Chapter 23   Officer James creates a felony from a bike infraction

I was night-riding without a headlamp through campus on the well-lit sidewalk, just as I did every night. But this night a campus policeman, James S.B., whistled at me from across the street … the mf … whistling at me like a heel dog. You can feel the anger because it sounded like my father heel-dogging me over social baggage like butt-scratching or not wearing approvable creased pants. Like my father, James’ actions were so unnecessary.
 
Raised in the wilds, I was furious, or was I furious for being raised in the wilds? I dunno, but my only thought was, what kind of shitheel thinks he can claim right over my life? Fuck that guy. This was my cow pasture, I shit here every day, not you.

Intentionally, I measured my pace on the bicycle and kept meandering along the sidewalk, letting James catch up in his 3-wheeled scooter-cart.

I chose the exact spot for the confrontation, and could’ve slipped away anywhere, but chose that spot because it was perfect for doubling back and putting him completely out of position. It was a planned insult, just like Bones hurling a coke bottle through the apartment window. Except he did it to my apartment instead of his so I would be blamed. Anyway, it was long ago.

James stopped me, and I waited for him to step out of his little cart with a ticket book wearing a hat that seemed too cocked to fit. And then I rolled off down the hill, pausing at the bottom to blare out these exact words, ‘one of these days you guys are just going to have to grow up, and I’m going to be a hard one to catch.’ Which prophetically turned out to be true, but also was the cause of my demise: My big mouth.

After farting my words, I cranked the bike to escape down the sidewalk, but James was a good street boy and calculated the interception perfectly and threw himself down the steep hill like a missile … and clipped my back wheel and knocked me over and then jumped on me.

The dam fool was hanging on my back when I stood up and it scared him. I was big and it was dark. He started to reach for his gun and I told him with my eyes that I would take that thing away from him if he drew it. In the end it was his training and not me that stopped that screw from firing 6 rounds in my chest. He was crazy and I could feel it.

A group of students was approaching from behind him, and when James turned to look, I used the moment to moderate the situation and say, ‘let’s go back to your vehicle and talk about it.’ I remained calm in confrontational situations, a talent learned from my hurricanal raising, but James was rolling turds down his pants. It was the fruition of all that he had prepared to do.

I gathered my bike and picked up the lock and chain which had flown off my neck and together we walked back along the sidewalk. It had been a hard collision, and unknown to me, James sprained his thumb after throwing his hand in my spokes. He must have been a football player but I was completely unhurt.

After the students passed, James started wrestling my left arm trying to put a cuff on my wrist but I twisted away and reared back with my lock and chain. I was gonna cold-cock him hard no matter if students were nearby or not. This cow was not going to be herded by no rent-a-roper.

We walked up the hill where I expected to get admonishment and a ticket, but James rushed to the cart and radioed, ‘officer in need of assistance.’ And then the guy, I swear to god it’s true, ran back down the hill to get his hat. When things get exciting, the true man comes out, so the perfunctory officer ran back to get his silly hat.

While he was retrieving the heraldic emblem of his stature, I put the drive-chain back on the front sprocket and mounted to ride away. The single-speed track bike had a 52-14 sprocket-ratio that was geared for a slow take off and it took forever to pedal the first few dozen yards. I looked back and James was fever-running up the hill at me like a boy fetching his first kill. He was going to catch me too. I couldn’t believe it. He was fast. Short, but fast.

In the draw however, the cards came up for me, and a pick-up truck backed out just ahead, creating a sliver of space. I pulled hard right and shot the tiny gap between the truck and the next parked car, and the brief acceleration from turning combined with cover from the truck cut James out, and I was blasting full bore and he was smoke in the mirror when I came out the other side. He hurled his handcuffs, and they hit the cement and slid in a perfect shot under the bike.

That was one angry cop. Sirens were coming a half mile away, so I flew quick into the woods like an owl, finding the darkest spot to ditch my bike before crawling under bushes nearby to sleep.

It was the sound of James’ cart that woke me. He was flitting around in his motor cart, going first one way, and then lurching through the parking garage, and then rushing off east. This is the disadvantage of motor vehicles; they’re limited to cement, and the entire time I was watching him 200 yards away from the trees.

No wonder our society is constantly pouring concrete; the moneyers are chaining you to a motor vehicle so you can be numbered and stamped while passing through endless toll booths in a procession of milked cows. Moo-ve in line they say. But my work on a bicycle denied this gooey procession of ownership down to its root.

