Eric Tansey, a former Army scout and Special Operations military veteran, joined the police force with a ton of unrealistic expectations. The reality of the job knocked him down and changed his perspective on everything.
Always a magnet for uncanny, wild situations, Tansey reveals exactly what it’s like to deal with everyday life as a police officer—from trying to tackle naked suspects to pepper spraying yourself in the face, from dealing with an angry mob to coaxing suicidal subjects off a bridge, an uncut version of everything is included.
Going behind the badge to bring the public a real understanding of the job, Pig Latin hopes to help inspire sympathy rather than condemnation and to encourage current law enforcement with the knowledge that they are not alone in their mistakes, their fear, and their experience on the job.
Eric Tansey, a former Army scout and Special Operations military veteran, joined the police force with a ton of unrealistic expectations. The reality of the job knocked him down and changed his perspective on everything.
Always a magnet for uncanny, wild situations, Tansey reveals exactly what it’s like to deal with everyday life as a police officer—from trying to tackle naked suspects to pepper spraying yourself in the face, from dealing with an angry mob to coaxing suicidal subjects off a bridge, an uncut version of everything is included.
Going behind the badge to bring the public a real understanding of the job, Pig Latin hopes to help inspire sympathy rather than condemnation and to encourage current law enforcement with the knowledge that they are not alone in their mistakes, their fear, and their experience on the job.

Pig Latin: A Seriously Funny True Story of a Former Police Officer
336
Pig Latin: A Seriously Funny True Story of a Former Police Officer
336Hardcover
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Overview
Eric Tansey, a former Army scout and Special Operations military veteran, joined the police force with a ton of unrealistic expectations. The reality of the job knocked him down and changed his perspective on everything.
Always a magnet for uncanny, wild situations, Tansey reveals exactly what it’s like to deal with everyday life as a police officer—from trying to tackle naked suspects to pepper spraying yourself in the face, from dealing with an angry mob to coaxing suicidal subjects off a bridge, an uncut version of everything is included.
Going behind the badge to bring the public a real understanding of the job, Pig Latin hopes to help inspire sympathy rather than condemnation and to encourage current law enforcement with the knowledge that they are not alone in their mistakes, their fear, and their experience on the job.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781668067956 |
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Publisher: | Atria Books |
Publication date: | 08/26/2025 |
Pages: | 336 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Nick Palmisciano is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business MBA Program. He served for six years as an infantry officer before moving into the world of business, creating the successful marketing firm Diesel Jack Media, and Ranger Up, which grew to prominence as the first military lifestyle brand. He lives with his wife and children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Find out more at NickPalmisciano.com, and follow him on Instagram @NickPalmisciano and on X @Ranger_Up.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: The Deep End of the Pool 1 THE DEEP END OF THE POOL
Hovering above me, perched at the top of a short set of stairs and framed like a goddess by the early morning sun, stands a rather large woman. When I say large, I want to be really clear about exactly what I’m staring at. I don’t mean “big-boned.” I don’t mean “plus-sized.” I mean this lady is four hundred pounds—the same weight as a large male lion or, you know... a bear. She has an American flag wrapped around her head like a turban and she is draped by a long sundress that is flowing just a little at the bottom as the wind blows past her. If someone started playing the theme song to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly right now, it would be oddly appropriate.
But that’s not what’s worrying me twelve whole minutes into my first-ever shift in the Southeast District of the Raleigh Police Department. Nor is it her death stare, as if she’s looking right through me.
It’s that right after I showed her the department-recommended steepled-fingers pose and calmly delivered the lines “Hello, ma’am. My name is Officer Tansey of the Raleigh Police Department. Your son is worried about you. How are you today?” she raised her hands into tight fists and assumed a boxing stance, daring me to climb farther up.
I’m not new to violence. I spent years in special operations in the military. I’ve trained in martial arts. I’ve been around. And because I’ve been around, I do not like the fact that her boxing stance looks legit.
Her elbows are locked in tight. Her right hand is protecting her chin. Her left hand is just a little away from her body so that the jab can flow freely. More than that, though, she is rocking back and forth, from her left foot to her right, like an athlete. You know that opening screen of every fighting video game where you toggle from one character to another and they’re just kind of bouncing a little? Well, I am apparently playing Street Fighter, Raleigh Edition, because this lady is ready to go.
