Chapter 2 - Time to Grow-up

I gulped down my shot of Cutty Sark whiskey and allowed the final sip of my Palmetto Ale to wash away its remnants. The cold beer mingled with the burn from the more potent libation to create a pleasant feeling at the base of my throat. I wasn’t hammered by a long shot, but I had the sort of buzz that fills one full of false hope, if not bravado. I walked past a sea of sequin clad “dancers” and out the swinging double doors that separated the entrance of Diamond Dolls from the main smoke filled parlor inside. Is parlor the right word? I’m not sure. Perhaps, performance area or meat market would make for a more accurate description. Immediately the intoxicating aroma that had filled the interior room began to dissipate. I’m always amazed at how strip clubs are able to maintain that alluring aroma that smells like a mingling of strawberry gelato and Chanel No. 5 – and this despite the poor hygiene amongst some of the clientele, the mildewing booze spillage seeping into the carpets, and that thick cloud of smoke wafting from the cigarettes clinched nervously by those in the audience. I passed the bouncer, an enormous Caucasian male with a shaved head and patchy goatee that made him resemble what Mr. Clean might look like if forced to enter the Witness Protection Program.

“Do you want me to stamp your hand?” Grumbled the enormous Balco poster-boy as I scooted past him into the oppressively humid South Carolina night.

I didn’t need a stamp. I wouldn’t be returning inside on that evening. I hadn’t even bothered to carry out the typical strip club patron mechanizations – lap dances, tall tale weaving, flashing a wad of cash lined mostly with $1 bills on the inner portion of the bankroll – while I had been inside. Instead, the majority of the evening had been spent in introspection, sipping my spirits, and keeping to myself as I pondered my next move. Sure, I made small talk with the dancers, played some video blackjack, and occasionally checked the ESPN ticker on the television above my head at the bar; but mostly I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

I’m certain that most people would probably find a strip club, littered with half-naked coeds, and engulfed by a strange mix of Techno Pop, Gangsta Rap, and Metal Rock thumping across amped up loud speakers to be the last place to get any thinking done. Diamond Dolls was however, a gentleman’s club with a pretty laid back vibe and though I wasn’t a regular, it was a place that I’d go with friends from time to time to escape from the pressures of daily existence. I believe that this was my first ever solo visit to the “Double-D”, but oddly enough, it seemed like as good a place as any to get some thinking done. I did after all, have a great deal that I was trying to work out in my mind. I would be turning 26 years-old and had a big decision to make. I had spent the last several years living in Charleston, SC and working in a variety of forms of employment that ranged from being a deckhand at a jet ski rental outpost, to writing film reviews for The Charleston City Paper, to running a Manhattan Bagel deli briefly owned by my family, to my latest incarnation – teaching English and coaching football at a small private high school. The current job was one I enjoyed and certainly it had merit, but the meager pay and poor prospects for any future increase of significance because of the school’s diminutive size, made it somewhat impractical as a long term career. I guess I’d always figured that a career would somehow find me but I was beginning to realize what a naive and childish notion that was.

I felt like much of what I’d done since graduating from college at Kutztown University had been productive, but my future was no more certain than it had been on that spring day in May almost five years earlier. I could tell that my family was beginning to worry about my future prospects and I was certain that my wife had had enough of this scraping by phase in our lives, even if she was too saintly to express it in so many words. My 94 year-old grandmother would say to me whenever I’d call her up to chat, which I did often (we were very close), and asked her how she was doing, “Oh, I’m just knocking around.” Here I was roughly seventy years her junior, and I also felt like I was just “knocking around”. My grandmother had earned that right over a period of nine-plus decades and through some pretty difficult periods in history. I didn’t feel like I’d earned the right to take an extended nap, never mind to spend my days knocking around. I needed to find a new direction, a career, and I felt that I needed to do so in a hurry.

What first triggered the notion to join the New York City Police Department is to this very day not exactly clear in my mind’s eye. I know that I never had any interest in wedging myself day after day into a suit & tie, or in sitting behind a desk tied to tedious paperwork that defined my daily existence. I couldn’t see myself returning to school in the quest for an advanced or professional degree because I’d always pretty much hated that side of the classroom. Though I managed to attain solid, if unspectacular, grades in college, I always considered it a minor miracle that I’d graduated at all. Many people I knew were joining the Wall Street game but that whole racquet always seemed to me nothing more than a bunch of overly competitive egomaniacs with too much money and not enough time on their hands. I had then, and maintain now, a tremendous appreciation and knowledge of sports and thought that I might make a good broadcaster or sports writer but it occurred to me that many of those positions are occupied by former professional athletes or coaches, and that if I’d ever hoped to break into that industry I probably should have begun pursuing such a path years earlier. My current position, on the opposite side of the educational lectern, as a teacher, was a noble endeavor that I enjoyed but I had no formal teaching certification (my college degree was in English) and to teach in most schools that was either required or preferred, and would mean returning to the classroom as a student. Some private schools, like the one I was teaching at, didn’t require a certificate but they offered little in the way of financial compensation.

Joining a police department was a thought that had never really entered into my mind until very recently. In fact, growing up I’d always kind of despised the police. Weren’t they the brutes who issued arbitrary tickets for minor infractions and could take away your freedom on a whim? In time I would come to learn through personal experience, once I’d been a cop, that these tickets were actually the result (at least in the NYPD) of strict summons quotas forced upon the officers, and that arrests were only rarely carried out on a capricious whim. Over the years and as I gained some life experience, I came to respect the police and understood that they had a job to do. Many law enforcement officers even seemed fair and good-natured in my limited interactions with them as I got older. I had always been a great admirer of the military men and women working to protect our freedom and I started to see local law enforcement officers as an offshoot of the military. The police were protecting our way of life here at home just as the military does on a grander scale abroad. Furthermore, it seemed on the surface like an exciting career choice and the image presented in Hollywood films, or on television in my favorite shows like NYPD Blue or Law & Order only served to cement this notion. I began to feel as though I’d lived a fairly privileged upper middle-class existence and that instead of continuing to cruise along life’s highway abusing that niche, I should start giving something back to society. I couldn’t see any better way to do exactly that than to become a police officer and where better to do it than the most exciting, fast paced city in the world – my birthplace, New York City?

