D.C Protest...Profile of the Left.

"Why didn't you just cooperate with the police?" A lot of people have asked me that in the last 36 hours -- officers, friends, other demonstrators, even the attorney who prosecuted me and asked the judge to jail me for 30 days. Some ask with the implication that I should have acted differently; others ask out of genuine curiosity. Some seem to believe I did it out of a misguided sense of political purpose. Others attribute it to a taurean stubborness. "That's my Jenny," my mother told a friend when she was notified of my arrest. "She doesn't do anything until she's damn good and ready. And ordering her just makes her slower to do it." As though I would flaut the police just to thumb my proverbial nose at them, which isn't true at all.

Did it appear that way to the young officer with the beatific smile when he arrested me on the corner of Delaware and Constitution at 10:00 on the morning of April 22nd? I had stopped at that corner because I thought the rest of my group had stopped there. I was then separated from the rest of the march by a line of motor patrol. I saw the Catholic Workers, kneeling and praying in front of a concrete construction barricade. I hadn't wanted to disrupt morning traffic during rush hour, but clearly no cars were going to go through whether I was here or not. And Catholicism is a part of me, a part of my childhood. Their prayers felt right, so I knelt and joined them. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name."

Chief Ramsey limped down the line, leaning on his baton like a crutch. "You folks can't be here. I need to ask you to leave."

"We will leave," said the elderly nun next to me, "when the United States stops killing people in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Colombia." She was so calm, so confident. "We will leave when the School of the Americas stops training Colombian soldiers to torture and kill their own civilians."

An officer on a bullhorn was shouting in front of us. "You are in violation of the law! Disperse immediately or you will be placed under arrest!"

"Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

The officers formed a line. The nun beside me squeezed my hand. "Are you going to resist arrest?"

I thought about that. If I did, they would pepper spray me, drag me, perhaps by the hair. I didn't really want to inflict that on myself nor on the sweet-faced boy in front of me who looked barely old enough to cross the street by himself, let alone put handcuffs on me. "No, I'm not," I whispered, as he pulled my arms behind my back and snapped on what looked like huge plastic baggie ties.

We were led to a bus where the protesters and officers talked and laughed together like old friends. I just stared out the window, pondering this bizarre verbal tennis game. And it WAS a game to them. Or perhaps more like a play, where each line was scripted and both sides followed their stage directions, giving the other no need to improvise. Improvisation is a choice.

We were led off the bus and into the processing center where the plastic cuffs were removed and and a tag reading, "Prisoner 8" was affixed to my wrist. That's when I began to panic. I didn't WANT to be Prisoner 8!! What do I do? Oh, God! I don't want to be Prisoner 8! I can't even breathe! Help!

I had to focus. I was losing ME in this proscribed dance. Where is "me" in all this?

"You", a little voice in my head whispered, are the choices "you" make. Be deliberate. Focus on the choices and you won't get lost.

My feet were hot and sore and, frankly, taking off my shoes would be nice. I took them off.

I didn't want to take off my shirt. She tugged it over my head. "Empty your pockets."

Between clenched teeth, she was on the edge of her patience. "I am not going to put my hands in those pockets so empty them this instant."

I had found what the purpose of this script was -- to make both protesters and police believe we had no choice. To believe that the script must be followed.

I didn't want her to believe I would do that. "No," I said. "Of course I wouldn't hurt you."

She glared at me and turned my pockets wrongside-out, rifled through the contents, and gave them back in a plastic bag. I had broken the no-choice rules of the game and it seemed to leave everyone angry and unsure how to deal with me. I had won the battle that began the war.

We were brought upstairs and seated separately from one another. A matronly officer was holding my driver license. "Are you J. Jackson, born April 26, 1971?"

"Well, this is no big deal. I just have some questions for you. Have you ever broken the law before?"

"You don't have a right to a lawyer, honey. You're not being charged with anything."

She tried soothing, cajoling, threatening -- everything but allowing me to call the number written on my arm in indelible ink. Finally, she led me downstairs. "You have no choice about answering these questions. You're just making everything slow and difficult. Your friends lied to you. You don't need to go calling a lawyer." I said nothing. "You're going to regret this," she told me.