Hand it to James though, he created a full-blown felony out of a bicycle infraction. (as if I played no part)

Even dumber, his following search told me exactly how to get away. First, I could see where my adversary was, simple enough, but even better, nobody was helping him by the way he was driving. If other people were involved, especially on foot, he would be driving cautiously around the corners, but he wasn’t. He was driving in a motorist’s rage, and doing so tipped his hat to me.

He should’ve staked out a vision line and sat quietly to see if the deer emerged from the forest. But a calm, ‘vision-line’ guy would never tackle a bicyclist over a dubious traffic infraction. Nope, it took a fella like him and a fella like me to create the situation. But the difference was simple: we both projected social lunacy, but his was better because he wore a badge. The badge means you care (enough to run back for your hat).
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Chapter 24  arrest and sentence / James gets thrown off my territory

The newspaper carried a composite drawing of me, and it looked pretty good, so I stopped riding a bike for a while. I was recognized on campus by a toll-booth guard a week later, but quickly disappeared over the hill.

It was silly to stay in town, and sillier for telling my friends about the ‘funny’ thing that happened, but it was my friends who narked me out … it was the Dan the Informer and my neighbor Steve, and I’ll tell you how it happened…

… we went for a walk, and Steve said he forgot to make a phone call and ran back to the house for a minute. A streetwise person would’ve seen that in a flash, but I was drooling all over myself: I didn’t leave town, I bragged, and now payback was due.

Ten minutes later, two officers stopped me. They said I matched the description blah blah. It was Larry the narc again … Hey Larry ! … but now he was detective Larry, and for some reason they forwent the line-up downtown. Instead they called that fool James who arrived pronto at the scene in his personal car and street clothes. You can’t question that boy’s eagerness.

The dumb-ass James rushed towards us, identified me as the guy, and then blew the whole case by pulling a large revolver from the back of his trousers and pointed it straight at me. Everybody backed off, leaving me standing there saying, hello.

There were no heroes that day, and a moment of shock passed before Det. Larry stepped out with his arms motioning for James to lower the gun. James put his only pistol back in his drawers. I got locked up. And you see why that lunatic wasn’t going to handcuff me at the original scene. Obviously police training is a tricky thing.

The charge was felony injury to a policeman and I made bail the next day. My lawyer pled it down to assault, and not surprisingly, James S.B. got fired.

I got sentenced to three days in jail plus probation. Assault hell, I never laid a glove on him, except the fool stuck his hand in my spinning wheel. But it wasn’t finished for the goat-roper, I would hear from that fool James S.B. four years later in Chicago.

Bad behavior, illegal behavior, arrogance? I was guilty of that, but my work as a changer accomplished the intended goal: the roper got thrown off my bike territory. He wasn’t going to bother me again when I rode, but the incident brought more legal scrutiny than ever.
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Chapter 25    the sex try: outline of a sex set-up

My three-day sentence was an experience in not shaving, but little else came of it except community service through the probation department. Now there’s a pot boiler of nonsense; the probation department, thub.

My probation officer was a cutie brunette, and they tried to create a sex offense using her. Evidently ‘sex’ is an oft-used police tactic … after all, the create-a-crime boys are always ready to expand the charges, like a credit card company tagging fees to the bill.

I’ve been respectful of women all my life, and respected my mother, my sister, the girls at school and every woman I ever met. I wasn’t forward sexually with any woman, unless the opportunity was mutual. But like any ordinary man, I would look down a blouse if it was offered. Hell, why not, a man enjoys looking at a nice pair of nips stacked atop a well-turned ankle.

At the very least, I have a humorous vocabulary about sex, so here’s how the sex ploy worked. Entering the probation office, she darlin’ed a big smile at me, and the guy sitting at her desk pretended to be jealous as he left and closed the door.

Without saying a word, she stood up and walked around the desk, right up to me, real close, showing obviously that she wore no bra, and her nipples stood out … and I took a big gander at them sweeties. Why not, she was pretty and those things were cute. Just as I was contemplating what gesture might further the offer, I heard a bump at the door and realized somebody was poised to enter. I knew instantly what was up.

