Tito’s home-boy was in town for the weekend. To celebrate, a bunch of the homies stayed up all night drinking Patron and High Life. Tito did the right thing and slept at his friend’s crib even though he had to get back to the east side early in the morning, yo.

He left at some-thing like 7 AM with blood shot eyes and a headache and sped down the 110, taking advantage of the clear roads. From out of nowhere, a cop pulls him over.

The cop proceeds to give Tito a field sobriety test. The sun rises bright and clear over the po-po’s shoulder and Tito’s eyes directly hit in the morning glare and it’s messing him up. “Hey, man,” he says to the cop, “Can I do this . . . like . . . not staring directly into the sun, sir?”

That was the best part of Tito’s day, because the officer obliged. Try as he might, the cop could not declare him drunk, even after dragging the test on for five rounds of the same finger-tracking exercise. And indeed, he no longer was drunk, just hurting with hangover. He escapes with only a speeding ticket. Happy Holidays, Tito . . . from your friends, the LAPD.

He doesn’t get much sleep during the day. There’s another big party that night, but he’s still crabby and cranky from the morning. “Let’s go to the club,” says Tito as the party winds down. “My cousin will be the designated driver, yo. I’m not risking it again.”

So Tito and his friends go to the club. They stand in a long line in the cold in front of The Havana Club in Alhambra. Anna doesn’t stand in line for a club, ever, for any reason, but she concedes this time, because Tito had a bad day and all he wants to do is get into this club and have a pitcher of beer with his friends.

They get to the head of the line. The doorman looks at Tito’s clothes, shakes his head and says, “Man, your pants are too baggy and you gotta lose the jacket.” He points to a sign on the door that says “Strict dress code enforced.”

“Man, we don’t need to go in there anyway, dawg,” says Tito’s friend.

Tito’s sister is already inside, however, and he can’t just leave her there. She comes out and yells at Tito in front of his friends for not dressing better. His cousin drives him twenty minutes to his home where he changes his pants and loses the sports jacket.

Tito returns to the Havana Club, irritated cousin in tow and re-enters the line, which of course, is much longer now. He stands there with his friends for over an hour. The line doesn’t move, but somehow many people who seem to know the doorman are ushered inside by his wide gracious arm, including three Alhambra cops in full uniform. Tito, hoping to find out if his pants are acceptable, attempts to make eye contact with the doorman on more than one occasion, but is ignored.

The three Alhambra cops saunter outside the club a while later, grinning and carrying ziplock baggies of cigars in one hand whilst keeping a finger on their night-sticks with the other. Tito is still freezing in line with his cousin and his friends. It’s nearly 1 AM by this time and any buzz he might have had earlier has melted away.

Then the line moves. The doorman approaches Tito and says to him as he shakes his head, “Man, I wish I would have seen you earlier. Those pants, they are still just too baggy, man.”

Random story time of an event in years past . . .

It was about 3 o’clock in the morning. We were dead tired and heading up a deserted, winding four-lane divided highway toward Santa Cruz. Neither of us could hardly keep our eyes open, so we pulled over to the side of the road, which was littered with about a foot of dry fallen leaves. I could hear them crackle underneath the Jeep tires as we pulled to a stop.

We were masters at the art of car camping. It took only about 10 minutes for us to move all our items into the front seats and to line all the windows with flimsy bamboo beach mats and our tattered sarongs. We unfurled our sleeping bags and cuddled up in the cold and immediately fell into a deep, necessary sleep.

We awoke with the early morning sunrise and the sound and force of semi-trucks barreling past. “Well,” he said. “I suppose it’s time to get going again.” We sat and talked for a few minutes and debated about whether we should wake n’ bake. We decided to hold off, a restraint that we didn’t often exercise.

“I need to pee,” he said. “But I’m kind of nervous about it. Cops love to give tickets for that kind of thing.”

“What?” I said. “Cops don’t give tickets for peeing on the roadside!”

“Yes, they do,” he laughed and got out of the Jeep, leaves crunching underfoot.

I was naked in the Jeep and covered with blankets and leisurely waking up while he was outside quietly pissing when all of a sudden, I heard the voice of another person.

“Whatcha doing there?” said the voice. “Are you peeing?”

“No.” Later as he re-told the story, he mentioned that this was about the time he ‘quietly put his dick away.’ He said, “I’m checking my tire pressure.”

“Really? Cause I thought you were peeing there, son.”

“Nah, just waking up. Girlfriend’s in the truck. Checking that we’re good to go.” I heard him move through the leaves again back toward the rear door. I thought that was going to be it, but I heard the crunching of leaves by a second set of more determined footsteps. It was about this time that I was really glad that we’d chosen not to break bread that morning.

“I’m gonna need to take a look there in the truck,” the cop said.

“Why?” he asked.

“What if there’s someone back there with a gun?” What is that cop talking about? I thought to myself. It was one of those frighteningly absurd moments that just come from out of nowhere.

“She’s naked.” He said to the policeman.

“Well, I have to make sure she’s not a hostage.”

Again. What?!!? I was busy throwing on a shirt and pants in case this situation went spiraling downhill. The door cracked open. I could see the policeman inching closer, could hear the leaves shuffling. I did the only thing I could think to do in such a strange situation – be a goofball. I laughed and giggled and called out in a sing-song voice, “I’m here of my own recognizance, Officer!”

And the next moment was an unfolding of reason. The policeman realized he was out of line, I could tell by the suddenly self-conscious look on his face, a look of “Oh shit, I’m being ridiculous.” And then the three of us all made acute eye contact and exchanged those real moment of truth kind of looks with each other. Then the cop said, “Have a nice day, folks!” Then he waved and retreated, crunching backwards through the fallen leaves. (The spot was so tight that the two of them had been in, that the cop didn’t even have room to turn around.)

He jumped into his squad car and zoomed away. He’d been sitting there, we figured out later, since well before sunrise, just waiting for one of us to pop out of the car in a marijuana smoke cloud, or brandishing a gun or a hostage or something. He’d pulled up deliberately into the blind spot of the Jeep so no one would see him when they got out of the car for their good-morning piss . . . or whatever it was he surmised we might be doing wrong.

So let this be a lesson to you all – yes, cops do indeed give tickets for roadside pissing. If you get caught – keep your cool, put your dick away quietly and just say that you were checking the air pressure of your tires. Try to make sure that your naked friend who’s still in the car has stashed all the guns and hostages into the glove box. You’ll be fine.