Teeing off on Eugene

You've got to be kidding me. That's Eugene O'Flaherty?

For four months now, I've been cowering under my desk by day, barely venturing out of my humble house at night, constantly frightened of this tough-talking state legislator who essentially threatened to kick my -- and I'm using his word here -- ''arse."

I've never seen him before, but I figured he was huge. I assumed he was tough and mean and ripped and all that other stuff, and that he could essentially squish my soft head with his brawny hands. Granted, so many stories floating around Beacon Hill involve him screaming at women, but that just makes him an indiscriminate menace.

Just to retrace, O'Flaherty, the House chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent me a rather unflattering note in June because he didn't like a column I wrote about his hero, the indicted former speaker of the House, Tom Finneran. I had no idea who or what a Eugene O'Flaherty was, but in that note, he said if we were in high school together, he would have made me run ''home to Mommy [sic] with tears in your eyes along with a black eye and a sore arse."

Them are tough words, tough enough that the guy suddenly made me rethink my entire way of newspaper writing. Suddenly, this became a dangerous profession.

Would I ever again take exception with the governor? Not anymore. Seriously, have you seen what kind of shape he's in?

Bottom line: I'll never write a negative word about anyone ever again. Just please, pretty please, don't raise a hand or a voice toward me.

Then I unfolded yesterday's Globe, and there he was, Eugene O'Flaherty, captured in a photograph on the top of the front page, vacationing in Portugal with a bunch of colleagues as the state Legislature remains in session right here in Boston. While he was gone, the governor pressed the Legislature to reconsider a drunken driving bill that O'Flaherty had woefully watered down on his way out the door.

But that's beside the point. The real point is the guy is skinny and not just skinny, but slump shouldered. You're telling me I've been living in fear of him for the past four months?

Now I might be wrong about this, but I think Eugene was carrying a pocketbook. Maybe it holds his makeup kit. His sunglasses were too big for his face. He was wearing sweatpants and sneakers, the classic uniform of the ugly American in Europe. I'm sure a lot of people around Portugal had wonderful things to say about Bostonians after having a bunch of Massachusetts legislators in their midst.

Of course, sometimes you have to feel a little bad for the guy. Word around Beacon Hill is that when Eugene was told he was going to Iberia, he got all excited and exclaimed, ''I've never been to South America before." Yesterday, he sounded more than contrite.

The truth is, I don't care where these legislators go on vacation, especially when they're traveling on their own dime. I don't care if the wine flows and the laughter is plentiful and the buffet tables are stacked with the richest, creamiest flan in all of Europe.

What I do care about is what they're leaving behind, and in this case it's the work of the people in the final stretch of the legislative session. A legislator planning an October vacation is like an accountant going away in March, like a retailer taking a cruise in December. It's just not done.

But back to little Eugene. Now that I've seen him, not only am I breathing easy, I'm ready to call for a truce.

I'm just hoping that he might have been bringing home a souvenir in that pocketbook of his, maybe something in a size large that says, ''My Judiciary Committee chairman went to Portugal and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.