In Sri Lanka the cops use suppositories in lieu of a breathalyzer
I’m in standing in front of BMICH all fk woozy cause I’ve been feeding baby birds for the last hour. The Police are asking me if I’m drunk and they’re mistaken. I’m actually hung-over. What they are really witnessing is the aftermath of a peanut allergy. While I certainly do smell of double malt cuttlefish, I have surely sweated out any alcohol during the course of my body trying to assasinate me. I assure the Po that I am most miserably sober and then they ask me if Peanut is a country. What the shit. So I’m going to the drunk tank. I have missed the party I really wanted to go to, and now I get to recuperate with Colombo’s Finest. I hope they have tea. Moustache gets in the car and tells me to drive as Razor follows on the bike. They are accusing me of drunk driving, and then asking me to drive them around. To tell the truth, I actually relish this stupid shit cause its bloggable.
I’m with friends, getting damnably late for T’s party when I take that fateful nibble of the dried bites. I’ve had this stuff before, but this bite is definitely peanut. I can feel the tell-tale tingle and I know that I have 15 minutes before it hits my bloodstream. Hard. I take my leave as rapidly as possible and do the only thing that works. Lie down, throw up everything still leaking poison, and wait for the toxins to claw and itch their way through my stomach, lungs, throat, and skin. I’m lucky in that peanuts don’t kill me, but they certainly try. I’ve consumed the legume enough times that I know the procedure. I just need to be alone. I get to the car and my breathing and vision are labored, so no state to drive. Lie down across the passenger seat and just wait it out. The handbrake is in my back, but I’ve got bigger problems.
I leave a puddle of DNA out the passenger door, which I feel bad about. It’s gross, but that’s the only way I can process the damnable nut. The four fingers of scotch and cuttlefish aren’t helping either. Once the direct toxin is out of my system I recover within an hour rather than a day, so I always force myself to throw up. Now the histamines are leaving my lungs and I can feel my windpipe opening. The corrupted blood, however, has reached my epidermis and I am so fucking itchy. It feels like my lungs are itchy inside and I cannot scratch them. It’s like 20 more minutes from here, but time goes agonizingly slow. If I’d eaten more my heart would spasm and I’d need to mainline epinephrine in my thigh. Entire system restart, with adrenaline, sorta like Pulp Fiction. Never been in that territory, however, and I leave my long-expired needle in the sock drawer.
After a while I can sit up straight and I feel really sober and empty. The histamines have eased up, though I would pass out if I had to walk 100 yards. My throat is half-closed and I barely get enough oxygen if I’m moving. My body is fucking stupid but I’ve learned to hack this one disability well enough that I’m really high functioning. I just start driving home. Take the route past BMICH (dumb) and whaddya know, Moustache and Razor pull me over at a checkpoint.
I got all my papers and I’m so sober it hurts. However, I smell like a Molotov Cocktail floating in Beira Lake. Pros and Cons, Pros and Cons. Razor immediately assumes that I’m drunk because I’m chewing gum. I try to explain that I’m chewing gum to get the taste of evil out of my mouth, but no dice. They make me get out of the car and just stand there looking at each other. They won’t let me go and standing makes me physically tired. I ask if they’ll just take me to the station and blow me. And they do. Moustache gets in the passenger and asks me to drive. This makes so little sense for a suspected drunk driver that it’s awe-inspiring. I wonder if there are accessory charges to DUI… So I drive to Fort. No problems except Moustache doesn’t know left from right.
I’m soberific so I just chat up the guys admin’ing the breathalyzer. Indrasena and Glasses. I should have gotten a group picture. They tell me to wash my mouth with water from an arrack bottle and spit it out the window. Classy. Them they give me the glass tube attached to a bag and I blow into it for 20 seconds. The glass gets incredibly hot in my hands. I ask them about the silica they use and why it heats up, but all they can tell me is that each unit costs Rs 2,000. I puff-and-pass and everyone looks really disappointed. The cash gives them a really injust interest in false positives, but they’re nice guys. Indrasena is chill, but Razor keeps telling me I was drinking and I’m like, ‘Heresay! Conjecture!’. He makes Moustache fill out a 2,000 word essay on why they wasted tax-payer money and ask me to sign it. I can’t read it, so I leave a disclaimer to that point. It’s not my testimony and they can read the silica line. Get my sheet and walk out of there. They were nice enough to let me take photos and I’ve attached a shot of my deposition below (View Larger Image).
