Within these pages of the Penultimate blog, I try out ideas like trying on clothes while standing in front of a mirror. You, my devoted following, are the mirror. Both of you. So, don’t be afraid to Comment and add your own thoughts about whatever you see. (Not you, Keith.)
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There has been a big problem reported by the staff here at Penultimate Headquarters. Per custom, we usually get everyone gathered in the lunch room at noon on Fridays and have a boatload of pizza delivered. The Coke and 7Up flows and a feeling of congeniality comes upon us. As Fridays are casual-dress Fridays to begin with, the casual dress combines with the drinking and we can come damn near to singing sailor songs with our arms slung about each other’s shoulders. But then, last Friday, as we all know, we had an incident. One of our Temporary employees was helping himself to the pizza and, well, we caught him and set him on the right side of Jesus. At this time, I’d like to recognize Sheila, one of our floor managers and function coordinators, for her diligence in protecting the rights and resources of our permanent employees.
Also, not to toot our own horn again, but the figures are in for this year and we made $56 billion dollars in profit. Our stock is through the roof!
OK, about the pizza incident. I have a confession to make. What had happened was . . . I had a flashback while writing this post (on or about item #3) about a time when I worked at Yankee Candle Company as a ‘Temporary’ employee. I was simply a guy hired through a ‘TEMP” agency, and at the time I was happy to be farmed out because I needed the work. I worked ‘The Floor’ and did all kinds of candle-making and wore a big heavy apron—though I would still get covered in wax anyway. And, as a bonus, I always smelled real pretty. So, my first Friday I followed everyone into the big lunchroom area for the vaunted free pizza and it was great. I had two slices and had just gotten two more (everyone was having that much, there was a ton) when I was suddenly confronted somewhat publicly by Sheila, who took it upon herself to inform me within earshot of half the factory floor, that the pizza was “for permanent employees only, not for you.” Wow. There’s a status hierarchy here and I didn’t make the Friday pizza cut. Me, standing there in the crowded cafeteria with a blank look on my face, two big slices of pizza threatening to slide off the flimsy white paper plate, a plate all grease-streaked with delicious golden grease. I’m standing there with piles of colorful candle wax all over my sneakers. “Oh” I said. And, honestly, that’s the last of what I remember about the incident. I don’t even remember whether I ended up eating those two slices I was holding.
Alright, another confession about Yankee Candle. You will think ‘disgruntled employee’. But you’d be wrong, I actually overall liked my short time at Yankee Candle and sort of have mostly good memories about it. But my lawyers are making me drop this other shoe to preclude exposure to the charge of hanging onto a juicy story. This was a real kicker, even though the pizza incident scarred me for life. OK. What had happened was . . .I got sick. I remember it very clearly; one October night I felt really woozy and went to bed. In the morning, I woke up and began to throw up. Whenever I moved my head, I threw up or dry-heaved violently. I eventually found out that I had an inner ear virus; it leveled me for weeks, and made me stagger like a drunk for 6 months. I couldn’t rise or sit quickly for years without head spins, but I’m ok now. So, I got sick and, after one week, I got a termination notice from Yankee Candle firing me. “Jesus Christ”, I thought. “I called in sick promptly and they know what’s going on with me. I’m not getting paid for my absence—not having accrued any sick or vacation time yet—and with the big factory population you support, you couldn’t wait more than 5 seconds to fire me?” They were already huge as a company and must have made $56 billion in profit that year. They must also have had some policy whereby Temp workers were just that highly expendable. I felt a little extra betrayed as I got the news lying on a couch with no medical insurance, unable to move without throwing up while being forced to crawl very slowly to the bathroom once in a while. My spirits weren’t at their highest. The hot wax spattering days of my life were over.
And here’s yet another colorful wax-dripping-covered shoe to drop about my time at Yankee Candle way back then. This all happened about 1980, I think. I said earlier that that was all that I remembered about the pizza incident—but that’s not all I remember about Sheila. What had happened was . . . Sheila worked the floor also and, almost immediately after the pizza incident, I began to bump into her frequently when we worked the candle-packing lines. Her line was next to mine, so we’d chat amicably while we packed candles rapidly and deftly as the line fed us candles. We grabbed packing paper and set up boxes and wrapped, boxed and stacked candles of all variety for a couple of hours perhaps each day as the manufacturing flow warranted. So, Sheila and I became kind of buddies, and she was a witty smartass with moxie. Also, and I can’t wait to tell you this: Sheila was a gorgeous girl with red hair, a pretty face and great body, and, fantastically, was a newly divorced single hot chick. She was probably in her mid or late twenties and I was 21. We never talked about the pizza incident. I guess a pretty girl can piss on a guy and all the guy will be thinking about is how great she looks in that skirt. (At 21, anyway.) One day, after I’d been there several weeks and just before I got fired, I ran out of boxes at the end of my line and yelled over to Sheila, who still had a ton of boxes at her line, if I could raid her boxes. Sheila was bent over, but stood up, looked me dead in the eye, hands on her hips, red hair tousled about and said evenly, “Kevin, you can raid my boxes anytime.” Believe you me, I thought about it long and hard. I guess I’m still thinking about it! But, as discussed, I’d already gotten a whiff of the crazy. So, nothing happened, but I was tortured anyway. That girl was on her game that year! Women are masters of the mixed message flirt.
Finally, please don’t litter. We’ve been finding litter about the grounds of Headquarters; in particular, we’re seeing Styrofoam coffee cups blowing about. Didn’t we already cover this?
A reported 4,935, 487 votes were cast in the Georgia General Election, and Biden won by 11,799 votes as we all know. (Well, perhaps not all of us know: I refer you to the current nationwide conspiracy-theory mania and its consequent immediate threat to the health (COVID) and safety (Civil War) of our people and to our vaunted system of government (Autocracy) whose keystone is the peaceful transition of power.)
But.
I thought about the math. The winning margin is a crazy-small percentage of the total vote. Way small. Biden won by .23% of the vote—so much less than even 1 percent! Per the ‘butterfly-effect’ this could have easily gone the other way if a giraffe in Africa had suddenly farted off-key. But, the giraffe sounded fine, and the vote count ultimately put Biden in the Win column, And that’s one little thing to be thankful for in Georgia.
And now for the second little thing—and we’re not done talking about those 11,799 votes. Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State to find a way to publicly discount the Biden margin of victory; the phone call was recorded and is now publicly reported on audio. I cannot top Mark Hamilton’s comment that listening to it was like discovering a lost episode of the Soprano’s, Instead, I would like to recognize the Secretary’s resolute stand on the facts as he knows them and the integrity of the voting process that his state manages. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Secretary of State, and an important Republican politician did . . . wait for it . . . exactly the right and obvious thing: he ‘spoke truth to power’. And, far from being obsequious to the President, he handled himself with aplomb. And this act of decent and morally appropriate courage is the second little thing to be thankful about in Georgia.
If I build a statue to Brad Raffensberger, and I think I will, I’ll inscribe it with these words from his conversation with the President yesterday: . . . “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.” This statement, under the pressure of being accosted by the President of the United States, being threatened and accused of criminal activity with high-powered lawyers and politicians also listening in- is brilliant. On its face, it is true. Trump’s facts are wrong. And to call it out in this way does many things: Under these circumstances, it is code for “you’re a compulsive paranoid liar and have serious mental health issues that have been on display for a long, long, time. ..Mr. President.” I believe that’s what everyone in on the conversation heard from this statement. Nobody believes for a second that Trump got handed the wrong sheet of paper by an assistant and is therefore undergoing the ‘challenge’ of trying to argue a case while being accidentally in possession of the wrong data. (And note the passivity of the action, as if talking to a child: the data is wrong, maybe not the person. Though, alas, this professional courtesy—an attempt to allow everyone in the conversation to save face—did nothing to shield Raffensberger from further insult by the President.) Trump’s data, or facts, are conjured into life by Trump himself who, through distortion and delusion, only espouses a reality that comports to his capricious narcissism. Further, somehow, Trump intimidates a coterie of Republicans and legal minions into believing that they must sacrifice their honor today to effect the approval of Trump’s base supporters to slightly improve their political chances tomorrow. It is painful to watch, day after day. I’m stunned by these Republican Senators who won’t stand up to a wholly unfit President. Why do we even have the 25th Amendment? I’ve encountered more spine in a banana. But, Raffensberger is one Republican who did the right thing and I hope he has children because they couldn’t get a better life lesson from Dad.
Perhaps a third little thing might happen tonight in Georgia that we can be thankful for, as the results of the Senate runoff elections come in. But even if that third little thing doesn’t happen, I will say I am still very, very thankful for the first two things. Two out of three ain’t bad.
The other day, Memory looked at me and casually said “I changed the sheets this morning. Your side was brown.”
Styrofoam was invented in 1941. Holy shit was that a bad day for planet Earth.
The best part of Poison Ivy is better than anything.
(Yes, I will connect these dots.)
First, the horrific implications of the miscolored sheets. (It’s not what you think.). I take a shower when I come home from work, even when I don’t want to, and before I get into bed at night. If I don’t, I’ll hear noises from my partner until I shower. Granted, I’m filthy upon return from work every day. But, since I shower, and with soap, I can’t explain the statement except perhaps for some inadequacy of my showering procedure. If any young lady wishes to assist me in showering, please send me a recently dated swimsuit photo.
But the reason I get so dirty every day is that I work doing a range of ‘construction’ labor; I get tar on me from roofing, cement on me from concrete work, dirt on me from fence work, brush clearing, etc.
