Hot Cops For Conscious Expansion

But seriously, what if the cops didn't suck?

Last month, I followed my partner to Australia, where they were performing in Is This A Room. I had to be convinced, aggressively, for months, to come on the the trip, before concluding that 34 is too early to start acting like an old lady. That being said, If you’ve never been to Australia, then I can tell you that it is too far away. This is not not in response to today’s story of an American taking a baby wombat from it’s mother, if you go to Australia, please do not touch the wombats.

With the layovers and delay, it took over 53 hours to get from JFK to Perth, and, what happens when you are in a tin can eating weird snacks for two whole entire days is that you turn into a zen monk. It’s true, I became enlightened. Don’t worry, it wore off. But then and there, strapped into that terrible metal chair, I had no choice but to be completely present. Intense and total presence was just the only option besides wine. Once you have run out of movies to care about, and, especially if your screen is broken in the middle seat, if you start trying to figure out how the hell you are going to get through your current 16 hour flight, you’re looking forward to a 12 hour layover, before another 14 hour flight, not to mention the 48 hour customs line, on the way back through LA. The hard fact is, if you think too hard about being on an plane for too long while being on a plane, your head might explode. And that’s illegal according to TSA.

Is This A Room was part of the Perth Festival, and the Fringe was also in town, and so, with Becca’s permission, I made a Tinder account to find friends to help me take in all that theatre. I was especially glad that I had brought a plus one to a show called Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett, because there were acrobats swinging through the air with their ballerina buns hooked together by carabiner, and that’s just not the kind of experience you want to have by yourself. Anyway, it was through Perth and a queer Berliner cabaret that I met the German woman living in Australia working as a park ranger. For the sake of her privacy, I don’t want to share her name, so we’ll just call her hot cop.

This hot cop was a woman, but please try to visualize your own hot Australian. This hot cop was very hot, so hot, indeed, that she was pulling off her leather bracelet and puka shell accessories. She was also very smart, and I didn’t know she was a park ranger until we’d been having beers, and so perhaps that’s why I did not filter the first question that came to mind, which was, “Ew, do you hav, like, to give people parking tickets?” She said no, she didn’t have to hit a quota, or anything like that. “So you give out zero parking tickets, right?” She said no, she still gave out tickets, because the law exists to make people realizing what they are doing and how it affects the people around them. The rules exist in order to protect people, society, and the environment. Reader, I choked on my beer. “The law as a good thing? The law as a matter of caring for the Earth?” Can you even imagine?

I’m sure there are cops in the United States who would like to be cops in this way, but the bureaucracy sure gives them one hell of a time at making that a reality, and, anyway, I think it’s pretty obvious that United States Law doesn’t give a shit about the environment. The hot Australian cop understood that this conversation might sound strange to me as a former New Yorker. While there are plenty issues with cops created from colonialism, the epidemic murder of unarmed Black men by the police is uniquely American, and, without having to even mention a name like George Floyd, I think we can all agree that there’s just kind of the wrong attitude. Or anyway, that’s how I thought of the police until I considered the prospect that a cop could be hot, and I had certainly never considered the idea that a cop could be someone who it would be fun to go snorkeling with. Her ranger job was not about parking tickets, and she had a clear reason for the times she choose to give tickets in general. “A ticket makes a person reflect on their actions, to understand how they are affecting the environment, so that they can be in harmony with the community.” It had not occurred to me that there even could be laws, or such a kind, smart, queer person, who I would definitely be friends with, if she didn’t live on the other side of the world.

It’s wild to consider the idea of rules contributing the survival of our species, and it’s extremely urgent, even if you don’t start thinking about what’s gonna happen when the robots get smarter than the humans. It blew my mind to consider the prospect of rules and regulations existing in order to put life in the perspective of caring for each other, and our home, Mother Earth. To make laws to expand our perspective, not punish the individual, but to create a consciousness built around harmony, health, and happiness. It seems obvious that police should be working to help resource food and shelter for the rapidly growing population of houseless people, which would also be possible with less than pennies from the pockets of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, but to be fair, they’re busy getting off the face of the planet). When I think about policing from the perspective of locally nourishing the global community, it’s not a proposition of whether or not there should be cops, but the question of whether the world would be a better place if all cops were hot Australians.

Pancake Brain is a weekly newsletter about politics, pop culture, and the psychedelic experience by the award-winning and -losing writer Lauren Duca. Subscribe to receive a fresh essay in your inbox on weekends. Please forward to friends or share wherever you do your best doom scrolling.

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