The Curious Case of Christopher Comtois (Part XVI)

Steve Nash

     One week ago I was waking up with a team of police at my door for the second time.  I was supposed to be dressed and ready for two of my rugby buddies to pick me up for a day of skiing.  We would have gone to Breckenridge, skied until the afternoon and then sat in the sun with beers in hand enjoying a perfect spring day.  Maybe we’d drive back and head out to one of our favorite local bars and revel late into the night.  I probably would have slept in on Sunday and gone down to the Southside Café for breakfast.  Maybe I’d call Aimee and see if she wanted to join since Kermit was out of town. I’d go for a run at some point then do a little prep for work on Monday.  Normal life just rolls along.  There is a movie called “Sliding Doors” that I often think about, and it came to mind on Saturday morning as I looked up at the ceiling from my toboggan.  In the movie, which wasn’t hugely popular, the focus is on Gwyneth Paltrow’s character.  It follows her in her rather mundane day to day life.  About a quarter of the way through the film, she is at a subway station in London, I think.  She barely makes her train as the doors close.  She had left work early and comes home to find her live-in boyfriend sleeping with another woman.  The story continues with the fallout and subsequent activity in her life.  Later, the story goes back in time to her at the train station.  In this version, the doors close and she misses her train, thus, not getting home in time to catch her cheating boyfriend.  The rest of the movie shifts back and forth between her life when she made the train and the one when she did not.  The premise is brilliant and one that I am constantly aware of in my own life.  Obviously we don’t know when these “sliding door” moments happen to us, but they do happen.  The choices we make every day have ripple effects on the course of our lives down the road.  What was my “sliding door” moment that led me down the path to jail and a horrible case of mistaken identity?  My “other” life would be me sleeping in my own bed after a regular week of work and, most likely, a night out on Friday.  I would be getting up soon.  Kermit and I would figure out what we wanted to do with our day or perhaps we’d already be driving up to ski.  I’d probably get my shot at 50 goals at some point.  I’d still be avoiding any calls from Kira and most likely would never speak to her again, at least until after the dust had settled.  A few camp friends had talked about coming out to Denver for Spring Break and we would certainly be putting our plans together.  Instead, I missed my train at some point in the past and I’m getting ready for my eighth day as a convict in the Colorado jail system.  I don’t think I have a job anymore and I’m facing an extensive list of horrible criminal charges that could keep me in a Florida prison for a very long time.  I’ve been handcuffed more times than I can count, shackled to another man, strip searched and relegated to hours upon hours of nothingness.  I have extreme insomnia, constant worry and a total loss of everyday freedoms.  How in the fuck did this happen?  What did I do to deserve this?  I was just a guy living my life and suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me.  I believe in karma, and it really can be a bitch.  I was now paying the price for some past indiscretions.  It always comes back around.  My life has always been about extremes and this was about as extreme as it gets.  Even though I was getting ready for day eight, I still had a hard time believing that it was really happening.   When I slept, which wasn’t often, I’d always wake up in a state of confusion like I was stuck in a dream.  I think I may have fallen asleep a few times throughout the night, but only for a few minutes here and there.  I had no idea how I was still functioning. 

     The lights came on just after seven a.m. Chris didn’t move and I grabbed the book of short stories and re-started from the beginning.  Eventually it was time for breakfast and we both got up and waited for our door to open.  I had already decided that I’d just hang back after getting my food to wait for everyone to sit down before taking a seat.  I didn’t want to go through the same musical chairs as the night before. 

     Breakfast was good, or at least better than I’d become accustomed: eggs, biscuits and gravy and even some Tabasco sauce.  I missed my catsup, which is a staple of my life since before I can remember, but Tabasco helped.  I ate by myself and didn’t try for seconds again, although I could have probably gone back for thirds or fourths if given the chance.  I was beyond hungry.  We all shuffled back to our cells to wait for the clean up to finish so we could head back out for our morning recreation.  Chris and I talked a little, but not much.  He asked if I knew when I’d be getting out and I maintained that it could be at any time.  Maybe he was curious about my story and situation and maybe he just wanted his room back to himself, I didn’t care which.  After 45 minutes, the doors opened again and the main room came back to life as everyone convened for their Saturday morning entertainment.  I had a few questions about D block life, so I made my way over to the officer at the desk.  He was reading the paper and I didn’t recognize him from the day before. 

“When is visitation?” I asked.  He was visibly annoyed and looked over the top of his paper to answer. 

“When did you get here?” he said. 

“Yesterday.”

 “No visitors until you’ve been here for two weeks,” he said as he went back to reading.  Everything took two weeks, apparently. 