Among the many things I do is ‘clear lots.’ The first order of business in clearing an overgrown vacant lot is picking up trash. (Mom would be proud of me picking up trash in my little neon yellow vest and orange Bob The Builder plastic helmet). I do this in anticipation of mowing and brush clearing lots and tracts of land, and trash is less fun to pick up after shredding by a mower or weed-whacker. All these lots are adjacent to major roads and receive their trash decorations via ejection from vehicles. There is a remarkable consistency to what I find and I can rank the top items you will find in any lot. In ascending order of frequency, here are the top five things that get thrown out the window: 5.) Lottery tickets 4.) Assorted fast food trash 3.) Nips 2.) Styrofoam 1.) My respect for the human race.
Styrofoam is forever and is everywhere; presumably it will therefore be everywhere forever. Unless I pick it up. Sometimes it is hidden in deep grass, and hitting a styrofoam cup with a weed-whacker can elicit oaths and epithets of great imagination. Now there are a hundred pieces to pick up, and I’d better pick them up because they are white and can telegraph from a distance that someone didn’t pick up all the trash in this here vacant lot, though that someone was here in a cute orange and yellow costume with a little bucket and a ‘picker’ stick. This is a substantive issue, but the real issue is the environmental permanence: estimates of how long it takes for styrofoam to break down range from five-hundred to a million years! And, as mentioned, there is so much styrofoam in our lives—up to 30% of landfills are comprised of styrofoam. Folks, you will never have a greater impact upon the planet Earth than when you toss a styrofoam cup out of the car window. Don’t make this a thing in your life. And don’t get me started about styrofoam in the ocean.
By the way, who litters? What software download never happened in the souls of such people that they can drop or throw trash on the sidewalks, streets and vacant lots of our cities and just blithely go on about their lives? This needs a big bug fix, as does not using blinkers while driving. Who are these people that literally won’t lift a finger for the safety of others? (It’s a well-known fact that Hitler didn’t use blinkers and littered blatantly.)
On to poison ivy. Another treat waiting for me in every vacant lot along with the trash is poison ivy vines that crawl through the dense greenery like snakes in the Garden of Eden. Whoever invented this plant is no doubt celebrated in Hell, and has been given a seat of honor at the cafeteria there. Blasting through poison ivy with a mower and weedwhacker, and even hand-cutting big vines of it, is another price of admission to my job. We do it though, with alacrity and good cheer, all the while using various pharmacy products to reduce the chances of imminent misery. We fail in these mitigation efforts usually, and I’ve been carrying a case of poison ivy around with me all summer like bad breath. It is somewhat under control but for my forearms which are historically the most tender exposed skin and the place where most people get poison ivy first. Now, real poison ivy-getters, like myself and my twin brother Keith, are steeped in the misery of poison ivy from childhood but rarely get it nowadays as adults. I am excepted recently due to this new job and Keith probably hasn’t had poison ivy in 40 years but for that one time a couple of years back.
[In that case, Keith relapsed while dropping some weight in the woods due to a sudden signal from the bowels that caught him by surprise. As he squatted, he considered his wiping options and noticed some wide shiny green leaves all around him. Don’t get ahead of me. Using these beautiful soft leaves to take care of business, he then hiked his pants up and strode out of the woods pleased as punch. A short while later, and back at home, he found himself absently digging through his pants at his ejection port. After a couple of times, and a sudden escalation of itching urgency, he suddenly froze in realization. I cannot imagine the horror . It must have been bone cold. The rest of this story is too appalling for thought.]
Back to my forearms: Agony. Itching that cannot be sated; if not unconsciously scratching, one will suddenly give in to consciously raking the affected area over anything to relieve the itch! Alas, it makes it worse. But there was that couple of seconds of relief that reinforces the vicious cycle. For example, my work partner and I were fixing barbed wire fencing recently and got cut up in the forearms doing the work which was a bit complex and we were in short sleeve shirts due to the heat and often needed to doff the gloves for some intricate work. Each time we got bit in the forearms by the wire, which frequently drew blood, we’d joke about the upside that it at least scratched the poison ivy for a second. Incidentally, that same day I fell off the ladder and was briefly hung up on the fence by barbed wire stuck in my bicep until my work partner got me down. Unfortunately, there was no existing poison ivy rash where the wires stuck into my arm.
Now, as for poison ivy remedies, one thing Keith and I have known since we were children is that if you drill the affected area of poison ivy with a jet of very hot water in the shower, a magical thing happens. Let me describe it: First, upon the hot water first hitting one part of the rash, every nerve in your skin which has been affected lights up like blood spatter under luminol and a Blacklight at a murder scene. You instantly know every area that itches because it now longs for the heat and your skin starts to crawl as each bit of poison ivy rash climbs upon your brain to be rotated under the hot water. You begin to drill these areas and turn the water temperature all the way up. As each area is treated in turn, the itch is fully satisfied, then super-satisfied, and then rolling undulations of pleasure course through your entire body. Oh my God the hurt feels so good. At a point, the affected areas become insensate and your mind is flooded white and floating. Eventually, you’ll begin to feel the heat more than the bliss and you must withdraw. I would call the experience orgasmic but I don’t want to undersell it.
(By the way, I never asked Keith if he resorted to this procedure for relief from his incident in the woods and I won’t mention it here as I don’t want you to think about poor Keith bent over like that in the shower holding his ankles.)
So, what are the life lessons from my new job?
1.) Bathe thoroughly.
2.) Don’t litter.
3.) Pain and pleasure sometimes meet in secret. I’ve told you one place. There are others.
A man is holding a marker and walking along steadily, drawing a line with the marker on an infinite whiteboard along an infinite wall. The line glides along the center of the board, about shoulder height, and roughly parallel to the ground. That is his life. Every color of marker is available to it, and the line goes on and on, swooping up or down slightly as the heart beats, things happen, and colors change.
Eventually, the man becomes aware that, far behind, he is being followed by someone holding a whiteboard eraser tight against his line. The Follower is walking steadily also, and the line is disappearing behind him as he methodically brushes the eraser along the line, swooping up or down slightly as needed to catch the story of this life. That is time.
At first, the man doesn’t give it too much thought, but eventually starts to glance back once in a while. One day, he glances back and sees that, unmistakably, in the distance, the Follower looms a tiny bit larger. The Follower is apparently walking slightly faster than him, and the realization shocks him horribly.
The man begins to walk faster to buy time. His breathing picks up and he keeps up the faster walking for days, and then months. And then years. For a while after he started walking faster, it looked like he’d maintained an acceptable distance from the Follower but after a very long time, it became apparent that the figure was not receding and even continued to approach, however politely. The man began to run, holding the marker against the whiteboard, holding his head high like a flag and running down that long wall in a straight line. These actions naturally straightened out his line and thinned it out also. The more he worked the less he was. The line took on a clinical monotony in the middle of the board as he ran along. All this, and a growing certainty of the futility of his efforts, eventually ushered in a new phase of walking again, and thinking. His first thought was “I cannot buy time.”
The man would now occasionally stop and push with both hands against the whiteboard, the way a runner would ‘stretch out’ against a wall before a race. But the pushing was out of anger and a powerful need to push back against being followed, and a frustration with knowing that even now, in this short moment of venting of the soul, the Follower has gained ground on him.
Much later, the man began to trade with the Follower more deliberately. Instead of stopping impulsively to push against the wall, he’d stop to draw things on the whiteboard with his marker; it became his only enjoyment as he walked along. He drew real things, like games in the fields when he was little. He drew the day he and his Love watched their doggy prance on the beach and in the waves at sunrise. He drew the trees in the forest, one by one. The Follower was much closer now, and his closing presence began to unnerve the man. The man would now occasionally break into scribbling as he walked along, jerking his marker-hand up and down the whiteboard like an EKG.
One day, in a fit of caprice, the man pushed against the wall again. He pushed with tremendous strength, straining every muscle, and pushing for tension relief with every fiber of his being. The wall suddenly crashed down with a tremendous roar, and the man found himself flat on his back on top of the whiteboard near the end of his line.
He looked up to a slow bright haze and small pulsings of light and soft audible alarms. Someone was asking him his name. His arm was slightly raised, and his hand was fisted to grip the marker, but the marker had fallen. Alarms got louder, activity in the room increased, and he began like an animal to scribble wildly in the air. At this, a nurse braced herself against him and the bed and held his arm fast.
At that moment, the man saw the Follower in the doorway. The Follower nodded as he might to a passenger on a train, then strode to where the man lay, leaned over, and picked up the marker where it had fallen from the man’s grip just a heartbeat before. He placed the marker gently back in the man’s hand. He then placed his own hands warmly around the man’s hand.
And then they drew that last little bit of line, together, at last.
Same incident. After I sat back down on the couch, hours passed. I wrote some more, watched TV, drank more coffee. Then I glanced over at the scene and saw that the fly was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I got up to look closer. Yep, he’s gone.
Apparently, there is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination, and of flies that cannot be killed. It is an area which we call . . . the Twilight Zone.
I’ve studied the Holocaust in history classes, of course, and read some books about it and watched a few documentaries. On a brief trip to Berlin once, I even visited Dachau. I was and remain deeply horrified, ashamed, angry and sad that such a thing could happen to people—by other people. I’m sure most people have the same reaction.
Early on, I found it strange that those events—the concentration camps and the outright rounding up and killing of people—were so contemporary. It was antithetical to my notion of history. Since the newsreels, films and photographs were in black and white, they registered as history—squarely in the past. Safely in the past. But paradoxically, I knew that my stepfather had served in the Army in World War II. Further, he even was in a unit that liberated one of the concentration camps in Europe (and, more astonishing, had an album of photographs that he took while he was at the camp.). And yet, while I was growing up: there he was, my same stepfather, going to work, or helping one of us kids fix something, or sitting on the couch with my Mom watching a Western on TV.
