A few weeks had passed since my last imprisonment, and I was out on the strip taking care of my dealings when, like a bolt out of the blue, I was nabbed again by the police on the strip selling the glasses.I was manacled, shackled, handcuffed, call it what you fucking like, and brought, yet again, to the downtown state penitenery.

Continued :

It was too late in the evening to go to court that day, but they did set the ball in motion by processing me through the system.It was during this procedure, when I was having my finger prints taken, that the full realisation of my predicament dawned on me, and that I was looking at a minimum of a six month sentence.I started to go into a stammering speech about “ The land of Opportunity my fucking arse , surely " I said to the person finger printing me “ that you can't honestly believe that Cuba could be any worse than your fucked up country ”.With this outburst I was put into, what I can only describe as, the “ Nutters Holding Cell ”.

There was five of us, including me, in this small cell about thirty-feet squared.There was two black guys, one of whom had a plaster of paris covering one of his legs, but both of whom were pretty quiet.There was two white guys, one of whom was a fucking hippy who pranced around the small cell sprouting out all sorts of unintelligible bullshit, the other of whom was highly aggressive, continuously banging on the door and shouting out all sorts of obscenities.I just sat there, in a highly distraught state, and said nothing.The two white guys gradually quietened down and there was a weird sense of calmness pervading throughout the cell, which lasted for about an hour, after which the two white guys resumed with their ramblings and ravings, and the two black guys started to react and suddenly the cell erupted and the fucking brawl started.The two black guys went fucking besirk, directing their initial punches mainly at the aggressive white guy, which succeeded in dazing him, whilst also clobbering the defenceless but highly annoying hippy many a time.I dived for cover into a corner, putting my head between my legs and covering the back of my head with my hands, but with the cell being so small you couldn’t help but get involved in it in someway or other, and I also ended up taking a few blows to the head, more so out of trying to get out of the way than anything else.The two black guys eventually succeeded in getting the aggressive white guy onto the ground and the one with the plaster of paris proceeded to use the white guys head for football practise.The fight lasted for all of fifteen minutes with blood splattered everywhere around the cell, until finally the coppers came in and broke it up.

I do still wonder why it took the cops fifteen minutes to open the fucking door ? Almost certainly because a good brawl, at least in someway, helped them make it through the sheer agony of having to do the nightshift, pretty typical, don’t you fucking think ?