Connell Barrett

A friend of mine at the time, I'll call him Kevin.

Kevin set me up on a double date.

It was Kevin, his date, and a lovely woman who was friends with Kevin's date.

And this woman is a woman of, as I recall, Chinese ancestry.

Very pretty.

Chinese-American.

And we were on a first date at a rooftop bar in New York City at a place called the Jane Hotel.

I remember it vividly and the four of us are seated together.

And I, again, I was trying so hard to impress, be shocking, be, I guess, negging might be the term we would have used back then that I cracked a terrible, um,

racially insensitive or ethnically insensitive joke.

I don't want to say the word here, but suffice it to say, I made a joke and I use an epithet that is commonly used in when talking about people of Asian ancestry.

I didn't call her this word.

I cracked a joke.

And as the word left my mouth, there was an Arctic silence.

Four of us are sitting there.

Kevin, his date, my date, me.

Oh, hey, Connell being funny.

Ha ha ha.

Epithet leaves mouth.

Foot enters mouth.