4 Things Everyone Needs to Experience
By: Remington Write
Tags: Life Lessons, Travel, Health, Addiction, Loss

A night in jail

I was sitting in our old beater of a station wagon in the driveway when six or seven guys stormed past. It looked like they were breaking down the side door of the suburban bungalow where my partner, George, was copping some heroin. I’d just made out CPD on the back of one guy’s windbreaker when the door to the car whipped open, I was yanked out by the arm, slammed face down over the hood of the car and handcuffed.

It was a bust.

I was marched into the living room of the house, shoved onto my knees with the rest of the handcuffed “perps” while the police wrecked the place.

“Looks like we busted Janice Joplin here.” One cop laughed and swatted at my wide-brimmed fedora. Because I have such tiny hands and wrists, the cop had tightened the cuffs as far as they would go and, fuck, they hurt!

George, cuffed on the far side of the room shrugged and mouthed, “Sorry”.

The police destroyed the inside of that little suburban bungalow. They cut open the furniture and broke apart cabinets. They knocked holes in the walls. Then they marched us all out to waiting police vans, all with gumballs flashing so the neighbors would have plenty to see.

“Take off your glasses, your belt, and take the laces out of your shoes.”

The police, even the female officers, are not at all pleasant to you when you’re in handcuffs. The cell I spent the night in stayed lit all night. There was a stainless steel one-piece toilet in the corner and a thin, blue plastic mat on the narrow platform that was, I guess, a bed.

I guess I fell asleep because I was abruptly woken by the arrival of my cell-mate for the night. Nothing was said. She got under the scratchy blanket feet to my face and we passed the rest of the night that way. In the morning we were given sandwiches (two pieces of baloney on white bread with mustard) and an unripe banana. Then we were piled back into a van and driven downtown to the “ahem” Justice Center.

All this time I was reasonably certain there wasn’t anything they could do to me. I hadn’t even been in the house and I had no drugs on me. But I didn’t know what was going to happen to George. He had been taken to another district jail and we had no way to contact each other. They kept us in a large, crowded holding cell all day with several women at a time being taken away either to court or to be released. No one would give us any information. Finally, at the end of the day, I was released after having my mug shot taken and being threatened with everything short of a firing squad if they ever picked me up again.

George was released at 3 am the following morning and called me from a payphone downtown to let me know. The cops’ timing had saved George; he’d just walked in and hadn’t had time to even take his money out of his pocket when the police came storming in. Even with his record, they had to let him go. The guys he was copping from, though, had just got back from New York and were holding a lot of heroin.

I never saw them again.

Traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language by yourself…more than once

I’ve been to Europe twice on my own, first to Venice and later to Prague. There was that sad second trip to Prague where I was supposed to go on my own and come back with a certain man. I came back alone after all.

Venice was an impulse trip after graduating from college at the age of 49. My partner at the time had no interest in going and my mentor, Anita Dixon Eppley, encouraged me to go ahead and put it on the credit card. It was that important that I go and she was right.

Two years later the passport started whispering to me again so I started planning a solo trip to Prague. I saw the Leonard Cohen was going to be performing there in August so I went ahead and bought two tickets to the show. I knew I’d find someone to invite to the show and I did.

For both of these trips, I rented apartments for myself for the week I’d be there. I didn’t want to be a typical tourist. I also wanted to have to buy food, deal with money, find my way around, and cook my own meals.

I was in Venice the week after Carnival thinking there might be fewer tourists but that was silly of me. Every season is tourist season in Venice which is so incredibly sad. Still, it was a week I’ll never forget. Getting lost and managing to find my way back to my flat day after day, meeting up with an online friend and having a fantastic seafood dinner canal-side, stumbling on my own into the Piazza San Marco one foggy night when it was nearly deserted. So amazing.

Prague is also a tourist mecca but the difference there is that Prague is a living, working, playing, singing, grouchy-ass city whereas poor Venice only has her beauty and her tourists. There aren’t very many actual Venetians in Venice, but Prague is filled with cigarette smoking, resigned, taciturn Czechs who nevertheless would smile at my gamely offered děkuji (thank you).

Getting locked out of your apartment in a country where you don’t speak the language on the day you arrive

My overnight flight to Prague arrived so early that I had to wait for an hour before my landlady made it in from the suburbs to give me the key to my apartment. I sat on a stoop near the address of the place and dozed off. I woke when I got pooped on by a passing pigeon.