One Of Those Days

'There's an alarm.'

Today I set out bright and early to see my clinician –penitentiary lingo for the psychologist whose caseload to which I'm assigned because of the last two digits of my identification number. Usually '86' gets burnt, last for everything, it in this instance I happen to have the very best dude, Dr. S–.

I'm always happy to see Dr. S–. I've been shuffled amongst dozens of psychs in the years since I fell but he is one of only two I ever had that I didn't feel were trying to give me the ol' shaftzilla. Besides the phone, Dr. S–'s little hole in the wall of an office is the only place in my current universe I feel like I can just talk.

Mental health care in the slammer is mostly a mess, believe me I know:

, so a typical 'incarcerated individual' (or 'prisoner,' as it says down the leg of my pants) is allotted only 45 minutes to talk to their clinician once every three months.

So, I look forward to these little jaunts up from the depths to be at least adjacent to humanity for a while. I follow the standard rigmarole: I go through gates, I state my business, I flash my pass, I check in, I wait.

I wait.

I wait.

And there he is. I get the wave. I step through another gate and we're rolling now. I follow him across the 'patio' (a fenced in concrete plaza under a gun tower where the two yards serviced by the mental health, dental, property, and other administrative offices opening onto it intersect. We step inside, pass some standalone cages for fuck-ups (imagine a telephone booth covered in chicken wire that locks from the outside), around a corner, and step into the bolthole they've stashed this hidden gem of a clinician.

I've been seeing Dr. S– for almost 9 years and we always come to the same place. I like that. I settle into the same chair I've been sitting in once every three months for 45 minutes the whole time I've been seeing him. I like that too. Routine is comforting. He sits at his desk like always. We check in like always. Everything is just as it should be.

Except, not ten minutes later I see some alien hominid look in the window on the door. I scowl at the intruder, but like most of my expressions it is lost in translation somewhere en route to my face. This is one of the unusual occasions where my so-called 'flat affect' benefits me so I'm grateful my face keeps my secret as the interloper opens the door.

'There's an alarm.'

Fuck. This place is awash with every kind of narcotic you can imagine and a whole bunch you can't, so there are alarms constantly. Whenever someone overdoses, there's an alarm. Whenever someone gets beat up for not paying their dope debts, there's an alarm. Whenever someone starts acting a fool because they got too damn high – bingo, alarmo.

Policy dictates that during an alarm all incarcerated slubberdegullions like me drop everything they're doing and sit your ass down. The psych offices, however, are off the beaten path, meaning that before I can sit said ass down I must first get up out of the chair I always sit in, leave the bolthole, go back down the hall, back around the corner, back past the standalone cages, back outside, back across the patio, back through the gate, back to where once not so long ago I waited, and waited, and waited.

The gate locks. I sit my ass down.

Not too much time passes. A phalanx of various assorted officers march a handcuffed gent with a big bushy broche across the patio. Mr. Mustache, as we've taken to calling this particular asshat, is a staple of the bullshit alarm diet we've been fed the past few months at this facility as it descends into a frenzied orgy of indulgence to shame Baccus himself.

The standard procedure for folks who overdose and pass out is to swarm them wherever they fall and jab Narcan spritzers up their nose until the cops run out. If the sleeper is still unresponsive they chuck him into the back of an ambulance and haul him off to the outside hospital. Anyone showing signs of life but still unable to get that ass up is instead tossed onto the hotdog cart (imagine an extra long golf cart with a built-in stretcher) and trundled off to the institution's clinic.

Since the ambulance takes a bazillion years to come and go, and the hotdog cart roughly half a bazillion, a dedicated self-medicator can interrupt normal penitentiary business operations for a good long while, especially considering some of the most doped up dopes can crash and burn like this multiple times a day.

But Mr. Mustache is an OG fuck-up and usually he gets on his feet when the partycrashers come for him, negating the need for any vehicular assistance. In such cases the individual just gets their pockets turned out, they slap on the cuffs, and you take a walk of shame across the yard as all your peers sit their asses down and make fun of you. Once you're locked up in timeout, things return to normal fairly quickly.

