Hello, Dad?!? I'm in JAIL!!!
by MJT

In 1996, before the brain injury, I got thrown in jail. It's a good story but I've always been careful about who hears it. I'm afraid I have to fault drugs, here – I don't think I would have pulled my gun had I not been under the influence. Of course, I was carrying a gun around, which was something else (I had found it under the bed, it was cool, I liked it, I wanted to carry it around).

The county detention center is right next to highway 270, a bit south of exit four, on the right-hand side southbound, and is plainly visible to passing traffic. I'm not sure it's obvious to everyone that this building by the highway is a jail, but it is sufficiently odd-looking to raise questions. My guess is that most people who live in Montgomery County and frequently travel highway 270 are certain only that the beige, monolithic concrete structure is something official and ominous, with its small, oblong rectangular windows, geometrically arranged across its cylindrical surface. It turns out that these are individual cell windows.

I was inside this building, looking out at the highway from the other side of one of those windows, watching people drive by from a few hundred yards away. I looked out at them beyond the dusting of snow on the grounds, as the drivers wondered whether this odd building by the highway was a prison or what, and then forgot about it as they passed. I remember the sky being clear and blue; it was one of those beautiful, crisp January days that I love. Now, when I pass this building in a car, I look closely at the little windows, and think about who is behind them, looking out at the highway.

In January of 1996, my mother was living with her boyfriend in Baltimore, and had rented what used to be her bedroom in her Gaithersburg townhouse to two young women. She was also considering renting the master bedroom to another girl who called herself "Raven." I was living with my father at the time, and would come to my mother's house to clean and fix things up for the boarders, as my mother had become an absentee landlady. I was kneeling on the carpet, measuring something, when I first saw Raven. She embodied the "heroin-chic" look, her black corn-row braids and dark eye makeup contrasting with her pale skin. She was emaciated, unhealthy and had an odd, horse-like face, but was somehow not unattractive.

I was invited to spend the evening with the three women and smoke marijuana that they would provide, all in my mother's old bedroom, in which she had provided them with furnishings and a television set. Raven intended to rent out the master bedroom, which I showed her that evening. I think it was at this point that she told me about her job as a stripper in Bladensburg, Prince George's county, and how she often brought home clients to service them in other ways, putting down plastic wrap to protect the carpet from overflow when she peed on them. I guess it was understood that this was to take place in my mother's master bedroom. I'm not sure if I was told this before or after we four began our marijuana-smoking, but for whatever reason I didn't immediately balk at the idea of prostitution taking place in my mother's house.

In retrospect, I think my unusually paranoid reaction to the pot was due to its interaction with Prozac, a documented phenomenon. For a long time, I entertained the possibility that the marijuana that evening had been laced with PCP ("love boat"), but now I think my behavior was simply a result of the combination of normal pot-paranoia and the deeper and more profound chemical probing of Prozac. I had experienced the odd but never-before-dangerous effects of this drug combination before; people who witnessed my behavior under the influence of marijuana and Prozac described me as acting as a normal person would on LSD. The world suddenly became fascinating beyond description, and my urge to poke at it irrepressible.

So, this was my mental state in the company of Raven and the two other girls (I've forgotten their names...one may have been Linda). One had contracted polio as a child, being crippled as a result, and was a light-skinned Black girl who had been adopted by upper-class suburban White parents. I got the impression that she was a child of some privilege, who was sort of playing at making it on her own. The third girl was a friend of hers, a shy waitress who left little impression on me.

The marijuana and Prozac began to influence me more as time wore on. One of the first thoughts that came into my head was not that Raven's prostitution was objectionable per se, but that if she wanted to run a place of business out of my mother's house, she had better re-negotiate her lease after giving my mother this information. I was definitely in business-strategy mode, and I got a bit ahead of myself. I was thinking all of these things to myself, and my thoughts had progressed from "you are planning to engage in prostitution here" to "you are running a business out of my mother's house" to "one should charge more rent to a business owner." At an apparently random point during our quiet evening of pensive pot-smoking and television-watching, I blurted out something like, "If you want to service clients in the house, you'll have to re-negotiate the rent." I like to imagine this was after a long silence – I think it might have been. I think everyone just looked at me, blinking.

