By Conrad Keely
i spent friday night in jail. it really sucked. they caught me and a
friend of mine pissing in an alley, and when they ran a check on me they
found out i had an unpaid traffic ticket from three years ago. so they set
me a court date.
it was my first time in jail. it was very packed, being friday night, and
everyone was drunk, including myself. but a lot of the other people were
pretty disgusting, shoeless slobs. actually i was also a shoeless slob -
they made me take off my boots because they were steel-toed. oh, what a
strange experience. the biggest thing i got out of it was listening to
everyone else's excuses as to why they were in there. for some reason,
everyone was extremely talkative. like they had to talk, even if no one
was listening. they apparantly had no inhibitions about talking to
complete strangers. it was a rather male-bonding experience. one fellow,
this tall blond texan, easily the best-dressed person in the cell and
coincidentally the most talkative (he was very obsessed with his
appearance, and was continuously trying to rub out a stain in his black
slacks), claimed that he was hanging out with some chick, who asked to try
some drug he was doing, maybe it was jut pot, i don't know. well he gave
her some and she starts freaking out and hallucinating or something, and
the cops pick her up and she points out this fellow as the person who
drugged her. so they haul him in, and he's freaking out because he thinks
he's going to be charged with date rape. he eventually discovered he was
just getting a public intoxication, and he exclaimed to everyone in the
room, "man, that is music to my ears!".
no one really spoke to me. i didn't want to do anything but leave, so i
kept entirely to myself, and no one gave me any trouble (maybe it was
because i was wearing this black harley davidson shirt). in fact, the only
real person who got any shit was this baggy-dressed hippy kid with
dreadlocks. while he was walking into the room some black guy turned to
him and said "hey, next time you bump into me you say excuse me, aw-ight?"
the hippy finally passed out on the floor, and when they gave us breakfast
(an orange, a carton of thin milk, and cornflakes), several people threw
their bags of cornflakes on his inert body. i'm not exactly certain why,
maybe it was his hair. maybe it's an ancient jail custom which pre-dates
american society, i guess i'll never know.
there were a lot of people passed out on the floor, mostly mexicans who
didn't speak english. since it was so full, the people crowded on the
benches practically rested their feet on these people, or slung insults at
them like "move your legs, bitch!". at one point, one of the mexicans on
the bench leaned over and with a dazed look and began vomitting all over
the person passed out underneath him. everyone in the jail cell jumped up
and ran to the other side as vomit splashed everywhere. everyone except a
guy on the phone sitting next to him, who pretended like nothing was
happening, and the guy passed out beneath him. the man above continued to
vomit, covering the poor drunk scumbag below with bile and spew, while
everyone in the jail cell just pointed and laughed hysterically.
eventually a janitor (who incidentally was a splitting image of charles
manson) came in and cleaned up, but he couldn't wake up the unconscious
fellow to mop underneath him. a police man finally had to come in and wake
him up, but the man refused to wake up, and began swinging at the policeman
in his sleep. the cop resorted to pinning the man's arm behind his back
and twisting it up. this worked, and they dragged this vomit-covered
wretch away. jail is truly extraordinary. you know, i go through life
thinking that i live on the edge, that i'm different and weird, or live an
extraordinary existance in some way. absolutely not. i'm normal. in
fact, i'm a fucking square, and so is everyone i know. you want to see how
the other half lives, spend a night in jail.
in some ways i guess jail really does work. because i remember thinking to
myself while i was there, "oh jesus, is this where my life is headed? is
this some new pattern that is going to plague me for ever?" and then you
start to think of all these things you need to do to get your life in
order. and i imagine that's exactly what they want you to think while
you're in there too. but on the other hand, it also made me think about
being in a prison in turkey, or being a captured british sailor in 16th
century japan, or a russian prisoner during the napoleonic invasion, and
that made it kind of exciting and cool. i don't imagine that the scum and
villanry that populate jails today are much different than their repugnant
conterparts throughout the centuries.
You can offer to post Conrad's bail by e-mailing
him.
You may also wish to visit the website for his band, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.
