Pandora's Box

Chapter 1: The Package
Chapter 2: The Break-in
Chapter 3: Roswell County Jail
Chapter 4: Fulton County Jail
Chapter 5: Freedom
Chapter 6: Aftermath

They left their used latex gloves atop my kitchen counter.

Rewind, 3 days.

On the night of January 31st, I was in a celebratory mood. Just two days prior, I had completed the utter cleansing, purging, and organization of all my worldly possessions under one roof, fulfilling my fantasy of categorization, classification, and alphbetization of material objects. Books, CDs, DVDs, tools, camping supplies, rock climbing gear, ritual objects, craft supplies, all were sorted, labelled, and neatly packaged in tupperware containers on shelves, with bold black letters identifying the contents. To arrive here, I had thrown away, given away, and ritually burned an equal amount of things: old magazines, books, clothes, broken electronics, seashells, 10 year old bank statements, etc, etc. The purging and organizing felt good. I had called my father just the night before and told him how wonderful I felt with my cleansing, how I felt that internal mirrored the external, my house was clean, all was well. In paralell, I was celebrating 30 days of keeping my New Years resolution of relative sobriety. So my body was clean too. I hadn't had a drink at all in 4 days that night. I had just filed for my official change of address at the post office that afternoon, and requested a new lease from the apartment office. Truly, reason to celebrate. My home. Yay! Little did I know that inside of 5 minutes my life would take a drastic turn.

It started with a simple knock on the door, at around 9:30 pm. I was sitting comfortably on the couch, reading "Freaks & Fire: The Underground Re-Invention of Circus," an excellent book I had just recieved from Amazon. "Who is it?" I asked... "DHL" they replied. It was dark, so I looked through the peephole, and sure enough saw a man in red and yellow uniform standing outside. I opened the door. He gestured to the ground, said "its right there" and hurried off. This late and that fast; hmmm... must be a busy day for deliveries. Curious, I picked up the package, set it down in the entryway, closed the door, and began inspecting it. It was a large cardboard box, about 2 feet on a side, and hefty. But then, it wasn't mine... doh! It was instead addressed to one "Alice Wilson" at "405 Ashley Forest". Curious, I thought, as my mind travelled into metaphorspace. A package from the Ether, addressed to "Alice" of Wonderland, of course, and "Wilson", for whom my personal mnemonic was an old friend who had fallen serverely out of favor when he attacked my then wife. Oops. Whoever Alice was, she wasn't me. And I live at Ashley Court, not Ashley Forest. I thought about chasing down the DHL man, and went over to the window to look for his truck. I cracked the blinds. Couldn't see much with the glare. I cut the lights and looked again. No truck. Nor had I heard the characteristic diesel engine grumble. Curious. Come to think of it, the guys shirt was a little frumpled, and he hadn't even asked me to sign anything... hackles of suspicion started to rise. Should I open the box? Nah, I decided, as my iPod played the soothing lyrics of "breath... wait until another day", and I decided to leave it till morning, then I'd figure out what to do with it, and either way I'd just take it to the apartment office and they would deal with it there. I left the unopened enigma box in the entryway and sat back down on the couch to read about an entirely different Enigma in my book of rogue circus troupes.

Five minutes later, I was interrupted yet again with a very rude, loud "knock! knock! knock!" on the door. At first I was irritated, then delighted. I figured it was the DHL deliveryman come back, realising his mistake. Instead, when I asked "who is it?", I was replied with "POLICE!" in a firm, loud voice. Uh oh. What WAS in that box? I looked through the peephole for the second time that night.

I did. Fast. Face down. As I hit the deck, face down on the floor, 8 other men in dark clothes and bulletproof vests stormed into my apartment, jumping over me in rapid succession, yelling as they flooded, quickly, into every room, closet, nook and cranny of my apartment, theoretically securing the area and making sure I was alone.

I was, of course. The man in green had taken a strategic position in the corner, his back to my television, and kept yelling "Stay Down! Don't Fucking Move!" with his gun pointed squarely at me, while the stormtroopers vocally confirmed that the rest of my modest apartment was "safe."

My heartrate had hit a racing 150 and I was consciously breathing deeply, making sure not to hyperventilate as I supplied my body what my adrenaline demanded. Fight or Flight, perhaps, but right now I was prone on the deck with a gun aimed at my head. Best to stay still... very still... and breath... deeply.

At first I couldn't process what was happening. I immediately knew it was that box. The box was poison. It wasn't mine. It was foreign. It was chased by the rats. And now the rats were in my house. And they were angry. I rationalized very quickly that the box had to contain drugs. My next thought was, given the force, timing, and sheer numbers of strong humans in my house, that it had to be not just drugs, but a LOT of drugs. Then I thought, since they weren't mine, that someone was very unhappy, and I believed for a moment that these were not indeed the police they had announced themselves as, but gangsters looking for their misplaced property, and that put me in a very bad situation indeed. Indeed, none of them had uniforms on. In fact, the thought occurred to me that they might just kill me. They certainly weren't concerned about making too much noise. I lay very, very still, even as my breathing got deeper and deeper. My hands were over my head and slightly obscured by the coffee table, and I was concerned that the froggy green man with the gun aimed at me would get hyper, so I slowly faced my palms up and moved them down to my sides where he could have a clear view. And waited.

After what seemed like an eternity of terror, a tall man walked in, and asked the man in green, still covering me with the gun, "any resistance?" Green replied, "Aw, he just threw two punches at me sir, as I came in, I'll be OK." This took me a moment to process, since it had zero congruence with my recent memory. Then I realised that Green had just bought an insurance policy. No matter what I said, he was now on record that I had attacked him. Which was complete fabrication, but this seemed not to bother Green. I was completely out of my league.

Shortly thereafter, still lying facedown, I was patted for weapons and my pockets were emptied. Which is funny, because aside from my cellphone, my pockets were empty. They slid my cellphone across the floor and a militant guy barked "What is your name?"

I replied with "Who are you? Am I under arrest?" to which they would not reply, even after I repeated it twice more. My wallet sat atop the bar counter to my left and the lead investigator, a tall man with a hint of Texan and a salt and pepper moustache, said "Is this your wallet?" I nodded in affiramtion. So in short order, they identified me correctly as "Greg Roberts." Not Alice Wilson. Hah.

A few minutes later they cuffed me behind the back and hauled me up onto my couch. For the first time I got full view of the crew, and it was intimidating. My living room really wasn't designed for 8 large men with bulletproof vests and big guns. They stood in a rough semicircle, like troops displayed before a seargant. I said "I am Greg Roberts. Who are you people? Am I under arrest? Do you have a warrant?" The man who had busted my door open picked up my copy of the US Constitution from the coffee table in front of me, showed it to his freinds and chuckled. I, too, appreciated the irony. That was one of three books laying on my coffee table. Apparently they didn't see or didn't care about the third document, the United Nations "Declaration of Human Rights."

