NYPDriscoll.

"So... basically, could you kick my ass right now if you wanted to?"

Driscoll never did inspire much fear, at least not of physical pain, in me when he was my R.A., and I an 18-year-old first year -- (we don't say "freshman" at UVa, because we're better than you) -- putting soiled rags and interactive paper women on my R.A.'s dorm room door. But this was not the same Driscoll who led icebreaker games and held court over our Humphreys dorm council meetings. That was English major, Jefferson Scholar Driscoll.

"Yeah, basically," he said after a moment or two to reflect. He was smiling, but wasn't kidding.

I had noticed that his hand shake was much stronger now. Or maybe I just didn't remember how it felt when I shook it for the first time just over six years ago. But Driscoll, short Driscoll who loved U2 and wore ties to football games, definitely carries a certain aura with him these days: Don't even front. I will hurt you.

That Humphreys was the best dorm in UVa history was never in doubt -- we had the No. 4 overall draft picks in both MLB and NFL drafts (D'Brickashaw Ferguson, who has started all 32 games of his career as an offensive tackle for the Jets, and Ryan Zimmerman, who lived next door to Driscoll, and is now the third baseman of the future for the Washington Nationals), the hottest girl in our class (who my best friend later dated), kids named Phil Jackson, Robert Downey and Seth Green, Hot Dog Man, Wes the Original Beach Kid, a badass who beat cancer twice, and the real life nephew (therefore, the real Fresh Prince) of Uncle Phil from "The Fresh Prince." Yeah I'd say Humphreys dominated.

But it was really our hall that led the way. Humphreys First Left. And it was headed by Driscoll, an R.A. who was firm but fair, who never went out of his way to get anyone in trouble, which was why everyone respected him.

On 4/20, for example, it was becoming way too obvious what holiday we were celebrating in Hot Dog Man's room (hint: it wasn't Hitler's birthday). So Driscoll tried knocking to warn us that other R.A.'s passing through may not be so fun to deal with. But instead of a reply, all he heard in the seconds that followed were the sounds of a muted gathering and a panicked Wes, spraying Lysol all over the place with abandon, like it was DDT and his door was a jungle in North Vietnam. Driscoll is not an idiot. He just went back to his room, opened up his Pleistocene era IBM laptop (which just recently died, I discovered) and logged onto AIM. Tom was also logged on. A few moments after the coast was declared clear, a message popped up on his screen. It was from our R.A.: guys, it's pretty obvious what you're doing in there. please just go to another room.

Driscoll wanted to smell no evil.

Would your R.A. have done that? Better question: would your R.A. have done that... and then become an NYPD officer?

I just couldn't believe it when I first heard in March -- Tipton, from Humphreys second right, had sent me a Facebook message after he ran into Officer Driscoll on the streets in New York. I wrote back asking if it was a joke. Driscoll?! My R.A.?! The dude who hated getting kids in trouble when other people in his position got off on it?!

"you better believe it," Tipton replied. "also, he made a remark about how it wasn't enough for him to police the hallways at dorms..."

It took some networking, but I was able to get a hold of Driscoll's number just before I left NYC to come home.

"When I see you I am going to take a bong rip and blow the smoke right in your face," I texted him, the first he'd heard of me in maybe three years. I always loved to mess with Driscoll.

He answered the text, probably said something to himself about how little I'd changed, and disregarded my provocations.

So I kept messing with him.

"Please don't search my bag when we meet up tomorrow," I said when we actually got to speak on the phone.

"Ya know," he said in a voice that only slightly betrays his Queens roots, "that right there is enough for probable cause, just so you know."

Driscoll wasn't in uniform the day we met up, sadly. He was still working, just in court, so he looked like he could have been coming from any office job, or a Strake Jesuit assembly, or a baptism. But he was still packing heat, and still had the badge. We had lunch at a Cuban restaurant; he paid. Then we grabbed a coffee; I paid. If you're ever poor and being subsidized by a friend who knows you're poor, and you want to make yourself feel better, to trick yourself into the notion that you're carrying your weight somehow, always offer to pay for coffee. It's cheaper than food.

I paid for Driscoll's coffee, and we sat in a park next to City Hall, on a bench that started in the sun, that slowly drifted into the cool embrace of the shade. We talked, and talked, and talked. Where to start? It had been so long. I hadn't even known he'd been in the academy when I was still in school. He knew just as little about what I'd been doing -- the Balkans, Africa, wow. I was fascinated as Driscoll talked about what he has learned about humanity, government, law, "the real world." He loves that phrase. He said it maybe ten times. The context of "real" for him was completely different, but the lessons he'd learned, it sounded very similar to the realizations I myself had come to over the past two years.

The words I'll never forget are "abject disasters." That's how he paraphrases the story of people. Humanity is abject disaster. I thought of Bosnia. I thought of Kenya. I thought of shaking hands with George Bush, and all the people who have perished in those lands, and because of those hands. I thought of a thousand places and faces, all at once, all on that bench, that were once real in the flesh to me. Human beings are abject disasters. I agree.

And yet...

And yet.

Lots of us are insulated from the types of things that would drive people like me and Driscoll to this state of mind. I know it wasn't like this for him, the son of Irish immigrants, but I grew up living in an affluent neighborhood, riding in nice cars with excellent sound systems, eating out and getting new cleats for every sport, every season. I knew life was hard for people not as fortunate; after all, my dad always made sure to mention these people in our nightly prayers. And sometimes we would go volunteer at a soup kitchen. A couple of times. Maybe just twice, actually. Both on Thanksgiving. But I didn't really get it. We don't even have black people in my neighborhood. Maybe one family. But they're not quite like the black people my dad was mentioning in those prayers.

Driscoll's a cop on the Alphabet City beat, and I'm a wanderer on the Eastern Europe/East Africa beat, and we both know that humanity is not pretty. We sought out a reality that doesn't fall in line with the one we were subjected to at UVa, or that most UVa grads experience in the jobs they typically take upon graduating. And we learned, in a way that we can't forget, just as you can't forget the feel of a nice breeze, or the warmth of a beautiful woman's bed, or the pain of a lost loved one, that life is hard for most people. That includes Americans. Hard. And it brings out a side in humans that is almost enough to make you lose hope. They are violent, and selfish, and drunk, and irrational. It makes you want to throw up your arms and say fuck it, what's the point?

It's when you reach that point when you have to find a reason to not quit. Perhaps this is the point of life: finding a way to just keep going. Forget saving the world, or policing it. Just waking up every day, getting out of bed, no matter what may happen from that point until you go to bed at night -- that is a quite a mission.

Driscoll? He may disagree with that statement. His mission, after law school, is to land a job in the U.S. Attorney's Office. The anti Gonzalez.

Me? I just want to write a book, man. About humanity, and these lessons I've learned the past two years.

Maybe I should amend what I said earlier. Maybe the mission, the point of it all, isn't just to keep breathing. That would make life pretty dull, wouldn't you say? If you want to maintain your sanity in the midst of all these abject disasters, maybe the key is to be able to analyze all of our issues while laughing about it, as calloused as it may seem. That is my mission in this book. That is what I am going to be doing for the next year.