I was taking my break up front when a regular customer came through. He is a towering man who played college football and pro basketball, and whose son is going into the NBA this year. He is a cabbie that has been threatened and attacked by many of the new generation of sissy black thugs, who all grew up under a mommy’s wing and act accordingly, like bitches. He says that’s why he’s impatient with his own, the young generation, because “they have no grit, no balls, no respect, nothing but bitch in the blood.”

Feeling the same way about my own, who were gathered around discussing football, I said nothing. Not right away. He was a Steelers fan and was busting on the Ravens, to howls of disapproval from the staff. Finally, when asked why he disliked the Ravens, he said because it was “prejudice* what they did with Ray Rice. I didn’t like the little guy, but they done him wrong.”

*It is so nice to hear the term prejudice instead of the deformed catchall “racism.”

The other three men went off, talking about how women are sacred, and you can’t have an NFL hero punching a woman and hauling her out of the elevator like a sack of laundry. They then –season ticket holders, two of them—pointed out how many people turned their Ray Rice Jersey in at the game when his shirt was recalled. The lone black man in the conversation was just shaking his head, knowing that these sissy, pussy-whipped white fellows would defend their women’s opinion at all costs. He was being too kind to bring up the subject of who wore the pants in their family, as many fulltime male retail food employees who are married have a wife who makes more money than they do and therefore calls the shots.

I had to put my two cents in, and his eyes bugged out, not having realized that I was an honorary African American, “First it was a lie—he did not punch her. That was a slap.”

My boss said, “But you can’t hit a woman that hard. You have to turn the other cheek.”

“Dude, I know you’ve never lain down with a black woman—let alone woke up next to the bitch. She was coming at him like a banshee. The only thing he did wrong is he used the Serena Williams Pimp Slap on her when the Robin Givens Pimp Slap was called for and dropped her ass.”

My man was happy, nodding and saying, “And she spit in his face. That is a crime worse than a slap, which is simple battery.”

The middle aged pussy whipped men were wringing their hands and decrying the death of chivalry, and objected to how she was dragged out of the elevator, so I said it, “Not a black woman turned her Jersey in. That was all white women that sent him down to the whipping post, just so you guys would know who was boss. The sisters knew that those high and mighty white bitches were just using Ray to make a point and taking her money in the bargain.”

That’s when my tag team partner stepped in and said, “Yeah, the man still ain’t workin’, still on the black list over something that should have stayed between the two of them.”

I chimed in, “That evil bitch deserved it!”

The pussy whipped team threw up their hands and said, “There’s no reasoning with you guys, you even live in the city,” one said as he pointed to me, which earned me the non sissy nod from the big man as he left shaking his head.

One of the things I like about discussing sports—even sports I could care less about—is that men of different races can have heated arguments over these subjects and usually do not let it get personal, which I think is healthy.

At times like this, I am faced with the fact that spiritually and culturally—particularly in relation to my masculine identity—I am much more like a sixty year old black man than is a 40 year old black man, and that middle-aged white men seem to be as distant from me as 20-year-old black men, both very different groups having one common tie, emasculation, and the shamefully apologetic life of the postmodern social eunuch, for all intents and purposes a steer in a pasture where bulls used to run, a pasture now fenced and ruled by the cows.