Checking Out - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 227

Being a bike messenger was a wild job. It was grueling. But during the day,
I would smoke pot in the various parks around Manhattan. I'd go uptown with
my deliveries and stop by Central Park, where I would duck into the trees and
have a smoke. I had my different spots that I thought were secure. But when
Giuliani was mayor, he started this big, city-wide crackdown on crime, and I
became caught up in that. He sent out all these crews of undercover cops. You
couldn't tell they were cops—they dressed just like homeboys. I guess if I were
hipper, I would've been able to tell.
These police were hunting us. They had the incident with Diallo, 118 the
Haitianimmigrant.Undercovercopsstuckabroomstickuphisass.SoonetimeI
saw these guys a little way over from me, and they were sort of skipping happily
back to their van. I didn't think anything of it because the way they danced back
to their van, I thought they were probably gay and on their way back from the
pier after a rendezvous or something.
But then they walked over to me and said, “Don't throw that roach away.”
And they arrested me and put me in the back of their van. There were already
some other people locked up in back.
These cops were doing a full-blown roundup. After they picked me up, they
drove over to Washington Square Park and arrested a young kid. He was walk-
ingdownthestreetwithhisgirlfriendandsmokingajoint.Theypulledhimright
away from his girlfriend and threw him in the van.
“I'm not even selling real pot!” the kid said. “I've got oregano here!”
“Tell that to the judge!” the cops said.
This kid was only about sixteen, a black teenager. So when we got to the jail,
they put me into the same cell with this kid. Probably because I'm a hippie-look-
ing white dude, really no threat. I'm not a mean person.
In the cell, the kid started talking to the policeman.
“Haveyoueverheardofpriapism?” 119 Heexplainedittothecop.“Ihavepri-
apism and sickle cell anemia. At night, my dick gets hard and it won't go down.
It's very, very painful. The only thing that'll get it down is some ice. Will you
guys be able to give me ice?”
The policeman just brushed him off. “Shut up. I'm not dealing with you.”
The kid was dejected. He said to me, “I have sickle cell anemia, and every night
when I fall asleep, I get a hard-on that hurts.”
It was sort of like Nightmare on Elm Street, where if they fell asleep, sud-
denly the nightmare would happen. If this kid fell asleep, he would get this hard-
on that was so incredibly painful that he'd have to get ice. It would be a horror