Thus from the lips of a scrawny, fiftysomething gentleman at the end of the bar, who spoke with a heavy outer borough accent and also proclaimed for all to hear, several times, "Fuck the Red Sox." That there were only four of us in there -- the diplomatic Irishman behind the bar, the squishy man about my age in a Cubs hat who sat to my right, the Red Sox hater, and yours truly -- seemed to trouble him not at all. In fact, it seemed to me that talking the way he was, loudly, to the bartender, seemed like a challenge to the rest of us. If one of us was a Red Sox fan (which I am), then we should probably speak up, or else we were "faggots".
I'm not really a violent person, and it's not often that I wish I had the ability to do harm to a person with my bare hands, but when people toss around that word -- faggot -- I start wishing I had spent most of my youth studying some mysterious and deadly martial art. Would you sit in a bar with strangers and talk about the "niggers" and "spics" you see on the subway? Of course not, even if you were dumb enough to harbor those kinds of thoughts. So why is it that a certain breed of low-IQ testosterone freak feels like it's perfectly acceptable to go on and on about "faggots"?
Okay, I don't really need that question answered; I can suss it out on my own. Homosexuality is the last vanguard of official inequality in this country; not only is there no Gay History Month, not only can gays not get married in most states in this otherwise-great country, not only is the language littered with vile weasel words like "traditional marriage" and "family values" that really mean "fuck those faggot fudge-packers right in the ear", but it is in fact handed down from on high, from pulpits and soapboxes, that homosexuality is, at best, "abnormal", and at worst, a mortal sin worthy of the death penalty. Don't even get me started on the idea of "love the sinner, hate the sin" -- what a weak, stupid, and impossible directive that is, a cop-out from religious types who would not own up to their own bigotry. Men, in particular, with our fragile sexual egos constantly at risk of collapsing, seem to find the idea of buggery somehow beyond the pale; a man who has sex with other men is somehow less than other men, though of course most will cloak that kind of bullshit in a thin patina of religion or politics, some trumped-up worry that the PC police and gay marriage will combine to destroy the "traditional" family.
But good God do I see red when I hear that word. I'm not a PC person, not in the least; I've been taken to task more than once for saying things that might offend the sensibilities of certain people. But you don't have to be PC to be made angry by hateful labels, particularly when uttered with the kind of vitriolic bitterness that the asshole at the end of the bar had in his voice. I didn't even finish my beer. I closed my book, dropped a fiver on the counter, and left. I made eye contact with the bartender as I left; he knew why I was going. I wish he'd had it in him to eject the other guy, but I didn't really expect it or anything. Shit, I didn't have the guts to say anything, either, because as I said I am not a violent person and I don't relish a fight.
But man, I had a vision in mind. As I was leaving the bar, I knew exactly what I wanted to do: seize the guy from behind, press the bony part of my wrist right against his windpipe like a fucking garrotte, and bite his ear clean off. I could feel the ear tearing between my teeth; I could see the blood on his face and my shirt, I could hear the police sirens howling outside as they came blasting up the street to get me. I even know what I would say to the judge:
"I was provoked."
And I was. But I didn't do anything. I'm still trying to decide if I feel good about that.
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