“What if I’m not going to be here for two weeks?” I said as I realized that the words should have stayed in my head. 

“Then you’re not going to get any visitors,” he shot back without looking at me.

I had more questions that he clearly didn’t want to answer, but I asked anyway.  “How will I know when I am released?” 

The officer made a big, exaggerated effort to fold up his paper conveying his annoyance. 

“Why, you getting out of here?  You just got here,” he said.

“I’m waiting on the results of a DNA test that could come at any moment.  I probably won’t be here very long.”

“What’s your name?” he said as he looked at my name badge.  I didn’t answer since he was already looking down a roster on his clipboard.

“I’ve got nothing here about you getting out.”  Clearly I was asking the wrong guy. 

“I know, but how will I know when I’m getting out?” 

“Look, when you get out, we’ll let you know, don’t worry.”  He picked up his paper again and leaned back in his chair.  I walked away and headed towards the phones.  I wanted to call my mother.

     No one was making any calls so I had my pick of seats.  My mom was extremely happy to hear from me.  She had spoken to Dave the day before and knew that I had been moved to County Jail.  I was happy to know that Dave knew where I was.  I told her about the bus ride and John and my new surroundings.  I even told her about the basketball game.  “You’re going to get out soon, I know it,” she said.  I really didn’t want to dwell on where I was, so I asked about what was going on with her.  Nothing ever really changed back at home but it was nice to talk about nothing in particular.  She was thinking about new wallpaper in the kitchen and her car needed an oil change.  She wanted to see a few movies that had been out for a few weeks and was annoyed with some girl at work.  I reassured her that I was doing alright and not to worry.  I think that she had passed the point of panic and seemed much calmer about me sitting in jail some 600 miles away.  She apologized at least three times for not being in Colorado to visit me.  I had told her during previous conversations not to come out since there wasn’t anything that she could do in Colorado that she couldn’t do at home.  It wasn’t like she was going to play private investigator and uncover hidden clues that would help get me released.  Plus, she couldn’t afford a hotel for an unknown amount of time and I didn’t think Kermit would want her living at our place.  I’m sure that he would have happily had her stay with him, but it wouldn’t be ideal.  “Mom, stay at home.  This will be over soon and I’ll see you as soon as I get out,” I told her.  We exchanged “I love you’s” and hung up.  I still had a few hours out of my cell so I instinctively called Kira.  

     The phone rang a few times before she answered and I could tell that she had been asleep.  She fumbled through the acceptance of charges ordeal that we had become accustomed to.  “Good morning, Sleepy Head,” I said laughing, “Late night last night?”  I was jealous.  “Yes, we were out till two or three,” she said through a yawn.  I offered to call back later, knowing that she would say no, which she did.  I listened as she told me about playing darts at the bar and some boyfriend issues that one of her friends was going through.  Since I had exponentially more time to talk and we had just spent hours on the phone the night before, we had gotten past immediately talking about my situation and just talked as if I was at home.   As she took me through some shenanigans from the bar, I suddenly felt someone tapping on my shoulder.  I was facing the wall and turned to see who was poking me as Kira continued to talk.  Standing directly behind me was a very large black man who didn’t look happy.  He couldn’t have been more than a foot or so away.  I looked up at him and told Kira to hold on.  I didn’t really have any time to consider what was happening as I said, “Can I help you?” 

“Get off the phone,” he said in a low, monotone voice. 

The four other phones were unoccupied but maybe I was using “his” phone.  I cut Kira off mid-sentence and quickly told her that I had to go as I hung up without saying goodbye. I swiveled my stool around so that I was facing him and took a deep breath in anticipation of the next course of events. 

     During the seconds after hanging up the phone and waiting for him to talk again, thousands of thoughts flooded my brain.  I knew that whatever was going to happen next wasn’t going to be good.  Maybe my initiation time had come.  I thought for a second that he was one of the guys from the basketball game, but I wasn’t sure.  He just stared at me for what seemed like hours.  Someone knew why I was in jail and my time had come.  This was exactly the situation that I prayed I’d avoid from the moment I was arrested.  If I could only make it through without any traumatic events happening to me, I’d be OK.  This was going to be a traumatic event and I wanted to run away.  I didn’t want to be raped or beaten or killed.  My fear prior to the basketball game was concocted in my head, but this fear was different.  It was really happening.  A very large black man had taken the time to come find me and order me off of the phone.  Something was going to happen to me and every result I thought of was ugly.  I just looked up at him and waited.

“Are you playing basketball today?” he asked.

The question came so far out of left field that I wasn’t sure that I heard him correctly, so I said, “Excuse me?”

“We want to know if you’re going to play basketball this morning.”