Make a note here for yourself: the sex-girl never said a word to me … it was all in my head, right? This is the essential point of a sex offense. The issue is not whether she was wearing a bra, or approaching me, or pointing the Doppler radar at me, no, the issue is whether my mind would see that as an invitation. It’s all in the perpetrators head, get it?

I informed my lawyer about the incident and he said, ‘they [the police] were supposed to stop doing that,’ so I knew it was a regular trick. But you know how dumb I was; I still thought that girl liked me and stopped by her office on a scheduled appointment and brought a piece of artwork like it was show-and-tell in the first grade. What a fucking stooge I was at 23. I’m sure it goofed her away from me, as if she wasn’t laughing hard enough already. But lonely men are suckers for love and gee what a wonderful match; the sex-trapper and bike rider cozied-up for a thrusting run at love.

Later I realized the police had pulled the sex angle at me before. Yes that explained what happened. We were sitting in our regular pizza booth, same year they tried the drug set-up. You see, this girl showed up at our table for the second night in a row. The first night she stood at our table for a brief moment and I thought one of the guys there knew her, and they might have known her because people were sitting anywhere. I didn’t recognize everybody.

The new girl was quick the second night too. She walked up, and, just like that, she intentionally leaned over, as a genial part of the conversation, and showed me her bra-less chest and then turned and walked out. It was kind of in the context of the conversation so it seemed ‘normal’ enough, being the college atmosphere and all. I thought about going out after her. But I didn’t. Remember again, this girl never spoke to me, so leaning over showing me her chest was ‘all in my head.’

Girls had given me the tipple-and-run before. For god’s sake I shot baskets on the hardwood more than once, but it was always within the quasi-mating dance and with someone I knew. At the pizza parlor however it was a total stranger and she wasn’t flirting … she was openly inviting sexual contact with a stranger. But I never liked the ‘cold-liver’ approach to congressional legislation, preferring shared feelings instead, and that’s why I didn’t bite the bait.

She likely would’ve gotten me off somewhere, enticed me to touch her, and then cried ‘sex assault.’ I bet a lot of men have gone down that road. Look what happened to Tupac.
Tupac had sex with a girl one night, then the next time they went up to his hotel room with a couple other guys, she cries ‘forcible sodomy’ and he goes to jail for three years … I swear if a man is deviated socially and targeted by the police, then that man will have ‘sex’ run at him so they can put him in prison.

Remember, if you’re on the edge of legal issues, be wary of the sex trappers.

With two failed sex attempts spilled on the floor, the police must have been steaming like a 25 year old virgin getting head at the nudist colony, anyway they started following me everywhere and I was getting paranoid.
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Chapter 26    followed by the police

I noticed the police looking at me so I took what few stolen items were in my apartment, including a big ‘ol electric typewriter, and threw everything out in the country. Then in a voice reminiscent of Bones, I swore that was the end of screwing around for me.

From then on, my real self would be honest, which was actually true, and I decided to change my boundaries within society and no longer violate property rights. And I kept that pledge, for the most part, which most people manage to make unaided at a much earlier age.

A few interesting stories arose from the police scrutiny … and the observations would help my work as a bike activist.

The first was a laughable folly when Det Larry walked into McDonald’s where I was sitting and talking with a guy. Larry spotted a friend of his. He smiled and was ready to wave, except he suddenly saw me and realized his friend was ‘secretly’ spying on my conversation.

Alerting on Larry’s reaction, I immediately turned and looked at the innocuous middle-age guy sitting at the table five feet away … and realized the police will sit next to you in restaurants and listen to your conversations. Crimney ... what an educational opportunity.

The plainclothes guy got up and casually disappeared out the door, but never drove out of the parking lot. He was state police, which I deduced by his clumsy refusal to glance back when I looked through the side of his eye plus his general build and demeanor as he walked away. He was very aware of everything yet pretended to be ordinary. Too ordinary and that’s how I knew.

The state police: that’s who sits in the restaurant and listens.
 
Yep the state police. Pillars of integrity. The same guys who have to be asked four times by a defendant’s lawyer before someone can find the ‘lost’ crime kit (10 years after the first request) so it can be re-tested for DNA.

Over the next months I noticed a car with two younger men following behind me. How many times were those same guys going to pop up in my rearview mirror I wondered? The next time they appeared, I slowed down so they’d have to pass my truck and let me see their faces, but they turned off after an awkward double-lane change, and that was the last time they followed me that way.