She led me into a locked room. "She's uncooperative," she told the officer behind the desk. "Book her." Then she stomped out and I never saw her again.

I was patted down, photographed, my belongings taken, my shoelaces taken. Another officer brought me into a room with a bench along one wall and two metal rings cemented to either side to which she handcuffed my wrists. She sat on a chair across from me. I felt like one of those patients in an old insane asylum movie.

"Look," the officer told me (her name tag said EE-something). "Your charges are very minor. Like jaywalking. Since we're not questioning you about your guilt or innocence of those charges, you have no right to a lawyer. You've been watching too much TV."

"Be that as it may, where have you been staying while you're in DC?" Silence. She asked questions while I stayed silent. When had I arrived? Who had I come with? What had we planned for the weekend? Where was I born? Where did my mother and father live? Where were they born? Where had I gone to school? What did my employment record look like? Finally she sighed. "You're not going to answer anything, are you?"

"Look, I'm trying to be your friend here. If you don't talk to me, you're going on lock-up. And, frankly, you look pretty pampered to me. You could be there for several days and I don't think you'll last in central cellblock. It's dirty. It's cold. And it's full of rats and huge roaches."

She read the Miranda rights to me and then uncuffed my right wrist and passed me the phone.

I called the Legal Collective and a soft, soothing voice on the phone calmed me, assured me I did not have to answer questions, and a lawyer would be there soon. Officer EE looked on while I sobbed on the phone with them. Then she took the phone and herself away and the waiting began.

I remained cuffed to the wall for the next four hours. Usually everyone ignored me. Occasionally they talked to me or about me.

"Hey, Beth?" (Apparently, EE stood for Elizabeth.) "On Prisoner 8? I've got a clean NCIC on her and I have her social. Want me to do up a citation?"

Time passed. Someone brought a pizza in and ate it at the desk. My stomach growled. "If you'd cooperate, you'd be out and having pizza too. All your friends just got out because they cooperated."

Time passed. Elizabeth came back in. "What was the idea of telling your lawyer you're in distress? Did you tell him we're mistreating you?"

She looked furious and I saw no point in angering her further. "You were right there when I called. You heard everything I said to them."

"Well, I'm holding your friends here until you cooperate so you might want to think about that."

I knew it was a lie, but I was starting not to care much. My faith in establishing human connections between police and activists looked hopelessly naieve. Had Dan ever chained someone to a wall and fed them lies? That seemed as impossible to me as my cat sprouting feathers.

Time passed. Elizabeth came back. "We're taking you to central cellblock. We don't have the technology here to fingerprint you."

Time passed. Through a crack in the window blinds,I could see the final convergence of the march outside on Upper Senate Park.

I thought about my first night in DC. A group of us had sat outside the church where we were staying and a plainclothes police officer had come and talked to us. Some had asked him if they were being detained and, when he laughed and said no, they walked away.

But the woman seated next to me had talked to him. She told him clearly and with obvious knowledge all about the School of the Americas and US aid to the Colombian military. When the woman left, the officer had talked to me.

"My sergeant sent me over. Wanted me to just see if everything was cool. You know how it is, we get word you guys are gonna be violent and we just wanted to make sure you're cool."

"Yes, we're cool, totally non-violent. And, actually, I DO understand. My best friend is a police officer and I know the things he's been told about us."

His eyes lit up. Now we had something in common. "Wow! Really? What does he think of you being here?"

"He worries about me. And he completely disagrees with my politics. But we manage to work it out somehow. I've been travelling since Christmas and everywhere I go, I get him a police patch. But," I laughed, "I don't think I'll be getting him one here."

"I tell you what," the officer said. "My sergeant has us patrolling around here all night. I'll get you a patch and next trip down this street, I'll stop and give it to you, ok?"

There was an emergency meeting after that in the church. Some were angry with me for talking to him, doing anything that might be perceived as an invitation for him to come back and raid the church. I had tried to justify myself, to argue that bridges could be built, that institutions are made up of individual human faces.

Now, cuffed to a cement wall, those arguments seemed pathetically naieve. Where did I get my foolish ideas?

A new officer came in the room and uncuffed me from the wall, cuffed my hands behind my back. I asked where we were going and she told me down the hall to be fingerprinted. Another lie. "Elizabeth said you don't have the technology to fingerprint me here."

