Sampled below is the first chapter of my latest novel. It's unlike my previous work in that it's firmly grounded in reality and also my first attempt at writing in the first person. I thought some of you might want to give it a look. I expect this one to be finished sometime around August.
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How many honest cops have you met in your lifetime? I bet you can count the number on one hand. You don’t know how bad that makes me feel. You know how hard it is to put on a badge every morning when the people you are trying to protect fear you rather than accept you? I’m not crying about it, not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s hard enough to do my job without dwelling on things like that. I just want it to be known that the stereotype of the dirty, racist, back-handed beat cop is long outdated and way overplayed. I won’t lie to you and say that there aren’t a few rotten pieces of fruit that wind up in the barrel, but don’t think for one minute that all of us are out there looking to plant evidence on everyone we see or shoot innocent black men just for the thrill of it.
I joined the police department shortly after my twenty-third birthday. I graduated from the local university with a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology with a minor in American history. I came from a typical middle-class family. My father worked in the oil industry, not on the rigs or in the fields, but in the warehouses as a supervisor. My mother was a nurse. She worked the night shift four nights a week every week since the day I was born. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. The older one took a job for a law firm up north and we don’t see much of him, the younger is still in high school though he’ll be finished soon enough.
When I told my father I wanted to be a cop he tried with every fiber of his being to make me reconsider. He was like everyone else I’ve encountered since the first day I walked out of the academy. He had an image in his head of what cops are and what they do and how they do it. He didn’t want me doing this kind of work. No respect in it he said. No money either. I didn’t care. Though I never told anybody, I’ve wanted to be a cop for as long as I can possibly remember. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I knew how people would look at me. I can practically read the thoughts of everyone who refuses to look me in the eye. I’ve come to terms with what people perceive me as, and I’m okay with it. If they ever spent one day doing what I do I think that they would never think those things again.
The first day on assignment I was patrolling in the third ward somewhere off of I-45 and Edgebrook with my training officer, a veritable bear of a man named John Fleming. John Fleming was a sergeant and had been for a long time. He never had any aspirations of climbing past that rank because he thought of the brass the same way most citizens think of cops in general. “A bunch of fucking douchebags,” he was fond of saying. I had only minimal contact with the command staff at that point so I had no cause to either agree or disagree with that statement. On that first day, much of his advice had little to do with surviving in the street as an officer but everything to do with surviving in the halls of the precinct.
“The department is like one big ocean,” he explained. “We’re nothing but mackerel. Everyone above the rank of sergeant is a shark that will swallow you in one bite and won’t think about you again until he shits you out the following morning.”
“Yes sir,” I said, nodding in agreement, letting him know that whether or not I believed what he was saying I was in fact paying attention and letting it soak in anyhow. Though Fleming hated the brass he understood and respected the chain of command, and another early pearl of wisdom he shared with me was the necessity to at least give the appearance of respect to anybody who outranks you, regardless of whether he was a walking sack of shit. Fleming was not a sack of shit by any stretch of the imagination, I just felt that his advice was, perhaps, biased by his jaded nature. Though nobody blamed Fleming for his demeanor, he had been around long enough to be proven right time and time again, so I wasn’t going to be the dumb rookie to question his valuable expertise.
The first call I caught with Fleming was a domestic dispute between a young couple at an affordable housing complex near Hobby Airport. I was familiar with the area having lived not too far away during my college years. We arrived on scene and a young woman by the name of Charlotte was being restrained by her neighbor as she tried to get to her fiancée, a man by the name of Steven Harris, who we would later find out had been hauled in on more than one occasion for possession of a controlled substance. Charlotte was wearing a rather sheer night dress and brandishing a rather large frying pan in one hand and screaming all sorts of obscenities at Steven who was hiding barely visible in the doorway of his apartment.
“What seems to be all the commotion here?” Fleming asked, his deep southern accent booming as if projected from a 120 watt amplifier.
“That mah’fucker is fuckin’ his secr’tary!” Charlotte yelled, thrashing her frying pan about in a frantic manner devoid of all pretense of aim, “I know he done it, his mouth tastes like rotten cunt! I’m gon’ whoop his fuckin’ ass!”
“I had me a damn tuna sammich for lunch! You’re a paranoid fucking cunt!”
“Aint no tuna sandwich smell like cheap douche and stale egg! Why’ll you eat her cooch but not mine! Mine don’t smell like the damn sewer!”
At this point myself and Officer Fleming are mainly trying to refrain from, if you’ll pardon the vernacular, laughing our fucking heads off. The woman dropped her pan and started kicking her legs in an attempt to gain some leverage to break free of her neighbor’s grasp. The neighbor is looking at us waiting for us to restrain her but we’re a bit caught up in the moment.
“Awright, fine!” Steven yelled, eyes wide open and bloodshot as all get-out. “I ate her snatch! And it tasted good! Not like your sourpatch fuckin’ clamtrap!”
