Essay

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American Jail

By Anthony Sutton

In February of my year as an adjunct professor, Officer Salazar pulls me over on the

intersection of Greenbush and 14th Street in the small college town I live in for not coming to a

complete stop. Officer Salazar tells me something I know to be true: my plates are expired (I can

be negligent). He tells me something I know not to be true: that it’s routine for police to search for

narcotics at night (I have been pulled over at this intersection before, a tricky one for me even

though I used to live right around the corner—it’s a three-way intersection by a school and the

trees often obscure the stop sign late at night—I’ve been pulled over at night many times over the

four years I’ve lived in this town. I can be very negligent).

I won’t know until I receive a copy of the police report, but Officer Salazar describes me

as “stuttering and shaking,” and states that he “couldn’t see my left hand.” He makes me put both

hands on the steering wheel (which, in retrospect, should resolve any concerns of what may have

been holding) and wait until two more police cars come.

There are two times prior to this that I have been stopped and interrogated by police in this

town, and in my life. The first was when I got lost walking home at night and a police car stopped,

two officers ran my ID through their computer, then neglected to help direct me home. The second

time, I walked home from a restaurant by my apartment when a police car’s lights started flashing

in front of me.

The first officer got out of his car and apologized, saying that he thought I was someone

else. He then asked for my ID. At some point another police car had parked behind me discreet

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enough that I didn’t notice. The first officer got into his car and while we waited, the other officer

asked me what I do.

“I’m a grad student.” I said.

“What do you study?”

“Creative Writing. Poetry. Not something that’ll ever make money.”

“It’s good that you’re following your dreams. Not a lot of people do that,” the second

officer said as police lights flashed through the neighborhood. When recalling this incident to

people, I say, “I guess there was a killer hipster on the loose.”

When two more officers arrive to join Officer Salazar, I am asked by one to get out of my

car and then patted down by each officer. Each are frustrated by the absurd amount of pockets I

have (10). When asked about my Texas plates and ID I lie through my teeth and I say I’ve recently

moved to town. I play up my connection to the university and my academic life—“Last weekend

I was in Louisville for a conference... 20th and 21st century literature and culture”—to which one

of the officers says “Sounds boring as shit.” I don’t go further and explain that the paper I presented

was on the sub-genre of nonfiction referred to as auto-theory, a blending of autobiography and

critical theory, and how this genre is particularly useful to writers of marginalized backgrounds.

The officer who said my conference sounded boring pats me down, and another brings out

a search dog which the police report will say “did not alert” to my car. I talk to the other two

officers as the search dog circles in patrol and has to be pulled back when he starts walking away

from the scene. I later learn that this set of tactics is, in legal scholarship, called a pretext arrest.

The actual, minor offense (often a traffic violation) is the launching point in which a search is

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implemented based on the chance that some type of drug can be found. As someone with no

background in legal scholarship, I don’t understand how this isn’t considered void as an escalation.

In a moment too fast for me to grasp—Officer Salazar shouts, asking if he can look through

my backpack while I’m also talking to another officer and from the corner of my eye I’m watching

the search dog roaming around—I agree to let the officers look through my backpack in a quick

blurt, “OK.”

After I say this, I realize there’s Adderall I bought off a friend to help me teach my 7:30-

10:30 AM classes and for the trip to Louisville. Officer Salazar and the second officer head to my

car and the third officer pulls the search dog by the collar and then stands by me. The first two

officers quickly find the bottle. My attorney will later say that there’s a difference between “can

we look through your bag” and “we’re looking through your bag” implying that this encounter is

subject to logical response. Though I know it’s pointless, I want to argue that affect is content.

Like how the poet and critic Charles Bernstein argues that, in literature, the form of a text (whether

a text is traditional or experimental, the difference between reading a novel and a sonnet) is also a

type of content. I want to argue that having “Can we look through your bag” with the inflection of

a demand does not qualify as a question. Especially as you see the search dog roaming around and

you need the other officer to think you’re giving him your full attention, though you shouldn't.

