this imploding heart

a frozen fire

he brought me a gift
a seedless pureheart melon
lopsided his bike

So, the story goes that it was around 3 in the morning in Wallingford and Cake had gone over to a guy-from-work's house to drink beer and play video games after the evening shift at the restaurant. Cake was a tad drunk and getting ready to ride his bike back over the bridge, so he sat down on the bumper of a car to put his bike shoes, gloves and helmet on and roll up his pants.

After he gets himself together, he takes off down the ave to hit the U bridge. (BTW, due to the drinking, parts of this story are a bit spotty). He's barely riding for 2 minutes before there are cop cars all around him. He stops his bike and immediately there are spotlights on him and between 6 and 8 cops are around him, some with guns drawn, shouting for him to put his hands on the car and spread his legs. So he puts his hands on the car and spreads his legs. A strobe is placed less than 6 feet from his face. He's scared, (obviously. anytime the cops yell, it's scary), and one of the cops comes up and says "Oh yeah, I can just smell it on you. He's shaking, boys. Must have something to be afraid of. Must have done something wrong. You wanna tell us why we stopped you? You got something to be afriad of?"

Honeypie's sordid past has taught him to be infinitely malleable when it comes to dealing with police officers. Don't speak unless spoken to, give only what they ask for, and don't give them any excuse to do anything.

They keep him there with the spotlight in his face and his hands spread on the car for twenty minutes while they wait for the detective and some EYE WITNESSES. I'm not sure when, but somewhere during this time, someone mentions that he's a suspect in the recent spree of arsons in Seattle. The cop that will be known as Good Cop frisks him and kindly ignores the green in his pocket. They ask to search his bag, and he declines.

The eyewitnesses show up. Cake notices them, VERY slowly and deliberately lifts his hand from the hood, tips his helmet back, slowly puts his hand back on the hood. He turns his face around in the light so they can see clearly, and hopefully see that he's the wrong guy.

The 5ft 300lb cop who shall be known as Dickhead is walking around all this time saying "I know he's got it on him! Why don't you bust him? You can smell it coming off him in waves!" And this is probably true. Cake takes enough of It in that when he gets really sweaty, his sweat smells like it.

The detective arrives, and Cake allows the detective and Good Cop to search his bag.

Dickhead: "What's in there? Lighter fluid?"

Detective: "Shoes, a change of clothes, some food, Nicorette, notebooks. Pretty much exactly what he said was in here."

Dickhead: huff puff puff huff harrump.

After more standing with his hands on the car, the cops converge and decide he can go. Good Cop asks Cake if he has any questions. Why he didn't have any questions before, etc.

Cake: "No questions, but I do have something to say."

At this point, Cake's had 30 minutes to think, and has come up with one of his patented speeches. While most of it was lost, it opens up like so:

Cake: "You cops are kind of like Nazi's." he puts his hand up in a 'wait for it' move.

Dickhead: huff puff "What, is the guy who called 911 a nazi too?"
(at this point, all the other cops do a subtle eye roll, aknowledging that Dickhead is -in fact- a dickhead.)

Cake: "You can all pretty much do whatever you want to whoever you want whenever you want and there's not much anyone can do to stop you. So I think it's generally best to be quiet and malleable, and avoid any potential problems..."

The speech is certain to have gone on for a while because Cakester is a longwinded one with a lot of opinions. They let him go.

Not 4 more minutes into his ride, just as he's crossing over the bridge, he sees a cop car pass him and hears a voice call his name. He curses to himself and pulls over again.

It's Good Cop, come to return Cake's wine info notebook for work (which only solidifies his alibi).

Good Cop: "Hey man, you left your notebook on the hood of the car. Thought you might need it for work, I saw your notes in there. Listen, I wanted to say that I really appreciated you speaking your mind back there. You know, some of us cops are just nice regular guys trying to serve the community, just like you. We're not all bad."

Good Cop gave him his notebook and let him ride the rest of the way home. Cake promptly threw up where broadway crests.

and that, my friends, was that.

Posted by Sonya at August 3, 2004 11:58 AM