As an adult, once in a while I’d remember the album. Those pictures in that album told a terrible tale. The most terrible tale ever told, the most horrible thing that will ever be told, I believed.
I was wrong.
Much later, in my fifties, I learned something about the Holocaust that is arguably more terrible than what that photo album told me: as the Nazis advanced across Europe, they received substantial voluntary help in killing the ‘undesirables’ in the villages that they overtook; and, horribly, that help came from the victims’ fellow villagers, or neighbors. Over and over again. This was the utterly shocking conclusion behind deep research, manifested in an extraordinary documentary, and backed up by every credible manner of investigation. There are photos, records, witness testimony and especially participant witness testimony to this fact.
You really have to picture this at the village level to see how people can just fucking snap. Let’s say it is 1940 and you are fairly cordial with everyone in your Eastern European village. You live a pretty normal life, though events in Germany have been rocking the political world and putting a lot of people on edge for 7 years now. So, the Germans, drunk on power and hubris, finally unleash and crash into your country and start ‘liberating’ it. They’re in your village now and they want all the Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and other named undesirables in the town square jetzt! There is enormous excitement, everything stops in the village, there are shouts in the German language, shouts in other languages, and the targeted families are crying and in great distress, holding their children close. A certain giddiness takes hold of a number of the other villagers and some get into the act by helping the German Soldiers round people up, shouting at and striking the ‘undesirables’ in the process. Soon everyone is marched to a huge pit outside the town, in a field shielded by a tree-line just off the main road. A large amount of the village has come to watch, and you are there among them. The Germans are coordinating with the participating group of villagers, and those villagers now have rifles. There is robotic obedience from the stunned and overwhelmed undesirables as they are lined up to be shot. Some of your friends are in the line to be doing the shooting and you can’t believe how excited, powerful, and righteous you feel. You never liked these people, and you know it now. You really know it now. These fucking Jews. And the queers are going to Hell anyway. They must all be sinners. We’d all be better off without them.
You are now standing with your comrades, shoulder to shoulder, and looking down your rifle into a long line of men, women and children standing in the pit. Beside you are some SS Einsatzgruppen Soldiers and behind all of you are a few German Officers. Behind the Officers are the villagers who’ve come to watch. Your family is here and are with this last group of people. Some of the women on both sides of the rifles are carrying infants. The Germans are giving commands through an interpreter and it’s just only seconds now . . . .You scan the line for a moment and think: “There’s the guy who used to play chess with us on Tuesdays, and there’s the idiot who helps out with the horses at the end of the street, and that’s my wife’s friend, I think, and her two sons—they’re Jewish.” You look back above the sight of your rifle and you’re looking straight at a teenage girl who is sobbing and shaking, clutching her little sister’s hand. It was such a beautiful May day, that day. A beautiful meadow, the sun, the warmth. It’s something everybody there later remembered; everybody mentioned how beautiful it had been that day. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The passive villagers greatly outnumbered the German Soldiers but never stopped the killings.
The participating villagers were feeding something very dark that had been sleeping in their souls.
I imagine it was initially a surprise even to the German Officers, hardened beyond hard, that every village had so many people who would rise up to assist them in the killing of their fellows. So many were eager to satisfy a deep prejudice, exact a petty revenge, or gain some other minor advantage. So many that, grotesquely, it became a measure of additional labor that the Germans could count on as they went from place to place, day after day—killing.
I was beyond surprised when the Rwanda genocide happened 1994. I will spare you what this must have looked like with machetes, but it should suffice to say that this was more, and more recent, proof of the tenuous hold on civility that humans have with each other. Nationalism drove this bloodbath with shocking speed and brutality; collective madness in humans is apparently always that explosively close to the surface.
And. Now. This. Election.
The anger and feeling spit from Trump supporters is becoming more and more indistinguishable from the anger and feeling that motivated the aforementioned horrors. Nationalism and racism in this country are becoming more and more indistinguishable from that which drove the events in Germany and Rwanda. The only question that remains is whether we have the same kind of people in ‘our’ village here that other countries have evidenced to their eternal disgrace.
Trump’s words and actions have been sent through America’s body politic like a medical dye sent through a patient to ‘light up’ the cancerous cells for everyone to see. The ‘Nationalist’ theme is the same, and white as ever. (When Trump said that there were ‘good people on both sides’ in Charlottesville, I could hear glass starting to break in Jewish storefronts. And when he told the Proud Boys to ‘stand by’ – I heard a pre-mobilization order.) And the ‘undesirables’ theme is the same, let’s just update the definition of undesirability: lazy immigrants, snowflake liberals, welfare blacks, inferior women, Mexican criminals and rapists, social justice warriors, Democrat leaders and yes, still the Jews.
We’re not all the way to killings yet, but, if you are really angry and disappointed that Trump lost this election, if you got a thrill from seeing ‘militia’ strut through our streets brandishing rifles, start thinking about whether you can see yourself in that body of villagers watching the slaughter with some quiet grotesque satisfaction. Would that be enough? Or, would you want to be actually out front holding a rifle?
And please stop the bullshit about your merely supporting Trump’s policies. Trump’s peddling of hate is his policy.
Your Facebook posts are assiduously cataloging the nature of your nature.
Now, we’ve already discussed the original kill-strike at the fly that resulted in shot-gunning the room with perfectly delicious mocha coffee. We’ve been through all that.
After taking that first picture and cleaning up, I sat back here on the couch in front of that gorgeous fire and got back on the computer (I began to write Fly Shot!) for a good long while, chuckling occasionally about the incident. Eventually, and I mean maybe 30 or 40 minutes later, I looked over that way.
The fly was still there.
In the same place. Wow. I had been all under and around that table swiping away with paper towels and somehow missed the fly? I had forgotten about it during the cleanup and could have easily sent it flying across the floor.
OK. I got up and began walking over to it with a napkin to grab it with. As I was bending down to it, it suddenly lifted off and began to wing its way slowly up and around in a wide low circle around its liftoff spot. I started. WTF?! I lurched backward toward the couch, grabbed the fly-swatter and was back as the fly buzzed back a few inches above where he had started from; improbably, I hit him again, in the same spot where he had landed after being struck initially. Since he hadn’t buzzed away noticeably, I studied the business end of the swatter to find him: there he is stuck to the lower left corner of the yellow square part. Still bending over and studying, I decided to simply lay the fly-swatter directly down. I didn’t want to disturb the scene any further.
There it is as a memorial. The killer and the killed. The law of the jungle, spread at our feet in plain sight at last. You, with your neatly prepacked food, losing sight of the violence that enables your life.
Anyway, I can’t believe he was alive that whole time, slowly recovering. And after I had made such a big thing of my killing him by writing that previous post! Embarrassing! (Who’s the real hero here Kevin? You, with your awesome weapons and resources, or the fly, brave beyond brave, suffering in silence and gathering the strength to fight again―while you warm your toes by the fire?)
OK, already many weeks have gone by since my latest misadventure, so I’d better get it down before I start to forget stuff. Although, I must say, this one I think I’ll remember for awhile!
I had never been arrested or jailed before. (I’m 61 now.) Fortunately, I was able to experience it from the smug distance of complete innocence, unencumbered by fears of real incarceration and the discountenance of society. The result was a niche travel experience, one akin to ‘slum tourism’—those controversial vacations available now to the bored, curious, and rich.
Well, ‘prison tourism’ didn’t disappoint. As a typical middle-aged white guy, I’ve seen me some prison documentaries, hey, and I can tell you that my five-day experience met all my expectations. Indeed, there is hardly a block that didn’t get checked, and a hefty tip to the Travel Agent is in order.
So. I was working in Lowell Massachusetts clearing brush when I received an alarmed phone call from Memory: “Anna says the Police are at the door and asking if you’re there and where you work!” OK. I called the Gloucester Police Station and assured them I would stop by after work today. Is this about yet another bogus Protective Order being levied against me by my angry ex-wife whom I haven’t seen in three years? Yes. OK, see you then. Meanwhile, Memory had a beef and vegetable crockpot meal waiting for me for dinner and she is the best cook and I was very hungry.
I stopped into the Police Station when I got into Gloucester, now just two minutes from dinner. Here’s the Protective Order. Sign here. OK. “Also, we have a warrant for your arrest.” Wha? Now I knew why I was surrounded by three Police Officers for the mere serving of a routine Protective Order.
Click.
“You’ll be staying here tonight and arraigned in the morning at about 09:00am.”
Oh.
It soon became apparent that I was a normal reasonable guy and not a threat and so the handcuffs came off at some point during the ‘booking’. Fingerprints, mugshot, let’s see your drivers license, do you own any guns?, etc. Remarkably, and not to be seen in the aforementioned documentaries, the conversation quickly shifted to a long collegial discussion of all things military as it turned out that all four of us in the room were veterans. I was surprised, and was told that about a third of the force in Gloucester are veterans and the fact that the four of us in the room were all veterans was a bit of a fluke. In and out of this, I was allowed to make a couple of quick phone calls to “Guess who won’t be home for dinner” and “Guess who won’t be in for work”. I also made arrangements to ‘surrender’ my pistol at that time. (I wasn’t surrendering shit: I was being robbed of my supercool Mark IV Colt .45 Automatic Match Pistol by a hysterically biased Family Court system. Yes, I used the H-word.) I made the first of several inquiries about my car getting ticketed and/or towed as it was parked outside the Police Station in a metered spot—perfect spot to run inside somewhere to pick something up right quick. I was suddenly captured, however, thereby stranding the car. I guess when you’re running errands, you have to be prepared for the occasional accidental arrest. Oh, and there turned out to be at best tepid interest in my vehicle plight.
