the letter 'f'

last night, i went to an event party with my former coworkers. bourbon was the drink of the evening, and that is what i drank. i've never drank bourbon before, and will never put that poison to my lips ever again. basically, i was body slammed and came home feeling like my 21st birthday, but worse. i'm being honest. i have no idea what happened. but, there is more to the story than my drinking.

living in new york, one gets to experience a lot of different people and lot of different cultures. this also gives people what i assume a very open mind, and the ability to be accepting. except, like always, i'm not (w)right, but rather wrong.

while i was enjoying the poison with my friends, a man came up and tried to talk to us. being with girls, i understood the appeal. so i humored the stranger for a short while and then moved my arm and body to signify we were done with the conversation. he starts getting irate and starts yelling at me about all sorts of things that were neither here nor there. i turn around and tell him "we're done here" and ask him to leave us alone. well, he didn't. he started yelling more and said the ultimate word "faggot." he said this many times in the course of a few sentences and i was beyond any emotion. i felt disgraced, humiliated, broken and ugly. the words were delivered with a sense of hate, and that's something you can't just get over.

you would think, being from texas, i would have encountered more words like this, with attitudes to match. but i never did. i had a great childhood and an even more perfect family and friends. never did i ever feel wrong. so, to be called a faggot in a bar in front of friends in a neighborhood that is known to be a gay area, was shocking and still hurtful.

words, as i am sure many of you know, hurt. i've never experienced the full extent of that phrase until now. it's humbling.

i'm a fun person, i like to believe. and i am pretty liberal in many things and to have that word thrown is jarring. while the sentences were flying and the words were being hurled, i was mildly frightened about where the upcoming actions might escalate. do i fight? well, i have never been in a fight and the guy was bigger in weight than me. and i didn't know if he was going to just punch me and that was it. i didn't know what was going to happen. but i knew i didn't feel safe. but i think this was the first time in this city i have never felt unsafe,

all things considering, it ended fine. the security people took him outside and he left. nothing much to say really. done and done. and even if there was something else to say, i couldn't tell you because shortly afterwards, the poison took hold of me and my body.