I don’t go to bars often. I usually need a good reason, like an awesome cover band, to compensate for the 10% of bar patrons who are drunken lecherous reprobates. My roommate tipped me off to a good gig tonight, so I took Darien out to celebrate her new arrival to the bay area. Little did we know that in addition to a totally fun show, we’d also be treated to some epic a-hole behavior.

We sidle up to the bar to watch the band finish setting up. The guy sitting next to me is pretty drunk, which is embarrassing enough, even if you don’t factor in that it’s only 9:30 p.m. He smacks — not taps, smacks — me on the arm and asks why I have on blue (I’m wearing green) and Darien has on red. “Did you guys plan that?” he wants to know.

“No, we didn’t,” I assure him politely, and turn back to my friend.

“Yes, you did,” the guy retorts, poking my arm. “We just started talking and you’re already lying.”

“Ah yes, you’ve figured out our secret,” Darien confesses.

“It’s all part of our plot,” I tell him. I’m not interested in helping this guy use us as a target for his rather cliché bitterness for life and love. We successfully ignore him for a while until I get smacked on the arm again. What is this, the Mos Eisley Cantina?

“You guys look like, you’re, like, Stepford Wives,” I am informed.

“Excuse me?”

“Like, so prim and proper, you’re like Stepford Wives.”

Confused, mainly because Stepford Wives would never, ever go to a bar, I ask him if he’s read the novel.

“I saw the movie. You’re Stepford Wives because you’re wearing the same thing,” he claims. His friend, who has been sitting next to him silently this whole time, begins to smile. He can clearly see that a train wreck is about to take place and wants to enjoy every moment.

“Actually,” I inform him, putting on my most going-to-scare-you-with-my-formidable-and-rarely-useful-knowledge-of-literature tone of voice, “The book has nothing to do with clothing. It’s about loss of feminine identity in the face of patriarchal control.”

The Wingman gets this kind of Oopsie This Girl Is Smarter Than She Looks look. But the drunk guy, oblivious, persists.

“No, it’s about how you’re all proper. I saw the movie,” I am informed. Well, isn’t that nice. He repeats a few things he’s been saying about how we are uptight and prissy. His evidence for this is based on the fact that we (a) are dressed up and (b) don’t want to talk to him. Except he doesn’t quite put it that way. In his version there was more slurring and profanity.

“Do you practice saying things to offend people?” I ask him in all sincerity, while Darien flips him the bird.

“No, I don’t mean it as an insult,” he says in a very insulting tone. “But you are. You’re like robots.”

I tell him there are some advantages to being a robot. He then says something extremely classy to the effect of that if I were a robot I would be able to provide nonstop manual stimulation to his favorite body part. I shake my head and correct him.

“No, see, if I were a robot, I could replace my foot or hand if it got damaged. And if I went to a bar and some jerk insulted me and my friend,” I say, “I would be able to hit him really fucking hard with my robotic arm.”

His jaw drops a little bit. His friend chokes on his Bud Light as he suppresses violent laugher. Darien and I get up to go find more civil company closer to the band, which has started to play.

A little wake-up call, genius. If you’re trying to get attention, please decide what kind you would like. The good kind takes manners. But if you don’t have manners, please remember that insulting me and my friend is probably only going to get you a nice verbal castration.