My imaginary life of crime.

This is a true story.

I once went to dinner with a group of Polish male immigrants at a TGI Friday's in Augusta because Wojciech Piech, a friend of mine on an exchange program, insisted on being among people from his hometown of Nowy Sacz. It was 1999.

Sensitive to their hard-drinking, hard-loving, hard-living ways, Wojciech asked me not to come out to them, or he seemed uncomfortable about that. So I didn't. I was sitting at dinner silently with them, not having a really good time.

But they were these boorish, ridiculous, drunken lunkheads, wolf-whistling at women and what-not.

Other tables in the Friday's were doing this, too. It was apparently Sexual Harrassment Night at the restaurant.

At one point, I stopped the woman who the Poles thought was the hottest woman in there. I swear to God, it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen - she walked by, and men at our table and other tables would gawk at her and howl. Howl. It was preposterous. One table was so rowdy, the restaurant called the cops.

So I stop the woman as she passes our table, and I say, "Pardon me, but ... for every man who's ever objectified you, who's treated you like a piece of meat, who hasn't paid attention to what you had to say or recognized that you had a brain and character that were as worthy of praise, I must apologize and ask you, 'What do you do for a living?'"

She actually smiled and laughed at me, telling me that she was a bartender. Then, she patted me on the back and went on her way.

The Poles thought that, because I actually spoke to her, I was AMAZING.

They told me to talk to other women, but I told them that other women weren't being harrassed by people. So the Poles offered to harrass more women so that I could try my "line" again. I declined.

I wasn't drinking, and they thought that was odd. They asked me if I had some problem with drinking.

I said to them that alcohol did me no good since I had to get over my crack habit.

They, if you can buy this, BELIEVED me. So they started asking me about prison.

I told them that I'd only gone to prison once and that I'd been forced into withdrawal thanks to my time there.

"Since then, I can't get a buzz off anything light like alcohol," I said. "I need the harder shit."

They bought it. Wojciech looked at me, impressed. He asked me later if I really made it all up.

When they asked me why I went to prison, I told them I had been arrested for statuatory rape.

I remember saying, "Damn, the bitch looked 18 ...," using a straight face that I learned in college drama classes.

And the Poles were rapt. I swear to God, they believed me. They told the waitress that I was a crackhead.

After that, the Poles didn't treat me like I was some space alien at their table. They thought I was a kickass guy.