A fastidious-looking asian sherrif’s deputy came to get the people in the room in groups of three and four. He took them out of the small room we were in and didn’t bring them back. he looked sort of small to be eating all those people, but who knew?

I squirmed on the nasty jail floor and wiggled myself under the bench where the fluorescent light wasn’t as harsh, trying to sleep. I dozed fitfully between outbursts from Mr Bud.

“You damn coon!” he shouted about the large black deputy who walked past the door. “Let me outta here!”

A few of the black people in the cell with us looked up at his racial epithet, but they didn’t seem to much care.

Mr Bud shuffled over to the door and its large bulletproof glass window. he pounded on it.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! Hey there!”

The large black deputy came over and unlocked it in a mostly bored fashion.

“Yeah?” the deputy said.

“Yes sir, I was wondering if I could please use the bathroom… I mean the phones, sir.” Mr Bud stammered.

“You will get to make a phonecall soon enough” the deputy intoned.

“Okay, sir, thank you sir, yes sir”

He was calling you a coon a minute ago, deputy I thought, but didn’t say.

The deputy shut the door again and went back to his place in the island of desks in the center of the room onto which all the holding cell doors opened.

“Muthafucker!” shouted Mr Bud again.

He shuffled back away from the door, mouthing off to the deputies quietly and talking about how he would kill his wife when he got out.

I stared at the blue metal screen which obscured the toilet. It had holes poked in it at random intervals in a diagonal pattern so that you couldn’t hide behind it. Someone had scratched the word “Mexico” into the paint. The “o” in “Mexico” made a ring around one of the holes. Someone must have had some damn sharp fingernails to have scratched that, I thought.

I sang quietly to myself inside my head as I dozed off restlessly.

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low
Moon’s so bright like to light up the night
Make everything all right

I was examining the locks on the cell door because there wasn’t much else to stare at, and because I had already examined the smoke alarm (such as I could). The locks in jail are big slots, and I think you can open them from either side, if you have the right key.

I did not have the right key. In fact, I didn’t have any keys because the lady up front had put them in a baggie after one of the deputies dug them out of my pants pocket. This was before he cupped my balls.

Just then, the right key stuck itself in the other side of the lock, dragging a sherrif’s deputy behind it.

“Okay, everyone out, let’s go” the deputy said.

There were three of us in there at the time. Myself, Mr Bud, and a guy with his hair braided into a corkscrew design on his head all filed out and sat on a bench as directed. Shortly we were called up to positions around the big desk area in the center of the holding cells. Someone had made a box on the floor out of tape.

“Stand in that box, there” the deputy told me. I stood in that box, there.

I was in front of a nice older lady, who was behind a little window like a bank teller. She had a camera that was supposed to point at me, but part of the metal stalk that the camera lived on was broken, so it sort of lolled back, pointing at the ceiling.

She asked me some questions, and I told her the answers. She reached over and helped the lolling camera to point at me, took my picture, and then gave me some papers that said what I was charged with, what my inmate ID was, and how much my bail would be. Corkscrew, Mr Bud and I were all then shuffled into a different cell than before, where we took up varying positions around the room.

I sat against the wall, and Mr Bud sat next to me.

“Iss COHD in here!” he yelled. “Why is it so COHD?”

No one answered him. I wished he would shut up.

“Why don’t these motherfuckers let us OUT? I hate these motherfuckers!” he continued.

I sat cross-legged with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands, trying to snooze. I wondered when I would get to make a phone call.

“When you feel your hands come free place them against that wall,” the deputy sherrif said, unclipping my cuffs.

I placed my hands on that wall, like he said.

I was wearing a tee shirt with some obfuscated perl code on the back of it. He asked me what it meant, and I mumbled a response. He emptied my pockets. I kept my hands on that wall, like he said.

After we got to be pretty good friends, what with him cupping my balls looking for weapons, he instructed me to sit on a bench. I sat on the bench.

A nice jamaican lady came by to check me out medically. She gave me the arm cuff and took my blood pressure. I filled out some forms for her, signed them, and then I was taken through a metal detector and led to holding cell number 4 to join my new cellmates.

Some were sitting around on the benches, others lying on them and moaning in their verious substance-induced fits. One guy was standing up, pacing around the room. I gave him a little wave and sat down.

I waited there for probably two hours, watching The Pacer pace around the room and occasionally listening to the drunk in the Budweiser wife beater moan loudly.

“Ohh!” he’d moan, and shift around some on his bench, one of his flip flops dangling from his dirty toes. He seemed to be getting some decent sleep. “unnnnh!” he moaned loudly.

One of the deputies came by the door and told the Pacer not to stand at the window because he couldn’t see what was going on in the room that way. The Pacer sat down.

“Ohhh!” moaned Mr Bud, the drunken sleeper.

“Well,” I thought, “you’re in jail, bubba. Nice going.”

I dozed off a bit, looking up at the ceiling, where the smoke alarm was enclosed in a metal grate.

In jail, even the smoke alarms are locked up.

I was bored at my night job, naturally.

I decided I might go for a drive around the neighborhood to see if I could find a non-highway route to the nearest train station so I could avoid driving altogether. As I was searching around, a cop pulled me over, which was good because I couldn’t find a particular street.

He took my license and my insurance info, and said that he had pulled me over for a tag light being out. I said I didn’t know it was out. He went back to his car for a bit.

He came back and asked if I knew my license was suspended. I said I didn’t. By this time two other cops had showed up. He asked me to turn my car off, and I knew I was in deep shit.

He asked me to step out of the car.

“I’m going to have to arrest you.” he said.

“Okay.” I said.

He arrested me. He had to, you see.

He clipped the cuffs on me and put me in the back of his cruiser, which had about 3cm of legroom. At a shade over 6 feet tall, I require more legroom than this, so I had to sit sideways. The cuffs dug into my wrists.

“I sure wish I had stayed at work.” I told the cop through the glass.

“Yeah, sometimes things just don’t go your way.” he said.

We pulled up to the county pokey. he radioed the people he had to radio, and the gates slowly slid back to admit us. We went inside that gate, waited for it to slowly close, and then the next one slowly opened.

He swung around and parked inside a big garage area, locked his sidearm in his trunk, and came to let me out of the back. I got out and stood up, and he and I walked toward the door a few feet away.

“By the way,” he said, “I’m not going to charge you for the tag light being out. Just this other thing.”

My laughs came out quickly at the absurdity of the situation, and escaped into the night as the county jail door clanked behind me.

I’m sort of shocked that I haven’t seen any video of anyone jumping a segway off of anythinng yet. I mean, they are pretty expensive, but what’s the holdup, people? Go big!

I’d like to have a segway, except that they cost a fuckload, weigh a fuckload, and are almost entirely impractical on broken and uneven terrain, of which there is a lot in my shitty part of Atlanta.

They sure are neat looking, though. The cops at the airport have them and they look like they’re having a fine time scooting around on them.

Shame they don’t give them to the passengers also to ease the four hour wait from parking your car to boarding the plane.