Anyway. It came time for the cell. I marched in, and spun around slowly as they slid the big metal-barred door closed with a Clang! Know what? That sound, that iconic moment in a new Prisoner’s life, it really lived up to the moment in all respects. It echoed up and down the narrow basement corridor and hollowed out a respectable amount of my self-assuredness. It was emotional in a goofy but deep way. In the sudden quiet, I held the bars in my hands and looked outward like the outlaw in every Western Movie town jail. I wondered briefly if I can use something to hook the key ring off the Deputy’s belt while he snoozes with his feet up. The metal bars were cold and smooth with thick black paint. I was cold and starting to get hungry. Where’s the beef?
For dinner that night near I guess 9pm I received a couple of pizza hot pockets. I have never had a hot pocket before and they were great, Mr. Gaffigan. Maybe partly because the room was cold? My shirt was still damp from the day of work in the sun. I had been soaked in sweat. Happily, I was indulged later that night with an extra blanket from one of the Guards (I’m already starting to think of them as Guards! Is this the beginning of a Stanford Experiment?). I slept on the concrete slab well enough, probably because the green wool blankets were the scratchy Army type I was so familiar and cozy with. At some point I remember a blurry encounter with one of the Police (one of the veterans who booked me in) outside the bars telling me that they had retrieved my pistol (with Memory’s help); he had some nice things to say about it, being a gun guy himself. He informed me that he’d oiled the outside as best he could and would have taken it apart to oil it completely but for the gun lock. And he’d put it in a weatherproof bag of some sort. He said the weapons storage area is slightly damp. A gentleman.
I woke up to no coffee nor any way to procure it. Oh shit, maybe this could get bad. After folding up my blankets very neatly, I waited until well after 09:00am before asking politely what the Jesus was going on. “Oh yeah. You have to be transported to Worcester.” WTF? I learned that there was a jurisdictional issue that mandated the case be heard in Worcester and that the Gloucester Police hadn’t caught it the night before; they were now obligated to surrender me to the ‘Prisoner Transport’ system. I asked about my car again and got another noncommittal response. (I’d wanted to have Memory come and grab my car key and move the car but the key was already sealed in an evidence bag with my wallet, belt, glasses and other stuff. They didn’t want to break the seal, I guess.)
Time to explain the charges and the jurisdiction thing! You can skip this painful part, but I’ll condense it to one paragraph for those who slog on: I was actually arrested merely for ‘Failure To Appear’. I was supposed to be at a Hearing (interestingly, a remote one due to COVID-19) but I never knew about it because I never got served the Summons mandating my appearance. The Gloucester Police recognized this misstep during booking, as they had no ‘Proof of Service’ document riding with the arrest warrant per protocol and so they believed that the warrant originated accidentally—it should not have been sent out by some Worcester clerk without proof in the clerk’s hands that I had been properly served and subsequently failed to appear. Though empathetic, the Police don’t have the authority to second-guess the validity of an arrest warrant and so they had to grab me. In this case, I was already walking into the Police Station to pick up and sign for a Protective Order, so they got a twofer. Now, put the Protective Order aside. The charge I was to be ‘Heard’ on is another erroneous charge, engineered by my ex-wife in the death throes of a four-year legal battle over my right to visitation of my children. (A battle she’s already won, by the way—I haven’t seen my children in three years and she’s alienated them against me. With this new criminal charge, she’s now walking about the battlefield checking the slain for any signs of life and running a sword through any moan or movement.) This charge, which I will go on Trial for many months from now, is a terrible accusation about inappropriate activity with my own daughter and is completely untrue every which way and this will all come out at the Trial. Incidentally, this same allegation was raised in Arizona with a finding of ‘Unsubstantiated’ after investigation by Arizona Child Protection Services (the children live in Arizona) and yet my ex-wife somehow has the legal right to get another bite at the apple by bringing this charge against me, in Massachusetts, since I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts at the time of the alleged incident. Worcester PD is finally acting on this, I’m guessing due to unabated pressure from my ex-wife. I’m guessing this because when I got wind of this charge ten months ago I immediately called Worcester Police, and got all the way through to the Detective who was handling this case—she said it had just landed on her desk. I told her the whole story of malice behind all this and offered, even politely demanded, that I be allowed to drive to Worcester rightnow to look everyone in the eye, tell them the truth, take a lie detector test, and provide them all kinds of key documents: the Arizona Finding on this same allegation and other documents that show a pattern of frivolous, and strategically escalating, allegations from her that have been burning up Court resources for years. By the end of the phone call, the Detective, though trying to be objective, must have known that this one wasn’t real and so was probably hoping it would die on the vine. She said the legal version of ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you on this if I need to”. And nothing for ten months. For an arrest warrant to issue on this charge, a terrible crime against a child, a full ten months after the complaint hits a big-city Police Sexual Assault Division, well, that’s hard to understand unless the Detective had good reason in her mind to devote her resources elsewhere instead. That’s why I’m thinking the ex-wife might have just kept pushing that Detective. I also believe that, after delay, details may have been added to the charge to ensure pursuit, if you know what I mean. So, eventually, Worcester set a Hearing date for a Pre-Trial Hearing and I never knew about it: hence this arrest after my failing to appear at that Hearing.
Back to me in the Gloucester Jail. By the way, I will be using the terms Jail and Prison interchangeably for dramatic effect; I know the difference between them and am hoping you don’t. So, mid-afternoon I get rousted. I figured a Gloucester cop was taking me in a squad car to Worcester and maybe I could lay on my side in the back seat and get some sleep for a couple of hours. But then the Prisoner Transport folks showed up. The Prisoner Transport Van backed into the secret back door garage of the Police Station where I had been led. Two Storm Troopers, bedecked in all things Authority Figure and Batman, jumped out and approached me briskly. Everything was white shirt, white van, black and blue pants and equipment, all gleaming and crisp. And the way those big black pistols ride up a little too high on the hip is oddly menacing. This was high-caliber stuff, and I was impressed.
This Prisoner Transport Van was big, strong, and brutally simple. (The Storm Troopers perhaps, also, but I’m not going there.) The whole interior was like fiberglass, thick, white and smooth like you’d find in a boat or hot tub, as well as the bench we sat on which was inclined slightly forward to make us all lean involuntarily forward, cuffed hands in lap, as if in penitence. I wasn’t penitenting, though, I was thinking about how I would’ve had Sourdough bread toast slathered with butter to dip into the broth of that beef dish that Memory made. Sorry to keep going back to that. Anyway, seat belts were ignored. The seat belt issue actually surprised me, and not just because of my own safety, but because I’d assume this was a regulated thing wrapped up in liability issues, and a general moral obligation to belt someone in who is in the care of the state, and quite literally, and thoroughly, handcuffed.
Handcuffs: I’m talking about the real thing now. The Storm Troopers came with some serious extra handcuff stuff. I was handcuffed and they put a chain around my waist connected to the handcuffs! But wait, also leg cuffs with a chain connecting ankle-to-ankle. You’ve all seen these guys so decorated: an offshoot of the merely-handcuffed perp-walk, these super-chained-up guys have to shuffle along ignominiously on camera while glancing about like a guilty dog. How long does it take to learn that perp-shuffle? One step. As soon as those ankle cuffs bite into your ankle bones, you learn a new way to walk. (Hint: much shorter steps). I later learned that 40% of Prisoner escapes happen during Transport so I get it―we’ve all seen that movie where the vehicle crashes, the drivers are killed or stunned, and some surviving prisoners wriggle out and make it into the tree-line.
As I shuffled a short distance to the Van, I actually had the thought of asking one of the Prison Transport guys to take my picture and send it to my text or email. I really did, I wanted to capture me so chained and shuffling. It didn’t seem real to me then, nor now, and I knew the value of that picture being a great souvenir of the experience. More about souvenirs later. Later, my brother Keith independently raised how great it would be to have a picture of me like that shuffling to the Van and I seriously regret not attempting the picture. I really think I could’ve talked the guys into it and I was just a little lazy about it at that moment.
So, back to the seat belts. An accident would be an ugly thing in terms of money and explaining why these fine folks tumbled around in back like a cement mixer while all chained up? By the way, didn’t a black man die during a rough ride in a Police Van by getting all banged up with a neck issue? Wasn’t this was one of a big series of events in a string of police brutality issues that effected “Black Lives Matter?”
But, I digress. The point of mentioning the seat belts is that it got me thinking how maybe we are under the radar of oversight and maybe nobody at this level gives a fuck. And above me, managerially, who really wants to investigate prisoner transport, of all issues, when we’re all just glad that it is being handled by the Good Guys, some big strong competent authority types with guns. Also, if we start with ‘no seatbelts’, how much further down the devalue slide do we go due to my status as a person in the custody of Police and Correctional professionals? Fortunately, there’s no big reveal here. I’m happy to say that ‘the system’ didn’t devalue me any more than a normal amount for the circumstances, sort of, I guess, in a way, I think, maybe. Um. In other words, I’ll just keep writing this piece and see how I feel about it in the end.
OK, so I’m in the van, alone, thankfully, and bent slightly over, and we’re bouncing down the highway, chains a’clinkin’. Between the amount of chain I was allocated and the high-end Prisoner Transport system, I felt under-qualified for the treatment I was getting. I desperately wished that I had killed someone over a girl at least once in my life. Or bashed someone’s head in during a botched robbery.
