How I Spent Election Night in a Baltimore Jail
By Michael M. Hughes, Baltimore City Paper. Posted November 14, 2008.
On a night of historic celebration, Baltimore city police arrested revelers without cause or provocation.
It was sometime between 2 and 3 a.m., and I was handcuffed and sitting inside a Baltimore police paddy wagon.
"Officer," I yelled.
"What?" a cop brusquely answered from outside the van.
"Officer, I need to use the bathroom. I really have to go." It was the third time I'd asked since my arrest, over an hour earlier. It was no joke -- my bladder felt as if it was going to rupture.
"You'll have to wait 'til we get downtown," he answered.
I grimaced. Behind my back, my wrists chafed against sharp, plastic cuffs. I squeezed my legs together. "I think I'm going to piss myself," I said to my only companion, a skinny kid in khakis and a pink oxford with a popped collar. He shook his head but didn't answer. My entire body began shaking, and I doubled over, sliding to my knees on the floor in pain. I remembered reading about a study in which volunteers were paid good money to piss their pants, and none could do it -- such is the power of social conditioning.
"Fuck," I said, and felt warmth spreading between my legs.
It struck me, then -- the pathetic and surreal absurdity of my situation. Why was I, a 42-year-old husband and father of two young daughters, a senior employee of Johns Hopkins, a freelance journalist, and a law-abiding, civic-minded guy, sitting in my piss-soaked underwear in the back of a paddy wagon outside the Northern District police station?
The day had begun with such promise.
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