What is it about poets and cops?
I’m reading Eileen Myles’ memoir-novel, Chelsea Girls, and early on she tells a story of a drunk night out with some friends, including this woman Chris, who she maybe still loved. Chris was drunk and starting fights and she punched a cop (!) who then tried to manhandle her out of the car she was in, so Eileen, without giving what she was about to do any thought, jumped on his back. Then they all got arrested. She writes,
“And, in my heart I know the moment of my flight towards the blue shoulders of the law, I was flying for Chris, did love her, and was saving her from the professional mediocrity of white Datsuns, I was releasing her from bourgeoise captivity, maybe bringing her home to the scrubby plains of my drunk art and love. Oh, Chris! … Also, my real moment in the police station in Bath, Maine was when I lifted my sword and revealed to them that I was a poet. I’m a poet, you fools, you asshole cops! Poet has always meant to me saint or hero, the dancing character on the stained-glass window of my soul, the hand lifting slowly through time, the whirr that records my material against strong light, gosh, why I live.”
Reading this reminded me of a wonderful line from the Morrissey song, “Late Night, Maudlin Street”, which might be the most beautiful song he’s written so far (and that’s saying something):
“There were bad times on Maudlin Street.
They took you away in a police car.
Inspector, don’t you know – don’t you care –
don’t you know about Love?”
It’s hilarious, it’s sad, it’s about being misunderstood. I guess that’s what cops represent to artists, to everyone—the authority that patrols the streets making sure none of us look or act too weird, since as we all know that’s a crime in itself.
Myles starts out telling the story of something that really happened, and ends up imagining herself reciting her poems in the police station, as a way of defending herself. I once wrote something like this myself, in the same sort of way—as a fantasy. In my book White Elephants, I tell the story of how one night, I took an office chair from a trash pile behind the Catholic grade school where I spent several unhappy years of my childhood. I still lived in the neighborhood and I walked past the school often, practically every day. On this occasion it was late on a summer evening and I was a little tipsy on wine. I’d gone strolling over to the post office, past the back of the school and the church, which were next to each other, to check my mailbox but really just for something to do. I saw the chair there next to a pile of black plastic trash bags and I wanted it; in my mind, it had certainly belonged to one of the nuns who’d taught me, possibly even the principal, since it was clearly a bigwig’s chair. (It had arms!) There was something subversive and funny and repulsive and triumphant about the thought of owning an object that had been inside that awful school. I had to have it. So I pulled the chair away from the trash, and on that quiet street its wheels sounded so loud, grinding against the pavement. I stopped, feeling mortified, but I wasn’t about to give up. I’d just have to get the chair home quickly, and in my drunkenness I decided to ride it.
I sat down and kick-rolled my way back to my apartment building, a thirtysomething lady chuckling to herself like an old hobo riding a skateboard with a seat. I felt scared and embarrassed and free. As I rolled down the empty street I fantasized about what I’d say if I were apprehended, which I was halfway certain would happen. This sexy guy I’d gone to school with was on the local police force—I knew because I’d seen him around town in his uniform. I pictured him stopping me and wanting to know what I was doing. Whose chair was I riding, and why? I would try to explain myself but it would be too hard. Why did he want to know in the first place? Taking something off the curb, someone else’s trash, wasn’t a crime.
“I’m a cop,” he’d say, as if that explained everything.
“Well I’m an artist!” I’d answer, which definitely would.
Indicative Mood 