Allow me to paint a picture. First, imagine a blank canvas. Pure, crisp, white and full of possibility. All the potential and grandeur of a limitless imagination is bound up in that white canvas. Just waiting. From the sweeping vistas of the Himalayas to the single tear that rolls down a widow’s cheek...the canvas could be filled with anything! Now, fill that canvas with a fat white guy. Not the most promising beginning, I understand, but wait! It gets SO much better. Cover that fat white guy not with Wranglers, not with a wife-beater t-shirt and not with baggy jeans that somehow fail to cover his doughy buttocks. No. Cover him with threadbare black boxer shorts and a hospital gown. Now add some black socks. Open his mouth. Of the blackened, neglected chaos that therein lay, remove all but one of the top teeth. And from his nostrils down to his one good tooth on the top of his mouth, very carefully and lovingly paint a thick, yellow-green line of snot. Cover him with a mesh spit hood (like a baggy pair of pantyhose stretched over his head). Now give him a blood alcohol level of roughly .300 and give him violent mood swings from hysterically-almost maniacally-happy and laughing to growling with rage and anger while spewing racial slurs from his toothless maw. And finally, as the piece de resistance, handcuff him to a rail at the booking area at the jail, next to an African immigrant smiling ironically at the sad little man spewing the N-word as if it were the only word in his vocabulary. And there! A masterpiece that encompasses the whole of the disenfranchised, poor white society. An homage, if you will, to working-class America. Or...if you’re slightly more cynical, like 436, all you have is a worthless white fuck-stick who ruined break...a walking anus festooned with hemorrhoids that should have thrown himself in front of a bus many years prior to our meeting. And before anyone cares to mention it, I AM white, so spare me any hate-filled rhetoric. I am the epitome of the definition of ‘honky’ (which -I- personally see as a term of endearment...), and I just feel shame and remorse for the actions but more so the appearance of some certain other members of my race.

To understand how Walking Anus (which is how I shall now refer to him from now on, abbreviated as WA) ended up in his boxers, a hospital gown and a spit hood handcuffed to a rail at the booking area, I need to back up about an hour. I was sitting running speed and dispatch called Shoe to a fight in progress. Turns out I was only a couple blocks away so I responded. I got there within seconds and rolled up on two guys definitely struggling with each other. As I stopped the car, one of the guys threw a second guy into a hardened ice/snow bank at the side of the road. It was snowing pretty hard at the time, and Shoe was going to be a few minutes slogging through the white crap. I ran up, past the two girls in the Honda who had called in the fight, and saw three guys wrestling on the ground. One was just a buddy, one was-obviously-WA, and the third man was WA’s brother, holding him in a tight bear hug and trying to get him to calm down. WA had some cuts on his face from being tossed unceremoniously into the snow bank. Medical was already on their way. WA was vacillating quickly between sobbing (causing the aforementioned line of lovely, infected mucus to slide down his lip) and screaming incoherently about wanting to go home. Held in a bear hug, he looked up at me and just lost his shit. I learned later that his lack of tact was caused by the female witness threatening to call the cops. He screamed at me. He struggled against the arms of his brother and thrashed his legs. He swore at me. He called me a pig. (Ouch! ) Meanwhile, I carefully and surreptitiously unlatched the taser. Just in case, mind you. The guy was big and I’m just not. And I learned VERY quickly that the hand-to-hand combat they teach us in the academy is less than worthless. His brother saw that and then kept WA’s attention on him. I then made what is known as a ‘command decision’. Since being badge-heavy and taking complete control of the situation would obviously have thrown WA into further rage and resulted in a drag-out fight hopefully ended quickly with the taser, I decided to allow his brother to try and calm him down. No punches were being thrown, no one was right then getting tossed into snowbanks. I figured if WA was at least KINDA listening to his brother, I may as well let his brother do the talking for me. After a couple minutes, which gave Shoe a chance to get there, his brother managed to calm him down and get him seated back in the truck.

In the truck, WA would head-butt the window every once in a while, even though he wasn’t handcuffed and could just as easily have struck it with his fists or decided to exit the vehicle using that marvel of evolution...the opposable thumb. But he stayed put while I talked with the brother. His brother informed me that WA had been drinking. Well, Captain Obvious strikes again! (Public Intoxication since he was on the road when I found him.) He said that WA had been in the back seat of the truck while he (the brother) was trying to drive WA home. He said that WA had then placed him (the brother and driver) in a headlock and began to playfully punch him in the ribs. He then stated that he attempted to carefully pull over. I then told him that was probably a good idea. He said that the females (the witnesses behind us in the Honda) had stopped because they were afraid they had crashed and tried to check on WA’s medical status. One of the girls turned out to be a very feisty ER nurse. WA had promptly screamed at her, swung a fist and spit on her. (Assault, for those keeping score.) She then threatened to call the cops and told WA that she would kick his ass if he tried that again. And no disrespect for feisty ER nurses intended, but I had to doubt whether she was capable of such a feat. WA was not a small dude and probably wouldn’t have even noticed if his nose was broken or if he was bleeding profusely. However, on the flip side, I also quickly learned not to underestimate the deceptive strength or viciousness of a pissed-off female. Check the archives for the legacy of Fun Size for just one example.

