my bladder made me do it  − 25 September, 2006

My liver hates me.

In fact, if my liver were capable of thought, speech and movement I'm sure it would've already jumped out of my mouth, said "Adios Motherfucker" and hitched a ride to The Betty Ford Clinic. Sadly though, my liver is incapable of these things. Instead, it must endure through the constant torture I keep inflicting upon it.

You see, I have a bit of a drinking problem.

And while my liver continues to function (seemingly on a wing and a prayer), I'm certain the end is near. After all, how much punishment can one organ take? Whenever I go for my yearly physical, I make my primary care physician check on its status. I'm positive that the results will be grim. That when I ask, "So how's my liver, Doc?" he'll reply with the words "embalmed" or "petrified from years of abuse," or "immediate transplant" or some dire combination of the three. Curiously though, Dr. Weiner continues to assure me year after year that everything is a-okay.

And yes, that is my doctor's real name. And no, he's not a urologist.

My raging alcoholism can't be easy for any of my liver's neighbors either. I'm convinced my stomach is nursing several premature ulcers and that my kidneys are probably crying out for dialysis. My brain too is in on the internal organ alliance against alcohol abuse. (The IOAAAA.) Lately when I'm on a bender, it's become more and more common for me to blackout, which I blame squarely on the detente they've all formed. At some point in the evening my exasperated liver convinces my brain to "check out" and "abandon ship," whereby I cease to remember events, things and conversations the next morning. Figuring that nothing too exciting or important is likely to take place while drinking (which oddly enough is a rather true assessment of anytime you and your friends/enablers are out imbibing), the part of my mind which controls memory just shuts down. Whatever cortex that is.

You see? I've forgotten it.

Did I mention I was drinking right now?

Thankfully though, I've been told that several drinks in, I still look and act like a very sober drunk. I may slur my speech a little but I don't lose any other autonomous controls. I maintain some semblance of decorum. In this very functional manifestation, I've even coined a term for myself. "Drunktional."

(Similarly afflicted folks are welcome to use my neologism. Let's add it to the lexicon.)

Which all goes to say that even whilst operating in the murky haze of a brain-induced blackout, I have yet to do anything really out of character. Embarrassing and illegal, yes. Out of character, no.

In May of 2006, I traveled from LA to Chicago with Erik to attend his former classmate's wedding. And while I hardly ever need an excuse to drink, a weekend vacation to one of my favorite cities on Earth was reason enough. Though Erik and I both lived in Chicago previous to our meeting in Los Angeles, we never knew each other. We did however have a few acquaintances in common, and our haunts were basically the same. So while our trip was largely to attend his friend's über-Catholic nuptials, we had several bars to visit and several steins to hoist.

And no, we didn't actually hoist any steins, though I wouldn't put it past us. Erik can match me drink for drink. In fact, he can keep going even after I'm down for the count. Though I think that has more to do with his foresight to switch to Miller Lite, late in the night while I continue on a Jack Daniels jag. He also comes from fine Irish Catholic alcoholic (Irish Cathoholic?) stock, where massive liquor intake is practically sewn into his DNA. My teetotalling Mennonite forefathers neglected to pass that gene on to me, sadly.

In any event the Friday before the wedding, we arrived in the Lakeview section of Chicago and commenced drowning ourselves internally. Our staggering bar crawl consisted of the following: Vaughn's. The L&L. Las Mananitas. Minibar. Sidetrack. Minibar again. The Lakeview Broadcasting Company. Finally at 2AM, we headed to Berlin. My blackout started at Minibar. The first visit. I was only able to reconstruct our other movements the next day with Erik's help.

Before leaving The Lakeview Broadcasting Company I made sure to use the facilities. By the time we reached Berlin on foot however (a mere mile away) my bladder was dangerously full. Whenever this happens I'm reminded of an urban legend my big brother once told me. It had something to do with an Asshole-type drinking game where the loser couldn't do specific things until the winner did them himself. Long story short, the loser had to urinate and the winner didn't. So the loser held it until his bladder exploded, whereupon he died. This story stuck with me for two reasons. One was that I was terrified of death. And two, the only thing more terrifying than death was dying having pissed your pants.