Visions of getting knocked the fuck out by a woman on my first day on the job dance through my head. I know I’m the rookie, and I know there’d be nothing funnier than me getting starched by this lady. I know I’d never live it down. Hazing, like it was in the military, is a critical part of being welcomed into an elite police force. There’d be nicknames, photos, reminders in PowerPoint presentations. It would never go away. I was also raised to never hit a woman, and I don’t want to start now. More important, I don’t want to overreact and hurt this lady if I have to roll up my sleeves and go to work. What the fuck do I do now?
I look over to my training officer, Jayce, as I round out my thirteenth minute on the force.
Jayce has his arms crossed and looks bored. Fingers facing the ground, he extends his arm a little and flicks his wrist at me in the “get on with it” motion.
Well, thanks a pantload, Jayce.
As I turn back to the lady, she reaches into her mouth with her sausage fingers and proceeds to remove some big white object from it. I squint. Mother of God, those are her teeth! As she calmly places them on the railing of the staircase, she locks right back into her fighting stance.
Who takes out their fucking teeth before they fight? Someone who has lost their teeth fighting before, that’s who.
I take one last desperate look at Jayce. Surely he sees this is about to go south, and for the benefit of both me, the rookie under his charge, and her, the lady shadowboxing like she’s Apollo Creed at the top of the stairs, he will now get involved to provide guidance and wisdom.
Nope. Now he looks even more pissed at me, spits on the ground, and gives me another limp-wristed flurry of get-on-with-it. I take a deep breath and turn back to the lady. My eyes go wide and my body tenses in fight-or-flight mode.
In the moment that I took to look at Jayce, she decided to charge me. And by God, she is lightning-fast. I now know what elk feel like before they get run down and eaten alive by a grizzly bear. They look over and see this giant creature and probably think, Even if it does try something, I’m so quick that I will easily be able to get away. I’m gonna keep munching on this grass.
Wrong.
She’s so close that I can feel the static electricity of her body about to connect with mine, and I throw myself to the side with everything I have, narrowly avoiding a major impact with this force of nature the way a matador avoids the charge of a bull... or at least that’s how I think I look. Jayce would later describe my actions as “jumping back like a scared child,” but I’m going with “deftly maneuvered like a skilled matador.”
Her momentum carries her way past me and for a brief moment she takes in Jayce’s presence. She quickly realizes he’s not getting involved, and huffing and puffing from her explosive assault attempt, she turns her eyes back to me. But something changes. Her eyes soften. Her muscles relax. She unfurls the American flag wrapped around her head, snakes it between her legs, and while making eye contact with me, starts grinding on it.
“You want some of this, baby?” she asks as she breaks out Shakira levels of hip gyrations on that poor flag. I’m gonna have to have that thing donated to the Boy Scouts to be disposed of, because there is no coming back from that.
“No, ma’am, I do not,” I say, steepling my fingers so hard that they hurt. “Can we just talk?”
“You like that, Daddy? You want to arrest me?” she beckons.
“Not really, ma’am. I just want to talk. Can we please talk?” I plead.
But she has other ideas. She lies down on the flag belly first and begins to grind and hump it, thrusting her hips into it sensually. I’m mesmerized by her rhythmic hip thrusts. How does a woman that size move so gracefully? She looks up at me, still twerking on the flag, and whispers, “You like this, big boy?”
I did not sign up for this. I look back at Jayce helplessly, albeit for much less time than last time, just in case she tries to charge me again. I’m so overwhelmed. I want this to end so badly. I would do anything for just a little bit of help but Jayce looks like he’s about to pour himself a glass of tea and do the crossword or some shit. Actually no, now there is a little smirk, like he’s enjoying himself. Fuck!
I have no idea what to say or what to do, but since no one is coming to help, I remember my time in the military. When in charge, be in charge.
With my background driving me, I finally muster up the intestinal fortitude to speak. I deepen my voice and bellow, “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to stand up and calmly walk over to the police car so we can have a discussion, or else I will have no choice but to take you in.” My delivery is powerful and masculine. That should do it.
