It seems one can find a bully anywhere—even at an anti-bullying event.

I’m standing on the patio of a Potrero Hill nightclub two Fridays ago near a table stacked with copies of “Heart Transplant,” a new book by Andrew Vachss, Frank Caruso and Zak Mucha. While a band is setting up inside, the happy-hour crowd is on the patio polishing off beers and baskets of fried bar fare. From the next table someone says: “Hey, what’s all that?”

The voice belongs to a guy with arms like legs and legs like people, as wide as he is tall. I tell him the book is a mix of art, narrative prose and non-fiction that debunks myths about bullying and shows readers how they can interrupt the cycle of abuse that has permeated our culture from the schoolyard to the internet. I also tell him we’re here to throw an all-ages rock show, hoping to get the book into the hands of young people—that population for whom bullying is most relentless and devastating.

“I was one of those kids,” the big guy says. “Except back then they didn’t call it abuse; they called it discipline.”

I hand him a copy of the book and he flips through it with his friend, reiterating my description.

“Hey, I’ll take one of these,” he says. “It’s great you guys are doing this. Someone needs to look out for the kids. I have kids.”

As I bag up a copy for him, he and his friend get up to get another round, shaking my hand and congratulating me on being a good citizen.

“Keep up the good work,” the big guy says, walking away. “The kids need people to help them.”

What a nice guy, I think to myself. It’s always a treat to meet someone who looks like he could beat you into the ground without spilling a drop of his beer, but acts like he would rather be your buddy.

The big guy ends up sticking around a while. Midway through the show, he steps past the club’s doorman and out the side entrance to the sidewalk where he begins urinating on a fence that lines the club’s patio. The doorman walks outside to smoke a cigarette and notices the big guy relieving himself, but decides not to interrupt him and heads back to his post.

When the big guy comes back inside, the doorman says, “Hey, next time would you not piss on the club?”

“I wasn’t pissing on the club,” the big guy says. “I went around the corner.”

Not wanting a conflict, but tolerating none of the big guy’s mendacity, the doorman says, “No you didn’t. I saw you out there.”

The big guy starts to flex: “Why the fuck are you watching me piss? Are you a faggot?”

Doorman: “Dude, you’re totally turning this around.”

Big guy: “Sounds like you’re queer to me.”

Doorman: “I was just asking you nicely not to piss on the club.”

Big guy, taking off his hat: “Fuck that. You were watching me piss. I’m going to knock you the fuck out.”

By this time, a bouncer is standing behind the doorman. He knows the big guy as a regular and the big guy knows him. The bouncer calms the situation enough to find the big guy’s friend and ask him to make sure they finish their beers soon and get going.

“I try to talk to him,” says the big guy’s friend. “Believe me I try.”

The two eventually leave and the doorman says he would have kicked the big guy out sooner had he not been so large and drunk.

“I don’t want to have to call the cops,” he says. “I don’t want to have to fight. It’s easier to let him stay through the night and 86 him later.”

The bouncer says the big guy is a longtime regular who often harasses and intimidates the club’s staff and patrons.

“When he’s sober he’s alright, but when he’s drunk, he’s a total asshole bully,” he says.

Apparently, the big guy usually minds his manners with the bouncer (also a very big guy) and with the club’s manager (who has the most power to kick him out for good). Everybody else, though, watch out.

“It struck me that maybe nobody ever talks to the guy about anything—like he’s not used to it,” the doorman says. “He wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying. He just wanted to call me a faggot. His way of deflecting me was to call me a faggot. He wasn’t confronting what he did wrong.”

The bouncer’s duty is to handle bullies so that staff and patrons don’t have to. He says he doesn’t like to fight, but scrapping sometimes comes with the job.

“Just don’t use your size to intimidate me,” he says. “I’ll get to a point where I’m going to knock you out and send you to jail.”

I ask why he thinks the big guy never steps to him.

“Maybe it’s the way I carry myself,” he says. “He’s seen me do my job.”

That makes sense. Bullies tend not to target people they’re not sure they can whip.

It’s interesting that the staff agreed to permanently ban the big guy from the club based on an incident that produced no physical violence. (Though it’s doubtful any of them look forward to explaining that to him the next time he walks in, thirsty.) Not everyone knows to define bullying outside the parameters of physical aggression.

The big guy seems to fit a certain bully profile: bullied as a kid himself, dismissive of other people’s needs, loose with the truth when called on his behavior. Perhaps he’s chosen to imitate his own abusers as a way to gain power over others. I wonder if he’ll see himself in the book he took home with him.