I am disturbed, bewildered, and perhaps a little inspired by a news item featured in this week’s C-Ville Weekly newspaper. Here’s what happened.
Best friends Jerald and Joseph were partying at Rivals Sports Bar & Grill one warm, average night last March. At Rivals they met their new buddies Sunshine, Big Mama, Candy, and “the Mexican.” The gang then caravaned downtown to visit the amply-stocked bars of the Atomic Burrito (RIP) and Miller’s. But Joe and Candy stayed in the car, presumably to hook up. When Candy passed out, Joe walked to the bar to meet Jerald, Sunshine, and the rest of his crew. But by then the crew had a new member – Joseph Ray.
As the night wore on, Joseph Ray and Joseph realized they didn’t like each other. On the crew’s walk back to the parking lot, this tension reached a violent crescendo. Despite Jerald’s best attempts to hustle his friend into a vehicle and prevent him from engaging in a drunken street brawl, Joseph Ray still managed to pull Joseph from his truck. Then “the Mexican” and Joseph Ray started “whooping” Joseph, who promptly curled up in a fetal position. Jerald saw that Joseph was being double-teamed so he ran around the truck and heroically defended his friend.
“If you know someone was a friend of yours,” Jerald said later, “you just ain’t going to let them get whooped up on without giving them some help.”
After Jerald broke up the fight by throwing Joseph Ray onto a parked car and elbowing him in the eyeball, the two best friends jumped back into the truck to make their getaway. That’s when Jerald realized that he had “a ball of guts” dangling from his body. Joseph Ray had apparently stabbed Jerald, causing his guts to dangle. Now the case is going to court.
Someone please alert John Grisham about the trial of the century.
In court, [Jerald] Gibson showed his scar. “I got stabbed right there and they had to go in and pull all my internals out and fix my insides.”
Jerald Gibson, I salute you and the lengths you go for your friends. I wish your guts a speedy recovery.
Huh. This all sounds suspiciously like a certain recently discredited memoir:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Said a former professor about this post:
“The article, which should be entitled ‘Low-Life,’ covers a story that isn’t long enough for the Coen Brothers to make a movie out of, but it has some of those ingredients, even ‘The Mexican.'”