Drinking me in with those deep brown eyes, barely visible with those fat cheeks peeking over the edge of them, she rolls onto her side, brings her top knee to her chest, and props her head up, while resting on one hand, also known as the “come and get me” pose. The same pose every man who is even a little bit lucky has seen once or twice in his life, and the same pose I hope to get from my wife if I make it through this shitpot of a day. She adds a sexy come-hither look motion with her finger. Oh God. I’ve somehow made it worse.
She rolls her tongue across her lips and says, “Come here, big boy. You know you want me. You gonna arrest me?” As she delivers that line, she pops up on one elbow so her whole body is in a one-armed push-up position and pulls her dress up. She is not wearing underwear, which was a little gift I didn’t expect to be receiving at 6 a.m. With some minor struggle, her large belly frees itself from the trappings of the dress, but she can’t quite clear the dress over her bosom in this position. With a grunt, she yanks with her arm and straightens her body, clearing the dress completely, and tosses it aside. She is now completely naked. It’s now a whole lot worse.
I know better than to look at Jayce. It’s me versus her. I am going to prevail.
“Now, you gonna arrest me, baby?” she moans.
“Yeah sure, ma’am. For lewd and lascivious acts, I guess...”
I take one step toward her. With a feat of athleticism I generally would only expect from professional athletes or elite CrossFitters, this lady burpees to her feet. The instant those pudgy toes hit the ground, she jumps, spins in the air, and lands in a perfect 180, so that her ass is facing me and she is now looking over her shoulder. The fat jiggles down her body like a wave.
Then I hear something. A grunt. I know that sound.
I had been trying very hard not to make direct visual contact with her. You don’t want to stare at the naked body of a person in this condition. It gives you that uncomfortable feeling, like when you’re thirteen and your weird uncle brings you to Hooters. But I have to look, and as I do, I see the result of the grunt. There is a turtle head poking out of this woman’s ass. She is twerking in my direction and she is trying to shit. Oh my God, she’s shitting on me! She relaxes and the shit goes back inside.
She grunts again and the turtle head reappears and makes it a little farther out. This time it doesn’t go back in. She hops backward toward me with the poo still protruding from her ass. I am in a sheer panic. Fight-or-flight kicks in again and I choose flight. I attempt to maneuver past her to get closer to Jayce, but she matches my every move, hopping in circles, wincing and groaning, as she tries to cover me in shit. Just then, I hear the sound I’ve been waiting for—my training officer!
“Put some handcuffs on her!” Jayce offers.
“She’s shitting on me!” I scream back as her dancing, shitting ass moves at me to the beat of some music that only she can hear. Then, with one more grunt, she leaves a small piece of shit in the grass and takes off at a dead sprint, back toward the stairs we started from.
“Go get her!” Jayce screams in my eighteenth minute as a peace officer. He seems mad. I don’t give a fuck. I’m mad. I wanted a nice first day. I wanted coffee and a donut with a mentor who welcomed me into the thin blue line with stories and lessons. But here I am, losing a footrace to a four-hundred-pound lady who is trying to shit on me.
She flies up the stairs like a cat, waves of cellulite dancing with each bound. I don’t know what this chick used to do, but she should not be able to move like this. She hits the doorway of her house and sprints in, just as I hit the top of the stairs.
I look to Jayce. In the military, you never go into a building alone. “You better go get her!” he screams at me, even more perturbed than he was a minute ago. I do as I’m told and open the door.
She explodes out, leaping into the air. To me it’s all happening in slow motion. I don’t know how high she got, but in my mind, she’s hovering in the air at least three feet above me, like she’s descending from the heavens. As she reaches the apex of her jump, she screams, “My president is black, muthafucka!” and with perfect timing, as she delivers the final syllable on “muthafucka,” she brings down the full weight of her power and proceeds to smash an extremely large portrait of President Barack Obama over my face, head, and shoulders, so that I’m left wearing a picture frame like a goddamn Bugs Bunny cartoon.
I’m done. I’ve been a cop for nineteen minutes and it’s the worst nineteen minutes of my fucking life. Obviously, I’m not cut out to be a cop. And then it happens.
Just as I’m wondering if, after multiple tours to the Middle East, I’m going to die at the hands of a large, naked, flag-humping lady with shit stains running down her leg, a SWAT officer the size of the Incredible Hulk sprints past me, palms her face like it’s a basketball, and bends her backward over the railing with one hand while brandishing pepper spray with the other, screaming, “You wanna get sprayed?”
