Behind the Scenes in DC

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As the police car pulled away from the White House, the driver, a dark haired cop in his 30's, turned to look at me and asked if I was OK. He asked me a few questions and we quickly discovered that we had grown up near each other, that I had gone to Minnesota for a man and that he had come to DC for a woman. That I was still married and he was divorced. By the time we got to the station house, he had held a picture of his 7 year old daughter up against the barrier between us and told me about his $15,000 successful battle for full custody of her. He said that in his work he prides himself on being able to discern who is on which drug with almost uncanny speed and accuracy. So it still mystifies me, he said, that for two years I was blind to the fact that my own wife was an alcoholic and a coke addict. He said that they had a really ugly divorce but that after she went through treatment and agreed to get regular drug testing, he voluntarily gave her half custody and now they're cooperating as parents. As soon as we got in the door of the station, he cut my cuffs off, though I noticed that there were bars for handcuffing prisoners everywhere.

Sure enough, I was getting special treatment -- I was the only protestor there. Then came the interminable inventory taking, and paperwork filling and waiting for the temperamental fingerprinting machine -- I hate that damn machine, he kept saying -- and the fingerprinting which took forever with the damn machine. We had a long time to talk. He talked about being with his daughter and said, focusing intently on the paperwork, that after his parents had divorced when he was young, his father had disappeared except for maybe once a month. He said heatedly without looking up, "I promised myself I'd never do that to my kid." He said that his mother is a fan of Cindy Sheehan's -- "My mother is a devout Catholic and a liberal democrat and still sort of likes Bush. I can't figure her out," he said. "I'm pro-life, myself, he said. I'll tell you why. I dated a girl who was the product of a rape. Her mom was about to get an abortion but something made her change her mind and then she decided she wanted to keep the baby. It's weird, I don't even think the girl was pro-life and we never talked about it, but that's what made me decide how I felt."

"I can certainly honor why you feel that way," I said, "but I'm pro-choice." Then we moved on to talking about the protest and how the cops handle the arrests. "You'd be surprised how many of the guys get involved with women they meet at these protests," he said. We talked about the movie Crash and that we both loved it. "I used to know Matt Dillon pretty well growing up," he said. I said Matt Dillon seemed like he'd be a nice guy. "Nope," he said, "an arrogant asshole." He said that he had served in the first Gulf War and had been in favor of this war in the beginning because of Sadam, but that we needed to get out. He's sure there won't be a draft because there will just be more and more recruitment ads everywhere and kids will keep buying into military service as a ticket to college. "That's why I joined," he said. We talked about the information I get about what's going on in Iraq versus what he hears. I told him about an almost-completed film I'd just seen of interviews with returning disabled vets. "I'm skeptical about everything," he said. "My mother hates that about me." I told him that I would try to send him a copy of the film. Finally everything was complete and the heavy set cop was back, mopping his brow, to sign the papers. I told him that I hoped the rest of his birthday went better. He made a guttural sound and said he'd be happy as soon as he got home and had a beer.

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