When we last left off from part two of this story, I was in court and being told by JW Esquire that the Commonwealth of Virginia had decided to amend my charges up from simple assault to assault and battery on emergency healthcare personnel. Which came with a mandatory prison sentence if convicted, but because they pulled this on us at the last minute, JW Esquire suggested that we file for a continuance so we did.
For some odd reason Virginia Tech hadn’t been receiving police reports in the Summer of 2013. Thus I had been able to remain in the classes I had registered for the previous semester, and I had been able to even go to said classes before I received a summons via email for a conduct hearing on September 9, 2013.
On September 9, 2013 I was officially suspended from Tech for the semester. I know this date because the night before on the 8th, the Cowboys beat the Giants 36-31. I remember the conduct meeting quite well. The conduct officer as I believe she was labeled, was named Angela. Her husband was from a town nearby the one in which I grew up in in New Jersey, and when she asked me if I felt I had broken four different school policies in regards to the night I was arrested three months earlier, I answered yes all four times. She thanked me for my honesty and after I made my case to stay in school by turning on the waterworks and explaining how despite my mistakes during the early morning of June 6, 2013, I wasn’t in fact a criminal or as malicious as the police report would lead one to believe. But after my admittance of breaking four policies, she still suspended me.
I remember that when she came back to the room after printing paperwork with details of the meeting, the suspension, and what would be asked of me in order to return to school in the Spring of 2014, she wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. I could tell she was avoiding eye contact because she really didn’t want to lay down the law. I had been completely honest with her about the incident, I hadn’t shied away from confronting my problems with alcohol (although I didn’t bring up any of my other substance abuse issues as they weren’t the target of the hearing), and I spoke to her like a man and not a student. She informed me that in order to gain readmission in 2014 I would have to seek counseling of some kind and bring documentation as proof of the counseling. Now seeing as I couldn’t afford therapy and I could no longer use resources available to students through Tech, I turned to AA.
Now the language of my suspension was explicit in saying that I wasn’t technically allowed on campus. But the conduct hearing didn’t take into account the fact that directly after it I was supposed to participate in a group debate in my Shakespeare class that my group had prepared for over the weekend, and which I had been given the responsibility of closing arguments for. The debate was on whether or not the play Taming of the Shrew was misogynistic. And my side was chosen by the professor to debate that it wasn’t, which it totally was. So I went to class because when have I ever been keen on following rules?
I got to class and as we’re setting up our desks the professor walked up to me and took me aside. She was a skinny and cute looking woman with glasses and long straight hair that she kept in a ponytail, and I’m assuming in her early 30s.
“This morning I went to put a grade in for you on last week’s pop quiz, but you were no longer on the class roster. Is everything okay?”
“Yea. I was suspended this morning and I hope you don’t mind me being here but I didn’t think I should leave my teammates in the dust when I’m presenting our closing arguments.”
She smiled and said “of course I don’t mind, and thank you for not bailing on them!”
We hit the ground running and despite the difficulty of our team’s argument I think we did made a very strong case. I capped it off with a long and thorough mention of evidence from the play on why it was not misogynistic and then dropped the line “I have exorcised the demons. Well, this house is clear,” from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
I don’t remember if we won or lost the debate but I do remember all of us in the class having a good laugh when my team admitted that we all felt the play was indeed misogynistic once the debate was complete and we could speak our minds freely.
I went to my office, the pizzeria, right after the debate. I was done for the day and semester, there weren’t any other classmates relying on me that afternoon and I needed to talk to my boss.
“So how many hours do you want?”
“All of them.”
Pig Vomit chuckled and said “I’ll think of something for ya.” I call him Pig Vomit because he looks like a pig and he makes me want to vomit. Actually that’s a lie and a line from the movie Howard Stern’s Private Parts. He really looks like Channing Tatum if he just took adderall and stood in front of a 650 degree oven all week. And he isn’t actually an adderall fiend, he just isn’t shredded like Channing Tatum.
Piggy threw me his car keys and I went home, changed from the nicer clothes I had worn to the hearing into my usual attire of gym shorts and a t-shirt. This one was a blue and green tie-dye tee though. And I went to the batting cages to alleviate some of my own demons on some baseballs.
When I said “all of the hours,” Pig Vomit really ran with that. My work schedule became 50-60 hours a week Monday through Saturday, all closing shifts with a few doubles in there. I was training a brand new employee every night of the week, but at least I had Sundays to watch my Cowboys and get belligerently, blackout drunk. Lots of shots of Rumple Minze and the finest rail tequila chased by vodka-sodas while I watched my always heartbreaking football team and ate 50 cent wings.
November 10, 2013, the Sunday before my court date I went to the bar with Pikey and Pig Vomit to watch the Cowboys at New Orleans. We got smoked, 49-17. The Saints set a new record for first downs in a game with I think 40. As we watched this we got sloppy drunk. So drunk that I admitted to how scared I was of my court date, and the idea of going to prison, and because of this PV, Pikey and I were at one point group hugging at the bar like a bunch of sorority girls saying goodbye forever, but really just for the Summer.
Pig Vomit felt he was “good enough to drive,” and we all went to a Kroger, or the Gucci Kroger as it was known locally because it was decidedly better than the other one in town. Inside the store Piggy was so wasted that he was eating food in the store and tossing the wrappers and plastic containers on the floors of random aisles. Pikey and I had to ultimately escort this motherfucker out and don’t forget, he’s our designated and now drunk driver.
He drives us to Pikey’s house which at the time was somewhat out there in the country, and I go inside to roll some joints. When I get back outside Pikey is eating a sandwich and Pig Vomit’s car is gone.
“He left you.”
“Motherfucker.” I said out loud as I found his Atlanta Braves cap on the porch and put it on. I smoked a joint, mobbed on all the food I had bought at Gucci Kroger, and fell asleep soon thereafter.