Elizabeth herself shouted, "Don't bother, Diane. You're wasting your breath talking to Prisoner 8. She doesn't talk. All she does is stare at you with those weird eyes and grin like an idiot."

I was allowed to call the Legal Collective again to tell them I was being moved to central cellblock. Then my transport arrived -- two buff men who never spoke to me at all.

They brought me in and I was patted down again. "What's the deal?" the patter asked.

"Yeah, but they only bring the violent ones down here. What did she do? Nip somebody in the ankles?"

Things looked up for a little while. They told me court was in half an hour. Court meant arraignment! And arraignment meant an end to all this. Freedom!

I stopped crying briefly when transport came to bring me to court. But it was short-lived. The court turned me away and said they would see me tomorrow.

Tomorrow? No! Not tomorrow! I couldn't live a night in central cellblock! Elizabeth was right! I was too pampered! I'd never make it! We'd been playing a game of "Say Uncle" and it was a game I couldn't ever win!

They let me call the Legal Collective again. And that time I really broke down and begged. Get me a citation! I'll tell them anything they want to know! Anything! I'd sell my own mother if it meant outside, outside, OUTSIDE!

But I was whisked away in another car. This time to 3D cellblock where I was to spend the night. The officers uncuffed me in the cellblock and gave me a little push toward the gard. "Prisoner 8. She's all yours."

They put me in the first cell on the block and closed the barred door. I had been inside jails before, but never this far inside. I suspect few people have. I don't see how they could and ever believe that it's acceptable to lock human beings in a cage like that.

It was a 7'x13' cell (judged from walking toe-to-heel in both directions). The floor was cement and no fluid on it had apparently ever been cleaned off. The color -- the dull, Caucasian-flesh color of '70's schoolrooms -- was so uniform it could have been an experiment in sensory deprivation. The only view through the bars was the wall and floor, painted the same color. The sheet of steel I was to sleep on was bolted to the wall and had nothing of a bed -- no mattress, no blanket, no pillow. The only things of a different color were the steel toilet (clogged, with no paper) and a surveillance camera on the wall in front of me. Roaches hid in the shadow behind the toilet, but didn't come out for the flood of institutionally bright light. The stench was revolting. I laid on my stomach on the steel-plate bed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

On Friday night, during our emergency meeting, the buzzer had rung again. Someone at the door for me. We had consensed on the proposal of not speaking to police on the premises -- a consensus I agreed to out of feeling thoroughly chastised and guilty as sin. Had I just put 50 of my friends in serious danger over my stupidity and foolish optimism?

It was the same plainclothes cop at the door. I walked all the way outside and shut the door. I wanted him to have no legal reason to enter the building.

He flashed me a wide grin. "Look what I got!" He pulled from his pocket a police patch from the Metro Department. "You give this to your friend and tell him to be safe." I burst into tears and hung my head. "Hey," he said softly. "What's the matter, huh? Come on, look at me." He put his hands on my shoulders and knelt down so I was forced to look at him. "Come on now, what's wrong?"

"Sir? Why so formal? What happened to that bright, sweet girl who was laughing with me earlier, huh?"

And I had pounded on the door until Jesse let me back in, where I dropped to the floor and really bawled.

Like I bawled now in this awful cell. I thought of that patch in my bag somewhere (wherever my bags were) and thought that Dan had better appreciate it after all the tears that had paid for it. That is, if Dan ever talked to me again. What would we have to say to each other after this?

Down the hall, I heard someone speak my real name for the first time since my arrest -- "Jennifer Jackson's lawyer". Lawyer! MY lawyer! Oh, happy day!! I jumped off the bed as the guard approached.

I was cuffed and brought to a conference room. Even my lawyer, Mark, was not allowed to see the conditions I was locked in. They cuffed my left wrist to the chair and closed the door behind us.

I don't remember well what Mark looked like. To me, he looked like Christ himself -- comforting, radiant, with warm eyes and warm arms that wrapped around me while I tried to choke out everything I could remember.

I talked and talked and talked. I thought that as long as I kept talking, he would stay with me. All night, maybe? They wouldn't throw HIM out -- they just couldn't! He was my lawyer! My salvation!