After some hemming and hawing, the Texan made a gesture and one of the detectives finally shoved a stapled stack of papers in my face. I was cuffed behind my back, but reached around to hold them... they were quickly drawn back: "You can read them like this", barked the officer. Truth be told, in my hyper-alert and agitated state, I could not more read a sentence of small print legalese than I could do needlepoint. I stared at the document for 8 seconds or so, noted that it had a signature at the bottom but did NOT say "search warrant" anywhere I could see, and sat back into the flow of the evening. Clearly, whether it was a valid search warrant or not, and whether they were police or not, they had the guns, I was in cuffs, and they were going to do what they were going to do.

I sat back, noted all 8 of them in their bulletproof vests, and let out a long bellow of raw laughter at the sheer absurdity of life. I then said "This is quite a party here, eh guys?" The intruders did not appreciate my humor. I stopped short of offering them drinks. My hospitality did have its limits.

They continued to pepper me with probing and leading questions, to which I responded mostly with pure silence and hard stares. As far as I was concerned, they were uninvited guests, had been extremely rude, had brandished firearms in my apartment, cuffed me and quetioned me, REFUSED to tell me I was under arrest, and still had not read me my rights. I had no incentive to cooperate whatsoever. Fuck them.

In time they told me I was not under arrest, but that I was being "detained for questioning in relation to a search warrant". I had never heard that before, I didn't know what it meant, and really I didn't give a fuck. As far as I was concerned, if I wasn't under arrest, I was free to go (the handcuffs and large men disagreed with me on this point), and in any case I had the right to remain silent and no incentive to cooperate with these brute terrorists.

15 minutes later, I was escorted down the short hall to my bedroom. I announced casually, "You're lucky, I just finished house cleaning and just made the bed."

"Yeah, we appreciate that. Some dealers places we go into, they're filthy, hell, there's roaches everywhere." I thought of the dual irony of roach insects and roach spliffs. I kept my mouth shut. They would find neither here.

Despite my outer shell of humor, inside I was deeply insulted by their invasion of my privacy, which was now moving from the living room, the social place, to the bedroom, my intimate place. Worse, they had re-arranged my furniture, placing my desk chair so that it straddled the threshold between my bedroom and my master bathroom. All I could think was, symbolically, they were fucking with the most sacred space of my house. Intentionally. Fuckers. They instucted me to sit down, and I remained standing. Fuck if I was going to be commanded by other men in my own inner chamber. This drew their ire. "You sit down or we're going to sit you down." I stood silent and still, staring at the offender. The chubby young officer then launched himself at me and dug his two fingers deeply into the soft tissue above my neck and below my lower jaw. Since I was cuffed behind the back, and not resisting at all, this essentially gave him control of my head, which jerked backward from the pain. Nonetheless I was able to arch my back so that even as my tortured skull hit the back of the chair, my ass did not sit. Regardless, within 8 more seconds, they had my ass sitting. I thanked my yoga practice for the strength and flexibility, and kept breathing. I resolved not to answer any questions except the most vague.

"What do you do for a living? Where do you get your money from? Have you travelled abroad in the past year? Do you receive a lot of packages here?"

How could my answers possibly help me? I had travelled the world, to exotic places like Mexico, Jamaica, Hong Kong, Thailand. I hadn't worked a full 8 hour day in over 6 months. I got paid cash for my art, and ever since the debacle in Reno, I had generally preferred crisp Benjamins to ominous credit cards, and regularly cashed my checks rather than depositing them in the bank. So it didn't look pretty, and I felt completely unwilling to explain to them the peculiar story that is my life... especially when, I could see clearly, in their eyes I was guilty until proven innocent. Fuck them, I thought.

At this point they decided to try to convince me that they were my friends. "Look, we're the good guys. We're trying to help you out here. You cooperate, and we'll get you on your way." They asked me many many pointed questions, made some nice comments, and I generally replied with questions of my own. My minor triumph occurred when one of them asked me "Why don't you tell us what's in the box?" (which sat still in the entryway, unopened, though they had pushed it into my living room to clear the way for their stampede). I replied, "I have no idea, since you're so fascinated by it why don't YOU tell ME what's in the box?" (Dick in a Box came to mind, hahaha). "That's thirty four pounds of marijuana, buddy, and you're in big trouble." I swallowed. Hard. My first thought was "Fuck!" Thirty Four POUNDS? I'd never even seen a full ounce before in my life, much less a pound... and now this dude was telling me that that entire huge box was basically FULL of marijuana. Oh Shit. Oh shit. Fuck. FUCK. I realised I needed an attorney, like, NOW, and told them I'd take my phonecall now, thank you very much. They said that would happen later, right now we're gonna get some answers to some questions.

A man who identified himself as "Detective Harris" explained to me that mere possession of such a quantity would only be minimum 10 years in federal prison, while if they proved (or rather, if I couldn't DISprove) that I was dealing it, that would be a minimum of TWENTY FIVE years. So I'd better talk to them, so they could help reduce my sentence. Reduce my sentence for WHAT, I thought, for being handed a cardboard box with someone elses name on it, and placing it in my entryway? This was completely FUCKED. I resolved to fight. I laughed, again. Unfortunately, no one yelled "Candid Camera!". I wouldn't have been surprised.

Harris continued to wax poetic about the fourth article of the bill of rights, but only referred to it as "paragraph four". Though I have and was studying the constitution, I had no idea what that specific clause was, and he refused to help me recall it. In fact, quickly, he became far more interested in my book collection. He took particular interest in one book in particular, which he hefted up as he exclaimed "'How to Make Love Like a Pornstar', this is some good shit! I've been meaning to pick me up a copy of this. Hey, Lester, come over here and check this shit out. Its by Jenna Jameson!" I told him he could have it, my gift to him. He politely refused the offer, his attention now shifted to another book which he gleefully brandished, waving "Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World" in my face as if posession of knowledge was a crime in itself. Perhaps, in turn of the century Amerikkka, it is.

For my kind readers, I feel the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights is worth noting here:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Well, call me violated. And it was only beginning.

I did explicitly think to tell them, more than once: "I do not consent to a search of my property." and "You do NOT have permission to search here." Not that they cared. But it felt good saying it. And I meant it.

Finally at some point I *was* read my rights, and the detective asked if I understood them. I refused to answer. If I had the right to remain silent, I certainly didn't have to acknowledge that they had read my my rights. I clearly needed a direct path to a telephone. And now that they had read me my rights, I knew the only telephone I would be using that night was the one at the jail.

Harris reminded me that he was being kind. They had a search warrant, and he said that since they would need to search every inch of my apartment, including every CD (he gestured to my 900+ compact disc collection that sat next to my bed), that I should be counting my lucky stars that he didn't just knock over the entire shelf to get it done more quickly. His every statement was laced with subtle, and not so subtle, threats like this. He wasn't getting on my good side. Asshole.

