Member-only story
Who is Face-Down and Naked in America?
I used to be a cop — not in the traditional sense, of course. My uniform was a short-sleeved collared shirt — an ID badge clipped to one collar-point — tucked neatly into a pair of Dockers, with a silver-colored Parker pen in my breast pocket, and my beat was the cinder-block walls and flecked floors of a locked, inpatient psychiatric hospital. Those floors were polished a couple days before inspectors would arrive to give us a look-over. We knew when they were coming. Plant the flowers outside. Clean the windows. Put on airs.
Make sure “Jerry Springer” wasn’t playing on the TV in the Activities Room.
In those days, I wore my keys on the outside of my pants instead of inside my pocket. I didn’t think much about why I did that — I just didn’t like the feeling of them poking against the inside of my left leg, so I got myself a cheap little carabiner and I hooked my keys to my belt loop. When I would walk down the halls of my beat, my keys would jangle gently against my hip, and I probably sounded like a cop as I patrolled my beat, peering into the square of plexiglas of each patient’s room to make sure they were still alive, knocking against the door of each bathroom, announcing, “Rounds; male staff!”.
Like good old Constable Warren of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, checkin’ all the doors of the shops along Main Street.