Apropos of Nothing Podcast!

Episode 18 [ 1:31:49 | 0.01 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (115)

This episode, Matt & Salsa talk about spending some time in jail. Salsa extols the virtues of donating blood, and Matt desperately tries not to sound like a pussy while explaining why he doesn’t. Also, Muppets. Matt has also declared that he will send a prize to whomever sends him a picture of themselves donating blood, and will declare that person his “Donor Surrogate” so get on that. Finally, here is the journal Matt mentions describing the couple of days he spent in jail, enjoy.

A couple of month’s ago (as of this writing) I got a DUI. I
went to court, cut a deal with the county attorney, and got a $900
fine, 2 days in the workhouse, and 17 days on electronic home
monitoring. I also had to have a chemical health evaluation, which led
to taking classes for the next few month’s and not being able to drink.

Anyway, here’s the jail part:

Sunday

I was assigned to show up at 9AM on the 8th of October. The judge had
tried to do me a solid and let me serve my 2 days over the weekend so I
wouldn’t have to miss work, unfortunately, he got the date
wrong and I ended up starting my 2 days on a Sunday. Oh well, life goes
on.

I showed up with my commitment papers, my ID, deodorant, a toothbrush and
toothpaste as per the instructions I had received. I didn’t bring my
wallet, a belt or anything else, also as per my instructions.

I buzzed in at the door and a really nice CO (corrections officer) let me
in and led me to desk where I filled out some paperwork, then got yet
another mugshot taken. (Can you find those online? I should check.)
After that I was led into another room, where I stripped down to nothing
and the CO gave me the clothes I would wear while I was there: faded
blue shirt and pants (similar to doctor scrubs) underwear, and a pair of
socks. I was allowed to continue wearing my own shoes since I was
wearing sneakers, if I had been wearing boots, I would have gotten a
pair of state-issued Chuck Taylor’s. Finally, the CO gave me a tightly
rolled bundle of bedding and told me to go see medical.

I headed out into the jail. The main hallway was perhaps 100 yards long,
and the ceiling was 3 story’s tall. Simple brownish stone, broken every
20 yards or so by a different hallway running off perpendicular to the
one I was in. I passed Block A, B, C, and Segregation (That’s where they
put you if you fuck up while in jail, as far as I know that’s also
where “The Hole” was.) before finding medical. I knocked on the door and
the doctor told me to sit down and he’d be with me shortly. I waited
around watching other inmates come and collect their meds, one guy asked
me how long I was in for, I told him 2 days.

“Two days!” He shouted at me, hand to chest. “How many people did you have to kill to get that sentence?”

“Apparently, not enough.” I replied.

The doctor popped out again to tell me he was nearly ready, and apologized
for keeping me waiting. On the whole, that’s a nice gesture, but I
couldn’t help wondering where he thought I would go. Anyway, I finally
went in and told him I didn’t currently need medical attention and
didn’t have any conditions they needed to be aware of, so he sent me off
to “the gym”.

I left medical wondering how the fuck I was supposed to know where “the gym” was, and wondering what part of the prison they had nicknamed “the gym”.

A CO asked me where I was supposed to be and assigned another inmate to
lead me there after I told him. Sure enough, I was led to a gym. It was
the size of half a basketball court, With a brick wall across where the
center line would be, a brick wall on the left side and behind the
basket. The other side extended maybe 15 feet past the sideline and
that’s where the stairs leading down into the gym were located. I’m sure
of the dimensions because there was a basketball hoop over one end of
the room, and the floor was all painted like a basketball court, the
stairs led down from approximately the height of the top row of
bleachers in a high school gym, and a CO sat at a desk at the bottom,
there was also a drinking fountain and a bathroom near the base of the
stairs.

I walked down with my bedroll, and the CO told me to find an open boat or
mattress. I walked to the opposite corner of the room and asked if an
empty mattress was available and was told I could have it by the dude in
the next one over.

I spread out my blankets and laid down on the shitty mattress. It was
basically a 3″ thick gymnastics mat, you know, kinda hard plastic
outside, foam pad inside. The boats the CO referred to were plastic
trays that you could lay a mattress in. They looked sorta like the
bottom half of one of those luggage cases people strap to the roof of
their car when they go on a road trip.

Anyway, I laid down and stared at the ceiling until noon or so, when the guy on my right went to sleep I grabbed his old Time magazine and read it a couple times. There was a TV in another corner of the
room, and when the Vikings game started most of the other inmates went
to that corner and cheered and talked about football. The guy who had
been sleeping to my left woke up and told them to shut up. I don’t think
anyone even heard him, much less cared. He made a few jokes about them,
and I nodded in agreement, then went back to reading my magazine again.

Eventually the dude gave up on trying to go back to sleep entirely, and started
talking to me a bit. He was a nice enough guy, I asked him when we would
get a chance to get some books as I was bored as hell. He said evening
rec time wasn’t until after dinner, but he had a book I could read. He
tossed me a copy of “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris.
He said all the other books he had were “black books” and I wouldn’t
like them. I asked him what he meant, and he said I could check them out if I wanted. He pulled
another 4 books out of a pillowcase, and tossed them to me. I don’t
remember any of the titles, but they all basically had a scantily clad
black woman on the front, and appeared to be some sort of gangsta/thug
life story. I conceded I wasn’t interested and my new friend had a good
laugh.

