Making Bail

Earlier on “My Pathetic Life” I had been forced to spend a day in jail. You can start reading from the beginning here – What Happened??? My story continues now with me sitting on a chair wondering if my call to Matt was successful or not…

It was quickly approaching 5:30pm and I was under the assumption that 5:30 was, once again, going to mean lockdown. I figured I best try to contact Doug before lockdown started. If nothing else, it would be a possibility to leave confusing messages with two of my friends on the “free side” and somewhat increase my odds at getting out of here quicker than my pleas to pay my own bail being heeded. I grabbed a phone as quickly as one became available…

Okay, so I had the procedure for making collect calls mastered now. As quickly as I could, I attempted to call Doug. I used the second number listed for him as my earlier attempt with the first number was a bust (it was another inmate’s PIN … perhaps he pressed “9”…). After once again receiving the message about the number called not being able to accept collect calls and being informed that I was getting a one-time only free connection, I heard Linda (Doug’s wife) say, “Hello?”

This time I was in the know. I wasn’t exactly sure how long it was; however I knew that the call time was limited and I needed to get my information out as quickly as I could before getting cut off. I spewed out a torrent of conversation that included a notice about the limited time, the fact that I was in jail although I couldn’t get into why right then and that I needed her to call Doug and tell him to get a hundred dollars and head over to the Boulder County Jail. She said they would take care of it. I thanked her and hung up.

It was shortly after this (I believe it was around 5:40pm) that one of the guards called out, “Lockdown!” Everybody headed back to their cells – I headed back to cell #13 – and the unmistakable sound of the magnetic locks engaging echoed throughout earshot. I once again lied down on the bottom bunk in my lone cell…

I didn’t have any knowledge as to when, or even if, this iteration of lockdown was scheduled to end. I didn’t really care. I wasn’t expecting anything to be happening for me until well after 7:00 anyway – and that was assuming Matt had the information he needed. Perhaps Doug would get there earlier, however I doubted it. There was always the possibility that I would finally be able to pay my own bail soon; however nothing that had occurred up to this point led me to put much faith in this happening. I took inventory of my cell…

Other than what I had brought in (the sheets, blankets and plastic coffee mug containing a comb, a bar of soap, a small toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and a spork) there wasn’t much else. There was a metal bunk bed and a crude sink and toilet. There was also a large roll of some very rough, single-ply toilet paper and two small pencils that I found under the steel mirror. I also noticed, stamped on the inside of the cell door, the address for the jail. That might have been useful to me prior to making my phone calls…

I utilized one of the pencils and wrote the address on the sheet of paper given to me earlier by the guard with the phone numbers and credit card numbers. I was thinking that this information might come in handy if we ever get out of lockdown. I was running out of numbers to try; however had a couple left that might get to someone…

The main thing I remember from this time was hearing voices from other inmates outside my cell. We were in lockdown; however it seemed like I was hearing some inmates walking around outside and talking. I distinctly remember one of them being called “Skittles” on a couple of occasions. Whether Skittles was one walking around or just a nickname of a prisoner now in lockdown, I had no clue. I just remember the name.

I also noticed, when looking through the windows of my cell door, that there seemed to be some sort of hierarchy in this ward. There were a few inmates (my old cellmate from cell #14 was one of these) that weren’t wearing their red jumpsuits. If memory serves me correctly, they were wearing your standard sweat pants and grey tee shirts. I think there were about four inmates in this group. The thing about this group was that they were not required to stay in their cells during lockdown. As a matter of fact, I believe their job was to clean up the commons area during each lockdown – which appeared to be mainly mopping up the floor. They were also wearing some sort of headphones which I concluded were to pick up the audio for the TVs – I saw a note next to one of the TVs that said the audio was being transmitted on some certain FM frequency. When they completed their cleanup, they basically sat downstairs watching TV…

There were also a few guys wearing blue jumpsuits (the gentleman that requested my dinner if I wasn’t going to eat it was one of these). I later found out that these guys were from the maximum security ward sent up to this ward because of some sort of fight that occurred in their ward. As I mentioned before, there was also another area separated from the general population by yet another glass blockade. I think this was either an area for punishment or possibly a place for the more violent. I never bothered to get the complete 411 on the hierarchy … I’m just mentioning it as an observation…

At one point I heard one of the other inmates yelling something about football. He wanted the channels on the TVs changed so that he could watch the game. This was done quickly enough and I decided to slide my chair (oh yeah, a couple other items in my cell were a plastic chair – sort of your lawn-chair variety – and a small table bolted to the wall … sorry, I forgot those earlier…) over toward my cell door so I could sit and watch the game. They were small TVs. I was looking through a narrow window at a not-very-direct angle. It was a pre-season game between Miami and I don’t even remember who else and (as anyone who knows me knows) I really could care less about football. It was something to do though…

It was somewhere around 8:00 when the cells were once again unlocked.

Having nothing better to do, I wandered back out to the commons area. Perhaps I would be able to ask the new guard (the guards that were there earlier had left on a shift change) if there was anything that I wasn’t doing that I should have been doing in order to pay my bail. Heck, it had been 5 hours since I told the judge that I could pay my bail; was there something else I needed to do? Could anybody give me any information that might actually be usable by me? I had credit card information for two of my cards written down for me earlier by a guard. What, exactly, was I supposed to be doing with this? As it was throughout the day, I had no idea…

The first thing I tried was to call Doug on the first number I had listed for him. You may remember that this was the original call I attempted using another inmates PIN; the thing is, it seemed to me that this was his cell phone number. Maybe I could get in contact with him and make sure he knew what was going on – I actually had the address now… The call didn’t get answered.

I spoke with the guard that was currently on duty and asked if he could find out what was going on with me. I told him that I wanted to pay my bail and he started going off on this “it could take half an hour or 12 hours” speech when another inmate – my old cellmate from cell #14 – interrupted the guard and explained that I was wanting to pay my bail with a credit card currently located in my seized possessions. The response I got was, “I’ll look into it.”

Oh well, what could I do? The only possibility I had was to wait. Wait for what, exactly, I had no clue… Heck, it was past 7:00 now; maybe Matt would come to my rescue soon…? I sat down and watched the game…

It was going on 9:00 when a guard entered the ward and called out my last name. He then told me to get my stuff. Sweet! I’m getting out of here! I quickly headed up to my cell and grabbed my still neatly folded sheets and blankets as well as my plastic coffee mug of goodies. I walked down the stairs and plopped my stuff on a table where the guy that I had given my dinner to earlier was sitting. He congratulated me on being released which was kind of a weird thing. I mean how does one respond to that with a guy that not too long ago told you that he was doing 2 years in there? I basically said thanks and wished him luck with his situation. That’s when this other guy approached…

He mentioned being aware that I had just arrived that day and asked if he might be able to exchange his blankets with my newer, cleaner ones. Apparently, according to this guy, clean laundry is not easy to come by there. I said sure, he could have my blankets as long as he was quick about it – I didn’t know how long before the guard was going to return. One of the other guys then requested my sheets. Sure, what did I care?

The exchanges were completed; the guard entered the ward and called out my name. I walked out into the hallway and was told to drop my stuff in a corner which I did. I was standing there waiting when another guard showed up and asked if I was getting out. She said she would take me from there and started leading me down the hallway.

And that’s where this episode will be ending. I, once again, need to go grab something to eat. Besides, I’m getting quite sick of typing today. I’ll finish this story later…

bis später,

Coriolis