I’m still out of sorts. It’s been two days and I can’t stop thinking about what happened. I’m angry.

No, fists were not thrown. Still it was a very heated altercation, my first as in adult in a public space. Security had to be called. Appropriately enough it was at a sports arena - the BankNorth Garden in Boston.


It was at the Barbra Streisand concert on Sunday night. She played Boston and I shelled out the per capita income of Bolivia to sit in the third row. I’m a big fan - not of everything she’s done. I’ve avoided certain of her more ill-advised ventures, just in case I meet her one day. I wouldn’t want to have to say I loved Nuts or The Mirror Has Two Faces or that album where she wore Superman pajamas on the cover. Plausible deniability is crucial.

From the very start of the evening I was rattled. I was supposed to be sitting in the center. Instead I was directly stage right which meant that I would be staring at her profile the whole time. Then again the nose is part (most?) of the whole package. What’s more the cool Rhode Island lesbian couple next to me - they’d seen her three times before - said they chose to sit there because Barbra thinks her right side is her bad side so she tends to actually face right so that the people stage right see her head on. (Got it? Just make sure you don’t sit stage left, unless you’re a fan of Barbra Streisand’s butt.)

By the way the arena was packed to the gills with lesbians. Huh? Since when did Barbra Streisand become Joan Armatrading?

Anyway the second row was empty up until about 7:50. Then four broads (the technical term for these women) came in. Puffy-faced, fifty-something boozehounds. Overly made up, fake-tanned former party girls. Married now, probably unhappily. (They all had wedding rings.) The types of women who screamed racial epithets during the Boston busing crisis of the early 70s. A couple of them maybe slept with Ted Kennedy during one of his benders. They never quite worked their way up to Bobby. Loyal to each other, in college they held each other’s hair back when they vomited at the tailgate parties.

Now they were drinking wine since that’s “classy.” (They started swilling a couple of hours before, in the white stretch they rented for the night.) The ringleader had a cast on her right foot. She propped it up on the empty seat in front of her.

As soon as the lush 60-piece orchestra began playing the overture, trouble was brewing. The broads were yapping away. I couldn’t say anything since, as any theatergoer knows, it’s become acceptable unfortunately to talk during the overture. I was concerned.

Then Barbra Streisand emerged. She rose from below centerstage. She’s 64 now, sporting the Mom-from-Scarsdale look. She was mellow and sounded tremendous singing “Starting Here, Starting Now.”

“Bahbra! Ovah heah!” yelled the injured one as she dropped her (third) plastic wine glass. I didn’t have a huge problem with that. She’s a fan, I thought. She’s allowed to act out a little.

Except that the broads weren’t really fans. The proof? When Streisand began singing “People” one of the other boozehounds got on her cellphone!!!

“Can you believe it? I’m at the Bahbra Streisand Cawnsuht!” she wailed. (Imagine Lina Lamont from Singin’ in the Rain transplanted to South Boston.)

One of the Rhode Island lesbians to my right suddenly looked distressed. I decided I needed to defend civilized people everywhere. (Plus this cawnsuht was costing me almost eight dollahs a minute!)

“Turn off the cellphone,” I snapped. I didn’t shout but my voice was very tight. I know that I must have looked like a troubled young man. (Like Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun. Handsome, but troubled.) The ringleader slowly turned her head in disbelief.

“Whaddid you say?” she snarled.

“I said ‘Turn off the cellphone’ and stop talking.” I was still barely in control. “I paid [embarrassing amount of $ here] to see this. Stop talking. Now. Just stop talking.”

“We can tahk if we want. We paid money, too. Jeez, can ya believe this guy, tellin’ us to stop tahking?”

“… people who need peeeeeeeople..” sang Streisand, not twenty feet from us. I simply could not believe that this glorious moment was being ruined by these whoahs. I lost it.

“SHUT UP!” I screamed.

“YOU shaddup! Tellin’ me to shaddup. Yuh trash. That’s what yuh ah. Trash!”

“… are the luckiest people … in … the …”

“BUTTON IT!!!”

“… wooooooooorrrrlllllld!”

“DON’T TELL ME TO BUTTON NUTHIN’!”

Finally an attendant came over to quiet us all and make the cellphone talker turn off her phone.

What happened from there is anticlimactic and sad. The broads kept talking throughout the first act, just to get me upset.

“Evehgreen! From a Stah is Bahn!”

“Remembah Kris Kristoffahson?”

“Oh, yah. He was wicked hot.”

“Hey, wheah’s Barry Gibb?”

At intermission I reported these harridans to security. The cop must have felt bad for me. (At this point I was Tony Perkins at the end of Psycho.) He reprimanded them. But like truly horrible people, they found a way to get at me even worse. They whispered throughout the second act. It was actually more irritating than their first act talking but it wasn’t a reportable offense. I was stuck.

My only satisfaction came at the end, during the encore performance of “Don’t Rain On My Parade.” Everyone stood cheering. The drunk injured one was helped to her feet - then fell backward! Her back banged against the top of her seat. I prayed for an injury, at least a sprain. She was pretty trashed, I guess.

“C’mon. Lez go.” The other boozehounds propped her up and carried her out.

I don’t know what else I could have done. I had complained to them, then called security. But they were intent on ruining my evening.

What would you have done??!!

More importantly, what has the world come to? When did people become so RUDE?! And why didn’t those lesbians from Rhode Island back me up?!