One of the officers yells about how Adderall requires a prescription and Officer Salazar

calmly puts handcuffs on me, leads me into the back of his police car, and reads me my Miranda

warning. In philosophy of language, there are performative speech acts, when language makes

something happen, which the philosopher J.L. Austin outlined in his book that defined the concept,

How to do Things with Words. The traditional example is a marriage officiator. When the officiator

says “I now pronounce you husband and wife” this phrase is perlocutionary. By saying it, the

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phrase causes an array effects ranging from the two people now being legally married, to people

in the audience crying, to both individuals gaining hospital visitation rights. When the officer gets

to the part saying that anything I say can be used as evidence, I don’t feel like it’s my choice to be

silent, but rather like my voice has been plucked from my throat.

As he clearly tries to lead me into telling him from whom I bought the Adderall, I deflect

each question. With no leads, Officer Salazar drives me to the jail. He says he’ll take in where I’ll

be served a court-date. It’s almost midnight and I imagine that in a couple hours I’ll be making a

3-mile hike down 9th street from the jail to my apartment.

Officer Salazar drives through an entryway in the jail, opens the car door, exposing manila

walls and fluorescent lights. He brings me to a room where there are two correctional officers. I’m

told to sit in a chair. I’m still handcuffed.

A woman, dressed in the brown uniform of a correctional officer, takes out the contents of

my backpack, mostly books (mostly poetry and philosophy). She asks me if there’s a number in

my phone contacts she should record for me. Partly because my phone is about to die and partly

because after this moment I will not be able to access my phone until I am released.

The other officer removes my handcuffs and has me move into a closed-off part of the

room. First I have to strip down to my underwear, he passes off each article of clothing I remove.

Then he asks me to remove my underwear, turn around and cough. I consider telling him that he’s

the first man to see me naked in a while.

I put my underwear back on and I’m handed a blue jumpsuit and orange sandals. Then, I’m

walked to a room where two other men are sitting. There’s an unclosed-off toilet and a payphone.

One of the men has his hands clasped over his face. I’m starting to consider the possibility that

maybe I won’t be on my way in time to teach my 7:30 AM section. Both men are brought out and

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I’m waiting alone for what I approximate was forty-five minutes, if only to maintain some

perception of time.

Once out, a correctional officer records my fingerprints and takes my arrest photos before

giving me a quick questionnaire. “Are you depressed?” (A question I now know if I answer yes

would entail me being handcuffed again and taken to a hospital—not a bad option).

“Do you have dietary concerns?”

“I’m vegetarian.”

“Is it for a medical need?”

“No.”

I am told that my bail is $215. I ask if they can put it on my credit card, and they can. It’s

the end of the month, so I know I will likely need to transfer money to the card. I try to ask if I

can, but the officer cuts me off—“No”—before I can finish my question. I have one free phone

call before I enter my cell, but it’s 2:00 am, and I know there’s no one who would answer. What

would be more helpful would be for me to email my students. I ask if I can, and the officer says

another sharp No.

The officer directs me to a pile of plastic mattresses and bin of blankets against the wall

and tells me to pick up one of each.

“This isn’t how I was told this was going to happen,” I say.

“Cops are dumb. Don’t trust cops,” he responds.

I pick up the mattress and blanket I’ll be sleeping in. I ask this officer when he’ll run my

credit card. “Whenever I get to it.”

It’s suddenly clear to me that at each juncture there are options, even if just a simple way

and a hard way, the system keeps choosing which path to follow each time. The officer didn’t have

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to give me more than a warning for missing the stop sign, but did. The officers shouldn’t have

looked through my bag after the search dog didn’t react, but did. I didn’t have to be taken to the

county jail over a minor offense that took an hour of searching to discover, but was. I feel like a

pinball, distantly aware that the machine is being operated. I walk through the cell’s heavy door,

lay the mattress on the top bunk, climb into bed. I’m certain that I will be released by day’s end,

so instead of sleeping, I clench my jaw and decide to wait.

I share the cell with two men. One of them entered minutes before me. He was clearly

drunk and dropped his mattress on the floor before falling on top of it. The other is asleep on the

bottom bunk.

I throw my mattress on the top bunk of the cell and lie flat. Above me is a light fixture on

the ceiling that won’t turn off. There is a chrome toilet next to the bunk and above that a

surveillance camera. A sink with a steel plate and toothbrushes stand between the toilet and the

door to the cell. On the wall opposite the door are two strips of glass with grainy surfaces and a

light behind them that I imagine is meant to make it seem like it’s perpetually sunrise.

All night I can hear a man in one of the cells screaming.

