Late-Night Tales

100 Dollars in 1985

by Suhail Bauer

The scars faded a while ago. But this was like right after college. We’re at this bar, trashed, throwing darts, when this sunburnt dude from Mississippi speaks up, says he has a bear outside. Bets everyone in the bar the Benjamin behind his ear that they can’t wrestle it.

And 100 dollars in 1985 in Champaign Illinois is a lot of dough. So we’re all like, Fuck yeah.

We follow him to the back parking lot, where he lines us up biggest to littlest. And I’m like the third-to-biggest guy, but for his secret reasons dude makes me go first.

The door to the horse trailer shrieks like it needs grease. Then the bear stumbles, leashed, and stands on its hind legs. Easily six feet tall, 300 pounds, easy. And I’m rattled, almost shit myself, until the guy says that the bear doesn’t have any claws or teeth.

And yeah, it's sad and unnatural, but you don’t hear me complain.

So I gulp the rest of my beer and charge him. And the bear just tackles me. I try to get on his back and like choke-hold him, but the bear stands on his hind legs again and tosses me off. Knocks my wind out. Pins me to the ground and, even though he doesn’t have any claws or teeth, he gums me, across the forehead. Imagine if the bear has actual teeth? All he does is gum me without teeth and my head still gushes. And then the bear goes for my neck, and I remember thinking: ‘This is It. I’m gonna die wrestling a bear in a parking lot.’

But the bear’s keeper from Mississippi jabs his rump with a cattle prod, and zap: the thing gets off me. Obviously trained real well. And the bearkeeper says the match is up.

But I didn’t win the money. The bearkeeper said the littlest guy won because he was the most wiry, but I think he only said the littlest guy won because the little guy still went up against the bear, even though he was so small. I remember he somehow climbed the bear, rodeo rode him. Until the bear threw him to the gravel.

Somewhere I have a Polaroid picture of me with blood just streaming down my face, posed next to this bear on his hind legs.

Last time I told this story, some joker at the party told me, “Fighting a bear is honorable.“

And I told him, “If it’s a matter of life and death in the woods, sure, I guess it’s honorable.”

But if you’re fucked up, fighting a bear in a parking lot, you’re just a schwanz.

Suhail Bauer works as a primary care physician by day and has completed the Bennington College MFA program.