I.
“I do not want to cry. I am punished for crying. Everything in me is bad. And I am alone.” - bell hooks, “Wounds of Passion”
I’m watching an off-duty cop cry at an airport beer and wine bar. My glasses hide the certain swelling and puffiness around my eyes. They obscure the fact that I, too, have been crying. But I kept my tears private. (For at least, this moment.)
I watch her. I don’t feel sorry for her. “Good”, I think. “Good”. Maybe her husband or her wife just left her. Maybe her dog just died. Got hit by a semi, or ran off a cliff. She curls up over a pint as she wipes tears away. She picks up her cell phone. Her voice carries across the conversations, the bartender laughing and the airport departure announcements. She says “it’s so stupid. It’s so stupid - so stupid - so stupid!” I wonder if she got written up, maybe she got kicked off the force. Maybe she barked out a slur in front of the wrong person. Finally - caught!
I listened to a conversation with john powell recently as he discussed the use of bridging for facilitating compassionate engagement. The need for us to be hard on systems but soft on people. But I feel like being hard on both right now. I want to be hard back to all of it at this moment. I want to match hard with hard. She is a white blond cop (She must be racist.) Fuck her.
She’s slouched over the bar on a high stool, a shiny metallic black carry-on bag stands nexts to her right. American flag ribbons are tied to the top of it like a Navarro cheer hair pouf. The back of her black shirt boasts images of 13 police force badges “together as one, second to none.” Look, cops be like we solidarity af. I’m feeling icy today. I’ve just learned 400 cops were at the scene at Uvalde. Apparently when they said you need one good guy with a gun, maybe they meant you just needed 401.
Her sandwich sits untouched. I keep watching. Either I am mesmerized or I have nothing else to do since I arrived 2 hours early for my flight. She yells into her cell “I don’t fuck up! I don’t fuck up!” The emphasis is on the “don’t.” Like she is grunting it. She drops her cell to the floor and the entire bar turns toward the noise. Ooof, we all know that noise of a dropped cell phone. Strikes fear into one’s body. We see her, alone, crying, dropping - her - shit. She has waded into, definitively, being airport drunk. Were I to be in any position of power, I would 100% not let her on a plane. She is sloppy. She is a mess.
I feel no empathy for this crying woman. I feel no need to bridge. I do not want to connect. I do not wish to compassionately engage. Is it because I wonder if she has a Punisher logo on her phone? My desire is to keep her othered. My heart hurts as well and my eyes have shed tears. But I don’t spend my days hurting others, I tell myself. I do not make a living being complicit in oppressive and harmful systems. Perhaps then, I feel her pain is deserved. (Unlike mine.) The police remind me of the cis-hetero men I have dated as an adult. Unable to hold themselves or a collective accountable to anything. Even here she does not ask what she has potentially done to harm. To even question how she may have contributed to anything. “I don’t fuck up.” Honey, we all, at some point, fuck up.
She gets up to leave, staggering through the thin hallway. Her carry-on brushes against my table as she zig zags away into the crowds. I wonder if there are no service limits at SeaTac airport, then I remember a friend was once barred from boarding for having had too much while waiting for a delayed flight. So, it does happen. Fucking cops, I think…