Finally, a topic I know something about. I live in FL, as I've mentioned, and last year I had a several-month-long flirtation with a cop. A white, southern, male cop. (with a hair weave, but that's another story).
Did you get to see or read Tony Kushner's Angels In America? One of his characters (named Louis) is a gay Jewish pinko. He has an affair with a closeted Republican Mormon. Louis referred to their relationship as an ideological leather bar and comments, 'the more appalling I find your politics, the more I want to hump you."
Anyway, that's what dating a cop was like. I was constantly shocked by his understanding of power, race, class, etc...If I was sitting on the front porch and he drove by, he'd stophis car and talk--backing up traffic. He'd turn on his flashing lights and make people go around him. I'd yell at him and send him away. The flirtation ended badly as a result of such abuses of power. Now, I *like* ideological leather bars--I fucked Rush Limbaugh's ex-wife's ex-husband. But a cop is too much. Some other folks suggested you should have gotten her number and maybe you could have changed her--you can't and you should not have.
I must say, I'm a bit surprised that you would even consider it. So what if she's young and beautiful--she's a cop. I believe it was Larry Flynt who said, "Dont let the little head think for the big head." You're in NY, there are enough attractive people with good politics that you don't need to cruise the police force. Good lord.
Frances
On Sat, 29 Aug 1998, Louis Proyect wrotes
> Yes, it's true. And I'm not sure what I should have done.
>
> I was peddling my bike up the tallest hill in Central Park when all of a
> sudden a beautiful African-American female cop drove up alongside me in one
> of those patrol carts. And when I say beautiful, I mean movie star beautiful.
>
> She said, "Go ahead. You can make it," referring to the long upgrade. Our
> eyes met as she drove slowly besides me and we both smiled. She then said,
> "You really look good." I nearly fell off my bike and all I could come up
> with was, "I'm sorry--I'm at a loss for words. Young and beautiful women
> intimidate me." With that she said thanks and drove on.
>
> What I concealed from her was my Marxist concept of the role of the cops in
> the bourgeois society. When I was studying Trotskyist politics in the late
> '60s, one of the things that was drummed into our heads was that cops were
> not part of the working class even if they were in trade unions, worked for
> a wage and occasionally struck.
>
> So my question is whether I would have been crossing class lines if I asked
> for her phone number?
>
> Louis Proyect
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
>