I saw another car too, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong, so why worry. In a way, it was fun learning what they were doing. Besides, the surveillance told me they had nothing to make a charge, and what were they going to find anyway? A dumb ass contractor who smoked dope and could barely paint a house? My days of rambling criminality were over. I was more talk and bluster than criminal ... I just liked the challenge.

Today the police follow people using GPS, so you don’t see anybody directly behind you, but they show up shortly after you arrive someplace. Just the other day a vehicle was cruising around my neighborhood, and a minute later an unmarked police car signaled him to pull over … but the officer spoke into the guy’s window without taking any identification … so they were shooing him away, and not asking for identification let him know he was being watched.

I was followed by GPS from 1999 through 2003 because of my bicycle activism … the police made the erroneous public claim that I was violent, and a danger to the public, a terrorist and a sex offender … plus they made the truly merited claim that I didn’t know how to act. Of course a bicycle activist doesn’t know how to act for christ’s sake, it’s the definition of activism; not acting like you’re supposed to act. Rosa Parks didn’t act right when she refused to sit in the back of the bus. I didn’t act right either when I demanded equal protection under the law and took the full lane for my bicycle.
 
Continuing the surveillance story from 1974: One night I called a customer, who hired me to build a cabinet and do some painting, and asked if I could come over and pick up my level. I needed a level to build a shelf in my apartment that night. The customer agreed and I decided to walk the two miles instead of driving. I was a walker.

Once past campus, I turned and noticed a guy half running behind me, but he quickly slowed to a regular pace. He had strong heavy legs, and suddenly I knew him: he was in that car that followed me. I also knew intuitively that his friend was somewhere off my flank. Those people don’t travel alone, but I lost them a quarter mile later after topping over a hill and entering my customer’s house.

As soon as I stepped back outside the customer’s door, I saw the guy looking around for me at the lit intersection below, so I gave my client an extra loud ‘see ya tomorrow,’ and the guy immediately walked out of view. It was the last time I saw the followers that way. But it wasn’t over.
 
It was about this time I added things up and confronted Dan about being an informer. It happened because Steve batted my rear-view mirror down after I kept looking back to see if we were being followed. Steve’s action inadvertently told me they weren’t watching me like that, which meant he knew who was watching, which narrowed it to Dan.

So this is what I learned: the police will encourage others to inform on you to help in their surveillance. They will plant friends, and use your trusted friends or use anybody near you to glean information. And believe me, your neighbors will gleefully notify investigators when they see you pee in the back yard at night … and just like cows, your friends and neighbors want the other guy to get caught and be eaten by the lions because it makes them stronger. It’s a powerful primitive emotion … people are charged-up socially by actions that separate someone from the herd, as long as it’s not them … it’s fundamental eugenics … it’s about reproductive purity … it’s the entire intent of every boner-inspired Biblical story.

Still it was a month or so before I thought back and realized Steve’s phone call led to my arrest. Further consideration let me think it was reasonable that Steve was planted next door as an informer … he was, after all, in graduate school studying to become a criminal psychologist … which of course is why he whistled like a pirate bird, wore mismatched socks and rolled a pair of dice each morning to see how the day would turn out. Steve was entertaining.

I also figured out Steve tipped the police where we were going to be one other night. That night two plainclothes police, a man and a woman showed up at the record-store and examined me. I saw the police that night, but it didn’t matter, and I kept my friends anyway. Three days in jail is not thirty years, but years later when Steve became a working criminal psychologist, he confided that his clients made him nervous … and that revelation made me want to call, pretending to be a patient, and tell him I just got out of prison and was standing outside his house. LOL. I never did it though. We lost contact since.
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Chapter 27        a rape trap at the intersection of High and Third Streets

Something happened to me over the next couple years and I moved back home with my mother. I can’t remember why I stopped working and let things go that way; maybe my later bouts with depression were the undiagnosed answer.

My truck stopped working. My friends finished their studies and were moving away; one had a position in Wisconsin and three others moved to California, and one got a job in Chicago. Everybody had some place to go and skills to sell, but I was unable to mount a plan. My latest girlfriend left too and I was terribly alone.

Living with my mother and sister and brother in the nut house was distressing. It was always so emotional you could practically bite the air. I stayed in the basement and slept late to avoid everybody, and usually left for a bike ride into town when I got up. No matter if it was raining. I couldn’t stay cooped up all day.