She calmly replies, “Nah, I’m good.”
“Put your hands behind your back,” he says gruffly.
She does. He cuffs her.
“Was that so hard?” this nameless superhero asks me.
“No,” I respond.
“She almost shit on you, man,” he says, reminding me. I resist the urge to say, “No shit,” and instead meekly say, “I know.”
“You can’t be scared of them, man, or you’ll end up hurt,” Mr. SWAT says as he walks away in slow motion. I can almost see fiery explosions begin to burst around him. He refuses to look at them because he is too busy emanating cool. If I wasn’t married and straight, I might’ve proposed at that moment.
I take over, walking her down the stairs and to the police car.
“Ma’am, I’m going to put you in the car now.” Surprisingly, she lets me do it without a fight. Finally, some respect.
As I close the door to the back of the car, I let out a deep breath. Holy shit, I am glad that’s over.
And there I meet Jayce’s eyes. He has finally moved from his perch. “You gonna bring her to the jail like that or are you going to try to put her dress back on?”
“I’m going to put her dress back on,” I mumble.
I walk back onto the grass toward her dress, careful to sidestep the pieces of shit she left there, and gather it in my hands. I then return to the vehicle and open the door as SWAT drives away.
Expecting the same calm rational attitude she offered to Mr. SWATTY McHulkMan, I am surprised when I eat a kick from one of her giant legs. “Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” she screams. I slam the door and sprint to the other side while she’s completely committed to kicking where I just was. I open the door on the other side of the vehicle and see her head, and instantly and victoriously throw the dress over it. But as I start to try to pull it down her body, she somehow completely flips toward me, lashing out with her meaty hooves once more. I slam the door again. After four or five attempts at this, where I run back and forth around the back of the car trying to outmaneuver this lady, I come to the conclusion that a dress necklace will have to do.
I am twenty-four minutes into my first shift—which, incidentally, I started twenty-four minutes early, so I’m really at minute zero—when Jayce walks over and says, “You better get her to the jail.”
I get back into my police car and Jayce gets into the passenger seat. Two dozen minutes ago, getting into this car was the coolest thing I had done in a long time. Right now, sweating through my uniform from the antics of trying to be a cop for the first time, feeling Jayce’s judgmental eyes on me, and hearing the occasional “You can’t have none of this no more, you son of a bitch!” from the back of the car make it markedly less cool. I radio in that 421 David (our vehicle) is on its way to the jail, and head out.
“You know, you don’t have to strip them down before you bring them in, rookie,” the stern jailer says to me.
“I know that. She wasn’t cooperating. I tried to get it back on,” I sheepishly reply.
“Mmmm... hmmmm...” she answers, filling those syllables with more judgment than even a tribunal of Italian, Jewish, and Asian grandmothers could. I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there until Jayce points me to a row of computers. “Go over there and type up an affidavit,” he says, emotionless.
“Absolutely,” I reply confidently. As I walk in the direction of the computers, I realize I have two problems. First, I have no way of logging into the system since this is my first time at the jail, and I haven’t been given credentials yet. Second, I have no idea what an affidavit is or what it looks like. Nevertheless, I’ve failed so many times today that I cannot bring myself to tell Jayce I suck once again, so I wing it.
There’s only one other cop sitting there—a state trooper who is cranking out about a thousand words per minute. I plop down next to him and pray to the gods that he is cooler than Jayce. “Hey, man, is there any chance you can help me?” “Sure, what’s up, man?” comes the reply. “I’ve been a cop for thirty-three minutes and I need to do an affidavit and I have never done one and I don’t know how to get on the system and I have the training officer from hell.”
He smiles and takes pity on me, logging me in, sifting through all the forms to show me where the affidavit is, and showing me exactly what and where to type. Thank God.
As I get to the meat of the document, I realize I can only fit four or five sentences in the allowed space. How do I possibly explain what just happened in five sentences? But as I’m about to ask the nice trooper that very question, Jayce appears behind me like the Phantom of the fucking Opera. I prepare myself for the deluge of insults and the mockery of my typing speed that I am sure are about to occur. Instead I hear something much more low-key: “You gonna do something about that?”
