The last word from the eye of a pig...that's seen it all
So there was this guy who accidentally became a cop in the early ’90s, a Gen-Xer with a really weird giggle and an affinity for horror movies and the sloppiest hot dogs Chicago and New York City could produce.
He loved firearms but hated hunting. He avoided conflict but enjoyed things like watching the first Gulf War live each evening from an armchair next to his old man. Without getting into details, this was a guy that had no business loitering in a Walmart parking lot much less wearing a polyester uniform held together with a gunbelt, but that is just what happened.
The story of how the latter came about is actually too personal to disclose, but he needed a job and this is the one he wound up with. Or perhaps it happened to him? Either way.
Like most things in his life, all of his preconceptions and assumptions were incorrect about said accidental employment but like most dilettantes he found his niche and embraced his penchant for bringing peace where he could while also having an all-access pass to some of the most interesting and horrifying stuff the world has to offer; a front row seat on the ultimate thrill ride—all you had to do was avoid perforation and letting your brain melt. (Sadly, he succeeded at neither.)
What he DID have was a penchant for typing almost as quickly as he spoke, and call after call, abused kid and mangled body after body, Hep-C and TB exposure after exposure, he found a way to make sense of it all (or to purge it at least): writing.
While the internet as you know it had only just gone from its crawling to a walking stage in the Bush Sr. and Clinton eras, this was still a pre-Facebook world (if you can believe there was ever a time without it and its dumbass cousins). Something called “internet message boards” are where people went to have conversations in the written form, and it was on those platforms I embraced the catharsis of storytelling; passing on events too unpleasant or at least too weird to believe under a nickname, and adding my perspective.
Thousands of words would come forth for anyone who cared to read them, and the guy who was losing his ability to “feel” suddenly began to regrow those psychological nerves. He began to feel “good” again. It was glorious.
Then some longhaired hippie screwed it all up.
“I am taking over a weekly alternative newspaper,” someone who until then I thought was a friend told me, “and you are going to be one of my columnists. Send me a sample.”
“No way,” I said. “My department will cut my head off if I do that.”
So twelve years later, I believe I may be one of the longest running contributors to a local fish-wrapper that’s been in print and lining parrot cages for at least seventeen years.
What the hell, man?
I’ve written columns* that generated not just threats to get me fired, they’ve almost gotten me sued and prosecuted. My peak? In one instance an entire group of people went to the entire City Council of Chattanooga, its Mayor, and even a sitting U.S. Senator in efforts to get me canned because they didn’t like my “words”.
(*Fun Fact: I’ve always titled my submissions as “Eye of the Pig” after a Cypress Hill song. ‘Look into the eye of the pig, it’s seen it all.’)
I’ve begged my editor to fire me so we settled on going from weekly to tri-weekly. I’ve grossly insulted the owner (funny but complicated). Yet like any other genital growth, I’ve persisted.
Until now.
Instead of settling in to write about how much I enjoy witnessing literal mass-hysteria and the need for mass production of brown colored slacks to accompany nationwide pants soiling, I have learned that The Pulse, who has outlived so many other alternative weekly newspapers, is finally hitting the Great Print Pause Button and calling the game for a while.
I want to thank Gary Poole for not letting me quit. I want to thank the half dozen proofreaders I’ve had over the years for getting counseling afterwards. I want to thank Brewer Media for letting me provide a peephole into the life of a living breathing beat cop that the public normally only gets to see in captivity (via policy and threats of non-advancement); an unvarnished and often foul litany that started as a catharsis, and…well, ends as one as well.
Today, a unique chapter in Chattanooga’s newspaper history comes quietly to an end and, like the job that got me here in the first place, I’m honestly grateful to have been a part of it.
It’s been a hell of a ride-a-long folks. Double check to make sure you don’t leave your cell phone in the seat and if you think that’s blood on your shoes, you’re probably right...but it’ll clean off and be ready the next day. Just like me.
Officer Alexander Donald Teach will be 10-07 for the remainder.
Thank you.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.