I continued to harp on this point in convoluted and incomprehensible ways, and eventually the discussion came to arguing. Everyone was pretty confused – the problem with marijuana (especially in conjunction with Prozac and my particular neurotransmitters) is that it is a double-dose of disjointed reality: not only does it affect one's perceptions, but what one produces in terms of speech, gestures, etc. So if there are several people in a room smoking pot, it will make them act strangely, and the others in the room will perceive these things to be even stranger than they actually are.

A few weeks prior to this evening, I had found a gun in my mother's house, a Rossi .38 revolver. I adopted it, and would carry it around with me, eventually sticking it down the front of my pants and walking about town. I have a tendency, as I think is culturally or even biologically established, to adopt a weapon as a kind of familiar or mascot, stroking it and loving it, as if it were a medicine drum or something in some way sacred. And in a certain shamanistic, hunter-gatherer sense, nothing is more sacred than a weapon. So, this little silver .38 was adopted as my weapon/familiar. The gun was never fired – it's now either languishing in some police station evidence room, or has been pilfered. I enjoyed the fact that it was a Rossi as opposed to a Magnum, Colt, or Wesson; I definitely took affected Eurotrash pride in my little Italian revolver. Carrying a concealed handgun is one of the dumbest things I've ever done, and it's a wonder that something even more serious didn't come of it.

The .38 was down the front of my pants as the four of us smoked pot in my mom's old bedroom.

The argument I had been pursuing about the perceived rent scam escalated. My paranoia grew; it was eventually shaped into a complicated scenario where the three were using false identities and were dangerous and established felons. Clearly, I had no choice but to call the police, and I told the three of them that they were not to leave the room until the police got here. The disabled black girl and her waitress friend warned me, "Raven is going to have to get tough!" Raven stalked threateningly at me, but then turned around and returned to the bed to sulk. I can't remember exactly at which point I decided that I needed to control my captives further, but I think it may have been about the time Raven got tough. I remember my exact words: "well...lookee what we have here." With them, I produced the .38 revolver.

Raven, the disabled girl, and the waitress screamed, or covered their faces with their hands, or hugged each other – I'm not sure who did what. But suffice to say, discussion ceased at that point. I called the police, and had a talk with what seemed to be a fairly uninterested dispatcher, during which I conveyed to him that I was holding three criminals at gunpoint. This delusion, that the three girls were hardened felons and I was doing the community a service, persisted for at least another 24 hours. The police kept me on the phone with them until they could call a car to the scene. Suburban police have a somewhat deserved reputation for being overpaid and bored, their cruising around the highways issuing moving violations being fueled by the tax money from in this case the 8th richest county in the nation. Not a whole lot of a classically criminal nature happens in Montgomery County; I'm sure that like everyone else, the police have seen lots of movies where cops do exciting things involving breaking down doors, drawing pistols, and handcuffing Negroes in the gutter. So, when something romantic actually does happen (a hostage situation in Gaithersburg most certainly qualifies as that), a lot of them tend to appear, hoping life will imitate art. The SWAT team showed up, as did the K-9 patrol, and there were maybe 5 or so cruisers and innumerable officers clamoring around the street in front of my mother's townhouse. I made my way down the stairs, on the phone with the police the entire time. "I'm coming down the stairs," "I'm putting the gun on the table" and "I'm opening the door" were the kind of play-by-play announcements I dutifully broadcast to whomever I was talking to at that point.

I finally stepped outside into a sea of police officers, swarming in the black and yellow of the night-time suburban street. At this point, I was expecting to receive a commendation for meritorious service, and continued to think this even as I was being handcuffed. One cop sort of smirked at me as he entered the house to tend to the girls – I think he was amused that I had called the police on myself.