As I look to where Jayce is nodding I realize that the “that” which he is asking me to do something about is my nemesis, the lady who brained me with President Obama and shit-twerked me while other officers laughed, has climbed onto the bench, is once again naked, and is dropping soft-serve ice cream–style shit cakes all over the jail floor.
I rocket my chair back, forgetting Jayce is there, hitting him in the nuts. He groans and says, “You’re lucky she’s not throwing it at you.” In that moment, I realize that having shit thrown at me seems to be a real part of this job, and that Jayce would have happily let that happen in the name of “teaching me.” I approach the lady once again, with no idea how to stop this, and with no member of SWAT to back me up.
I didn’t need it. This time I am saved by a jailer who is maybe five feet tall. Her size doesn’t affect the booming in her voice as she proclaims, “Ohhhhh hell no! You best not be shitting on my floor. Bitch, you gotta be crazy if you think Imma let that fly!” In a blink this tiny woman was on the bench, retrieving my nemesis by the hair, and dragging her into a holding cell.
“Get somebody in here to clean this floor. We’ve got someone shitting on the floor in here!” she screams the second she returns. On cue, two inmates arrive with a mop and a bucket.
I just stand there for a minute, then I hear Jayce’s voice once again. “Come on. It’s time to see the magistrate.” I just follow him. My brain isn’t working anymore. This is military basic training all over again where there is so much to process that you lose the ability to function.
We arrive at Magistrate Tibbet’s desk, and within five seconds I think I’m talking to Mark Wahlberg’s dad because this guy is such a larger-than-life Bostonian. “Wut happened? Tell me wut happened? Oh, she was nakid? Down by the pahk? Did anyone see her? Oh, her son did? Figures. Oh, you got a victim? Who’s ya victim? Ya gotta have a victim, right? Yuh chahgin’ her but there’s no victim? That ain’t right. Did Sully hear ’bout this?”
Okay, he didn’t say the Sully part, but the rest is pretty much exactly what he said. He stops and looks at me for a brief moment, and I see a gleam in his eye. He knows I’m broken. I don’t care anymore. The lady didn’t offend me. She’s just batshit crazy. I don’t care if she goes to jail. I just want to leave, dig a hole, and die in it.
He changes tactics. “Tell me what happened, young man.”
I do. I tell him all of it. Every detail. The charge. The stripping. The grinding. The shitting. The assault with President Obama. The kicking. The additional shitting.
When I’m done, he looks at me with just a little smile on his face. “All right, heah’s what we’re gonna do. Go back and retype this, and I know there ain’t much room, but if ya go to the bottom and open a new fahm, you’ll have moah room to type. Once that’s done, hustle back heah. Come back and we’ll write some new chahges. We’ll get this all sorted out.”
This is the first kindness I have received all day and it refills me. Hope wells within me, and I remember that there were days like this in the military and it all turned out all right... well, maybe not quite like this. There was less assault, less shit, similar levels of nudity, but mostly male nudity... With a spring in my step, I head out to write my new chahges... I mean charges, damn it.
As I sit down and start happily typing away, Jayce adds his first words of wisdom to the mix: “Tibbet’s an asshole, but he’s the best kind of asshole. He just wants to make sure you did it right and you had probable cause. We hold people’s lives in our hands. It matters.” And with that, he walks away like some kind of bored Yoda.
As I close the car door, I tell myself that while that was a rough start to my first day, it cannot get any worse. Maybe now I’ll get that coffee-and-donut experience I have been desperately craving.
I start the car and Jayce looks at me. Either by mere coincidence or divine intervention, he says, “Feel like a coffee?”
“Absolutely!” I respond, maybe a little too excitedly. And if I’m externally grinning, inside I’m doing the entire opening dance routine to the movie Bring It On. Yeah, the one about the cheerleaders.
“Okay, let’s do it,” he responds.
With a big smile on my face, I put the car into gear and head to Dunkin’ Donuts, one of the few places in the area I know how to get to without assistance. Just as that glorious pink and orange logo comes into view, a crackle comes over the radio. “421 David, Raleigh.”
That’s us.
“Answer the radio,” Jayce barks.
Crap. Even though I’ve learned all this stuff, I’m used to the military methodology on the radio, where you can talk a little. Cops want everything to be number codes and that’s it. So if you forget the number code for something, you might think you’re showing up for a domestic disturbance, but there’s really a cat stuck in a tree or some shit. Naturally, when he told me to answer the radio, I forgot everything I knew and had ever learned.