But he did leave, practically needing to peel my arms from about his neck. He gave me a note from the Legal Collective reminding me to be strong, that my support team was holding a vigil, that they would be there in court for me.

All my strength walked out the door with him. I was brought back to my cell and the barred door clanged shut. The next phase of torment began -- boredom and desolation. There was nothing to look at. Nothing to think about except to replay all the events since my arrest. Nothing to do except wait. I felt like I was losing substance, ceasing to exist. There was nothing in my environment which I could affect in order to confirm my own existence. I could be forgotten forever in this cell. If they wouldn't let me out, I had no way to GET out. I tried the door. Firmly locked. I rested my chin on the bars and pushed my face against them. I flared my nostrils. Now my nose was free. I wedged my feet under the door and wiggled my toes. Now my toes were free. I stuck my arms out the slot designed for food they never brought us and splayed my fingers. That was the best one since I could get my arms out almost to my elbows. Now my hands and almost half my arms were free.

Tired of that game, I lay down on the steel-rack bed and took out the note from the Legal Collective. I read it over and over. I turned it upside down and read it backwards. I contemplated the handwriting. I considered carefully the implied meaning of every word. I tried to imagine a voice speaking the words to me.

Tired of the note now, I lay on my belly and tried to find some diversion in my imagination. Childhood memories were the best because they seemed the most ME. And the only way to survive 3D cellblock was to stay ME. So....let's see....I am....the little girl who went to kindergarten pretending to be Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz". I am...the little girl who used to sit on Grandpa's lap and read "The Castle of Grumpy Grouch". I am...the little girl whose grandmother used to wash her face every night in just this special way that only she could do it.

But then I was sobbing again. Childhood memories were their own form of torture. Because THEIR Jenny, THEIR little girl, is in jail. Jail! I hoped my mother didn't know. Prayed no one had called her. I pictured her face crumpling in tears and comforted myself with the thought that, even if she did know, she couldn't dream how bad it was.

Better to think of something else. Like the storm the night I left Virginia. A really wild storm where it was almost 100 degrees in the shade and the sky just opened up and poured buckets and the wind was blowing like crazy. We had stripped off our clothes on the back porch and ran out into the storm completely naked. It was amazing! We had to shout to hear each other over it. The rain stung all over and our hair was drenched with warm water and the wind was blowing so hard at the river that we could lean into it and not fall over. The only word I could think of for running naked through a Southern spring storm was "sacrament". It was like feeling completely alive and free and deeply grateful all at the same time. Then in the middle of it, I had thought about jail, which seemed completely unreal, like an abstraction. Something absurd in the context of the storm.

Now, it was the storm that seemed an abstraction, an absurdity in the context of jail. I started to shake. It was cold in the cell. Refrigerator cold. And laying down on steel sucked all the heat out of my body. I couldn't get warm and my head ached until it swam. I sat up and began to vomit. I hadn't been given anything to eat or drink since my arrest so there was nothing to come up. I just retched violently and then crawled across the sticky floor, still retching, to try to get the guard's attention. I kicked at the bars. Nothing. Then I tried calling out, louder and louder. For how long? Thirty minutes maybe? An hour? "Will someone please help me? I'm sick."

I really WAS losing substance. Either no one could hear me or no one cared to answer. Jail is for human refuse, left for criminal tendencies to evaporate. And if some humanity evaporates too, that's just an unfortunate side effect.

He walked away without responding. I lay on the floor and retched and shook and cried for maybe another hour. It was hard to tell about time anymore.

"Get up off the floor. Step back from the door. Face the wall with your hands behind your back."

The guard led me, cuffed, to a young, blonde officer in the hallway. She had pretty hair and her nose turned up at the end a little bit.

She led me out by the arm and I found myself snuggling into the touch just to feel some warmth and comfort. I thought about those stories of prisoners who fall in love with their captors.

It was all the way across the District to DC General -- a run-down hospital now used solely for inmates. The back of the patrol car was heavy plastic with a well in the seat for my cuffed hands. Absolutely nothing in this environment allowed for comfort or softness.

