DUI

I'm driving with Harry to Kearny to pick his car up from the impound lot, and we're getting off of Route 21 after being on the road for about 20 minutes. He pulls out his wallet out and begins looking through it.

"We gotta turn around."

"What?" He's still rifling through the wallet.

"I forgot my registration. They won't let me get the car out of the lot without my registration. We gotta go back."

"You fuckin pric."

20 minutes later we're back at his house, he runs in, and then I turn around again.

We're tracing back the same way we came, and it's a good thing that we had to turn around because we got off at the wrong exit... the broad who wrote him the directions apparently doesn't know how to get to where she lives.

We're driving through all these towns that are so small and close you can't tell them apart on the map, and before you know it you're out of the town and you missed your turn. It's so damn far to this police station that I'm losing faith in the little scrap of paper that is supposed to lead our way, but I know the area so little that I can't argue with whatever he's telling me.

We're driving through Main Street in either Harrison or Kearny, I can't tell. There's a lot of Spanish guys around, and a lot of Portugese and Mexican flags hanging from buildings. We drive by the "PizzaLand" place that's on the opening credits of The Sopranos.

"I always wondered where that fuckin place was. I thought it was in Elizabeth."

"I wonder if their pizza is actually good. They must get a shitload of business just from being on that show."

"Hey Harry."

"What?"

"Next time you get a fucking DUI, can you get it somewhere a little fucking closer?"

"Yea I was thinkin' that. This is a drive. I was lost too, I wasn't even supposed to be here. I stopped at some gas station over here and was trying to get some Indian guy to give me a map. I was getting fucking pissed...I think I scared the shit out of him."


These are some tough towns. Not outright dangerous like Paterson or Newark, but just tough working class towns. Kearny, Rutherford, North Arlington. There's a lot of Italians, and more recently Hispanics, and the streets smell like pizza the whole way through.

"The cops loved me though, man. They were saying that they felt bad doing this to me because I was such a nice guy," he says.

"Well I'm glad you weren't in the "Let me fight a cop" stage of drunk. That's what I figured happened." It was true. He doesn't deal well with authority when he gets drunk, and he knows exactly how big he is and how that affects people. It's something that has gotten us all in trouble in the past.

"Nah, I was fine. I was talking to the one guy who was doing the breathalyzer thing, and I was asking him questions and shit about the machine. I know where all the readouts come out of, and we were bullshitting about it. He said to me, 'Ah, so you been around a lot of these before?'. I told him no, I just watch the History Channel all the time."

"I told this cop, "Man, I gotta take a piss. I'm dyin." The cop tells me that I can go in one cells and use the toilet, and he walks me through to where all the holding cells are. I'm about to walk in when I stop right at the bars, and look at the cop, and ask'em, "Hey, this isn't like, a trick, is it?"

I start laughing.

"Hey man, I didn't want to be taking a piss and have that cocksucker slam me in there," he says.

"You know, if they wanted you in a cell, you'd have been in a cell."

"You never know."