That little admission was apparently all it took to render unto Charlotte the strength of several men as she broke free of the neighbor’s headlock and rushed toward her adulterous fiancée screaming bloody murder with all intention of doing grevious bodily harm. She leaped at the poor sap like a banshee out of hell and grabbed ahold of a clump of his hair and tried to rip it out by the roots.
“Fuck me sideways!” Fleming yelled and dashed forward, drawing his taser from his duty belt. I attempted to retrieve my own but by the time I had it cleared from the holster, Officer Fleming had already fired his, the prongs of the taser embedding in Charlotte’s back and sending her crashing to the floor twitching like nothing I’d ever seen before. I took a step forward and backed Mr. Harris away from the convulsing young lady on the floor. He himself was now in a laughing fit. “How’s that feel ya’ fuckin’ cunt ya’?” he screamed in between bursts of pure belly-laughter.
“Sir, there’s no cause for that,” I said, knowing that if he didn’t stop laughing I knew I’d find myself joining in sooner rather than later. I escorted him back into the confines of his apartment and advised him to sit down on the soiled futon that occupied his living area. He complied, though he continued stomping his feet up and down and nearly gagging on his own suppressed laughter, like a child who has heard his first fart joke. While he was preoccupied with his giggle-fit I stepped outside to check back in on Officer Fleming. He was in the process of cuffing Charlotte who was now shaking nervously and whimpering like a lost dog.
“Help me pick her up partner,” John said as he knelt down to help her up. I reached under her trying to get a grip on her but jumped back, shaking my hand in the air. “Oh god, oh shit,” I yelled, frantically, “oh fucking god damn shit!”
“What it is it?” Officer Fleming asked, his brow furrowed in genuine worry, “What’s wrong, partner?”
“She fuckin’ pissed on me!” I yelled.
At that point, no force on heaven or earth could stop Sergeant John T. Fleming from laughing himself silly. While I tried to find some sort of cloth or material to wipe my hand clean, he leaned against the frame of the door laughing like he would never again have the opportunity to do so. From inside the apartment I could hear Steven Harris doing likewise. Whether he was still laughing at his fiancée being tasered or her relieving herself on my hand I am not quite sure. But either way that’s what I remember of my first day on assignment; John T. Fleming tasering a belligerent housewife and my hand sopping with human urine. When people ask me what police work is all about, that’s what I tell them. It’s about the good citizens of this city pissing all over you.
=====================================
Feel free to leave comments. Though if your hurt my feelings I will delete your comment and kick you in the shins.
=====================================
How many honest cops have you met in your lifetime? I bet you can count the number on one hand. You don’t know how bad that makes me feel. You know how hard it is to put on a badge every morning when the people you are trying to protect fear you rather than accept you? I’m not crying about it, not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s hard enough to do my job without dwelling on things like that. I just want it to be known that the stereotype of the dirty, racist, back-handed beat cop is long outdated and way overplayed. I won’t lie to you and say that there aren’t a few rotten pieces of fruit that wind up in the barrel, but don’t think for one minute that all of us are out there looking to plant evidence on everyone we see or shoot innocent black men just for the thrill of it.
I joined the police department shortly after my twenty-third birthday. I graduated from the local university with a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology with a minor in American history. I came from a typical middle-class family. My father worked in the oil industry, not on the rigs or in the fields, but in the warehouses as a supervisor. My mother was a nurse. She worked the night shift four nights a week every week since the day I was born. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. The older one took a job for a law firm up north and we don’t see much of him, the younger is still in high school though he’ll be finished soon enough.
When I told my father I wanted to be a cop he tried with every fiber of his being to make me reconsider. He was like everyone else I’ve encountered since the first day I walked out of the academy. He had an image in his head of what cops are and what they do and how they do it. He didn’t want me doing this kind of work. No respect in it he said. No money either. I didn’t care. Though I never told anybody, I’ve wanted to be a cop for as long as I can possibly remember. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I knew how people would look at me. I can practically read the thoughts of everyone who refuses to look me in the eye. I’ve come to terms with what people perceive me as, and I’m okay with it. If they ever spent one day doing what I do I think that they would never think those things again.
The first day on assignment I was patrolling in the third ward somewhere off of I-45 and Edgebrook with my training officer, a veritable bear of a man named John Fleming. John Fleming was a sergeant and had been for a long time. He never had any aspirations of climbing past that rank because he thought of the brass the same way most citizens think of cops in general. “A bunch of fucking douchebags,” he was fond of saying. I had only minimal contact with the command staff at that point so I had no cause to either agree or disagree with that statement. On that first day, much of his advice had little to do with surviving in the street as an officer but everything to do with surviving in the halls of the precinct.
“The department is like one big ocean,” he explained. “We’re nothing but mackerel. Everyone above the rank of sergeant is a shark that will swallow you in one bite and won’t think about you again until he shits you out the following morning.”