Medical arrived and WA was totally cool with them. They got him strapped in and ready for transport with no problems. Shoe and I stayed in the background because we seemed to be causing more harm than good. Every time WA saw one of us, he would growl and stare us down, panting and breathing heavily. His nostrils would flare like an enraged bull that is too stupid to realize he isn’t in control. So we’d back away and he’d laugh and joke with the EMT’s. And off he went. I then made sure the brother wasn’t dui, hadn’t actually crashed and that his brother hadn’t actually assaulted either of these guys. Turns out the friend had grabbed WA and tossed him to keep him out of traffic. I was fine with that. I then got a witness statement from the ER nurse.

Incidentally, both sarge AND Shoe said that the nurse and I would make a cute couple. I thought that was odd because I saw no such thing. Not because she wasn’t cute. She was actually perfectly lovely. But because when I’ve just contemplated tasing and wrestling a fat white guy covered in blood and snot...running through the possible worst case scenarios in my mind...asking a cute ER nurse to ‘dress my wounds’ is about the last thing on my mind. Maybe if you’re a certain type of person, wrestling and tasing a fat, toothless white guy covered in blood and snot is undeniably erotic. However, such people will not be counted among MY friends. Not judging...just saying I’d prefer not to get a latte with you, ya know? Live and let live. Just don’t come over here.

So WA went to the hospital. Shoe and I both went because we fully expected him to fight vigorously when he was finally informed that he would be going to jail for public intox and for assaulting the ER nurse. We got to the hospital and it was obvious that WA’s behavior had not improved because there were five of the ER’s security personnel keeping watch outside his door. He seemed pleasant for the moment. He was laughing and joking with the orderly about how exactly he was supposed to provide his urine sample. In the time since we’d last seen him, WA had been changed from his requisite white-trash uniform into MOST of the canvas I entreated you to paint above. The only things missing were the handcuffs and spit hood. Oh, and the guy from Sierra Leone laughing at him. He was given a shot of something called Adavan which is apparently something to ‘calm him down’. But given his extreme level of intoxication, they didn’t give him a whole lot. We told WA he was under arrest and he was shockingly cool about it. He must’ve been in one of his manic phases at that point. Strange how alcohol turns some people bi-polar...

Shoe and I each grabbed an arm and led him out to the patrol car for transport to jail. He stiffened a couple of times, but Shoe is quickly becoming a professional body builder and even -I- can keep control of a drunk guy in handcuffs. We got him situated in the car and I don’t know if it was the cramped confines or the cage itself, but he flipped out again. He started spitting on my windows, head-butting the window and generally making an ass of himself. I got the spit hood and forcibly shoved it over his head. Just one piece of the puzzle missing now...

On the ride to jail, we called them to make sure the deputies knew he was going to be fun. In the back, WA went from sobbing apologies to expressing utter indifference at his situation to screaming and head-butting the window again. During the tirades, he would lapse into strings of the most darkly scatological profanity ever heard. Like Ralph says in ‘A Christmas Story’, "He wove a tapestry of obscenity that as far as we know, is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." Wow. I was impressed. And then we got to jail and he was cuffed to the rail. He began spouting racial slurs at the poor immigrant from Africa, and the canvas was now complete. Rather than hurting the poor man’s sensibilities, I got the distinct impression that the racial tirade was the highlight of the man’s night. Naturally, this only incensed WA’s bigotry to new heights of evil. And every word only widened the smile on the face of his intended victim. It was beautiful.

As the artist’s signature to the canvas I’ve painted, I TRIED to tell him to be cool when I was taking him up to be searched. "Be COOL with these guys, man!" I whispered to him, "These guys don’t take any shit. Just do what they say and you’ll be out of here in a few hours. Be COOL," He nodded with the spit hood. "I got it man, thanks for being nice...I’ll be cool..."

Deputy: "Face the wall,"

WA: "Fuck you, pig!"

Deputy: [WHAM! And WA gets dropped to the concrete floor. The deputy then knelt on his neck while his colleagues hog-tied him]

WA: "Aaaah! What the hell?! Fuck you! Fuck you! I’ll fuckin’ KILL you!" And the sounds continued, but they got progressively lighter as WA was dragged, hog-tied and screaming to a holding cell.

Guy From Sierra Leone:  [Chuckles]

I fuckin’ WARNED him! I warn ALL of them. Don’t fuck with the deputies...

I also got a middle-aged white drunk dude who FINALLY broke the .300 record for me! Four years on the job and I had never had a drunk who broke .300. This guy did. He had wrecked his mom’s car (who was probably almost 70). I gave him the courtesy of letting him talk to his mom before I booked him. She SCREAMED at him. I talked to her briefly to give her the tow company’s information. She then said, quote: "The only fuckin’ good thing that’s happened so far this year is the Giants won!" Seventy years old. I’m not normally a fan of old people, but she rules.

Last night we had a great crash where I’m guessing the guy just fell asleep and slammed into a semi at probably 90 mph. We flew him. It was weird. It was a great example of how quickly patients can go downhill. He was sitting in the car blinking and looking around when I got there and the firefighters were chopping away the car to extricate him. Not long after that, he was unconscious and unresponsive and they landed the bird for him. I went to the hospital and he was intubated (sp, Chris?) and the ER doc said they couldn’t find any really obvious signs of trauma that would have caused him to drop so fast. He was stable, though.

And I’m out! Here’s your horoscope:

You're always worried about where your next meal will come from. Sadly, this has less to do with your financial situation and more to do with you being a gluttonous fuck.  (www.theonion.com)