The service at the hospital (or rather the lack thereof) was what I expected of a jail hospital. It wasn't a great deal cleaner than the cellblock and it was mostly equipped to handle drug problems and psychoses. I was the only patient. It was four hours before I was treated.

We sat in the hallway -- the officer in the only chair and I, wedged on the floor in a corner that allowed me to lean back while accomodating the awkward placement of my hands at the small of my back. I had to wipe my nose by raising my knee and inclining my head.

We sat in silence for a long time until even silence became awkward. Sooner or later, we would have to acknowledge each other's presence.

I looked at the papers the officer was holding. It was a blank medical report and scrawled across the top was, "Prisoner 8, Uncooperative, Female".

We were like strangers who had coupled sexually and now it was morning and we were groping for awkward conversation, only to find we had nothing in common.

"I really don't. I only need an aspirin. I've been crying a lot. Until it made me sick and very cold." Silence. "I guess you're used to seeing people at their worst, huh?"

I could see in her eyes our growing awareness that we were more alike than different. But for the handcuffs which forced my complete submission to her. She shrugged. "Every night's something different." Silence. "How old are you?"

"What's that around your wrist?" I asked her. She had a bracelet of bright beads.

That dealt a fatal blow to the wall between us. She told me about her son and her daughter of seven. She told me about her husband and how hard it had been to be on-duty while pregnant. A prisoner had spit on her once during her pregnancy and she had feared disease that would harm the baby. She came from a long line of police officers. Law enforcement was her heritage.

I devoured the conversation, revelled in it. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend we were friends, meeting in a coffee shop, getting to know each other over cappucinos. I told her about my grandmother's death and my travels, about work on the farm. I told her about the storm.

"It's embarassing mostly. And scary. You're the first person who's actually TALKED to me like I'm a person."

"You're the first prisoner who's ever seen any other side of me. Like that I'm a wife and a mom, too." Pause. "I guess you're the first prisoner I've ever talked to. Have you ever really talked to a cop before? About personal stuff?"

The conversation wound to the protests and I explained to Colleen why I was there and told her about the nonviolence committment we had all agreed to, which included such statements as: "We will bring no alcohol or illegal drugs", "We will not curse or insult anyone", "We will not run or make threatening motions", "We will protect others from acts of violence even if they oppose us or disagree".

Colleen's eyes widened as I recited the pledge. "They told us....," she whispered. "They told us you were violent."

I was getting tired and wanted to lie down. "Why is it, Colleen, that everyone assumes the protesters have a choice and the police don't?"

I turned my head away from her and sighed wearily. "That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard, Colleen. Maybe the police really do have a harder choice to make. But everyone has a choice."

"It's not even that. It's not even the arrest I object to. It's that no one ever made a CHOICE about arresting me. They never thought about it and decided that arresting me was the best thing. They just followed the script, followed orders, were 'just doing their jobs'. That's what I object to."

I was allowed to lie down since the doctor was still "unavailable". I didn't get a bed. I got a cell in the hospital's basement that was even filthier than the cellblock, if such a thing were possible.

She led me into the cell and uncuffed my wrists. "Just lie down as best you can."

Then she retrieved a chair and set it next to the bed and locked us both in. She sat on the chair next to the steel-rack bed. I lay on my stomach, crying as inconsolably as I had before. "I can't touch you," she said.

But she put her hand about an eighth of an inch above my back and moved her hand as though to stroke me without actually touching. I dozed for the first time since my arrest.

I awoke when a nurse came to retrieve us. Colleen was still sitting by the bed. Without being told, I stood away from the door, faced the wall, and put my hands behind my back. Colleen didn't handcuff me. "Just come," she said sharply.

A little bewildered, but not about to argue, I followed her out into the hall, uncuffed. She held my upper arm. Her hand was warm.

I was taken into a regular hospital room and allowed to lie down on a bed with a regular mattress. The doctor came in and gave me a Xanex and a codeine pill. I had to put the pills in my mouth and then take the water. Just enough to swallow them, then the water was taken away.

The doctor left and I dozed again, able to move my arms freely, Colleen standing watch by the door.

I awoke again when the sergeant entered. "Why," he asked Colleen, "is this woman lying uncuffed in an unsecured room?"

"I didn't feel she was a security risk," Colleen answered. "And I'm standing right by the door."

