Getting mad, but not getting even

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

RN: You seem a little shaken up. What's the deal?

CP: I got called the "F" word. Twice. In one night.

RN: Uh-oh. To borrow from Barbara Bush, we're talking "rhymes with maggot," right? I'm sorry. Just when we think that crap is over and done with, it comes back and slaps us upside the head.

CP: In the olden days, a visit to the Townhouse in St. Paul just wasn't complete without a Chevy full of guys yelling slurs at you on University Avenue. It was a perverse badge of honor. On the recent night in question, however, it was a real buzzkill.

RN: Share.

CP: It was downtown Minneapolis, the nightlife district, before and after the Scissor Sisters concert at Epic nightclub.

CP: I was so mad about it that I fantasized myself as Jodie Foster in "The Brave One."

RN: Fantasize indeed. I hate to mention this, but Miss Two-Time Oscar Winner could take you with one arm tied behind her well-massaged back. I've seen her in sleeveless Armani. That girl is buff. What did you do?

CP: I chickened out on replying. When it happened, it was me and my friend vs. five young guys. And with my high deductible, I didn't think I should gamble on ending up with expensive dental work. Me? I'm a glancer, not a fighter.

RN: Choosing personal safety over a re-enactment of the rumble from "West Side Story" is hardly chickening out. Remember that scene from "Jeffrey," when Steven Weber invokes "irony, adjectives, eyebrows" as weapons to beat back his queer-bashers? A cutting wit never shields in real life. Actually, it flopped in the movie, too. The bigoted TWMs -- thugs with mullets -- still beat him up. Bullies never grow up, do they?

CP: Going all Oscar Wilde on them -- as in, "The only thing worse than being the object of your ignorant blather is not being the object of it" -- is unlikely to have the intended effect.

CP: I know. I lived in New York, walking the streets at all hours, and the worst thing anyone yelled at me was, "Aren't you kinda old for a Mohawk?" Which I totally deserved.