To add insult to injury, there was a line outside of Berlin. At my friend Matthew's suggestion, Erik and I quickly made a b-line to the alley beside the club under the El tracks. It was a place Matthew had peed countless times without incident, apparently. No sooner had we unzipped beside a dumpster and started to relieve ourselves than a police car pulled up with its lights flashing. It was a sting operation.

Surprisingly or perhaps not-so surprisingly considering the circumstances, here's where I emerged from my blackout.

One officer jumped out of the vehicle and forced us to stop mid-stream which, as any man can attest to, is excruciatingly painful. The idea of being shot in the back with my dick in my hands however, outweighed the temporary discomfort. We obeyed the barking officer's orders and surrendered our driver's licenses so that he could write out our tickets. The other cop stayed in the car behind the steering wheel looking rather sheepishly distracted. I think he was embarrassed that he had been relegated to handing out ridiculous citations. "Surely there are some real legitimate crimes happening somewhere." I imagined him thinking. Then again maybe he was hypoglycemic and just needed a doughnut.

As the officer wrote out our citations for "Urinating on the public way," he felt it necessary to accompany his busy scribbling by adding quasi-threatening cop-speak. Erik and I were treated to such memorable comments as "You California boys think you can do anything!" as well as "We should really arrest you for this." I suppose he was trying to scare us or make us beg or something. The situation was indeed grave. Seeing as how Erik and I were both filled to the gills with alcohol however, the seriousness was lost on us. We were more stupefied than scared.

Finally after copying down a hopelessly outdated address from my California Driver's License and serving me with the citation, we were released. Once we got inside Berlin and took care of what we hadn't been able to dispense with outside, we were met by a very apologetic Matthew. We told our story to just about anyone who would listen, which resulted in several more drinks and shots. For us, it ended up becoming a sort of red badge of courage. Or rather, a yellow badge.

Despite the seriousness of my infraction, I successfully shrugged it off as a hilarious byproduct of a solitary vacation back east. So I was caught giving a golden shower to a dumpster. Is that so wrong? Was it going to affect my credit rating? Were potential employers privy to that type of information when they did a background check? Given the fact that the Chicago PD had only an outdated home address to go on, I didn't expect to ever hear from them. After all, I lived in 2,278 miles away. And when was I ever going to live in Chicago again?

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Four months later I found myself living in Chicago again. I got offered a role in a play and moved back permanently deciding to put Los Angeles behind me for good. That first month when I wasn't in rehearsal, I was busily settling in. Eventually, I knew I'd have to change my license and registration. Only then was I slightly worried that this blemish, this unresolved issue, might pop up at a DMV window. My worst-case scenario imagination got the best of me. Somehow I could easily envision a shifty county employee hitting a secret alarm button while I prepared to take my vision test.

"A J D F E Z." I would read from left to right as a plainclothes officer approached with his handcuffs unfurled.

"You're under arrest for urinating in public... California boy."

In my overly paranoid imagination it was the same officer who initially cited Erik and I. He had no qualms about announcing my embarrassing crime to a multitude of disgruntled motorists waiting in an interminably long line.

"You shoulda stayed in Hollywood." He'd maliciously add.

Understandably, if there was anything I could clean up, I wanted to do it prior to applying for my new Illinois Driver's License.

I had never received anything regarding my infraction while I was still in West Hollywood. Nor did I expect to, given that they had a non-forwarding address for me on file. Erik however, got something in the mail. Only after I was all settled in Chicago did he choose to mention it to me.

"So I found the judgment." Erik announced to me one day, sounding grave. "I never got anything from the City of Chicago proper, but this collection agency notice just came."

I could tell the news wasn't going to be good. Had the fine been small he probably would've started with that fact outright. Instead he was prepping me for a debilitating blow. I sat down expecting the worst.

"Are you sitting down?" He asked.

"Already done." I said as my mind began focusing on a palatable, doable number. "75. Or, 125. No, 75. 75."

"It's 525 dollars."

Silence.

"Well it's actually a judgment of 500 dollars with a 25 dollar processing fee." He said.

"Oh. My. God."

This was terrible, catastrophic news. I had just left a rather cushy corporate dayjob to heroically subsist on a meager actor wage and this, THIS was not a part of the plan. 500 dollars was almost a month's rent! I hadn't factored this in to my budget at all.

