My Cop

And another interesting development.

I've been chatting with this guy on AOL. Unnervingly, he lives right around the corner from the Humble Abode, here in Beautiful Downtown Jersey City. I mean, on the one hand, how convenient is that? Wanna hook up? Yeah, I'll be right over. On the other hand, what if we meet up and it's just not there for me, but it is for him. Or vice versa. Then I'll have to change the route I take when I walk my dog or something.

So last night, when I got home from meeting up with blue, I jumped on line to check email. There he was. He flagged me down. he had just gotten in himself. We both agreed it was pretty late.

"I've gotta walk my dog," I said. "As a matter of fact, I'll be passing by your house in about five minutes."

Okay. That seems safe. I got some poop bags and went out with Trusty Companion. Sure enough, there he was, standing at the entrance to the park. I greeted him, and was pretty pleasantly surprised. Hot guy. I tried to recall what he told me he was into, because the next step in the calculation is, If he's into flogging, is he someone I'd be hot to flog?

We had the park to ourselves, since it was after one in the morning. He had a great manner. Sort of gruff but differential. Smiling eyes. I asked what he did for work. "Well," he said, not in this neighborhood, but somewhere else in Jersey City you'd see me walking around. Or driving around." He looked at his feet. "Yeah," he said, "I'm one of the boys in blue."

Schwing!

I know I know I know. A thing for cops. How trite. Bite me.

I grew up watching cops. Wojahowicz on Barney Miller. Ponch and John on CHiPS. Starsky and Hutch. Baretta. These butch men, with ideas about Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, that they did their best to live out. Tough men, with good, kind hearts. What's not to like.

Most of my real life dealings with cops came when they were arresting me. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen. This is your final warning. If you do not stand up and get out of the street, you will be arrested for Disorderly Conduct."

"People with AIDS! Under Attack! Whadda we do? ACT UP! Fight Back!" we responded.

So they'd put plastic twisty-ties around our wrists (Make a fist, inhale, put your wrists in a line, not wrist to wrist, and that way you'll have enough room when they tighten it and it won't cut off your circulation.) Then, two or three of them would pick us up one by one and take us and put us in the wagon. ('Paddy Wagon' is an Irish slur, and many members of the NYPD are of Irish descent, so cops don't call it a 'Paddy Wagon.' It's just 'the Wagon.'

Then, they'd take us to the precinct. We'd be put into the holding cells, boys in one cell, women in the other. Then they'd ask questions to try and determine whether or not each of us had 'ties to the community.' This could be dicey. Some of the questions (date of birth, address, name) we'd answer, but some questions (Social Security number, place of employment) we wouldn't answer, since if someone in the group didn't have one of those, they might be singled out, and our goal once in custody was not to be separated. Sort of the "I'm Spartacus!" strategy.

But our arresting officers would divvy us up, and ask us all the questions. Two of my favorites were, "Do you have any distinguishing marks or tattoos?" (Once, with an arresting officer I got pretty palsy with, I said, "Yeah, my cock is tattooed to look like the skin of a cobra." "Really?" he said. "Wanna see?" I said. He laughed.) and another was "Are you married?" (with the aforementioned arresting officer, when he got to that question, I said, "I'm in a Master/slave relationship. Does that count?" "No," he said, "We're not gonna count that.")

Then we'd be photographed. Even if you offer to pay for them, they won't give you copies of your mug shots. Sometimes fingerprinted. This was a pain in the ass, because it meant that they were sending the prints up to Albany to be checked. It took forever, and you'd be sitting in the holding cells, singing 'I am woman, hear me roar...' and songs from 'Gypsy' with the gang waiting for the results to come back for hours.

Once, when I was arrested at Hoffman-LaRoche in New Jersey, the cops decided that to be able to figure out which collars went with which arresting officers later, they'd take the photographs with us standing next to our arresting officers. I would always smile in my mugshot. A friend of mine commented that my cop and I, standing there with me smiling (he was this big, beautiful Italian guy) looked like a Gay prom picture.

By and large, the cops were great. I mean, really great. In fact I only had one bad experience, when a lieutenant went ballistic on us when we were only leafletting outside of Gracie Mansion. Since what we were doing was perfectly legal, four of us opted to take a bust on principle, although we hadn't planned on this. In the cruiser on the way to the precinct, the cops were talking about what an asshole the Lieutenant was. We agreed. About a year later, it was reported that the lieutenant had committed suicide with his own weapon. Obviously a deeply troubled man. But, one bad apple out of hundreds in my experience.

And the real life cops were just like the cops that I had fallen in love with on television as an impressionable young homo. Go figure: they were watching the same shows I was, right?

So I'm hot for cops. I don't fetishize the uniform, or the handcuffs, or the power or whatever, and I don't have arrest fantasies. Although having the gate of the holding cell swing closed and clank shut always got me hard. But overall, it's more the kind of man that in my mind is equivalent to 'cop.'

And this guy, this neighbor of mine, is all that. Totally. He's like an extra on NYPD Blue.

Tragically, My Cop seems to be pretty relationship oriented. Even though he's kinky, he's probably fairly conservative in his values. And I am definitely not relationship oriented. I'm relationship dis-oriented.

But, definitely, the next time I'm online and bright eyed and bushy-tailed instead of drowsly and fuzzy-headed, and I run into My Cop, I'm gonna hook up.

I've waited my whole life for that.

I hope I don't call him 'Wojo' in a moment of passion.

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