Friday, October 12, 2007

They'll Kick You And They'll Punch You And They'll Tell You It's Fair, So . . .

john walker | 7:58 AM | |
When he first told me to "beat it," I wasn't all that bothered. I had been trying to extricate myself from the table for what seemed like hours anyway, but his date just kept yammering on in a half-drunken Italian impersonation that was as embarrassing as it was insulting. So I was relieved at the sudden escape hatch, the wave of the hand granting express permission to leave the table and be done with it.

It was only after I related the dismissal to Pepe that it started to irk me. "That guy just told me to 'beat it'," I said, much in the same way that I might report someone asking for more bread. But Pepe's eyes widened at the news. His jaw slackened a little bit and his pupils took on an immediately sympathetic cast, and it was then that I started to feel the first gurglings of outrage.

That guy just told me to "beat it."

Besides top-hatted characters in 1920's musicals and Michael Jackson, besides mullet-headed toughs in 80's cop dramas, who talks like that? Who looks at another human being they hardly know and tells them to "beat it?"

What, "scram" was taken? "Shoo" not coming to the tip of the tongue? "Beat it?" Seriously?

The rest of the night is a blur of anger and self-loathing as I try to reconcile the depths of human indecency with the circumstances that have brought me to this place, where I, at 31, can be told to "beat it" by a complete stranger and not be bothered until someone tells me to.

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