When the cellmate who slept in the bunk under mine woke up, he was quick to flash his

genitals at me. “Do you like it?” I shooed him off, “I’m not interested,” “But do you like it?” “I’m

not interested.” I’m struck by how quickly he shifts his tone. Now, more like Virgil walking Dante

past the Gates of Hell, he was still eager to tell me about himself and the situation we’re in. He

self-identified as a dopehead who, for reasons I don’t understand, was brought to the jail for a

transitory period where he’d been taken out of the prison and will return in the afternoon, his

account, at times, shaky and unreliable to the point that he might as well of claimed to be Virgil.

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When I tell him what I’m in for and what I do, he says “These police do not mess around. They

are even arresting professors out here!” He says I’ll be out by the end of the day and asks me to

have two screwdrivers and some Adderall for him when I’m out. I feel guilty that, years later, I

still haven’t.

He asks me more about my life:

“You have any women friends?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know any of their addresses? I’ll write them letters!”

“No, I don’t just know their addresses off the top of my head!” I try to play friendly, “I

don’t go around memorizing people’s addresses.”

Later: “Do you ever just pop eight Adderalls and teach high?” He laughs.

“That’s not quite how that works.” It’s true I haven’t, but I’m especially firm knowing

there’s a camera over me.

As the conversation continues it becomes clear he interpreted my refusing to perform oral

sex as me identifying as straight. He asks about my haircut, grown out of what was once an

undercut, and tells me its a style he’s only seen worn by bisexual people on The Jerry Springer

Show. He tells me that when one lies they’re only really hurting themselves. He says people should

be more open and honest, like all the bisexual people on Jerry Springer sporting undercuts.

The door opens and a correctional officer brings in three trays containing oatmeal and a

powdery imitation-milk concoction. I eat the oatmeal and my cellmate pours both of our milks into

the toilets. The third cellmate is still asleep and thus forfeits his breakfast—the correctional officers

take it up along with the empty trays.

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When the third cellmate wakes, he is at first confused to be waking up in a jail cell and

says he has a plane to catch tonight.

He says he grew up in this town but lives in Tampa now, that he only gets in this kind

trouble when he’s back home. He was visiting his brother who just became a father. They went to

a bar and after the night got hazy he vaguely remembers walking down Main Street and seeing a

police officer.

The door opens again and a correctional officer tells us it’s time for “break.”

Break is a time when all the inmates are removed from their cells and put in a bigger room

together. There are pay phones in this room and some of the men use them, often shouting at

whoever is on the other end. I sit by myself in the front-left corner of the room facing a window to

the hallway. I can see correctional officers walk around my reflection like Foucault’s pendulum. I

try to make a stern face but look approximately as fey as normal. I don’t make eye contact with

anyone in the room. My cellmate from Tampa is sitting with someone else he clearly knows. My

cellmate from the bunk below me moves from person to person, often announcing that I’m in for

having Adderall. Like him, none of the other inmates realized having Adderall without a

prescription was an arrestable offence, though one of the men says he hopes I get a good lawyer.

His comment leaves me nervous.

There’s a man who keeps shouting at the door, pounding his fist against it, for the

correctional officers to give him his glasses. I assume he’s the man who shouted through the night.

He has a long, gray beard running over his neck. The officers come to the door for a little and

laugh, taunting him from the other side of the window. The man doesn’t let up and after a while

they escort him away.

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Later, two correctional officers come into the room for the cellmate who slept in the bunk

beneath me. I assume it’s to bring him back to the prison since this is the last time I see him. A

while more passes and the officers bring us back to our cells. The walk to and back from break are

the only opportunities I get to see a clock. It is almost noon.

It’s impossible to count the hours that pass as we wait to see the magistrate. I’m nervous

that I’ll spend another night in jail. While I’m still confident that I’ll be released after I see the

magistrate, I can imagine being told that there just wasn’t enough time for you today. I can imagine

not being told anything at all. I sit on my bunk in the cell for a day and not know until breakfast

comes in. The door opens and an officer gives us lunch: a gooey Mac & Cheese plate with crumbles

of bacon in it and the same powdery milk concoction as breakfast. “I’m not near the end of my

patience, but I will be after another day,” I think to myself.

