Why I Committed Suicide (40 page)

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Intake into jail is the worst part of getting arrested. There is so much uncer-tainty—so much unpredictability. Anything can happen. Drunk men wake up next to stainless steel toilets with a black man’s dangling penis pissing inches from their face. Drugs, fights, broken bones and just the waiting. The hurry up and waiting.

I wrote this down on a scrap of paper while I was going starting to go through withdrawals in the 72 hour tank. Sorry if it’s not very coherent:

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I saw a kid come in while I was in still the holding tank. He was still trying to find someone to bail his ass out, but finally coming to accept he might be staying awhile. Like I mentioned, the holding tank is a very smelly overcrowded place. Young kids in for piddly shit are mixed in with all the big boys who violated theirparole and are going back down south to Hutchins, Tennessee Colony or any one of the other farms. I guess if you know you’ll be out relatively soon and you are young, jail seems alright at first. You can complain about how much it sucks and then go home after a short stint, but the other long-term guys are quiet. Staring and keeping to themselves. Wondering if maybe this is the time they go down for good and don’t ever come out.

So while I was in there, one of the old timers is on the floor (overcrowding) on his mat, sleeping and snoring his ass off. Well I guess all the snoring is bothering this one young kid or he’s still on drugs or something because he walks around waking people up to tell them they are snoring and asking them to stop or rollover on their side or whatever, who knows? I’m watching as he does this a few times and a couple of people do wake up, mumble an apology, roll over and go back to sleep.

Note: a lot of black people sleep on their back and snore like crazy.

Note: a lot of people snore.

Anyway, the kid finally gets around to this grizzled old white guy snoring on his mat in the corner and he’s reaching down to shake him awake (the guy is still sawing logs, dead asleep) when the guy suddenly grabs the kid around the neck
in his sleep
and shoots a fist right at him. The guy was instantly awake and didn’t hit him, but the kid nearly crapped his pants right there. I could actually see the look in the kids eyes go from good natured, to
this is serious,
in a fraction of a millisecond. It was kind of funny but I knew enough to stay out of it. The old guy talked some pretty serious shit to the kid and then went back to bed, snoring just as loud as ever and the kid found someone to post his bail first thing in the morning.

Jen went ahead and bonded me out for the marijuana arrest even though I asked her not to. I mean I secretly wanted her to get me the hell out of there of course, but after about a month in general population, having already kicked the worst of the withdrawals from heroin, I didn’t see much point. I figured I would be going to court soon and that I would just get time served or a few more days. Jenifer went through so much to get the bit of money that she has, it just isn’t worth wasting it by bonding out a bum like me.

I can see in her eyes now that she doesn’t trust me, but that might be for the best since apparently I can’t even trust myself to do the right thing anymore. I just wish she would stop doing dope, we’re another Orpheus and Eurydice and I can’t help but look behind me to check on her. I mailed her a lot of letters from jail, just like before, but I can still tell I’m losing my “Azami flower.” For some reason most people have to have direct contact with me to be reminded of why they love me, but I don’t want my personality to be defined by my presence any longer. Whatever empathic “ability” I have to charm, talk, or get through to people isn’t worth shit if the substance of my essence doesn’t last. Every girlfriend I’ve ever had has been surprised that I can actually think coherently once they get to know me, but now I feel that the same abandonment issues and the “being the butt of all rumors” thing that happened with
all
my friends is now happening in Jen’s mind too.

Her car is cool, it has a sunroof and everything. The special hand control that allows her to use it like a regular car—Saturn installs it for free if you need them and the contraption still lets a non-handicapped person get in and drive it like a regular car without having to adjust anything. Very cool.

Jen has made friends with this girl named Lori who I don’t particularly care for. Lori’s a stocky Mexican girl who kind of slowly became Jenifer’s new partner in any shoplifting endeavors and anything else that makes quick cash. Lori sees me as an intrusive asshole ruining the good thing they have going together and I just see her as another innocent getting lured into the perils of the H lifestyle without knowing it. While I’ve been away, Lori and Jen have developed their own pattern of going to score and now that I’m out of jail I’m not really included. It’s a blessing for me in a way but very bad juju for Jen in the long run. While I was in jail, Jenifer wrecked her white Saturn while she was fucked up with Lori and by the next week her insurance company already got her a brand new red replacement. She thought it was funny trying to explain to the ambulance drivers that she couldn’t move her legs but that it was okay because they already didn’t move. It was a funny story, but it is also was a sad reminder to me
that nobody’s really there watching out for her anymore.
Oh Jenifer, don’t do what I’m doing, please stay alive for me, even if I’m being hypocritical.

