Congratulations on Being Drunk in Public!

You didn’t marry rich and loveless to drag your heels and shield your eyes every time a young and pretty man looked at you. And you certainly didn’t outlive your sham husband to pretend, even after his death, that you loved him. So you don’t see a problem with going out to bars and getting into cars and slamming back drinks until you can’t think. But Johnny Law does, and he’s not much for your tomfoolery, so tonight you’re gonna have a run in with him.

You’ll have it, as so many do, on Boylston Street, just outside of Candy Heaven. You’ll be sitting out there with your just barely legal companion, drinking from a bottle of Stolichnaya you brought from home. Occasionally each of you will pop skittles into your craw, to cut the bite of the vodka. You’ll talk about growing up poor in southern Russia and fighting to get everything you’ve ever had in life, and he’ll talk about how hard it is to be a student at BU when your parents are always riding you to get Bs or better.

There won’t be a lot of overlap. You’ll mostly just talk in circles around one another, just as oblivious that your companion is a living, thinking human being as he is of your vast life experience and the hideousness of life outside of the protective bubble of the world he has been raised in. Eventually you’ll get frustrated that he’s not attentive enough or affectionate enough or both, really, and you’ll just start screaming at him. You’ll swipe your purse, claw at his face and kick at him with your spiked heels, an impressive achievement given their bizarre, nigh non-Euclidian construction.

He’ll give as good as he gets, or close to it: tearing at your clothing, getting a handful of your hair out of your scalp, leaving you bloody-faced with one tit all but falling out. And since your English is speckled, your breath stained with liquor and your companion young and handsome and very, very white in the American sense of the word, where white means of the cultural norm, when the police arrive, as they inevitably will, you’ll be the one who’s considered in the wrong.

And so, kicking and screaming, you’ll be the one dragged into the back of a police cruiser. You’ll be the one who punches a cop in the face on your way into the car. You’ll be the one who weeps uncontrollably and wordlessly all the way back to booking and then becomes a model citizen the moment you’re placed behind in a chair in the booking room. It’ll be like you were transported back to your first border crossing, where you were told to be as quiet and cooperative as possible and to avoid drawing attention to yourself at all costs.

And this cooperation will draw the attention of the officer who you punched in the face earlier. And that night he’ll watch you as you sleep off your vodka and skittle induced rage. He’ll make sure your blankets cover you. And the next day he’ll smile at you. And you, you’ll thank him for being so kind. You won’t notice he’s slipped you his number until you’ve been at home a good long while, but when you do see it you won’t hesitate. You’ll call him immediately, ringing to voicemail. At this point, things become indistinct, but we still have high hopes.

Congratulations on Being Drunk in Public!