The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Frankie, our tour manager. He was either a drug abuser or an ex-abuser, depending on who you happened to be talking to. He looked like Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe, only with big dark circles under his eyes.
    â€œThe cops are here,” he blurted in a panic. “And they’re coming to arrest you!”
    I ran upstairs and made a futile attempt to look respectable, which meant taking off my rubber underwear and putting on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. There was a commotion in the hall, and two undercover policemen burst in and yelled, “You’re under arrest in violation of the Adult Entertainment Code,” a phrase that sounded like “a tart in a tan mint coat” over the disco music the club was now blaring. They handcuffed me behind my back, escorted me out of the club and sped me to the police station. I wasn’t worried because they didn’t seem to have a grudge or any malevolent feelings toward me. They were just doing their job. But all that changed when we arrived at the police station, and I was introduced to several burly rednecks in police uniforms who looked like they wanted to do more than just their job.
    One in particular, with a thick black mustache, a stocky build and a cap that said FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF JACKSONVILLE, seemed to have it in for me. He and his cop friends made numerous ignorant jokes at my expense, and then posed with me for Polaroid photographs, probably so they could show their wives the monkey they had played with at work. It was a slow night, and I was clearly the entertainment.
    Still I had no complaints. After all, I am an entertainer. But then in walked a black colossus, possibly the biggest person I had ever seen in my life. His hands seemed to cast a shadow over my entire body and each vein bulging in his neck was probably as thick as my own neck. He shoved me into a small cell with a mysterious stainless steel contraption that was supposed to be a combination toilet, sink and drinking fountain. As I was trying to figure out which part was the toilet and which was the sink, the colossus ordered me to wash the makeup off my face. All I had was water and a paper towel, which were useless. After watching me struggle, he opened the door and boomed, “Use this,” throwing a plastic container of pink floor cleaner at me.
    With my face scrubbed raw and pink, I sat in the cell dejected and abandoned, waiting for help from the outside world. The colossus returned, slamming the door behind him. “All right,” he ordered in a drill sergeant voice that rattled the room. “You’re going to have to take off all your clothes.”
    No matter how much of an exhibitionist you are, when you stand naked before someone several times your size with the power to do anything they want to you and get away with it, you suddenly learn to appreciate rayon, cotton, polyester and all the wonderful fabrics that protect your body from direct physical contact. Slowly, thoroughly and with the constant threat of violence in his oafish, callused hands, he searched me up, down and inside.
    When he left, a quarrel broke out on the other side of my cell door. The colossus was arguing with two other officers. In my mind, I tried to work out what they were debating because I knew the outcome of their argument would determine my fate in jail. I finally decided that either someone wanted to release me on grounds of lack of evidence or someone wanted to be my new boyfriend.

    Fig. 313. T ALISMAN FOR D ELIVERANCE FROM P RISON
    The argument died down and the colossus returned and asked as curtly as possible, though I could tell he actually felt embarrassed, “Where’s the dildo?” Before I could keep my smart-ass instincts in check, I asked coquettishly, “What do you want a dildo for?” And that was when all hell broke loose.
    His face turned as red as if it had been scalded with an iron, his chest expanded like the Incredible Hulk’s, and he threw my naked, pale, trembling body against the wall. The other cop, the Baptist shit-kicker, pressed his face against mine and, puffing hot pig breath down my throat, interrogated me. We had a confrontation as long as the concert over the existence of the dildo I had supposedly committed lewd and obscene acts with. After a while, they seemed to relent, and once more started arguing amongst themselves, trying to figure out if they had made a mistake.
    When they finished, the