No Socializing Is Legal in the USA

How anyone could argue that America is not already a police state is beyond me. Whoever would even so much as try is, in my opinion, someone who either does not have much experience as a pedestrian in America, or even a motorist, or they just never ...here's the important part...saw another country that isn't so much of a police state as this one. 

Once you do that, you understand how not free you are in the States, and it really is very sad.

Take my own short tale here, for instance, dealing with a small little seaside park that exists about 5 minutes from my house. It is a very popular little spot during the day, often very quiet during a weekday, and especially during the winter, but one that still, at any given time , will still have about 10 cars or so parked there with some random folks -- young or old-- milling around . When I was a kid and I had firsr gotten my car, or even when I just had a bicycle, I would often pass hours at this spot, sometimes alone and reading in the mornings , but very often also with boat loads of others. Many of my best memories with my friends from youth are there, at this park. Tons of them. Kids literally came from all over to hang out there. 

Now , of course,  flash into what the spot becomes the second the sun is gone and night has fallen: It becomes a literally illegal place of fear that you do not want to go to, if you are a  "responsible" citizen, because there is a pretty good chance that cops will show up, at some point, if you do. I can vividly remember many early and very fun evenings with my friends, when the sun had just fallen, not wanting to yet call it a night, but being literaly forced to do just that and disperse, either because we feared the cops would soon come and kick us out (and maybe frame us for something, which happened to some  kids) or they of course actually would show up, and demand we leave. 

I would say 9/10 times you remained there at night, they'd show up and you'd have to leave. Often they would come speeding in literally the moment the sun was fallen, with lights flashing and everything . Literally the very moment the sun was out of the sky, you'd turn and look off into the distance and see two police cruisers speeding into the parking lot. Even if you were just sitting there in your car with your girlfriend listening to love songs, or on a bench looking out at the ocean, these cops would come. "You must leave. This is illegal. LEAVE." 

The only way you could really have a chance to not have them show up was if you parked around the block and then snuck in on foot. But no one was going to do that, because it was annoying, and so the group would disperse, and the night would end. It was also, if it was just you and a girl together, sort of embarassing, because you would feel all sorts of suspicious, as though you were a criminal, sneaking in like that . It wasn't very romantic.... 

Now what is strange is that, for many years I really didn't think much of all of this, because I ceased to go to this spot once I was a bit older  (due to how ridiculous  it would feel once the sun was gone and you had to leave) but, after I took a splendid trip to Italy, which yes I've written of before, I began to think again about this little meeting spot everyone had back then, because practically the first thing I began to notice as I toured even the smallest of the Italian towns was that each of them had not just one of these meeting places but dozens of them, and it seemed, much to my surprise, that people , adult people, were able to actually hang out at the places, and congregate. In addition, these strange people were  even allowed to  drink alcohol and wine there if they wanted, like it was their own yard. Even at midnight or later. 

I was baffled by this, literaly confounded, and I felt like I was on some sort of alien planet. I later came to realize It was someting much different: I was just someone who had broken out of the American prison camp who had a chance to glimpse actual freedom in a country that is not running a police state . And by God, was it  an extraordinarily relieving feeling. 

I have since been put back in my cell of course (i.e. I am back home in Gods country, the USA) but it seems that my one long summer in Italy has caused me to unfortunately have accidental yearnings to take walks to public places, at night, that I never really had before (beyond childhood) here in the American prison country. 

And so recently it just so happened that I was with an old friend, and we had decided to buy a bottle of wine, and neither of us wanted to drink it at home, and so we decided to take us a walk with it, thinking we would go to the sea to enjoy it, and of course this old park. I told my pal it would probably be a bad idea; but like old times from boyhood, my friend insisted we had nothin to worry about when it came to the place. For I had made sure to repeatedly  remind him that, no matter if you are 5 years old or 120, the Holy Americans have made it illegal to sit there, by the sea,  as I say, past sun fall. 

"We're not even in a car." He said, "we will sneak in and no one will see us, and then we will enjoy this good bottle of Sicilian  wine by the sea. Trust me, Dominic, no cops will come. We're not in a car." 

"Ok." I said, "but I bet they'll come. I bet they will." 

"No no come on. I don't want to drink here either, in the apartment complex. Let's take this walk to the sea. It will be like we are sailors."

