Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [156]
“Mr. Irvine, you’re over the legal limit and I’m going to have to take you to jail.”
Wow. I was going to jail. I’d never heard that one before.
He took my fingerprints, then handcuffed me. The clock on the dash said 3:15 a.m.
As the cop arrested me he told me not to worry; I wouldn’t be at the station for too long as I’d be able to bail myself out once I got processed.
I was trying to stay calm, so I struck up a conversation with the popo to attempt to gain a few brownie points. When I mentioned that I didn’t feel drunk, the cop said that most people drive over the legal limit an average of eighty times before they ever get caught.
Eighty times, huh? Well, the odds had finally caught up to me, as there’d been plenty of other times I should’ve been busted for drunk driving. But this time I’d blown over the limit and was legally drunk, no excuses, no sympathy, no escape; and now I had to face the consequences.
I just thanked God I hadn’t hurt anybody.
I arrived at county at 3:30 a.m. and had to blow again. My blood alcohol count now read 0.089, and because it had risen (stupid $75 tequila), I was escorted straight into processing, and bingo—I was officially a ward of the state.
To make things worse, I was being held prisoner at the Hill Street station in downtown L.A., one of the roughest precincts in town. To say I had the damn Hill Street Blues was an understatement and there was no Daniel J. Travanti there to rescue me.
They let me out of the handcuffs and I had to fill out a bunch of forms (in triplicate) before they took my mug shot and fingerprinted me again. Then I was given a small plastic bag holding a bologna sandwich and a juice box that proudly proclaimed on the side: CONTAINS 0% REAL JUICE.
I was escorted to an expansive holding area populated with my fellow undesirables in one corner and a bank of pay phones in the other. There was a portly officer with a mustache (why does every cop have to have a mustache?) sitting behind a barred window, and I asked him what I had to do to bail myself out.
“Bail yourself out? Ha! You can’t bail yourself out. Who told you that?”
“The officer who arrested me. He seemed like a nice guy and he told me I could bail myself out.”
“Well, you can’t bail yourself out under any circumstances. Not to mention that you’re so mildly over the limit, I wouldn’t have brought you into the station to begin with. I just would’ve made you park your car and walk home. Guess your cop buddy wasn’t such a nice guy after all.”
With my hopes of bailing myself out dashed, I asked the officer how I could get out.
“Call a bail bondsman.”
“Do you have the number of one?”
“Nope. Can’t give you that information. If you don’t know of any, call your lawyer to get the number.”
Who in the hell memorizes his lawyer’s phone number, let alone a bail bondsman’s? The only numbers I knew by heart were my house phone and Jessica’s cell, and there was no way I was going to call either of those.
“Well, if you have nobody to call, you need to go sit in the holding cell until we call your name. Shouldn’t be more than four or five hours.”
Four or five hours?? The clock on the wall said 4:30 a.m.
So I skulked into the cell. The other occupants didn’t seem too happy to see me, and it was obvious why. I was surrounded by a crew of East L.A. Chicano gangbangers, all of them sporting wifebeaters, baggy jeans, tan work boots, mesh do-rags, and tears tattooed under their eyes. I’m talking serious mothertruckers here, folks.
I was in the cell for thirty seconds when one of the vatos with biceps bigger than Snookie’s hair, sized me up and asked, “Hey homes, are you Chris Jericho?” After a few seconds the rest of them joined in and suddenly I was a very popular jailbird.
“Yo, Jericho, let’s have a wrestling match,” another one said. “Can you really fight, vato, or are you just a fake?”
This tête-à-tête with my newfound friends was not going well. If something went down I thought I could probably take one of them, maybe even two, but there was no way I’d be able to fight them all. I wasn’t Jean-Claude