Why I Committed Suicide (36 page)

After Wal-Mart, I worked for this temp agency that doesn’t do any background checks and I got a job helping this lady clean doctor’s offices at the same hospital Jenifer was born in. It was cool because I got to poke around in the doctor’s cabinets and desks and I scored all these kick ass samples of pain killers they save for themselves which were ripe for the taking. The best score I ever got out of that job was a box of Tylenol with Codeine. It’s something I can trade or use during the next withdrawal time. I never got in any trouble with the hospital or temp agency but after a while I quit going in at night because the lady I worked with was too nice and I felt bad for putting her job in peril.

So I’ve pretty much been on a mini-crime rampage lately trying to fund my habit without any legitimate money coming in. The easiest thing to do is score for other people and then jack the price up a few bucks to pay for my own dope. I also steal a lot of books from the campus bookstores but the scams are getting old, people start to recognize me wandering the stores more than once a week and the people in the return line seem to grasp what’s going on but usually a book isjust a book to them no matter where I got it. I’m glad I’m not paying for these books because I’m getting raped in the re-sale racket.

I’ve hit a few dorm rooms just by knocking on doors during class and checking to see if they are locked. From my experience, most students leave their dorm rooms unlocked and if I walk in on anyone I can just say “whoops, wrong room” and everything’s cool. Some of the outer edge dorms have (unintentional) removable plate glass windows that pop out with a screwdriver. I’ve skateboarded down the street a few times with purloined stereo and musical equipment under each arm to take to the pawn shops. I just don’t like messing with that anymore though. I don’t like stealing from students or people and the last time I took off a window, the huge plate glass wouldn’t fit back into the frame right and while I was casually walking away with a bunch of loot the entire window fell out and shattered all over the concrete. I was glad I always wipe my prints off the glass as I ran scared down the street.

Jenifer is back at her parents’ home in Denton now but I don’t really get to see her much. Although talking to her cheers me up and I really miss her. I wish I could go back and just take back that one day or moment in time forever. The happy memories we shared make me so sad now. The few times I’ve gone back inside the Tomato it’s like I’m a leper. My old boss won’t even look at me in the eyes. I hate it even more when they won’t look at Jen either.

It’s cool of Kirk and Bryce to tolerate my staying with them. Hopefully I won’t end up screwing them over like I have with most everyone else. What can I do to keep my life moving forward? I DO the only thing I know how to do better than most. Write. Lately though, it’s just more sad pages of shattered hopes and dreams. Who am I kidding? This is really all one big titty-sucking whine fest. My miseries and the like are simply recorded in a journal for posterity even though it’s an old repetitious story told across a million lifetimes.

*The Cat Is In The Bathroom

**Apple With Milk Is Good

Hello Mom, I’m In Jail! Every day in here is yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Officer fucking Goldberg. The name will be forever imprinted in my brain as a conspirator against me. Mr. good-guy Officer fucking Goldberg. Mr. Campus fucking police man working to right the wrongs the world has committed against him. Officer fucking Goldberg. The embodiment of everything I hate about cops is permeated in the actions of this man. Cops justify falsifying evidence because they look at it as getting the results they want within what they feel are limited means. It’s the quick and easy way to do things, a characteristic that personifies most police as I’ve come to find out. They are the not-so-bright kids in high school, maybe even the ones who got picked on and are still holding a grudge. They’re lazy, donut-eating paunches of men sitting in their cars truly believing they are going to make the world a better place by getting into everyone’s business for the sake of right versus wrong, firmly believing that
they
are the sole voices of right. The soldiers that dragged Jesus’ ass to jail and beat him down over and over and then nailed his butt to the cross probably felt the same fucking way. I call it “working for the side of right by doing wrong.” How does the famous quote go? “You don’t change the devil, he changes you.”

I went in the campus bookstore to make a snatch and grab, to get some quick cash with a few purloined textbooks. It’s not easy anymore since I’ve become pretty familiar to all the faces around the ins and outs of the campus bookstore in the Union. There were days when I could go in the bottom of the store, get some books, exit the top of the store, walk back down to the bottom floor on the other side and sell them their own books back. It was a quick 50 to100 bucks on most days. Today I went in and as I was about to exit, scott-free again, something came over me. Far back in my mind, my conscience thought it would be a good idea to try and apply for a legitimate job since I know so much about the book orders and shift changes anyway, at the very least I could work the place from inside, but my intentions were honorable. Instead of zipping away with a giant book surreptitiously stuffed in my baggy pants I stopped to fill out an employment application.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I guess I just wanted to do something honest or strive for legitimacy or something. I’m bored by this amoral path I have become so familiar with, I’ve taken to corruption so easily and it is not who I feel I really am.

The joke was on me though. While I was filling out the application somebody recognized me and they must have called the cops because when I went to turn my app into the manager, they had Officer Goldberg in there, waiting and licking his chops. I HATE all of them! Every fucking one of them! Easy money arrest! I might as well have just walked to the jail with a videotape of me stealingthe shit and asked for a room.
Fuck me!
Fuck me!
Fuck me!
Stupid! I blew my cover at the bookstore and got thrown in the pokey.

Humiliation, handcuffs, police car, arrest, blah blah, blah. I finally got to the campus police station and the motherfucker starts shaking me down, only I don’t know it. He starts talking and asking me my motivations like he really is a concerned person underneath that uniform, just another average Joe, like he might be able to fucking help me with some of my problems.
Hey look at that
I think,
this is the first adult in a long time that has asked me about what’s going on in my life
and I actually fell for his caring act. It was all a fucking act!