I’m way, way behind on my rent now but my landlord’s cool and hasn’t evicted me. It is the dead-heat of summer now and I finally talked to him about staying there and arranging to pay him back. It’s so hot that it muddles people’s thinking and he agreed, probably thinking it’s easier to let me stay than moving my few belongings and re-renting the place. He’s a nice guy. I’m going to have to move out anyway though since there is no possible way I can realistically arrange to pay him back the rent I owe. Until then, I’ll stay and watch until the electricity and water gradually get cut off and he eventually forces me to leave. I’ve locked myself out a few more times, but I know that even after the locks get changed, if I’m desperate for a place to squat, all I have to do is push in the AC window unit and crawl through.

There are quite a few old abandoned houses along Fry St. that I can always stay in, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Most of those places are ok but some are too heavily haunted to deal with right now. There’s one old multistory house with four floors of rotting antique wood lovingly carved years ago. Drooping ceilings caving over looping staircases and incredible gaps in the floor that seem to fall forever. The third story porch is incredible, somebody loved it there. People don’t need to talk or tell me about the murder in the family at this house and how the parents abandoned it immediately after, leaving behind their only little girl who was unable to understand the transition her spirit made. Her mother’s grief kept her from ever returning to the house. She’s waiting around just in case,
stay in one place,
that’s what mommy always said.
“If you get lost, stay in one place and I’ll come to find you.”
It doesn’t fucking matter how I should know any of this I guess, but I do. Most of the squatters around town say the house is alright, and most have been inside it during the day, but none of them have ever managed to sleep there overnight like I did.

It was their little girl, she’s just scared now.
I kept having to tell her to get lost. I don’t know how to explain to a six year old that after she fucking died her parents moved away and tried to start another family. How her mother’s grief was so overwhelming that she couldn’t conceive again, how her father started cheating with his secretary when the mother broke down and went to the institution. How do I explain that back then an institution involved lots of hard drugs and electro-shock therapy? How do I tell her that her mother died alone not even remembering what pushed her over the edge in the first place? She thinks it might help us both if I doused the first floor in gasoline and just let the flames lick their way up to us in the attic room. By destroying the house and taking away the last possibil-ity of hope it will likely free her spirit, but no matter how hard she wants to convince me to stay, burning alive sounds like a terrible way to die. In my craftiness (or desperation) I’m sure I could find a way to comfort her and still escape or maybe I could jump from the roof to reasonable safety.

Then again…I’ve got enough shit of my own to deal with in the land of the living. Some of these damn houses are just too haunted for my taste.

I finally went to court for that bullshit marijuana possession misdemeanor charge that Jenifer bonded me out on. While I was waiting, I saw my very first probation officer in the courtroom testifying against somebody with another violation case, he was very friendly and said “hi” to me, then asked how I was doing. I wonder if he remembered my face or just that I violated my probation with him when I got another case.

This time I almost had to go back to jail and serve 20 days. The District Attorney wanted to give me 20 days which I said would be “great” since I had already done more than 20 days in jail on the charge and that it meant I would get to go free, but the D.A. and even my own court appointed lawyer kept insisting it would be 20
additional
days. I argued back and forth with both of them about the language in the paperwork and neither one of them would budge about crediting the time I spent sitting in jail waiting on a court date. Finally, when I saw they weren’t competent enough to understand, I quickly agreed that 20 days would be fine and signed the paperwork. I knew I couldn’t get the 3 for 1 trustee gig anymore, thanks to my prior “miscommunication” with Denton county, but 20 days seemed fair and easy enough. So I stood up in front of The Judge, respectably dressed for a change, and let him agree to the sentence and sign off on the official paperwork. Then just as he was about to order the bailiff to haul me off to start serving jail time, I politely asked The Judge if I “would be receiving any credit for the time I’ve already served in jail on this charge?” Everyone in the court looked at me with surprise for a moment, annoyed by my audacity to speak aloud, but then The Judge asked the D.A. to verify how long I actually
had been
incarcerated after the initial arrest. The D.A. and my own lawyer’s face turned bright red when the County Clerk looked my file up in the computer and confirmed I HAD already been incarcerated in the County Jail for almost a month before my bond was posted. It turned out that they actually
owed
me days! The Judge was furious with the D.A. and chewed him out in front of the court for not doing his homework, wasting the court’s time and (shock!) not listening to me. I was prepared to go back to jail that day and the sweet freedom I pulled off by the skin of my teeth tasted like ambrosia!

I finally had to move out of my apartment behind the Zebra Head Shop and the ruins of the Lodge since my landlord found another renter, but that’s ok. He’s still cool in my book for handling it all with dignity. I’ve moved a lot of my stuff over to Dan’s house but I’ve mostly been staying with various “friends” around town. I have a pretty solid weed business going now, based on Gabe’s old business model of quality service. I’ve got a pager and I’ve built up a fairly solid list of clientele that depend on me and prefer my fast, friendly and reliable service. It’s worked out well so far but handling all that cash has made my dope habit start to re-surface and so I mostly just end up breaking even.