Cactus Club Series, Part 2

During that time that the city was dry, I sometimes got a break from riding with Santa’s Helper. One such night, I got partnered up with Mike H. Mike was a couple of years older than me and like me was divorced. Unlike me, who was once divorced, Mike H. was on his fourth divorce. He had a steady girlfriend at the time and he told me that he wanted me to meet her.

I really liked Mike H. but he had the most abrasive personality that I believe I have ever run across. He pissed off everyone he talked to! It didn’t matter if they were a victim, a suspect, or someone asking for directions, he would rub them the wrong way within minutes of coming into contact with them. I would kid him frequently that this was why he couldn’t keep a wife. One day I actually told him that he had an abrasive personality. He didn’t know what the word meant so I explained that sharing space with him was like having your skin rubbed with a Brillo pad. He thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He was very proud of this personality trait so I dubbed him Brillo Billy. The name stuck. I believe that some people would not know who I was talking about if I called him Mike H., they only knew him as Brillo Billy.

So Brillo Billy and I left out on patrol one Saturday afternoon together. As usual, he was chain smoking and drinking coffee in the car. This was not the best combination for fresh breath when closed up in a car for 8 hours together, frankly, his breath was rather foul. He started talking about his girlfriend and how great she was. I was trying to figure why any woman would agree to date a guy whose marriage record was a train wreck and whose breath was so very foul, not to mention his rather obnoxious personality. He decided to drive by her apartment building so that I could meet her.

We pulled up to her building and she was outside getting a laundry basket out of the back of her car. She was average looking and dressed normally. I was really impressed that she actually gave him the time of day until she spoke. She did not have a tooth in her head, no dentures, nothing but pink gums! We talked a few minutes and then we had to go to take some type of report. I didn’t mean to be rude but I had to ask about her teeth or lack thereof. Before he thought, he blurted out that he loved a woman with no teeth because…well, use your imagination…too gross to mention here! I told him that I could not wait to tell the guys about his criteria for selecting women.

Later that night, we went to a club down the street from the Cactus Club that catered to a teen-early 20's crowd. There was no one in the parking lot so we decided to do a walk through inside. The bouncers did not do as good a job of keeping alcohol out of the club as the ones at the Cactus Club. They had some pretty good 80’s rock playing and the dance floor was full. We worked our way through the crowd looking and smelling for violations.

The hair regulation when I was hired was the same for men and women. Our hair could not touch the tops of our ears nor our collar and it had to be tapered, not blocked. I was tall, thin, muscular, had short hair, and wore a bullet proof vest so I was often mistaken for a very young boy by older people. They were not used to women being officers so they just assumed.

We were threading our way through the crowd and this girl about 18 or 19 attached herself to my left arm. She started begging for me to dance with her. I told her no thanks and she kept on. She was literally hanging all over me. I was thinking that she thought that I was a guy so I told her that it wouldn't look right dancing in uniform. She started telling me to take the night off and come back and dance with her. I looked over her shoulder and saw Brillo Billy laughing so hard that he was about to wet himself. My face turned scarlet and I started trying to disengage myself from her. By then, I was starting to stutter I was so taken off guard. She started talking all kinds of trash which led me to believe that she KNEW I wasn’t a guy. That was worse than mistaken identity!

Brillo Billy finally saved me when he said that we had a call. I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. He was cackling! When we got into the car, he struck up a deal. He said that he would never tell a soul that a girl hit on me if I would keep his toothless preference to myself. I thought it was a bang-up deal and as a far as I know, neither of us ever told a soul.... well, until now.