Three officers handcuffed me, and I asked them if they could somehow make the handcuffs more comfortable (I often do a strange thing in truly dire situations – I shut down, and become unduly nonchalant). One cop then adjusted them so as to make them tighter and less comfortable, and one of his colleagues admonished him: "C'mon, man." I think some of the cops liked me – maybe the system of respect for violent crime that is prevalent in the detention system (murderers and armed robbers are better-treated than say, child molesters or drug dealers) extends to the relationship between cops and criminals. Anyway, I was put in a squad car, and my "Mr. Cool" act continued; I requested that the officer driving me change the radio station. He gave me a lengthy version of "No, you don't get to ask that."

Once I was inside the police station, a group of cops who were clearly entertained by all of these goings-on asked me some questions, one of them being about the kind of gun I had used. I responded haughtily that it was a Rossi, and they all snickered at me. They asked me what I did, and I told them that I was a student. The response was something in police-slang and sentence fragments, coupled with emphatic noises, to the effect of "you will be sexually molested in jail." I believe I also told them something about me knowing all about their tactics, since I had taken some criminal justice classes (in fact, I had not – I knew of criminal justice, an approach to competence that I later adopted when searching for a web design job – "I know of HTML"). I think this might have amused them the most of all, since I heard that phrase repeated a few times in the police station during the course of the evening with accompanying hoots. After sitting around, handcuffed to a metal table, I was finally questioned. I believe this was the chief of police, or some higher-up. At any rate, I still remember his last name but I won't publish it; "Officer S," instead. Officer S was a short, chubby, middle-aged man with curly, sort of pompadour hair and a head that was far too big for his body. He looked Mediterranean, but in a cheeseburger-fed, wife-beater way. He asked me, "So what all just happened back there?"

I, like the police, had seen too many movies, so I responded with "Oh...um...hmm...I'm not sure I should really say anything," accompanied by a really effeminate set of vocal affectations, titters and giggles that came across as more pompous than Officer S was probably used to hearing. He yelled at me, "Just say 'I prefer not to answer,' fuckhead!" I'm not sure if he recommended "I prefer not to answer," exactly, but he made it clear that there existed some specific phrase that was deemed appropriate when you don't want to divulge information to the police. In any event, I wasn't briefed on the phrasing before my interrogation. So, in response to Officer S's outburst, I said "I prefer not to answer" (or mimicked the format he had recommended), and he answered, "That's better!" I was still quite intoxicated at this point, which served me well during these proceedings; had I been in a better frame of mind to appraise reality, I might well have been more upset.

As I was being led to the holding cell, I thought aloud to anyone who was listening "My God! You'll probably all have to testify!" Officer S happened to be standing in my path, and he responded with "I'll be around" and a wink. I guessed the implication was that favorable testimony could be bought but now I'm less sure about that. I stayed in the holding cell for a few hours, and it got very cold in there. There was a call button on the wall, and I pressed it a few times, yelling for a blanket, to no avail. When the cop who would drive me to the detention center finally arrived, I was bundled up on the floor, and had wrapped myself in a cocoon made from my orange henley. "Peeeee-u! you smell like a great big ol' elephant's butt!" the cop cried festively. He was very friendly; in the squad car, he engaged me in a discussion on the night's events, and I was eager to talk about them. I only later realized that this discussion wasn't magically exempt from the record, and that I may as well have told Officer S when he had first asked me, and been saved being called a fuckhead. But this cop was nicer, and more pleasant to talk to. I can't remember what I told him, but it was the truth as I perceived it at the time.

So, I was driven to the Montgomery County Detention Center on Seven Locks Road, often referred to as "Seven Locks" ("locks," in this case, refers to devices on the nearby C&O Canal that control the flow of water between cordoned-off chambers, enabling boats to travel upstream). I was made to secure my street clothes, wallet and keys in a footlocker, and to put on dark green, baggy, artificial-fiber jail clothing. Then, I sat in another holding cell, where I began to cry, for the first time. I was secretly hoping that a guard would walk by, and seeing me in such obvious pathos far outstripping any yet experienced in a penal institution, would let me out. At this point, my marijuana high was finally wearing off.

