fter several hours in a cold booking cell waiting to be suited with the mandatory county-issued blues, they call me in to the next room with a few other ill-fated criminals and tell me to turn in my street clothes. I am now totally and absolutely sure that I will not be going home tonight, but rather spending it behind bars.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am extremely relieved. Relieved that I will awaken tomorrow morning to something totally new. Something not completely devoid of hope and lacking the utter routine of everyday junkie life. Relieved that I will now be under someone else's control instead of my own, forced to make new and different decisions at the start of tomorrow's day instead of repeating the same ones over and over again, which for the longest time has either been to A.) Figure out a way to get money to score dope or B.) Take the money I already have and score dope. For the first time in several months, or maybe even years, I actually do not know what tomorrow holds in store for me. You see, that's the thing about junk when you really get into it, it numbs you to the inevitable point of extreme complacency. You are attracted to it because it is the highest step of the drug subculture ladder, it throws a strong rebellious finger to the nine-to-five lifestyle of modern-day slavery and clamors a loud "fuck you" to the establishment that you so much detest. You try it with an open mind and for a little while everything seems fine. Aside from a little puking, you are satisfied with the effect to the point of extreme bliss--euphoria ad nauseam, but that in itself becomes your biggest crux, your biggest self-defeat. You have now become satisfied, when in actuality nothing has changed externally, absolutely nothing! Nothing has changed except the way you feel. We're all still going to hell in a hand basket but now, well now you just don't give a fuck.

I begin to remove my clothes when a small cigarette, half smoked and a bit crooked, falls out of my inside jacket pocket. I remember that I have a few of them stashed away in there, also previously smoked and ready to get me into trouble. You see, you can't smoke in the county jail. They'll put you in solitary confinement for having a cigarette in your possession. You can smoke in prison, sure, but not in the county jail. They'll stick your ass in the hole. I quickly kick away the small cigarette that first fell out and then reach in to the pocket that it came out from, grabbing two lengthy Marlboros right before handing my jacket over to the jail trustee behind the fenced counter.

Where should I hide them? Should I keester them, right between my ass cheeks? I don't think so! I'll just creatively fold the booking papers they gave me and I'll put them in there, nobody will find them. It's just an ordinary light-pink piece of paper.

I am now fully dressed in the county-blue attire when a guard walks in and asks us where we're supposed to go to. One of the inmates takes out his booking papers and before I can answer the question, the guard quickly bends forward and without thinking reaches for the light pink document that is slightly sticking out of my shirt pocket, where I foolishly thought it would remain safe because of its complete conspicuousness. He unfolds it once and then again. The cigarettes come falling out, and to me it is very slow, the whole thing. They seem real heavy just floating downwards in slow motion there in front of the guard. I imagine them to be little tobacco-filled missiles, dropping from a small light-pink B-52 Origami bomber and the targets are the guard's shiny black uniform shoes. Only one of the targets is hit and together they make a sound like "Thump! Pop!"

I am busted.

 

mmediately I am pulled away from the two other prisoners and led away deeper into the compound, around a few corners and down some darkened stairwells. All I can think about is how far underground we must really be because it is just so deathly cold and when we first pulled up to the compound in the sheriff's jail-bound bus, the building seemed much too small from the exterior to hold this much space. I slowly come up to a large metal door with a small bullet-proof window and when I reach it, a mean looking fucker is just staring out of it. His pockmarked and acne-ridden face the paradigm of a violent history of brutalities and brutal truths both dispensed to him and by him, accented with the obligatory scars of an ugly dysfunctional upbringing. He pounds his fist against the thick glass when he sees me, as if to say that he has beaten and brutalized everyone else in there with him and now he is just waiting for me. Luckily, the guard keeps me walking, and I hear him laugh a bit under his breath when we pass the mean looking fucker.

We finally come up to another heavy door with thick metal bars, and it's even darker on the other side. He opens it and we walk through to the first door on the left, which is just one of many doors in the dank, long corridor. I stand right in front of the door with my hands tightly locked together behind my back as I was told to keep them.

"This is your home for the next ten days Cervantes!"

He slightly pushes me inside with a nudge to the back of my shoulder, but to me it feels like I am being thrown headfirst into a medieval dungeon. I almost half expect a black-hooded guard to come in next and chain me up on the wall. In fact, it really isn't that much different than what I would imagine a real dungeon to be like. The concrete cell is only about five feet by ten feet, the size of a typical bathroom in a city apartment. Imagine spending ten fucking days in your bathroom--with the lights off! It's so dark in here, I can smell and feel the old humid dampness; the cold moisture emanating from deep inside the inner structure of the gray concrete walls, years and years old. I don't have any heroin in my body and I can feel the sickness beginning to creep in so I think I'll just sit down on this thin, cold, vinyl-covered mattress for now.

The morning hours have now passed and it is well into the afternoon, not that I can tell any other way but by how dope-sick I feel. My mouth is full of bitter saliva and I constantly spit into the metal toilet in the corner or in the small metal water fountain that sits right above it. My skin is clammy, my eyes watery; the intestines inside of me are wrapping tight around themselves, creating spasms that are just so inexorably painful! They jolt me upright straight from my gut, making me jump in electrical spastic pain. It feels like there is a tight vice in the small of my back and I think it must be about five or six o'clock out there in the free world.

hut the fuck up!"

