When the Connecticut Post decided to ask Bridgeport Mayor John M. Fabrizi to take a surprise drug test, I drew the straw to pop the question.

Comes with the territory, I suppose, for having known Fabrizi and an assortment of other Bridgeport politicians for 20 or more years.

So Wednesday, the day after the Fourth of July, I called him and asked if I could talk to him privately for a few minutes.

Fabrizi walked the short distance from the City Hall Annex, at 999 Broad St., to the Connecticut Post at 410 State St. He was dressed casually in a dark blue, open-collared shirt with a Bridgeport logo on its breast and cream-colored, pleated linen slacks.

Fabrizi roamed the newsroom for a minute, shaking hands and schmoozing reporters and editors.

We went into a conference room and sat down. "We want to take you up on your offer to have a drug test," I said.

"What, right now?" He had a quizzical look on his face.

"No," I said, "tomorrow's fine, if you need to rearrange your schedule."

"Come on, you come with me and we'll go right now."

I reached for the phone and called Allen M. Gregory, president of Gregory Services LLC, of Milford, where the Post had made arrangements for a test.

"Allen, that employee you were talking about with Sharon Ferguson (human resources director at the Post), well, it's not really an employee. It's John Fabrizi, the mayor of Bridgeport, and he wants to know if he can come over

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now."

Gregory said come on over. The mayor and I walked to the City Hall Annex, starting a conversation that over the next hour or so would cover his cocaine use, his drinking, his wife and son, his weight, his shame, his concern for his political future.

We got into BPT-1 and headed for Interstate 95. He vented about a few things and then stopped. He was quiet for a few seconds.

"I did this to myself," he said. Stopped at a red light at the corner of State and Broad streets, he eased down the driver's door window, lit a cigarette and hung his left arm out the window.

"You did this to yourself, John," he said in a softer, inner-directed tone. We sat. The light stayed red.

Then, out of nowhere: "For God's sake," he said, "I'm 262 POUNDS!!"

He turned and looked at me. "I'd look like you, if I just " His words trailed off.

I don't think anyone I've encountered in my life ever said they aspired to look like me, but, yes, I have the physique of a gymnast when compared with the mayor.

Fabrizi's 20th wedding anniversary was June 27. In the post-confession days, there wasn't much celebrating going on in the house.

"My wife comes everywhere with me now," he said. "She comes to council meetings, reads a book. Now she sees some of the stuff I go through. We're closer now than we've every been. Gotta figure out a date to celebrate that anniversary." The mayor's account of his trouble is this: He likes to drink. When he would have too much to drink, and when dark stars were in alignment, the mayor would ease into a line or two of cocaine.

Without elaborating, he said he realized at some point in 2004 that he had to quit the cocaine, and vowed to himself that he would. But another night came, a few too many drinks, and a few more lines. That night, he says, he realized he was not in control. He talked to a friend, Dr. Jay Berkowitz, who put him into treatment.

That was in 2004, he said, and he has not touched cocaine since. And he would have kept the matter quiet, he concedes, had it not been for the disclosure of a document in a federal drug case in which it was alleged that Fabrizi was a customer of an accused Bridgeport drug dealer, a former member of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee.

We pulled off I-95 and onto Route 1 toward Milford.

Gregory Services is at 22 Lafayette St., just off the Milford Green, in a small Colonial house.

We went in and Gregory asked the mayor to sit, explained a few things to him, and had him sign some papers. The mayor had, I thought, been remarkably upbeat up to this point. Now his body language changed. He fidgeted some. He frowned. He looked a little smaller in the chair.

He turned toward me. "Do you know how embarrassing this is?" There was not a lot of bravado in his voice.

But when the paperwork was over, he seemed to regain his equilibrium. Gregory took him toward the door to a bathroom and I wondered how far a reporter's responsibility went in such matters.

"Come on," Fabrizi yelled in my direction, "you wanna watch this?"

"No, thank you," I replied.

"Actually," Gregory intervened, "state law prohibits a witnessed specimen collection."

"I give you special dispensation," the mayor yelled.

I asked Gregory if he was going to take a hair sample.

"Hair? You want hair?," Fabrizi asked. He threw his arms open in a gesture of invitation. Gregory declined. On the way back he asked, "As a newspaper guy, do you think I'm going to survive this?"

With a Democratic primary some 14 months away, I told him I thought his future was pretty much in his own control. During an earlier conversation on other topics, the mayor emphasized, "I'm telling you the truth."

I said, "If you're not telling the truth, it's not me you have to worry about."

There are others watching. Michael J. Daly is managing editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 330-6394 or via e-mail at mdaly@ctpost.com.