I had never been so dumbfounded in my life.  Was he really asking me if playing basketball was on my recreation schedule for the day?  I thought it was time to get raped in the shower and he’s asking me if I’m playing basketball. 

“We want you to play with us.  You’re Steve Nash, the hustling white guy.” 

  There have been moments in my life when I was so stunned by a situation that words and actions totally escaped me.  I walked in on my parents having sex when I was ten or eleven.  My body froze as my mind tried to comprehend what it was that my eyes were seeing.  My initial thought was that my father was attacking my mother.  It happened so fast that my brain kind of shut down and I couldn’t get anything to come out of my mouth.  My parents didn’t have time to react either, and I was out of the room and sitting on the couch before they realized what had happened.  I sat there for a long, long time scratching my head.

     I sat motionless for at least ten full minutes, unable to move, when Leon Durham of the Chicago Cubs let a ground ball go through his legs during game five of the National League Championship Series in 1984.  In the span of five seconds, I went from thinking that the ground ball would result in an inning ending double play and bring the Cubs just one inning closer to their first World Series since 1945 to watching the Padres score the tying and go-ahead runs and knowing that the Cubs would lose.  Again.  This was two years before the more famous through-the-legs error by Bill Buckner of the Red Sox in the World Series that left the entire Red Sox nation in a state of shock. 

     In 1990, when I was in college, I received a phone call from a woman who said that she was with MTV and that I had won a contest that would send and friend and me to Denver to party with rock stars and celebrities, all expenses paid, and that I’d be leaving in just three days.  We would also appear on the network during the weekend festivities.  I had been expecting a phone call from my mother and, after listening to what this woman had to say, I had to ask her twice to repeat it  It was so far out of the norm of regular life that it took me awhile to fully accept that it was really happening. 

     On three separate occasions, the Missouri Tigers football and basketball teams gave me situations that nearly paralyzed me, rendering me unable to completely process what I had just witnessed.  In 1988, when Kirk Gibson hit his historic home run off of Dennis Eckersley to win game one of the World Series, the first words out of announcer Jack Buck’s mouth was, “I don’t believe…what I just saw!”  He was so taken aback by what had just occurred that the only thing he could follow it up with was another, “I don’t believe….what I just saw!”  The moment really happened, but no one, Buck included, could immediately accept what their eyes were telling them was true.  It was so unlikely that it was hard to believe.

     Just eight days prior, I was lying in my bed when a SWAT team full of police officers showed up on my front porch knocking on my door.  The scene was so surreal and unexpected that I simply didn’t know what to do or how to react.  The feeling, in a way, mirrored all of those other moments when my brain was overcome with too much information to process.  In the span of just a few seconds, I was playfully opening my parents closed door, thinking my favorite team was going to win a big game, answering a phone call from my mother or sleeping in my bed to not fully accepting what happened next.  My immediate reaction to all of these situations was disbelief.  This is exactly the way I felt after hearing that this man’s purpose of getting me off of the phone was to inquire whether or not I was planning on playing basketball.  I was so sure that I was in serious trouble and in for some terrible things that I had to ask him to again repeat what he had just said again.

“Excuse me?” 

“We want to know if you’re playing basketball today.  We talked about it last night and we want you to play with us again.” 

I fumbled for a bit and instinctively looked at my wrist as if there was watch on it. 

“Um, I hadn’t thought about it, but sure.  I can play ball today.  Just let me know when you’re going out.” 

“Great.  We’ll come find you.” 

     And that was it.  Just as I did after seeing my parents having sex or watching Durham let that ball go through his legs, I just sat there and went over what had just occurred in my head.  Did that really just happen?  These guys, these criminals, had an actual conversation about me and concluded that they wanted me to play basketball with them again.  Even more than when the police showed up at my front door, I was stunned.  This took the cake.  In the middle of an ongoing unthinkable situation that couldn’t get any stranger, it got stranger.  But I was relieved.  Relieved that I wasn’t being escorted to an out-of-the-way location with a crew of unhappy criminals.  After a few minutes of sitting and thinking and eventually laughing, I turned back around and called Kira, who was certainly sitting at home extremely concerned at how I had to end our conversation.  When she answered I could tell that she was near frantic.  “What happened?” she cried. “You won’t believe it,” I said, and she didn’t at first.  I had to tell the story three times before she calmed down and we both laughed about it for the remainder of the next twenty minutes.  “Well, I should go,” I said, “I guess I have to get ready to play some basketball.”  I hung up the phone and walked around for a few minutes before one of the guys came over to tell me that they were heading out to play.  As we walked out, another guy who I recognized from playing the day before walked out of his room carrying a pair of shoes and t-shirt.  “What size you wear?” he asked.  “Eleven or twelve,” I said.  “Here, try these,” he said as he handed me a pair of basketball shoes.  There was a pair of white socks tucked inside and he also gave me a t-shirt.  “Thanks,” I said as I quietly shook my head in disbelief.  If Jack Buck were announcing this scene, he surely wouldn’t have believed what he just saw.  I know that I didn’t. 

