Beggars can't be chastisers

The BBQ Pit
1

So I walk out of a restaurant with a friend last night around 11:30. On our way to the parking garage some gruff bum calls out from behind us and solicits funds with the following elegantly posed question:

“So you two fag-boys don’t want to give me any money?”

What the fuck? This pisses me off, for several reasons:
(in no particular order)
[list=1]
[li] We are not gay. Again with the fucking presumptions! (See my pit thread of yore.)[/li][li] Regardless of our orientation, that insult would not incline me to want to help this guy out.[/li][li] Greetings, Opal![/li][li] That is just plain rude! If he really wanted money, shouldn’t he ask nicely or something? My friend said he would have given him money if he hadn’t been so rude. [/li][li] Perhaps he knew we wouldn’t give him money and just felt like insulting us. Fuck him, then.[/li][li] What the fuck! (plain and simple)[/li][li] Fuck him.[/li][/list=1]
Anyway, I considered it my duty not to dignify such an odious query with a response, so I kept walking in silence. My friend, unfortunately, offered a pitifully weak, “No, sorry,” or something like that. Oh well.

After we were safely locked in the car my friend suggested that we find this guy again and run him down, however my humanity and fear of the law forbade it. Plus I have to consider wear and tear on the tires.

2

Much as I would have been pissed off had I been in your situation, I think you and your friend did the right thing in just ignoring him. Option #4 was probably the case, although mental health issues may also have been involved. Getting into a fight, verbal or otherwise, wouldn’t have gotten you anything but trouble.

You could, however, have told someone working at the garage (or the restaurant) that there was a homeless guy harrassing customers. Also, I would have made a note of the guy’s face for future reference and put him on my personal handout blacklist.

3

It’s not very constructive, safe, smart, or enlightened, but my usual reaction in that situation is to walk up into the guy’s face and either ask if he has a fucking problem, or if I’m in a bad mood, just hit the guy. I know many very nice polite bums who I give cash or cigs to too, and assholes like that make it hard for them to exist. Assholes like that try to intimidate people into giving them money, which in my book is essentially mugging. It ends up scaring people just walking one the street, and making general people afraid of the harmless street guys. I figure, as someone pretty much able to take care of myself, it is my obligation it to make it clear to the asshole that that is not something that should be done.