coptalk

"Great. I have to go to a meeting full of cops. I hate cops, this is gonna suck."-4-wheeler-driving Chillicothe, IL Sheriff with a dashing white mustache

This week my dumb CTA card stopped working. For out-of-towners, CTA stands for Chicago Transit Authority, and they are the keepers of the trains and buses. Anyway, their cards are shitty and I took my lunchbreak to get a new one. The building where i work is comprised of a weird layout, marble-infused fountains, 70 floors, and a shitload of important Capitalists. They wear their CEO badges on their BrooksBrothers, trade stocks at their $30 lunches, and hail cabs to go 4 blocks in the summer so they don't break a business-sweat. For this reason it was a breeze to have the doorguy, mistaking me as one of these people, whistle a taxi and send me off on what would be one of the most bizarre adventures a gal could never expect.

Normally I'd never take a cab to get across the loop, but I'm paid by the hour and it made mathematical sense where: time=money. This driver was the rare-breed, older white man cabbie who seemed to be both sober and intelligent. This human and occupational composition is pretty much as unheard of as abstinence. We swapped CTA trash-talk and I jumped ship at its headquarters where I totally backstabbed, smiling and complimenting all the workers. I've learned the hard way you have to do that...those people fucking hate their jobs. This got me the hook-up with a nice old lady who speedily processed my order free-of-charge and released me into the wild, wild West Loop where I could finally take the train and avoid joining the round-trip, sunny-day, cross-loop cab fraternity, Duchebag-Duchebag-Duchebag. If you know me you know that nothing is ever really that simple, and could probably guess that, yes, I did make a 65-yr-old, black and well-built male CTA employee friend named Chris on my way to the train which was about 50 yards away.

In the four-minute exit from that fated building, I felt like I knew more about Chris than anyone in my entire life. His wife, his side job with the White Sox, what all those packages were that he was carrying, his passion for fireworks after a rainstorm, you know...the ushe. He carried my bag and escorted me up the Clinton Pink line platform and asked me tons of quiz questions about safety. Do you carry mase? Do you walk alone at night? Do you get blacked out and spend days piecing together your actions (regarding to safety)? Do you always carry a cell phone? Don't worry, he said, you'll be safe with me. And then magically, the inbound Green line chimed and deposited two uniformed police officers and their canine compadres who clearly were straight-BFF with Chris. They did a sweet-Chicago-union-brotherhood handshake and sure did stand right with us waiting for the Pink Line to the loop. Just me, Chris, 2 Cops and their metal-muzzled K9-unit dogs. No big deal for me, or whatever could maybe be in my purse, bloodstream, or most fearful nightmares.

I ancily hung out like the falsified-good-citizen I had been taken for all day, but inside my tie-dyed paranoia had me twisted. I played it cool as a maybe-crackhead limped over to the officers asking if the dogs were for, "drugs or bombs." Not laughing at all, or at all worried about my future, I managed to look at the guys with a straight face. Unpleased, they muttered that the dogs were basically well-suited to bust anybody toting either of the above, or even sense their fear. I, again, was not sweating or nervous at all as they asked if they could join us for our trip back to Financial Village. Due to my loyal allegiance to Chris (<3 <3 <3), of course the answer was yes.

So, as I boarded the train metaphorically holding hands with my hodgepodge gang of state employees, I felt like I was on the wrong side of the tracks (aka...the right side of the tracks). Residents on the train from the community in which I normally reside, comprised mostly of romantics, lost souls and overall scumbags-to-the-likes-of-Loop-workers, knew I didn't belong, changed train cars, and shot me sympathetic glances as I made small talk about the weather and if the Sox could pull off a win tonight. Finally the cops and their, ...eh...fuzz mutts?, exited swiftly and took dear Chris with them, two stops before mine, giving me enough time to slow down my heartbeat, appreciate my freedom, and swear to be a better person deplete of any drinking or drug use ever again, as I headed back to my shitty desk next to the Sears Tower. Thanks to that crappy CTA card, on this day I'd made some friends, talked some government shop, and shat my pants only once. All in all, I think we all learned something. DOG COPS ARE FUCKING SCARY!