Later I discovered my sister was an alcoholic when she ‘lost it’ after mom died. Let me tell you, I never once saw alcohol being consumed at our house. I never saw any bottles or heard slurred speech or smelled liquor. Not once, and I’m fairly observant. Nor was alcohol kept anywhere inside the house that I knew about. Yet my sister said she drove home completely blacked-out practically every night. It’s a total mystery, and compounded incredibly because my sister had evidence that mom was also drinking heavily. Holy shit on a pancake, how could I not even have a hint that was going on? I never saw anybody drunk or drinking ever, but in retrospect, it does explain a lot.

Those couple years turned into a period of profound artwork for me, as my pencils began capturing the twisted situations I saw in life. I would draw pictures for a couple hours each night and then go for a 7 mile walk into town and back, always following the same route, just to burn off energy. Looking back, I must have had a powerful body.
 
Nobody follows the same routine impeccably, but I had to exercise long miles every day, and felt sick without it. I remember walking 7 miles in four degrees below zero one afternoon just to get out. A friend honked and waved that day. He was a good carpenter and a respectable man and I wonder what he’s doing today? I bet he’s got grandkids and a nice set of bookcases.

Out walking late one night on my usual route, I ran into a rape trap at the intersection of High and Third Streets. I saw this girl silhouetted and walking across the church parking lot off to my right … and immediately knew what it was. It was instinct. She wasn’t walking normal, there was something different about her gesture and manner … and peculiar that she was aware of me even though she hadn't looked at me and I was coming from a different direction on a very dark street.

Was that in my head? Hell no.
 
… but it had nothing to do with me, so I forgot about it and a half-block later rounded the corner and turned left on Third. I was mired in the mud of my life, and looking straight down when suddenly a woman’s shoes and cream trench coat popped into the viewfinder.

Startled, I lurched up to see the same blond woman I’d seen two years earlier when she and another police-fellow were at the record-store to examine me. Although I can’t tell you how I knew they were police, except to say they were out-of-place in that store, but I knew exactly what she was doing there that night; she was tailing behind the decoy. But like a donkey pushing a cart, I had no idea the target was stuck on my hatless head.

It was just a random thing the police do at two in the morning, wasn’t it? But in retrospect, it shows they had been following me enough to know my habits, and had worked to devise a plan with those exact angles. Pretty clever actually. Still I ignored the situation because the ferris-wheel was roiling my mind, so I side-stepped the yellow-coiffed lady and continued walking down the street minding my business.

It’s obvious why I would come under police suspicion, not just for my history of anti-social behavior, but because I wandered all hours of the day or night arguing aloud to myself, carrying out some crazy war between my shoes and a moonliner, and I was grossly prone to ill-tempered outbursts toward people.

I never counted my moments of vomitous public rage, instead I saw myself as warm-hearted and absolutely square … except a man is actually the sum of all his behavior, and not just his pleasant best. Unfortunately I had unfairly blocked my hours of mania while demanding that others see me as I saw myself.

But I never could see myself. My high school teachers were afraid of me, and now I was larger and dirtier and appeared less suited than ever for fitting into society.

For sure I was a public relations disaster, but where, when, how, why? …. I honest to god want to know … why was I targeted for a sex offense? Who was the complainant? Or was it simply every-woman feeling my red raw nerves scraping the wall … or maybe this action is part and parcel to law enforcement when they desperately want, but can’t find a substantive crime.
 
The near-complete list of my crimes has been tallied … with but two or three similar offenses unmentioned … an embarrassment of petty theft and vandalism that most would never dare inventory … yet nowhere appears a sexual deviate … unless of course the appetite for public non-conformity is of itself proof of such malfeasance.

I was reading Penthouse and jacking off. Dan the informer did the same, yet we both had conjugal relations with women, and I always had steady girlfriends … and not the bust-out brawling, twist-your-arm, revenge-fuck type relationships … they were close and caring bonds between two people.

Today we know a steady relationship with women guarantees nothing … because the same man who cuddles his life-love can also be a predator sated by attacking women. But this was not true of me by the largest stretch, and I had only experienced sexual predators in the newspaper, naively thinking sex deviates were not in my community. I guess this explodes on me the obvious fact that I didn’t understand people, but the police had yet more plans in store for me.