Step Out Of The Car, Please: You, Me, and Consolidated Edison

Here is how I got arrested: first, I fell in love; then, three years, eight months, ten days, 12,007 emails and Gchats, innumerable texts, phone calls, and Skype sessions, three breakups and two reconciliations later, I was arrested for trespassing.

The summer after my freshman year of college, I fell in love for the first time. H—— and I were together for three years, most of which was great. We learned from each other and grew with each other and the more I fell in love with her the less I had to think about things that had happened before we met: a friend’s death, my parents’ divorce. Six months after we graduated, H—— ended things for good.

On the evening of April 12, two weeks after being put on antidepressants, I went to a party on the Upper East Side that was hosted by a friend from high school, R——. She had been a senior when I was a sophomore. I didn’t know anyone else there, but I just hung out next to the makeshift bar, which is generally a great way to make new friends. I had eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner and around 11:00 or 11:30, I blacked out.

I’d always been a heavy drinker—a blackout drinker—but there are plenty of heavy drinkers in college and it was easy to dismiss. First I drank because M—— was sick and my parents were getting divorced and I felt like I was going a bit crazy and getting drunk helped to slow it all down. Then I drank because M—— was dead and I woke up every day feeling guilty about not having answered his Gchats more often, about having been away in Ohio making friends and having fun while he and his twin brother, my two best friends since I was five years old, sat on a couch watching television at home or in a hospital room. I drank because when I was home I couldn’t look this friend I had known for most of my life in the eye anymore. I also drank because I was falling in love and that was terrifying.

At some point all of those went from being Things That Were Happening to Things That Had Happened and events that were unfolding became events that had unfolded and the furniture of the world settled into its new arrangement. I stopped feeling guilty all the time. I stopped being angry with my parents. I was generally happy.

But I didn’t stop drinking, and when things ended with H——, I started drinking more ever. I also started writing more, but writing is hard and drinking is easy. Eventually I started going to therapy, too. Soon enough I was on medication.

My doctor told me I would need to cut back on my drinking. I didn’t.

It’s unclear how I got into the 15th Street Consolidated Edison power plant. There are high fences everywhere and the doors are all locked. The next morning I was covered in cuts and bruises, so it clearly hadn’t been easy for me.

When the security guard found me, I waved to him.

“No, I’m fine, just looking around,” I shouted.

He called his boss, and his boss called the cops. The cops cuffed me and put me in the back seat of the squad car. One of them sat with me. He was very nice about the whole thing. I mostly just remember telling myself to keep my mouth shut and do whatever they asked of me. Still, I couldn’t help but give the camera what I imagined to be a very punk sneer when they took my mugshot.

R—— told me later that she had no idea I was even particularly drunk.

Oddly and luckily, I was the only person in jail that night: just one in a series of intersecting circles of luck—’luck’ being one word for it, anyway—that got me through the whole misbegotten thing.

One of the cops came up to my cell while they processed my information.

“So, is there a girl involved?” he asked.

Yes, I said. Sort of.

“Ahh. What were you drinking?” he asked.

The real answer would have been something like “Whatever was closest” but I told him I had been drinking Jameson because I’ve seen The Wire and that’s what you would tell a cop you were drinking to get over a girl.

“Ahh,” he said. “Fuckin’ Jay-mo. Been there.” He really said that. We laughed and he went out and I lay back down on the bench and stared at the fluorescent lights above me.

Around 4:00 in the morning they let me go. I walked home from the 13th Precinct on E 20th Street with a piece of paper in my pocket telling me I was being charged with criminal trespass in the third degree. I was to be at 100 Centre Street on May 23 at 9:30am to answer the charge.

* * *

The next day I called my dad and told him what had happened. First, he told me it was going to be okay. Then he told me that I was an idiot. And then he told me about the time that he got arrested. Within a few days we had hired a lawyer.

The lawyer was very good: on May 23, the morning of my arraignment, he told the judge my sob story about getting dumped and being depressed and how hard it was for these plucky college kids to graduate into such a terrible economy. My therapist wrote a note explaining that it was possible that my blood alcohol content had been higher than I would have otherwise expected because of the way the medication I was taking interacts with the liver. A family friend wrote a letter of recommendation extolling my virtues as a human being.

I just showed up and looked contrite.

My lawyer spoke to the DA, who agreed to have the judge grant me an A.C.D—Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal.

This means that the case has been put on hold: as long as I don’t get arrested for the next six months, the whole thing evaporates. If I do get arrested, the case is reopened and we start from the beginning again.

I would like to try to avoid that; lawyers are expensive.

* * *

It’s hard to quantify all of the ways in which my upbringing, background, and all the other incidentals of birth helped me pass through this ordeal (relatively) unscathed. It’s one thing to appreciate the position of privilege that being white, straight, and male affords you in the best of times, but it’s in the worst that you realize just how powerful that position truly is.

What trumps even all of that, though, is money. I am lucky to come from a family that, when someone fucks up, can afford to deal with it.

It’s entirely possible that I could have achieved the same result without retaining a lawyer. The public defender could have gotten me the ACD simply for being on time for my summons, wearing a blazer and having a college degree and having shaved that morning. But, just to be sure, we threw money at the problem. Because that’s what people do when they have money. Wouldn’t you?

For the next few months, this thing will hang over my head. But soon enough—assuming I don’t get arrested again—all that will be left will be this scar on my shin. I don’t even remember how I got it.

* * *

One Friday evening in July, two weeks after I took my last drink, I met up with two friends after work for pizza. We ate in Washington Square Park and ogled girls and then walked towards the East River, having decided to walk the perimeter of the ConEd plant to attempt to determine how I’d even gotten in.

“I remember being up high inside a brightly-lit building, like a warehouse or something,” I said as we looked up at the dark towers inside the fence. “I climbed down and was just wandering around when they found me.”

“You climbed down?” A—— asked. “Like, down a ladder?”

“Yeah.”

“You climbed down a ladder, black-out drunk, in a building full of electricity?” K—— asked in that way that isn’t really a question.

“Yeah.”

“You could be dead, dude,” said A——. “You know that, right? You could actually be dead.”

“Yeah.”

This is the first installment of Step Out Of The Car, Please, a recurring and unglamorous series about DUIs and drinking problems. If you are interested in submitting a story either anonymously or under your own name for consideration, contact [email protected]. 

[Image via Flickr]

Tags: brendan o’connor, dui series, lawyers are expensive, luck and privilege and luck again, run-ins with the law, step out of the car please