Oh well. It happened. I don’t like doing what I am told, and there is a cost to that.

 The Law office was in a plaza with a dentist and a doctor. I arrived early and filled out a form with a bunch of information on there. I had no idea what it would cost, and unfortunately the attorney that I wanted to hire had died of cancer on July 6th a few months earlier. I knew his father, a Sicilian man well into his 80′s who played the mandolin and had been a fixture in the immigrant community. I imagine that that gentleman never imagined that he would outlive his son. I get a young lawyer. He has watery blue eyes, and is taken aback at the names of the people that I know. The attorney who referred me to him. The fact that I know the deceased firm’s namesake’s father. I can tell that he doesn’t know what to make of me, as I am being quiet and organized about the whole thing. I describe in detail everything that happened and answer a variety of questions. And then I cut to the chase.

So, am I going to go to Jail ?

 Apparently not. Apparently not unless something really bad happens that I don’t know about or, unless I had some some really bad things in other places I am not telling him about, or unless I have served time before that I am not being forthcoming about.

 Ok. That makes me feel better.

 And he is not worried about Jail. That does not enter his mind. He is worried about having the charges dismissed. He is worried about me paying for everything, he is worried about the financial ramifications to my life if I get a period where I cannot go to work. He is worried about how I am going to explain this foolishness to other people if I do have to take time off of work have I though about that? I pull a visa card with a $10,000 limit and put it on the table and ask what his fee is. It is only $3,000 plus an additional $2,000 if it goes to trial. I tell him that is reasonable, and I trust that he will put his full attention to the case.

 I ask if he has gotten a lot of referrals from the attorney that referred me to him. He said no, and I say, you know who that is right, the fellow on all the television commercials and in all the magazines, the biggest firm back in my town? He says he knows exactly who they are. I say good, because they are friends of mine and they want to refer more people to you, lets see how all this turns out. He smiles. We shake hands. I see the woman at the front desk on the way out, they charge my credit card $3,000 tax included. We shake hands again. They give me three copies of the same business card. I say thank you. He says it will be two weeks before any real developments may happen. I turn and leave. In America, freedom can be put on credit.

 I got my first bit of paperwork from the firm this week. It is some court document that has a statement for a request for a hearing. It has signatures on it in blue ink and a pretty seal and a stamp in red ink. It looks important. I put it in my bible and stick the book back on the shelf.

 Now I am leaving for Texas again. Almost done with my travels, in the final stretch of the year, the dog days, the indian summer of the southeast that never abates; it is still sweltering. Atlanta is flooding. Florida is baking. And Alabama still don’t give a damn about anything at all.

Actually the report says that it was Sunday morning at 1:58 AM.

I have been handcuffed before and put into a car but never taken to the station. Of course, all of that happened in the past, the exciting benevolence of youth and general indifference to the consequences of a little footnote to your record, and perhaps a charming picture to look back upon and say, “Yes I was a wild one back then.”.

But this time was different, I was actually taken into custody, and I have a nice piece of paper that says THE STATE OF __________ V.S. _______ to prove it. Well, at least on a piece of paper the whole STATE is against me because no one in the STATE knows that the entire STATE is against me aside from a few officers of the LAW, my ATTORNEY, my LOVER and, well….now, you. And the reason why this all happened doesn’t really matter; it was boring and trivial and possibly deserved. But let me tell you about how to achieve this confusing situation of having an entire STATE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA against you.

First you have a disagreement with an officer of the law, about what your rights are and what you are entitled to do if they ask you. Second you are polite about the disagreement and explain to the officer that it is in your best interest not to co-operate with anything they are asking you to do because you feel that it is a violation of your:

A. Rights
B. Religion
C. Your attorney has advised you not to submit to such things.
D. All of the above in that order progressing from A to C in such a way that coincides with how angry and or frustrated you are making the police officers which will directly coincide with how difficult they are making it for you to get out of what ever situation you have found yourself in.

Then they inform you that they are going to arrest you. You nod as if you understand, and tell them that you respect their job, and that there are no hard feelings over what they are doing even though you disagree with them and would like to speak to your attorney at that point. Or perhaps you asked to speak with your attorney about that previously and that is what got you quickly to the next point without any foreplay:

Then they handcuff you.