I'm hopeful this current alarm will resolve itself soon, since Mr. Mustache has already come and gone. I can go back to my once a season chance to unburden myself of the accumulated stresses inherent in living day in, day out in an environment where nothing I've described thusfar is in any way out of the ordinary.

And miracle of miracles, they do clear the alarm pretty quick. And they open the gate. And one of the psychs waves us back across the patio. And we pass a gaggle of cops yukking it up before heading back to their posts and allowing normality to resume wherever they came from, and–

–around the bend, at the other end of the patio, various assorted officers are still mulling around. They are, like the gaggle, just yukking it up. But, they're in my way. Various assorted officers notice we are approaching.

Various assorted officers tell us to hold up, because Mr. Mustache is a current occupant of one of the standalone cages for fuck-ups that are in the hallway I need to walk down in order to reach the bolthole and resume my appointment with Dr. S–.

One of the clinicians, not Dr. S– but a decent fellow, inquires if we might be able to pass by. I am dying to ask the same thing, but as an incarcerated schmub I rate lower than a boot scuff in the eyes of various assorted officers and the absolute quickest way to ensure I don't get something I want is to ask a cop for it.

'There's a guy in there,' says an obstruction in a verdant jumpsuit. Which, duh, he's ten feet away.

Decent Fellow: 'OK. But maybe we can just walk by–?'

Obstruction: 'No, cause there's a guy in there. You can't go in when there's a guy in there.' Then, perhaps realizing it is a tad ridiculous to disallow us passage when there are no fewer than a dozen various assorted officers in the vicinity doing a whole lotta nada, the Obstruction qualifies his statement by adding, 'well, I mean, you can ask the Sergeant.'

The Decent Fellow asks the Sergeant, a dapper specimen of professionalism I've never seen before with his pants sagging low and his ball cap popped up high on his forehead. He just shakes his head.

'Naw, dawg, they gotta guy in there,' sayeth the sage, then he saunters over to the gaggle and proceeds to yuk it up.

The Decent Fellow sighs. His shoulders slump, a characteristic show of defeat that's all too common here. It is far from his first time butting heads up with a solid wall of human obstinacy, it seems. I sigh too.

My clinician comes out from his office – past Mr. Mustache in his cage – and tells me the officers aren't going to let us finish our appointment today. He apologizes and I ask if he has my pass. He doesn't, so he walks past Mr. Mustache and various assorted officers again, retrieves my pass from his office, and for a third time ventures over what is apparently in the eyes of the law a bridge too far for me to cross in order to get what's left of my 45 minutes. I leave.

As I departed the patio and returned to the maelstrom that is the yard I couldn't stop thinking about the burn. 45 minutes of mental health treatment, once every three months. I haven't seen Dr. S– since February, I hardly had time to sit down, and now I won't see him again until August. Four visits a year and this whole one is a wash because some asshole got too high and some other asshole wouldn't let me walk down a hallway. I have a hard time deciding who the bigger jerkoff is, so I float around in a negative funk.

I gravitate to my sanctuary, the outdoor nature-based religious grounds. As I open the gate I see some other interaction of Mr. Mustache (who himself won't be back staggering across the yard and falling out for a couple hours) looking around guiltily before using a rechargeable battery and a razorblade to strike a light to whatever he's smoking.

I fantasize about expressing how I feel about that with 'a boot stamping a human face forever,' à la 1984, but because I have a flat affect my face mostly keeps my secrets. Instead of playing the vigilante, I just go sit on a bench.

Before I have a chance to ruminate on what else in this wide, weird world has failed to meet my exacting expectations today, two orange kittens hardly nine weeks old hop up into my lap and curl into a catpile. They don't give a crap they weren't even born the last time I saw the headshrinker, they just crash out and challenge me to say one crossword about it. Try as I might, I can't resist being suckered in by their schmoofiness.

OK, I don't try to resist.

As I sit petting two kittens at once, all the frustration of the morning's fuckfest drains away and, flat affect or not, I smile.

Some secrets aren't meant to be kept.

–ronin.