I got arrested for the first (and last, I swear) time last fall. It was for DUI. When I got downtown I blew under .08, so much of the later part of the story might be different for others that were drunker, but the timeline will still be the same.
It was about three o'clock (all times are guesses because not letting you see clocks very often is one of the things they do) when I got to the jail -- what can I say, it was Saturday and I made a snack run between football games, and I didn't think I'd had as much to drink as I did, much less enough to be legally drunk. During the first two or three hours I just sat around in big room with the kind of people that get arrested on Saturday afternoons, wearing heavy, gray, baggy pajamas and sandals that won't stay on, until they got around to fingerprinting and photographing me, and doing a cursory medical check. There is a phone in that room, and the cops had let me get one number off my phone before they took it, and I called my sister and said, "Get a lawyer down here fast!", because I've seen Law and Order and Night Court reruns, but that's not how it works at all. Also all the calls you make from in there cost about ten dollars (I think - my sister won't tell me the cost, because she wants to get paid back with several months of my doing favors for her).
Once the guards had enough of us ready, or once they got board enough, we got into a line, were issued a blanket and sheet and marched upstairs. We were put into a cell, one to a cell. It was about seven by six - four and a half steps from the door to the bed for me. No books. No phones or TV or computer of course. Nothing, just me and a steel toilet and a roll of toilet paper. And a six inch window in the door that looked out on an empty room, and that a guard looked it through every couple of hours. I guess I could have faced the wall and masturbated, but I've never been into bondage fantasies, and really didn't feel like it. I tried thinking about RPGs but that didn't work because I could always get out of dungeons in those. I walked back and forth from the door to the bed a lot. After what could have been six hours they brought me a sack with three pieces of baloney, two slices of American cheese, four slice of crappy bread, a cookie and an apple.
I stared at a spot on the ceiling and fell asleep and woke up and fell asleep and walk the floor and fell asleep.... Then while I was just standing in the middle of the room (awake) the door opened, and I was told to sit at the table. After six of us were collected we were led downstairs through a maze and into something that looked a little like a court room (It was three thirty a.m.; there was a clock in there). Just after four a guy in robes came in and told us he was a magistrate and not a your honor. He called our names and some people tried to tell him there stories, or get the venue changed, or whatever, and they were told to tell it to their lawyer or their judge. Then he set bail. Mine was thirty-five hundred if I remember correctly (but a judge might lower it he said). When everyone was done he said we would be taken to an interview to see if we qualified for release on our own recognizance. But we weren't, we weren't taken to a room with phones and a lot bail bondsmen's ads either. We were taken back to our cells. I stared at the ceiling and walked to the door and back... More bologna and crappy bread and an apple arrived. I walked back and forth and forth and back. Where's this recognizance interview? How do I get a hold of a bailbondman? How am I going to pay him, even if he only wants ten percent?
The door opened. I sat down at the far end of the big room I'd been staring into all night. I filled out a couple of forms and a woman asked me some questions, mostly about my never being arrested any where and who I knew, and my sister's phone number (she is the most reputable person I know in town, so it's good I got here number.).
More ceiling staring. I don't know if I ever got more bologna or not.
** I know this is stupidly long, but bare with me. Writing it is cathartic. (You don't have to read it all; it won't be on the test)**