I read for a few hours, stopping occasionally to talk to the dude next to
me. (Sorry, I keep not using his name, but I never did learn it.) He
pointed out some of the characters in our group:

Whiskers
- A dude about my age who spent most of the day with a washcloth tied
over his eyes so he could sleep. I think he finally got up around 2PM.
When he wasn’t sleeping, he was reading Stephen King‘s
Dark Tower series or
talking to a couple of the other inmates near me. The name came from
his bushy, yet ragged beard. He seemed like a cool enough guy, but I
never really talked to him much. My buddy said he was alright, but had a
temper. When I asked him about it he told me if you told him to go
punch some dude in the face, he’d just do it, no big deal, assuming he
liked you. Good to know.

Mike
- An older guy with glasses, kinda lean, talked a lot of shit to the
CO’s. As long as he was across the room from them. Played a mean game of
spades and was pretty funny.

Billy Bob Thornton
- Dude looked just like him, I swear. Sorta quiet, but seemed to always
be talking to another inmate, helping them with their plans for how to
improve their situation once they got out. I liked him.

The Cryptkeeper – A fucking creepy dude from a few mats over from us. Not
that he ever did anything that spooked me while I was there, he was just
creepy lookin’. Dude was all gaunt, hands nearly skeletal, long
fingernails, only about as much hair as the Cryptkeeper too. Whenever I
ended up sitting near him for some reason I always heard him talking to
another dude about methods to sell drugs and shit. Kinda like two
tradesmen comparing methodology. I think I may even have overheard a bit
more than I was supposed to about a dead guy.

Eventually, the CO told us to get our shit and head up to the cafeteria. I joined
the line at the bottom of the stairs and followed everyone to the
lunchroom. The food was roughly like what you prolly got in high school,
perhaps a little worse.
Despite not being terribly fond of the food, I made myself eat all of
it, thinking I would prolly be glad I did later. I also watched the
lunchroom economy begin its hustle. I was once again reminded of high
school, as guys would get their tray, set it down by a friend, then grab
whatever they didn’t want to eat and start walking around the tables
offering trades to other inmates. It was pretty easy to spot the guys
who had been at it a while, as they were parlaying a single dessert into
multiple bowls of soup and sandwiches.

After dinner, we had rec. time. I hit the library and grabbed Franken’s “The
Truth, With Jokes” and a Stephen King book. I waited in line for a phone
and spent 2.50 on a collect call to Chrys
to let her know I was gonna be fine. I waited out the rest of rec. time
and returned to my mattress. By now it was prolly 10:30 PM or so, so I
read for another hour or so and then went to sleep.

Monday

A CO woke us all up at 6AM, and told us to grab out shit and head to the
rec. room. At this point I was a little confused, I couldn’t imagine a
more “rec.” themed room than a fucking basketball court. I gathered my
shit and followed a herd of grumbling,
shit-talking inmates to the other end of the prison, where we walked
down a short flight of stairs below what I believe was “A” block. This
room looked like the long barracks you see in military movies, long and
narrow, with beds lining either side. We fixed up new beds for ourselves
and went back to sleep.

At 7:30 the CO woke us up again to send us to the cafeteria for breakfast. I left my book on my bed, my big mistake of the day.

On my way into the cafeteria I was pulled aside by the CO all the guys
called “Smooth”. I never found out why. Anyway, anyone that didn’t have
an ID card had to go to some orientation meeting after breakfast. I got
my shitty breakfast, forced myself to eat it all, and headed upstairs.

There were about 10 of us, we each filled out a form, much like all the forms
I had to fill out to get into the jail in the first place. (I have
discovered that filling out the same information multiple times is
apparently the norm in such situations.) After we turned in our forms we
were led into a room where a CO briefly went over some policies, then a
chaplin came in to tell us what services were offered, and finally a PO
came in to tell us how to contact a PO if we wanted to work on our
cases. Finally we were excused to return to our cells/rec. rooms or
whatever. Upon returning to the stairs by cell block “A” I discovered my
group wasn’t there. I was told to return to the cafeteria, which is
where I found them. This seemed odd, since my meeting had lasted nearly
an hour and breakfast was only a half hour long.

I found my friend and he said that since we didn’t have individual cells,
we had to have a CO around to watch us all the time. Unfortunately,
there weren’t enough CO’s, so our little group was kept in the cafeteria
all day so the CO who was supervising the cafeteria could guard us too.
Basically what that means is we went to the cafeteria at 7:30AM, waited
through the next breakfast at 8AM, then waited around until the first
lunch hour at 11:30AM. We all got in line and a bunch of guys were
continuing their conversation from the lunchroom we had just exited, and
were about to reenter, unfortunately for them, the hallways are
supposed to be “Quiet Zones” and Smooth was there.