It’s not my cellmate from Tampa’s first time in jail and, for this, he becomes a reliable

guide. He explains to me what an O.R. is (a release, the verdict I want to receive). After what feels

like hours of waiting to see the magistrate (my cellmate from Tampa says it’s our right to know

when this meeting will be), he presses the call button but nothing happens (I assume that, like the

strips of glass with a light behind them, it’s meant to be an illusion). Later when he holds down

the button for a couple minutes he gets a response. All my adult life I’ve been witness to

conversations about how jails and prisons are not meant to reform anyone or make society better.

Basically corporations, people say. It’s becoming clear to me that there is an idea of improvement

in place. What improvement here really means is being better at working inside the system so that

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it does not break you. If I would have known how to deflect the police officers who surrounded

me like vultures, I wouldn’t be in this state of free fall. I admire my cellmate for getting someone

to budge. The voice on the other side tells him they need his inmate ID.

“How do I get that?”

“Write down your name on a sheet of paper and slide it under the door.”

This proves to be a challenging task since there is nothing to write with in our cell. For

obvious reasons, there’s nothing sharp. My cellmate finds a bible, a sheet of paper, a tube of

toothpaste and begins tearing out words and letters from the bible trying to spell out his request

for his prisoner ID. He’s fortunate that he shares his name with Moses’s brother. I’m not sure if

I’m more in awe of the ingenuity of creating this request, or the stubbornness it took for him to

even get a response from people who clearly have no interest in helping him. When he completes

half a sentence, the cell door opens and we’re told to get out. It’s 2:30 pm and we’re meeting the

magistrate.

Because every step in jail requires a waiting period, we’re brought into a waiting room

identical to the one I was in after changing into my jumpsuit. An inmate asks me why I’m chewing

on the end of the swoop of hair that runs over my face. I stop and my cellmate from Tampa tells

me to not become “the prison bitch” (I remember this comment in case I need to talk myself into

an O.R. It’s a threat to my wellbeing to stay here, maybe? I know there’s not a jail specifically for

queer vegetarians, but surely someone has some cencept of identity politics and the psychic burden

laid on the marginalized that they can understand the psychological assault I’m withstanding). As

we’re waiting, people ask what I’m in for, what I do. I quickly deliver “I’m a professor” and leave

it at that.

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They direct us all to sit on two benches facing a window exposing the room where the

magistrate will preside. Each inmate is handed a sheet of paper stating the terms of the trial: that

this hearing is meant for each inmate to confirm that they understand the nature of the charge(s)

against them, give each inmate the opportunity to take a public defendant or agree to hire an

attorney, and if they argue the charges in the hearing, anything they say can be used as evidence

in a later court date. In the case of an O.R., the suspect must maintain “good and lawful behavior”

and “not use or possess alcohol or controlled substances.” The paper does not give a definite time-

frame for this condition, nor does it further define good and lawful behavior in any way. These

phrases will be paired on nearly every document I receive regarding the case.

Each inmate is expected to sign their form confirming that they understand the conditions.

My sheet is pink and the man who asked me why I chew my hair is holding a brown form which I

understand to mean that his charge is far more severe than mine. I sign my name, pass my sheet to

him, and never see a copy of my form again.

The magistrate proves to be the first person who is interested in helping anyone. He

reiterates that the purpose of these meetings are meant for us to understand the charges against us

and talking about or arguing the charges can be used against us later. He sees each inmate one-at-

a-time and consistently gives what is likely the most optimistic verdict they could hope for. The

first case he sees is from the women’s prison. The woman’s long, auburn hair makes it difficult

for me to see her face. The magistrate says she’ll be put on bond. She begins weeping with joy.

When the magistrate gets to me, he gives me the O.R. He asks me if I can afford an attorney

or if I want a public defendant. Not knowing any better, I say a public defendant to which he stops

me and asks what I do. “I’m a professor,” I say. He then asks me how much money I earn in a

year, and when I say my annual salary from two semesters of teaching three courses a semester,

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he strongly suggests I hire an attorney. I’m thankful for him walking me through that situation like

a toddler.

