Weird People, Weird Nights

I had this super weird encounter last night. This guy was trying to pick a fight with me. I was invited to a bar by this girl staying at the hostel, we had shared a room when I first biked here. We watched the Australian Bachelor that night (it’s the same), so we go way back. We biked to the bar and she introduces me to some of her coworkers/friends. They all blend together when you travel. The first guy she introduces me to doesn’t say hi or anything, just sort of looks me up and down. Things are fine for a while and we keep meeting new people and chatting. Then this guy comes and sits with us and starts saying things like “This guy…” and “Americans are so…” but never really finishing his sentence. He keeps trying to knock over my beer as well. At first I’m confused. I really wanna know what other people think of Americans so I’m like listening, but I’m not gonna argue. He hasn’t said anything! Also I’m like the least nationalistic person, so if he was trying to cause a conflict he really picked the wrong way to do it. But after a while I pick up that everyone is on drugs except for me and the girl. So it’s this general sigh of a relief, like I hadn’t made a faux paus. I just wasn’t fucked up. But he kept trying to egg me into a fight. Which made me uncomfortable, because let’s face I’m not really a fighter. Why would I fight? Seems like a lot of work for not a lot of reward. He even said “this guy’s not falling for my mind games”, which makes more sense in drug context. I half deduce on my own/confirm with my ex-roomie, that he has a crush on her, and for some reason perceived me as a threat. I literally just showed up with her. If I was sleeping with everyone I showed up to parties with, I’d have AIDS. So he’s trying to fight me for a girl? Can’t I just be gay? I figure the drugs have something to do with it as well. He jumped off a roof and skinned his hands and knees at one point. He kept throwing back drinks and giving me the stink eye. Eventually he was blinded by his own ego, and was just tackling people and running around. The cops came and had a chat with him. The cops are super lax here, so nothing happened. Eventually he was thrown out of the bar, not sure what happened after that. But what a shitty person! To just meet me and start being a dick? And to assume I was in the way of his sexual conquest?? Like he was entitled to “talk” to this girl, and she didn’t have a say? C’mon. And just no self-control. He was also like my stylistic enemy. He had the sides shaved of his head and on top a bunch of short dreads. He was white. English. And had tattoos of those silhouette mud flap girls you’d see on trucks on his pelvis. Classy. On the other side of interesting people I meet at night, I met this phD candidate from England, studying philosophy of biology in Canberra. He was writing his thesis about the way low-level creatures communicate. Like bees is the classic example, but he was talking about ants and even plants. Which was super similar to the work my lab was doing on ants and spiders and wasps. So we compared notes for a while. He’s trying to determine where an individual ends and a colony begins, or where a group ends and a colony begins. And how does a colony make colony level decisions with a group of individuals, how do they talk? And if a colony does make decisions as one, say an ant hill entrance is destroyed and the colony sends a bunch of workers from other tasks to fix it, then what kind of mentality is that? And that’s the reason I would want to go out. I don’t really like going to bars, cuz I never meet anyone with similar interests. And it’s so loud. Most people just want to get fucked up and listen to shitty music. I’d be much more prone to getting smashed with good music. But if I have to listen to shitty music then I want to meet and talk to cool people. And this marks the first occasion with a total rando. I asked to exchange email, which was probably too formal, but whatever it happened.