Clink Slammer Hoosegow
Monday, July 2nd, 2007
This week’s question:
With Paris fresh out of the pen and Scooter Libby off the hook, we’ve got to know: what was your closest brush with the law?
Next week’s question:
Scooter, Dubya, Brangelina—bet your nickname’s better. How’d you get it?
As a teenager, I wasn’t just a vegan, but an ardent animal rights activist. Attending protests occupied much of my time (once we got chicken thrown at us). When I was 16, I did civil disobedience in Hegins, Pennsylvania, one of the scariest places I’ve ever been. I saw someone in a KKK uniform (thankfully the first and last time), and I also saw the “Hitler World Tour” t-shirt sported (I’ve since seen someone wearing this in Greenwich Village). I, along with many others, ran through a forest of drunken revelers and onto a field where we released pigeons who were about to be shot. Then I got to go limp and be carried off on a stretcher! I wound up being released shortly thereafter and am glad I did it, but way scarier than being arrested was being around so many people with guns who probably hated us as vehemently as we hated them.
“Thirteen-year old girls don’t usually do this,” the policeman snickered as my friend Sally and I stood by a rolled Volkswagen out of which we’d just climbed. A day before, my mother “disowned” me. Sally’s parents were divorced and too preoccupied to notice that she often drove the car to another friends house for pot and amphetamines. This time, Sally swerved en route. She was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. I got a warning. I walked home in the rain and said nothing to my mom. After reading the next day’s paper, she could only glare.
We were in the middle of “it” in the backseat of his truck, in the middle of the open fields where he works during the hot desert days, in the middle of nowhere, Israel, but also about twenty feet from the border with Jordan. He sat up for a breath, looked out, and said “I think we have company.” Three hummers of Israeli soldiers headed towards us. Clothes got back (half) on, he made it to the front seat, I was still in back, sitting on my feet, textbook sheepish smile, when the nineteen year old reached us with his flashlight. They said a few words, I didn’t bother to catch them. “I think he was more embarrassed than we were,” my farmer said, and we pulled away.
There was major construction going on in front of my house. It sucked—the bulldozers revved up every am at 7 sharp, and every surface in the apartment was covered with dust. So one night, me & two friends get shit-faced and climb onto one of the steamrollers. HOLY SHIT! the keys were still in it! Naturally, being young and drunk and stupid, we decide to take it for a little spin. We start her up and off we go, driving it around the block. Only its a freaking STEAMROLLER, it tops out at about 5mph, not exactly a thrill ride although we were still whooping it up. We decide to park it and see if maybe we’re really lucky and there’s another faster one with the keys in it. We clamber onto the bulldozer—this one is much lighter, and definitely has some horsepower. Just then, up pull about five police cars, lights flashing, the whole bit. They say the neighbors called in a report of some kids driving a bulldozer around the block —”would we happen to know anything about that?” “Why no sir, officer, sir, we were just sitting on it, sorry, didn’t mean any harm. We’ll just be moving along. Sorry, sir.” The one dude puts his hand on the engine…he says, “Well the engine’s cold, so maybe theyre telling the truth.” I’m not sure, but I think there’s was still smoke coming off the engine of the steamroller. How we didn’t bust out laughing I don’t know. And then they let us go.
Somehow, I became a candy thief. When I was nine I went to Kuka’s, the little market on the corner, and slipped a Mars Bar down the front of my pants. On my way out, Kuka grabbed me and shook until the candy bar slid down my leg and plopped onto the sidewalk. He banished me from the store forever. Still, I went back from time to time when Kuka’s tiny wrinkled wife, whose name was also Kuka, was behind the counter. At fifteen I was arrested for shoplifting a box of malted milk balls from a supermarket. The cops brought me to the station, where a policeman took my fingerprints and mugshots. Then he handcuffed me to a wooden bench whose surface was shiny and smooth from decades of criminal butts sliding around on it, and made me sit there for three hours before telling me to go home and if I ever stole again there was a special jail cell for girls like me.
Ben and I were racing northward in his Volvo, the clock ticking ever-closer to my curfew, the unfinished bottle of Steel Reserve rolling around in the backseat. We’d ventured out in search of a lap dance; it was worth it. Flashing lights appeared in the rear; Ben pulled over to the left side of the road. I had been thoroughly distracting him. Dad was running for state Senate. I froze, the possible outcomes unfolding before my horrified, drunken gaze. The officer saw the bottle in the back and made Ben dump it. Then he let us go with a warning.
