Tales from the Whack Shack, Vol. 1 - Cellie #1

By Nicole Cater

They call them roommates, but we all know they’re cellmates, so let’s skip the pretense, shall we?  Oh, and did I draw a winner!  Jessica - pardon me - Jessie, while being Schizo/Bipolar must also have had the worst case of ADHD in the world. Now, as you all know, the Pinkster is a progressive and has nothing but love for the GLBT community. But it did get a tad tiresome explaining that my cellie was not a man; she was, in fact, a woman in transition. She talked...a lot…Nonstop, in fact…About her love/hate relationship with her mom…About her hate/hate relationship with her stepdad…About how her being locked up finally cured his impotency…About her 72-year-old sugar daddy in Frisco. About her 9 years in the penitentiary for stealing a cop’s gun. She was nothing but charm.

Well, charm and ridiculous, uncalled-for outbursts of which she seemed unable to fathom the consequences. She would go off on her parents over the phone. She would go off on the nurses at their stations. She would go off on the other patients in the Community Room. She loved me, thank God, because she truly scared the fuck out of me.

And so we come to The Restraint. Its visiting hours, everyone is hanging in the Community Room trying to chill and spend some time with loved ones. She’s on the phone yelling at her parents because they promised to bring her an e-cig, and they didn't. Well, for starters, that’s total contraband. My mom smuggled me one in, but I sure as hell didn't tell her to do it at the top of my lungs in a crowded room.

After that meltdown, she proceeds to the nurses’ station and has another meltdown and starts physically abusing the nurse’s desk. Within 15 seconds, we’re locked down, three policemen show up, hustle her into our room, my best friend’s gone to the bathroom and gotten locked out of the ward and I am left to sit and look at my door and wonder what the hell is happening behind it.

Finally, after an hour, I’m allowed into my room. The police had tried to restrain her to my bed, which they mistook for hers, ripping the cover off  my second best cookbook (not the Toba Garrett, hallelujah!) and just fucking up my stuff in general. They did this because she had one cop by the balls and one by the throat. Pleasant gal. They finally got her to her bed, sat on her, got the restraints on her and drugged her. She was promptly moved into a single room the next morning to make restraining her easier.

And all this was just my first full day. Exciting shit, right?