Facing all this, I resolved to remain completely silent. I saw zero upside to answering anything at this point. And how the fuck did the officer know what was in the box when I hadn't even opened it yet? This whole thing stunk of a setup. I started to wonder who exactly had been wearing the DHL shirt. And why, oh why, had this evil box arrived at my doorstep? Then I remembered. Just 5 hours prior, I had re-established connection with my New York lawyer regarding my involvement in the World Economic Forum protests of 2002. I had just refused a $618,000 settlement offered by NYPD, instead opting to fight it in the courts in hopes of actual policy change to prevent their gestapo tactics in the future. Had they seen that email? Was this retribution? The cooincidence seemed too real, too close... but I couldn't be THAT paranoid. Whatever. I had to stay present. Shit was going down. In my house. I decided to take more firm action.

The bedroom cops had given up, after having to slam me down in my chair again and getting quite rough with me (their explosive forms of violence still shock me to this day... police are angry people). So, their interrogation failed, they paraded me back out to the living room.

Of curious note is that I had a soundtrack for this entire affair. As usual, my iPod had been playing my my library on Shuffle, and I was enjoying the proverbial "soundtrack of my life" when this whole explosion started. And as I re-entered the living room, the "Conan the Barbarian" soundtrack came on, loud an clear, Carmina Burana in 21st century style. That was my cue. I would make my stand now.

Simultaneously, Harris had to get in one final jab. He saw my kids pictures on the wall, and said, "too bad you're going away for 25 years in prison, man, you ain't gonna see your kids for quite some time."

That's one button that should not be pushed. I stared right at his pudgy face 3 feet from mine and said loudly: "Jack, look me in the eye. I am as innocent as the day I was born. That box has nothing to do with me. Do NOT fuck with my children. Do you understand me?" Reluctantly, a mildly humbled Harris backed down. (this was later to be mentioned in the police report as "Roberts made agressive motions towards me")

But I wasn't finished yet. Conan was playing, I was out of the bedroom, I was standing, and I had three things I wanted to try.

So here goes. First: "Get that fucking box out of my house. You have no right to be here, and neither does that fucking poison box. Get it out."

A few chuckles. But the box didn't budge, and neither dd the officers. Fuck. Time to escalate. If you can't go any further down, may as well bluff up.

I stood in my own living room in handcuffs and barked "Allright, then all you fuckers get the fuck out of my house. You have no right to be here. Now leave."

The tall man in charge laughed heartily, and gave me the grace of a reply. "In fact, this isn't your house, or your property. You don't even own this place. Its owned by Madison Apartments, just like it says on the deed." A smug smile was on his face. Damn. He was actually right there. He continued: "Son, we're going to stay here as long as we need to to find what we're here for. We're going to search every inch of this place, and that's that. Now pipe down and get with the program."

If they weren't going to remove the offending box, and they weren't going to remove themselves, only one other logical option remained.

"Fine, then I'm walking out that door. Fuck all y'all." And I proceeded to walk to the door. Three large boys quickly blocked my way, and I found myself face to face with the big man in my entryway. I was breathing very deeply, through my nose to prevent hyperventilation. He laughed at me, and said, "put this man under arrest." I asked, defiantly, "What am I being charged with?" And met utter silence. Fuck. I was sure that was illegal, being arrested without being told what you're being charged with. But fuck it, I was done with this bullshit. Taking them by surprise, I exercised my last act of conscious choice, and took my own two steps out my own door, wearing nothing but my shirt, pants, glasses and socks. No shoes.

Whereupon I was quickly grabbed and smashed into my own outside wall by two large officers I hadn't seen before, who had apparently been lurking outside. "You gonna try any more funny shit, buddy?" They cranked the handcuffs tighter, cranked me with one on each elbows, and marched me out into the rainy night. One of them said, "You're worried about the neighbors, aren't you? Its OK, we'll be quiet."

That was my cue. If my body was compromised, I still had my voice. Yes! I had neighbors! I'd lived there over a 18 months and had met most all of my neighbors, nice people all. They would come to my aid, surely. I started screaming bloody murder and simultaneously let my body go limp. As loud as I could, I yelled "Get the fuck off of me! Let me go! I am being illegally arrested!" I'm sure I woke up somebody. Days later I would find out I had in fact woken up most of them. No one came to my immediate rescue, however.

I struggled all the way to the car and placed my knee up on the trunk when they tried to slam me down onto it. I thanked my yoga training for flecibility. Tex came over as I was being thoroughly searched (again), and took off my glasses, saying "we don't want them to cut into his face." He placed them on the trunk of the cop car. I haven't seen them since.

Big Texan was strutting proud as I was peeled off the trunk and positioned for entry into the back of the squad car. He turned his back to me and said to Harris: "One more drug dealer off the streets, who won't see his kids for 10 years, sellling drugs to kids, he deserves it."

At this, I popped. I had already been redlining for 30 minutes, but this was too much. I said firmly: "You want to start name calling? Come on man, look me in the face, tell me who I am."

He turned to stare me down. He was 6'2 in shoes, a good 4" taller than me. I stared back. My Burning Man memory flashed through my head, where I was playing with a 6'3" supermodel. The whole time I felt intimidated by her height, but finally got over it by commanding her. It worked. When I got home and explained my story to my best friend, he said "Greg, why did you worry one iota about that? She should be bowing to you!" That flashing through my head, I had no fear of Texas.

Tex, clearly, had no fear of me either. A truly menacing look came over his face, and came in close and muttered "Boy, you remember me, don't you?" I stared blankly, surprised. Did I? I desperately scanned my facial memory bank. Vaguely, perhaps, but... He continued as I struggled with the weirdness of his remark... "Think about it, boy. You'll remember. It'll come back to you. Then you won't forget again. Now get in the car and out of my sight." I was disturbed. He had almost said it like he had a vendetta against me. And the only thing that came to my head at that moment was, he looked like Santa Claus.

Next thing I knew, I was being shoved, hard, into the backseat of the car. They weren't exactly graceful, missing and slamming my head and nose against the door opening before finally getting me inside. That was that. There was a strange unopened box, and a group of thugs, still in my apartment, and I was cuffed, under arrest, in the back of a police car. And with a buckle and a chuckle, it was off to jail we went.

I found out he was a career cop of 16 years, and had been in the Army before that, travelling all over the world with service in Budpest, Germany, Afghanistan, and even Croatia. But in all our conversation, one snippet left me stunned.

Pitts: "So, what do you do?"

Me: "I design interactive spaces for childrens museums and science museums, all over the world."

Pitts paused, then said offhandedly: "Ah, you're a Free Thinker. We, um, we're kind of the opposite of that here."

I rapid scanned through the events of the evening so far. My treatment. Their behavior. Yes, I thought, that's the truest statement made all night. I am a Free Thinker. And the Police. They are the Opposite. His remark hit me home like a bullet to the brain. No doubt about it. I was in the custody of the robots.

For the rest of the ride, I simply listened to Pitt's entertaining stories and anecdotes.

I realise that many of you, my fine compatriots, have not yet had the privelege of living through the character building experience we call jail. For your enlightening pleasure, before going into too much detail, let me set the tone with some key points that should be kept in mind throughout:

First, the purpose of jail is to strip away all feeling of entitled freedom. From admittance to exit, you are treated as no more than a savage animal to be prodded and ordered about. If you are not inclined to respond like a Pavlovian animal, several creative devices exist to goad you into that mindset. These include the holding cell, the removal of all your clothes, the shower, the filth, the discomfort, the poison they call food, and finally, the interminable waiting and endless "process."

