Wikimedia CC0 image of a potluck dinner.

Back in 2003, shortly after I moved with my wife and two young children to take my current job, I was eager to make new friends and rebuild my social network.

One evening, my wife agreed to watch the kids so I could drop by the local branch of a national service organization in which I had been active in the town I had just left.

I signed in at the door and found my way to a table of friendly-looking strangers. While we were in the middle of introductions, a chatty older gent who had been working his way around the room dropped by, with a twinkle in his eye.

“How do you wink at a [n-word]?” he asked.

In answer, he raised an imaginary rifle, sighted with one eye closed, and mimed pulling the trigger.

The cheerful racist made a shuffling vaudeville exit and moved on.

In shock, I stared at my companions (we were all white males). They looked a bit uncomfortable, but they avoided my gaze and said nothing.

As calmly as I could, I asked my tablemates if I could expect this sort of thing on a regular basis at this branch of [Service Group].

Someone mumbled, “Well, that’s just the way [Name] is.”

I marched across the room to the organizer’s table and shared my story.

“Well,” said the organizer. “That’s [Name]. You’ve just gotta get to know him.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

I marched right out the door, and have not been back.

It’s not fair to blame an entire national organization for the speech of one volunteer and the enabling complaisance of one branch leader, so I’m not naming the group.

I never bothered to unsubscribe from their mailing list.

Each time I read about next month’s potluck or who’s retiring or whose memorial service is Tuesday morning, I think about the 20-plus years of friendship that I didn’t end up sharing with that cheerful violent racist and his shifting-awkwardly-in-their-seats-but-saying-nothing enablers.

It’s not easy to maintain friendships as a middle-aged adult. (A recent study found that the average American hasn’t made a new friend in five years.) So I don’t say this lightly.

But I’m chilled to the bone by what a majority of voting Americans has just done, and I’m sick to my stomach thinking of the price that the poor, the hungry, the meek, the empathetic, the outcast, and absolutely everyone but the very wealthiest and their most enthusiastic bootlickers will have to pay.

And yet somehow, I have to keep going.

If you’re thinking to yourself that I’m overreacting, that I’m too sensitive, or — heaven forbid — “woke,” that’s cool.

But you know how to block me on social media. I won’t miss your friendship.