to that one cop who always hangs out on marion pugh

There are certain things the academy simply can't teach you. The academy can show you how to roll swiftly out of the line of fire without injuring yourself. The academy will hardwire the Miranda Rights right down in your thick head, beneath the thin layer of fuzz you laughingly refer to as your hair (recalling, as you so often do of late, your hedonistic party animal days, or daze as you comically misspell it in your mind, the times when you were never seen without some kind of controlled substance in your grubby, forever-callused laborer hands) and into the slimy folds the doctors call gray matter. The academy will teach you to love your weapon in a manner that those on the outside would most likely classify as indecent. The academy can teach a man (and even a woman nowadays, haw haw haw) a great many things, but there are little things that must come from within, from the lonely heart that beats so plaintively under that crisp black uniform.

The academy cannot teach you style.

Officer Barrett Owens Jr. knows this. He knows that a lot of guys on the force would think it foolish to wake up an extra hour early to trim and brush his moustache. No- those words do not do the ritual justice; Owens pampers that strip of vestigial hair above his mouth every morning and though he won't let you in on all his secrets, he doesn't mind letting you admire it. Touching, however, is a priviledge reserved for the ladies.

"No fat chicks neither," Barrett says with a grin. Somehow, his moustache refuses to move when he does this; it is as though it has a mind of its own. Impressive.

Now Officer Owens is seated atop his motorcycle, on a short street just off one of the city's main drags. "They call it a drag 'cause it's boring as all hell to work over here," he laughs. "Old police officer's joke, guess you wouldn't get it. But boring or not I can make the city more money here than just about anywhere else. It's all tarted up sorority gals and momma's boys that live over here and I just catch 'em speeding to and fro. No problem at all, and I can always meet my quota before lunchtime." On these occasions, Owens spends the rest of his afternoon "runnin' down poontang."