My cellmate is originally put on bail, and after a little bit of bickering over the semantics

of his encounter with the police and the plane he needs to catch (to which the magistrate reminds

him that anything he says can be used as evidence) he is able to convince the magistrate to provide

an O.R. We’re brought back to our cell before being discharged. Even though I received my verdict

first, my cellmate is discharged and then it’s not for nearly another hour that I am too. Before he

leaves he tells me that the correctional officers will hook my phone up to a computer and look

through its contents “for legal reasons, and pervy ones too.” I don’t know if it invalidates what he

says that my phone is dead when I get it back. In the meantime I sit on my mattress and think about

the two strips of glass with the light behind them. A lie is a unique perlocutionary action because

when one is aware something is a lie the lie loses effect (though one may still feel betrayed), but

that works for words which the two strips of glass are not. I lay my body flat and try to meditate

the glass strips into a lie. I start thinking about a song by The National, “The System Only Dreams

in Total Darkness,” which months before I had been telling people was the “song of our times” for

its title alone, though I’m only thinking about it now. It’s true, the system does only dream in total

darkness even though the lights inside never turn off.

Every morning for the rest of the semester, in the darkness before sunrise, I consider this

paradox: how am I waking up in my own bed right now?

I continue the term teaching from 7:30 to 10:30 AM Monday through Friday, and continue

commiserating over it with my neighbor as we carpool every morning. The morning I was in a

holding cell, she assumed I had overslept (which I am prone to do and have done) until she saw I

also wasn’t in the non-fiction workshop we were both in (her as a graduate student, and me as an

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auditor). If I was in the cell for another day she would be the first to know that I was gone. The

morning I was in the holding cell, I missed small group conference meetings with thirty of my

sixty students.

When I was in the cell, I imagined coming up with an intricate lie to tell my classes. I got

in a major car accident with a drunk driver and spent the morning hospitalized, but then it became

clear that I would have to fake my own recovery. When I walk into the classroom I see a few

knowing smirks and so I say the truth: “obviously the charges were frivolous because I’m back

already.” Maybe a little too much truth: “hopefully I’m the only professor you have that this

happens to, but cases like mine happen in college towns.” Definitely too much: “give it a week-

or-two and if you google search me, in addition to several of the poems I have published, you’ll

also find my criminal arrest photos.” Their faces shift into states of shock and later, confusion.

I try to lighten the mood as we shift into our scheduled discussion of The Immortal Life of

Henrietta Lacks. “It’s good to be free.”

The next week I fly down to Tampa for the AWP conference. I try to get dinner with my

former cellmate but our schedules don’t align. I still appreciate the trip. When I return, I see a

ticket in the mail for the traffic offense that my arrest escalated from. On the ticket my race is listed

as white. I place the ticket on a stack of mail and consider the racial calculus: I don’t pass as white,

but my arrest was near the end of the month, if they were fulfilling a quota, how accurate can any

data collection on the racial breakdown of individuals stopped be?

Time melts and freezes. Days pass in rapid succession for the rest of the semester until it

is two-thirds of the way through and 50 of my 60 students still have no grades entered. Many of

them rightfully ask why.

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I deflect by saying “You know, I’ve had a hard semester. I presented at a conference and

then I got arrested and then I went to another conference.”

In the first unit of the semester, my students and I read over a series of essays (Martin

Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi

Coastes, David Grann’s “Trial by Fire”, and the first chapter of “The Holographic Universe” by

Michael Talbot). The students have to write an analytical paper using two of the readings. The

most popular combination this semester was King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Grann’s

“Trial by Fire”, the two essays about incarceration. I imagine Martin Luther King Jr. sitting in his

jail cell more vividly than I have in the past. Beige walls and crisp, orange jumpsuit. I don’t know

how King wrote his letter (I guess they had access to writing utensils then). I think about my

cellmate trying to compose a note using toothpaste and words torn out of the bible. I can only bring

myself to quickly grade three papers.

The town I live in is, jurisdictionally, two towns divided by a thin river, but functions de

facto as one city. Despite the population being around 100,000 people and the fact that one could

drive the diameter of both towns in less than an hour, there are two mayors and five police

departments: the department for the town I live in, the department for the other side of the river

where the university is, the university’s police department, the county sheriff’s office, and a

department for a small down in the county.

The presence of these police departments often causes visitors and new graduate students

to comment on how many police cars circle downtown, but I’m now hyper-vigilant of the way

they cut through back streets. The way how, when they pull someone over at night, their flashing

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lights bloom onto buildings like fire. I notice when they patrol in groups of three cars or when a

single officer stops an entire family.

