Title: Fall 2008
“The reason people treat you like you’re nothing is because you are nothing,” the police officer bellows.
The female police officer continues sharing this and other pearls of wisdom as her male partner in protection and service pats down over fifty women. My hands are against the wall; I and all of us are still in our pajamas, half asleep and half in shock and we know we‘re not dreaming just re-awakened into a new chapter of this nightmare. The woman next to me is shaking and looks like she’s about to cry. That last part surprises me because she’s done time -more than a few of them have. Me, I just try to keep my head down and my mouth shut.
How did I wind up lined up against a wall in the middle of the night being patted down, or felt up, depending on your perspective? It all started at a red light. I stopped and waited for the light to turn green. I know - they tell you in traffic school that is this exactly what you’re supposed to do and so theoretically it shouldn‘t lead to being frisked in the middle of the night for a cell phone but it has.
If you ask the local medical university whose bread, butter, jam and crumpet’s come from psychopharmacological research I’m lined up against this wall because I suffer from a delusion that I was ever sitting in front of that red light in the first place. The other part of my delusion is that I was a dean‘s list student twenty hours short of graduation with an acumen for system analysis and investigative journalism.
I kept restating what I regard as the facts of my life which the medical university selectively declared as delusions. After which I made a series of requests that to me seemed logical. The doctor hadn‘t seen it that way “I’LL SEND YOU TO THE STATE FACILITY IN COLUMBIA SO FAST IT’LL MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN !” he’d yelled.
I’d asked for a neurological consult . The university had refused. I had asked for a medical release of information from the original admitting hospital. I was given a form, filled it out and told the hospital never replied. I’d refused the university upping my beta blockers from 10 milligrams to 50 or 60 milligrams. Why would that be necessary? What? if 10 is good five or six times that is better? It didn’t make sense to me and that‘s part of how I got in hot water.
Too, I’d asked for data supporting the use of the latest medication the university now wanted me to take. Which to me seemed like a reasonable request since the last time I’d trusted the medical university with a prescription pad I’d gone into saline toxicity. I was released from the university while in saline toxicity wearing clothes I‘d been given from the charity bin. The university had ‘lost’ my clothes, I filled out a form but nothing ever came of it. I was then transferred to a $180 a day a half way house. I was told I would be going directly to a homeless shelter from there. I never could figure out if they didn’t believe I had a car and possessions or if someone somewhere had decided I wasn’t allowed to have them anymore. Obviously my clothes were something someone at the university had decided I wasn’t allowed to have anymore, didn’t really need, or they liked.
I don’t know if saline toxicity is lethally toxic only that the personnel at the half way facility (half way to what?) called the medical university saying “We are not equipped to handle a medical emergency”. At the time the half way medical bureaucrat looked worried. “She’ll have to be readmitted”; there was some heated debate but eventually there I was back at Med. U asking again for a neurological consult again. Then again refusing anymore than ten milligrams of inderal and now requiring documentation for the next drug they wanted to put me on. It was that last bit that put me before a judge. On my end I simply wanted to know whether the medication was or was not contraindicated for brain injuries.
“I’ll have you locked up…Columbia…then we’ll see how feel about taking what I decide to prescribe you!” Dr. Kelp had yelled.
I seem to piss people off. Though I think its more the questions I ask and maybe that I do, that I did. I was provided an attorney and curiously the judge informed me that “this has never happened before” which at the time struck me as strange and unlikely in and of itself: that no one in the history of the program had said: no I‘m not taking that unless you provide me with some supporting documentation . I won that small battle. Dr. Kelp didn’t get to ship me to a hospital in Columbia, the residents and a nurse practitioner produced some documentation but the medical university isn’t above holding a grudge. Gods don’t like being told they’re not.
But all that was months ago and now my job is simple “spread ‘em, keep your hands against the wall- DON’T EYEBALL ME!” the cop yells at someone who let their eyes drift from the wall toward either her pacing behind us or her male partner running his hands over our bodies and up and down our legs. The Personal Responsibility Counselor on duty feels the introduction of such and guns is in order because a cardinal rule has been broken.
“If you don’t take personal responsibility for your things and something is stolen that is your fault.”
