My question for you, reader, is this: is it OK that I am wearing a blue tie with a stormcloud-grey shirt and black pants? Lacking anyone down here who knows a windsor knot from a hole in the ground, let alone anyone knowledgeable in the intricacies of color coordination, I must ask you.

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Yesterday I got off work at noon. Noon! It doesn’t happen often. The college where I am a math tutor is closed for a week, and so all I have to do on Monday and Thursday afternoons is tutor Monica. I went over to her place yesterday, and her parents, while understandably upset that they’ve hired a tutor and she’s still getting a D, were very understanding. They’re afraid she’s given up for this year, though, and I think that they’re right, and that this is my fault. Whenever they want an explanation for her low grades, I tell them that she’s a smart kid (she is) and that I think it’s the teaching. Monica hears this as “I have a bad teacher and am never going to learn anything; so, as long as I work hard for Seastreet, I have the material. I don’t even need to try to do the classwork.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hard on her teacher. On the other hand, I can only supplement good teaching, I can’t supplant it; someone of her intelligence should be doing better, and it’s the only explanation that I can think of, impolitic though it may be.

Anyway, I got paid for that, and went to browse around Barnes & Noble with the rest of the bourgeoisie. The other night, after Wren’s graduation, I got quite a few compliments on my piano playing, so I’ve been practicing, and wanted some good music to try to learn. I ended up picking up a copy of Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell, and the best album you’ve never heard) and a Nick Cave best-of. As I was paying up I thought that Monica probably hadn't heard of Nick Cave, even though she likes punk and dresses the part, which made me feel old. Went home, listened to C&S a few times, went to the bar down the street.

Cricketers is all about the regulars, who are a remarkably friendly bunch. Usually when you try to butt in on the old timers’ turf in a bar you have to deal with finding your place in the pecking order, go through a few rounds of dick antics, etc. Not so here.

There are two bartenders of note, S. and M. (There are two or three more, but S. and M. are the only ones that have any personality.) S. is short, comes from Long Island, 24, and either has fabulous breasts or wears pushup bras. I don’t like her much. Talking to her is like making small talk with a stripper. I have a hard time convincing myself that if I were not a tipping customer that she’d even waste her time. She hugs the regulars often, everyone within miles knows her name, and she may be exiled Italian royalty and working on cold fusion but you’d never know it. I think she thinks that if she gave you the straight story you wouldn’t tip her as much as you do if she just aims her melons at you and smiles.

M., on the other hand, is either more subtle or more sincere. She’s from Long Island too, originally (isn’t everyone down here?) and doesn’t put up with shit from anyone. Some people find her personality grating (I’ve heard customers complain that she’s bitchy.) I would guess she’s in her late 20s or early 30s, and she just finished her BA in journalism at USF. The side of me that judges people by their bookshelves perked up when she mentioned Hawthorne’s broadsheet work last week. She wants to get a PhD in women’s studies, a quixotic pursuit that of course makes me like her even more.

Of the two, I’d much rather listen to M. read a phone book than chit chat with S. But S. was there last night, along with the Chef (whose real name I forget, but who doubles as security), a couple yuppies, and a guy named Scott. Scott was friendly, came up to me and talked, his girlfriend Heather in tow. I was on my third MGD, and he’d had a few drinks himself. He asked where my family was from, and I told him it was German/English/Welsh. He was impressed with the German part, and decided it made me suitable for conversation. He spent awhile explaining his genealogy, which should have made me suspicious, and then toasting Germany with his Guinness. I bought him another Guinness and had a friend for life.

So after S. pours his beer, he goes, “Good Irish beer for a couple of Germans! Hey, tell me, what’s the best engine ever made?”

”I have no idea?”

”Of course you do! The best car engine ever made, man, what is it?”

Trying to remember every remark I’d ever heard a mechanic make, I hazarded a guess. “Volkswagen?”

”VOLKSWAGEN! That’s right! Who built this country? GERMANS! GERMANS! Booyah!” Then, more quietly and with a less enthusiastic high five, “Germans get a bad rap. Those Jews are always- hey, you’re not Jewish, are you?”

I tried to give him a beginning-to-take-this-line-of-questioning-personally look. “Why do you ask?”

”Hey, nevermind, no problem, I’ll get along with anyone. A nigger wants to start shit, though, and I’ll kick his ass, but if you’re a nice guy, then we’re OK, I’m an old-fashioned cracker like that...” Scott’s girlfriend glances at me nervously and then he gets up to take a piss, but not before buying me a drink called a Sexual Gator. [ed: He also actually, really sieg heiled]

Stuff like this always has to happen after you stand the guy a drink. This isn’t the first time, either, and it’s not like I see it as my job to run around and be Very Concerned at Every Remark On Behalf of Groups to Which I Do Not Belong. But if I had a dime every time I heard black/lazy people (to many in Florida, the two qualities seem interchangeable) referred to as niggers I would be able to pay reparations out of my own damn pocket. I suppose I could look at these attitudes as piquant examples of cultural difference. But doing so would rebel against everything I've ever been taught.

And the worst part is, I never know what to do. It seems unnecessary to treat everyone with a common prejudice, however detestable, as unclean and unworthy. It smacks of denial, at best: pretend horror and surprise that any self-respecting white person would trot out tired stereotypes. But every time I hear the same old party line about Jews running the UN/US foreign policy/world finance or hear someone who resents doing all the work on any particular project call themselves the office nigger, I have to swallow something. Is it enough to quietly oppose? Is it enough only to disagree when it’s a little less socially unacceptable to do so?

You have to give people room to be who they are, and learn what they learn, and remain in the dark in the manner of their choosing, of course. But when does that kind of stoicism cross the line into complicity? Is it just self-righteousness that I complain about it now, but didn't try to kick Scott's ass myself?