Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the past. I don’t know why, but my mind has been recalling things that have happened or that I have seen. So I decided to add a category called Reminiscing to my blog just to log some of my recollections. That way, if they fall away from my memory bank, they will not disappear completely.

Around 1995, my two best friends Jimi and Jonathon and I decided to get dressed up for Halloween and attend a costume contest at a restaurant/night club called Mere Bulles. Mere Bulles used to reside on 2nd Avenue here in Nashville but has since moved to a more “upscale” location you could say. That night we all donned afros and other 70’s style accoutrement and headed down to the club. We dubbed ourselves the Jackson 3. Jimi’s dad has his own band and he happened to be the entertainment for the evening, so we were prepared to have one hell of a night.

All of the people who were participating in the contest were packed into a back room and one at a time we were called out to be viewed and judged by the crowd. I remember Jimi and I leaning against the wall in the back room waiting our turn when a short, chubby man dressed as an alien approached us. His makeup job was horrible. Through his splotchy green makeup we could see the patches of white, and on his head were two sad antennae made out of aluminum foil. I can’t remember the rest of him. I just remember his face and the fact that he was drunk off his ass. There were other black people in the room but he approached us. Must have been the afros. Always a dead give away. Just ask Angela Davis or Don Cornelius.

The little green man approached Jimi and I and started talking, real friendly-like. Again, I can’t remember everything he said, but I do remember him saying, “I ain’t never had a problem with niggers. Some people, they don’t like ‘em. But not me. That ain’t how I am. Niggers ain’t never bothered me.” He said nigger so much I was beginning to think I was at a Richard Pryor concert — or in a Scorcese film.

Behind the man was his wife. I can’t remember her costume. I only remember the look of fear and humiliation on her face. I guess she thought that at any moment Jimi and I were going to turn her husband into a fine green paste. But we didn’t. As the man slurred out his words, both racist and amiable, Jimi and I just stared at him. We looked at him, then looked at each other, then looked at his poor, trembling wife. There was no hatred or anger in our eyes that night. Only pity. Had the man been sober and all white, the story may have had a different ending. I don’t know. I am not a violent person by nature and neither is Jimi. But anger has a funny way of creeping up on people. For some reason, however, my ire could not be aroused by a short, drunken alien. If we ever went to war with aliens like Will Smith in “Independence Day”, I would have to toss my draft card and move to Canada. Like Ali with the Vietnamese, I have nothing against aliens because no alien has ever called me nigger. In fact, I’m pretty sure an alien wouldn’t know what a nigger was. Plus, you have to consider what a surreal experience that was. This wasn’t George Wallace or Bull Connor saying these words. It was freakin’ Gazoo from the Flintstones.

Eventually, the man’s wife was able to pull her husband away and mutter to Jimi and I a few words of apology. But we only shrugged and shook our heads. Minutes later, all three of us were called onto stage and received a loud round of applause. Ultimately, we were voted the winners, although, I don’t remember us winning anything. Soon after, Jimi’s dad and his band came out and we danced the night away.

I’ve had my run-ins with racists before but never with a man shabbily painted green with tinfoil clumsily looming above his head. Maybe it was the fact that his words were spoken matter-of-factly and not with malice or vitriol. Or maybe it was the fact that I felt so sorry for his wife. Not only did she have to endure the embarrassment of being with such a buffoon, but I’m pretty certain his flabby green stomach was writhing atop her later that evening, completed, of course, by the heady mix of alcohol and stale vomit on his breath. What we had to endure for a few minutes, she was stuck with for the rest of her life. If she had to do it all over again, I’m pretty sure she would have married Shrek instead.