But I find myself on a cousin of the vinyl/plastic-y comfort of the mats that line all high school gymnasiums… as well as straight-jacket, “calm-down”-rooms in psych wards. In a very small school, in a relatively suburban New York, the gymnasiums are lined orange. …I think?… Here, I believe they are some sort of navy… ….I don’t mark the moment. …too into ‘the now’, I can’t. I don’t think that I’m tired. Just a waning meth/wine buzz that I cannot see as a buzz anymore. Regardless, this is some sort of cot or bed… something…. and so, it advises… suggests, rest. This coupled with my scratchy fiber-glass “blanket” that I am instructed to take from one in a series of large grey, rubber garbage cans that hold things like scratchy blankets and useless sheets… I mean, it all points me to “sleep”… or something. But I think that I’ve now decided that I cannot be tired… really.

And so, I feel absolutely exquisite!!!

…if not for the creeping knowledge that I just ruined my entire life and/or the fact that I now share quarters with crack-addict middle-aged women felons in the felony tank somewhere in Van Nuys. I don’t even know where Van Nuys is. I understand that it is in ‘The Valley” though. A place where, unless required to by a work commitment, or a medical emergency, one really has no reason to be. No reason to travel over the wondrous Hollywood Hills to Burbank or Sherman Oaks. It’s like living in Manhattan and going into Brooklyn or Staten Island.

Useless and time consuming.

But for now, I find myself in the Van Nuys prison in California.

The Side-Track Second:

Despite everything else, I look pretty kick-ass, I must say. My hair is still passable as awesome and I am wearing this weird trendy-like sea foam green t-shirt/dress-like, though sweat-shirt material ensemble completely off-the shoulder, it wrapped around just under my collar bone [shout out to Diesel]… with black capri leggings; lace at the bottom and ballet flats [this will become useful later].

After a myriad of finger-prints and confiscation of “personal property” ie. Ricki’s-bought Yak-Pak-default-bag complete with a thorough search and itemization: count my cash; remove all jewelry [rings, earrings, toe-ring, necklace… most of which I've never removed prior], I am sent to a random “room”… square-ish, box-like, small… a wooden bench tacked-on or possibly extrudes from three sides. On the fourth side… a categorically lockable door with a large window into the inner-goings-on of the precinct. Or the precinct’s inner-goings-on of me… whatever.

Slam, click, lock… I freak. Where did my arresting cops go? My Stockholm Syndrome flairs.

They are gone. Most likely to the relatively ‘normal’ side of the hill…. where I should be. But I am here. Held against my will in a room I cannot escape. A seemingly million miles away from my current abode and upwards of light years from the home that I fled in a city that I love. And they are gone…. forever.

Somehow, it becomes okay, I guess… “Hold on tightly, let go lightly”.

Off to the holding cell and my first introduction to bed-cots with aforementioned high school gym-mat mattresses… Cold cold air blows on me. It is June in California, there is no reason that cold, cold air should be blow on anyone. Though it is the valley, I suppose.

I am allowed to keep my jacket. In the holding cell, there are no scratchy blankets or useless sheets; and my exposed shoulders and bottom of legs POP with goosebumps. There is this one other chick in there when I get in. Sort of young like me, she watches some mind rotting reality-something on this television that is blares it’s sound from the ceiling with it’s friend the cold, cold air.

Like I’m rollin’ and the music stops and the trip goes horribly awry: my senses hyper-aware of all that is uncomfortable in my immediate experience of the world and, thus, rendered unavoidable. [this is theoretical, mind you, I am not on Ecstacy].

And now, we’ve reached the point wherein I stop receiving information about what is presently happening and will happen to me.