Entry 44. Closing time

I just remembered how our night of beer and philosophy ended – how could I have forgotten to write down how I won the argument?

As we stood to leave, Nate Maples – like all of us comfortably numb after parching and reparching our thirst for hours – balled his hands into a fist, grinned, said, “OK, Mr. Pacifist, give me an answer for this,” and lunged forward intending to give me a hard poke to the jaw.

I stepped into his attack, grabbed his arm and used his momentum to carry him over my body and onto the floor, where I held my foot to his throat.

“A belief in non-aggression does not rule out self-defense,” I said, also grinning, and, moving my foot aside when I saw he was still smiling himself, “I’m just not going to kill you.”

Did I say I won the argument? Not so, sadly; as I’ve always said, violence only begets violence, it does not change the beliefs of the victim. Nate Maples was one of the most fearsome warriors of what we now call the imaginary revolution, and he did not live to see Earth concede our right to exist free.

Entry 45. Coffee and memories at the watershed