Chapter Sample #1 (Biography)
   —  by Bob Olson, Ghostwriter

Below is the end of Chapter One for my most recent biography. This book became a biography rather than an autobiography because my client wanted me to interview other people in his personal and business life to be included in the book.

Choices & Consequences

“We pulled into the parking lot of the Admiral Lounge go-go bar and I parked by the front doors. With my dad as the manager, I knew I could get away with it. I wasn’t trying to show off my car. I simply didn’t want the scumbags that frequented this dive to mess with my beautiful car. I figured it was safer under the lights where the bouncers could see it.

“I walked in the front door with Greg following behind me. We first entered a little foyer that housed the cigarette machine and payphone, then we opened another set of doors to the bar area. There were two bars, one directly in front of me as I walked in the door and one to my right. Behind the first bar was my dad who saw us walk in. I looked at him and said, ‘What’s up Daddy-O?’ He placed his hand to his forehead in a motion to express, Oh no, look what the cat just dragged in.

“It was around half past midnight. I got myself a drink and, before I knew it, I saw Greg at the other bar to the right. He’d been wearing his Traditional Martial Arts Institute jacket that night and somehow one of the go-go dancers was now wearing it up on stage. I’m thinking to myself, Wonderful. One of the dancers is wearing my school’s jacket. I don’t know if this is good advertising because this girl has it on or the worst frigging advertising ever. I’m standing there thinking about this with a smile on my face when I suddenly heard my dad whistle and call my name. He called me over to the front door, then motioned to the two bouncers to come, too. The next thing I knew we were all following Dad out the front door.

“I didn’t work there, but Dad was proud of his 2^nd-degree black belt son. I guess it made him feel self-important, and I guess it made me feel good, too. What son—regardless of his age—doesn’t want his father to be proud of him? So I got caught up in Dad’s little attempts to show me off and usually just followed along. He’d occasionally call me over as a backup bouncer, and I just stood there, not ever expecting anything to happen. So this night, when my father called me over, I couldn’t foresee any harm in it.

“The four of us showed up outside and it turned out that a bachelor party had showed up in a van. It was filled with black gentlemen, which isn’t significant except that I knew my father was prejudiced against blacks, so I didn’t know what to expect. The first thing I noticed was that the van had Pennsylvania tags. So I wondered why they had come all the way to New Jersey. The next thing I noticed was that all the passengers were loaded off their ass. Even so, my father began collecting the cover charge from everyone, which surprised me a bit. I didn’t expect him to let a bunch of drunk people into the bar to drink more alcohol. I was thinking to myself, Bad, bad move.

“The last two guys out of the van didn’t have an I.D., and they were the youngest of the bunch, probably around 20 or 21 years old. So they were checking their pockets like they were looking for their license or something, but I knew they weren’t going to find anything. That’s when I noticed that the two bouncers were gone. They had followed the rest of the bachelor party into the bar, so it was just me and Dad out there—two against two, and my dad was seriously overweight, over 400 pounds.

“As I was watching this whole scene, I noticed that the taller of the two guys, a little taller than me, was wearing a red sweat suit with that slick, windbreaker material. The shorter guy had on an old black leather jacket with regular clothes; he was dressed a little nicer. Dad was messing with their heads because they didn’t have IDs, threatening to not let them in, but they were arguing with him. They were both real cocky. I thought it was odd that neither of the guys would look me in the eye. Yet they didn’t have to look me in the eye for me to tell that neither one liked me. Between their facial expressions and their body language, I could feel it. I thought to myself, How did I get myself into this? I don’t even work here and the bouncers who do are now gone. Dad then decided to let these last two guys in as well, so we all walked back into the bar together.

“After I got back into the bar, one of the dancers came up and started talking with me. With my father managing the place, I knew all the dancers pretty well. Most of them were nice girls. So me and this girl were chitchatting when Mr. Sweat Suit without the I.D. showed up and started hitting on her like a typical inebriated punk—belligerent and rude. At first, I didn’t feel any need to step in since these girls already know how to handle themselves. But what this girl did next took me completely by surprise. As this guy was telling her that she needs to go home with him, she stepped to my side, put her arm around me and said, ‘I’m with him.’

“Now this guy didn’t like me to begin with, so I just knew this was heading in a bad direction. He said a few words, then I said a few words, but then he just sort of shut up. That’s when the girl walked away and went to the back where all the dancers change. I thought it was all over and proceeded to go find Greg at the other bar. But when I picked up my jacket off the chair and began to walk away, Mr. Sweat Suit was standing in front of me staring at me. So I said to him, ‘You’ve had a little too much to drink. You ought to watch yourself.’ And when I started to walk away, he pushed me from behind. From there, everything seemed to move so fast. Out of nowhere, my dad appeared with one of the bouncers behind him. The next thing I knew, the bouncer was pushing Mr. Sweat Suit out the door and my father was pushing me out the door. My father was saying to me—loud so the other guy could hear it—‘You’re gonna mess this asshole up.’

“I was too caught up in the fear of what was happening to notice, but in hindsight I now recognize that I was trapped between one man’s drunkenness and another man’s prejudice. My father should have been preventing a fight, not encouraging it. I certainly had no desire to brawl with this man. One of the key principles you learn from martial arts is to avoid fighting if at all possible. I lived this principle since my first black belt at the age of 15. But I was now literally being pushed into a fight. And making a statement like ‘You’re gonna mess this asshole up’ while shoving us out the door was just adding kindling to the fire.

I had my hands up in the air shouting to my father, ‘What are you doing?’ But it was too late. The next thing I knew we were in the foyer that held the payphone and cigarette machine. And that’s when the guy finally looked me in the eye. And in that moment, what I saw was a man who didn’t care about life. He had nothing to lose. And that’s a scary situation, because you can be dealing with someone who’s one foot tall and weighs three pounds, but if they don’t care about life, they’re ten times more dangerous than the biggest giant in the world. That’s the moment I knew we were going to fight, and it wasn’t going to happen outside; it was going to explode right there in that foyer.

“As fists started flying, I decided that I wasn’t going to let this guy get the upper hand on me. I was going to rip this guy in half, because if I didn’t then he was going to rip me in half. I’ll admit that I was really scared. So I just started beating on him. I’m sure he was beating on me, too, but I couldn’t feel anything. All I know is that I was doing shit to him with my fists and elbows that he’s only seen in Bruce Lee movies—everything I had been trained to do for years, but for competition, not fighting. I then put my leg between his two legs and did a major inner-leg sweep. This swept him down onto the ground, causing him to fall on his ass. I then dropped my 180-pound frame on top of him, driving my knee into his nuts. From there, the adrenaline in me just kept me punching and punching and punching. My heart was beating a million miles an hour.

“When the fight was over. I was standing up and looking at my buddy Greg in front of me. I began tucking in my shirt while trying to catch my breath. I noticed that Mr. Sweat Suit was no longer in the room. I assumed he took off out the door. And at that very moment, he came back, opened the door just a crack, pointed a pistol towards my head and pulled the trigger. That’s the last I remember of that night,” said Robert.