“421... David... Raleigh... uh... Go... ahead,” I say in the slowest, saddest way possible.
“421 David, we’ve got a disturbance at 123 This Isn’t The Real Address Lane.”
Well... looks like I won’t get my coffee...
As we arrive at my second-ever call, I see a young, attractive, professional-looking black female wearing a business suit and standing in the middle of the street. As we approach, she waves us down. It’s hard to gauge the exact emotion on her face. There’s definitely anger in there, with a good helping of disgust, and maybe just a soupçon of fear? It was the kind of look my mom would give me when I passed gas at church.
I exit the vehicle and approach her. “Ma’am, what’s wrong?” While still maintaining eye contact with me, she points her finger ninety degrees to her right. “There is a naked man in my car.”
We just stand there staring at each other. What? How does one follow up on that bad boy? If I ask her if she knows him, it might be offensive. Do I ask what he looks like? No. That’s stupid. I can just go look myself. Maybe just ask her if she’s okay?
As my rookie brain wrestles with this conundrum, she takes mercy on me and breaks the ice, whispering, almost like she owes this man some kindness. “I was backing out of my driveway on my way to work, and as I turned my head to look out the back window, I saw him in the back seat.” She pauses, briefly covering her mouth, and I think she’s about to vomit. At least it’s not shit...
“Saw who?” I ask.
“A naked man in my back seat! Oh God! He smells so bad.” She is waving her hands up and down rapidly, clearly on the verge of a meltdown.
“Ma’am, is he completely nude?” At this question she loses all her composure and walks away, practically hyperventilating. I can tell by the way she’s dressed and by the manicured nature of the front of her home that this lady likes things “just so.” She might very well burn this car to the ground when this is all over. Still, how bad can it be?
I look over to Jayce for some guidance. I don’t know why. He’s been such a bucketload of help so far today. Smirking, he gives me a simple thumbs-up and a slight wink. Awesome. At least you’re having fun. Huge fucking help, boss.
I walk over and look through the cracked rear window of the victim’s car, and sure enough, there he is—stark naked, all curled up in the fetal position with his twig and berries mashed out the back of two excessively hairy legs. To add a little spice to the whole image, there are flies buzzing all over his balls, which makes me think of those nature documentaries where there’re always flies buzzing around animals. That in turn makes me think about rhinos, because of all the animals out there, rhinos seem to always position themselves so that their genitals are just right there in your face.
I sniff the air. Yep, smells just like Bigfoot’s jockstrap after a hard day of pickleball with the other forest creatures. I get a little kick of gag reflex but hold it together. Jayce has a fist balled up in his mouth to keep from laughing.
No more waiting around like a bitch for guidance. Time to do what I’m paid for! I dramatically throw the car door open and announce, “Raleigh Police!” On TV shows, this shit always results in the criminal taking off at a sprint, resulting in a badass foot chase, or with them putting their hands up in an obvious show of respect for the power and authority of the job of peace officer.
This dude doesn’t even move. He just lies there balled up (pun intended), snoring away.
I am bummed (pun intended).
That’s when my eyes pick up on other things in the car besides testicles. Little things that only a trained officer would pick up on... like the fact that he is using wadded-up women’s panties for a pillow... or the fact that he is covered in rose petals and that rose petals are covering the floorboards... I mean straight up, this dude is lying on like sixty dollars in rose petals.
I turn to the woman and ask, “Ma’am, are you missing any panties?”
“What!? No... I don’t think so...”
“Do you normally keep rose petals in your car, by chance?”
“Eww, what? God no!” She shakes her head, offended and disgusted. Yes, this car is being burned to the ground or sold by day’s end.
Summoning my strength, I turn my attention back to the car and announce myself even louder than before.
“RALEIGH POLICE! Hey, man, wake up!” I roar.
Slowly, like an olde-tyme cartoon character waking up to some classical music, he lifts his head from the wad of panties and looks up at me. Unimpressed, he casually stretches and yawns.
A little aggravated at the fact that he isn’t giving me my due, I bark in my best not-a-rookie voice to get out of the car and to keep his hands where I can see them. Not that he can really hide them anywhere.