"Very well." 

And so we began our walk from the apartment complex , hiding the bottle of wine in a book bag as though we were 12. I made sure to explain to my friend how, in Europe, we could have walked openly with the bottle of wine and had no worries, since Europeans know that wine is a real thing and they are not petrified of it. He seemed bewildered by the comment: "well, we put ours in a bookbag. What's the difference?" The difference is of corse that, if we were stopped with it, I am more than willing to bet th cops would have confiscated the entire bottle for themselves, and then the next morning, God only knows, I might be waking up with some outrsgeous fine or even the threat of an actual jail sentence. One never knows in America. Perhaps I could have even had a bullet, if not many of them, shot straight through my heart,  for having a bookbag at night by the sea. It seems extreme indeed, but then you remember the other stories from the Great Book of American Tales , that feature people with bananas in hand  getting shot 39 times in the back. 

Nevertheless, we persisted , choosing to believe we would not fall victim to such mayhem, and we entered illegally Into the park. We walked over to the bench and sat down and my pal unzipped the bag and we took out the bottle of wine, looking everywhere all over our shoulders in the utmost fear. I suggested that we should perhaps abandon the bench, as it was too close to the parking lot, and head deeper into the park, where the cops of course won't go or pass with their cars. Or I suggested we could check the tide, since down there when it's low you can walk around a mountain and vanish into a rather unreachable spot. "Nonsense" my old pal said, "no one even cares. You're still like you always were: as paranoid as ever. Just relax. It sure is a nice night tonight ain't it?" 

He poured me a cup of wine into the big red plastic cups we had brought , and we sat there talking for a bit. A car sped through at one point with someone yelling out of the window and rap music blasting and then disappeared. Another came and we heard laughter. But it was gone just as fast. 

We began to discuss, as we always have, old ancient stories of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Odysseus setting sail from Greece, where Frodo Baggins ended up at the end of the Return of the King. An indeterminate amount of time passed, maybe an hour, and we were comfortable and a little drunk on the 15$ bottle of cheap Sicilian wine. But then suddenly it happened. 

"Shit!" My friend said, "fuck! Throw the book bag and throw the cups! Fuck! Fuck! Jesus Christ fuck!!" 

He had fortunately just so happened to be looking out into the distance, facing me as he was with a view of the street. We tossed the "illegal" wine bottle and  the red cups down over a hill of sand into the beach, and then sat down calmly waiting for the two squad cars, which began to flash their lights and make that obnoxious "woo woo" sound with their sirens, to arrive. 

The first cop rolled his window down. "It's illegal to be down here." Said he, "what you guys doing?" He seemed to have a southern accent ; but maybe that's just my imagination. 

"Oh is it? We had no idea. We're just sitting and talking, it's a nice summer night."

"Well go talk somewhere else. This place is closed after sun down. Gotta go. You...you aren't drinking or smoking are you?" 

I felt my hand shake like old times as a boy, when any given day might be the day the cops decide to attack you and chase you, and then send you off to some meager cell where you have to, as a white boy, fend off, so we white boys are told, against a thousand nameless  vicious blacks who can't wait to tear your head off. 

"We are not." My friend said. "We're just talking of life, wanted to see the ocean." 

For a second it seemed he'd decide to turn the car off and get out  and come search us. If we were blacks, I'm sure he would have. His friend in the squad car behind us eyeing us carefully, blinding lights above the hood. That strange eternity passed where it seems you are waiting for your doom to fall, and you don't know if they'll cause you big trouble, and hold you for an hour and a half, but he didn't get out. 

 Instead he just pointed towards the exit and waited, with a watchful eye, and the car tailing right behind us, with the red and blue lights flashing on us, as we exited. The second we were out of the vicinity of the park, him and the other squad car sped off. 

The bottle of wine of course: it was still back at the beach and we did not intend to leave it there, half filled as it was. Still, we didn't feel comfortable heading right back. So we passed the next hour and a half wandering through the streets (because there's no where you can legally sit down here at night without that cop telling you it's against the law of the Holy Americans). As we did of course, we conversed, only this time our conversation was no longer about the Odyssey or ancient times; but about cops and America. 

"So," my buddy eventually said, as we walked down long roads where you'd think no one lives, since you never see a single Walker, "it's really true huh, about Europe? They really do just walk about at night, and talk in the open air, in groups of young and old?" 