After awhile, we picked up passengers in some town or other. I was disappointed because I realized then that I was just on a bus running a bus line and not getting nonstop service to Worcester. The lighting at the big fenced entrance and exit sites to these facilities is amazing, by the way. Coming in off the dark highway at night, it’s like a sudden flashlight in the face during a DUI. So, we get in there and pick some people up; I watched them shuffle to me across a short stretch of pavement. Yep, everybody knows that careful shuffle. Two guys are now sitting next to me on my bench. The closest guy is in T-shirt, shorts, about 30-something, balding and unshaven. His legs were all banged up with scabs and bruises for some reason. He looked hungover but docile. The second guy was a little more amped up, just as cheaply dressed, and unkempt as well. A thin young woman, tiny, bedraggled, and obviously deep in drug-dependance-land, was escorted to a special small side seating compartment of the van for folks to ride separately from the benches. And there was now another guy on the bench across the interior wall on the other side of the van. We could all hear each other perfectly: either a shift in the seat, the slight tink and rattle of chain, or a cough, etc.
Oh, yes, there were coughs. In the back of a van, five people, no ventilation, maintaining an average social distance of I-can-elbow-that-guy, and coughing from people who couldn’t point out a bar of soap in a lineup. (What else would they put in that lineup, you ask?: a toothbrush, a High School Diploma, a salad, a job, and a book.) Well, at least we’re not all directly on our way to a crowded place where we’ll be in a position to spread a virus to other people.
Back on the road, after a little while, I said “Anyone here read The Wall Street Journal today?”
No. No I didn’t say that. Not because it would be a rude and condescending affront in its sarcasm, implied prejudice and elitism, but because I didn’t think of it. Part of me is glad I didn’t think of it and part of me is not. Nor do I know if I would have said it had I thought of it. I would hope that I would have had I had. I love that last sentence. In any event, I satisfy the condescension requirement by pretending to address it analytically here when in fact I am simply being condescending in a different realm. A bait and switch.
There was some minor chitchat among my fellow passengers but I politely telegraphed my disinterest. Eventually I heard the girl on the other side announce that she got out of the handcuffs―and she had! I remembered how tiny she had been. When the Guards pulled her out later they were nonplussed. “Yeah, I figured you might be too small when I put them on.”
After a long time, maybe an hour, we arrived at ‘Middleton Jail and House of Correction.’ I’d heard many stories about this place from my AA Meetings (sorry to dime this out―I love AA and the people in it―but it seems relevant that the vaunted ‘Middleton” had long intrigued me, though not because I had myself been incarcerated there). Approaching the fantastic high walls with razorwire rolls under blazing lights, I noted the Guard Towers. Nothing good ever starts with Guard Towers. If you see Guard Towers, you have either stumbled into North Korea, or you done fucked up. As we were just getting out I asked, before I could help myself, about my just staying in the van since I’ll be moving on to Worcester anyway. Immediately I felt stupid. Of course not. They’re not going to just leave me alone for a couple hours while I try to escape or kill myself. I was to be in-processed to a degree as a Transfer. This stuff takes time and we’re going to be here awhile.
It all seemed impressive and official enough as I was in-processed. I was in a big bustling room with lots of Corrections folks and a few civilian Administrative folks at various stations. Quite businesslike. I did an abbreviated in-process, got a picture taken, got a full body scan by sitting in a high-tech chair that scans, then I just waited separately in an adjoining holding cell that was one big plexiglass-like box. .
In my holding cell was one other person. I came in and sat at the opposite end of the cell while he remained standing by the cell door, staring out impassively at the reception station/transfer station activities. He was standing relaxed but firmly, if that can be said. He was notably well dressed. I remember that he had on a red collared civilian shirt, nice black pants, shoes. Sharp haircut, modern glasses. These must be the clothes he was arrested in, given back to him now for transport somewhere. Also, tall, dark and handsome-looking, in a Latin American way. He was staring without moving for a long time. Maybe a full hour of this goes by. Then he turns toward me slightly:
“You going to Walpole too?”
“Ah, no. Going to Worcester.”
Walpole! This guy is going from Jail to Prison, to Walpole State Maximum Security Prison. He’s in the transfer hold, processing it. I’m processing him processing it, and my immediate thoughts bring me back to my upbringing in Maplewood Park, a Housing Project. Here, the biggest street credibility came from a stint at Walpole, ultimately. As a kid, ‘Reform School’ was the thing and then as kids got older, real Jail and Prison stuff happened. For example, a circle of friends of my older brother and sister were all busted for a string of stunning bank robberies and so some people we really knew went to ‘Walpole’. After long stints at Walpole, we saw some of them return home as adults. It was strange. And so, I knew Walpole was big-time Prison.
Eventually I’m back in the Van, alone again, for the long ride to Worcester. Same Prison Transport Team driving, but just me in the back now, having dumped my van-mates into the Middleton Jail system like throwing grease out the back door of a restaurant. As we pull into the entrance to Worcester County Jail and House of Corrections, I was again impressed with the security and fences and lighting. The driver was chatting to some of the initial Gate Guards and I heard him say “Just one punk in back.” That irked me a little bit to hear, and it just didn’t go away. As I sat there for a few minutes, I got more and more pissed off. It was Friday night, and it had been a long day, and not one of my best. After we got through another gate and parked, finally, one of the Guards flung open the back door. I leaned forward and said, “Are you the Driver?”
“What? No.”
“Can you get him over here?”
“Why?” A little perplexed and on alert now.
“I’ve got something to say to him.” Louder.
“I’ll tell him, why, what’s up?” Taking a step back.
He’s not getting the other guy.
“You tell him I’m 61 and have never been arrested. Tell him that the current charge is bogus as will be found out shortly. I am a hardworking tax-paying citizen and have respect for authority.” My voice rising even a little more. “I don’t drink or do drugs. I’m a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and a good normal guy. I am not a punk!”
The driver had been on the side of the Van, and now appeared. They both looked a little stunned at my sudden dressing down. Then one said quietly “Who called you a punk?”
“The driver.”
“I never said that.” Emphatically.
“You said ‘I have a punk in back’.”
“No, I said ‘I have one in back!’”
Wha?
I kind of believed the guy, the way he said it.
Whoops.
OK, jeez, sorry about all that. Heh-heh.
Wow. That was uncomfortable. (For people ‘in the know’, it reminded me of my ignominious start to the Appalachian Trail where I started off without my hiking poles.) So, I’m getting processed into Worcester County Jail now, the Storm Troopers are taking a coffee break before they hit the road again and I’m hoping that they aren’t surfing about in the background saying that this one here, Perrin, is delusional and paranoid. I’d be doing that. Anyway, a lot of in-processing happens. And―I should have seen this coming―I’m told that since it is now a Friday afternoon, I can’t see the Judge for the Arraignment in the morning and will be held over the weekend to see him on Monday. Wow.
In-processing was very interesting. They get a lot of data from/about you at several different stations. You really get a decent orientation as a guest at your new gated community.
At no less than three different stations, I was asked, among many other questions, if I currently had a job. Do you work? This was so they could factor that variable into three different assessment determinations: Overall Classification of Badness? / Appropriateness for General Population placement versus more restricted ‘housing’ as they call it / and Mental Health Classification. It was interesting to see the groups of questions tailored to these particular concerns but employment status was one of a few that showed up understandably in all three interrogations. And the reaction to my answer to this question was the same with all three people that I spoke with:
“Yes, I have a job.”
“Oh!.” Glancing up at me from the computer screen, too late to hide a slight surprise. Then, recovering, “Name of employer please?”
I’d chirp that out and then we’d move on, but one guy took a little more convincing. He asked me the question twice in quick succession, pretending not to hear my quick ‘Yes’ to the first one, perhaps thinking I’d have a change of heart and decide not to lie after all―given an eighth of a second to think it over. He looked at me like “ Really? Don’t you hang with that gang downtown at the corner of Lazy and Shitbum?”
Same thing for the ‘Years of education’ question:
“18”.
“Oh!.” Looking up at me like I‘m a colorful salamander.
Now it is time for clothing issue: take everything off: Lift ‘em. Turn around, bend over and spread ‘em. OK, now put this orange jumpsuit on and these stupid humiliating shower-shoes things. (Up until the shower-shoes thing, I hadn’t felt humiliated.) My Prison ID picture is taken with me in orange! I look great in orange! I am Inmate #0711048. And the jumpsuit is quite comfortable and I actually wouldn’t mind having one. Maybe not orange, though.
At the last minute, I have to read and sign some stuff at a final booth pertinent to my housing and the guy leans forward conspiratorially and says quietly “You know, due to the nature of your charge . . . “ and he listed some restrictive housing opportunities. Now I’m thinking that I must be headed to General Population and this guy is telling me I might get into some shit there. I’d always heard of course that people convicted of and probably even just accused of bad stuff with children get rough treatment in Jail and I’d always believed it of course. Now this guy is confirming that it is a real thing, and about to happen to me maybe. So, I ask if he’s saying I have the option to be alone. “Yes, but you’d only get out for a half hour per day.” I’ll take it. Now I don’t have to tolerate a strange man shitting in a stainless steel toilet three feet away from me while I wait to get shanked from someone who was abused as a child. Ok, yeah, I’ll take that being-alone deal.
Upon this, I was asked to change to a brown jumpsuit which designates something, probably not something good.
Now, I’m finally led to my cell. I walked into my cell without much fanfare carrying one big efficient bundle of clothing and bedding and some literature about the facility and various brochures about resources available to me, etc.
Clang.
There’s someone else’s stuff in here! I thought I was supposed to be alone! Fuck. I hope it isn’t someone uncool. There was clothing and towels draped around and several Styrofoam meal boxes and various trash. I didn’t touch a thing and lay down carefully on the bottom bunk since the top bunk was made up tightly with a couple of blankets. Where’d this guy go? Medical? Shower? I waited for him while dozing on and off for the next several hours and the lights went out and I eventually slept through the night.