The first key jail concept is "detainment." Before you are actually admitted to an assigned jail cell, you are detained and "processed". Technically this is a straightforward procedure, involving the announcement of your charges, the inventorying of your physical property, fingerprinting, identification, and a possible medical examination (my advice to you: avoid the medical at all costs!). In any well oiled commercial enterprise, this procedure would take all of 30 minutes. In jail, however, think of going to the DMV, and multiply the bureaucracy, lack of motivation, and inefficiency by a hundred fold. During "processing," you are either held in a solitary cell, or in the holding tank, as fits your mood and state of sobriety. There are no interior doors; the stainless steel toilet is generally separated from the common area by nothing more than a 3' tall cinderblock barrier. There are no beds or blankets to comfort you; there is typically a single steel bench or several chair seats securely welded to the wall. There are no clocks to tell how much time has passed; there are no windows to tell if it is day or night or glimpse the free sky; the stark flourescent lights are ALWAYS on, with their itinerant ballast buzzing; there is no place to recline (sitting or standing only); the stale air of incarceration is recycled via the few ducts where the vents aren't clogged with toilet paper; this because there is no heat (temperatures often hover around a comfy 60 degrees farenheit)... to top it all off, add the soundtrack of constant barking of guards shouting orders and the yelling and wall banging of drunken prisoners, plus the solenoid slamming of the solid metal doors as new inmates are admitted and old ones transferred or released. In short, it is absolute psychic hell, especially after the novelty of the first 15 minutes have worn off. There is no place to sleep, no way to rest, and absolutely nothing to do but contemplate the circumstances of your incarceration. Did I mention the floors and walls? Imagine a hospital operating room that hasn't been cleaned for four days... in otherwords, smooth cement surfaces covered with a curious formula of hair, dirt, saliva, sweat, piss, blood, and urine. With the smell and texture to match. From childhood, my prison fantasies were always pseudo-monastic; I dreamed about a quiet place where I could focus on nothing but pure physical & mental discipline via strict yoga and hundreds of pushups a day... the reality of the floor surface hygiene is nothing my hands really want to touch.

The end result of all this is that jail is a waking nightmare of noise and filth... all in the ghastly light of relentless flourescent, and with no reference to time whatsoever... all on high adrenalin alert due to the seriousness of the situation, and the dangerous character of both the sadistic guards and the potentially unpredictable inmates.

With that introduction to readers, I will re-enter our story.

With the assistance of Officer Pitts, I was unbuckled, and stepped out of the car and into the caged garage of the Roswell County Jail and Pre-Trial Detention Center. Processing had begun.

My first few hours were spent in a solitary cell, a comfy little room about 4' wide by 9' long, with a stainless steel toilet and sink on one end and a worn wooden bench on the other. After a few hours of silence, and a shift change, I was put through the first stage of processing. This is where your possessions (and shoes) are seized and placed into inventory. As my possessions consisted of one shirt, one pair of pants, and two socks, there was nothing to worry about, and I signed an inventory sheet listing "nothing on person". Easy enough. I asked what I had been charged with, and the officer on duty responded "no charges have been filed yet, they're still making up their minds." "OK, How about my phone call." "No phone call until the charges are filed." Oh well. Back to the cell I went.

In time, after I was properly photographed and fingerscanned (this procedure is completely digital these days, no pun intended), I was transferred to the common holding cell. It was cold in there, and there were only chairs, no benches. Two fellow inmates already had occupied the 4-chair blocks, so I was stuck trying to curl into fetal position across 2 small malformed chairs. I figured it was somewhere between 1am and 3am when a knock came on the steel door for me. The Officer on duty looked up and said "they're gonna charge you with Trafficking Marijuana." I asked "Is that serious?" Her eyes got big. "It sure is. You better make your phone call."

Phone calls from jail are a non-trivial affair in their own right. Most of the phones don't work due to physical abuse. The ones that do, are operated by a special phone company that only allows collect calls, even for local numbers. Since these collect calls are ridiculously expensive, most every normal household in America has an automatic block on them by default. This is all stated to both you, and the recipient, should they answer, through a minute-long advertisement which instructs the homeowner how to go online and get "bulk rates" for more economical calls from within the penal system. Should they opt not to go to said website, you're not gonna make any more phone calls to that number. Simple enough.

So after this rigamorole, I finally got through to Suzanne, my ex-wife and still good friend. I had rehearsed exactly what I would say to her in my mind for an hour now. How to explain this situation succinctly, without panic, in my allotted five minutes? Calmly and concisely. It went like this:

"Hey, Suzanne. I need you to listen carefully."

"OK, are you OK?"

"I'm fine. I need you to go downstairs, splash some water on your face, get a pen and paper, and sit down. Tell me when you've done that."

"Allright, hold on... you sure you're OK?"

"I'm fine. Just make sure, you splash water on your face." I needed her fully awake and reasonably calm.

She finally told me she had the pen and paper (and water). OK.

"All right, write this down" I dictated. "At 9:30 tonight, DHL delivered a large cardboard box to my house. Five minutes later, police broke down my door with a battering ram. I did not sign for, nor did I open the box. In fact, it wasn't even addressed to me. The police later told me it had 34 pounds of marijuana in it. Did you get all that?"

I waited while she repeated it back to me.

"OK. Now listen. I need you to call my dad. And I need a really good lawyer. Call Keegan Federal, and ask him for a referral. He's a former judge, and will know the right people to call. Can you do this for me please?"

"Sure, Greg. Oh my god. That's unbelievable."

"I know, its the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. They're supposed to transfer me to Fulton tonight so I can appear before a judge this morning. I'm not sure I'll be able to call you again. I need your help."

"OK, you got it."

"Thanks."

At this point, the guard called "TIME! Off the phone!"

I had to go, and the phone went "click." Hopefully, I would have a lawyer by morning. I was escorted back to the holding tank. And back to my restless attempt at comfort across two sculpted plastic chairs.

As it was, no transport would show that night. Nor the next morning, nor the next day. I asked every few hours, or every shift change, always to the same response: "There wasn't a transport available, all the officers were busy. If they don't get you today, they'll get you tomorrow. So I sat, laid, paced, and waited.

I didn't have much to do, so all I did was spin my brain on the huge question: WHY was this happening to me?

When it came down to it, it felt like I had been set up. And with nothing but four walls and my brain, I went into hyperdrive of paranoia. I was in here, I was going downtown to the Big House, and who knew what awaited me there. I was in on a serious offense. I would be in jail with serious repeat felons. I actually started to get worried that I was being set up to get killed in jail. So I did all I could think about; I bit the bullet, hit the floor, and started my pushups. Over and Over and Over, to the point of total exhaustion. Not even counting reps, Arnold style. I might be going down, but if I was, I would go down fighting.

The incident I kept coming back to was my run in with a certain biker gang (which, really, is a whole 'nother story). It had been unpleasant enough at the time, and since I had taken a beating, I figured it had been resolved. But perhaps not. Perhaps they still had a price on my head. And perhaps that price was equivalent to the growers price on 37 pounds of marijuana. Who knew. It was the only rationale that made sense, at least without me consulting others.