“Yes sir,” I said, nodding in agreement, letting him know that whether or not I believed what he was saying I was in fact paying attention and letting it soak in anyhow. Though Fleming hated the brass he understood and respected the chain of command, and another early pearl of wisdom he shared with me was the necessity to at least give the appearance of respect to anybody who outranks you, regardless of whether he was a walking sack of shit. Fleming was not a sack of shit by any stretch of the imagination, I just felt that his advice was, perhaps, biased by his jaded nature. Though nobody blamed Fleming for his demeanor, he had been around long enough to be proven right time and time again, so I wasn’t going to be the dumb rookie to question his valuable expertise.
The first call I caught with Fleming was a domestic dispute between a young couple at an affordable housing complex near Hobby Airport. I was familiar with the area having lived not too far away during my college years. We arrived on scene and a young woman by the name of Charlotte was being restrained by her neighbor as she tried to get to her fiancée, a man by the name of Steven Harris, who we would later find out had been hauled in on more than one occasion for possession of a controlled substance. Charlotte was wearing a rather sheer night dress and brandishing a rather large frying pan in one hand and screaming all sorts of obscenities at Steven who was hiding barely visible in the doorway of his apartment.
“What seems to be all the commotion here?” Fleming asked, his deep southern accent booming as if projected from a 120 watt amplifier.
“That mah’fucker is fuckin’ his secr’tary!” Charlotte yelled, thrashing her frying pan about in a frantic manner devoid of all pretense of aim, “I know he done it, his mouth tastes like rotten cunt! I’m gon’ whoop his fuckin’ ass!”
“I had me a damn tuna sammich for lunch! You’re a paranoid fucking cunt!”
“Aint no tuna sandwich smell like cheap douche and stale egg! Why’ll you eat her cooch but not mine! Mine don’t smell like the damn sewer!”
At this point myself and Officer Fleming are mainly trying to refrain from, if you’ll pardon the vernacular, laughing our fucking heads off. The woman dropped her pan and started kicking her legs in an attempt to gain some leverage to break free of her neighbor’s grasp. The neighbor is looking at us waiting for us to restrain her but we’re a bit caught up in the moment.
“Awright, fine!” Steven yelled, eyes wide open and bloodshot as all get-out. “I ate her snatch! And it tasted good! Not like your sourpatch fuckin’ clamtrap!”
That little admission was apparently all it took to render unto Charlotte the strength of several men as she broke free of the neighbor’s headlock and rushed toward her adulterous fiancée screaming bloody murder with all intention of doing grevious bodily harm. She leaped at the poor sap like a banshee out of hell and grabbed ahold of a clump of his hair and tried to rip it out by the roots.
“Fuck me sideways!” Fleming yelled and dashed forward, drawing his taser from his duty belt. I attempted to retrieve my own but by the time I had it cleared from the holster, Officer Fleming had already fired his, the prongs of the taser embedding in Charlotte’s back and sending her crashing to the floor twitching like nothing I’d ever seen before. I took a step forward and backed Mr. Harris away from the convulsing young lady on the floor. He himself was now in a laughing fit. “How’s that feel ya’ fuckin’ cunt ya’?” he screamed in between bursts of pure belly-laughter.
“Sir, there’s no cause for that,” I said, knowing that if he didn’t stop laughing I knew I’d find myself joining in sooner rather than later. I escorted him back into the confines of his apartment and advised him to sit down on the soiled futon that occupied his living area. He complied, though he continued stomping his feet up and down and nearly gagging on his own suppressed laughter, like a child who has heard his first fart joke. While he was preoccupied with his giggle-fit I stepped outside to check back in on Officer Fleming. He was in the process of cuffing Charlotte who was now shaking nervously and whimpering like a lost dog.
“Help me pick her up partner,” John said as he knelt down to help her up. I reached under her trying to get a grip on her but jumped back, shaking my hand in the air. “Oh god, oh shit,” I yelled, frantically, “oh fucking god damn shit!”
“What it is it?” Officer Fleming asked, his brow furrowed in genuine worry, “What’s wrong, partner?”
“She fuckin’ pissed on me!” I yelled.
At that point, no force on heaven or earth could stop Sergeant John T. Fleming from laughing himself silly. While I tried to find some sort of cloth or material to wipe my hand clean, he leaned against the frame of the door laughing like he would never again have the opportunity to do so. From inside the apartment I could hear Steven Harris doing likewise. Whether he was still laughing at his fiancée being tasered or her relieving herself on my hand I am not quite sure. But either way that’s what I remember of my first day on assignment; John T. Fleming tasering a belligerent housewife and my hand sopping with human urine. When people ask me what police work is all about, that’s what I tell them. It’s about the good citizens of this city pissing all over you.
=====================================
Feel free to leave comments. Though if your hurt my feelings I will delete your comment and kick you in the shins.
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at 9:30 PM
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