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Authors: Lynnette Lounsbury
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dollars. You did not fire on the police. But you were there. And that is stupid. Many of the most stupid people in the world were justâ¦there.
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T HERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO WAKE UP around the worldâthe cows mooing up the path to the milk shed, the heat rising up from the ground in Africa, the sun pouring through the window in London, a bucket of filthy, watery, something-like-shit poured on your head in a Mexican cell. I sat up and tried to get the stuff out of my mouth and eyes knowing if I didnât I would be shitting the stuff myself for a week. A new but completely identical cop was standing at the door smiling, a different tooth missing, a shorter cigarette clamped in his lips, the same tattoo of a bare-breasted sigñorita on his forearm.
âLevantense,â he gestured me out of the cell.
I dragged myself out, finding new horrors in the twisted muscles of my back and neck beforeforgetting them entirely as he slapped me hard on my arse. He led me down a narrow corridor between a row of six or seven cells. They were small, dirty and dark, and each had only one person crouched or lying on the floor, silent and bloodied. The silence lasted only until we reached a large iron door at the end of the hallway, and when he opened it I was assaulted by the roar of almost one hundred people crowded into a huge room, another cell, yelling and pushing, some women but mostly hard and drunken men. The wave of fear that kept lapping around me swelled and washed me backwards, and I would have run if the guard had not planted a large hand squarely on my back and pushed me into the cell. I turned on my front foot to see him closing the door and I yelled back at him, âHey, my friend, the German, where is he? Is he okay?â But the door was shut and I was alone with one hundred people in a Mexican jail, all of whom, except the twenty per cent who were comatose and the two people fucking on the floor in the far corner, were looking at me with faces full of disdain.
I put my head down and worked my way over to a sliver of empty wall, leaning back and sliding down until I was in a squat near the floor. I didnât sit directly on the floor cos there was a trail of liquid from a toilet hole in a corner that traced its way across most areas of the cell leaving an acrid scent of urine to burn nostrils and eyes and making it impossible to sit. The couple in the corner, a middle-aged man and a woman who could have been twenty or fifty, had finished their wrestling match and she was smoothing down a faded colourful skirt and moving to offer her services to the next group of men, though no one took her up on it that time, perhaps for lack of money, or perhaps the wet stain on her skirt was enough to turn them away. I would have been happier to have them watching her than their new object of interest, me, and I kept a careful watch through the hair I let tumble over my face as they talked about me and made lewd gestures.
I wondered where all these people came from, what they did, if they had done anything other than get drunk or piss-off the police, and if Iwould be here for long. I knew I would eventually have to use that toilet and the more I thought about it the more the tiny urge to urinate became a pressing need and then a consuming thought and eventually, my lifeâs calling. I watched four or five men go over to the corner and piss, most of it missing the small concrete hole, but I hadnât seen a woman there yet. Most of the women were wearing billowing skirts, nice discreet tents, better than my jeans, which would have to be around my ankles for me to manage. I couldnât remember pissing in front of anyone in years, even female friends. Finally I knew, it was piss in the hole or wear it down my legs for however many hours, days or years I was to be in here. I stood and made my way through the crowd to the hole as discreetly as I could, but being the only non-Mexican person, I drew
Â
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T HERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO WAKE UP around the worldâthe cows mooing up the path to the milk shed, the heat rising up from the ground in Africa, the sun pouring through the window in London, a bucket of filthy, watery, something-like-shit poured on your head in a Mexican cell. I sat up and tried to get the stuff out of my mouth and eyes knowing if I didnât I would be shitting the stuff myself for a week. A new but completely identical cop was standing at the door smiling, a different tooth missing, a shorter cigarette clamped in his lips, the same tattoo of a bare-breasted sigñorita on his forearm.
âLevantense,â he gestured me out of the cell.
I dragged myself out, finding new horrors in the twisted muscles of my back and neck beforeforgetting them entirely as he slapped me hard on my arse. He led me down a narrow corridor between a row of six or seven cells. They were small, dirty and dark, and each had only one person crouched or lying on the floor, silent and bloodied. The silence lasted only until we reached a large iron door at the end of the hallway, and when he opened it I was assaulted by the roar of almost one hundred people crowded into a huge room, another cell, yelling and pushing, some women but mostly hard and drunken men. The wave of fear that kept lapping around me swelled and washed me backwards, and I would have run if the guard had not planted a large hand squarely on my back and pushed me into the cell. I turned on my front foot to see him closing the door and I yelled back at him, âHey, my friend, the German, where is he? Is he okay?â But the door was shut and I was alone with one hundred people in a Mexican jail, all of whom, except the twenty per cent who were comatose and the two people fucking on the floor in the far corner, were looking at me with faces full of disdain.
I put my head down and worked my way over to a sliver of empty wall, leaning back and sliding down until I was in a squat near the floor. I didnât sit directly on the floor cos there was a trail of liquid from a toilet hole in a corner that traced its way across most areas of the cell leaving an acrid scent of urine to burn nostrils and eyes and making it impossible to sit. The couple in the corner, a middle-aged man and a woman who could have been twenty or fifty, had finished their wrestling match and she was smoothing down a faded colourful skirt and moving to offer her services to the next group of men, though no one took her up on it that time, perhaps for lack of money, or perhaps the wet stain on her skirt was enough to turn them away. I would have been happier to have them watching her than their new object of interest, me, and I kept a careful watch through the hair I let tumble over my face as they talked about me and made lewd gestures.
I wondered where all these people came from, what they did, if they had done anything other than get drunk or piss-off the police, and if Iwould be here for long. I knew I would eventually have to use that toilet and the more I thought about it the more the tiny urge to urinate became a pressing need and then a consuming thought and eventually, my lifeâs calling. I watched four or five men go over to the corner and piss, most of it missing the small concrete hole, but I hadnât seen a woman there yet. Most of the women were wearing billowing skirts, nice discreet tents, better than my jeans, which would have to be around my ankles for me to manage. I couldnât remember pissing in front of anyone in years, even female friends. Finally I knew, it was piss in the hole or wear it down my legs for however many hours, days or years I was to be in here. I stood and made my way through the crowd to the hole as discreetly as I could, but being the only non-Mexican person, I drew
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