Jul
7
And Heaven Is A Place You Can Never Find Your Cigarettes - Pt. I
Filed Under Best Of, Existential Angst-astic, L'Amour, Long/Multi-Part Pieces, Social Ishizzles, The Compleat Thumbscrew
So here’s how it went down.
It was a mistake. It was One of Those Things. It was also what’s known as an “ungraded misdemeanor”, which is a deceptively cutesy term. Rip the tag off your mattress? T.P. the sheriff’s Taurus? That’s an ungraded misdemeanor, pal.
As it turns out, the legal definition is the only benign thing about it.
It’s not the sort of thing you laugh about with friends years later. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania may not grade it, but most people eagerly issue a big ol’ “F”, for “fuck-up”. So do a number of public interest groups. Viewing the offense a little less disdainfully is a one-way ticket to Wingnut Terrace. It’s not quite “publicly raping the corpse of the puppy you just murdered with an Iraqi-manufactured shovel”… but suffice to say, it’s not a hell of a lot more popular.
______
During a particularly raw patch last winter, {@Boyfriend} and I split up. We were apart for thirteen days, each enlightening as it was grueling. Discoveries were made. Plane tickets were purchased. Diet Coke was employed as a food group. The fourteenth night, I borrowed my mother’s Buick and flew up the turnpike, blinking back tears and blasting spooky, atonal college rock. “A lot’s happened in the past two weeks,” I’d meekly offered, “And, y’know, I still have some of your socks…”. When I arrived, we sat at opposite ends of the couch… both thinner, more washed-out, wiser. Not wise enough to know exactly why I’d come, but enough to stare and squirm until it became apparent.
______
We lasted about fifteen minutes before touching knees… then foreheads… then grabbing one another, tight, like the last strong sapling at the edge of the ravine.
Relationship v2.0 has been more… More. Better and harder, truer and more complicated.
One of the complications? The looming specter of my beloved’s incarceration.
It will be a brief stint, admittedly. In addition to the wildly popular “seven to ten” and “twenty to life”, our penal system also dishes up smaller offerings…. an extra-value meal, if you will, of sentences measured in hours rather than days.
This is less of a consolation than you’d imagine. There is only one ideal length of jail time. It is the same as the ideal rib to fracture, or the ideal quantity of trichinosis colonies on your pork chop: none. Anything else is a bitter compromise.
______
“Let me get this straight,” I’ve joked, “We were apart for two weeks and you managed to incur criminal charges? Truly, my love is an umbrella which shelters men from their deviant impulses!”
Joking’s one of the only things you can do, really, other than gnawing your cuticles and re-ironing your trial clothes. Whether you stand accused of murdering or littering, you’re innocent until proven guilty. Assuming you can post bail (and weren’t littering, say, fragments of prostitutes’ skulls), your first lambada with the law is liable to be brief. The wait is the surprising part… surprising and absolutely maddening.
______
Televised justice has a lot more in common with porn than reality. It’s dispensed hard, fast and smokin’ hot. One minute, they’re hauling a body out of a greenhouse. The next, they’re interrogating a mulch distributor. There’s a Lysol commercial, witness badgering (”Are we to believe that soil aerator embedded itself in the victim’s sternum?”) and then - et voila! - wrongs are righted, handcuffs are applied and it’s time for Jeopardy!
In actuality, weeks, months or - in the case of particularly heinous charges, years - may elapse between crime and punishment. The court system’s a massive Rube Goldberg machine; it’s easy for cases to ping-pong through multiple delays and postponements. Even under ideal circumstances, both sides must be given sufficient time to build their cases. However, criminal defense attorneys aren’t usually keen on client participation. They’re more personal assistant than therapist. They take your information, they take your money, then they scurry off into the shadows, presumably to polish their horns and practice Sam Waterston-style eyebrow acrobatics. As the defendant, your duties are limited to writing checks and refraining from further shenanigans. Your only reminders of the impending Big Event are an empty wallet and uneasy stomach.
Pre-trial anxiety’s a nasty little gremlin, though. At first, it’s small, fuzzy and easy to cram under the bed and ignore in favor of more pedestrian pains-in-the-ass. But as the day of reckoning grows closer, the beastie under the bed gets progressively louder. Work problems, family problems, small appliance fires… they’re all drowned out by a shrieky, screechy, gavel-banging, bone-rattling fear.
_______
The day before {@Boyfriend}’s trial was a productive one. We ran errands, made phone calls, composed neat little bulleted lists. At around 11 PM, we stopped at a gas station to check off a few final items, like fueling the car and stockpiling cigarettes.
Oh, and finally losing it.
“You want anything?” I asked, walking towards the mini-mart. “Soda? Snack? Some… ummmn… jail money?”
The ride home was miserably grim. {@Boyfriend} focused on the road; I stared at streetlights and attempted to keep my tear ducts clamped by force of will alone. After a few miles of silence, {@Boyfriend} murmured, “Hey… I’ve got the perfect song for this occasion,” and turned on the stereo.
Fucking indie rock. You wouldn’t expect Kryptonite to be quite so twee, would you?
I’d held it together for months. I’d made hundreds of anal sex jokes. I’d been fine, fine, perfectly fine.
“Will you come visit me when I’m in prison?” lilted The Beauty Pill, “My outside sweetheart / Bring me birthday cakes with contraband inside / Outwit the guards?“
The second the parking brake was up, I buried my head in his t-shirt.
“What’s wrong?” he said, stroking my hair.
“This… this is just… really, really sad!” I said, wiping my eyes on his shoulder, “I’m sorry…”.
We held each other, tight, terrified little saplings bracing themselves for Hurricane Justice. After a few minutes, we grabbed our assortment of jail supplies and headed inside to stare at the ceiling and count the hours.
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