"I just put it on my credit card." Erik explained, which was an ideal situation for him. Although we've never talked salary, I'm fairly certain Erik makes three times whatever I made in the corporate world. Compared with my nine week theatre stipend, Erik's wage was most likely 25 times larger. And although my credit card company would certainly appreciate me racking up another significant charge, I didn't feel like I could do that either. Call me crazy, but I'm already wary about how much my credit card seemingly knows about me. I've noticed that they analyze my purchasing habits in order to send me special offers I'm more likely to succumb to, and I find this really unnerving. It bothers me that somewhere, there's a marketing file on me noting certain facts an advertiser can use to their advantage. For this reason alone, I don't like to use my credit card to pay for supplement purchases at GNC, tanning sessions at salons, or porn at adult bookstores. Nor do I like to purchase my Rogaine and Propecia that way. Call me paranoid, but the last thing I need is unsolicited flyers flooding my mailbox, targeting me as a pale, fat, bald pervert.

Without a case number though, I wasn't exactly sure how to fix the situation. In the cross-country move I had misplaced (or more likely thrown away) the original citation. Erik thankfully was able to give me a phone number to call and said that they could probably look me up by last name, whereupon I might be able to handle it over the phone. Looks like I was going to make the Chase MasterCard people very, very happy.

So the next day I called the number and explained my situation to the cordial Disembodied Voice on the other end of the line. I tried my best to avoid actually mentioning what the citation was for, but when Disembodied Voice asked (presumably it had some bearing on how I could get the situation resolved) I owned up to my crime.

"Urinating in public." I told her, trying to sound plausibly unbothered by my secret shame.

There was a pause.

I couldn't tell if it was because she was looking up a specific answer, or if she had perhaps covered the receiver with her hand and was motioning to a co-worker, explaining the nature of her latest pathetic call.

"Francine, I got another caller who took a whiz in public!"

I hoped for the former.

She finally returned and explained to me that I should go down to the courthouse at my earliest convenience, explain what I had just explained to her; namely, that I was given a citation, but lived out of state and that the judgment never reached me at my new address. She went on to tell me that if I had missed my court date (which I'm sure I had) they'd probably schedule one that same day.

The very next day, I shaved (something I tend to do rarely), put on the suit and tie my parents bought me for college graduation (affectionately known as my "marry 'em and bury 'em suit"), and headed down to the courthouse. It was not my plan to grovel really, but plead the dumbass defense. Being sure to tack on a sincere, "I'm really, really sorry and I'll never do it again" at the end. I wanted to look my best of course, so the judge (who I hoped was a compassionate looking woman) might see that I was an upstanding member of society, worthy of being pardoned.

The hearing facility was abuzz with activity. There were lots of people milling about, some clutching single sheets of paper, some clutching the familiar orange ticket Erik and I had both been given (which I had subsequently misplaced). No one was wearing a suit. No one except a few older, white men trying their best to look as distinguished as possible. I took these to be either public defenders or the cheapest lawyers money could buy. Suddenly I worried. Should I have hired a lawyer? Would my nine year old suit and boyish charm be enough to get me off? Suppose I got a crazed man-hating, lesbian judge with a grudge against anything that could pee standing up.

Soundly I reasoned that if I was found guilty and charged, the most I'd be out was $525.  Just like Erik.

I went through the metal detector and approached the information desk.

"Hi. I got a citation against me back in May when I was visiting Chicago from out of state, and the judgment never reached me because the address on my driver's license was old. Well, I recently moved here a few days ago permanently and wanted to get it cleared up." I explained to the man who looked more like a security guard than a clerk or judicial aid. My demeanor screamed upstanding, by the way.

"What was the citation for?" He asked.

"Urinating in public." I reluctantly responded.

How many times will I have to say this, I wondered. Saying it to Disembodied Voice was easier. After all, she was disembodied. Owning up to my crime in front of an actual person was a bit more difficult. I tried my best to sound professional yet slightly apologetic.

"Down the hall, first desk on the right with all the people standing in front of it."

And so I stood in a line several bodies long, waiting for my turn. The desk was staffed by three black women.  One was handling traffic and parking violations and the other two presumably handled citations of my nature. They didn't seem like especially nice ladies either, which worried me.  Not that they were mean exactly, just short and to the point. After all, why show compassion?  Compassion was weakness!  Everyone they saw wanted one thing; to get off scot-free. Becoming emotionally attached to someone's "But I'm innocent!" plight, when in all likelihood they were guilty, was moot.  One after another The Tribunal dispensed with the criminal riff-raff ahead of me.

