Taking It on the Lam by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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I changed from my prison garb to my street duds, filling my pockets with the remains of my personal possessions which the bull pigs had not yet “liberated” from the stored items which I carried in. I didn’t mind the lack of admissions and orientation rigmarole doping me on my “rights,” as much as I minded my missing watch. In fact, I’d have been feeling semi-reet Jake were I in possession of my protective, comforting roscoe pal.

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My private cell was at the end of the line, one painted cinder block wall with a heavy metal door outside my cell separating my holding area from the twenty-four hour Intake room. As I exited my unlocked cell door, I was only seen by the two inmates directly across the way. One said; “Set-up.” I said; “I’ll wind up brown bread in here anyway.” The other said; “Bye.”

I wasn’t lying. This was my first time in jail for more than the cursory, un-naturally bitter taste forced for 8-9 hours as a juvenile when I found it to be the height of hilarious justice to threaten ding dong sap, Fat “Rev-rend” Al Dingess, the over-aged, school bully, with a BB gun that must have looked quite real to Dingess when pressed against his neck, and made him start begging for forgiveness, which got all of his young victims laughing. I liked the feeling much more than I had expected to and it had some positive effect at my school, as Rev-rend Al’s mommy transferred him to another one. Though I tried to sleep through as much of my point making,

“preventative” hoosegow stay as possible I couldn’t sleep, maybe because the restraining nightmare was ushered in out of sequence. I also couldn’t take the confinement and the professional inmates’ renditions of “funny and cool” jail stories constantly told by the mingling said inmates, which I didn’t find funny and cool at all, though I thought it best

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under the circumstances to provide the obligatory guffaws, and there was no Winnie, and, and, and .......... The “playful” jail badinage was merely depressing. It was as if the inmates had fully accepted that this was how their lives were going to be, and that they were perfectly happy, jovial, and capable of handling it. If that’s what they wanted it was Jake with me, unless they tried to impose their notions of nolo-contendre nirvana on yeztruly.

I turned the doorknob and let the door swing open, semi-expecting to see someone with a rifle out to save the county a few bucks. All I saw was one portly female behind a clear plastic partition to my right. She didn’t even look up, and just continued to grunt and shuffle some papers on the desk she stood at, making faces as if some arresting cop had again done their paperwork indecipherably or otherwise abominably, as if her job responsibilities were something more than filing the papers in the right slot. To my left was a holding tank which held three detoxing lushes, each with a hand, leg, or some combination thereof uncontrollably shaking like the flame of a candle in blustery weather. They all looked in my direction for a few seconds, but when seeing me in street rags must have concluded that I was neither a doctor nor fellow inmate, and one gave me

Taking It on the Lam