I woke up at 5:00 and still nobody here but me. OK. Great, I simply got left an unclean cell. Who knows where the previous occupant went, and it was probably a mistake I guessed. Everything has up to now been about just getting here and now I’m here. Just glad I’m alone.
I started to organize the stuff left in the cell by stacking the leftover clothing and blankets and consolidating the trash, which consisted largely of white Styrofoam clamshell type fast food containers.
Meanwhile, people were working behind the scenes on my behalf! My girlfriend Memory was in touch with my nephew, a Gloucester Police Officer, and my boss Jamie O’Hara, who is also a City Councilman and quite savvy. Memory got my car towed for free with her AAA service, thereby saving me a lot of money. Between them, they also figured out my itinerary and even started tracking me by my inmate #, which they had obtained! And, unbeknownst also, my boss was planning to pick me up after my Arraignment on Monday. I tried to call Memory and Jamie this day, Saturday, but found out after a few failed attempts that the phone lines available to me near the shower areas have to be activated by my registering in the Prison Phone system first. The COs handed me another form, but the form indicated that the process would take 3-5 days. I was planning on being gone by then, and so I realized that I just had to wait it out, having ostensibly disappeared from society. Ah, but no . . . they were all tracking me. (They even later became aware on Monday of the disposition of my Arraignment and Jamie appeared in Worcester after I was freed to drive me home.)
Back to H-Block, Saturday morning. I’m cleaning up my cell. Stirrings are happening and I get my first look out of my little window at the Block. The rectangular window is like a World War II Tank driver’s view port and I scan out of it with the same vigilance. This is a giant square building, with two tiers of cells surrounding a big interior common area on the ground floor. Metal stairwells climb up to the second floor at the four corners. The opposite leg of the square, as I look straight across the common area, is the only side that doesn’t have cells. The bottom floor is a row of showers, some pay phones and some installed computer screens for people to use money for ‘Commissary’. The whole top floor above the showers is the Corrections Officers (COs) Control Center, behind slightly smoky glass. From my distance, they were shadowy figures akin to the Banker silhouette guy in Deal Or No Deal.
People are stirring, some talking, but not too much yet. For some reason, and this remained true over the next three days, the noise never even bothered me that much, even when it got bad. I’d always imagined this would be a much bigger deal for me. I flagged one of the COs over, a big muscular bald guy who I eventually gathered was the lead CO on the day shift. (Incidentally, all of these COs seemed like they could take care of themselves; it was reassuring to see that.) I asked him if I could get the trash out of my cell. He looks in and says “Holy Shit, what happened to your toilet!” I hadn’t even got to thinking about that yet. But this led me to say “Hey, I’ll clean this whole place if you give me some paper towels and cleaner?” He opened my food port and put a trash can abutted to it so I could happily rid my cell of all of the trash, he pushed in some paper towels, and then a big spray bottle of generic industry cleaner. As he pushes the cleaning bottle through, he stops, looks me dead in the eye and says seriously and sternly: “Don’t drink this stuff.” This was a buzzkill. I went from “Hey, cool, I’m going to clean my room!” to “I guess I’m in a place where people want to kill themselves.” I cleaned my room cell methodically, wiping down everything, got the trash out, got the previous guy’s stuff all in one zipped up container in a corner by the door, made my bed neatly and even cleaned the toilet.
Soon it was time to distribute breakfast.
OK, here’s the food thing: Three times a day a couple of big wheeled carts make their way methodically through the tiers, dropping first a drink and then a Styrofoam carryout container with the meal at every cell. After a bit, someone comes around and retrieves the containers or you can keep it in your cell and drop them in the trash buckets later in the common area during the half-hour of free time. They place this on a metal lip midway in the door which gets unlocked by a CO preceding the cart. You can gauge when to get off your bunk by how loud the food slot opening clangor is getting. This morning’s breakfast was a folded piece of egg fluff stuff, probably a bit of cheese in there, a small apple, a piece of bread and a small carton of 2% milk. OK. I finished about half. Overall, the meals came in at a consistent C- and the food was clearly steps lower than Army food in both quantity and quality. No wonder the last guy in my cell left so many containers that were barely eaten.
Chatter picks up as the day goes on and I figure out that I am in cell #H113, thought of here as simply 13. I can see most of the numbering system and see people intermittently looking out their Tank windows and talking, yelling, faces appearing and disappearing. The acoustics are terrible, and if you downshift your attention level a little bit, it all washes out as often many people are talking at once. A guy several doors away from me on my floor soon becomes the main event though; he was in 10, I think. He’s talking the most and the loudest, and it was the same every day. I can see him when his face appears at an angle to me as we are across from each other at a corner. I can see that he is dark, and short by the way he’s lifting his face up to the window slightly and I later hear him referred to by one of the COs as “The Puerto Rican that won’t shut up.” He gradually amps up his rhetoric, generally speaking and yelling to the whole H-Block as a whole and occasionally to one of his acquaintances.
“Hey, Time Check, it’s 09:30! Hey, they’re shutting down J-Block because of a fight! Hey, 8, I’m sending a message, get ready to grab!” Then he sends a note on a string two cells down with a deft slide-throw from under his door and across the floor and a hand at the other end darts out and grabs the note. 10 reels in the string, announcing, “Hey, (to someone else) I’ll leave you half the string when I go! This is a 30 footer!) Said with pride. And on and on. Talk about the weather, sports, and other generic subjects came and went but most of the talk was about who is where, how long they’ll be there, what’s going on with their lawyers, and that sort of stuff. A lot of talk about how the lawyers aren’t representing them well enough, to put it politely. Then 10 starts harassing 23 as he can see him across the way talking quietly to a CO standing patiently outside of his door.
“Hey 23, what are you talking to that CO about? You been talking to him a LONG time!”
Meanwhile, I need to talk to a CO too and soon get the attention of one who is walking by. I need eyeglasses and he brings me a form to fill out. I fill it out and give it back. My glasses are at the Gloucester Police Station and I want to be able to read; the medical folks here have some reading glasses for inmates I’d heard and hopefully I’ll get some glasses before I leave.
Lunch. Another solid C-. Some kind of sandwich with pressed meat in it. I ate most of it before my pride returned.
Meanwhile, 10 is increasing pressure on 23, who is still talking with a CO. 10 is now yelling “Are you snitching? What’s so interesting over there 23? Why THE FUCK are you still talking to that CO?” Holy shit, this is starting to get real. That kid could just as easily get his message to that CO some other way, right? If you are being accused of being a rat in prison while the entire block jeers at every new escalation of the accusation, for Chrissake, do something to save yourself!
In an out of this, 10 is telling someone else to do something for someone else and tells him “You tell him the Shot-Caller said . . .” I forget the end of the message, as I was surprised to hear this guy identify himself as the Shot-Caller and nobody blinked. OK. 10 is the boss of this whole block! And everyone knows it, including me now. Now I’m worried about 23.
The CO eventually left but 10 kept pressing 23. “Are you a Rat 23, you gonna tell us what you were talking to that CO about?” Unexpectedly, 23 starts yelling back at 10 here and there and I’m paying attention now. This kid has some moxie at least. So, the Shot-Caller himself is in it with another inmate, and it’s been going on for hours. 23 is yelling back, but I can barely make out what he’s saying but Shot-Caller seems to have no problem making out what’s being said. 23 sounds defiant, though a little whiney. Suddenly, later that evening, with this hate still flying back and forth across the block, something big happens. Everybody in the block suddenly yelled BOOOOOOO!!…..literally Booing 23 like baseball fans would ‘Boo’ a bad call on the field. Shot-Caller yelled out as loud as he could YOU DONE FUCKED UP NOW 23, YOU’RE DONE BOY! YOU’RE DONE!” The whole place went grenade-in-a-monkey-house loud and was almost gleeful about what had happened.
What had happened was, and I still can’t believe it, but, 23 must have said something in rebuttal to 10 that accidentally gave away the fact somehow that he was indeed an informant, a Rat! WTF? I can’t imagine what could have been said but everyone got it’s import immediately; it went through the block like electricity. Shot-Caller is now yelling about what’s gonna happen when this guy gets out in general population. He said “You’re going down 23! You’re DEAD!”
Holy fuck. These people aren’t playin’, hey. And, not for nothing, but the COs can hear and see everything as well as I can. They’re not hiding in the Control Room; several are always slowly moving about the cell-block at all times, watching the six that happen to be on their half-hour of freedom, and answering the occasional question from one of these six or yelled out from a cell and of course for a good portion of the day the COs are working the meal rotations and right in the middle of things. So, why aren’t they telling the Shot-Caller to shut the fuck up or stopping the passing of notes with the string, etc.? I really don’t know, but perhaps there is something to the Urban Dictionary definition of a Shot-Caller in a prison: “An individual who runs the prison, even respected by the guards. The Warden of the inmates, runs the asylum, unbreakable, high Commissary status, most likely a lifer and deadly. Always keeping people from taking his place.” Elsewhere I read that Shot-Callers control outside events too: “Go kill this dude named Tone, you can find him on the corner of 34th street, apartment 419.” As a believer in law and order, and an Army Officer, I can’t help myself and after I got my glasses I refer to the 2019 Inmate Handbook I received upon in processing. Sure enough:
[The following acts are prohibited; commission by an inmate shall constitute a disciplinary offense:
(18) Fighting with, assaulting , or threatening another person with any offense against his person or property.
(18A) Fighting with, assaulting or threatening another inmate.