"That isn't what I asked. I asked why this woman is lying uncuffed in an unsecured room."

She brought me back to the cellblock and then Colleen and her brief act of resistance disappeared. But the codeine had taken effect and I dozed until sunup.

I awoke so bitterly cold I was shaking. When they led us into the hall, I discovered why. The heater was turned off and all the windows on the cellblock had been open all night. We were taken to court in a van with the air conditioner turned on. I struggled to believe that was coincidence.

The next phase began when we arrived at the courthouse -- the gauntlet of US Marshals. We were lined up against one wall and patted down. Then we were sent through a metal detector and down a hall, past a line of marshals, towards our holding cell. Unfortunately, I didn't realize I was to pass through the detector, then turn back in the direction from which we came.

One of the marshals grabbed me roughly and shoved me in the proper direction, bellowing, "This way! I said this way!"

I was to pass the entire line of them while they yelled out in my direction. "She's with the protests." "That explains it. She's too stupid to know where she's allowed to walk." "That's why she's in here." "Fucking idiot." "They say she doesn't talk." "Uncooperative." "Maybe she's deaf too." "Deaf, dumb, and ugly."

Each comment was met with hoots and guffaws. I didn't feel anger. I was too relieved about being at my arraignment, with freedom in sight. I just walked past, refusing to lower my head and suspecting that they would stop insulting me if I did.

The holding cell was a dark, dank basement with cement walls that echoed every sound. Before we were allowed to enter the cell, we were lined up, with a row of marshals behind us. "Hands against the wall! Legs apart!"

Their voices bounced off the cement. We complied. Nothing happened. One second. Two seconds. Three.

I and the woman to my left turned our heads -- she to her right and I to my left. She was a tall, skinny black girl with mussy hair that sprouted off her head every which way. "I said," barked the marshal behind her, "up against the wall!" The marshal's knee met the black girl's crotch. The uniformed body crushed her to the wall and slammed her wrists to the concrete once, twice. The girl's grunt and shriek echoed off the wall too.

My options flitted across my mind. I could speak. I could say, "Stop. Don't hurt her. We only turned our heads." I could put my body between them. Which clearly would have been suicide with the marshal so irrationally angry and out of control.

Instead, I turned back to face the wall. Allowed myself to be patted down. Felt relieved it was her and not me. And those were choices too.

The cell itself was painted a bright red I couldn't help feeling was pure sarcasm. At the door, the marshal stopped me. "Drop your pants." I did so. My shirt was long enough to be modest. "Squat and spread."

I just stood there, more out of confusion than resistance. Though I would pay for that hesitation. One gloved hand pushed my upper back until I was bent over while another gloved hand roughly inspected my vagina and rectum. Then I was shoved into the cell and the door clanked behind me. All the others were placed in a cell together across from me. I was the only white woman.

The waiting torment began again, made worse by the fact that freedom was so close. Freedom sat beneath a flag and wore a black robe. Time passed and passed. The hours melted together like butter and syrup on hot pancakes. I was hungry. All my analogies involved food.

There was no bed in this cell, only a steel bench. I tried to doze on it sitting up because it was too narrow to lie down. I would wake up just as I began to tip over off the bench. I stayed out of my imagination, out of my thoughts. I tried to practice keeping my mind entirely blank and chasing out any intruding thoughts.

Four hours passed. Someone walked through and told us the courts had closed for lunch. I asked why I was in a cell by myself. They told me it was because I was going to a different court than the others.

At 2:00, they came for us. The same routine -- step away from the door, face the wall, hands behind my back. We were, in fact, all taken to the same court, but held outside in a cell no bigger than a walk-in closet while we awaited our appearances. The floor was wet and the walls unpainted.

The black woman with the spikey hair was beside me. "Why was you in a cell by yourself?" she asked. Her eyes were full of accusation.

"I don't know. They said I was going to a different court but it doesn't appear to be true."

How calculatedly devious of them! To turn even the other prisoners -- my only potential allies -- against me! "I'm not afraid of anyone."

The woman persisted. "You was scared of that nigger bitch beat me up in the hall." (In point of fact, the "nigger bitch" was a tall white woman with a blonde, military crew-cut.)