I become uncertain if I can live in another small town, which also gives me anxiety about

a future in academia. Students continue emailing me about grades and the admins directly above

me are similarly unhappy with my lack of progress. All the understanding the academy has shown

me in regards to identity politics, feminist practices, activism, and Foucault’s work on the penal

system have evaporated. In seven years of working in academia, it’s been commonplace to talk

through my experience as a marginalized person in the University, but this is where I feel like I

have become something fundamentally different. A mutant. What could the straight, white,

cisgender administrators know about someone like me being swept into the men’s jail?

The O.R. I received from the magistrate came with four court dates (an attorney conference,

discovery conference, pre-trial, and jury trial) and the requirement that I acquire an attorney within

ten days of being released.

A colleague’s partner suggests I contact a former grad student who works at a law office.

I know this former student from a seminar a couple years before, but was unaware she worked in

law. I message her and she tells me cases like mine are fairly common in this town and sets an

appointment for me to meet with her boss. He primarily works as a divorce lawyer but also does

criminal justice. Our meeting runs at under 30 minutes. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or not.

He looks through the police report and touches on the things I hoped he would: the arresting

officer’s descriptions of me “stuttering and shaking” and the fact that the search dog did not

respond to my car—”hit” as my attorney puts it.

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He says that depending on how long they had the dog on the scene and how long it took

for them to inform me that there was a dog can constitute a fourth amendment violation. And in

my case, the argument is plausible. That evening I read an article about how in 2015 the Supreme

Court ruled that in a case in Nebraska, police officers violated the 4th amendment in what they

deemed an “unreasonable seizure” when the officers used a search dog without a warrant during a

routine traffic stop. My attorney says that he can make arrangements that I won’t need to attend

the attorney conference and that while my case isn’t a guaranteed win, it is a low-ball.

Two weeks pass without notice from my attorney so I walk down the court house, which

is a convenient 9-minute walk down the street from my apartment, for my attorney conference. A

friend gave me a piece of advice I wouldn’t have thought of on my own—wear a suit. I translate

this into “I’m so angry, I could show up to court dressed like a man!”

I only partially took this advice and put on a nice button-down and blazer with my skinny

jeans.

As I walk down the street I begin to feel an increasingly rare appreciation for life in the

academy. Unlike the professors and grad students I regularly interact with, the legal system is not

very good at giving directions. The notice with my court dates only say the day, time, and judicial

officers’ names.

I enter the courthouse. The first floor is two intersecting hallways that form a cardinal rose.

I walk through the south and west corridors and try to figure out where I’m supposed to go.

Eventually an officer tells me to go up to the second floor.

I take the elevator up and find this arrangement of hallways to be even more labyrinthine.

I find a wall that has the times listed for everyone scheduled with an attorney conference and make

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my way into the room. Inside are a-dozen-or-so other people sitting in rows of chairs in front of

the judicial officer who is a warm and bubbly woman in her early 30’s with a pastel blazer. She

runs down the list of people scheduled for the session and when she has trouble finding someone

she looks them up on her phone. I’m the most overdressed person in the room.

She calls up five people who don’t have any defender (public or hired). She says that

they’re getting offered a diversion and summarizes the terms of the offer. The five people are not

allowed to use or possess alcohol or controlled substances for the next year, nor are they allowed

to step foot in a bar, tavern, or liquor store while the diversion is in effect. They each waive their

4th amendment right to decline a search and seizure. If they are requested to take a drug test they

must comply and pay for the test themselves. She assures them that they’d only be searched if they

are suspected of any wrongdoing. She calls up another person and tells him that his attorney

already has his offer and that he can go across the street to the public defendants’ office.

When she gets to me she says: “Your attorney isn’t going to be here but I talked with him

yesterday. You and him seem to be in good contact. You’re probably good to go.” I try to devise

a way of asking what she means by “probably” but as she begins to say something a man walks

through the door and briefly talks with her. He leaves and she has clearly forgotten her train of

thought. She tells me that I can go and I should see if my attorney is at the public defendant’s

office across the street as he has an office there he sometimes uses. She assures me that she’s

marked my attendance so there will not be a warrant for me.

The courthouse takes up an entire block and is surrounded on all four sides by streets: Main,

3rd, South, and 4th. I have a 25% percent chance of picking the right street so I cross South and

walk into one of the law offices. I’m greeted by a secretary and ask her where the public defender's

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office is. She leads me out and directs me to a large, unlabeled building around the corner on the

adjacent street. I was close, at least.