The other thing I did was fantasize about getting out of jail alive, and telling my story. To that effect, I went over and over and over the events of the evening, committing them, and a timeline, from short term to long term memory. This story is largely a result of that prolonged jailhouse meditation.

So, for over 12 hours straight, I mostly paced in circles in the holding tank, meditated silently on these two topics, did countless pushups, and sometimes attempted to conform my body atop a bumpy row of hard plastic chairs in a pathetic attempt to sleep.

Around 3pm (by my reckoning) the following day, still in the holding tank, the drunks had all been taken to court and the guards were all hidden in back rooms. Basically, the entire jail was empty as far as I could see, as was the holding tank. My own private jailhouse. How nice.

It was at this moment that I recognized something that Johnny Cash may have also appreciated. Like a high school shower room, the acoustics of the holding cell were awesome. And with nothing else to do, and no way to sleep, and no one to complain, I decided to start singing. It started humble enough, with a round of "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore", but as soon as I realised the acoustics, with the ultra smooth jailhouse reverb, one after another I went through every bluegrass song, johnny cash and elvis tune, childhood ditty and christmas carol I could think of, simply revelling in the joy of unfettered song. It shone a light of hope through this otherwise dismal affair. And I respected Johnny Cash even more for his Folsom Prison concert; I also vowed that upon my release, I would take more seriously to the guitar. Truly, there was salvation through music, and I had gotten a glimpse of it in Roswell County Jail.

Finally after roughly 24 hours of Roswell County restlessness, I was told my transport had arrived. I had long ago missed my scheduled court hearing downtown, but apparently there was another one available on Saturday morning at 10am, which was only 13 hours away. My spirits positively soared, tempered with caution; I knew if I missed Saturday, it would be Monday until I had a chance at bail.

For the transport from Roswell to Fulton, they clearly decided I was of Hanibal Lechter class criminal insanity. Placing me spread eagle on the wall, the officer first fastened a heavy chain around my waist, then put on some nice metal cuffs, spraypainted a lovely flourescent pink, then placed a matching set of pink cuffs to my ankles. For a final Japanese bondage touch, he attached my hands to the chain belt. This, shall we say, severely limited my ability to flee. Not that it would matter. As I exited the jail through double airlock solenoid controlled doors into the cold night air, I saw the patrol car, surrounded on all four sides by heavy metal chain link doors, outside of which was additional fencing. Not until I was securely locked into the car were the garage doors raised. As we drove out of the jail yards, I gazed out the window at the natural night sky, my first glimpse of it in 24 hours. There was dear Orion the hunter, shining bright, standing stout and bold, telling me to be strong for the next phase of my journey. I smiled. Freedom, truly, is in the mind.

What a surprise it was that the first commercial establishment we passed, not 3 blocks from the jail, was the Roswell Krispy Kreme... the exact same store that had become a pseudo-tradition with my children every other Sunday. I joked to the officer that we should pull over for some donuts... I didn't realise the ill taste of my humor until after the words had left my mouth. He didn't favor me with a response, other than turning up the stereo, which was blaring some heavy metal cacophany. Well, that tone was set. We made the remainder of the 45 minute trip to downtown in silence.

If Roswell was a more or less typical small town jail, Fulton was the real deal; a major metro downtown jail -- the closest to prison I had ever encountered. As we drove in, we must have driven through 3 separate gates along over 200 yards of 12' high fencing, replete with double rows of razor wire. As we approached, the towers loomed: Fulton was seven glorious stories of solid concrete, with tiny vertical slits of light coming out of what served as windows in this fortress of incarceration. When we finally got into the prisoner transfer zone, 3 large gates slammed shut all around the car. I was then escorted, still sporting my fashionably pink cuffs, waistchain, and leg-irons, into the prisoner inventory area. For the very first time, I was given a piece of paper detailing the charges being levied against me. It looked more or less like a speeding ticket, with the significant exception of two words: Trafficking Marijuana. Oh well. Welcome to Fulton.

I noticed a few things off the cuff. One, this place was huge. Just the room I was being checked into was larger than the entire holding tank at Roswell. From this room, all of whose walls were glass, I could see into the admissions area. It looked more like a disheveled hospital than a prison; rows upon rows of seats, large plasma screens playing a "welcome to jail" orientation video in both english and spanish, long desks with bored clerks behind them flirting with officers and ignoring their monitors. Inside, I could see hundreds of fellow inmates, moving through the system, as it were.

The second readily apparent fact was that almost every single person, guards and inmates alike, was black. I decided to check to make sure. Yes, every single guard was African American. So was every clerical worker. But wait! I saw one white guy in the rows of seats. Amazing. It was true. All but *one* of the hundreds of visible inmates were African American. And there I was. White Boy. But at least, I soon found out, I was a whiteboy with some cred. In those first hours, the only marks we had to classify ourselves was 2" wide plastic wristbands which they issued us as soon as we walked in. (Not to digress, but this is one reason I hate wristbands; they're to the advantage of the power structure only, no advantage to the wearer, ever). Mine was a pretty white with ten striped bands of orange on it. That pattern immediately struck a strangely recent symbolic memory, in fact.

Juno. The soundtrack. That #1 seller on Amazon! it was the exact same graphic motif. Orange stripes evenly spaced on a white field. Hmmm... food for thought. Well, I found out soon enough, from the startled expressions of my fellow inmates in processing, that orange stripes meant felony, as opposed to the simple navy blue wristbands, which were for misdemeanors. So immediately I had some respect. Everybody wanted to know what a white boy was doing in Fulton on a felony. I explained my story and eyes went wide. And then everybody wanted to know how much I had paid for the shipment, and how much they could buy from me for. I simply laughed and shrugged it off. It wasn't mine! I would say, and they would simply laugh and give me a knowing look, like, "right answer, smarty pants. Hahahahaa. I didn't do it either." Little did they know.

In my mind, the delivery of the box and the explosive entry of the police through my door were beginning to merge. I began to see the police simply exploding out of the box, a portal through the universe, a Pandora's box of univited nastiness into my world. That box was a fucking Trojan Horse, indeed. A Trojan Horse of the Government, and really just its worst element. Well, we won't get fooled again.

This "admission process" to Fulton was the most un jail-like time of the entire experience, and I revelled in the wide open space of the admissions area. All in all, it was the size of a football field, and though our movemnent was carefully controlled by the barking orders of guards, it felt like a wide open space. There was also an air of hope there, as manifested in the nice women at the counter in front of us, sitting behind computers. The battery of four clerks collectively called one name about every 10 minutes. The rest of their substantial time was spent flirting with the guards, one of whom perched atop each desk, full of banter. I guessed there was about 150 of us in the admissions queue. I didn't bother to do the math. I sat between two interesting characters. The man to my right was a giant of a black man, all muscles and nappy hair. He was somehow already suited up in Fulton Jail uniform, which they called your Blues. He was in on a misdemeanor. He laughed often and struck me as not too intelligent. Nonetheless, after I got over my initial fear, I realised he had a gentle heart, and we talked a bit. At one point, still waiting in the seats after 30 minutes of void, I started to doze off. I was awakened by the softest stroke on my mohawk. I looked up to see him gently running his hand along my hair. I smiled and said "Now you've got good luck, you've rubbed the Mohawk." I was a wee bit worried I was submitting to being his bitch. But he simply put his hands in his lap, and in the simplest, sweetest tone, said "Don't worry, I can see. You're going to get out tomorrow. Judge'll give you bond. Don't worry." I looked in his eyes and saw truth. And didn't worry from that point on.