Now what happens after that is probably different for everyone. Me, well I got my handcuffing done with my arms behind my back, although I am sure he was just getting even that I was so polite to him while he was recording every word I was saying. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that I was wearing a nice brown tailored vest that matched my tailored pants that I had to take to M____ A______’s suit store back when they were still open and harboring mafia ex cons that looked like Ray Liotta and were tailoring suits at extremely reasonable prices, so much so that you would see it sensible to buy very nice suits that belonged to someone then deceased that eventually found their way into the local thrift store, and take it there, affording yourself not only the ability to be perpetually dressed in suits of exquisite fabric, but also cuts and styles that you would never see on any one else, that could not be mistaken for anything bought at a box store.

At this point they will ask for all of your personal belongings. You will look like an asshole for not being able to take off a thin gold chain because you either don’t normally wear jewelry and someone else put it on you, and / or you are so viciously angry and scared that you will not be able to keep it together enough to take it off because your hands are shaking so badly. They will also ask for the ring on your small finger, which you will then inform them is very dear to you as it belonged to your great grandmother, and it was her wedding band, and you would like them to make sure that nothing amiss became of it. They toss all of these things in a small brown sandwich bag.

Then they put you into a nice Ford vehicle that has no door handles on the inside, and also has a bunch of neat bells and whistles that you don’t normally get to see in cars unless this is your sort of thing and you spend a lot of time either sleeping with police or getting on their bad side.

Then they make you wait. Perhaps for an hour. With handcuffs bending your wrists behind you and metal cutting into your bony hands that are behind your back in such a way that every bump in the road makes you feel as if you are going to snap something important.

Then they may in fact take you on a thirty minute drive out into the country where they will allow you to slide around the back seat because they did not put a seatbelt on you, and place you in a converted semi trailer cargo area that has a cute jail cell in it, with some drunks trying to make conversation with you and a cloistering smell of urine where someone must have lost it completely. Here they act like you don’t exist because you said you wanted to speak to your lawyer and by law they can not ask you anything from that point forward without your lawyer present. You get to sit there on some stainless steel thing, with stainless steel wire mesh and stainless steel locks on the outside as you inadvertently listening to some unseen poor bastard get grilled and screamed at by the county’s finest for the better part of two hours. Then they come get you again. Sometimes they might be mean to you at this point because you are a piece of luggage they had forgotten that they had to deal with, and also you don’t seem scared or really bothered by the situation much, and are still really polite and unshaken. You say thank you sir. Yes sir. No sir. And that is all. If you are lucky they hand cuff you on the front this time and try not to bounce your head around the car to much as they take turns going over the speed limit because they have to get your down to the county jail and they want to get home off shift in time to watch some infomercial or whatever else is on at four in the morning.

Then you come up to the JAIL. It says JAIL no where on the building because you are coming up to the special back entrance that you only get to go to if you are either there for business or you work there. Everything is gray and / or dark blue with black letters. The officers seem to like that color. It must be inexpensive paint. You get led into a very brightly lit open space that looks like just about any county office you might have had to go to downtown, except everyone there is either in trouble or in charge of making everyone there realize it.

Then they will take your shoes. They take your hat. They take your vest. They ask you your name. They talk about you like you are not there. They have a person with blue latex gloves come out and feel you up very firmly to make sure that the generous endowment in your britches is god’s own gift and nothing more interesting than that. Then they lock you up. If you are lucky it is a really slow night and they aren’t that mad at you and they get around to you quickly. If you are lucky, you are in a big holding cell by yourself, and you only have to make some water in the very clean looking stainless steel toilet, in front of the window in plain view of the person in a uniform who just grabbed your genitals as firmly as any high school lover ever had. Then perhaps on a personal note the fellow that cuffed you and took all of your belongings has enough courtesy to let you watch and dramatically gesture towards you as he pulls each item that he took from you one-by-one out of the little brown paper baggie and pass them to some other fellow that makes them vanish, as you nod assent just waiting to see that thin white gold ring pass from one hand to another and think about what your great grandmother would say to know that her long lost wedding ring is now in the goose stepping hands of a back woods jail.

Then they come and get you again. Now at this point the initial rush of fast car rides, handcuffs, and whatever else you were on has worn off, and you realize that your feet are cold, and that things are not going so well. You notice that the place smells like a school hallway. And then you have enough sense to ask politely what county you are in, only to find you are in a county really far off your normal map of social order in the middle of bloody nowhere, where people from your own county never think to look through the police database of, because that county that you are now spending quality time in is in the sticks and therefore you face will not be plastered all over the social networking media. This makes things look a little more promising. Then they ask you all sorts of interesting information about yourself, more than the last person you slept with probably had thought to ask. They want to know if all the information is true, and who your next of kin is and how to contact them. I told them I had none at present, but that they could contact Bill. Then they want to know who Bill is, and I tell them my lawyer and give them his full name, as he is very well known and in the phone book, telivision and on billboards all over the darn place. And no I do not know his number by heart, but it is my cellphone, that along with all my other personal affects is getting laminated to a thick piece of white poster board by clear plastic and a vacuum heat wrapper.

Then they send you back into the cell. Maybe now you sit on the wooden planks instead of standing. Then they come and get you again and hand you some paperwork. Then you have the guts to politely ask if you may ask a question. Then the person behind the big partition leans over and looks down at you waiting for it. And then you admit that something like this has never ever ever happened to you before, and you would like to know if they could tell you what was going to happen to you. Then they say that you are going to go sit in the area next to the phones and wait, and after eight hours they might just release you.

Well that of course changes everything and in this little sitting room with pepper grey carpet, white walls with sweat stains on them and plenty of cheap blue plastic chairs all facing the same direction, the sort that you would find at the doctors office, and indeed this place looks like the waiting room in a cheap fly by night doctors office, you make new friends. Well you could if you wanted to. The fellows in front of you seem to know one another, and they are both teenagers, now sporting the ice cream orange and cream colors with stripes, and chinese plastic slippers that indicate that they are waiting to be shown to their rooms at this drab hotel. Then a salty tatooed fellow gets escorted in and sits at the phones and has no ability to read the numbers on the page and somone has to dictate them to him and he makes a few calls until he finds someone to post his bail, because he got in an argument with someone and pulled the phone out of their hand as they were calling the police, which is apparently tampering with a potential witness and a really really painful thing to have to explain to an old man who is hard of hearing and sight and walks like he has been lifting heavier things than his cauliflowered eared russet red head for many years.

Then you get to hang out with the fellow that was getting screamed at in the first holding area you were in, and he is blonde, clean cut and handsome and bloody soaking in drink, and is really worried because he works as a salesman for a company that sells bundled benefits to other companies and that is hard to explain to anyone, and it will be harder to explain to a judge why he cannot lose his license, but he will, and then he will lose his job, be unable to make the payment on his new Acura sedan, and his condo, and he really needs to get a brilliant lawyer on this one or else he may be doomed. He may also offer to give you a ride back to your house, because he was pulled over just down the road from the jail, until you tell him that you live at least an hour away from where you both are sitting, and really it is okay. Then he will change the blaring telivision that has no affect on everyone there sleeping to an even more blaring sports show that by the grace of god is getting beamed in via sattelite and is on at Four in the morning. Then he will go to sleep, leaving you neurotically swiching legs back and forth and thinking about how much you fucking hate television, and how you hate the sports channel, and about all the horrible things you have done over the years and never really got in trouble for any of it, only to go to jail tonight, just as everything is looking rather peachey, all because someone gave you a wrong direction and a wrong turn and a silly argument and you weren’t paying attention to anything but you did not run the red light, and in fact you were then issued a warning and not a ticket and even offered to allow the officer to search your vehicle for any reason, including a strange and unfounded accusation that you very well may be on narcotics, which was in no way true, and was so off base that you informed the officer that you were insulted and saw no just grounds for said accusation, later justified by a search of your person and your friends’ vehicle to reveal no incriminating evidence.

You sit in the room with sleeping criminals, unfortunates and truants, sitting in blue plastic chairs, some even in slumber waiting on the chrome lifeless telephones to ring, and you watch the clock. This all makes you remember why you hated being a teenager. This reminds you why you hated life for so long that you wanted to wrap your hands around it and squeeze it like an orange. You had to do what they wanted you to do, you had to sit in class. You had to wait for your mother. You had to wait to get picked up. You had to wait. You had to do what they told you when they told you. You did what they wanted even if they didn’t tell you why. You waited silently. You sat still. You had to be quiet. You had to sit still. You watched that exact same sort of standard black and white government issue size of clock with that exact same typeset with invisible purposes and forces gliding the plain black needle in perpetual circles with no way to speed it up or even stop it, for eight hours every day, for twelve straight years of your damn life waiting, waiting, waiting WAITING, on someone to tell you it was okay to go and do something else to move and then…

And then you were waiting again.

At Ten A.M. it may be time for you to be released, because after reading all your paperwork once every fifteen minutes or so for the last several hours, it states that after exactly eight hours from the time of your arrest you very well may be allowed to be released. You are hungry because you have not eaten since twelve hours previous, and you have not gone to the restroom. In fact you have not moved much or said a word or slept in quite some time, for fear of making anyone in charge really think long and hard about you or want to change their minds. Then you get called to speak to the nurse. She asks you polite questions about whether or not you:

Have AIDS
Have TUBERCULOSIS
Have HEPATITIS
Have any generic infecious diseases or parasites
Have drug addictions
Are on any specific medicines
Are allergic to anything at all
Take medication for anything
How many drugs were you on that night
How much did you have to drink that night
What is your charge if you know it
Do you have any physical maladies
Do you have any mental maladies
Do you smoke
Do you drink
Do you do drugs
Are you healthy

Then she puts a card in a basket with your photograph that says INMATE on there, making you certain that the next step will be the creamcicle colored jumpsuit and an extended stay with nothing to read. Then she sends you up against the wall. They take your photo. If you saw this coming you took the time to freshen yourself up a little by spitting in your hands and slicking your hair back, and butting your higher button on your shirt. They snap a picture of you from the front. Then they do a profile of you. You smile for both of them but still look really mad that you are in them which makes you look benevolent and dashing. You compliment the nurse on her photographic abilities. Then a fellow calls you over to what looks like a machine that takes your weight and tells you your fortune. It has a screen on the front of it, and he takes your left hand in a way that makes you know to let it be limp. The screen imprints and scans every nuance and detail of your hands, every scar every wrinkle, every print every partial, every bit of science and shape that a palm reader would take years to divine and it saves it with your name and social security number, charge, age, height, weight, and photograph.

You thank this man for doing this sort of thing and he looks at you like you are insane, and you simply explain that you are sure that by being so careful and getting everyone’s prints that come through the door, that they will eventually catch some really bad apples with this sort of digitized system. You tell him that for the last week until they caught that rapist down the street from your house that held the woman up at gun point as he brutally raped her again and again and then beat her and robbed her, given the opportunity because he was released from jail after only serving seven of a forty year sentence for a similar previous charge; that you were extremely worried about you and your loved one’s safety. And you then thank the man holding your hand for playing a part in capturing that fellow that week, but then you realize that it was another precinct and recant your former statement of thanks, amending it to basically say that you sincerely feel that this will make a difference, in general, except you personally will never break any laws, but it is for the best to give this sort of thorough treatment to everyone who turns up there just in case someone is a bad apple. He at that point thinks you really are completely mad. And after an awkward couple moments he tells you to go back by the phones.

Then someone walks by and asks you if you want food. The handsome sales man in the poplin blue dress shirt next to you wakes up on cue and says yes for both of you. The officer brings a white styrofoam takeout container with fresh blueberries in one area, some toast, unintelligible cold cut of meat, fried potatoes a piece of lettuce and tomato in another, and a oil and vinegar salad of fresh white onion dried oregano and more fresh tomatoes in the other. They do not give you a piece of silverware. You grudgingly eat all the fresh blueberries, and listen to the salesman mumble about the unreal nature of the pink plastic looking cold cuts as he eats them with the bread. Then he offers you his blueberries to which you say no thank you. Then he informs you that you should have been let out by then. Then he realizes that he will be let out in minutes and goes up and lets them know both of these facts for which you cringe because at that point you had been staring at the second hand burn time away for so long that you knew that eventually soon it would be over, but are scared to instigate it lest some strange circumstance of further misfortune should knock your path awry and lodge you in that place for days or weeks.

And then they come get you, and ask you who you are. They give you a gray tray, the same sort that you used as a cubby tray in grade school, or use to shuffle through the airport security x-ray, and in it all your personal clothes are there. You are informed to not put your vintage leather Brando hat on until you exit the building, and then it hits you that they are in fact letting you go. You get back your shrink wrapped and vacuumn sealed personal affects, put on your boots, and verify what you told them was in fact correct.

Then they point you to another phone on a post in the middle of another sitting room and there is a torn out pice of the yellow pages with a cab company number on there and you ask how to dial out because an accompanying taped piece of paper says to ask the officer if you can dial out first and how to do so.

Then you call a cab. The cabbie asks where you are and you reply: “I am in jail.”

Then you turn to the officer and you ask what jail you are in. And he assures you that the cabbie knows how to get there, and give him the name.
Then the cab says forty five minutes and you say okay.
Then you sit down defeated.
Then they tell you to get up and go stand by a large thick looking steel door that is painted blue, and you go stand there looking at the isolated decompression area in between with metal mesh in between the two panes of high tempered glass. And they tell you to wait. Then they open that door and tell you to go in, and you hesitate because you don’t trust them at all and you are still waiting for everything to fall apart completely. And you go in. And the door closes. Then the next one opens and there is a foyer, and you realize that you have been underground. You walk up three flights of stairs, into the light of windows, and warmth and out of the cold frigid shivering basement and cloistering fluorescent lights. You notice that your wrists look like they have had handcuffs on them and shrug. You come up the stairs to another foyer with elevators and a metal detector and another time release door and the receptionist lets you out and you walk, vest unbuttoned, shirt still tucked, hat in hand, boots clicking on the linoleum into the vast and empty lobby and she is on the phone laughing and smiling through an uncomfortable conversation with hair on her nose and dark eyes and librarian glasses and waves you outside with a smile. And you smile back, and you want to run and you are free. You are standing in a large plaza on a hill, that looks like the minimalist entrance to a college library, with Mexican families arguing on park benches with the sun beating down. And you notice a car you recognize in the distance, the one you were pulled over in, and are unsure what to do next.

You put your hat on and cock it to the side.
You rip your keys free from the thick plastic on the posterboard that has your name and a date on it.
You are cautious not to lose your papers in the wind because you know them to be important and you will need to give them all to a lawyer.
You get your cellphone free.
You break the gold chain in three pieces while trying to get it out of the plastic.
You put the links in your right vest pocket and forget they are there immediately.
You can’t recall what happened to you wallet and hope that you had enough sense to hide it in the car and not lose it.
You take your grandmothers wedding band that you found in the suitcase that you had inherited and wear every day of your life on your little finger for good luck and put it back on your hand.

You make one phone call with the last bit of charge on your cellphone that you had a presence of mind eight hours earlier to shut off before they confiscated it from you to make sure that it would be charged whenever you got it back and were released.
And you are free.
Well, until a trial that is… and then you feel the wind in your face and start walking down the descending walkway away from that place, and you realize that you left the Styrofoam container and the uneaten food sitting open on the floor in the phone room.

You feel bad about it.

You feel bad knowing that they will know that you were the one that did it.

*This work, as all works of this author must be stated as a work of fiction, with all rights reserved to the respective artist. Whether or not the reader chooses to judge the words to be true or fiction is up to the reader, but it has been stated for legal purposes and otherwise that this work is henceforth to be considered fictional, and any characters or places bearing resemblance to persons or places in real life is coincidence and the interpretation of a reader and in no way representative of any factual bearing.