He said WHAT?

"You're an idiot," said the policeman that had been yelling at me for some indeterminate time. He and five other policemen gave me stern, angry looks and then walked away.

Or maybe I walked away. I can't remember it very well. It was 4am on January 1, 2009, and I was B-E-A-T. I was lucky I wasn't called worse. Spending the night in jail would have been an inauspicious start to a new year.



After a hectic night at two New Year's Eve parties in Brooklyn and the West Village, I eventually landed at the The Red Lion where I counted into 2009 with B and J. Somewhere on my way home from Bleecker Street, as I waited for B and friends to catch up to me, I thought it would be a good, no, GREAT idea to check if the police golf cart I was next to was locked.

Well, the door wasn't locked.

I opened the door and then I shut it. Thanks to my tiredness and impaired judgement, I didn't think it was a big deal. I was feeling GREAT -- I got to see tons of friends, and I had had a martini over dinner (courtesy of Pookie), a scotch at M and L's house party in Brooklyn, and four or five scotches at the Red Lion (courtesy of J).

I walked away from the golf cart and would have forgotten about the whole thing if it weren't for the six policemen that had started to run towards me the minute my hand touched that vehicle. To my hazy memory, they suddenly appeared out of nowhere, yelling at me. According to B and J, they RAN towards me.

"Why did you open that door?"

"What did you think you were doing?"

"What were you going to do?"

I was confused. I mean, I didn't even get IN the car! Why were they so upset? I was just checking to see if the door was locked!

They looked at me like I was stupid. Which I'm chagrined to say I was. They called me an idiot. Which I was. I was then summarily dismissed. Dismissed by six angry cops.

Happy 2009!