The man on my right wore a crisply pressed white shirt, and had dreads. He was very interested in the details of my crime. Upon hearing it was 34 pounds worth, his mind did some very fast math. "Damn! Lets see, $900 a pound profit... you shoulda made a quick $31k on that load, dog! Nice!" So now, a question which had been bugging me had been partially answered. This guy thought he could do a quick flip and make thirty G's. That meant it was worth at least double, maybe triple that, in the suburbs and broken into smaller quantities. Damn. Somebody lost a lot of money to get my ass in here. I shut up.

In time, we were placed into groups of ten to twenty, each group assigned to a separate holding tank. In these tanks, which measured roughly 6 foot by 15 foot, we were packed in like animals on the ark, even denser. The 8 foot long stainless steel bench held five of us, the walls were lined with leaners, and the floor was covered with curled up bodies desperately trying to sleep under the cold flourescent lights. It was so packed that bodies even lay on the floor well into the filthy bathroom zone, one man even curled around the base of the stainless steel toilet. I stood against the wall. I still had not lost enough pride to lay upon that filthy floor.

Within a few hours, my name was called and I was walked over to fingerprinting, and the finger scanning machine. I remarked to the officer that I had already been scanned up at the Roswell jail. They checked their computer. No records of file transfer. So, the man just shrugged, and me over to the manual printing area, an antiquated wooden table with inkpad that looked straight out of the 1930s. He put on a pair of latex rubber gloves and said "give me your hand". With fluid movements that would have impressed a martial arts master, he rolled my fingers one by one first on the pad, then the paper, back on the pad, the paper, until there were several pages filled with my finger and thumb prints, both hands, which I duly signed. For this, I was given a great reward: I got to wash my hands. After 30 hours of groping filthy walls and benches and doors, I got to clean my hands. After that, I felt positively semi-human again. I itched my nose with renewed confidence, feeling the clean skin on skin and breaking a slight smile. This smile, I attempted, unsuccessfully, to carry through to the booking photo, which was next. I always want to have a happy booking photo, just to show them that I can't be beaten down. But she just waited and waited until my smile turned into a forced grimace, then finally snapped the picture. Oh well. My identity recorded for posterity once again, it was back to the holding tank.

The good news was that the tank was full. So it was warm. The bad news was that the tank was full. So there was no where to move, or rest, or lie down. For ventilation pruposes (all cieling vents were cleverly jammed with wads of toilet paper), the heavy metal door was left wide open. I kept staring and staring at this door, an open invite to leave. I shuffled one step closer to it, like a wild animal sensing freedom, then sat still, fearful of the violent men just outside. Then I sat there, still, staring at the open door and and obsessing about walking out, that CHANCE of just walking out, until it took over my brain, and five minutes later I advanced towards the door again, only to hesitate just at the threshhold. But after 15 minutes of this, I was ready. It was now or never. With full confidence, I walked out the open door of the tank, into the open admittance area, towards the front door.

Still in my street clothes, I walked confidently past 4 other tanks, then made a left into the glass-walled check in holding area, which was empty. It was at this time that I finally recieved the notice of the guards. They yelled in unison "hey, hey!" but I fully ignored them. I had one goal: to get to the door and open it, and to inhale the fresh air of the Outside. I got to the door. Placed my hands on the handle, to cries of "What the fuck are you doing?". Cranked it. Locked. Damn. I gave it one more good yank before three of them grabbed me firmly and peeled me backward. The Big Dog asked "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" I replied "I'm leaving this place." "Oh no you're not" was Big Dogs response, and with a chuckle, they drug me back to my tank. I resisted getting inside, which was met with much chest puffing of Big Dog, and by this time my antics had drawn a crowd of other guards around him. I gave him the long long stare, and he threatened to punch me, asking "You really want some of this?" but finally thought better of it and just said "167, close the door!"

It was at this point that I realised that the other inmates might not be exactly thrilled with my antics. The closed door effectively blocked all our ventilation and fresh air, and was clearly a punishment. It punished me, but also the rest of them. I looked back at my group, a little shamefully, as if to say "sorry guys." But it wasn't to last. Within 30 seconds, the door slammed opened again, and I was yanked out. I was summarily thrown into the cool off tank, a cold cell with an extra dirty floor and no bench. I paced in a circle like the caged animal I was, huffing and puffing, but unable to blow the walls down. Hell, at least I had room to walk. But as with all pleasures in confinement, even this was to be short lived. Ten minutes later Big Dog, who was the ranking Sherrif on the admittance floor, came to take me. I did not willingly follow. Why should I. But with each dragging of my feet, his pincer grip on my tricep became more forceful. It was so strong I felt it had to be ripping my flesh. But I didn't care. Fuck him, and fuck all his cronies.

During the forced march, he asked me why I had to act like this, and I didn't favor him with the pleasure of a response. But when he stopped abruptly and asked, "so, you wanna FIGHT ME?" romantic visions entered my brain, of a genuine mano-i-mano, prisoner vs. guard fight. Big Dog had 6 guards surrounding him and was clearly bigger and stronger than me, what did he have to lose? I didn't hesitate. "Yes." as I stared into his eyes. Before I could even think, I felt a hard hand clubbing me squarely in the face, as I remained constrained by two other guards. "Now we're gonna settle this in private." said Big Dog. I gasped in disbelief "You hit me in the face, dude!" "No I didn't" was his stolid response. "Yes you did!" "You want another?" I really didn't. But I was pissed again, just like I had been in my apartment 30 some hours ago. But this time I was getting scared too. I was clearly out of control here, and at their whim.

They drug me past my tank, down a short hall, and into the shower area. Again, movie clips flitted through my brain, but these were far less glorious than the previous fight scene. You get taken to the shower so the blood can wash away easily. All I saw was pain, and possible accidental death. Big Dog motioned me to sit on the steel bench. I stood. He was getting really pissed. Good. So was I. Then he took a gun-like object off his belt which made a bright white electrical arc, glowing, and said "Now sit your ass down, NOW."

