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The
Big House
by
Evan Saffer
According to Evan Saffer's lawyer,
the following narrative of events did not actually happen
to him; rather, it is a portion of short fiction.
It was 4 a.m. by the time I reached the
comforts of my living room and finally sat down. I had spent
the last four hours with three strangers in a filthy prison
cell, 8x10 at most, with one wooden bench that was full so
I had to stand (since the floor was filled with cigarette
butts, spit, vomit and piss). There was no toilet, running
water, or moving air for that matter.
After I realized this would not be a
brief stop, I made small talk with my fellow cell-dwellers
and realized they were all musicians in some regard: very
human and very nice and so easily misjudged. Their crimes
ranged from drinking in public to smoking pot to hanging posters
on city property to spitting in the street to jaywalking-
all ridiculous crimes that clog the legal system with thousands
of new cases each day. One fellow was dealing drugs to support
his music (although he was not charged as such). |
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| I know it can be tough to stay afloat
while trying to make the band work, so we at least had that
in common; I have again lost my job because it has become very
difficult to maintain regular working hours with my band so
frequently rehearsing and on the road. Naturally, being out
of work, I decided to use my extra time to promote my band with
a little postering that quickly landed me in jail. (Street teamers
take note: you cannot legally stick posters on city owned property-
lamp posts, green boxes, mailboxes, garbage cans- only in store
windows and clubs.) Now I don't want to repair government policy
and I am not a whiner. I got in trouble because I didn't pay
for the space I was using to advertise. They call that permission.
Permission means you pay someone and they let you do what you
want. If you do it without permission, you go to jail. Pretty
simple system we have. That's OK. I'll just get smarter and
better at exploiting it, that's all. |
I basically saw the experience
of being in jail as I see any new experience, and that is
as an opportunity to learn. What I did while I was in there
was talk to, listen to and observe people. Maybe that will
get me into more trouble one day than hanging up posters,
but I'm a curious person and I'm not going to let fear keep
me quiet. I am out to find the teachers. The best relationships
are those that give and take, where you teach and learn at
the same time. That's how you grow without getting bored;
those are the people I am looking for, and they are not always
the obvious ones. |
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A couple of weeks after my
ordeal in prison, I was doing community service, cleaning up
the parks with a new set of strangers. Seems no matter how severe
your crime, community service gets tagged onto the punishment.
I guess that's not a bad thing. It gets you in the mode of going
to work again, of having a purpose and being useful (see? I
don't have complete disdain for the system, only some). Anyway,
I hung out with one guy I met while doing my service; we spoke
about life, about options, about what his dreams are and how
to make them happen. His options are unjustly limited, yet he
couldn't have been more positive if he were the tip of a Duracell.
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| Right now I am unemployed and struggling
to keep my balance both in society and in my mind. Before, I've
always achieved balance by creating music, writing poetry or
exercising. Now, I can simply think of my new friend in order
to stay positive whenever I want to punch someone in the face
or fire a gun into my mouth. |
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