Hello, D—
It’s been a long time since I’ve written. You probably don’t even remember who I am. That’s alright—I remember you. I’ll remember for the both of us.
I remember you sauntering around our college campus on Staten Island, shoulders slouched under your Baja hoodie, hands buried in your pockets; I did the same. I remember you lounging on the dorm room floor, playing board games until night stretched into morning; I did the same. You were a poet studying Chaucer while others discouraged me from writing; otherwise, I would have done the same.
Our mutual friends even joked that we were the same person—you, the taller, whiter and slightly more masculine manifestation and I, the shorter, browner and slightly more feminine—both of us boundlessly kind and brutally honest.
But we weren’t identical. You offered your seat on the bus to an elderly woman and endured that endless trip to the mall on your feet; I did not possess your sense of courtesy or respect. You were better than me, or maybe you were being good for the both of us.
And then we lost contact.
After college, I spent six years failing as a scientist, having discovered nothing and helping no one. Dejected, I sold my skills to Big Pharma and made easy money editing glossy advertisements for Klonopin, Ambien, OxyContin and Actiq. I had power over words. Meanwhile, you found work at a big hotel in Manhattan. Something must have been missing—a lucrative salary, job stability or purpose—so you entered the New York Police Department academy and became a cop.
Thirty years carved a canyon between us: terrorism, two wars, bursting economic bubbles; uneven partnership, parenthood, the parting of ways; not to mention a deadly pandemic and an attempted coup d’etat. I grew disgusted with Big Pharma and became a journalist, and then I grew disgusted with racism and capitalism and became a radical. You embraced forensics and graduated to crime-scene detective. Hopefully you’re a better scientific investigator than I ever was!
Now we stand on opposing sides of the police barricade, you in riot gear and me with a protest sign. I want to abolish the police probably as much as you never want to hear from me again. But I need to make one thing clear: you are not my enemy. The institution that employs you is.
Policing was founded on racism to protect and serve the elite and their interests. Maybe it’s why you took the job and stayed for more than twenty years. More likely, you enjoyed the intrigue and the steady income it provided. Still, it’s dirty money made through the oppression of neglected communities, like the dirty money I made promoting poison to discarded people. For this reason, all cops and all pharmaceutical editors are bastards.
But the truth is you are not a bastard. You never were. Your altruism would have made you a good brain surgeon or a good bus driver. I have to believe it makes you a good detective dedicated to facts and truth, and that your goal is not the selfish accumulation of unchecked power but the unfortunate pursuit of a punitive end.
There is no worthy penance for the harms we have inflicted in our respective roles—no pardons for a benevolent fascist or the angel of death. We can only move forward.
I must pursue equality and respect for my gender, and dignity in my skin. Your trajectory may put you again on the same path as I, or maybe you will retire into quiet obscurity. I only hope your courage and humanity guide you to a more compassionate justice for all of us. I will strive for the same.
Black lives matter. Not all cops are bastards.
Your friend always,
Jennifer