In the same slothlike manner in which he reacted to me, the man slides himself out of the car and stands next to the trunk. The proper, put-together car owner gasps and shields her eyes as he does, because this guy doesn’t give a fuck. His dark skin makes the salt-and-pepper hair covering his whole body stand out, and because he’s like 3 percent body fat and slight, he’s basically a muscular skeleton, albeit one who’s hung like a rhino. To make matters worse, as we start our conversation, he straight-up Peter Pans it, hands on hips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jayce shaking in quiet laughter.
“Hey, man, what are you doing in this lady’s car... naked?” I ask.
“Maaaaan, I just got out of jail last night. I needed a place to sleep... her car was unlocked and it looked comfortable,” he replies, as if I’m the asshole in this situation.
“Okay, sure, that makes sense... I guess... but what’s up with the panties and flowers?” I ask, trying to rein this back in.
“I don’t know about dat. Dey ain’t mines,” he says.
“What?” I respond, a little taken aback.
“Dem ain’t mines!” he proclaims with gusto.
Standing there in front of me, he is so matter-of-fact, so confident, so shameless, and so very naked that I start to question myself. He doesn’t appear to be drunk or high. Am I missing something? Am I the bad guy? Wait, no!
“You’re under arrest, sir.”
“Fo’ what?!” he asks me.
“Well, for breaking and entering a motor vehicle,” I reply.
“Oh damn,” he answers.
“And for indecent exposure, man.”
“Yeah, I can see dat...” He trails off.
As I am about to put him in the car, I remember the valuable lesson I learned thirty minutes ago. I look at the car owner and say, “Ma’am, I noticed a pair of Guess jeans in the back of the car. Are those his?”
“No, they are mine,” she responds. As I start to form my next question, she blurts out, “Yes! He can have them.”
“Would you like me to return them to you when we get him to jail?” I ask. She holds her hand over her mouth and shakes both her head and her other hand at me in the most forceful “no” gesture I have ever seen.
But the pièce de résistance is watching this dude put on women’s jeans. I mean this guy puts on a performance. Hip swivels. Gyrations. Jumping to clear his ass. And finally, a deep inhalation, coupled with a hand stuff to get the family jewels into jeans that make no such allowance up front. When he finally clasps that top button and pulls that zipper true, he crosses his arms and smiles like he has just won the WWF championship belt.
We never did find out where the panties and rose petals came from, or where his clothes went, but I’m sure it’s a very romantic story.
I pull into my driveway and sit for a minute. After bringing him in, Jayce and I had twelve more calls. It’s now 9 p.m.
I drove to work this morning at 4:30 a.m. I was supposed to report at 6:00 but I couldn’t sleep last night worrying about my first day, so at 4:00 I just decided to drive in. Pulling in this morning, I was scared shitless. All you hear about SED—the legendary Southeast District—is that it’s nuts. It’s hard-core. If you’re working there, you have to be good. You have to be on your shit. It’s the military equivalent of choosing to be in Ranger Battalion or Special Forces. There are much easier paths. I knew all of that and I thought I wanted it, but the whole day made me question that.
From the moment I pulled into the precinct, which was nestled behind a bank and a seriously overgrown set of tree branches that made it feel like I was pulling into the Bat Cave, to being hazed for having too much gear when I walked in, to the shit, vomit, nudity, and assault I dealt with all day, my shift drove me to my knees. I had nothing left. It ended at 6 p.m., but that’s when the paperwork started. After a quick dinner in solitude and a lot of slow typing, I finally left the station at 8:30 p.m., very confident that whatever I had typed was not going to be good enough.
I take a deep breath and exit the car door, dragging myself up the stairs and through my front door, where I am greeted with a hug and a kiss from my wife, Ashleigh.
“Tell me about your day! How was it?!” she musters, showing excitement for me and my new profession.
I want to meet her energy, but I can’t. I don’t have it in me to recap my day. I just lived it, then recapped it for the magistrate every time I had to bring someone in, then recapped it in reports for the last two hours.
“Babe, if it’s okay with you, I just need to take a shower and go to sleep. I have to be at PT [physical training] at 4:30. Everyone in the squad goes to the gym together.”
“Whatever you need,” she offers, surprised by my attitude.
As I trudge to the shower, her voice follows me: “It’ll get better.”
Man, it needs to. It fucking needs to.