(18B) Fighting with, assaulting, or threatening another person.]
A few observations here: Inmate #H123 is an inmate, and a person. The COs saw and heard him being threatened clearly; indeed the threats were yelled repeatedly. Some of the 46 offenses listed in this handbook can qualify as a Minor or a Major offense, ostensibly with respect to the circumstances surrounding the offense, but 18, 18A, and 18B are all deemed Major offenses only.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Shot-Caller keeps it up: “You’d better get in PC 23, (Protective Custody), YOU’D BETTER GET IN PC!” All evening this goes on.
Happily, at dinner-time meanwhile, some medical folks showed up with glasses for me and they were the perfect reading glasses. I had requested 2.0 or 2.5; they had me try the 2.0 first and it was perfect. Yay! I was so happy that I could read again. (I was also happy that I’m not 23.) Two weird things here: I noticed how the medical folks were very nice and how good it felt to be talked to nicely, versus the guarded clipped discourse ever-present since this journey began. And, I found myself thinking that “I’m glad it’s not me” thing regarding 23’s plight. Of course, I don’t want anyone to get hurt or anything bad to happen but there really is a little something to that good but guilty feeling when something bad happens to someone else. I hadn’t known how real that was. I wasn’t gleeful or anything, but some of the “glad it’s not me” thing does leak into the gut. Not proud or it, just a messenger here.
Dinner comes and goes. C-. I’m actually losing interest in food, having by now been consistently presented with such poor fare. At about 8:00pm, my cell door opens up GRRRRRAANNNGG! and it’s time for me to get my half hour of free time. My door is open. I felt very exposed when that door opened me up to the common areas. Now, they were only doing six people at a time and sets of six doors at a time had been opening up periodically all day. Each small liberated group would sparsely populate the showers, phones, perhaps sit at one of the common area tables and watch one of the TVs for a little bit. Chitchat with the COs and generally sulk around sullenly. So I wasn’t surprised my time had come but I was surprised that I hadn’t thought about it. For a second I thought about riding it out in my cell; who knows if any of the six got the word about ‘the nature of my allegations’ yet? I’d seen the Prison telegraph system in play for two days now and it is quite something. Maybe I would have not hesitated if I was 27, but at 61, with a replaced shoulder, even a quick scuffle that gets broken up by COs right away could screw up my shoulder forever and I’ve gotten used to being able to use my left arm. But then, I thought, I shouldn’t overthink it. I want a shower. I want to see if the showers are any good. So, I down-dressed to shower shoes, shorts, t-shirt and towel and sauntered over to the showers. Externally I was playing Mr. I-Been-Here-Before but internally I also felt a little bit like an animal raised in captivity being released into the wild. Treading gingerly across the Savannah, shower shoes squeaking away, I’m listening for every sound and looking for escape routes should a blur of leopard appear in my periphery. I get to the showers, dramatically pausing to watch the TV for a few minutes on the way. Incredibly, a Patriots Game was on and I watched a few plays. (I won my Fantasy Football game that week despite having been stopped from managing my Team on Thursday.)
The showers were wonderful! Oh My God that felt great. Pretty well set up too, with individual showers big enough to undress, shower, and redress, all inside the curtain. And the water was good and hot and jet blasting. Soap and toothbrush/paste in my little welcome kit. Just what I needed! First shower since Wednesday. I have to give them an A on shower facilities. On my way back to my cell I grabbed a book from the little stand of books in the common area. It was about a member of a rock band, an autobiography of sorts. I read some of it that night, and was reading it when 23 got outed as an actual Snitch, and that’s why I didn’t hear the inculpating statement made. I don’t remember a goddamned thing about the book, or even the Band’s name by the way, and I stopped reading it after a short time and switched it out for another, the only other book that wasn’t damaged, at shower time the next day.
At some point, 23 covered his window. This is a major no-no, as it allows the inmate to go unobserved by the COs who need strict accountability and can’t have bad stuff happening behind the veil. The veil is a long sheet of wet toilet paper that sticks to the inside of the Tank view port. So, noise starts as this gets noticed―23 covered his window! 23 covered his window!―and the monkey-house amps up again. I quickly read the situation as this kid trying to appear anti-CO to claw back a little street cred with his accusers. The accusers weren’t buying it for a second, and it was pathetic to watch until a CO appeared beside his cell and convinced him to take it down. But . . . it was still a good half-hour drama and I’d wondered if some type of SWAT Team would eventually break in to deal with it. Accountability through the window comes in several forms. Sometimes the COs walk around and just peer in randomly; they also get a visual at every meal distribution; and they even have periodic Standing Counts where it is announced for everyone to stand and be counted while a Team goes around and tallies everyone. I got the feeling that I distinguished myself early by simple compliance with the Standing Count; every time it happened I stood politely in the middle of my cell until they counted me. Soon it was ‘Thank You Mr. Perrin’ every time. Wow. They are grateful for even this crumb of civility on my part. Some guys were a little sluggish on compliance though: “Get up, 44, get UP!, hey, 29, on your FEET. Standing Count Dude, nothing new, GET UP!, etc.” Jesus, the COs aren’t asking for much. They have to count you and merely standing gives them a quick read on you medically. For example, if you’re dead, you’re probably not getting up for Standing Count.
Shortly before lights-out, there was another big commotion as a small team of COs converged on 23’s cell door. This was long after the window-covering incident and was clearly something else. “23’s going to PC! 23’s going to PC, LOOK, they’re getting him!” from everyone. As Instantly, “BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!…..” Sure enough, 23 was rousted, shackled up and got shuffled off to a Protective Custody cell, which may have bureaucratically been in the works since the morning. All the while, inmates were letting him know what they thought of him, and they were predominantly unkind, unchristian-like thoughts. All this against the backdrop of a sustained rising and falling “BOOOOOOOOO!!”.
Wow, we’ve come a long way from the days when prisoners would rake their pewter cups against the cell bars in a cacophonous show of solidarity.
But ‘Boooo?’
Alright. I got into my bunk and slept pretty soundly again. Man, I am seriously catching up on sleep.
Next morning starts typically. The whole day was fairly uneventful in retrospect. All the lights go on, the noise swells, an abominable breakfast comes around. There was a pile of Pterodactyl shit in my container and I ate some because it had a slight odor of food.
Today, around mid-morning I began to pace my cell in a brief nod to Papillon. Had to see what that was like. Answer: slightly soothing. I’ll keep it in mind in case I actually get convicted.
J-Block and H-Block are pretty close to each other, about 15 yards away and separated by a wide asphalt path and some fencing. I could see this out the back window of my cell. A few people in my line of cells had established relationships with J-Block guys and they’d yell back and forth, trading news and opinions. This wasn’t William F. Buckley stuff but it was interesting to listen to, and was much clearer acoustically to me: “Dude, he smashed the Police car, they’re aluminum I think, and the windows shattered. He got stun-gunned twice! Was up for multiple charges, attempted Murder. He was on probation, he violated probation, but that’s another story . . .” Wow. Let’s hear the other story too. Lots of these H to J, J to H interjections all day long. One was a fairly sincere discussion of religion, and Jesus, between two guys. I was tempted to think “OK, here we go, now they find religion. Sure.” But, it seemed sincere, and what can it hurt if these guys find that kind of solace?
During the day, about mid-day, I noticed something really strange. Two inmates, from somewhere, were in the common area and racing about getting food and drinks from ‘Commissary’ and heating them up and delivering them to people in various cells. They gave a lot of stuff to Shot-Caller and his cell-mate and to others that Shot-Caller directed. But also to other people on both floors. And so I’d see them running up the stairs and around the tiers with hot coffee, etc. with great concentration. There were two microwaves in the center of the common area and they were in constant use. Hot coffee! Pop Tarts! Ramen! What was really strange was how extremely quick and concerned these guys were and I came to believe, sadly, that they were under orders from someone. Man, those two guys moved. Fuck. Imagine being here and being a forced Microwave Food Delivery slave to others because they will hurt you otherwise? I remembered seeing a version of this from the day before but I studied it today. A hierarchical construct allowed only at the most primitive levels of human social development.
Near dinner today, the word went around that we’re having chicken tonight. The word was passed around almost quietly like a piece of good news. “Chicken and Rice.” Well, I found out why this was newsworthy. The chicken was baked, and it tasted just like . . . wait for it . . . chicken. And the rice wasn’t half bad either. I guess when they bake chicken here, it always comes out good. So . . . a B, maybe B+ meal and one that is an A compared to the other meals we’ve been getting.
All day the usual noise, rising and falling capriciously.
At shower today, I picked up a book about an adventurer in the great old days of sailing warships. It was great reading and I read it on and off for the rest of the time I was there. I was swept out of my bunk and onto the deck of a great English Warship under fire from the French, but I was turning with the wind to deliver a devastating broadside with double rows of 16-pound shot cannon. God, I hope I have the range right!
Anyway.
Sunday was coming to a close and I wondered what my Arraignment would be like. I wondered more if the French Warship would react to my turning movement too quickly.
I woke up Monday and immediately began to pack all my stuff quite neatly and professionally. I’m going to my Arraignment today and I’ll probably be home by the end of the day!
