Tuesday, May 04, 2004 Sideways Stories from Jail
One time I was in this holding cell, and I was real tired. I'd been up all night flirting and breaking and entering and so forth, and all in the service of The Homeless, concurrent to my policy of personally housing said homeless, and dating them.
All I wanted to do, given the limited options I had, was to curl up on the jail bed, which was cheap hard metal like a cookie tray, and doze 'til my arraignment.
However:
*I was in there with one of my co-defendants, who had spent the past several years chaining her neck to stuff whenever she got upset. The only public hospital in town closes? You'd better chain your neck to the locked gates. Chain your neck to the mayor, if he'll let you. The mayor was out to get this woman. It had taken 8 months of following him around and personally insulting him, but he was out to get her. Also, every time she got arrested, it was worse for her. Jail terrified her. She wanted to work through this by disturbing my nap.
*When she would momentarily become distracted but a crafts project she was imagineering out of JailSnack (brand-x maple-flavored donut) wrappers, I still couldn't sleep, because just down the cell block was Legendary Leonardo.
Leonardo and I never spoke, and nobody else told me his name. He announced it in a bellow. He announced most things that way. He was the most cheerful guy in the whole row. Sleep through a performance opportunity like incarceration? Not he! Leonardo rhymed, hooted, and performed a variety of acts upon his person for a solid six hours.
An ordinary man's voice would have given out, but he wasn't called Ordinary Leonardo.
He did not become popular with the other people who'd been arrested that morning. They didn't necessarily enjoy watching anybody drop anybody's pants and gleefully enjoy "what GOD gave" anybody.
Now, for some reason, I and the lady co-defendant were off in separate cell from everybody else. Ours had cinderblock walls and a thick metal door, with a small mesh and glass window inset. I was almost drifting off to sleep, when I heard a commotion. Suddenly, the lady grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off the bed.
She hustled me over to the window and smooshed my face up against the glass. "Do you see that? That's ABUSE!" she yelled in my ear.
I could see a female guard in her mid 50's running away from the portion of the cellblock which housed a more-agitated-than-ever Legendary Leonardo, laughing hard, with a Dixie cup in her hand. She had apparently had enough of the ongoing performance, and thrown a cup of water on the star.
I don't recall what I answered, because Legendary Leonardo retaliated. He found his own damn Dixie cup, and the next time that guard came by to tell him to shut the hell up, he let her have it with a face full of fluids he'd dipped from the toilet bowl.
I've never seen a mid-50-year old lady move so fast, unlock a cell, and start beating on a guy before.
Later, she got bored, Legendary Leonardo resumed rapping, and we all got transferred to new jails in different neighborhoods anyway, and in girljail I got distracted by meeting new people and having to prove I wasn't concealing weapons and so forth. (You will never in a million years guess what they thought my criminal mind was capable of sticking where!)
I got released on my own recognizance later the next day. I was the last in the group to get out.
I wandered blinking into the sunny courthouse parking lot, picking the lice out of my beard. My codefendants were hanging out, waiting for me. "You'll never guess who we just saw," they said. "Legendary Leonardo!" they said.
Turns out, the US Marshals who run Central Processing, where they hold you before you go in front of the judge the first time, were some real progressive thinkers who believed in a holistic, all-natural, and drug-free approach to loud and obvious mental illness--a "wisdom of our forefathers" type approach.
They'd spent the better part of a lazy summer afternoon curing the shit out of Legendary Leonardo.
He was in good spirits when he got out, my codefendants said, even though that one eye was swollen shut and everything. No longer rapping, pants up. Some might say that no longer being forcibly confined might have helped his mental state, but that is a rather short-sighted approach. Jerks like us do not appreciate the delicate position law enforcement and prison personnel must fill.
It's exciting how far rehabilitation techniques have advanced in the last couple years: think of the benefits Legendary Leonardo could have reaped had he had the opportunity to participate in a nude human pyramid!
posted by Frenz | 5/04/2004 11:14:00 PM
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