Seven Locks is divided into several "dorms," or collections of cells. Each dorm consists of a "day room" on the lower level, in which there are tables for eating, a cable television set, and showers. The individual cells are on the upper level, there being two inmates per cell. Each cell has a sink and, of course, the prison toilet, sitting in plain view. I would learn that the inmates had devised a system where someone using the toilet would hang a towel out of their cell to indicate that none should barge in. I believe I used the toilet in a serious manner once, but before I was clued in to this system. Fortunately, I was left undisturbed. I was lead into the day room, where I believe my first order of business was to use the telephone. A friend tells me that I called her, although I don't remember this. I do recall talking to my father, who told me that I would need to spend the night in jail, and be bailed out on Monday.

The first person I encountered and became familiar with was Robert, my cell-mate. He was a soft-spoken, thoughtful, and friendly Black man, tall, slender, and either my age or a bit older. He was in jail for failing to meet the conditions set by his probation, I believe. I also think his incarceration had something to do with child support. During my weekend in Seven Locks, I discovered that the vast majority of the jail population had been jailed for 1) parole/probation violation 2) child support issues, or 3) minor drug offenses. Clearly, this was not a prison, but rather a detention center in keeping with the plasticized, luxury shopping-mall theme of Montgomery County. I liked Robert, and talked with him a good deal. He shared his views on social and family responsibility.

"You gotta get your act together. No more of this bullshit. You gotta think about your kids."

"I don't have any kids."

"You don't have any kids?!? Then do whatever the fuck you want."

Robert came into Seven Locks at about the same time I did, and his anxiety grew as his period of incarceration drew on. After the first day, he had taken to pacing back and forth across the cell, saying, "I gotta call my peoples...I gotta call my peoples." I was one of my weight-loss kicks at the time of my arrest, and I thought it would be a good idea not to allow jail to wreck my fitness schedule. So, as Robert lay down in his bunk, I did a round of sit-ups and push-ups. Robert was impressed. "Damn, that's a regular work-out right there," he exclaimed. Despite the fact that I often behaved as though I was comfortable there, I don't believe I was in Seven Locks long enough to really say that I had adapted to the routine; instead, I was able to carry myself through the two days in jail on the novelty of it all, and on my tendency to displace reality (this is especially doable when I know that reality to be temporary). Plus I was coming down from pretty serious drug intoxication.

A fun coincidence turned out to be that an acquaintance of mine from high school named Chris had been incarcerated at almost exactly the same time I had, and had been housed in the same dorm, only two or three cells to the right of mine. Chris was one of the "alternative kids" in high school, one prone to wearing odd clothing, going to concerts, and putting some effort into behaving unpredictably. At some point, I guess he had made the transformation to a White, suburban follower of hip-hop culture, as exemplified by enormous pants and a style of colloquial urban English usually attributed to Black Americans. He had always been happy-go-lucky, and he was in generally good spirits despite being in Seven Locks. Chris and I were glad to see one another, and he spent a lot of time in Robert's and my cell. He told me about his charges, and I told him about mine. Chris was a fairly serious marijuana dealer, one of those who deals not only to support his own habit but also for a principal source of income, and had violated his probation by being caught with pot again, being charged with possession with intent to distribute. He got excited when he was telling me about the drug-dealer ethic, and how if he had a whole lot of friends out for hamburgers, and if they wanted to play video games, then dammit, they could go play video games, because Chris had accumulated enough money from dealing pot to pay for them. He was adamant about this, as if there was some kind of moral righteousness in being able to play video games whenever one wanted to; I don't know – maybe there is. I believe at one point, I gave Chris a lecture about something. I don't remember the topic, but I think it was in the "get your act together" vein.