Lots of delays, and I am finally taken out of my cell and brought to an area for my digital and remote meeting with a Judge and it was way across ‘campus’―not sure of the right word for this network sprawl of buildings, fencing, pavement, and policed deprivation. When I finally get into a very small room, I’m seated at a monitor that shows a lot of people at once; the Judge, DA, various staff helping with the flow of Arraignments for this Judge. The COs are outside; they’re handling several Arraignment people here, and the people waiting to get to the monitors are sitting in the pews of the Prison Church! I’m in a little side room of the church, and can see the altar while I wait. There were a surprising number of technical glitches while people figured out how to hear/see each other onscreen. I’m sure I wasn’t their first Zoom-like digital remote Arraignment in the COVID era, but there were problems. Meanwhile, I could see myself onscreen, confirmed that they could see and hear me, and sat there in my jumpsuit. Things finally get going, the Judge seemed very patient and one of his staff even semi-admitted to being the cause of the technical screwup and they all chuckled.
I watch my name come up in the rotation onscreen and the Judge is finally shuffling some papers in front of him pertaining to me. The very first words he says, loudly and to no one in particular, are “What’s Perrin doing in Jail?” A minute of further shuffling, searching goes on. “Anybody see any Proof of Service here?” Nope. Then he asks me who my lawyer is.
“Um. Nobody.”
The Judge makes me get a CO, instructs the CO to bring me to a separate room and await the phone call of a lawyer for me. We comply, and a minute later the phone rings and it’s my new lawyer. I am impressed that this guy is asking all the right questions and very fast. And I’m answering them:
“Nope, no criminal history. No, I never knew about the Hearing. Yes, I’m employed. 61 years old. Yes, I’m a veteran. What are my ties to the community? Well, family, job, car, driver’s license, boat, girlfriend, gardens, etc. . . .I explained how an earlier version of this allegation got dismissed in Arizona. And many other details, rapid-fire, in two minutes.” We hang up.
We get back to the online Arraignment. There is now one person ahead of me in line and I can watch her Arraignment on the screen, all parties are visible, to include her in all her jumpsuit glory, and I am astounded. It is a middle-aged female and she is belligerant. She is mentally wandering, is the big victim here, is insulting the Judge, swearing, and all manner of craziness. She ended up giving the Judge the middle finger! Holy shit, I’m thinking, I think I can do better than that! I looked at the CO at the door and said, “Are you seeing this?” and we both started laughing. He ‘didn’t recommend’ that I do the same. We both chuckled again.
The woman finally got shut down, and now I’m up for real.
The Judge and my lawyer, who was now dialed in but not visible, both confirm out loud that I should never have been arrested. To my very big surprise, ‘my’ lawyer rapidly rattled off all the relevant facts I had told him. He forgot nothing. It briefly restored my faith in lawyers, and a hope flickered in me the way that last match flickered in the Jack London story. I won’t tell you the name of that story―I can’t be spoon-feeding you people. Anyway, I couldn’t believe it; it was if we had actually prepared for the meeting. The Judge quickly and crisply arrived at PR for me (the word I’d been waiting for! Personal Recognizance!) even though the DA recommended $5,000 cash bail. I was suddenly on my way out. I was told to call my lawyer back after the meeting and I did, and he confirmed again that I got screwed and sort of apologized for the legal system. He than asked me a lot more questions, was correctly incredulous about my troubles within the Family Court systems, and told me to call him next week if I wanted―he was interested in representing me.
So, the Pre-Trial Hearing was set for me for December 4th. Fine. Plenty of time to prepare.
I got led back to my cell, moved some stuff out and was ultimately led back to the room which was the scene of the original and famous lift ‘em and spread ‘em event. I was given my bag of the civilian clothes I arrived in and was told to change back into them.
I glanced about nervously. Not because I had any modesty issues, of course, but because I was about to make my big move―smuggling out my souvenirs! I took in the disposition of the room with deadly interest. I needed to conduct this change of clothes in full view of two guys near the far door, the ones who had escorted me here and gave me my civilian clothes back. They knew I was low/no threat and so were disinterestedly doing something and shifting about in my periphery. They were close, five feet maybe, but they were not watching me. Behind fogged glass directly in front of me were a few more people in some sort of admin control room. These guys could see me perfectly, but I could barely make them out, but I could see that they were in relaxed posture. So, I was facing them, pretending to figure out how to open the giant Ziploc bag with my clothes in it, and then executed the following plan:
Wait―what souvenirs? I told you we’d get back to souvenirs. When I cleaned out my cell on Saturday morning, I found, way in the very back of a built in steel desk area, an amazing pair of ‘Prison Dice’! So cool! They are extremely light, and made of compressed toilet paper―cubes no doubt shaped carefully when wet and allowed to dry thoroughly. Then, the little pens they let you write with provide the black dots. I swear that my first thought on seeing these was that I wanted to smuggle them out when I left and here I am. As I was packing up, I found the only shirt item with a pocket; literally one shirt had one pocket out of a wardrobe of four sets of prison clothing. Thus, my simple plan was hatched. The dice would ride in the shirt pocket and, during rehearsals, I noted that they weren’t noticeable beyond the general wrinklage of the whole garment. Therefore, I also slipped my Inmate ID into the same pocket and saw that still nothing in the pocket was noticeable at a glance. I figured I could try to waltz into the changing area under escort and hope the escort guys don’t notice anything nor ask me to turn in the ID. I still don’t know if I was supposed to turn in the ID or not. Anyway, so now I’m here with both souvenirs in my shirt pocket.
I take my shoes and pants off first and nonchalantly dress, though being careful not to lean forward at all so that nothing went tumbling out of my pocket. Come-On lucky sevens! So, it looked like I was changing pants standing up in a phone booth but I did it quickly. Then, I turned slowly to my left just far enough to get my back to the fogged window and not far enough for the guys by the door to see beyond my side. I then with my right hand slid the souvenirs from my upper left shirt pocket into my front right pants pocket in a motion that was smooth with me taking my jail shirt off. Then I pulled my civilian shirt on in a manner that kind of matched my other motions. Voila!
After changing, I was led to the holding area for being released and waited a couple of hours, souvenirs safely in my pocket. (Hope there’s no final shakedown going out the door!) During this time, bag lunches were handed out to several guys in various holding pens for various reasons and I put mine aside. When I heard the guys in the next cell over asking themselves “What is it?”, I had to look. It was a sandwich with two big pieces of meat in it, I guess. It looked terrible, didn’t smell all that great, and when I took a bite it was my last bite. If they had said, “yeah, no, it’s a mistake, that’s what we feed the horses” I would have understood. This was an F. Really, it failed on presentation, taste, and it probably didn’t technically qualify as ‘food’. Nice meal to go out on. On the plus side, I got to hear another long thoughtful conversation about religion between two guys close to me in the adjacent cell who figured out that they are each on that path. I’m not religious but again, I was impressed with the amount of sincere peace and love that these two guys were immersed in. I’m aware of the importance of spirituality from my meetings in AA, and I see the religious piece as a cousin effort. I know also that AA is big among the incarcerated but I didn’t get a chance to get involved in any programs in my short time there. Per the Inmate Handbook, there are tons of great life-building programs and educational programs available to the inmates at Worcester County Jail and House of Corrections, and I hope that they are well-attended.
So, I sat there. A prisoner being led by was whining and being pissy quite a bit to the CO who was escorting him. Since they had now sort of stopped in place, they were suddenly putting on a one-act play in front of ten or twelve of us in a long line of holding cell benches. We can only look one way, and it’s into the hallway stage, mere feet away, where the escort CO was being impatiently patient with his charge. Meanwhile, just off-scene, but visible to me as I was at the far end of the bench-line, I’m watching another CO watch the action. He is a huge and tall muscular bald-headed guy, maxed out in Prison Guard bling, and I watch his interest ratchet up. His arms are big enough to pull trees out of the ground. He is staring at the belligerent inmate with unkind thoughts in his head, but he’s hesitating out of professional courtesy to let the other CO deescalate in his own way first. But he can’t help himself. After a minute or two he yells at the inmate “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” and that pretty much ended it. It was admirable farce* and I almost applauded lightly.
*FARCE: / NOUN a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations..
Later, an Extraction Team paraded by the holding cells. These are the ‘SWAT’ teams that have to ‘extract’ hostile prisoners from their cells or otherwise respond to violence in the compound up to and including prison riots. And they are another big, strong-looking bunch of guys. They have the helmets, shields and all manner of impressive gear. They look prepared to attack enemy headquarters on Mars. Wow, at the last minute, I get to see these guys. Granted, they’re just sauntering by, but that block is now checked, and I get a good look at them and all their gear. (I have a particular interest in the gear as I trained with SWAT Teams during my time as the OIC of RECONDO School in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. Separately, I was an instructor at our Close Quarter Combat School and would love to have stopped these guys to talk tactics under various situations.) Anyway, it’s like they said “We got this guy Perrin leaving today, anything big we miss with him? No, we pretty much got it all? Oh, wait, did he get to see our Extraction Team? No? OK, we got an hour left with him, let’s just have the guys parade past him. He’s in the holding cells, so just go by pretending you’re downshifting from some horrific encounter in J-Block and you’re on your way to Miller-Time.”
Eventually a CO came with documents. Sign here, sign here, take this, take this, sign here. I finally got released. Yep, that’s the door there. (No final shakedown!) There was a free phone in the entrance area, and I called Memory to catch her up. But she was ahead of me, already knowing I’d been released and having already talked to Jamie about me getting picked up. Wow. Holy Shit. So, I called Jamie and he pulled up in about 20 minutes. While I was sitting in the sunshine on the stone stairs outside the main entrance, I realized I was in the middle of a Corrections Officer shift change, and they came streaming by in both directions. Very interesting. professional and fit-looking group of folks. Confident military bearing generally. They looked at me in my wrinkled and stained work clothes with just a touch of wariness.
Jamie pulls up and I get in. Big stupid smiles.
“So, you ready to go back to work?”
“I may need some time. I’m having trouble adjusting back to normal life.”
Penultimate 
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