So my cowardice had not escaped her attention. It was the only real shame I felt in the 30 hours of my imprisonment and the only real shame that lingers beyond the cell walls. I didn't even justify myself by trying to apologize.

Then -- glory, hallelujah! -- we were led into the courtroom. When I entered, seven people stood up. My jail support team! Most of them I recognized from the weekend. They held flowers. Oddly enough, I had not been handcuffed when they brought me into the courtroom. As if to send the message that I had spent a night at the Marriott and not in hell. How posh the courtroom looked! Did anyone have any idea what went on in the basement?

I was brought back to the closet-cell again without explanation. A marshal told us that the court was closing and that we would "be skeletons in here before you're let out."

I was impervious to that now. There were seven people in the next room who weren't going to let that happen! And I didn't know if my flood of emotion was relief, love, or gratitude.

But I was brought before the judge finally -- the last person released. My paperwork had been lost and, in spite of the prosecutor suggesting a 30-day sentence, the charges were dropped.

I never really appreciated the ability to run until I ran into the arms of those seven people in the back of the courtroom. I had never appreciated the outside or my ability to go there whenever I choose. I carried my flowers and walked barefoot on the pavement. I laughed and cried and hugged and broke the involuntary fast imposed at my arrest the day before.

It's now been four days since my release. The bruises on my wrists are fading. I slept last night without a nightmare. I put off people's questions with "I'm writing it all down". I turned 31 yesterday. Overall, I feel pretty much like the woman I was two weeks ago -- the bookish, dramatic, sometimes socially awkward woman who holds a Masters degree and comes from a good family and used to work for the government and sit in those courtrooms in nice dresses or ride in the front seat of my friend's patrol car.

The only solid reminder is the bright white shoelaces on my dirty sneakers which replaced the laces taken from me. They seem to stand out like a beacon, reminding me that I have choices to make in my life. And I choose peace. I choose hope and optimism. I choose to build bridges. I CHOOSE.

Where is "me" in all this?

The ever-self-regarding adolescent left - she actually thinks she's doing it for the poor oppressed. All of them do. One of the signal characteristics of this peculiar approach to life is the assumption that moral rectitude gives one unlimited absolution for any act, however illegal, and that there should be no consequences involved if only your heart is in the right place.

She should re-read her Thoreau. You do civil disobedience knowing that arrest results, and you don't whine about getting what you set out to get when it becomes inconvenient for you or damages your precious self-esteem.

The guard led me, cuffed, to a young, blonde officer in the hallway. She had pretty hair and her nose turned up at the end a little bit.
"Where are we going?"
"The hospital," she told me. "They don't dispense aspirin on cellblock."
She led me out by the arm and I found myself snuggling into the touch just to feel some warmth and comfort. I thought about those stories of prisoners who fall in love with their captors.
...
We sat in the hallway -- the officer in the only chair and I, wedged on the floor in a corner that allowed me to lean back while accomodating the awkward placement of my hands at the small of my back. I had to wipe my nose by raising my knee and inclining my head.
We sat in silence for a long time until even silence became awkward. Sooner or later, we would have to acknowledge each other's presence.
...
I was allowed to lie down since the doctor was still "unavailable". I didn't get a bed. I got a cell in the hospital's basement that was even filthier than the cellblock, if such a thing were possible.
I started to cry again and plead. "I don't want to be in here alone, Colleen."
She led me into the cell and uncuffed my wrists. "Just lie down as best you can."
Then she retrieved a chair and set it next to the bed and locked us both in. She sat on the chair next to the steel-rack bed. I lay on my stomach, crying as inconsolably as I had before. "I can't touch you," she said.
But she put her hand about an eighth of an inch above my back and moved her hand as though to stroke me without actually touching. I dozed for the first time since my arrest.
...
I awoke when a nurse came to retrieve us. Colleen was still sitting by the bed. Without being told, I stood away from the door, faced the wall, and put my hands behind my back. Colleen didn't handcuff me. "Just come," she said sharply.
A little bewildered, but not about to argue, I followed her out into the hall, uncuffed. She held my upper arm. Her hand was warm.

This story is such a tease! It keeps on sounding like it's finally about to get to the hot lesbo action, and then nothing.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.