Anyways, I’m typing this at 5 am and I feel like a fk zombie with alien spawn in my tummy. I’m mostly disappointed that I got sick and missed T’s party, which I was really looking forward to. Sorry machang. I bet there were girls there too. Unfortunately, I am a dumbass. Amma’s going to find out and give me a real slap-upside-the-head.
Great gods, that’s crazy. How do you end up eating peanuts, do you just not look at what your eating or were they hidden somewhere in a mixture or something?
Scotch
Peanuts aside that is darn interesting… :-) You should be more careful dude, especialy while u r semi drunk ;-)
very interesting night…
ever gone into anaphylactic shock? just out of curiosity… never met anyone else who has a nut allergy..
Wow, just wow. Kudos to you for keeping your shit together mate. If that were me I would have just not stopped at the checkpoint. Still, have you tried pretending not to know Sinhalese?
um, he DOESN’T know sinhalese. :)
ouch indi, sounds like one fun night. what a party. when you said ‘dying’ i didn’t realize you might actually mean ‘dying’. this shit is messed up.
A “don’t shit me” attitude, feigned inability to understand what cops are saying and feigned ignorance of sinhala have always got me off the hook in SL. The problem is, you think SL cops are actually people trying to keep the streets safe which is pure horseshit. Cypress Hill would have a goddamned field day with these pigs.
Sorry about the allergy again, do you carry one of those allergy tags in your wallet? You should just in case you ever pass out or something.
I wouldn’t call them pigs, they’re just people. The ones I sat with at the station were nice and they let me take photos.
Thank you for your concern. The allergy is a part of my life, I accidently consume some peanut at least once a year. It’s just something to deal with. It’s uncomfortable but it’s something I’m fully used to by now.
Dunno, pretty much every single one I’ve met have behaved like perfect assholes to me. I’ve constantly had to field questions about why the woman sitting next to me in my car is white (wtf? Does nobody know how genes work?) “meya sudhui nedha?”, is this car yours, where is your passport (after giving them my license and ID) etc., and one fucker’s even asked if my girlfriend was a prostitute.
I’ve heard a lot of really shitty stories about them from friends who’ve been to SL and back, for example, one of them was on holiday with her boyfriend and the pigs told him he could either be arrested or he could let them fuck his girlfriend. They actually had to make a getaway from the checkpoint.
Potential rapists aren’t people in my book to be honest. And seeing policemen drunk in their own vehicles, bumming freebies at pilawoos after the night is over doesn’t do too much for my perception of them either.
Is your allergy potentially lethal? Or does taking some anti-histamines or something help get it in check?
Awesome. You! really should go the whole way man. Court is a lot of fun. Lot of interesting ppl there as well :)
Boycy and I drove, pissed out of our minds from Balapitiya to Colombo at 3am…. probably while you were with cops.
Scourge it sounds really macho and cool to do what you did, but I’ll tell you what Boycy in the driving seat even stone cold sober is bad enough. But pissed out of his mind is not cool. Besides if you hit someone in Balapitiya it isn’t you who’ll be in Court, it’ll be your parents in the morgue. It’s just not fucking worth it man, and I’m not a square when it comes to most things.
CY you’re spot on. The Police is in this country reeks of all that is evil. I find it easy to believe your friend’s story. But on the other hand that’s not all of them. There are a few decent buggers.
Coincidentally just turned up after seeing Mendis in traffic court. It’s not a pleasant experience. Neither is spending 3 hours at a cop shop at dawn on the weekend. The bottom line is. It’s just not fucking worth it. Have a drink. Let a friend drive. I’m not talking one drink or two. But the rate some buggers we know get plastered, it is just damn fool stupid. It’s not cool – and you could end up killing your friends.
Indi you’re right. There were girls at the party, but they just more or less spoke to each other, which is another wholly irritating trait among Sri Lankan girls. Sheesh. So I left and watched the rugby.