Smooth unloaded some philosophy on us: “I’m sorry, I must have said; gentlemen
go stand in line and have a conversation. What I meant to say was, shut
the fuck up!”

Sweet.

We all filed back into the cafeteria and got our shitty lunches. I sat
next to my new friend and he taught me a bit more about the lunch room
economy and scams. He pointed out a guy who had just walked over to a
table near us , set down his tray, then ran out into the hall.

“Watch the line,” he said.

A minute or so later the dude reappeared with another full tray, and repeated the process.

“What the fuck? I don’t get how he’s doing that,” I said.

“Dude,” he said, laughing, “Us black dudes know we all look the same to them,
he’s just getting right back in line and they aren’t even noticing.”

Sure enough, the guy walked out of the line with a 3rd tray of food. A blond
CO walked into the lunch room just then and the dude sat down quickly
and started eating. I asked what that was all about and my guide replied
that the CO who had just showed up was “Spider-man”. I must have looked
as confused as I was by this 6 foot something blond middle aged dude
getting known as Spider-man because my friend smiled and continued
explaining:

“Spider-man will climb up the outside of the cells instead of taking the stairways up to catch
people smoking and shit. He thinks he’s some kinda fucking super hero.”

Lessons learned. After our lunch was over, we were moved off to the side so the
kitchen staff could clean up, then the next group showed up for their
lunch, we waited. After they were done and gone, I figured we’d finally
go back to our beds and I could get my book, I was bored as fuck. Wrong!

We stood around in the cafeteria until dinner at 6PM. (Coincidentally, the
cafeteria had the exact same tables and stools as my high school, which
was weird.) We ate our dinner, then sat through the next group’s
dinner. “Finally!” I thought, “We can leave!” Wrong again! It’s rec.
time!

Finally about 10:30PM we were allowed to leave the lunchroom and go back to our beds. I read a
little bit then went to sleep, happy as shit I would be getting out at 9
the next morning.

Monday

CO woke us up at 7:30AM, told me and another guy to grab our stuff and
bring it to the cafeteria with us. Got jealous looks from some of the
others, smiles from the ones that were happy for us.

Went up to breakfast, loaded up and gave my tray to Whiskers. I told him he
would have more use for it then I would. (He had tried to get me to
wager my dinner the night before on something or other, I wisely
declined.) Sat around drinking coffee until about 8AM when I was called
down to be released.

Walked back into the same room I had gotten my photo taken in two days before,
signed the same forms again, then changed back into my own clothes.
Once I was all changed out I was put in a small holding room with a few
other guys. One was going to a methadone clinic for his meds, another
had gotten a furlough for a funeral, a couple more were going to a court
appearance and one other was leaving like me. They swapped stories and
experiences, seemed like a lot of them had been in jail before or had
family doing time elsewhere.

We finally got let out a little after 9AM and were led to an armored car.
This seemed odd to me since I had expected to be leaving. In fact I
could see Chrys’s car in the parking lot. We were driven to another building on the
property and I found out I was gonna start my home monitoring. Ok, cool,
wish I had known that. I asked if someone could go tell my wife I was
at this other building now and what was happening. They told me not to
worry, eventually she would go inside and someone would tell her where I
was. This pissed me off to no end. Sure, I’m there because of something
I did, but there’s no need to treat my wife’s time as such a trivial
thing. Fuckers.

Compounding the problem was that I had no access
to a phone in the new building, couldn’t call Chrys‘s cell, or work. Oh yeah, did I mention I had told work I’d be in by 10AM on Tuesday, thinking I would be out at 9AM? Yeah.

So eventually it’s noon. I haven’t done anything toward getting my equipment for home monitoring, I haven’t talked to Chrys and I haven’t been able to call work, who at this point have no fucking idea where I am. *Sigh*

I finally got called in to some CO’s office, answered a few questions
about my work schedule, and then he called my boss to confirm my
employment. Fortunately, he was about as tactful as a finger in the ass.
We finished our little interview and I was sent back out into the
waiting area for another hour or so. Finally, at nearly 2PM I was given
my little ankle bracelet and sent on my merry way.

While I was trapped inside Chrys
had apparently figured out where I was and eventually called my mom who
came up to replace her as the token family member waiting indefinitely
in the parking lot.

Mom gave me a ride home and some Applebee’s leftovers, which was the first
food I’d gotten all day, as well as the first non-institution food I’d
had for a couple days. Yay!

So, that’s the gist of my experience. (Can I still call something this long
the “gist” of anything?) I don’t know, it was exactly what I expected
in some ways, and totally surreal in others. The jerk at the home
monitoring place asked me what I thought of my time next door, all
smirks and condescension. I told him it was a lot like high school, you
just never went to class, it was study hall all day long. I don’t think
he liked that.

I saw some guys busting their asses trying to get their shit together for
when they would be released, trying to get a job, trying to get an
education, trying to get a license. I also saw guys who were planning
their next crime, figuring out how to get back in the game, or plotting
revenge on the guy who narc’d on them.

I got some new perspectives while I was there, and I think I’m a better
person for it. I think it’s not something that’s easy to put in writing.



Well, that’s what I’ve been up to, how about you?