St Pats Day Brouhaha!

Well, on this St Patricks Day, while I am safely enconsed at work, lets go back into my archives for a St Patricks Day brouhaha! Reprinted without permission.


I am one of those few fabled drinkers that gets calls from long-lost buddies on St Pats, wishing me a good one, like people get on their birthdays or on Christmas morn. My friend Dave just called me after many a month, and after we blew the dust off things he recanted a favorite Sheriff Tom St Pats memory, the time I was roughed up by a female cop who I had just happened to have attended high school with on that storied day.

I was quite the Irish rover that day. Green beer, a shot here and there and Hell, I think at one point I even took my beer soaked shirt and stuck a bit in my mouth to suck off the excess foam for a while. I sang Irish ditties, and danced a jig. I told every Irish joke I knew, loudly. With each drink i found the bagpipe more and more amazing. By the time I left the last bar, not by choice mind you, I decided I wanted to put aside the harmonica I had at home and forget about my allusions to playing the violin or viola and learn the bagpipe. But those thoughts were quashed by a more pressing issue....an altercation inside your friendly neighborhood West 4th Street Subway Station.

I approached the ticket booth cause these were the arcane pre-Metrocard days, and was chagrined to find a line. Its one thing to wait in line to buy Yankee tickets or pee on the grave of an enemy, but not to buy a token to give you the means to pass out on the C train and ride back and forth from the Bronx to Queens all night. I decided to move things along, by saying real loud, "um, can we move along please?" Just like that. Only a little slurrier. And with more urgency. Oh, and curse words too.

You see, heres why we had this line in the first place. Cause it was St Pats you had a lot of people that decided to take their alcoholism to the streets and not out of their cupboard at home or hidden desk drawer at work for a change, and you had people in the city for the first time solely to buy a plasic green leprachaun hat or a "Kiss Me, I'm Irish!" balloon. While I hated the idea of the line in front of me, I will admit it was a pretty line, with all the green colors decorating the people going nowhere in it.

Amazingly enough I made it to the front of the line without having to flash dukes or even tell anyone that was too curious to face eyes front, but I could not leave it well enough alone once I came face to face with your resident token clerk. She was almost as unhappy enough to be working the booth that day as I was to have to stand in that line while already having to pee. We ended up in a verbal altercation, and I am not too sure what precipitated it. She may have simply said "Top of the morning to you!" for all I know. Still grumpy about the turtles engaging in foreplay speed of the line, I had a few cracks for her, which I spiced up with an epitaph or two. All in a brogue tinged with as much cadence as rancor.

And then it happened. The schmoe behind me put thier hand on my shoulder. I cant have that, I dont like to be touched there except during the tender act of lovemaking. I sort of shrugged it off, as by now I was pointing at the lickspittle in the booth and telling her where to go, and exactly how to get there. It was to Hell, via way of suc*ing my *@()@ or some such thing.

By now my shoulder was being tugged and I was being led away. At this point I already had my token so I really did not need the booth anymore anyway. But as I turned I decided to shove whoever decided to take me for a waltz. I mean why not? I am a man, not a bag of chips to rustle your hands through.

It was only after I made my contact that I noticed the police uniform. Not just any police uniform, these duds just screamed Double-XL. It was a woman, or a reasonable facsimile of such, big enough to crush dreams as she walked. And she was not happy with me. But how many women were back then?

You ever see footage from the 1880s of little girls in dresses smacking a hoop in front of them on some prairie grass as they run? Well, she was that little girl and I was that hoop. And the cement was that prairie grass. I ended up on the cold subway surface, after having taken a right turn at the corner of "upside down" and a quick stop at "on my head."

I knew I was in trouble now. For one thing, I still had to pee. For another, I had a cop standing over me, cursing, and there were kids around. And they were laughing. I envied them and their balloons. They had the whole night in front of them, and I had this female cop that looked like Kathy Bates and was snarling down from an Andre the Giant frame.

I started to get up but she must have been tired and chose to use me for a footstool. Hey, I like a little foot fetish here and there, who doesnt want a boot on the back of thier head now and then? This, though, was not my idea of that fantasy evening. She was quite the tease too, that firebrand, telling me to get up as she grinded a heel on the head. I think that is where I got my bald spot, from her boot.

To make a long story even longer, she picked me up, with help from her stereotypical cop buddy, as I was listless and drunk. I was led out of the subway station to the applause of those I regaled with my improv performance at the ticket booth. "Please tip your waitresses! Try the veal!" I remember saying to the guffawing minions. "Keep walking, motherf***er" my new friends in badges snarled in response to my one-man show.

I was put in the back of a van, which already had a couple of sullen sods, one wearing a Hawaiin Lei for some reason. I wish I could give you more details of the denizens in the cramped van (or at least make some good ones up) but my mind was in, "oh, s**t. This is going to take some explaining" mode. I still had to pee but I think asking to stop at the Wendy's on the way was a bad idea. Didnt stop me from asking...I could have used a Frosty too. Obviously the trip continued sans Frosty.

The behemoth, now in the passenger seat with a s**t-eating grin on her face (in place of the usual cake frosting usually on there) then hit me with the most sobering statement of the day (at least since one of the bagpipers told me, "no, the Chinese dont play the bagpipes as far as I know") when she said, "I can't believe we went to high school together."

My heart dropped and I burped and it tasted like beer. Normally I would try to burp again to taste more beer, but for now I had to put these words together in my cloudy and already prematurely balding head. High school together??? Oh, crap, I realized. It was {name deleted to protect the guilty). My only memory of her was a comic one, sitting on her shoulders in a pool only 5 or so years before, playing chicken at a party at a mutual friends house. She was obviously pretty big even then if I was on her shoulders. She and I sure did have quite the relationship, huh? First I ride on her shoulders and then she sticks her boot on the nape of my neck.

I honestly dont remember much after that, outside of sitting in a cell almost as small as the bathroom in my apartment in Long Island City (although the cell was much cleaner). One of those cops that masquerades as a tough guy behind the other side of the bars from those he accosts came to visit and threaten to "beat me up" for HITTING A COP. I "hit a cop" now??? All i had done was shoo my arm away from her. If all the hot dogs she ate had the same idea maybe she would have never gotten that fat.

In sumnation, the charges were dropped. NOTHING came of it. I was left to stew overnight in a vain effort to scare me (I dont scare easily, I once lived in a roach-filled apartment in Albany) and I think I visited a judge, but I am not sure. (I have seen so many they kind of all blend in together)

The moral of this story? There is none, cept maybe turn around to take a peek at who you may or may not shove in the future when they grab at your shoulder. And do your own research on bagpipes and who invented them and plays them before you ask a bagpiper that is not in the mood to answer any questions.