The low point of my day is always the first nine seconds. In my bed, my nest, wondering where that buzzing noise is coming from. After disproving a Giant Bee invasion beyond any reasonable doubt, I check the alarm clock. Guess what? It’s still Earth, still spinning, and I’m still a student. More importantly, it’s 9:45 a.m. That is how my day usually starts. Surely not the rudest awakening, but definitely not the most diplomatic.
So when I woke up last Sunday in the drunk tank of Lou Gehrig (or is it Lew Sterrett? I can’t remember…) Dallas County Jail to the sound of a deranged crackhead screaming at the enormous Hispanic gangster peeing on him, I was offended.
Luckily, that’s not what woke me. My alarm clock that day was Officer of the Peace Julius Adkins violently shaking my shoulder and cracking his baton against the wall. T-minus 11 hours until bail was posted and the final chapter of SMU Rugby vs. San Angelo Sate would come to a close.
Chapter one starts on last Thursday at 7:06 p.m. We had a game on Saturday, and the Student Senate helpfully reneged on its offer of funding, so we received a unique opportunity to practice crisis management. Captain Jeremy Chang gave us the basics: SMU had a Saturday high-noon showdown three hundred miles away in San Angelo, Texas.
A five-hour drive is easy. However, when that five hours begins at two o’clock on Saturday morning because only half of the team refused to take it easy the night before, five hours can be a long time. Add to that the fact that Jeremy is a terrible driver and you have a recipe for careening off the highway at 95 mph. In our huge white van, we were jolted wide awake by the buzz of the highway shoulder. On top of fighting gravity, fatigue and a hangover, we had to yell at the driver who promptly lurched back across two lanes of Interstate 20, but almost into a semi-truck full of gravel.
Luckily, I have made my peace with God. I just wish I didn’t have to do it at 4:06 a.m. in the middle of West Texas. The AC was way down and for the next fourteen hours, that would be the coldest night’s sleep I’d ever had.
I like breakfast. I like pancakes and bacon and syrup and hash browns. Allsup’s Egg and Sausage Pork Cracklin’ Surprise with Nacho Cheese is not breakfast, but on that day, it had to do.
Making sure to carpe diem, I also loaded up on a bottle of water and red Gatorade, which is of course the best Gatorade.
We informed the former mayor and current gas-station attendant that we played rugby and that Rugby was, “like football.” Outside we were greeted by a friendly but filthy dog that followed select members of the team around spilling drool and whatever else had been in its mouth for the past month. He sure was friendly. Maybe he was the mayor. Maybe he was a she – we didn’t check. I didn’t care. I went back to sleep.
No matter where you are, sleep ends and consciousness begins in a state of complete bewilderment. I was lying in the back of an empty van, blindfolded. After immediately determining that I was not somewhere in Mexico, I realized I had merely used a sock as an eye mask. Ever vigilant, I set about locating the rest of the team. Empty van, empty parking lot, full Burger King, mystery solved. In my stomach sloshed the remains of the Allsup’s meat surprise, so I collapsed back into the rosy mist of sleep.
When next I de-socked myself, the sun was up in full, and we were in San Angelo. In two hours, our reason for the last two hundred and ninety-four minutes, the game would commence.
After emptying myself of the final remnants of last night’s liquor and the front-runner of this morning’s breakfast, I donned by mouth guard and joined the team for our pre-game. The next two hours can be understood by any one of the SMU’s fifteen other men, lone girlfriend and hot mom present.
After three hours of tackles, sprints, bruises and blood, the spray and hiss of an ice-cold beer is the first sign that God really does offer infinite love to all mankind. In a second your throat becomes a thick alcoholic glacier and you can almost feel liquid vaporize against your stomach. Beer is open, the fever is broken. Thank God for sports.
The ride back is a slow descent back to civility. First comes air conditioning, then the body temperature drops back to medically reasonable levels, and before you know it, we’re pulling into a Burger King. I like steak. I like lobster. I like shrimp, salmon and avocado. But on that day I could have tracked the King down and open-mouth kissed him and meant it.
I ground cheese, beef and mushrooms together and mashed them into their basic amino acids. Fries, ketchup, Dr Pepper, true love and chocolate pie became one in my mouth. Fifteen Mustangs declared war on meat and in about 10 minutes, we consumed most of a cow and would have gone back for seconds if we didn’t hate missing kick-off quite so much.
Schoolwork, asphalt and a pretty good mixture of Zeppelin and Dire Straits later, we arrived in Dallas. The team is tired and we go our separate ways. Someone jokes about how we should call Jeremy if we get arrested. That was funny at the time. I go to a friend’s room and we celebrate.
I have a high tolerance for alcohol, but not as high as alcohol’s tolerance for me; .68 liters of “Canadian Hunter: Fine Sipping Whiskey” later and I am experiencing life in a photo-album sequence of swirling, kaleidoscope snapshots. I remember leaving the dorm and I remember waiting by my roommate’s car to get a ride back to the apartment downtown, but I don’t remember much else.
I laid on the ground by the tennis courts, staring up and thinking about how cool stars are and how I’d like to be one some day. Then I have what doctors call a “black out.” This is where my night starts to suck.
Luckily, police are pretty helpful. When they found me sitting quietly at the Park Lane DART Rail station attempting to dewhiskefy myself and losing a lot of Burger King in the process, they helped me look through my wallet and find my driver’s license. Then, they were a huge assistance in helping me stand up. I also appreciated their aiding me face the wall. I could not have placed my hands behind my back and remained silent without them.
Like I said, cops make the world go around.
Jail is pretty simple. Don’t piss anyone off, don’t drown and make sure to avoid getting molested. I played dominoes with a bunch of my fellow inmates for like three hours and had a pretty good time. I kind of had to, of course, because DPD turns the temperature down to about 60 degrees, so if you lie down to sleep you will instead freeze to death.
Breakfast was waffles and sausages made by the lowest bidder in the city services contract pool. I could have given anything for an Allsup’s right then.
Jail does have a shower, but the water is, no kidding, 115 degrees and it’s right next to the latrine. The whole place reeks of vomit and crackhead and blood and whatever else comes out of homeless people, so after enough time in there you smell about the same.
Here’s my advice: don’t get arrested. Well, that’s not very helpful, but I would say one thing – talk to your friends. Get a plan worked out. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel arrest may be imminent, you call your friend and drop the precinct-related codeword.
If you do not call back within 15 minutes, you have been taken to jail and need bail ASAP. Don’t wait for your legally sanctioned phone call, because though you have the right to make it, you don’t have the right to make the call instantly or even reasonably soon after incarceration.
What did I learn from this whole ordeal? We can’t stay out of trouble, and I think it’s a good idea to get involved with as much as possible because that is how you learn. That is my fact. This is the truth as I see it.