There are rules to live by here. The rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you anymore- if they ever did- and you better start accepting that. Those rules do not apply here. On this particular evening the Personal Responsibility Counselor had left her cell phone out unattended and the cell phone had been stolen. That theft is now the responsibility of all the “guests” as we’re called. This is would seem and in fact be in direct contradiction to the cardinal rule- but that’s the great thing about being a Cardinal of Personal Responsibility: the rules don’t apply to you.
“You wanna know why you’re here?” the female officer asks. No one raises their hand. Even those who if asked to couldn’t define the word rhetorical know a rhetorical question when they hear one.
“You’re here because you’re scum.”
I’m scared like everyone else but more so now because the questioning has just shifted to “Every one of you knows who took that phone!“ I feel confused; in part because I can’t figure out if the officer actually believes what she’s saying. How can we all know who took the phone when most of us were asleep?
“We can stay here all night,” the cop says but I start to get the feeling maybe we wont be lined up against this wall all night and I may get some of what passes for sleep here. I haven’t figured out whose responsibility it is for me not getting sleep when the flashlight this Personal Responsibility Counselor sports at night gleams in my eyes, probably mine.
Before the cop leaves she gives us something to think about after she’s gone “I’ve taken a good look at all your faces- this isn’t over ”.
I go back to bed with my heart pounding. One of the usually hardened criminals is crying in her pillow and I don’t need her telling me to know that this has happened before -but a cavity search or some private time with a guard. I realize I’m crying too but not for her. I’m scared all the time and mostly I just don’t want to die. Though that’s not the worst that can happen here. I know the worst that can happen- that’s what scares me. I’ve already seen it and I’ll see more before my year is up.
* this is my final entry to this blog- or any blog owned by google. Sorry guys but telling people, arguing that what people produce on your platform is owned by you as if you own them- not okay. It would be like facebook saying they own faces, identities and the grids of human interaction (which I suspect they'd more than happy to argue)
But back to the googlings: You didn't live these words and y'all sure as shit didn't compose them- so thanks for the platform but its time for me to go somewhere with a none"we own your ass and your shit" attitude.
“The reason people treat you like you’re nothing is because you are nothing,” the police officer bellows.
The female police officer continues sharing this and other pearls of wisdom as her male partner in protection and service pats down over fifty women. My hands are against the wall; I and all of us are still in our pajamas, half asleep and half in shock and we know we‘re not dreaming just re-awakened into a new chapter of this nightmare. The woman next to me is shaking and looks like she’s about to cry. That last part surprises me because she’s done time -more than a few of them have. Me, I just try to keep my head down and my mouth shut.
How did I wind up lined up against a wall in the middle of the night being patted down, or felt up, depending on your perspective? It all started at a red light. I stopped and waited for the light to turn green. I know - they tell you in traffic school that is this exactly what you’re supposed to do and so theoretically it shouldn‘t lead to being frisked in the middle of the night for a cell phone but it has.
If you ask the local medical university whose bread, butter, jam and crumpet’s come from psychopharmacological research I’m lined up against this wall because I suffer from a delusion that I was ever sitting in front of that red light in the first place. The other part of my delusion is that I was a dean‘s list student twenty hours short of graduation with an acumen for system analysis and investigative journalism.
I kept restating what I regard as the facts of my life which the medical university selectively declared as delusions. After which I made a series of requests that to me seemed logical. The doctor hadn‘t seen it that way “I’LL SEND YOU TO THE STATE FACILITY IN COLUMBIA SO FAST IT’LL MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN !” he’d yelled.
I’d asked for a neurological consult . The university had refused. I had asked for a medical release of information from the original admitting hospital. I was given a form, filled it out and told the hospital never replied. I’d refused the university upping my beta blockers from 10 milligrams to 50 or 60 milligrams. Why would that be necessary? What? if 10 is good five or six times that is better? It didn’t make sense to me and that‘s part of how I got in hot water.
