Below is a personal account of a post dui arrest and subsequent stay in San Diego jail.
Enjoy...
Hello my dearest friends,
I know you’ve all been doing nothing but worrying about my for the past 10 daysduring my retreat at Sheriff Joe Camp, so I decided to give all of you the 411on what life will be like for you should you decide to get behind the wheel ofa car while inebriated and how to deal with the other thugs in the yard.
The first day was probably the worst/best day. Worst because of the nerves. Best because you realize that it’s not going to be as bad as you thought. They takeyour picture and your fingerprints. If you wanna be a baller, you try to look as rapist as possible in your pic. If you wanna do it up Mindy Rose style, you smile as big as you can and squint your eyes shut so you look like your name is Flo. They keep you in a holding cell for 7-9 hours with 10 other people. There will be a middle aged Indian woman named Sah-BEE-Kah who is a self-proclaimed active alcoholic and recovering crystal meth addict. The entire time, she gets all of the attention by doing impressions of her mom, telling stories of her second husband’s awful sexual prowess and closet homosexuality, and recalling how she wept the first time she had an orgasm at the age of 35 from a vibrator. Amongst the others will be married/divorced folk who got too drunk at an office party and passed out at a stop light, hipsters in their mid-20s who enjoy the occasional dabbling in crack, and meth/esctascy-addicted Morman mothers of 4 who decided it would be appropriate to curl their hair and put on a full face of make-up before jail. You sit around in a circle facing each other because that is the only way to sit. Everyone bonds. Sah-BEE-Kah tells jokes. And you feel jealous that you are not as funny as her.
When they decide to release you from the holding tank the handcuff you to oneother person. You say, “Hey! We’re bracelet buddies!” Then, you feel stupid because no one thought it was funny. The handcuffs are pink because Sheriff Joe thinks they are demeaning for people with penises. I thought they were cute. After a few more hours of bullshit, you start to try and flirt with the Detention Officers. They tell you to stop talking or else they’re going to“Roll you up!” You think it sounds fun, but later you find out that being rolled up means you’re taken to “O-yard” where bi-curious predation is a certainty. Finally, around dusk you get to Tent City. Tent City is a large yard with a bunch of large military tents that fit 11 bunk beds each. There is a fence in between that separates the men from the ladies. On the girls’ side,there are 6 sleeping tents and then a common area tent which has a TV. Cigs, pencils with erasers, and tampons are not allowed. There is a bathroom that is kind of like the communal bathrooms in the dorms but there are no doors on the stalls and no curtains in the shower. You don’t sleep at all the first night because it is cold and you haven’t mastered the art form of turning your bunkbed into a cocoon of heat. People make weird sounds. You think it might be that girl in the bunk bed beneath you is masterbating so you toss and turn really hard to shake the bed and try to mess up her groove. You don’t eat the food. After your first 48 hours, you get to go home for work release and take the best shower of your life.
The rest of it is pretty much a breeze. You learn the sweet lingo, some new dirt jokes, the art of smuggling in contraband, how to make your own tampons, and you run laps around the yard like a gerbil and convince people you’re training for the marathon. You ask a 48-year-old divorcee with a snaggle tooth if she’ll show you her fake boobs but she says no. You hate the girl who sleeps in the bunk beneath you so you step on her bed constantly and steal her treats. If you wanna be the coolest kid on the playground you have to have at least two boyfriends and one girlfriend from the “O-yard.” To prove that you have a girlfriend you have to show everyone how she marked her territory with a hickey on your neck. It helps if you’re an overweight chola with penciled-on eyebrows who knows a few impressing card tricks. If you wanna be a the baddest bitch in town, find the leader of the cigarette syndicate on the men’s side andsmuggle in a pack of cigs in one of your cavities (asshole or vag). Sell it onthe yard for 3 bones a dill and beat up any dirty vagina whore who tries to sell them for $2 a cig.
Once you are the master of your domain it will be time to leave. You go out the same way you came in. They wake you up in the middle of the night and put you in a holding cell for several hours with people even cooler than the people you came in with. I was blessed enough to be able to spend my last few hours in jail with the real queen bees of Sheriff Joe’s town who had to wear stripes. Most of them were heroine addicts with a tooth count that ranged from 2 to 10. The rest were pregnant or insane or all of the above. One was actually a celebrity fugitive featured on America’s Most Wanted.
All in all, it was the most interesting experience I have ever had. You learn how to develop extremely awkward social skills, how to make sure to inject a curse word into every sentence you speak, and you catch up on some really good ready. Your crossword puzzle skills also improve, if you are into that sort of thing. Oh, and to top it all off, you decide to become gay. I hope my survival guide to Tent City will serve and an excellent guide to your future endeavors. It took me longer to write this than I’d like to admit, (partially because mycomputer was slow and partially because I’m trying to impress you all with mywit and cynicism). But we all know that out of all of you, probably only Abby laughed out loud because she’s an idiot. Anyway, I love you all. Thanks for your support. Let’s make this a sweet learning for all of us and try not to make stupid decisions. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! And Happy Drinking and Driving!”
Love, Mindy “lock n load” Rose
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