Fairly certain that I woke the entire house up that Monday morning with what sounded like an exorcism but was really just me dry heaving and puking up bile. I guess the alcohol soaked up all the food I had eaten from Gucci Kroger in minimal time. With each heave of puke the thoughts of 49-17 and my court date loomed on my mind. I felt horribly physically, mentally, and I was too scared to check my bank account given the previous night’s brown out and how I was currently feeling as I hugged a toilet seat. I made several trips to hug that toilet seat before one of Pikey’s roommates finally gave me a ride home. I got home, I smoked more weed and I got ready for work. All of this had legitimately become my routine during my suspension, but I was three days away from court, I was a mess and I knew it, but I’ve always said “fake it till ya make it.”
NOVEMBER 14, 2013 – COURT
I woke up on November 14, 2013 (Sara Jay’s 36th birthday), and I smoked a joint or two, took a shower and burnt myself a CD. Yes, a CD, that I entitled Jailhouse Rock to prepare myself for the potential ass pounding I was likely going to receive in prison over the next 12-18 months. Freddie King’s “Going Down” was the first song on there, the theme from Eastbound and Down starring Danny McBride. I put my suit on which now felt slightly snugger after four months of degenerative behavior (since my July 25th court date) at a pace of 24/7.
Pig Vomit picked me up and he took me to court. We were there early and we were sitting in the parking lot. I was stressing out and Piggy decided to try to calm me down by bringing up what was probably a fictitious article he had read about Tony Romo being underrated as a quarterback in the league. Whether it was a real article or not doesn’t matter because he was trying to be a good friend and take my mind off the possibility that my life might be taking a drastic turn towards the rocks within the next few hours.
I finally decided to go into the court house before my scheduled court time. I left my cell phone in Piggy’s car as they’re not permitted in the Montgomery County Courthouse, and I wrote his number down on a piece of paper I ripped from something in his car so I could call him for a ride when I was out.
I was standing in the hallway outside the courtroom when I spotted JW Esquire. She immediately hit me with the bad news:
“Hospital hasn’t complied with either of our subpoenas. No security cam footage, no medical records.”
See I had asked her to subpoena for the security cam footage to prove that I was trying to run away and that my “swim move” was not a clothesline as written in the police report. And I had subpoenaed for my medical records because a month prior to the court date I had to take a friend with a broken nose to the ER and when I asked about the records, the dickhead in the Grateful Dead scrubs said I had to subpoena for them.
Sidebar: waiting for said friend with the broken nose to give me the okay to tell that story because it’s pretty awesome in itself. Also, came to find out at this court date that dickhead in the Grateful Dead scrubs was one of the folks that Officer Slapnuts had pressed charges against me for. Legally I could’ve been fucked for even speaking to this miserable human.
I blew all of the air out of my cheeks face as she told me these were both no-gos and I asked what we could do.
“Let me ask you something, if I can get you some kind of a plea where you don’t go to jail, would that be something that could work for you?”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been stressing about this thing everyday for the last five months. At this point I would go to jail for a few weeks to just get this fuckin’ thing behind me.”
JW Esquire laughed and said “I’ll see what I can do.”
She came back to me about thirty minutes later and explained that I was going to be on twelve months of unsupervised probation and I was banned for life from all Lewis Gale Memorial Hospitals barring extreme emergencies that basically excluded everything except a deadly illness or injury. I felt good about this. She told me not to speak in the courtroom unless spoken to by the judge.
Sidebar: when the judge read the charges and saw that they were being filed over a few scratches on someone’s arm and a bruise on someone else’s hand, he laughed and said “that means these guys are _____.” I didn’t hear the last word of his sentence but both JW Esquire and the prosecutor laughed so I can only assume he referred to these dudes as pussies or bitches.
I called my boss telling him I’d explain it all shortly but he should pick me up at the nearby ABC store, and then I walked out of the courthouse. Next order of business was walking into ABC and buying a pint of Fireball since I so obviously had just learned my lesson.
When Pig Vomit I arrived I got in the car and dramatically started chugging the bottle.
“Okay, what the hell happened?”
“Fuck man,” I said as I faked a bitter face while I was drinking, “bro I’m so fucked. You’re gonna have to figure something out because you won’t have me there Monday to Saturday.”
“Fuck man, are you serious?”
“No not at all. Twelve months unsupervised probation. We all but beat them charges son!”
He dropped me off at home and my roommate was out. So I threw the pint in the fridge because I didn’t need it for once, rolled a jay, smoked it and cranked some tunes as I got ready for work that night.
When my roommate got home he asked how it went and when I told him what had happened, he congratulated me and as he noticed my smile he said “I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile since we moved in here.”
It was true. I had been so fearful of what may have come that I carried it with me everywhere including home.
Sidebar: I realized years later that I could’ve beaten the charges entirely had I just kept continuing the case. Without the compliance of my subpoenas I think we could’ve filed for another continuance. Prosecutor’s office would’ve likely soon become annoyed with the case and perhaps dropped it altogether. I think the reason the security cam footage never came through was because I had a head injury and had been chased by hospital personnel trying to tackle me, and had they tackled me and hurt me more than I was already hurt then I could’ve had my own case against them. But of course my mindset at the time was littered with blue agave, liquor, marijuana and vast amounts of Robitussin which I drank all summer in my apartment to keep from going downtown and getting into even more trouble. JW was a public defender with like 400 cases at a time so she likely wasn’t all in on my case at the time either and I don’t blame her at all.
Little did I know that on November 14, 2013 I was seven days away from my first tattoo, and less than two weeks away from nearly dying on the side of I-81 northbound in a nasty car wreck. But those are different stories for different times!
MattyMouthsOff 
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