They’ve done another free service upgrade, and since I connect to their updater via the Internet rather than a phone line I now get 24/7 streaming radio through Live365.com. Know what this means? This means never-ending showtunes, baby!

So John finally makes it up to the Memphis Zoo to see Bobo the Amazing Talking Chimp. It’s a Wednesday, so there aren’t any crowds around and John is able to get right up to the cage.

From this close, he can see the covers of the two books Bobo is poring over: the Bible and Darwin’s Origin of the Species. This, thinks John, is a peculiar combo.

“Hey, Bobo! What’s up with your choice of literature?”

Bobo puts the Darwin down, shuffles around to face John, and says, “Well, I wanted to know if I was my brother’s keeper or if I was my keeper’s brother.”

On a couple of the personals sites on which I have ads, members have the option to send winks to other members. I’m not, at this point, terribly clear what winks are meant to signify; I had assumed that they were the online equivalent of an unambiguous flirtatious signal, the sort of thing you shoot at somebody from across the room if you’re not quite bold (or enticed) enough to go up and introduce yourself to the winkee.

I really can’t conceive of any other purpose these winks might serve, but there must be one as every email I’ve sent to a winker has been met with copious non-response. They wink, I say thanks-for-the-wink-wanna-talk?, they say nowt. So why, I have to wonder, did they wink in the first place? Do they take a wink to mean, “Hey, man, I’m totally not into you but good luck anyway?” Feh.

I did not organize this particular party, but I was part of the core group. By 9PM, those of us in the core began, whenever we bumped into one another, trying to find which of us was responsible for inviting that guest. No one would cop to it, so we eventually decided the guest of honor must have invited that guest on her own initiative.

I am currently wearing, with no discomfort or unsightly gaping, a size Medium shirt and a pair of blue jeans in a waist size I haven’t been able to squeeze into since, if memory serves, fourth grade.

Granted, these clothes are fresh from the consignment shop, so they’ve already been stretched and beaten and worn in. Also, the shirt is from Old Navy, which does seem to cut their clothes a bit larger than other places. Still, in a couple of weeks I should be able to fit into these sizes off-the-rack, I think. Woot!

Shortly past seven there came a delicate, perhaps even tentative, knock on my door. I opened it up and found a very cute young neighbor boy, and my heart did its little skippy thing.

One of the last times I saw neighbor-boy, he was in the company of known homosexuals. This indicated at least some potential for promise, I thought, and I had then begun weaving my web. I knew neighbor boy to be a fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune series, and I also knew of an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy which was very clearly Dune-inspired. I used the combo of my knowledge of that ep and neighbor-boy’s lack of cable to create a lure, hoping to eventually draw him to my apartment. I set the bait when I ran into neighbor-boy in the parking lot a couple days ago, telling him at that time that I had the Dune episode recorded and ready to show whenever he might like to stop by.

So, yeah. Open door, see neighbor-boy, heart skippy. Then I saw he carried an open bottle of wine in one hand and a corked bottle in the other, and skippy turned to leapy.

I invited him in, we chatted, he poured wine, we watched the cartoon. He liked it. Cartoon over, I put on the nifty new streaming Internet radio provided by TiVo and we chatted more. I was very much up.

And then, as convo continued, I realized neighbor-boy to be thoroughly and unambiguously straight. The known homosexuals in whose company he’d been were merely classmates he’d been joining for a drink. Down, down, down I went.

But then, sexual tension evaporated, I found him to be charming, witty, and just generally fun. We talked for a couple more hours, drank more wine, and at least I had a truly great time. Up!

So, yeah. While not optimal, it was definitely a pleasant evening with someone I hope to develop as a brand-new friend. Yay!

Last night I was standing by the take-out window at the Quick Grill, waiting for a portion of their superior hummus. One thing you need to know about the Quick Grill are that it is owned and staffed by people whose visual and auditory appearance suggest they have come here from the Middle East. Another thing you need to know is that the gaily painted cinderblock kiosk is on a corner in the heart of the Strip, which is the home of Tuscaloosa’s most popular just-barely-off-campus undergrad-friendly bars and clubs.

OK, so I’m waiting for my hummus, and this trio of drunken undergrads I’d noticed earlier in the evening walks by. I don’t know if you know the type if you’re not from around here; I do know the type, to the extent that they registered more as three members of a Type than as three individuals and so are hard to describe.

They were all three young, no older than 21 and most likely under-age. They all three wore camouflage hunting jackets, the thin kind not warm enough for a proper deer hunter going out at dawn and so suggestive more of a group-identity statement than of a utilitarian purpose. They all shared the kind of complexion that looks grubby even when they come freshly scrubbed from a shower; this detail may sound like an attempt to dehumanize and unfairly villify the boys in question, but I stand by it and maintain that it’s likely an artifact of the Crisco-heavy cuisine on which they’ve likely been raised (I speak from personal experience here).

So I’m waiting for my hummus, and the trio walks past. I pay them no mind, but the little revving up my limbic system does as they past does make me register their presence–these are the kind of people that makes a gay man’s lizard brain hiss “Danger! Danger!” But they’re walking past, so no worries.

Then one of them, the shortest and (this is true) greasiest one turns back and goes to the kiosk’s order window. (At the Quick Grill, one places an order at the window facing the street and picks up the order at the window on the left-perpendicular wall.) He clearly has mischief on his mind, but my snap judgement is that it’s the sort of testosterone-and-booze-fuelled machismo that will result in a couple of smart-ass comments to the (possibly) Arab foreign nationals working the kiosk.

