I Saved My Friend from Bill Cosby

The title of this post is the same as the title of a Daily Beast article published today and written by Lloyd Grove. It's about how Tony Hogue saved a friend from being sexually abused by Bill Cosby in 1984.
The Complete and Total Loser also saved a friend from being abused by Bill Cosby. 
Here's how he did it:

1. Instead of pursuing work in the glamorous, high-paying world of show business after graduating from college with the lowest GPA allowed by law, the Loser got a job in a liquor factory through a temp agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early 1980s. 
2. The Loser futzed around over the years in similar low-paying jobs until in the 90s, when he put himself through graduate school in journalism.
3. Five years later, after making a living but going no place in that field, the Loser quit his job at a wire service where he was mocked and disliked. He got a job in retail.
4. After a dozen years of being treated poorly by his customers and superiors, the Loser lost that job due to "restructuring." 
5. The Loser, now well into middle age and without any marketable skills, is living on unemployment compensation. He wants to start his own business, but whether or not he has the self discipline to do so remains to be verified. So far, it doesn't look good, and the Loser may soon be operating a cash register near you.
6. The Loser has never had attractive friends, precluding having any who would have access to Bill Cosby.

Comedian and alleged rapist, Bill Cosby.

Today's old Loser

This is someone else in a photo from the 1930s

What's making the Complete and Total Loser feel old today is this item from the daily almanac he gets online:
On this date in 1977, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant and a convicted murderer, became the last person in France executed with the guillotine. 
Imagine, a country like France, civilized Europeans who make good movies and went halfsies on a supersonic passenger plane, cutting a guy's head off as if it were the 18th century. Granted, he had raped, tortured and murdered his 21-year-old girlfriend and was well deserving of severe punishment. But still.

Hamida Djandoubi

At the time, the Loser was in his first year of college, taking courses that would never lead to a decent job that he liked. Really, they might as well have cut his head off. 

The Indian Rape Victim

About sex, the Complete and Total Loser concluded, Indian men were like unsupervised twelve-year-old boys in a tree house with a new stash of pornography.
This was in 1989-90, when he spent two months traveling in the country.
The Loser had arrived just two days before New Year's Eve, and on that eve he and two American women got restless and left the New Delhi guest house they were in to walk a few blocks to a nearby gathering place. They'd seen many Indians head that way and they wanted to see how the natives celebrated.
It got ugly fast. At first it seemed to be just people gathering and enjoying the warm evening in each others' company. Then one of the three, the Loser forgets whether it was he or one of his female companions, remarked that all of the hundreds of people in the public square were men. In moments men encircled the three, and sly hands were touching the women inappropriately. 
Foolishly, but naturally, the women reacted with fear. This incited the men further. 
The Loser told the women to walk calmly with him back to the guest house and they started to do so. The touching continued and the women broke into a slow run, even though there were hundreds of men between them and safety.
The story had a happy ending. Four other western men from the guest house had come to the rescue after hearing of the trip the three made. With five men around them, the women got back without more fondling and greeted the beginning of the 90s with resumed calm.
Clearly things haven't changed for the better in India.
The Loser noticed the relative absence of women everywhere he went in India. It seems they stayed indoors all day and night. In Varanasi, the nation's spiritual capital and its oldest city, making it one of the oldest cities on earth, the Loser stayed in a guest house that had access to a roof. He found that the women of the city spent much of their days on their rooftops, weather permitting, doing household tasks. 
The few times the Loser met Indian women were at gatherings like crowded restaurants, and they were with boyfriends or husbands. They were intelligent and interesting. The Loser has no idea why anyone would do anything unkind to them, drunk or not.

The Loser lived overseas for half a decade in the 80s and over a solid year of that was spent traveling extensively. Of the wonders of the world, the only one he saw which lived up to the adjective was the Taj Mahal. Yes, it's rightly regarded as a monument to slavery, but is nonetheless such a stunning building the Loser felt silly taking a snapshot of it. 
How can a country whose ancestors made something of such beauty be so focused on debasing the essence of human beauty?