He asked what was going on and before you know it, I started blubbering like a baby in rehab again! The words start coming out about my addiction, the car accident and everything. I knew to hold back about the thefts around town because of the Hasting’s incident, but I couldn’t stop myself from pouring out all this personal pain to him. It must have been boiling just beneath the surface waiting for a release.

Through my whole spiel he’s acting concerned for my well being, like he genuinely has some sort of answer he can give me, like he really cares! I’ve got snot pouring out of my nose and my vision is blurred with tears while he watches sympathetically, but then he releases the kicker. He sort of casually lets out, “we’ve been investigating a couple of burglaries around the campus area.” as if it’s a natural part of our conversation.
EXCUSE ME?!!

All at once the tears dry up and I knew I was just played for an ass. My wide crying eyes narrow into evil little slits and I focus every fucking ounce of pent-up hurt negativity and rage through my pupils, into his fucking corneas and penetrate the back of his fucking brain all at once, trying to get his head to hemorrhage or preferably explode. He even backed up for a second in the cold cell where we are talking under observation, looked back at the video camera on the wall and leaves nervously before I can poke my fingers into his fucking eyes and twist them around until he’s Stevie-fucking-Wonder blind! I’m fuming, fuming, fuming mad, but I know what’s going to come next. He’s blown the good cop shit, so he’s got to play the bad cop now. It’s psychologically smart and I’ve been played like a fucking idiot schoolgirl up until now but I realize I’ve got to sit and be calm. So I focus, and breathe and stare directly into the video camera high up on the wall for about ten straight minutes letting the glare off the lens help me focus into a more relaxed meditative state. I know I have to be smart now or this cop’s going to fuck me hard. Sure enough, ten minutes later a Lt. comes in and politely takes me back to his office and offers me a seat. Here it comes I think, be cool.
Be fucking ice cream in the Arctic cool.

To this guy, I present myself as Joe Schoolboy. I’m Mr. “In over my head and scared but innocent student” to this guy. I’m sure he was watching the exchange with Goldberg in the cell since I’m probably the only interesting diversion in their full day of writing traffic and parking tickets. I’m the potential “winning-lottery-ticket-of-burglaries-that-might-take-some-of-the-heat-off-their-ineffec-tive-asses” guy. The Lt. starts in on the “this could be hard on your paralyzed girlfriend routine” which almost pisses me off and I’m silently thankful for the meditation time they gave me to analyze the angles that would likely be put in play against me.

When he sees that won’t work he tries to tell me they have fingerprints from the crime scenes and that they will find out if mine match and I can make it easier on myself by just admitting to him the extent of my criminal enterprises. Yeah-fucking-right! I was born at night, but not last night. No matter how green I am at this criminal routine, I’m learning really fucking fast. Innocent as can be I ask him if they really have fingerprints. Of course he says “yes”, his eyes suddenly getting predatory and hungry, his mouth going dry with anticipation for a brief moment before I let out an over-exaggerated sigh of relief and say “Oh, thank you!” I proceed to let him know I’m really glad they have the fingerprints so they’ll know it wasn’t me and thank him over and over while I watch the cast of disappointment fall into his eyes. We exchange a few more words and then I am out of there going back to my cell. Goldberg’s waiting outside the lieutenant’s door and he’s pissed. As he’s taking me to the cell he makes sure to painfully punch me a couple of times in the ribs and slam me up against the concrete wall, but as he walks out I get the satisfaction of giving him the barest hint of a smile. Fucking cock sucking whore bastard. Fucking cock sucking
dead
whore bastard.

So I’m here in Denton County Jail looking at another misdemeanor charge and, get this, my first felony charge!
Possession of a controlled substance under one gram.
The fucking bastard got the last laugh by charging me with felony possession of heroin along with my misdemeanor and throwing me in jail just to watch me spin. I’m nervous, but I am assured by the fact that I am innocent of the felony. I had nothing on me. Unless they have drugs to plant on suspects just lying around, like New York, Minnesota and Dallas cops do, I doubt they even have a decent case. It must really suck to be nothing more than an overblown campus traffic cop.

Now it’s just a matter of me waiting around in here. I’m not 100 percent assured that being innocent will actually mean I come out of this experience a free man, but it’s something to latch onto, and thanks to bad government policies causing prison overcrowding I know a first felony will get me automatic probation at the very worst.

The wait is going to be murder. Unless you take the guilty plea, the City of Denton will keep you for damn near as long as they want. File me away, let me plot and rest. Like the black people say, “They gotta let me out one day. Until then, get used to baloney.”

Believe it or not, being in County Jail isn’t too bad. Don’t get me wrong, the food sucks and the process of getting integrated into the system is its own circle of hell that I’ll save for another time, but once I got to my “residence” where I was going to be living for a while it actually wasn’t too bad.

I’m in an area loosely attached to a wing of the jail that fences in a set of portable prisons where they put minor offenders and folks that are trustees or people in relatively good standing. Imagine a large storage shed or a double-wide trailer home completely gutted of its interior and fitted with 6 rows of bunk beds down each side wall. In the very back, open to God and everyone, are three toilets and two small showers off to the side. Each trailer house has one thick wall down the middle, completely and solidly separating it into two living areas, an “A” side and a “B” side. By dividing it in half,
they
can add twice as many bunk beds, allowing the whole building to hold a total of 48 prisoners instead of 24. Another great part is that only one guard sits behind a thick screen at the very front of the building, watching both sides and unknowingly saving the prison money by not having to hire extra guards.