Another inmate who made a lasting impression was a big, imposing, loud, but friendly man – I'm not sure if I ever knew his name. He was Black too, as were most of the inmates at Seven Locks. Those that weren't Black were Hispanic; I think Chris and I might have been the only White inhabitants of that particular dorm. Anyway, it was clear that the big imposing loud-but-friendly man had established himself as being informally in charge of the facility, a "bull-goose loony" figure. Robert told me that the Big Loud Man had been incarcerated longer than just about anybody else on multiple sentences; 18 months or so. I experienced two principal interactions with him.

The first was based on the issue surrounding my socks. The cop who had driven me to Seven Locks had commented on my malodorous feet, and I guess they hadn't gotten any better at this point, because Big Loud Man approached me earnestly in Seven Locks. He was very polite about it, and made it clear that he represented a larger coalition of inmates as well as the greater good when he gently told me that I needed to wash my socks. He told me where I could find a bucket, soap and water in the day room, and explained to me that "no one's gonna laugh at you, no one's gonna make fun of you, just go down there and wash them socks." He even gave me instructions on how specifically to wash them, on detention center sock-washing technique – he stressed forcefulness and thoroughness as being essential qualities. So, I did this, and everyone was happier. No one made fun of me, no one laughed at me.

The second occasion for interaction with Big Loud Man came when I found him in my cell, standing on my bed. He had an excited grin on his face, and was yelling into the air vent. "Hey! Hey! You ain't gonna be saying that with them titties in my face! Hey! Hey! You ain't gonna be saying that with them titties in my face!" He saw me watching him with fascination, and turned to me. "You wanna white girl?", he asked. I declined. Apparently, the inmates of Seven Locks had discovered that they could communicate with inmates of the opposite sex imprisoned in other dorms by yelling through the air vents, and used this lo-fi intercom to strike up impromptu romances. Months later, I mentioned this to some official person, and he grimly shook his head. "Yeah...they're not supposed to do that" was the response.

All in all, there was something oddly civilized and characteristically "Montgomery County" about Seven Locks, the television, lighting, cleanliness and imposed order making it seem more like a summer camp than what I had expected a jail to be like. There was a weight room, along with the toilet-in-the-room a staple of literary jail-culture. I was given the chance to access it during "activity time," but I opted to stay in my cell, not being in the mood to adapt to a strange new environment within my already quite sufficiently strange and new environment.

Most offenders who were locked up were inside for stretches of months, as opposed to years. I think this, more than anything else, contributed to the very un-jail-like atmosphere (or again, it's possible that I had seen too many movies). There were no homosexual rapes in the shower, no race wars, no black market cigarettes, etc. Or at least none that I noticed during my two-day stint. It's likely that I would have had a better chance to more accurately appraise jail culture if I had been able to stay for a month or so, which was about the average length of a stay. Of course, if I wasn't bailed out, I would have been in Seven Locks for six months, since my trial was postponed for that long. I can imagine that after six months, I would have become pretty thoroughly acclimated to jail routine and gained insight into all of its subtleties, for better or for worse.

The food, of course, was terrible; the only food I've had that compares in awfulness was the fare at my grandparents' rest home. It wasn't infested with maggots, but it was simply very bland, cheap and watered-down. As I was getting my first dinner from the guards, a short man asked me if I wanted to trade some food item for another – I believe the coveted item was a few slices of white bread. I declined, and as I was returned to my table, he exacted retribution for my refusal by violently jostling my tray, trying to overturn it. This was probably the most prison-like thing that happened at Seven Locks, and even that wasn't all that prison-like; I didn't drop my tray, and the short man went on his way, moving on to other projects.

My father and Lauren, an ex-girlfriend who had come to visit me in Maryland on a whim that involved an argument with the 45-year-old man she was seeing at the time, came to see me in jail. When they arrived, I was lead to the visiting area, where I saw my father and Lauren behind a sheet of glass. It must have been a jarring sight, to find me behind a glass and wearing prison greens. My father sort of grinned uncomfortably, and Lauren cried. I don't remember what words were exchanged, but "visiting hours" was certainly part of the quintessential jail experience. From what I do remember about the interaction, it was muffled, formal, and brief, a few pleasantries and inquiries about how I was doing being filtered through protective glass over the course of two or three minutes.

