Each punishment for DUI is its own unique torment; the interlock is wiping your with ass with tender hemorrhoid. A several-times daily pinprick of impassioned annoyance, which mostly faded after 2 months, followed by a long numbness and resignation. On busy days with many errands, it was a stomach bug clenching then erupting over the tender hemorrhoid. After spending a year in the car with it, you’d think i’d have nicknamed it or bonded with it in some Helsinki way. Nope. Fuck no. An object. Refused to take a picture. Used the same mouthpiece for 12 months, covered it for a year with the same shirt in the floor of the car, which I will give to Goodwill or burn. I wouldn’t waste a single extra calorie on it – my silent protest. Around the 4th month, they upgraded the unit’s firmware and shaved 20 seconds off the startup time. I could not confirm this other than by noting the version on the splash-screen. There are no internet forums for Intoxalock. This was the closest i allowed myself to get to it; the rest was strictly business.
Every month I visit the Interlock SuperStore for recalibration. Calibration = status reporting to the DMV. The employees service you quickly, quietly, doing their jobs as invisibly and sans chit-chat, not wanting to deal with your frustrations or sob stories. I heard plenty of them in the lobby. A lot of people don’t take the thing seriously enough, or their situation seriously enough, or the thing sneaks up on you with its extremely imperfect accuracy. I took the interlock very seriously, but i still had a few agonizing brushes with the rules and bullshit fines due to its imperfections.
The interlock’s boundary is .03 – blow over and you can’t start the car, blow over while driving and you get hit with an $85 fine. Blow over 5 times in a 1-2 month calibration period and you get hit with another year at $80/month. I had 8 overblows the whole year. The first was the day after Memorial Day when i woke up and blew .06, then went back to bed and went to work 4 hrs later. Nothing wrong with a good drunken bbq, i didn’t drive, and i learned what buzzed the next morning feels like. The next 3 overblows came in one 5 minute period when I blew .032 15 minutes after starting the car at .029 and having finished my 3rd beer in 3 hrs 30 minutes prior to driving. $85 in fines. 2 came when the thing was so heated up in June it registered .15 on half a beer and immediately went into its own reboot cycle. 3 minutes later it registered .037, 3 minutes later it registered .018 and let me start the car. That made me late for daycare and cost $25.
1 overblow came after the Squealer – I had a shot and a beer after the race, rode 10 miles and with .012 bac (half a beer, given my body weight) drove the car to the awards ceremony where i nursed a 20 oz beer for 1.5 hrs and then blew .035. Probably a legitimate reading, but it pissed me off. I was following all the rules – out with my friends after a great day, drinking responsibly with a plan for getting home, after dealing with the interlock for 8 months. i was over .03 by about 2 sips and my bac was coming down. FFS I’VE LEARNED MY LESSON, LET ME GO HOME ALREADY! I stood around for 15 minutes til i got under the line – picking my butt in the parking lot, organizing my trunk, cleaning garbage and cheerios out of the backseat, too embarrassed to go back inside. I wanted to to yank the thing out of the car, but that anger lasted about 10 seconds til i forced the numbness back over me. Much better than looking at the calendar and chafing.
The final overblow came driving home from the 12 Hrs at Night in Prescott, 10 days before my sentence ended. I had blown 0.0 for an hour and a half when suddenly it registered .037 on a rolling retest. I pulled over and restarted it in 5 minutes and it read 0.0 again. This was a physiological impossibility that would cost me another $85. Stupid, and defiant. There was a splash of leftover beer in a waterbottle that i drained before refilling it with water, and the thing’s accuracy goes to shit in the heat. Maybe it was the grapes I’d been eating, the garbage in the trunk, my disgusting teeth having ridden bikes all night, mine and Kila’s b.o… Nah, I got lazy, and had a sip of delicious warm chocolate beer that tasted like coffee at 9am before the water. Even though 1 oz of beer could not possibly affect me, the policy of the Interlock company is that a violation is your fault. You have no grounds to appeal. A rolling retest failure over .03 but not over .08 does not impact you with the DMV. I just paid the fine and gave up arguing. A final smackdown, just 1 week before I got the thing removed. Dont forget that you are a fuck-up and a criminal, and your relationship with the car and the law is all uphill for the next 7 years.
An interlock is not really there to keep you under .03, its there to punish you for having anything at all. If I wasn’t so self-destructive about it, I wouldn’t have even tried cause it only got me in trouble. The employees at the Interlock Superstore acknowledge that the thing is frightfully inaccurate and that any alcohol can register a .03 reading, that your reading can swing wildly over 2 immediately consecutive samples, that food and sports drinks and mouthwash can set it off. I saw all of this randomness, its unhidden indignity made me angrier and more afraid. A .03 limit, when tested accurately, I had very little trouble obeying. Amidst the self-loathing and self-doubt I’ve been struggling with since getting arrested, going a whole year with no question of impaired driving has been very empowering. They all tell you you can’t you won’t give up loser. The undeniable benefit of the interlock is teaching me to plan ahead and know how much i’ve had. Its been an excellent experience and proof of penance, sorta.
The hardest part, the most depressing part, is facing the daily reminder of the might of the State and seeing the system stacked against you. Over by .002 – guilty! Interlock misreads your sample – guilty! Thousands of them in use every year, and yet this wantonness continues. No one in the legislature gives a shit. Interlocks are good for the economy. Once labeled a criminal, you simply don’t have the same rights as others. Or the same voice. This is something most blacks or hispanics have learned at an early age, and it certainly changed my outlook on the patterns of power in our society. Get into an accident – the cop is gonna be looking at me. Run into AZ’s “Zero Tolerance Per Se” DUID law, i’m going to jail for a month. The corresponding teaching moment is i have become a much calmer driver, more conservative, less confrontational, less obvious, wanting to go 72 and just blend in, like a mexican-american in AZ under the cloud of SB1070. The car is a big fat probable cause, and alcohol aside, the smartest thing to do is realize you are the cat’s caught mouse when driving it.
This much-improved citizen of the road just wants to rejoin society, drive my F150 on a road trip finally. I had it a month before my foolishness made it off-limits to me everywhere but Mexico. I want to park the Prius in the hybrid spot at Fresh & Easy. I want to take the Acura for an oil change and a car wash; I’ve avoided both due to the risk of the mechanic missing the rolling retest. Then I will change the registration to Beckie’s name, so cops scanning plates won’t profile me.
The last few weeks with the thing are coming when its over 100 degrees outside, but I am placid and numb enough to look past 30 seconds of roasting in the car til it lets me turn on the AC. At least the Acura could roll its windows down via the remote control, or the kids would have cooked. The responsible parent alternative — ironic, given how i got into this situation — would be to leave the doors open while I blew my sample. This would have given the world an even better view of my shame: at work, in front of daycare, in my driveway, Hello Friends! I don’t think anyone who mattered saw me all year long. Hunching down like doing a one-hit on a ski lift looks almost normal. You could be checking your messages, finding something for the kids, getting a drink of coffee. By the end of the sentence I just didn’t care anymore. You see me, you don’t, i made a mistake, I learned. fuck it, whatever, I’m moving on.
If nothing positive comes out of this, I am the loser all those miserable motherfuckers in Shame Training say I am. But I’m not. So here’s my wisdom.
Fuck it, whatever, I’m moving on.