Wednesday, December 12, 2012

So You'd Like to Donate $50 to the City of New York: A Guide

As some of you may know, my love Julien is filing for a green card very soon. After filing some paperwork, he met me at the diner and we took the railroad back to Penn station, where we saw that the next subway to my apartment wouldn't be coming for another twenty minutes. So we went to take some beers at Rose's, tipped a confused cashier because I refuse to leave without tipping someone who has given me alcohol, and headed back to the subway, drinks in paper bags. Julien joked that he'd better keep his drink hidden because all he needed was to be arrested just before he was to file for residency, the joke being that it would be incredible to be stopped when you are clearly neither drunk nor disorderly nor causing any disruption of any kind whatsoever.
But alas, some of you already see the problem lurking just beyond the horizon: the "open container" law of New York City, which until now I actually thought was a joke that Europeans made up to make fun of the prudishness of Americans. I literally had no idea that you could actually be stopped for something so stupid, as I will evidence right now.
We exit the subway at my stop and we see, about a block away, some guy getting arrested. "Look, that poor guy is getting arrested. I wonder what he did," I say out loud, perfectly exemplifying irony within the novel of my life.
As the two officers pass with arrestee in tow, one of them looks over to us and is like "Hey what're you drinking?"
And I'm like "Beer."
And he's like "Please step to the side of the street."
Then, true to form, the officer doesn't believe that Julien's ID is real because it is French and the French have not adopted a new style of paperwork since World War II aside from lamination. His license is a folded piece of pink paper, and his official government-issued ID looks like a pool pass. I'm surprised he could even buy the beers, which in this case wouldn't have been such a shame.
I don't have ID on me, of course, because why would I live my life like an adult? He tells me if he were a mean guy he could arrest me for that, which I'm not completely sure is true and sounds kind of gestapo-esque, but I do not mention this to the officer. He gives us some scribbles on a paper that's supposed to be a summons but I swear is just a drawing of us inside of a big middle finger and we now owe the city of New York fifty dollars for buying beer from a stand and leaving with it, which is clearly the point, and even more clearly a conspiracy for entrapment.
The worst part of the evening was when the officer made us put our own drinks into the trash, upside down, so we couldn't even wait until they were gone to pussyfoot back and retrieve them like the derelict we are.

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