My attorney isn’t in the public defender's office and I try to call his cellphone and then his

office number. One of his secretaries picks up and we schedule an appointment for Thursday.

I assume I’m done and have learned for certain that, despite how the police treated me, the

courts aren’t particularly concerned about my case.

I walk around the corner to my regular coffeeshop for a happy hour beer. I drink my first

beer in weeks and chat with a barista about Kubrick films like normal.

When I meet my attorney, he says we’re at a crossroads. The first option is to keep fighting

the charges, a battle that we are likely to win, but victory isn’t guaranteed. He explains that my

case is a question of legality, not a question of detail. There’s no denying I was in possession, or

that possession is illegal, but the steps the officers took to discover my Adderall were themselves

illegal. As my attorney says, “It's bullshit.”

The other option is that the state is offering a diversion, the same offer made to the five

people I saw in the attorney conference. The diversion form is a list of possible terms and

conditions. Of all possible conditions on the list, half of them are checked. They include items

such as the possibility of being searched without a warrant and having to comply with drug tests,

if asked. The fourth amendment, which was broken in my arrest, still does not apply. Scrolling

down I’m not happy to see that I have the same lines about good and lawful behavior, that I’m not

allowed to use or possess alcohol, and that I’m prohibited from entering a bar, tavern, or liquor

store and that these terms last until March 1st of the next year. I’m more angry about this than the

$333 fee I have to pay.

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My attorney explains that the diversion is without a parole officer or drug counseling. No

one is watching. My attorney tries to explain it another way. He can’t tell me to drink or not, but

it becomes clear that police officers aren’t going to come to my home or into a bar to see if I’m

drinking or not. I think about the judicial officer and the diversions she offered. How she said they

would only be searched if there was a reason. It’s of the utmost importance to not create a reason

for them to search me. After a few weeks of vigilance I have a nightmare where I walk out of my

apartment and police cars appear as soon as my foot hits the sidewalk. I take this as a warning.

He assures me that, realistically, what the good-and-lawful behavior line means is that if I

were to be at a bar and get in a fight where the police have to be called, then the police can terminate

the diversion in addition to what punishment they would serve me. I’m still unhappy with this

equation and ask my attorney for a week-and-a-half to decide.

I spend the weekend doing research. I learn that not only is the diversion the lowest

punishment I can receive, above that is a deferral, which has the same terms as the diversion, but

can also include a parole officer and drug counseling. I would have to report everywhere I go. I

remember what my attorney said about there not being questions about the details of my case. I’m

surprised they didn’t kick me while I was down with a deferral and wonder if the diversion is

meant to keep me from fighting the charges in court. At first I find this to be an insulting

compromise.

I come to realize that the diversion is likely to be cheaper than challenging the case and

accruing more fees from my lawyer. It’s almost the end of the school year and I don’t get paid

over the summer, so this is an important factor. More importantly, I realize that the diversion makes

it easier for me to continue about my life than continuing to center myself around it. Teaching

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allows me to compartmentalize my life into semesters, maybe to the point that this whole incident

can be boxed away along with my syllabus. I remember that my attorney said if the diversion is

terminated the case restarts where we left off, if we continue fighting the diversion may not be on

the table anymore.

When the diversion is processed and signed by the prosecutor, I receive an email from my

attorney’s office that the case is closed on their end.

“But the diversion just started,” I think.

At the end of the semester, I hold individual meetings with each of my 60-students. My

grading schedule runs from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM every day for a couple weeks so I have feedback

to go over with each student for their meetings. We talk about their first two papers in the class in

preparation for their finals portfolios. At the end of each session I try to apologize to each student

for taking so long to grade. My regular script goes “As you know, I had this incident with the

police and most of the rhetorical analysis papers were about ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ and

‘Trial by fire.’ I really imagine King in that jail cell so much more vividly.” Some students get the

irony before I can finish. Another cuts me off at “incident with the police” to say that it was her

“favorite part of the semester.” I tell her “It kind of is mine too.”

I don’t tell her that my least favorite part is the paranoia. I save that part for my friends.

“Paranoia and shame are forever.” I only tell my closest friends that sometimes when I see a police

officer, I imagine mercilessly slicing his head off with a broadsword. Or shooting him. Or stealing

his car and running him over with it.

Much to my disappointment I don’t do any of these things. Instead I show up to the

courthouse at the end of May and pay my diversion fee.