Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Before I head out for my evening plans (which include editing a Vincent Hoquet interview for tomorrow, with Allen Falkner and many intereting others coming soon), I am posting my promised content… My prison diaries are, as I warned, quite brief as my stay was limited to all of about twelve hours, having been arrested and processed in the evening and then released the next morning.

After being brought to the station in cuffs, I was put in an interview room for a while. Because of some very unpleasant allegations that were made, even though the cops appeared fairly convinced the situation was contrived and told me as much — on one hand I'm sure they present themselves to everyone in that way to gain trust, but on the other hand all the arresting and processing officers urged me to say nothing when interviewed and just call a lawyer so I don't think so — they had to “play it safe” with me and treat me as a potential suicide risk, which meant a full search (ie. strip search, looking in my mouth… that sort of thing). That was sort of strange, and it meant that the cops saw the full range of modifications and my chestpiece. They were extremely polite and friendly to me the whole time, and never once treated me with any disrespect other than the entire absurd situation which of course was not their fault. After a brief interview — taking the advice of saying very little — I was put into one of the cells, probably about four feet by eight feet with a bench and a steel toilet and sink.

Three other bad sheep were in neighboring cells. One of the guys was being transferred between prisons and had been sitting in this holding cell for twenty-four hours waiting for a wagon to deliver him to his final destination. He yelled regularly, out of boredom I think, but was polite, in part because they hadn't fed him in eighteen hours (I'm really not sure if that's legal) and he was hoping that someone would bring him a sandwich. Every hour or so someone would good-naturedly promise to get him something when they went out for a coffee, but I don't think anyone ever did.

A little later a completely drunk couple was picked up, I think for fighting in the street, possibly with each other. This guy did a lot more screaming than the other, and was quite hostile, threatening and taunting and insulting the police with much bragging about his fighting skills, as well as about various crimes and drug use , which didn't seem to me to be a particularly bright thing to be doing, if only because a good relationship with ones jailer is probably a good thing? I guess he didn't care though because whatever he'd done was a bail violation and he was in the wrong jurisdiction to top it off, so no matter what he was going to be in jail for a while.

Anyway, the part of the story that I actually quite liked was that I had been put in the very end cell, which meant that I was next to the staff room. I tried to nap, but got only an hour or two of sleep, so mostly I just listened to the police. Because it's not every day someone covered with the specific types of tattoos that I have — or the body modifications that I have — they had something to talk about. They went on about how weird I looked, but every time they'd say that, they'd qualify it with “but he's such a nice guy” or “and he's really calm” and various negative comments about the others involved, which definitely helped make the whole situation all the more non-threatening.

I actually found it kind of strange that once arrested anyone would bother resisting… It's not as if it will do you any good. I figure once you're behind bars, your job is to con everyone you meet into being your friend because you may find yourself needing a lot of favors… and certainly it's not as if any good can come from negativity in that situation. After all, I might find myself being the guy in need of a sandwich!

Morning came and a big shipment of people was delivered and since they didn't have enough staff at the time to process me, I was released on recognizance and without any conditions of release other than I had to return a few weeks later for full processing, which involved being fingerprinted and photographed, which was interesting because they have a cool ink-free scanner device for doing it. I chatted with the officer about tattoos, and he asked if he could take pictures of my various mods for my file, but since it was optional I declined, and while he was interested in seeing them all, I think he was relieved he didn't have to fiddle with what seemed to be an occasionally uncooperative computer more than he had to.

Not particularly exciting, I know.