Finally, I reached the front of the line. Thankfully there was no one behind me as I anticipated, yet again, having to say what the citation was for.

"Hi. I got a citation against me back in May when I was visiting Chicago from out of state, and the judgment never reached me because the address on my driver's license was old. Well, I recently moved here a few days ago permanently and wanted to get it cleared up." I spieled again.

"What's your last name?" Tribunal #1 asked me not looking up from her computer screen.

I told her. All the while thinking, "Finally, I won't have to tell her the hideously embarrassing nature of my misdemeanor! She'll just look me up on her computer and tell me what new line to stand in, or when to come back from my hearing, or how much money I owed." Completely lost in thought, I hadn't realized #1 had stopped typing and was now, very pointedly, looking up at me.

"What was the citation for?" She asked.

Again with this question! How many times can one man be forced to say "Urinating in public" in public?

"Urinating in public." I said, more annoyed than anything else. By now though, the two other ladies had stopped their activities and were also looking at me, silently judging. An uncomfortable moment passed.

The spell was broken by something being printed out behind them. Tribunal #2 reached behind her, snatched the piece of paper and handed it to me over the credenza.

"It's been dismissed." She said.

"What?" I asked dumbstruck.

"It's been DIS MISSED." She emphasized the two syllables like I was hard of hearing.

"Do I have to pay it?"

"Not unless you want to!" She replied.

Still I was confused but I took her sassy, "I'm-Marla-Gibbs -and-I-live-in-227" retort as a "No."

And it was in that moment, while I was adjusting to this bizarre twist of the most fortunate kind of fate that Tribunal #3, queen of traffic and parking-related violations (who hadn't yet said a word), spoke up.

"Your teeth are so white." She exclaimed.

I looked at her and the most curious thing happened.  Suddenly and surprisingly, on a dime, I launched into the most ridiculous yet heartfelt testimonial for Crest Whitestrips the world has ever known.

"You know I use Crest Whitestrips and they really work! My dentist recommended them, and I know they're really expensive, but usually you can find a coupon for them in the Sunday paper, and then if you go to a store that has double coupons, you can get them for a really good price. It's so much cheaper in the long run than having them professionally whitened. Oh, and when you start using them you should use all your top strips first so that you can really see the difference with your bottoms.  And then do your bottoms. It's amazing. It really is. People tell me my teeth are crazy white all the time."

All three ladies sat there flabbergasted by my enthusiasm.  I too, was quite shocked by my behavior. I understood though, that it was coming from an incredible, immeasurable sort of elation. I had come there expecting to grovel, beg forgiveness and potentially be out of a nominal sum of money. Instead, I experienced a completely unexpected 180 degree turn. Through some stroke of good luck, I was being pardoned. And although I knew the ladies had nothing to do with it, someone had to accept the brunt of my joy, the full force of my happiness. Suddenly, I felt like the Pine-Sol Lady doling out tidbits of priceless, personal advice... and I loved it!

"Crest Whitestrips?" Tribunal #3 hesitatingly asked, afraid that she might encourage another outburst.

"Yes! They're amazing!" I exclaimed before I realized what a ridiculous shill for the Proctor & Gamble Company I had become. "Um. Thanks for this." I resumed a more normal tone of voice and waved proof of my dismissed citation in the air. "Have a really good morning."

And with that, I walked out of their lives forever. Hopefully having left their lives (and possibly their smiles) a little brighter.

I called Erik immediately after I left the courthouse building and let him know the good news, which was bittersweet of course, knowing that he had already spent 525 dollars cleaning up his side of the whole mess. But he took the news in stride and was happy for me. Though I never asked The Tribunal why my citation was dismissed, Erik and I surmised that my initial mailed judgment was probably returned to sender, whereas his was not. The authorities then must have decided it was more cost effective to dismiss the case than to hunt me down for prosecution.

And while I'd like to end this story saying I learned my lesson and am now on the straight and narrow path of sobriety, I can't. I do understand however, that it isn't always in a person's best interest to keep their address updated with the DMV, Secretary of State, or the US Postal Service.

That knowledge could save you 525 bucks.  Let it be a lesson to you too.