This memoir is set in Vancouver in the 1980s.
One night I was supposed to be sleeping over at Judy Lynne’s, so she could have a sleepover at Janet’s, and so Lucy, who was a young teen, wouldn’t have to be alone all night. The deal was, Lucy had a party to go to and so did I. Our plan was to meet at 11:30 sharp for the late movie, and I would get the junk food to go with. They lived at Victoria and Napier and my do was over at the Lakewood house that housed multiple dykes. I brought my pack and picked up the various chips and Cheesies on my way to the party and by 11 o’clock I was heading on to my next date.
I was walking along Victoria, about at Grant Street and about to cross, when a car slowed beside me. I was wary but relieved to see a man and a woman in the front seat, so I slowed ready to be asked directions. The passenger door flew open and the woman jumped out. At the same moment a second car appeared from nowhere and parked cross-wise behind me so that I was “contained” in this triangle of black (but unmarked” police cars, and with me were four cops, two women and two men. It was pouring rain so they were bulkily dressed, their heads covered with hoodies, and they seemed huge and terrifying.
One of them, one of the women, rips my pack off my shoulders and starts to examine the contents on the hood of one of the cars, pulling everything out, including my library book and my clean underwear and T-shirt for sleeping over, and leaving it all in the pouring rain.
Meanwhile another cop, a boy one, pushes me face first into the car and growls, “Spread your legs.” They aren’t telling me what it’s all about, but this one keeps saying, “Where were you tonight?” but not giving me a chance to say word one.
I realize I’m about to be frisked by this male cop, who is by now pulling my wallet out of my back pocket. I turn slightly to speak and he shoves me hard back against the car.
“I’m not a man and I would rather be frisked by one of the women officers.”
They all laugh meanly, and one of the gals says, “Not a man eh? What are you then?” Big round of appreciative guffaws from her mates.
“I’m a woman . . . really,” I say, and hate myself for how desperately I want to convince and appease these people.
The mean-mouthed woman cop steps forward grudgingly and starts by reaching around me and grabbing my breasts really hard from behind. “Yeah, it’s a woman,” she says. More guffaws. She continues on down with the frisk.
One wise guy says, “Watch it! It might like that too much!” More hilarity by the city’s finest though at least now they have me for a lezzie and not a man. I am not reassured. I am definitely afraid.
Then we start with the questions. “Where was I coming from? A corner store was robbed by a guy” (smirk smirk between the cops) “who looked just like you.”
I said I was at a party . . . on Lakewood.
“What was the address?”
I didn’t know the address – I knew the house but not the street number.
Total disbelief!!! Real or feigned, I had no idea. They acted like this was so totally bogus. Actually I didn’t much want to send the cops over to the party. Some pot was being smoked and so on.
I explained I was on my way to sleep over with my pal’s teenager and she was expecting me. Could I call her? I was so famous for my punctuality, I knew Lucy would be freaking out. A lot of time had passed. They had looked at my driver’s license and other ID. It was still before the days of picture ID so their initial reaction, before my frisking was, “Whose ID is this and how do we know you didn’t steal it?” and the taunting, “You don’t look like a SHEeeila . . . Get it? Get it” and just cracking each other up with a kind of raunchy wit and un-funny repetition you’d expect from pre-teen boys. As for a phone call, I would get one after I was arrested they told me.
That these are our “protectors” is a rather ironic if not outright scary thought. What turns “wanting to serve” into wanting to humiliate and serve up someone’s worst nightmare? Were they humiliated by their mistake and needing payback? Or do they just do it because they can?
They alternated between asking me the same questions: “Why did you rob the store? They said it was you. They described you. We know it was you.”
Just like the TV cops do, a little part of my terrified self couldn’t help but notice.
When they weren’t doing that, they ignored me.
Through all this, me and my stuff were still full out in the pouring rain, although by now two of the cops are snug in the car on the radio.
Then as suddenly as it began, it ended. Something was said on the radio and one got out and said, “You can go.” No apology, no explanation and no assistance stuffing my sodden belongings back into my pack. One of the bags of chips had split open and lay crushed and melted into Victoria Drive.
It was way after midnight by the time I ran the last few blocks. Lucy was half out the window watching for me. She was very cool , I remember, freaked and pissed, but all on my behalf. It took forever for me to come down. I realized that I at least felt as though they could do anything, and tell themselves it wasn’t their fault, and back each other up. Some logic thing told me that would be paranoid, but then you think about Robert Dziekanski and what four cops did and lied about, even though there was a video of the event.
Is it really paranoia?
