“But when I kissed the cop down on 34th and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number 9”
It is with a heavy heart, chapped lips, and a shirt that still faintly smells like a Yankee Candle explosion that I file this formal complaint against the officer who, in the course of his so-called duties, destroyed my bottle of Love Potion Number 9.
For those unfamiliar with the substance, allow me a moment of education. Love Potion Number 9 is, according to the gypsy who sold it to me on the corner of 34th and Vine, “the real deal, honey — not the knockoff.” She looked me square in the eye, took my forty-seven dollars, and warned me not to drink the whole bottle. I, being a man of moderation and questionable judgment, drank the whole bottle.
What followed, I will concede, was not my finest hour. Or my second finest. Or, frankly, any hour I would like entered into the public record. But since the officer has seen fit to file his report, I feel compelled to file mine.
The Facts, As I Recall Them Through the Fog
At approximately 8:42 p.m., I exited the establishment known as O’Malley’s Tap with what I can only describe as a newfound appreciation for the human condition. The world was beautiful. The streetlights were beautiful. A parked Buick was beautiful. I kissed the Buick. This is not in dispute.
What is in dispute is the characterization by responding Officer Killjoy (I am aware that is not his legal name, but it is how he shall be referred to henceforth) that I was, and I quote, “engaged in a public disturbance of an amorous nature involving multiple inanimate objects, three shrubs, and a fire hydrant.”
Let the record show that I did not discriminate. I kissed the shrubs, yes. I kissed the hydrant, absolutely. I kissed a mailbox and told it I loved its work. I kissed a stop sign and apologized for every time I had rolled through one. I was, in the truest sense of the phrase, spreading the love.
I will now address the elephant in the room, which — and I want to be very clear about this — I did not kiss, though only because I did not encounter one.
Yes. I kissed the officer.
I am not proud. I am not ashamed. I am simply a man who, under the chemical influence of a duly purchased folk remedy, encountered a uniformed human being and did what any reasonable person full of Love Potion Number 9 would do: I told him he had kind eyes, and I planted one right on his badge number.
I want to emphasize, for the sake of Officer Killjoy’s clearly bruised professional pride, that this was not personal. I was, at the time, kissing everything in sight. He was in sight. Ergo, he was kissed. The transitive property of amour demands nothing less.
To suggest, as his report does, that I “targeted” him is to fundamentally misunderstand the pharmacology of Love Potion Number 9. One does not target. One embraces. One anoints. One kisses a lamppost with the same tender enthusiasm one kisses a Ford Fiesta.
Now we arrive at the crux of my grievance.
While I was in the middle of a very meaningful moment with a bus bench, Officer Killjoy — apparently unmoved by the beauty of universal love — proceeded to remove the remainder of my Love Potion Number 9 from my jacket pocket. In the ensuing struggle (I use “struggle” generously; I mostly kept trying to hug him), the bottle fell to the sidewalk and shattered.
Shattered.
Forty-seven dollars of unregulated romantic elixir, gone. Pooled between the cracks of the pavement. A single ant walked through it, and I watched that ant leave with a spring in its step and, I believe, a plan for the evening.
That officer did not just break a bottle. He broke a covenant. He broke a promise made to me by a gypsy who, for all I know, is now unreachable and possibly fictional. He broke my supply.
I therefore request the following remedies:
- Full reimbursement of forty-seven dollars, plus emotional damages to be determined by a jury of my peers, provided my peers are also people who have kissed a fire hydrant.
- A formal apology from Officer Killjoy, delivered in person, though he need not kiss me. Unless he wants to. I’m no longer under the influence, but I am a forgiving man.
- A written acknowledgment from the department that I did not, in fact, target the officer romantically, and that my affections that evening were distributed in a manner consistent with the Fair Housing Act — that is to say, without regard to race, creed, color, or whether the recipient was a shrub.
- The return of my dignity, which I last saw somewhere near the bus bench.
I am, by nature, a peaceful man. I do not, as a rule, make a habit of kissing municipal infrastructure. I have a wife, whom I love, and who has since informed me that she will be having a word with the gypsy herself.
But I cannot let this stand. A citizen has a right to be strange in public. A citizen has a right to purchase suspicious liquids from street-corner mystics. A citizen has a right, damn it, to kiss a mailbox on a Tuesday night without having his elixir smashed on the sidewalk like so much broken hope.
I kissed the officer, yes. But I also kissed a raccoon, and you don’t see him filing a report.
Respectfully submitted,
The Complainant
(Currently sober, mildly embarrassed, still slightly in love with that Buick)
Author’s note: Had this been an actual complaint, three captains, the Chief of Police, (all of whom rose through the ranks without ever actually doing any police work), and two city attorneys would spend three complete days trying to decide what to do about Officer Killjoy without any consideration of his numerous commendations, lack of any previous complaints, or bothering to read his report. They do read all the anonymous social media complaints about officers and accept them as accurate.
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