Pee Story or, Good Cops or White Privilege?
After dropping off passengers at the Trudeau International Airport in Dorval, I headed back to Ottawa driving an empty van, torn between the comforting inanities of the sports station on the radio (go Habs go!) and the distorted eco-rock of the eternally-rejuvenating Neil Young, playing with the much-younger men of Promise of the Real.
Anyway, though I'd make a quick stop at a nearby hotel to pee, about half-way back to Ottawa I began to feel that pressure again, the one that says, Really, Young Geoffrey! You do like your fluids, don't you! And it's true, I do.
After balancing the twin desires - the relief of a good pee vs the desire to get home as soon as possible - the urge to pee won out over a frankly pretty brief stop.
I flicked my turn signal on and pulled off the highway, stopping entirely off the paved shoulder, turned on my hazard lights (yes, as a cyclist, a driver and a pedestrian, I've become a bit of a signal-nazi; and no apologies), and got out from behind the wheel, walked around back to the passenger side and opened the front passenger door, in order to more discretely go about my business.
Job done, I zipped up, closed the door and started back around the vehicle again. Only to see, as I reached the driver's side, a car pulling up onto the shoulder behind me. One with flashing lights on the roof.
Oh my Christ! was my first thought, am I going to be busted for indecent exposure!?!
But surely not! There was no proof I'd exposed anything, was there? It was dark and I'd completed my ablutions before they were anywhere near me!
Still, I could only wait to find out. I turned to face them as an officer emerged from either side of the car. The driver carried a flashlight, but she didn't point it aggressively towards me, but rather just illuminated the ground between us. "Good evening!" I said, waving at them with my gloved right hand.
"Hi," said the cop, "are you all right?"
"Oh," I said, a little non-plussed. "Yes, yes, I'm fine thank you."
"Well good," she said, "we just stopped to make sure everything is okay."
"Yes, it is," I said, then added with completely unnecessary candour, "I just had to, y'know, empty my bladder." (Idiot! came a voice from the back of mind, never volunteer anything!) But no harm done. She smiled and said, "Well good night, then," and she and her partner turned back to their car.
"Okay, thanks," I said, waving. And I thought, making sure "everything is okay" is what cops should do!
But when I got back in the car, I had to wonder, would that have been the whole of the interaction if I'd been a brown or a black man?
And that - after she finished laughing - was just what Raven said when I told her the story after I got home" "Yeah, because you're white!"
I'd like to think that she (and I) are wrong about that, that those particular cops really were among those "good cops" we hear about every time a Sammy Yatim is gunned down like a made dog that's not even on the loose, but it's hard not to wonder if I was only benefiting from my white skin.
Anyway, here's Neil Young and Promise of the Real, to give you something else to be angry about. ("Monsanto").
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