I suppose that I’d made up my mind some time before I actually said the words aloud to most of the people who knew me. In fact, I know that I’d discussed it with my wife on more than one occasion in the previous days, if not weeks. I had even gone so far as to do an internet search in pursuit of some details on what the process of becoming an NYPD officer might involve. It was a much simpler process than I’d ever imagined and it seemed on the surface that the compensation and opportunity to learn many different skills and get involved with a variety of specialized units was plentiful. When I coupled these illusionary enticements with the fact that I thought my personality was well suited to the job’s demands, it was a no brainer. I knew that my family would be both shocked to hear me express any interest in becoming a police officer (in NYC or anywhere else) and also apprehensive about me going into a career that they viewed as a realm for the uneducated blue collar sect. My parents had always taught me to be respectful of police officers but I don’t think the idea of their sons joining a police department had ever entered into their minds. My father is a well respected doctor and my mother has always worked more out of desire to contribute than any real financial need to seek gainful employment. As I mentioned previously, I’d attended a college preparatory high school and my going on to a university had always been compulsory rather than encouraged. My parents never put pressure on me to be anything in particular but I certainly felt pressure to be “something” of merit. I knew that my wife would stand alongside me no matter what I decided, but I wasn’t so sure that the rest of my family would be quite so supportive. They’d never pressured me to be a physician like my dad and his brothers; nor a lawyer, a banker, or a politician but I was more than a little certain that a cop was not what they’d had in mind. I was not confident that this was the successful life they’d envisioned me leading and I was sure they’d have a boat full of questions that I was not properly schooled enough on the subject to answer with any level of intelligence.

When I began my night of booze fueled soul searching inside the Charleston flesh factory Diamond Dolls, I may have been looking as much for a way to tell my parents that I’d decided to join the NYPD as I was trying to convince myself once and for all that this was the move to make. The career choice that would enable me to leave my drifter mentality in the past and cross over into a life of stability, with a blossoming new career anchoring my identity. Not just another job mind you, but an actual career like all productive members of society are supposed to embrace as part of their growth from adolescence into adulthood. All of my cousins, allegedly each and every one of my parents’ friends’ children, many of my own friends, and even my little brother who was attending NYU’s prestigious Stern Business School had seemingly found their career paths; but I had spent the time since graduating college adrift in a sea of blind alley jobs. It was time to grow-up and the NYPD seemed like just the thing to hasten my ascent into mature adulthood. My mind was finally made up and once I gulped down my whiskey and swilled the last sip of my beer, I’d have the liquid courage I needed to make the call to my parents and tell them of my decision to spend the next twenty or so years strapping a gun to my hip as I headed off to work each day.

I had only recently purchased my first cellular telephone and as I slipped past the Diamond Dolls' overgrown bouncer, I removed the brick-like object that bulged out of my right front jean pocket. Man, the phones were so much bigger less than a decade ago. The warm, thick Charleston night air hit me all at once like an unanticipated face slap and I briefly teetered on my pivot heel as I wondered if I should turn right around and go back inside for one more bottle of Palmetto Ale. I knew it was merely my nerves that triggered the impulse to turn back, and I resisted the urge. I began to dial apprehensively. Suddenly my buzz was seemingly gone, sapped of its powers to instill false bravado, and I sort of half wished that my cheap cellular service would fail to connect the call to a tower in New Jersey where my folks lived. The line rang once. It rang a second time. Three times. “Maybe they’re not home,” I half hoped.

Just before the fourth ring, “Hello?” It was my father, and the tone in his voice told me straight off that he was not in the very best of moods.

“Uh, hi . . . Dad . . . it’s Jay. You got a minute?” I inquired timidly.

I proceeded to outline for him, trying mightily to avoid slurring my words, my still barely fleshed out plan to move back North and join the NYPD as a police officer. Just as expected, my father was stunned by this seemingly out-of-the-blue revelation and the idea was met with the skepticism I had anticipated. He had a million questions, and for most of them I had either dubious answers or no answer at all. He reminded me of how as a kid, I’d always expressed disdain for the police, and how he and my mother had needed to convince me growing-up that the police were the good guys. I acknowledged this, but tried to explain how my views had done a 180-degree turn through the years. I told him about my new found respect for law enforcement and of the epiphany I’d underwent that it was time to grow-up. Never did I mention that I’d completed the final step of this great awakening surrounded by silicone enhanced pole dancers.

When the conversation ended – I don’t have any idea of how long it actually went on, but it was quite some time – I knew that I hadn’t yet convinced him (and I hadn’t even broached the subject with my mother yet) but I had laid the groundwork, and I hoped made a somewhat compelling argument for why it wasn’t a “harebrained idea” as my father often refers to things which he believes to be ill-conceived, off the wall, and doomed to failure. I hung up the phone full of the false hope and shameless bluster that alcohol so often stimulates. The conversation had made me cautiously optimistic that I might be able to garner some support for my new direction in life and certain that soon I would be an NYPD officer. I handed the valet out front of the club a $5 bill and he hailed me a taxi. I climbed inside, my sense of optimism reinvigorating the remaining booze in my bloodstream, and I was once again feeling the perfect balance in my alcohol induced high. The taxi sped out of the Diamond Dolls' parking lot carrying me forward to my new life as a productive adult contributor of society . . . or so I believed.