Snap judgements are so very often wrong. Those people who say to always trust your first instinct? Idiots.

It appears the greasy boy and the guy running the counter had had a run-in earlier in the evening. Apparently grease-boy had been about to park in the Quick Grill’s small reserved parking lot rather than in the adjacent grocery store parking lot and had been asked to, well, not park there. Grease-boy had taken umbrage at this, and had been stewing over this act of supreme disrespect all evening.

Grease-boy starts berating the counter man, loudly and with many colorful epithets. Counter-man took the best available tack and ignored him. Grease-boy, being the kind of person he is, grew even more incensed. He stopped simply cursing counter-man and began threatening him. Like, saying he was going to get his gun and would be back any time now. Still, counter-man ignored him. Grease-boy grew livid.

Grease-boy grew incoherent in his threats. He stomped around to the back door of the kiosk and started pounding, demanding admittance so he could kick counter-man’s ass. After a couple of minutes of grease-boy shouting and hammering at the door, counter-man snapped. He came out the back door but, to his credit, did not engage grease-boy but instead walked briskly to the front, where he started hailing a bouncer at the door of the club across the street. This, in retrospect, may be the most depressing element of the entire ordeal, as it suggests encounters with the ilk of grease-boy are common enough that deals have been arranged.

This gets grease-boy really hot. He’s all up in counter-man’s face, threatening imminent violence. I think this is where the pejorative “sand nigger” made its first appearance and that this is where grease-boy first explicitly identified the posse with which he would be returning as the Ku Klux Klan. This threat and this pejorative would be frequently invoked throughout the rest of the encounter.

Bouncer came over and pulled grease-boy aside. As soon as he realized he was dealing with someone who could genuinely and easily (and gladly) kick his own personal ass, grease-boy’s manner of course changed radically. He ceased being the inflamed racist and instead tried to adopt the manner of the garden-variety belligerent drunk. Further, he began claiming the source of his ire was that he had been inexplicably denied service at the Quick Grill. This was clearly untrue, but it’s the way these country boys roll (again, personal experience): as soon as they perceive themselves as being on the weaker end of a power dynamic, they swap their wrathfulness for wounded pride swaddled in a patently false shroud of naivete.

So bouncer keeps trying to calm grease-boy down, trying to get him to just rejoin his buddies (who, to their very minor credit, are shuffling their feet embarrasedly on the sidelines and not sniggering or egging grease-boy on, and occassionally are even coming up and trying to get grease-boy to give up and leave). Grease-boy continues to demand satisfaction, although what might prove satisfactory remains unclear. Counter-man returns inside the kiosk, and eventually bouncer’s co-bouncer across the street comes out and makes a broad gesture indicating bouncer’s services are required.

As soon as bouncer is across the street, grease-boy’s wounded-pride misery face is replaced by a leering grin. He starts back up on counter-man, implying counter-man had been abandoned by his one ally in the world (a “sand nigger lover”, in grease-boy’s charming phrase) and that counter-man would almost certainly not live to see the dawn.

Shortly after counter-man finished my hummus and passed it off to me. And, get this, he apologized to me for having had to witness all that. I told him it certainly wasn’t his fault and headed off for home. En route I flagged down the first cop I saw and told him what was going on; he assured me he would check it out, and more I know not. I heard sirens shortly after I got home, but such are far from uncommon on a weekend night on the Strip (weekends start on Thursdays here) and so were not necessarily related.

But here’s the thing, and the reason for my question in the title: What should I have done? Should I have physically inserted myself into the altercation, at least making a symbolic stand showing that not all of us crackers are seething pimples of hatred and ignorance? All I could think of was the Kitty Genovese slaying, where the young woman was raped and murdered as all her neighbors watched silently from their apartment windows. Hell, I had my phone, I could have called 911 as soon as the first death threat flew; god knows I thought about it, but I shamefully felt too exposed, too likely to get dragged into the violence and quite likely get my very own beating.

But prudence often does not intersect morality. I can’t help but feel guilty, knowing I probably should have been willing to take my licks in standing up to neo-nazi scum.

So, for future reference, what should one do in such a situation?

UPDATE: Holy fucking hell. Grease-boy done went and shot somebody, apparently no more than 15 minutes after I left. It wasn’t even the counter man he had been berating, just some random customer. Christ.

Looks like I need to call the Tuscalosa PD.

UPDATE 2: The nice desk officer said they already have a suspect identified and are currently trying to locate him. They apparently already have enough witnesses, so my services won’t be required.

Got in 45 minutes of cardio and about 30 minutes of weights. I still think I must not be doing the weights right, because I’m never pronouncedly stiff or sore the next day. After only a week it’s too early for any visual clues, but I’m hoping that by St. Patrick’s Day I’ll be able to tell whether or not I’m actually doing myself any good.

I skipped the gym yesterday because it was so yucky, all gray drizzle and cold. Of course, this set up a pattern as rapid and destructive as Ice-9, leaving me unable to get off my (thankfully diminishing) ass and get over today. Even worse, today is supposed to be a lifting day in addition to the cardio, so I really do have a lot I’m going to have to pack in once I make it over, which of course is making it even harder to get up and out.

Somebody gimme a bullet to bite.