Perhaps what truly separates the insane or the transcendent from the rest of the world is their ability to stand up to the present moment before them and say what they feel and believe, out loud instead of inside their own heads, regardless of the consequences. That or I’m trying to glorify my ever-increasing detachment from society.
My brother and I are in a notoriously seedy dive, the type with coke trays and faded rose tattoos, two-dollar domestics and a lax eye for the smoking ban. We are here to see our cousin’s band, a performance that is quickly disrupted a little after midnight by just shy of a dozen stocky officers, some of whom are undercover and wearing their badges like dog tags. The music is halted and replaced by bitter idle chatter while the muscle of the law is flexed.
The fruits of their Prohibition-like raid turn out an arrest for every five officers present — a twenty-three year old who was unable to handle his liquor and who had fallen docile, his head against a table, and a twenty-two year old who had left her I.D. at home, but was able to produce a wrinkled Social Security card that checked out over the radio. Ten officers on an underage bust with no underage arrests.
“What did I do wrong?” the groggy twenty-three year old asks, in the midst of the rudest awakening of his life.
“What did you do wrong?” a late-twenties undercover with a shaved head and a hairy claw hanging from his chin repeats in a mocking tone. He shakes him violently and pokes him in the chest with two fingers. “What gives you the right to come into a bar and drink so much that you pass out?”
“His status as an American,” I say from my stool, drawing laughs from the bar and the ire of the government employee with pointed facial hair. At this point, I feel like I’m retreating into the one-too-many sour grapes rebellion of a teenager, and perhaps what happens after this will read as such, but the next bit felt so much more serious and honest to me. Maybe I just never grew up. Maybe I don’t ever want to.
The majority of the bar has spilled outside to smoke and witness the rest of saga. The aforementioned girl’s given information had checked out, but one could tell by the boyish grins on the faces of this bunch that they weren’t satisfied to walk out of here just yet.
“We’re going to have to take you in anyway,” one of them says with the smirk of a bully, cuffing her against a brick wall and perp-walking her for everyone to see. Everyone’s eyes are burning with discontent, and the sounds they make are the barely perceptible grinding of their jaws. Or perhaps I was just projecting.
“Is that really necessary?” If I wasn’t so sad, if I had an ounce of hope left in my body, I probably would’ve just kept it down in my guts.
“Shut your mouth or you’re next.”
“Yeah, America’s much safer now, Soul Patch.”
“What did you just say to me?” he asks, turning with a puffed out chest.
“I said sarcastically that this arrest was making a difference, and then I said that I think your little soul patch looks stupid. That’s my opinion, and I’m completely within my right to express it.” I am not scared. I am nervous that I am not nervous. The symptoms of teenage rebellion and peacocking confrontation are missing — I do not tremble and the blanket of warmth that usually spreads beneath the skin of the face is not there. The officers circle me now, arms folded, heads tilted back, smirks growing wider. They are vultures, and I am an eviscerated roadside possum.
“Say that to me again.”
“I respect your profession, and I respect what you’re trying to do…but I think you’re being needlessly rude to these people and I happen to think that your facial hair looks ridiculous.”
“You better watch it there, kid…or you’re the next to walk,” calls out the other undercover leaning against a civilian car. He reminds me of a manager I once worked for in a wing joint.
“On what charge?”
“Inciting the public.”
“Inciting the public?” I repeat with a laugh, deciding to myself that I’ve had enough. I’m done with all of this. I don’t really care anymore if I end up in a jail cell. I have every right to do this. It’s soul-crushing to pick and choose one’s battles. Fight them head-on, even if you’re massacred. In this world, that’s a foolish ideal that’s liable to land you left for dead. But I already feel that way.
“Yeah,” he says with a cocked jaw, tugging at his belt.
“If you didn’t have that badge on, you’d be just another tough guy trying to prove himself at a bar.” His arms unfold, his shoulders droop and all of the action in his body is shot into his eyes. He’s trembling. He’s developing a thin film of heat under his skin. I’ve got this motherfucker, and he’s probably going to take me away in handcuffs, but it’s not going to stop those words from ringing in his head all night. My brother gently grabs my right arm and the officer behind me places his hands on the button that snaps his cuffs to his belt.
“I’ve said all I needed to say here…good luck with your citations, gentlemen. Have a nice evening.” I flick my cigarette into a sand-filled pot, flash the patronizing smirk that they’ve been emitting for the last twenty minutes, and walk back into the bar.
Friends and observers roll through to shake my hand or laugh or tell me how the officers are camped outside plotting their revenge. Alternate modes of transportation are arranged to thwart their plans, and as my cousin and I are playing songs on the jukebox the undercover who had been leaning against the car approaches me.
“You better get home safe tonight,” he says, his words dripping with the angst and hesitance of a fifteen year old. “We might run into you later.”
“I look forward to it,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “Take it easy, man.”
We spend the rest of the evening in my cousin’s basement, drinking rum and laughing at recantations of the whole affair. It should’ve been one of my happiest moments. Instead I found myself bothered by the fact that this never would’ve happened if I was content. When we find ourselves happy or content with the world around us, we tend to turn our eyes from what is wrong about it. Getting involved or speaking up in those sorts of incidents are liable to threaten that joy and contentment. It’s best to just keep your eyes forward and do what they tell you.
The angry and the discontent are the ones most likely to change the world. It’s the happy and complacent ones that often and unwittingly perpetuate it’s ills. Either path you take, you find yourself losing something.
