I went back to my spot in Robert Burns Park and jacked off all night. The high lasted eight solid hours and left me dingy and schizzy. T-Bird took the edge off and eased me into a fresh euphoria.
I’d found something. It was something I could have at will.
I went at it willfully. I stole inhalers and flew every third or fourth day for a month. I chugged down inhalers in library men’s rooms and buzzed back to Burns Park with my head scraping the moon. The speed continuum gave me my most textured crime and sex fantasies. I stole a flashlight and some skin mags and worked them into my scene.
Outdoor life was good. I told Aunt Leoda to send my monthly C-note care of Lloyd. She thought I was bunking in with a buddy. I didn’t tell her I was now a perpetual camper.
I forgot to factor rain into my outdoor-life equation. Some drizzles sent me looking for shelter. I found a deserted house at 8th and Ardmore and moved in.
It was a two-story job with no interior lights and no running water. The living room featured a moldy faux- leather couch. The couch was good for sleeping and sustained jackoff action.
I settled into the house. I kept the front door unlocked and hid my stuff in a closet when I went out. I figured I was being discreet. I was mistaken.
It went down in late November. Four cops kicked my door in and charged me with shotguns.
They threw me to the floor and handcuffed me. They stuck those big 12-gauge pumps in my face. They threw me in a car, drove me to Wilshire Station and booked me for burglary.
My cellmate was a black guy popped for armed robbery. He held up a liquor store, got away clean and saw that he’d dropped his Afro comb at the scene. He went back to get it. The proprietor recognized him. The cops bagged his ass right there.
I was scared. This was worse than Georgia Street Juvie.
A detective interviewed me. I told him I was sleeping in the house—not burglarizing it. He believed me and knocked the beef down to plain trespassing. A jailer moved me over to the misdemeanor side of the tank.
My fear subsided a bit. My cellmates said trespassing was chickenshit stuff. I’d probably get cut loose at arraignment.
I spent Saturday and Sunday at the Wilshire holding tank. They fed us two TV dinners and two cups of coffee a day. I was in with a bunch of drunks and wife beaters. We all lied about our crime exploits and the women we’d fucked.
A Sheriff’s bus hauled us to court early Monday morning. It dropped us off at the Lincoln Heights Division— home of the famous Lincoln Heights drunk tank.
We waited to see the judge there. The tank was forty yards square and jam-packed with male lowlife. Deputies lobbed lunch sacks into the crowd. You had to fight for your food. I was tall enough to snag my chow straight out of the air.
The day stretched. A dozen winos suffered alcoholic seizures. We went before the judge ten or so at a time. The judge was a woman named Mary Waters. The guys in the tank said she was a nasty old cunt.
I stood before her and pled guilty. She said I looked like a draft dodger. I told her I wasn’t. She ordered me held without bail—pending a probation workup. I was due back in court on December 23rd.
It was December 2nd. I was headed for three weeks in stir.
I tamped down my composure. A deputy hooked me up to a 12-man shackle chain. Another deputy herded us out to a big black & white bus.
The bus took us to the Main County Jail. It was a huge facility a mile northeast of downtown L.A. The induction process took 12 hours.
Deputies skin-searched us and sprayed us with delousing solution. We traded our street clothes for jail denims. We got blood-tested and inoculated for various diseases. We spent hours moving from one barred pen to another. I got to my actual cell at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.
It was a four-man cell overpacked now to six. A deputy told me to slide my mattress under the left bottom bunk. I scooted down there and passed out from complete exhaustion.
I woke up for 6:00 a.m. chow. A deputy called off some names on an intercom—my name included. We were being “rolled up” to the Hall of Justice Jail.
An inmate said this was everyday stuff. You processed in at the “New” County and got rolled up elsewhere. The Hall of Justice Jail was known as the “Old” County.
A deputy shackled me to some guys. Two deputies herded us out to a van and drove us to the Old County. We elevatored up to a tank on the thirteenth floor.
My tier was packed to double capacity. A deputy said the new guys had to sleep on the catwalk. You had to roll your mattress up in the morning and drift between cells until lights-out.
I had twenty days of this coming. An inner voice hipped me to the basic gestalt.
You are big—but not tough. You commit crimes—but are not a
I fed myself that message instinctively. I did not verbalize the thought. I didn’t know that my mere presence shouted: fool, chump, geek, ineffectual kid.
I kept my mouth shut. I programmed myself to be stoic. I tried not to betray my fear overtly. My fellow inmates laughed at the plain sight of me.
Most of them were felons awaiting trial in Superior Court. They understood and disdained male weakness.
They laughed at my twitchy walk and shortened my two names to the hated “Leroy.” They called me “the Nutty Professor.” They never put their hands on me. They considered me beneath that kind of contempt.
Lloyd visited me. He said he called my aunt and told her I was in jail. My insurance money was running out. The