Drunk driving isn’t cool. However, everyone here does it without thinking. I definitely drive after a couple drinks (over a couple hours), but I don’t get wasted and drive. There are so many checkpoints that its just trouble, plus hanging out with the cops is a huge fucking waste of time, even if you do pass the breathalyzer. I don’t know what they do if you fail.
The thing I don’t like about the Police is the sheer amount of underpaid people with guns we have roaming the streets. I still find it jarring to see people with assault rifles on the street (army included). Maybe that’s just me.
Oh bugger… hope you’re ok Indi. Wondered why you didn’t show.
Debating on where you’re going to watch the football with the friendly tapir is not an ideal conversation starter Shanaka (even though in your mind it should suffice), and you wonder why they didn’t talk to you.
btw did M have a good time? She seemed a tad peeved
I was completely used to seeing assault rifles slouching around Colombo, and then went to Jaffna, where they more or less march in formation and squat in pillboxes at intersections. Wacko.
Then I went to Israel and was sort of inured to it until I started noticing that not only are there the machine-gun-toting army and police, but that lots of regular people, Orthodox even, have handguns in hip holsters, all the time. Then outside Jerusalem I ran into whole gaggles of stylishly dressed civilian-clothing soldiers still of course carrying their guns, and that was INSANE. We’re talking effing sexybeautiful 19-year-old Israeli girls (have you seen photos??) in clubbing outfits with strappy tops and lowrise jeans and sparkly eyeshadow and assault rifles.
Which is all to say, it’s a matter of degree, and it’s creepy and sad that I’m not viscerally bothered. That level of ‘normal’ rationalized violence is just sick.
I’m speechless…
Definitely, drink driving=not cool. I don’t think they have a limit in SL indi, at least if they do then my Dad hasn’t told me about it. I think it’s drink driving period which is illegal, no 1 drink limit etc.
My parents’ generation think it’s cool to get behind the wheel after having had a few scotches, wife and 3 kids in tow. Not cool in my book. Sadly, I wish I could say I haven’t done it ever, but I can say I haven’t done it since I came here and went back. I didn’t understand how badly it can impair your judgement.
Even more sadly, some people from our generation seem to think it’s ok, even sort of expected of them. These people probably came into the world through the door marked braindead fuckslut.
Wow!! Is Indi ok now? Food allergies suck big time, if you have them you have to be really careful about what you eat (especially when drunk). I once had a friend in 3rd grade who was allergic to strawberries, as wierd as that sounded to me, she would go into shock if she ate one and had to be given an allergy shot. As far as the cops asking Indi to drive when they thought he was drunk, how stupid can they be? Sounds like a wild night though.
hmm wats in an ‘allergy shot’??
Ado T, I didn’t talk to the birds about football. I don’t do that – give me SOME credit. But the thing is they put up these impregnable walls of ice around them that it’s almost impossible to break through without suffering a huge chill. I was speaking to Venu at the quiz y’day and we got on famously and I’d seen her out so many times before and had to ignore her for lack of an alternative.
M was really knackered and really hot. As in warm. But hot as well. And I was more than slightly peeved as I couldn’t eat and/or drink due to a halfwit cholesterol test scheduled by my parents. The only house party I’ve been to in the last 18 months and I have to drink fucking water!!
Fair point Sophist and I do give you more credit… but if you actually didn’t spend your time watching the footy and got out your ice pick you wouldn’t have much to complain about.
Its true that Sri Lankan girls tend to gravitate to friends or other known girls at parties but I see it more as a means of easing themselves into the social situation in much the same way that guys tend to gravitate towards the bar. However, more often than not they’re there for exactly the same reason as most guys albeit they are far more subtle about their intentions. The icy front is most likely a defense mechanism to calm their nerves from having to talk to someone as dashing as you Sophist. By the way can you make it for a filthy little lamprais at GC, I’ll call the Navrat, Poodle Mendez and the pro-life brothers.
Yeah! I know its stupid and should never be done. I’ve been there, got copped for drink driving, over two beers and 3 hrs and food inbetween. Best part of it was they let me drive back home… beats me…!
You shouldn’t do it and if you do and get copped, pay the copper off, doesn’t matter how much, the hassel of courts and a 3 month suspension just ain’t worth it.
feeding babies may be a bit tiring but i enjoy this job specially when the baby smiles back at you `”: