I feel like I've set this standard for "Rotfl" satire that I cannot keep up with, hence the months of no blogging. But I refuse to let my blog become a dead place with memories that I can indulge in once every couple of years so that's why I'm writing this:
To rebel against my own ridiculous standard of flawless satire. I'm going to write if I feel like it and it won't always be funny, but it will be honest.
I spent the day in county lock up and had some time to think. The concrete was freezing against my skin as I laid there, curled in a ball, arms inside my t-shirt, wondering what would happen to me.
When the squad car drove me down to the underground parking I thought: "Its ok. You've been here before. You can't run from the past forever." My phone kept chiming from my pocket so after the officer parked and left me there, I struggled to see who it was. I could grab the phone from two fingers but the cuffs were too tight. If I pulled it out, I risked it dropping so I gave up.
Inside the intake, the police were friendlier than I remembered but then again I was sober and more cooperative than before. I had fought back the anxiety until they took off my hoodie and threw me into a freezing waiting cell with doors on both sides. One into the cell, the other into the unit like some sort of air lock between freedom and confinement. The mouth that feeds the belly of protective state custody.
In there I shivered and lost calamity to the throes of anxiety. My warm hoodie was the last security blanket and I was nothing more than a trembling fleshy morsel in the mouth of the system. So I wept silently until that door opened and I was fed to the jail population.
In another waiting room a sheriff took down information and I sat in a movie theater arrangement of plastic chairs that faced a television playing closed captioned loops of a conduct expectation video. These plastic chairs were a final pleasantry before entering a world of concrete routine. "I'm cold." I said to the sheriff to which he replied "It happens." A female guard saw how upset I was and got me some tissue.
I had been here once before some 7 years ago and theres a certain numbness that goes with the experience when you know you lead a lifestyle where incarceration could come at any hour of any day. My life as a heroin addict ended well over a year ago and I was anything but numb this time. I noticed things like the bugs crawling on my feet, the frigid temperature and the magnitude of total loss jail offers a free man. I suppose when your life is out of control, jail is not much worse than a day on the outside where addiction is your prison and great danger is always close behind.
I was lead down the hall to a hospital like row of intake cubicles made of concrete where nurses ask your medical history. After that they made me wear an orange smock to be photographed in. I wanted to keep it for warmth but they take it the moment your photos are done and a wristband is put on you bearing a black and white copy of your picture and your prisoner serial number. Then i went to a holding cell across from another intake window.
Inside the window is an office with towers of file cabinets and cubicles of workers with stuffed toys on their desks and pictures of their families. A 9-5 world of administrative work separated by bullet proof glass.
In the holding cell, a group of colorful people slowly collected and at this point I began to appreciate what the arresting officer had done for me. I had mistaken his hurry to get me downtown for that of an overzealous patrolman, eager to pump me like a token into the coin slot of his quota taker but that wasn't the case. He had got me to the front of the line so I wouldn't wait behind the row of inmates that come to intake every morning before they await court that afternoon. He had even let me have a last cigarette before cuffing me and was careful to put my unfinished soup in the fridge as we left my home.
Two middle age black men sat beside me; career criminals visiting from another county. Next was a silver haired professional man obviously there on a DUI. Then there were two guys my age - a composed bright eyed guy from Minnetonka and a slightly beat up chatterbox from New Hope who rambled aloud as he tried to piece together what happened to him last night.
I shuddered to think that the annoying chatterbox was my same kind: an addict. He had just lost 13 months of sobriety in a night of reckless drinking that had gotten him pepper spayed, beat up and convinced he had slapped around his fiancé. We all talked of our offenses and exchanged opinions on release dates. When the black men learned I was a former heroin addict, they seemed impressed I didn't have AIDS. The chatterbox, claiming to have had 60 shots of Jag, argued with me about Hep C and claimed to be am expert after his 13 months of drug treatment. As they called my name, I stood up and told him he probably thought he knew everything, but he didn't. He shut up a little after that.
Even though they roll every part of your hand on a new computerized machine designed to record your fingerprints, they still make you do it with ink afterwords and after trying to wash my hands I was afforded some phone calls.
A while later I found myself in an ice cold holding tank with two collect call phones where I curled up on the concrete bench and tried to sleep. There's something about that cell that makes you remember things clearly as you wait for hours, hoping someone bails you out.
I thought of the summer I spent in Wilmar Treatment Center and how my mother had flown from California to be there for my release and driven out there to pick me up. Wilmar is more state funded damage control than rehabilitation. They put you on methadone, refer you to a local clinic and release you some 60 days later.
My first night there was very different than most people who immediately start complaining of withdrawal to get as much methadone as they can. All I asked for was a bed where I slept off the first 9 hours of withdrawal. When I came to, I was crawling on the floor in the hallway, my body burning so badly I could hardly move. The nurses hoisted me up, one on each arm and held me up to the dosing window where the drug was poured down my throat. I was carried to bed and as the burning subsided, I fell into a deep sleep. It was 2 days before I could get out of bed and join the daily activities. During those 43 days of controlled withdrawal, I experienced the kind of pain and fear only a career addict knows. At the end of it all it was good to see my mother.
When my mom and I arrived at my apartment, I was reminded how bad things had become. The basement unit I rented was littered with charred spoons, used needles, pill bottles and empty soda cans and dried blood was smeared everywhere. My mom cried and offered to put me up in a hotel but I refused and said I needed to begin cleaning up so we sat on my mattress and prayed together. I never dreamed that my life would get worse than that but it did.
I thought of my summer living out of my car in uptown. The hard work I put in everyday to get drugs only to spend my nights crammed in a dirty two seat Honda waking up to the hot sun. I survived being robbed and beaten unconscious, a near fatal overdose and escaped arrest time and time again while my partner in crime went to jail. Here I am laying in jail freezing with 15 months of sobriety, you'd think these things wouldnt happen anymore.
Later on that day I was freed. I was spit out onto the city streets, all my money put into check form. There was no one waiting for me. I stood in the sun and even the winter streets of downtown Minneapolis seemed warmer than those cells. Some cute girls gave me a cigarette. I felt alone but the immediate intoxication of freedom was upon me. I didn't know who bailed me out, I didn't care. I guess the difference between now and then is I'm writing this from a warm apartment, I may be down but in not out and lastly I will live to see another day. There was a time not long ago when I really couldn't say.
- Postedusibgng BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:Minneapolis