I was in jail for the better part of two days, and only spent one night in my cell. I was arrested in the late evening, spent the night in the police station and in holding cells, and then was driven to Seven Locks in the morning. I spent that day and the following night in jail, and was released the following day. I was arrested on a Saturday night, and bailed out the following Monday, since all of the bail-bond offices were closed on the weekend (or specifically Sunday).

On my last day in Seven Locks, I decided that I needed a shower, so I headed down to the day room to take one. They weren't arranged as one pictures showers in a jail being arranged, but were divided into private, individual stalls. While I was in the shower, some of the inmates yelled "Hey! They lettin you out! It's time to go!" in the hope that I would frantically come running out of the shower and provide some entertainment. I imagine that White kids on drug charges coming through for a couple of days until their families bail them out is a fairly common occurrence, and the set of inmates inside Seven Locks for the relatively long-haul have begun to associate certain behaviors with these White kids, namely freaking out and not being very comfortable. I recognized that they wanted to be entertained, and made some clever comment along the lines of "Oh really?," spoken in such a way that it was clear I was in on the joke. This entertained the inmates, and they laughed.

Big Loud Man comes into play one more time. There is some sort of lock down procedure at Seven Locks, meaning that inmates must be in their cells at certain times. This isn't directly enforced, but if procedure is violated, inmates are kept in their cells when others are allowed to migrate freely between day-room and cell. I wasn't made aware of the lock down procedure, and inadvertently violated it. So, I was kept in my cell, coincidentally close to the time I was supposed to be let out of jail altogether. I was only very vaguely and dimly aware of the goings on, and surely not enough to be actively upset about it. But Big Loud Man rushed to my defense. He yelled at the guard, "C'mon! He don't know what's goin on! He supposed to be gettin out!" I'm not sure if Big Loud Man liked me personally, or was just exercising an opportunity to carry out his roll as "leader of the pack," and represent the interests of the jail population to the guards, thereby reinforcing his notions of his own authority. He was a nice guy – I never found out what he was in for.

When it was finally time for me to leave, a female guard approached me, and said "Okay sweetie, time to go." This caused some uproar among the other inmates in the form of hoots, giggles and exclamations of "sweetie!" As I was being led out of the day room, I responded by flipping my wrist at them. This made their day – maybe I could have been a "class clown," but that's looking on the bright side.

My mother and father came to get me, and it was very strange walking outside for the first time, even after only two days. I remember it being very bright outside.

During these next six months, I was placed in a program called "pre-trial," which is a way of controlling bailed-out offenders before their trial, especially if it is very delayed, as mine was.

I was made to visit numerous agencies, offices and facilities during this time, including a substance abuse support group with a grizzled, embittered former-alcoholic leader. One of the requirements of this group was that I attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Even the grizzled group leader, trained to spot people who won't admit they have a problem, told me that I had probably been misplaced in his program. I guess the system sort of goes on autopilot when it comes to drug-related offenses, and shunts folks off into addiction programs, regardless of how appropriate this might or might not be. Actually, I was very nearly shunted off into a domestic violence program by the activation of another autopilot (assault charges against women), until I was able to convince a suspicious, angry, bureaucratic probation officer that I had never encountered these girls before in my life. I also met with several other pre-trial coordinators and supervisors, many of them very nice, and seemingly as concerned with my welfare as they were with maintaining the social status quo for the ruling elite.

