“Hey, guess where I am?”
“I dunno,” he said, pausing for effect, “Jail?”
I, Scanner Brian, decided to speak out after reading of Sheila's recent brush with the law on Gawker and, admittedly, mostly thanks to the recent story of the handcuffed burglary suspect who escaped custody by stealing a police car.
The story of my first arrest and night in jail is far less Bourne Supremacy than that, certainly compared to the time I avoided arrest in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi for driving stoned out of my mind while trying to find my mentor, Stephen Ambrose's vacation house at four o'clock in the morning... well, actually, you just heard that whole story.
Continued from the excerpt at the top, direct from the writing journal I had at 17:
“But aren’t your parents in Rhode Island?”
“Yeah, dickhead. Do me a favor, I can’t talk long, call Justin, tell him I’m in jail, make sure if I don’t call him tonight from home to come down with his attorney to the Manchester Courthouse tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, so we can discuss the case.”
“Hey, you shit! Stop being so selfish. I wanted to go see Return to Paradise tonight!” He laughed to show he was only joking… but I knew the truth.
“Hey, buddy?”
I ignored the stunning realization that my friend probably cared more about a screening of a bad Kate Beckinsale movie than my well-being. “What?”
“I’m sorry, dude.”
“Don’t worry, it’s my fault, I should have known better.”
“Couldn’t you have… Did you have a chance to get away?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you? You had a car…”
He was right. I could've gotten away. I'd felt the tap on my shoulder the moment I stepped into the department store's music aisle. But I lost my cool as panic washed over me: my hands began to shake and my teeth chattered and the security guard squinted at me knowingly. He was blond, mid-thirties, in a light blue shirt, smiling politely and affecting an air of complete casualness but for the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “Excuse me. Did you just return a backpack?”
I said no and resumed shopping as if my illegally obtained store credit still existed. He went away. As soon as he rounded a clothing rack and headed toward the cashier, probably to ask her why she had pointed me out as the culprit, I barreled through the nearby emergency exit door. The alarm sounded behind me, but it felt like it was following me all the way out into the mammoth parking lot.
My face burning with Fear of the Blue Shirt Man, I raced toward my father's Plymouth like a madman, or more likely America's Most Laughable Criminal, pressing my baggy jeans to my waist to keep them from sliding down. In ten seconds flat, I was at the driver's side door with my key out, jamming it into the lock. Not looking back but feeling every second rush by, I screamed for the inanimate object to get into the proper fucking keyhole. “Come on! Come on! You piece of shit."
I heard his sneakers coming, slowing from a sprint to a cautious jog. “Hey,” he said, not even out of breath, “Where are you going?”
The other security guards were already blocking the car's exit from behind before I could get the key in the ignition. Blue Shirt Man squinted at me. I was seventeen-years-old, no more skillful than a dimestore hood, caught resisting arrest and trying to return a boatload of merchandise without actually purchasing it. And though they didn't know it yet, there were drugs in the car, under the passenger seat, just waiting for the cops to pick them up with a chuckle and a "lookee here." I turned back to Blue Shirt. Defeatedly, with all that I had left, I told him, "Fuck you. I'm seventeen, bitch."
And then I went to jail.
To Be Continued... in Part Two: The Cellmate...
Photo of the author at age 18 by Michael Edwards.