It’s not smart to smoke pot outside. It’s especially not smart to smoke pot outside in outdoor parking lots, and it’s ESPECIALLY not smart to do it in EMPTY parking lots in front of shuttered Dunkin Donutses off of Route 18 in central NJ… at twilight. But I was in a band. When the cops rolled up, three of us froze, but one genius dropped the joint in slow-motion (I swear!) and banked it sweetly off the arch of his foot to send it skittering under the van. It was still there, flickering, as we crept away free men.
While renting a place in Vermont, my husband and I drove to Montreal for the day — and back with two honking brisket sandwiches from the legendary Schwartz’s, packed in the trunk along with fruit from a greenmarket. We were salivating over our dinner when we saw the massive sign at the border, which read, basically, “NO MEAT OR FRUIT…OR ELSE.” We watched, stricken, as officers searched the trunks of other cars, my rabbi husband wondering how he’d explain to his congregation what he was doing in customs jail. Fortunately, luck smiled, and so did our officer. Best. Brisket. Ever.
Currently residing in Idaho, I have come very close, but never have I been caught. Following one act of professional vengeance, I actually retained a pricey criminal attorney to represent me should I get fingered for this deed. And I almost did! As a director at work, I had access to everyone’s email passwords. One co-director, a contemptuous bitch, really ticked me off. So I logged on as her and deleted ALL of her email: incoming, outgoing, saved, all folders – 9 years’ worth. Most was unrecoverable. I came under suspicion, but some other slob got nabbed and fired instead! Sweet!
All-women’s college in Massachusetts, first year. One night Sherry’s U-Mass guy (!) friend comes over. (We never see guys.) Pulls out some acid, and who cares about class tomorrow? (We never see drugs, either.) Couple hours later, we’re at the one club in town. I’m dying of thirst. Instead of, say, asking for water, I reflexively reach for the glass closest to me. Backwashed beer, but whatever. Split-second later, dude in a Starter jacket walks up. “How old are you?” he asks. “Oh, eighteen,” I answer, oblivious. “You’re under arrest,” he smirks. Fuck — arrested? For that? While I’m tripping? My mother still doesn’t believe that the arrest notice she received at home was for one sip of beer.
It was me and Eric and a pipe full of hash. The Charles River ambled lazily in front of us while the cool Boston breeze kissed our cheeks. It was three in the morning and the world was asleep. Or so we thought. A cop car creeped out of nowhere and busted us. While he could’ve given us tickets or taken us in, he did something much worse. “Throw it in the river,” he commanded. “Wait. What?” “Throw the pipe in the river.” I searched for it the next day but it was gone forever. Just one more piece of garbage in a dirty, dirty river.
What subversion-loving wild-child fresh out of college wouldn’t jump at the offer to trot the globe with drug smugglers? Paris, Bali, Jakarta, Brussels, Zurich, the world is yours, right? Wrong. Flash forward 10 years, I walk into federal women’s prison, scared and green as I was at 22. And then? The all-American girl finds her place among the convicts. Survived ghetto lesbians from hell (all bark, no bite), wretched prison guards, and a trip on Con Air: 12 females, 200+ males (fortunately, we’re all in shackles). Befriended hood rats, dope-smoking yogis, gangster’s wives, and one renegade nun. Lived to tell.
Piper Kerman is writing 89,900 more words on the above in a memoir coming out in fall ‘08.
In Arizona, I’m a sophmore and having a party at my place. Things get going and the police come. Things are fine until one cop finds a bag of weed and a bowl. It wasn’t my stuff! Turns out my friend dumped his pockets out on my couch. Anyway, the police also found a bong, which was mine, I confess, and put it on top of the cop car. But this is a happy story. A girl I liked saw me standing in front of the flashing lights, bong on the rooftop, and I guess she thought I was cool. We ended that night together on the same couch where the cop found the weed.
I was the summer of 2000. I was naked. Back then Jones Beach was a haven for nudies. Unbeknownst to scores of gay New Yorkers who frolicked there, whatever Long Island municipality the beach resides in decided to clamp down on naked fellows. One sunny day cops descended, ticketed us and told us to appear at court in Hicksville. In court, 20 well-coifed tanned gays had our charges dismissed by an amused zaftig lady judge after lining us up, Fully Monty style, before a room full of hooting toothless thugs and Long Island sots.