Without a doubt, the worst thing about pre-trial was the pee-testing. Once a week, I was required to drive to a location adjacent to the courthouse, stand in line with other offenders, and produce a bottle of urine, directly supervised to ensure that I was not 1) substituting someone else's urine for my own, or 2) slipping detergent into my urine bottle, which I was told could negate an otherwise positive drug test. I had always been somewhat pee-shy, but this experience would prevent me from ever peeing normally in public again. The psychological effects of a man standing two feet from you and staring directly at your penis as you try to unclench your prostate and squeeze out a few drops of undrugged urine is profound. I would often spend hours there, at the pee-place, trying to pee for my audience. And I wasn't the only one – a weathered, middle-aged Black man next to me in line shook his head and remarked about his friend wistfully and out loud, to know one in particular, "He in there tryin to piss...", with a wry chuckle. Most of the time, the pee-place would close before I could force myself to urinate, and I would have to go home, untested. I think I donated about a cup of urine in total during my 6 month tenure at the pee-place. I had dropped out of school at that point, feeling as though the time and pressures of pre-trial were too much for my academic load. I'm not sure if I could have done it with greater determination – at any rate, I was far too demoralized to continue with school at that point.

My trial was finally scheduled about six months after my arrest. During my pre-trial period, I had met with my public defender (the associated $50 administrative fee was errantly deducted from my tax returns for something like four years in a row), a small, slight, dark-haired, not overly unctuous young man named Jeffery Something-or-other, I think, who performed his lawyerly duty for his client primarily by "judge-shopping." As I was told by the same angry bureaucrat who wanted to place me in a domestic violence program, judge-shopping is a semi-ethical and common practice in which strict judges scheduled to oversee cases are avoided by asking for a continuance until a more sympathetic judge turns up on the roster. My parents were both present at the trial, as was a friend of mine. During the trial, both my psychiatrist and my therapist were called on to testify on my behalf – a rather glaring example of money buying one's way out of harsher penalties. I think the testimony was warranted, since it was the combination of prescription medication and marijuana that had caused me to behave the way I did (or presented the opportunity for me to make the choice to behave the way I did, depending on your personal politics), but I don't think Robert, Chris, or Big Loud Man would have been afforded the same privilege.

Along with my family and friends, two of the three girls were there (the waitress had since moved out of state), along with their families and boyfriends. I overheard the disabled girl's boyfriend tell her, "Don't worry...we're gonna get this guy."

In the end, I was given the chance to address the court, and I apologized at length to the two girls and their families, receiving a series of solemn, acknowledging head-nods.

I was sentenced to probation before judgment for one year, and a $40 fine, plus court costs. Immediately after my sentencing, Raven blurted out to the judge, "I don't understand how he could just get probation. I don't see how you could do that. He...hit me. He hit me." I had not hit her. The judge looked down at his desk and sort of smiled in response. I don't know what Raven and the other two had told the police officers, but apparently it had something to do with me hitting Raven. In reality, I didn't come into physical contact with them at all.

I spent an uneventful year on probation, never once undergoing one of the mandated occasional urine tests. During the course of my probation, I sent several letters to the judge, asking that this fee or that fee be waved due to my indigent status. My probation officer was one of the nicest men I've met. He remarked with a sort of chastising awe, "You basically re-wrote your probation." I still remember his words at the end of our last meeting, "Well MJT...I wish you luck, and if you see me around, don't look the other way." I've always thought that was a nice, wistful greeting, appropriate to a probation officer who sees it as his job to supervise offenders' return to society, and understands their tendency to view him adversarially, as part of the machine, instead of appreciating his intentions. I haven't seen him since.

I saw Chris again years later at the local community college, and he was wearing a black box around his ankle. Apparently, he had been picked up once again for possession, and had this time been placed under house arrest. Chris explained that the black box was a transmitter the authorities used to make sure he didn't leave his house when he wasn't supposed to.

I saw Raven again, maybe a year or so later, in the supermarket. I made sure she didn't see me, quietly made my way out of the store, and postponed my shopping trip until the next day.

Oh, and the judge – I encountered him some years later when I was being tried for a DWI charge. I don't think he remembered me, and he gave me another "probation before judgment."