     Although I didn’t play as well as I had the day before, I felt pretty good about my effort.  We had a few more guys who wanted to play, so during each game some would have to sit out and watch.  My team won all three games, so we never had to sit.  It was fun to get out and run again.  I didn’t have any of the worries or stress that had weighed me down before we played on Friday.  I did call a few fouls this time around, although I was still very aware of where I was and who I was playing with.  These guys were still criminals who were serving time in the County Jail, so the possibility of tempers flaring and the game getting out of hand was greater than a normal pick up game at the local rec center.  At least that’s what I thought.  Although I didn’t have any real interaction with any of the guys on the court, they all continued to call me “Steve Nash.”  If I had the ball and someone was open, they’d yell out, “Steve Nash!” to get my attention.  After two of us simultaneously knocked a missed shot out of bounds, one guy kept yelling, “It went off Nash!  It went off Nash!”  I understood the reference and it made me laugh.  Steve Nash is an NBA player who is scrappy, hustles, shoots the ball well and also has long, scraggly looking hair.  He is also one of the whitest men in the league.  My whiteness and nasty hair led them to me suddenly being Steve Nash.  It felt good to not be in a constant state of worry and sitting in my cell trying to kill time until my next visitor.  It seemed like a really long time ago that I was in the City Jail.  After the game ended, we all walked back to our cells.  I was very sweaty again and asked the guy who had given me his shoes and clothes if he wanted them back right then.  “Maaaannn, shit.  You keep the shirt and socks.  I ain’t never seen a dude sweat like you.  Get me the shoes back later.”  I thanked him and headed back to try to cool down, which would certainly take an hour again.

     County Jail was as good as advertised and I was becoming a believer.  The food was significantly better, I had exponentially more freedom and the schedule was much more reasonable.  No more 5:30 a.m. breakfasts and 9:30 a.m. lunches.  During my recreation times I was nearly able to escape the dread of what was still happening with my life.  I felt like I was in a holding pattern while I waited for the DNA test to come back.  It was great to have multiple options each day to use the phone and I was surprised that I wasn’t taking more advantage.  All I wanted to do for a week was have opportunities to call people and now that it was available, I was choosing to play basketball.  It’s amazing at how your mood and priorities can dramatically change when you’re not left to your own thoughts for hour upon hour each day.  Although I never forgot where I was and what I was facing, my quality of life had shot up tenfold in less than 24 hours. 

     Chris and I still didn’t talk much, but it didn’t bother me.  He let me keep one of his towels so that I could dry off and cool down while we waited for lunch to be set up.  We had to spend a few hours in the morning and few hours in the afternoon locked in our cells.  To ease the elephant in the room, I broke a long silence by telling Chris that I was planning on finally showering when we were out again.  I wasn’t sure how long I’d gone without showering and now I had nearly four hours of basketball stink on me.  Our cell smelled worse than a locker room and I knew that it was obvious to Chris.  It was the feeling I when that doctor in college was checking my feet.  I knew it was bad and Chris knew it was bad.  Luckily I got to wear socks for the game on Saturday, but I stunk.  It was just that simple.  “Thank you,” were the only words that Chris spoke during the hour we spent in the cell before lunch.

     As I waited on the outskirts of the lunch tables for everyone to sit down, one of the guys from the basketball game asked me if I wanted to sit with him.  I felt like the new kid in school who had sat alone in the lunchroom for months and was finally being invited to a table.  I sat down with him and two other black guys.  As per my usual style, I just started a conversation.  I felt comfortable enough to try to talk with these guys.  Two of them were serving nine month sentences for robbery and the other was in for a “long time” for “something you don’t want to know about.”  I left it at that. When one of them asked me what I had done to make it D Block, I took up the rest of lunchtime laying out the events of the past week, minus the actual crimes, of course.  It was just like I was back in the City Jail.  The most common comment from anyone listening to my story was, “That’s bullshit.”  Whether it was the police taking me from my house, Jerry and potentially losing my job to anything about Laney, someone would just say, “Man, that’s bullshit.”  Also, every recount of my week induced at least one emphatic “Fuck the police.”  Early on during my stay at City, it was Ice Cube who said it, which gave me great pleasure since it was the actual Ice Cube who recorded the song of the same name with his rap group, NWA.  If nothing else, the week had been flooded with entertaining and ironic side stories that were probably only funny to me. 