The other guards backed away, a warning sign that this was real danger. My heart skipped a beat as I thought about getting tased. That white arc looked totally inhuman, almost magic-like, not of this world. Involuntarily, my ass muscles forced me to sit. I silently cursed myself for not having the strength to withstand the fear of it. In an alternate universe somewhere, Greg Roberts stayed standing, and took 120,000 volts to prove his point. A kinder guard whispered to me: "You are on the edge, man. Do NOT fuck with this dude any more. He will hurt you." I took the point. In the next 5 minutes I was stripped and handed my dress blues, heavy cotton tank top and matching pants neatly silkscreened with white letters: "FULTON COUNTY JAIL INMATE". Fuck them. If they were going to hold me indefinitely as a prisoner, the least they could do was dress me like one. Now fully garbed, I was once again led to solitary... a very remote one this time, mildly clean, and one with a toilet. I wondered at my good fortune. I curled up in fetal position on the stainless steel bench, and was just about to fall into a blissful sleep.

Then the clang clang of the steel door sounded. In was pushed a giant of a man, an old old man, six foot four and lanky with curly grey hair. He cursed loudly at the guards as they shoved him in, the door slamming firmly behind him. He spoke non-stop, but unfortunately his voice was the deepest grumble I had ever in my life witnessed, so much so that half of what he said was simply sub-aural. My translation matrix completely failed, and I understood one out of ten words he uttered, when I was lucky. I tried in vain for 30 minutes to understand his ranting, while trying deftly to avoid his breath death ray. He was drunk as the day is long, and would alternately spit, or worse, drool long chains of yellowish fluid down his shirt and onto the floor, all without skipping a beat in his angry monologue.

In time, I came to see this old man as my future, should I continue to feed the rage I felt about the police and the guards injustice. His psyche was gone. He wouldn't even take care of himself. His body was strong, but its only function was rage. It oozed out of his every pore. My peace was broken, and I recognized this mans presence as both ingenious punishment by the jail guards, and a stern warning from the universe. Since I couldn't understand a word he was saying, I resolved to be quiet, hoping that he would get the point. He didn't, at least not for another 45 minutes of tortured grumbling. And then, when he finally came to realise I was no longer listening, he turned his rage to the door, which he alternatively kicked and punched with tremendous force, sending steel on steel tremors through our whole cell.

For this behavior, which could also be heard clearly throughout the entire processing area, he received several stern warnings through the hardened plexiglass portal. When he paid no heed to these, after another 30 minutes of banging and slamming, Big Dog himself came in to settle the matter. This time I offered no resistance. In fact, I cowered in the far corner of the bathroom area, dreading what was to happen next. Sure enough, the guards had no mercy. Two held him still while Big Dog cuffed him behind the back. Big Dog then instructed the Old Man to sit. As had I, he refused -- in these situations, where no words suffice, simply standing is the last possible act of defiance. Big Dog would have none of it. With Old Man's hands cuffed tightly behind his back, Big Dog punched him in the stomach repeatedly, over and over, until Old Man finally collapsed on the bench. I watched in horror and fear as they put him in leg irons and left. The door clanged shut ominously.

Astonishingly, Old Man was up and at it again within sixty seconds. He was able to creatively position himself, all cuffed and shackled, back to the door, to still give it a resounding mule kick. And another. And another. The guards once again approached the door. I waited for the inevitable. Surprisingly, Old Man turned around and just started yelling: "What are you gonna do now, motherfuckers? You cuffed me, you beat me, and I'm still kicking! Fuck You, cowards! What you gonna do about it?" The guards made menacing looks, but apparently agreed, for they left the staredown, and Old Man remained unscathed. He then trumphantly resumed his kicking and yelling. I had been awake for over 40 hours at this point. But with this insane racket, sleep was simply not possible. I was in hell.

In the midst of all this cacophany, a familiar face stopped and peered into our door. It was the laughing giant from admittance, the one who had rubbed my mohawk. He looked at me past the old man, and yelled "You OK?" I gave him the thumbs up and he smiled a big happy smile. He was like my friend on the Inside, and he was checking on me, crazy Whiteboy. I was touched.

All this time, night was moving on (I guessed; there were no clocks nor windows to see the sun or dark), and the temperature was falling; in fact, it was getting really, really cold. I guessed the temperature to be around 55 farenheit, which really precluded sleep while in nothing but a tank top, pants, and plastic slippers.

Finally, the Old Man gave up, seeing as he was getting no more attention from either me inside or the guards outside. In a painful motion, he fell like a tall tree, flat onto the floor. For a moment I thought he had died or had a stroke. But upon studying him, I saw his chest gently rising and falling. Now that it was quiet I tried desperately to get some sleep, but it was way to cold and the steel bench was way too hard and slippery, and every five minutes I just felt I had to check to see if my cellmate was still alive. Inevitably, he was.

After another eternity, the door opened. An angel threw me a t-shirt and a sweatshirt, while two other guards fitted the same onto my cellmate. Well, something to celebrate. Warm clothes. God Bless.

I think at this point I managed to catch about 30 minutes of sleep. Thank God. But then, of course, it was time for another cell change. Apparently, morning was nearing, and morning meant court. Yay!

As the hours passed, through some convuluted process of cell changes and handcuffed marches down long hallways, I arrived with about three dozen of my fellow inmates in an extra large holding cell outside the courtroom. This got me both excited and optimistic. For the first time in 36 hours I would get to see my lawyer, and if I was to believe it, my father and ex-wife. Someone was able to get the time from one of the guards. It was 7:20am. That meant my court time was less than four hours away.

Those four hours were in fact quite fascinating. Bolstered by the promise of our "day in court", the laconic slumber of the holding tanks was replaced by a dynamic conversation in which the entire group participated. Two large men appeared to rule the court from oppostie ends of the room, but the flow of conversation was so dynamic and all inclusive that I simply marvelled at it and meagerly attempted to follow the flow. In all my years of grass roots activism, consensus decision making, and even board room politics, I had never seen such a natural flow of information. Truly, over 30 people were holding one large conversation, and not once was there an interruption or even a heartbeat's pause. It just flowed. It felt good, and I was honored to be in such company.

Finally, my name was called, and I was cuffed and brought across the hallway, into the courtroom. Since I had a private lawyer, and perhaps since my case had the second higest monetary value (one woman stood accused of stealing $93,000 of computer equipment and forging another $15,000 of company checks), I was granted a special seat behind the other inmates but with a clear line of sight directly to the judges desk. Or maybe it was because I was the only white man in the defendants seats. Who knows. My lawyer, a man by the name of Kazuma, came up to me and was given about 90 seconds to explain what was going on. I really couldn't get a word in edgewise, which was probably just as well. In time I saw my father and ex-wife enter into the observer seats directly behind me, separated from me by a thick and well scratched sheet of bulletproof glass. I turned to look back one more time, to see my father adorably holding up a photograph of him and my deceased mother, before I was scolded by a guard: "Look back one more time and I'll yank you outta here on contempt of court." I did not look back again.

The judge was an elderly man who reminded me of my Uncle Jeff. Straight grey hair and a well trimmed white beard, with bifocals. He seemed chipper enough, and his trying of the first case felt both fair and clear headed, without prejudice. I immediately trusted him.

My case came second. The judge let out an audible chuckle as he asked "This is the DHL case, right? OK..." "Greg Roberts." As instructed, I stood up to be recognized. The judge continued. "You are being charged with Trafficking in Marijuana. This is a felony crime. Do you understand the charges?"

