Doesn't everybody have a gay bashing bully story from high school? That is when casual cruelty is at its peak in otherwise normal youngsters; when we practice marginal truancy, toss beer cans out the window of speeding cars, utter snide remarks, snap bra straps, make prank calls to the fire department and persecute outsiders.

Choosing to remember my gay bullying story in heroic terms, it goes like this:  fellow vigilantes from the high school wrestling team and I beat up a tough guy non-wrestler who was creeping out our smallest teammate, the tiny, bony, effeminate, but game 115 pounder who was like the team mascot.

Cable news and talk radio are making a killing demonizing undocumented immigrants. In terms of ratings, few issues resonate as reliably. Since the fiery period 2006-2008 when Congress first seriously contemplated rational immigration reform under the leadership of senators John McCain (R-Az) ((yes, that John McCain)) and the late Ted Kennedy (D-Ma), but then ran from the issue in the face of furious backlash, ample file footage exists in every news outlet's video library of young Latinos jumping the border wall or wading across the Rio Grande.

I took an emotional ride on the time machine Saturday night in the city, a flashback to the days when New York's ghetto life pulsed with anger, resentment and a feeling that change was in the air. The event that stirred up the old memories honored the late author and poet Piri Thomas at el Museo Del Barrio. Piri died last year in California after a long career that took him from hard-core, thug in prison for shooting a cop to redemption and eventually prestige as the first, best chronicler of Spanish Harlem from the inside out.

Jose from Brooklyn stunned me with his call to the radio show. "Puerto Ricans are citizens, what do we care about immigration," he asked disdainfully?

I had been on one of my broadcast rants about the need to have compassionate, comprehensive immigration reform when I took his call. Expecting a Kumbaya moment from a supportive brother calling the show from the hood, instead his remarks stopped me short. I stuttered something about all Latinos being brothers.

But he cut me off saying, "not out here in Bushwick," referring to the heavily Puerto Rican and Dominican Brooklyn neighborhood, which has experienced an influx of Mexican and South American immigrants in recent years, many of them undocumented.

Having run aground literally scores of times in dozens of countries over the last half century, I know that mistakes happen at sea. But aside from the old days, before electronic navigation made sailing safely a no brainer, every time I’ve hit bottom since has been because I wasn’t paying attention to where my vessel was at the time; or, importantly, I was in a state of altered consciousness (i.e., drunk or recklessly showboating).