[After spending all weekend polishing an indie film script for screenwriting competitions, I’m too written out to start a new piece. So here’s a true story from Misery Loves Company for your enjoyment.]
The Bryant Patch
I was starting my third month locked up in the county jail of San Francisco at 850 Bryant street and not feeling very pleased about things. I had a class two felony hanging over me, but all I needed to do was find a drug program that would accept me, and then the judge would dismiss the charges upon receiving a favorable report. Unfortunately, due to my history of 24-hour psychiatric holds for PCP psychosis, of IV drug use, of being a whore and a former transsexual — but mostly because I was honest about all this stuff — I was, as one social worker termed me, “a difficult placement case.” Just why the staff of a rehab program would think its other patients might feel a tad uncomfortable about living in close quarters with a dope-shooting, drag-wearing, cock-sucking, borderline personality with narcissistic features is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I guess they just hated the fact that I’m not ashamed of this stuff. Worst of all, I missed my lover, a preoperative transsexual who I loved more than anything except perhaps heroin.
Faced with internment in a regular felony tank and still in possession of breasts not yet completely deflated despite have been off female hormones for months, I revealed my residual titties and begged the deputies to put me in Gay Tank, the jail’s repository for homosexual males, pre-op transsexuals and other transgender types who have a penis, men who admit being unable to defend themselves, and hardened cons who lie about being queer so they can be top dog in the tank. I didn’t really identify as gay and was trying to reclaim manhood, but I knew that one look at my androgynous face and my tiny boobs would place me smack-dab in the center of a non-consensual orgy the moment the lights went down. So then in with the gays and the “queens” I went. It was kind of like being back in the ‘hood.
To help me pass the time my lover brought me money, which I spent on the high grade smack the trustees furtively sold at the tank’s bars. When the dope wore off I was so lonely for my lover — and she for me — and I realized the only way we’d get to spend some quality time together was if she got herself arrested on a Friday afternoon on some minor charge. Being a preoperative transwoman she’d be tossed in the tank with me, a somewhat unorthodox conjugal visit. If it were a small enough misdemeanor she’d be released on Monday and only have to do a few hours of community service along with time served. Being just as fucked up on drugs as I was, she also thought it was a great idea, and so she set out to get herself busted.
The problem was that every time she pulled a caper, she got away with it completely. If she shoplifted, she ended up with great looking clothes, even though she hit numerous retail outlets notorious as shoplifter hunting grounds. If she whored — and she was as blatant and reckless as she could be — she just made money. Finally, she tried something that I just knew would get her in here with me. She mixed some crushed up aspirin and baking soda, placed it in a tiny plastic bag, and put it into her purse with a syringe. Then she came to visit me in the county jail. The logic was the rig was only a misdemeanor and once the lab discovered the powder was bunk, they’d have to let her go. But when the cop searched her, he merely looked into her purse, shrugged, and handed it back to her, telling her to move along. Apparently he was only searching for weapons. Drug felonies were “not his table.”
Later, after I’d finally been released into the custody of a drug program and then booted out of it for showing up testing dirty for opiates, she compared herself to Brer Rabbit from the Uncle Remus stories being unable to fool Brer Cop by telling him not to throw her in the “Bryant Patch.”
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