Too, I’d asked for data supporting the use of the latest medication the university now wanted me to take. Which to me seemed like a reasonable request since the last time I’d trusted the medical university with a prescription pad I’d gone into saline toxicity. I was released from the university while in saline toxicity wearing clothes I‘d been given from the charity bin. The university had ‘lost’ my clothes, I filled out a form but nothing ever came of it. I was then transferred to a $180 a day a half way house. I was told I would be going directly to a homeless shelter from there. I never could figure out if they didn’t believe I had a car and possessions or if someone somewhere had decided I wasn’t allowed to have them anymore. Obviously my clothes were something someone at the university had decided I wasn’t allowed to have anymore, didn’t really need, or they liked.
I don’t know if saline toxicity is lethally toxic only that the personnel at the half way facility (half way to what?) called the medical university saying “We are not equipped to handle a medical emergency”. At the time the half way medical bureaucrat looked worried. “She’ll have to be readmitted”; there was some heated debate but eventually there I was back at Med. U asking again for a neurological consult again. Then again refusing anymore than ten milligrams of inderal and now requiring documentation for the next drug they wanted to put me on. It was that last bit that put me before a judge. On my end I simply wanted to know whether the medication was or was not contraindicated for brain injuries.
“I’ll have you locked up…Columbia…then we’ll see how feel about taking what I decide to prescribe you!” Dr. Kelp had yelled.
I seem to piss people off. Though I think its more the questions I ask and maybe that I do, that I did. I was provided an attorney and curiously the judge informed me that “this has never happened before” which at the time struck me as strange and unlikely in and of itself: that no one in the history of the program had said: no I‘m not taking that unless you provide me with some supporting documentation . I won that small battle. Dr. Kelp didn’t get to ship me to a hospital in Columbia, the residents and a nurse practitioner produced some documentation but the medical university isn’t above holding a grudge. Gods don’t like being told they’re not.
But all that was months ago and now my job is simple “spread ‘em, keep your hands against the wall- DON’T EYEBALL ME!” the cop yells at someone who let their eyes drift from the wall toward either her pacing behind us or her male partner running his hands over our bodies and up and down our legs. The Personal Responsibility Counselor on duty feels the introduction of such and guns is in order because a cardinal rule has been broken.
“If you don’t take personal responsibility for your things and something is stolen that is your fault.”
There are rules to live by here. The rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you anymore- if they ever did- and you better start accepting that. Those rules do not apply here. On this particular evening the Personal Responsibility Counselor had left her cell phone out unattended and the cell phone had been stolen. That theft is now the responsibility of all the “guests” as we’re called. This is would seem and in fact be in direct contradiction to the cardinal rule- but that’s the great thing about being a Cardinal of Personal Responsibility: the rules don’t apply to you.
“You wanna know why you’re here?” the female officer asks. No one raises their hand. Even those who if asked to couldn’t define the word rhetorical know a rhetorical question when they hear one.
“You’re here because you’re scum.”
I’m scared like everyone else but more so now because the questioning has just shifted to “Every one of you knows who took that phone!“ I feel confused; in part because I can’t figure out if the officer actually believes what she’s saying. How can we all know who took the phone when most of us were asleep?
“We can stay here all night,” the cop says but I start to get the feeling maybe we wont be lined up against this wall all night and I may get some of what passes for sleep here. I haven’t figured out whose responsibility it is for me not getting sleep when the flashlight this Personal Responsibility Counselor sports at night gleams in my eyes, probably mine.
Before the cop leaves she gives us something to think about after she’s gone “I’ve taken a good look at all your faces- this isn’t over ”.
I go back to bed with my heart pounding. One of the usually hardened criminals is crying in her pillow and I don’t need her telling me to know that this has happened before -but a cavity search or some private time with a guard. I realize I’m crying too but not for her. I’m scared all the time and mostly I just don’t want to die. Though that’s not the worst that can happen here. I know the worst that can happen- that’s what scares me. I’ve already seen it and I’ll see more before my year is up.
* this is my final entry to this blog- or any blog owned by google. Sorry guys but telling people, arguing that what people produce on your platform is owned by you as if you own them- not okay. It would be like facebook saying they own faces, identities and the grids of human interaction (which I suspect they'd more than happy to argue)
But back to the googlings: You didn't live these words and y'all sure as shit didn't compose them- so thanks for the platform but its time for me to go somewhere with a none"we own your ass and your shit" attitude.