     After lunch and another short stay in the cell with Chris, we were let out for our afternoon recreation.  My first order of business was to take a shower.  I hadn’t been into the shower area since my arrival, but it was mostly out of view of the guards.  I was very nervous about putting myself in a situation that was out of sight, but I was a little more comfortable after becoming Steve Nash and meeting some new “friends”.  I checked out a bar of soap and towel and spent nearly half an hour under the stream of water from the shower.  It felt great to finally get cleaned up.  There were multiple shower stalls and all were partially visible to the rest of the main room through frosted glass.  Although I was clean, I really wanted underwear and socks.  The t-shirt and socks I had worn during basketball were unusable and still damp from sweat.  I wore the dock shoes again since I didn’t want to push the use of my loaner basketball shoes.  When I brought my towel back to the control table, I found out that we could exchange our dirty clothes every three days, so I’d have to wait until Tuesday to get clean versions of the green County Jail scrubs.  I had just missed the last exchange while I was being in-processed on Friday morning. 

     I noticed that a few guys were getting haircuts inside their cells during recreation time.  We could check out electric clippers and I briefly thought about giving myself a buzz cut, which was in the plans for the spring anyway.  My hair was really becoming unmanageable, but since I was now Steve Nash, I felt that I should keep it until I got out.  The real Steve Nash didn’t get a hair cut so I wouldn’t either.  I did want to shave, though, and made a mental note to block out some time on Sunday to see how awful it would be to shave a full goatee and week’s worth of beard growth with a safety razor.  It might actually be worse than being in jail. 

     All of the phones were occupied for the better part of my afternoon outing, so I just walked slowly around the main room taking in the sites and sounds.  Any idle time took my mind back to the stress and worry about the reasons why I was in jail.  The entire week had been a battle within me to hold back the typhoon of emotion and fear.  I wanted to keep it as far in the back of my mind as possible, and “down time” always began the slow process it all leaking back to my forefront.  As I walked around and around, I felt like I was in an insane asylum and the guy who just walked and walked and walked.  It seems like every movie that takes place in a mental home has one patient who does nothing but mindlessly walk around the room.  That was me.  Maybe I was Mac McMurphy in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” and had just been through my third round of electroshock therapy.  I had my hands behind my back and must have lapped the main room twenty times, never talking to anyone and never stopping. 

     Just before we were to go back to our cells, I stopped at the control desk when I heard someone talking to the officer about the movie that was going to be shown later that night.  I was kind of excited that I’d be able to watch a movie while in jail.  I suddenly felt like I was a white collar criminal.

“Did you say that there is going to be movie tonight?” I asked the officer.  There were a few other inmates standing around the table.

“Yes.  The movie “The Last Castle” will start at eight o’ clock,” the officer said.

“The Last Castle?  With Robert Redford?”

     I had just seen that movie a few months earlier when it was in the theaters.  I love seeing movies and I love Robert Redford, so it was a no-brainer.  The premise of the movie is that Redford is a top ranking Army General who is convicted of something and sent to prison.  The warden has it out for him and Redford organizes the inmates in military style and starts a huge riot.  A prison riot.  Maybe I really was in an insane asylum.  They were going to show a movie about a prison riot to group of incarcerated prisoners. 

“You realize that the whole movie is about a prison riot, right?”  I asked. 

     Showing a movie about a prison riot to inmates is kind of like showing “The Titanic” on a cruise or “Cast Away” during a long flight.  Someone had clearly lost their mind.  

     My day started by being aggressively forced to hang up the phone in the middle of a conversation and being asked if I was planning on playing basketball, and now I’m being told that the movie of the night is about the glorification of prison violence.  The week had gone from the unimaginable to the completely ridiculous.  I was living in Bizarro World.  I’m a school teacher accused of molesting a teenager and I’m presumably without a job.  I was living with a constant knot in my stomach and had seen the darkest hours of my life crawl by me at the slowest pace imaginable.  After all of that, plus still being smack in the middle of it all, I was so happy that I was there at that moment to hear that “The Last Castle” was the movie being shown.  It was a day of pure Jack Buck moments that I simply couldn’t make up.  Even if I sat and tried to conjure the strangest and most ridiculous story of a man wrongly accused of a crime and forced to spend eight days in jail, I could never come up with the series of events that I had been witness to and a part of.  This was my life and it was happening right in front of me.  It was at this moment, standing at the control desk, that I knew that someday I would have to tell my story.  I just hoped that it had a happy ending.