I replied honestly and immediately "Your honor, those charges are wholly invalid and incorrect."

"Um, thats not what I'm asking."

At this point my lawyer cut in and motioned me to silence. Of course I knew I was supposed to just say "Yes", but truly, I did not understand nor did I recognize the validity of the charges. So I had said so. Now the lawyers would do their dance.

My lawyer jumped right in and stated "Sir, this is really cut and dry. Its as simple as a wrong address. The undercover delivered the package to the wrong address. Given the circumstances, how about a reasonable bail, of, say, six thousand dollars?"

Now it was the DA's turn, and as he spoke up, my brow wrinkled in disgust. Literally, this kid could not have been more than a year out of law school. His freckled face and curly blond hair stood out like a sore thumb as he puffed his chest and stated. "Your honor, this is a serious amount of drugs, and a felony offense. I'm going to ask for a bond of at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, given the severity of the crime." I sent virtual daggers into the back of this kids skull. Not once had he looked at me. He had no clue of who I was, or any idea of the entirely bizarre events that had transpired leading up to this moment. He just wanted to be a tough boy and keep a drug dealer in jail. Well, fuck him. My lawyer retorted, insisting that the address on the package and the address of my residence were two separate physical addresses. The punk DA said he'd prove otherwise and requested time to pull up Google Maps right in front of the court. His motion was granted.

In the meantime, the Judge continued onward, trying other cases. There were something like 32 defendants with me in the small jail courtroom. The kid next to me, who was arrested for cocaine posession (as were almost half the people there), had his case dismissed. This brought a big smile to his face. Many others were released on bond, typically in the range of $140 to $800. After a few more cases were tried, the Judge asked the DA if he had found an answer to the address quandary.

"Yes, Your Honor" he responded humbly, "It does appear that they identify two different physical addresses." The judge said "thank you" and rapidly announced a bond of $25,000, which he explained was the minimum allowable in a crime of this type. My ex had told me that there was some kind of program where they could pay just ten percent of that and still get me out. I was sure they had that covered. I began my internal celebration. Freedom was near.

Soon enough, my entire row of inmates cases had been heard, and the guards motioned for us to exit, which we did. The air was entirely positive. I had a jump to my step as I exited the courtroon, looking forwad to re-uniting with my family on the "Outside."

But as with everything in jail, Freedom was not so easy. I, and the others, were returned quite efficiently right back to our holding cell, where the door, once again, slammed fully shut. Doh. I was still happy. I knew I would be out soon. When I had been detained in New York City during a political rally, it had been less than 30 minutes between my court hearing and the freedom of the Manhattan streets. It could hardly be worse in Atlanta...

My first indication of reality was a fellow inmate, who, seeing my smile, told me: "Don't get all excited just yet; you've got at least four to six hours of processing before you get outta here." Going now on 50+ hours of little to no sleep, that was not what I wanted to hear. It actually ended up being worse.

When I finally arrived back into the main holding area, arguably to get my street clothes back, the sherriff on duty had been alerted to my earlier antics. While the officer delivering me was kind, and said "why don't you give this boy a phone call, his dad's here and paid him out." the guard replied with "Not this one, he's trouble. Put him in 173. I don't care if he's paid out or not, he's still not done processing in."

So while the rest of my courtmates went into one cell, I went into another. Which was filled with a batch of fresh inmates who had just arrived that very morning. It was like the night prior, all over again. Fuck. An hour or two passed, and we were escorted to the uniform room, so that they could be processed into their rooms. The guards counted, and said "There's nine here. There's only supposed to be eight. Who doesn't belong?" I volunteered that it might be me, and after a brief roll call, I was told I was correct. The eight went up to their cell blocks. I returned to the abyss of tank 173.

Moments later, I was joined by another wayward soul. Somehow, he had been getting a special treat of using the vending machine while the rest of his tank mates were marched up to their cells. This boy was a music producer, whose studio had been raided while he was mixing down a group who were toting unlicensed firearms. We talked a bit about the positive values of art, and how opposite that was to the creulty and absolute callousness of the prison guards. We both had a boiling anger inside, and exchanged fantasies about meeting one of these guards on the street, without cuffs or a gun, and just venting our physical rage. We both tried to quell eachother and move into positive topics, but every time we signalled a guard, the situation and our anger got worse. In particular, I finally got a guard's attention (most simply ignored us, even when they walked directly by), and said "Excuse me, my bond is paid, I just need to go home." She looked me square in the face, and said "I don't give a damn about your bond, you can go to hell for all I care." I was so shocked at that one, I just sat down and breathed for a while. At this point, it was nothing but waiting.

What I eventually found out was that legally I could be held up to 24 additional hours past the time that the system recorded my bond being paid. And that the court room computer system was on a different network than the jail computer system. etc. etc. I settled in for the ride. In resignation, I broke my promise not to eat the jail food, and began removing the saran wrap from the meal I had been provided hours earlier. It consisted of four slices of wheat bread, two slices of american cheese, two slices of some strange kind of bologna, and a packet of mayonaise. Alongside it was a "juice bag" which cleverly failed to have printed ingredients on it. I ate two slices of bread and the meat and could stomach no more.

I also learned, against all common sense, that I could not be "processed out" until I was fully "processed in". Processing in meant getting into an actual numbered jail cell with a bed. Up until this point, I had spent 40 hours in various community holding cells, or "tanks", but had not yet actually been assigned to an individual cell block within the main jail. This "processing in" procedure unfortunately also included a medical screening, which required both an injection inoculating against tuberculosis, as well as a blood test. Spiritually there was no way in hell that I was going to let this filthy prison draw my blood, and resolved to fight it. Luckily I never needed to make my case.

Three hours later, I was marched out into the common area, my "detainee felon" wristband swapped out for a heavy plastic band which was then actually riveted tightly into a ring around my wrist. I was cuffed to my cellmate and side by side we were marched into the depths of the jail, processing "in" almost complete, a scant 9 hours after the judge had declared me free to go on bond. I made one final verbal protest about my bond (no one else with me had bond posted), and was replied with a chuckle from the "Red Dog" seargant, and the wise aphorism "Buddy, it's real easy to get into this place, but its hard as hell to get out. Learn it." Truer words were never spoke.

Next we were back in the uniform room, where each of us received our bag, a pillowcase stuffed with jail essentials, such as a blanket, toothbrush, comb, etc.

We were paraded into an elevator two by two, and told to "face the back wall", a very unusual position. The elevator then took us down one floor to the basement level, where we were instructed to march backwards out of the elevator into the hall.

Our next stop was an empty cellblock, where about a hundred styrofoam containers sat atop a pair of steel picnic tables. One by one our names were called, we were uncuffed, handed a styrofoam bin, and told a cell number. Mine was 415. San Francisco, I thought, nice. We were given a brief orientation, which basically stated, "when a guard comes into your cellblock, all inmates will line up against the far wall for inspection. whatever a guard tells you to do, you do it, no questions asked." Once we all had our styrofoam, we were marched into cellblock 400, where 8 other inmates awaited us. This, finally, was home. Home "on the Inside," as it were.