I am screaming inside my head at the black inmates down the corridor, yelling Ebonics back and forth through the bars, their corrupt and mutilated English spewing forth obnoxiously out of their mouths and through the steel bars. They're fucking loud enough to begin with but now I hear them like they're right here in the fucking cell with me, talking their jive--amplified to the umpteenth power! Everything is so fucking loud it's completely unbearable! I can't stand it!

Then all of a sudden, as fast as the amplified hearing came on, it just disappears. Now I can't hear anything! It almost feels like my ears are clogged up, except for that constant thumping. What the hell is that? Oh fuck, it's my god-damned heart--beating inside of my own chest! Thump, thump, thump! Then I hear the low muffled sound of air traveling inside of me, quickly to and from my lungs. Whoosh! Whoosh! I can now also hear myself breathing! It's as if my hearing has been reversed. Nothing from the usual external sources is registering in my auditory senses; only the internal sounds are coming through. My voice is distant with too much bass and I cannot understand what I am saying though I know what I've said. I can now completely sympathize with the way deaf people must feel. I tap my foot on the floor and the vibrations travel through my entire being.

I look around the room so much from object to object that my eyes are twirling around in my skull. I look at the metal table for hours on end, constantly swaying back and forth in my bed, the blankets and sheets drenched with my sweat. They bring me food and after I finish eating, I lay the plate down on the cold concrete floor and slide it out underneath the steel prison bars. I am so much weighed down by the repeatedly nauseating institutional food that I cannot move back to the bed. I let my heavy, tired head gently rest down upon the chrome metal table.

The days begin to pass slowly, one after the other. For some reason I liken them to adolescent tragedies, those painful childhood events that shape who we are as adults. So significant yet soon put behind and unrecalled for no other reason than to compare something horrendous to. To put side by side and know that whatever it is that is being compared could not be as unpleasant as this day.

I have absolutely nothing to occupy my senses during my whole entire stay in this darkened pit. It's so dark and silent that it's practically a sensory deprivation tank and by the third day I begin to hallucinate. There's no way to tell time except by the serving of the meals, so I think that it's some time in the middle of the night when I hear them. I hear the clakkity clakkity clakkity of their little feet first--and then I see them, the jailhouse rodents. Running to the dark corners and having little conversations about who-knows-what. Bartering and whispering in their own little language. Money and drugs are exchanged and I want to chase one of the little fuckers down and steal his dope, however small an amount that would be.

I think of Camus and about his novel, The Stranger. I think about how the protagonist of the story ends up in a narrow jail cell for killing an Arab and then explains about how before being holed up he often thought that if he'd been obligated to live in the trunk of a dead tree that he would have gotten used to it. While incarcerated he becomes plagued by the desire for a woman, of which I also am plagued by-naturally, and about his obsession with all the women he'd ever had and the circumstances under which he'd loved them. Precisely as they came to him, they come to me, crowding my cell with their beautiful faces, every one of them. The ghosts of all my old passions come to visit me at night, their transparent ethereal bodies glowing dimly in the darkness of my unlit cell. There I am, kissing into the dark nothingness at an abdomen, running my tongue against the small of an invisible back, caressing the under part of a breast that is NOT REALLY THERE!

Such a diverse crowd too! A short Italian girl, a thin Native American, a tight White girl, a Puerto Rican with a great ass, a Jewish girl with large breasts, another tight White girl, and on and on. Several times a day they come, sometimes in twosomes and threesomes. Suffice to say, I will soil quite a few sheets because well, I've known quite a few women.

 

t's so fucking cold and the sheets are completely soiled with sweat and cum. I take rotating turns using the blanket or the sheet while I put the other one to dry on the edge of the bed. The same goes for my clothes, I have to put them out to dry or else after a while I'm just sitting there, freezing cold and soaking wet with the foul odor of everything toxic that has seeped its way out from every pore in my body.

The pillow has become like a large wet sponge and I must toss it aside. I try to rest without it but it's so uncomfortable, and I can just forget about trying to sleep--it's impossible, I just can't!

You see, when you kick, the dope seems like it has to leave your body in any and all ways possible. It will come out through all of your holes. You'll puke it out, piss it out, cum it out, shit it out, cry it out, sweat it out, bleed it out, spit it out, and sneeze it out. Oh man, and when the sneezing starts it just won't stop! You'll be on your nineteenth sneeze and you'll wonder if it's ever going to stop! The whole thing just puts you in touch with the cruel and incomprehensible reality of the flesh. If you experience it with a certain perception understood only by the few, it'll change your ontological view of the human race and with that also your outlook on the human spirit. You see, for those of us that are really in touch with our spirits, junk is something that validates the idea and theory that being human is vile, vulgar, and anti-spiritual. It nullifies the widespread acceptance that the Homo sapiens body is a tolerable means of enclosure. It reinforced my belief that it is not a satisfactory vehicle for the spirit but rather a vicious entrapment for the soul, a flesh-cage if you will. We are dirty leeches and parasites that quickly become foul odored if not tended to, and if we don't periodically rob life from another living system in order to sustain our own, then we just wither away and die, leaving a disgusting, decomposing mess in our place. A meaningless and valueless puddle of useless, liquefied flesh.

One of my all time favorite quotes is from Antonin Artaud: "Where there is a stink of shit, there is a smell of being." Yes, I am that nihilistic son of a bitch and being stuck in a place like this just takes me to a completely new level.

 

[END]

© Vladik Cervantes 2002