"Yes indeed." I said, as we walked the streets , tired , and wishing we could sit, but again, knowing that there is no where to legally do such a thing here, especially as a young man, "they just walk out of the front door, it seems, and they go sit wherever they fancy, young men...old men..middle aged women...old women...groups of teenagers. Everyone. Even in the smallest village. It's not limited to just some urban center. They're sitting on walls, benches, on the sides of curbs in nice pants, all sorts of folks, just doing what they want, socializing . I was talking at midnight with, like, 80 year old men on park benches about Hemingway books. I took the girl Flavia out four times and our dates consisted of nothing more than waltzing about the roads and occasionally chatting with other Italians or sitting on a fountain. All I had to buy her was a Coca Cola, she's with ya for 6 hours. Just kissing you on a 2,000 year old roman fountain." 

"And...where are the cops?"

"They're there," I said, "but they generally did not seem to actively bother anyone for essentially any reason at all, like ours do. The people are allowed to congregate. The various meeting spots arent torched in flames and made off limits." 

"Which is what has happened to ours, clearly." He said, "and now that I'm thinking about it, they've also done it to the other two spots everyone used to go to." 

"What ones?"

"The coffee shop  and the plaza parking lot . Everyone used to meet there. But then they come, just like here, and usher you out, the moment the Sun is gone. And sometimes even when it's up.  Don't you remember how we used to always get the whole group broken up and you never knew who would wind up with who later into the night, when everyone would split off to their own individual houses or yards. It was always a sort of desperate panic wher the cops would come speeding in yelling and screaming at everyone to get out and all the cars would speed off angrily and everything, one afte the other. And sometimes you'd just hop into a random car back seat real fast, not even sure who the hell you left with." 

"Oh yea. Of course. I haven't thought of it in some time. Sad. Well you see? They kill the chance of the meeting spot growing, and by doing this they have made it a thing that, basically, only the risque kids are willing to even attempt or do for the short while they can. In Europe , that's the most amazing part of it all: Both the good kids and the bad kids, it would seem, are all out there seemingly as one much of the time. And the adults too, like i said. It's just everyone. It isn't just random mean kids with uncomfortable family lives hanging outside out there. Everyone is eager to take a walk or hang around for a bit. Totally free entertainment. And of course, you can have a beer or a bottle of wine and it's not illegal." 

"It really isn't illegal to drink outside in public there?" 

"Nope. One night I was sitting right in the center of the piazza just sipping straight from a bottle of vino, laughing with some random Italian stranger who had offered to share it with me in exchange for my tales from America. Adults and children were all around, just running at our feet, as we talked and drank." 

"Christ. It really does seem like another planet." He said.

"I hear that. Trust me. It really does. You'll understand more too, if you see it with your own eyes."

And then of course we began our sneaky ways back to get the bottle left on the beach thanks to the cop. We took a different and darker route to reach the beach this time, up through the woods, and once we got the bottle we took off towards the spot I had suggested earlier, which the low tide offers you . We walked off under the mountain and sat in the shadows with the bottle, at this point now forced to pass it back and forth ad sip from it, since the cups had gotten full of sand when we tossed them, and we drank alone like that, again discussing Julius Caesar and his Rubicon and then too the great vastness of the ice cold Atlantic Ocean right at our feet. 

"I wonder how long it would take for us, if we were so lucky to have a boat, to sail from this exact spot across the sea to Genoa."

"The great port city of Christopher Colombus." My pal said, always knowing his history, "it would probably take about 20 days in a regular boat, I would imagine ." Then he pointed to a big oil tanker you could ever so slightly make out in the distance. "That big boat there probably came from Germany or Finland or something." 

"Might as well be another planet." I said, looking out across it into the darkness of the night, covered by the thick black shadows as we were beneath the mountain.

And it really might as well be another planet, it really might as well be, because one country is a police state; and the other country is.... well, I suppose you might venture to call it "an actual country". But hey, that's just me, and last I heard, I am a pompous and arrogant self-righteous jerk (so my uncle the Trump lover tells me) because I want to be able to have the right to hang around in my own neighborhood, and drink a little wine, and shoot the shit down by the public ocean I've grown up near for all my life now. Good lord you know? Good lord, what kind of asshole am I? 

July, 2017