Outside Old I

I was leaving Old Ironsides after a night of drinking. I was far from shitfaced but there was definately a nice warmth in my chest and belly. The bar was closing for the night so I'd have to find somewhere else to drink or give up and go home to bed.

A cop was parked right outside the door and I didn't think much of it. Probably just looking for drunks getting into cars I figured, and I wasn't drivin' so all was fine with the world. A black man, at least a decade my senior was leaving just ahead of me. He was a dapper enough looking guy and the least drunk acting of the crowd. I stopped to button my coat and the cop approached the guy.

"Excuse me, do you have any i.d. on you?" the cop asked him.

"No, my wallet's at my buddies place about two blocks from here. Is there a problem?"

"The law says you're supposed to have i.d. on you at all times. Do you live in town?"

I decided to stick around and witness what was happening here.

"No, I live in the Bay Area, I'm here visiting a friend."

"No local address and no i.d. that makes you a vagrant. I'm gonna have to take you in."

This cop was harrassing the only black man in sight while drunk white boys climbed behind steering wheels all around us. Maybe I was drunker than I thought. I yelled at the cop.

"What the hell is this? You didn't ask nobody else for i.d. I aint got mine either."

"Stay out of this." the cop warned me.

"No this is bullshit." and with this I was in his face. "You're gonna stand out here and wait for the first non-white face. What are you trying to keep downtown white? It's too late." I was pushing closer and closer to him until finally he put his hand to my chest and shoved landing me on my ass.

The whole while the man I imagined I was helping stayed calm and polite offering to be escourted to his friend's apartment where he could retrieve his i.d. and prove that he did indeed have a place to stay.

Faced with this polite black man and this mouthy little white boy yelling in his face the cop still went about arresting the black guy, even after shoving me to the ground.

"Fuck You!" I hollared getting up. I was determined to get arrested in this guys place, or at least to get dragged in with him. My friend Dave grabbed me and told the cop he'd get me out of there. "No, fuck you Dave. This is bullshit." Dave pushed me halfway towards home.

"Dude, what's wrong with you? That was messed up shit. That cop was a racist asshole."

"Yeah, and you getting him more angry was going to help the guy he was harrassing? That guy was handling it much better than you were if you would have shut up and given him the chance." Dave left me in my living room feeling powerless and clumsy.