welcome.
this is the first entry of a nine part series i am writing about my experiences in the multnomah county jail. as mentioned in my previous entry, i will be checking in thursday mornings, and getting out some time between midnight and 9:00am on fridays.
here's how the day went...
8:00- check-in, which involves handing over my passport, 80 cents, my trazodone prescription, and any strangulation devices on my body (ie: my shoelaces, and the strings to the hoods on both my sweatshirt AND my raincoat)
8:30- move from the waiting room, to a room called "the holding room". this is a room with rows of hard plastic chairs that force your body into a perfect 90 degree angle. there is a television, a phone for collect calls, and a handwashing sink the size of a small bird bath. it is here i meet lisa, a woman who is also spending her thursdays in jail due to a dui offense. she is a vegetarian, has beautiful red hair, and agrees these are the most uncomfortable chairs in the history of the world. we proceed to make small talk for 3 hours. this is lisa's second thursday in jail, and her best anecdote is about a girl she sat in the holding room with last thursday who spent several hours masturbating with her hand down the front of her pants. i am instantly jealous, and silently ask myself why i didn't start serving last week.
11:00- traci joins us. she is 18 years old, cries uncontrollably, and makes collect phone calls every five minutes despite each call costing her grandmother ten dollars. traci is about to spend three days in jail due to a missed community service date because "her baby had the pneumonia". after calming down, lisa and i learn she enjoys taco bell steak quesadillas, thinks the judge with white hair is a "punk", and loves her new boyfriend because he owns property and buys her anything she wants.
11:30- lunch is served, brown bag style. it consists of a plastic wrapped tower that includes 4 slices of wheat bread, 2 slices of imitation kraft singles, 4 slices of bologna, and 4 creme-filled sandwich cookies. ALL of these items are in one contained pack. also in the bag: an orange (organically grown, i'm sure), a mustard packet with enough mustard to coat one quarter of one slice of bread, a mayo packet, and carton of tepid 1% milk. i devour the entire thing, and make a third sandwich with lisa's leftovers.
12:00- two girls from the clackamas county jail join us. i never learn their names, or the nature of their crimes. what i do learn is that they're both highly skilled shoplifters, have no desire for employment of any kind, and think the food at clackamas is waaaay better than here. one of them asks me what my style is because i look like "one of those alberta coffee shop kind of people that seem to have taken over north portland". i tell them that i shop at the goodwill bins- a place neither of them has heard of. when i explain that the bins are all the rejects from goodwill, and that the items are paid for by the pound, i receive unanimous laughter from all four women. who knew the bins would be such a crowd-pleasing story??
2:30- strip search. all five of us are taken into a room with stalls and are told to remove our clothing. "you mean get butt naked?", i ask. "yes. get down to your birthday suit," the guard tells me. this is where i experience what is, by far, the best combination of humiliation and hysteria EVER. luckily, all of the other women are laughing as hard as i am. one by one, the female guard came to each stall and asked us to lift our arms, shake out our hair, and (the best part) turn around, spread our cheeks, and cough. apparently my cough was too forced, because one of the clackamas girls shouted, "god! you don't have to gag!". after this, we were given our jail scrubs, complete with plastic sandals and pink tube socks. they even gave us pink jail underwear to put on!
3:00- transfer to cell block C. it is a large two-level room with a window overlooking downtown portland and a view of the willamette river. i would say there were a dozen women in the room. there is a television, two round tables, and a bookcase with hundreds of books to choose from! i find a ruth reichl book, and upon heading up to my single cell (#C15) one of the women says "did you smell that girl? she smells good." on the way up the stairs, i drop my blanket and instantly feel half of dozen eyes on me. in order to overcome my embarrassment, i proclaim "thanks for thinking i smell good!". the upper level of the room has floor to ceiling white metal bars, which i find somewhat comforting rather than unnerving. my cell has a nice big window, and when i make up floor mat bed, i discover how pleasing it feels to be horizontal and descend into a deep sleep for a couple of hours.
6:00- dinner. we are released from our cells, and are handed a plastic lunch-room style tray. this is where i realize the true meaning of why jail food has been given such a bad rap. in one compartment of the tray there is a pile of baked beans intermingled with ham and cheese macaroni that is so overcooked i could have easily eaten it with a bubble-tea straw. also on the plate is canned spinach and a square of corn bread. i think the cook was attempting a unique polarizing effect with these two items because the spinach had the consistency of an odwalla juice while the cornbread more like a brick of wall spackle. i tried combining the two, and found the flavors didn't mingle as well as i had hoped. there were two more creme cookies on the tray, and i ate them not because they were tasty, but in an attempt to cleanse my palate of the spinach.
6:30- i'm sitting in my cell, and hear an ethereal female voice. "hey neighbor," they say. i'm confused, and, for a second, think that i may be hallucinating. i hear it again, and this time i respond with, "uhh.. where is that voice coming from?" "go sit down by your toilet. we can talk this way." i do, and see that there is a vent next to my toilet and that the person talking to me is the woman in the next cell- speaking to me from her toilet. we proceed to have a ten minute conversation about her sentence (armed robbery, but she's innocent) and i am given advice about the $1.50 hygiene kits that are available to us. i tell her that i don't plan on purchasing one, but thanks anyway. she seems nice.
7:00- recreational time. those of us who are interested are given 90 minutes to hang out in a large, smelly gym equipped with a basket ball hoop and some archaic work out equipment. lisa suggests we play a game of "around the world", which lasts about twenty minutes because it turns out most of us suck at making baskets. the next game, suggested by the "hey neighbor" woman, is 4 square. we use our jail sandals as boundary lines. this goes on for about thirty minutes, during which time i am accused of playing cut-throat style. personally, i think i'm just quick on the draw but i reign it in because i don't want to get punched or stabbed with a spork next thursday when i return. after 4 square becomes boring, i offer to lead some of the ladies in a series of ab-strengthening exercises. we lay on our backs and pretend we are bicycling through the countryside, all while laughing hysterically. rec time ends with me giving the women a tour of my tattooes, which somehow leads the my jail cell neighbor into telling us a story about her first sexual experience with a woman happening behind bars. they got busted. :(
9:00- bed time. i have not gone to sleep this early in ten years, but it seems appropriate considering i have grown bored with reading and am pretty worn out from rec time.
1:30am- a loud speaker voice booms into my cell: "larson. roll up your bedding. you're getting out." yippee!!!! in a stupor, i ball up everything on my sleep pad, my street clothes back on my body, and i'm outside being picked up by carmen fifteen minutes later. never has a cigarette tasted so good...
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