When the truck started to move, it was completely disorienting. I couldn’t see anything, and all I knew was that I was being thrown around a metal box and all I could hear was the engine and a faint police scanner. I couldn’t really tell which way we were going and I had no idea where we were going to end up. There was a certain absurdity to it- that playing games had somehow led up to a nightmarish situation.

I was pulled out of the truck in an underground garage and shepherded over to the processing department. I was compliant, meek, and friendly. I didn’t know what else to be. They took my picture, emptied my pockets, and searched me for any weapons. It felt so extreme, disproportional, and exaggerated. All of this for pushing a guy- I got the same treatment a drunk driver, a child molester, or a drug dealer would have gotten.

Once I was booked, I was sent to a holding area where prisoners wait to be assigned toilet paper, a toothbrush, a bag of chips, and jail-issue pajamas. It’s kind of like the waiting room in a DMV but full of lowlifes, cretins, and other spurious individuals. There were probably 100-150 other prisoners there. A beat-up old TV hung over the room showing a basketball game that eventually ended and DEMOLITION MAN came on. I watched the entire thing without sound.

The thing they don’t tell you about being arrested and taken to jail is that there is a psychological element that completely bludgeons you the whole time. When you’re in there, and you’re aware that you can’t do anything, go anywhere, or say anything, then this unbelievable helplessness sets in. It’s horrifying. And I wasn’t even really in a cell or anything like that so I can only imagine what that’s like.

I was in there for nearly nine hours, just sitting and waiting. Some guy talked to me and I found out that he was a computer hacker in the 1980s so we talked about Commodore 64s and old school BBS stuff. He was completely out of his mind on something and he told me that the police beat him up. By the look of his face, I didn’t doubt it. By hour six or seven, I really had to go to the bathroom but the thought of going into a public room and literally standing over a man passed out in front of the toilet to pee made me reconsider.

The inmates suddenly lit up when what appeared to be an escort service bust came in. A whole bevy of “high-class” hookers were booked and so I got to listen to some of the most lascivious and disgusting male-gaze comments I’ve ever heard in my life. Watching and listening to a prostitute calling her parents to get them out of jail is not exactly an uplifting experience.

But the highlight of the evening for me had to be talking to an inmate who had, come to find out, been in the store. He had asked me why I was arrested and I told him at least the rough outline of the story. He said “Y’all got those Airsoft guns, don’t you? I was gonna buy one of those from you but when I went back they were gone!”

When it came time for me to get prepared to be sent into general population, one of the clerks called me over. She said “Some people are here working to get you out”. I knew it would be my wife, Dollar Bill, and probably his attorney. No matter who it was, it was hope, a lifeline in the dark.

It took another couple of hours, but eventually I was led down a hallway and rather unceremoniously sent out a door. It was my wife, Dollar Bill, and the attorney as I had expected. I hugged my wife and then went straight to the bathroom. I washed my hands for ten minutes. Dollar Bill had paid my bond through one of the bondsmen conveniently located around the jail and I was free, at least until the court appearance in a few hours.