Tequila
Yesterday I took a walk.
It’s been a very interesting existence up here. It really has been… One of the striking experiences has to do with the amount of police officers I’ve seen since I arrived, both over time and all at once. Most of them within the past few weeks. I estimate that within the past ten days alone I’ve seen more than 70 individual policemen engaged in various circumstances across Long Island. To see that many in Missouri… well, you’ve got to attend a police banquet.
These guys were on the streets. Helmets down, flak jackets strapped, sticks out, guns drawn and pumping tear gas into a crowd of three hundred people.
They were not at a banquet.
Queens, NY.
“Whoa… Steve, you see all that? What is this?”
Steve and I turned the corner in my little car and halted. Every car behind and beside us also halted.
“Oh… wow.”
Traffic lurched backwards. “Okay back up back up back up.” Thirty police officers marched forward, into the mess we were trying to escape. “There is no room here. Oh my gosh there is absolutely NO ROOM. Hey! Move your car! Stop watching and move the car we’ve got to get out of here!”
They were getting close. Three hundred bodies upright in the streets with signs and loudspeakers. Outraged bodies. All for the sake of Sean Bell. Cops standing on the street corner assembling, bad idea, these people didn’t like cops before three of them fired 51 shots into an unarmed car and get away with it. OJ would have been proud. These people… naw they were just pissed.
They filled the street like a wave, pouring out through sidewalks and intersections. They began to mix among the cars stuck without a way to turn around. They were yelling at the officers. Squad cars appeared from nowhere, from everywhere, ambulances waited, iron vans opened their doors and a dozen helmets and shields leapt out. It was a mess. Everything was a mess. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I felt proud to see what I was watching. I didn’t feel proud about either side of the conflict. But I felt proud of my existence then, here, seeing the streets and the blood pumping through it. Hot blood full of anger and bitterness, and even hatred. Full of grit and determination and pain and sorrow for lost loves. Full of fear… full of struggle… just full.
… the street was alive, it was a creature all it’s own that night. And the blue fought to contain it.
That was almost two weeks ago. Last night was the fifth of May, Cinco de Mayo. The celebration was in swing driving home from work. I got caught up in serious traffic just inside of Huntington Village main. People and cars were piled on top of each other in that narrow little road. I parked. I didn’t even look at the meter, got out, and started towards the front. Flashing lights and lots of proved excitement was ahead. Pancho Villas was having a massive outdoor barbecue and an all-your-kidneys-can-handle drink-a-thon. Someone bumped into someone and someone got upset because someone’s skirt was too short or something.
Someone swung.
I watched a glass of tequila rock and clatter over that table. I watched the gilded liquid leap out of the glass and spew into the air, shining in the lamp lights like leaves of gold.
I saw a guy take a chair to the face.
Hard.
I heard it forty feet away it was so hard. Chair-face went down and someone else hit the guy holding it.
Everyone started moving, everyone started flooding through each other. A half dozen squad cars and two ambulances were there almost instantly. Getting caught in it was one thing, I think I was almost arrested for merely being there.
I made it two blocks down the road and sat outside a small pizza place and waited for the crowds to disperse so I could get my car back on the road and get back. I ordered a Snapple and took it outside, sitting in one of the tables near the door. Two more guys fell out of the doors kicking and swinging and rolled onto the sidewalk. Seven more guys ran out of the door and grabbed them, pulling them apart, pulling them away, yelling “Look at my face! No. Just look at my face! It’s not worth it! Look at me! Look at my face!”
And there I am just sitting and sipping my Snapple. We’re still at war in Iraq right? I mused… So they’re drunk and throwing a few punches in the street. At least they’re not calling their parents in the middle of an Iraqi firefight and getting shot to bits thousands of miles from home.
It was a really good Snapple.
Someone got away from his friend and glanced a blow through the hair of the guy standing just four feet to my left and there they went again. The police migrated and got there only three minutes too late. Four cars pulled up just as I was finishing my drink and everyone had moved on. I threw them a friendly wave because I’m a stupid gutsy son-of-a-gun. I was ignored.
… yeah, REALLY good Snapple.
Tags: activism, alcohol, beer, bell, blue, bond, cal, caleb, call, car, cinco de mayo, city, conco de mayo, cops, fight, free, freemonster, huntington, iraq, island, jessica, long, monster, monsterbox, new, NYC, officer, parents, phone, police, protest, queens, riot, roy, sean, squad, swat, tequila, york
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