You Don’t Get To Be Offended

So the other day I’m flyering in an affluent part of town and I see this rich, elitist cocksucker in his pinstripe suit and his wingtips strolling out of his townhouse without a care in the fucking world, and right as he goes to step into his Escalade, everybody on the block hears this:

“Nice suit, you boy-toucher!”

I look over to see who said it—a homeless guy with a shopping cart full of aluminum cans. Everything is suspended in motion for a couple of seconds. The rich man in the suit is frozen still, with a look of bemusement on his ugly, overfed face.

“Wha…what was that?”

“I said your suit is shitty and you look like you touch boys! These rich people ’round here ain’t got no fuckin’ style, man. You look like you live in the 1920s or some shit. Fucking poo-butt ass.”

All the rich people look mortified, but I’m rolling around in hysterics. The suit man hears this, and overcome by humiliation, he marches over to the shopping-cart hobo with both fists clenched.

“Who the hell do you think you are? What are you even doing around here? Get out of here before I call the police and have you—”

At this point I stop laughing. I step between them, shielding my new hero from the brunt of this bourgeois bully, and we square up like rival boxers touching gloves.

“Whoa. Back up, Mr. Monopoly. This guy’s with me, and he can say what he wants.”

“Not to me, he can’t—and who are you, anyway? This has nothing to do with you. I was minding my own business, and he assaulted me.”

“Assaulted you?” I scoffed. “This guy right here, he’s just fighting back. Fighting back because you and your kind assault him every single day of his life. Why do you think he’s collecting cans and wearing these raggy clothes and walking around smelling like horse shit?”

“Hey, man,” the hobo interjects.

“It’s because you put him in the gutter. You put him there. So let the man say what he wants and go about your business. It really doesn’t concern you at all.”

“It doesn’t concern me? He called me a pedophile, for crying out loud! I’ve just been publicly insulted by some loudmouth, and you expect me to, what, forget about it?”

“No, I don’t. I expect you to learn from this man.” I put my arm around the hobo and hug him closely to my body. “I expect you to think about why he felt the need to tell everybody that you got fired from your job as a Scoutmaster, and what kind of feelings he’s trying to express, and what you’re doing, or rather, what you’re not doing, to instill them in him.”

“It’s not my fucking problem what his feelings are!” His face is as red as a beet at this point. “I’ve got plenty of problems of my own, my daughter’s in the hospital right now, and I was just about to—”

I’ve had enough. I knock him clean on his ass with a right cross and watch the blood pump out of his nose as he looks up dazed and bewildered.

“Shit, man, you’re crazy!” the bum cackles as he rattles his cart away.

“It’s not your problem, huh? Let me make one thing very clear to you, you pampered, self-indulgent pig-fucker: Oppression is EVERYBODY’S problem. And here’s something else, and you can tell it to your dumb slut of a daughter once they’re done pumping the Adderall and black seed out of her system or whatever it is that she’s in for—”

I take him by the collar and hold his big red face up to mine. His beady eyes are glistening with fear.

“You don’t get to be offended. Not when someone you have power over insults you, when they’re just doing what they need to do to get through the day. Now do you understand me, or do I have to sodomize you right here in the middle of the street to get my point across?”

He nods his head in terrified affirmation.

“Good. Now give me fifty dollars.”

I think I did the right thing—just kidding. I know I did. My only regret is that I didn’t kill the guy, but he’s kind of a person, too, I guess, so maybe it would have been wrong in a way. What do you guys think? Should I have raped and then throttled him as a warning to the others? Drop me a line, and we can work this whole thing out. Until then, I need to get back to my flyering. Peace and love to you all. Well, some of you at least.