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Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019
6:54 a.m.
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The First Time We Were Arrested

So I have a thing for construction sites. I like climbing shit, and I like being where I'm not supposed to be. This is back when we regularly would go check out, like, apartment complexes they were building, or parking garages, or expensive houses or whatever. It's pretty cool; we don't take or destroy anything, but since the walls aren't finished you can usually climb up to the roof which is fucking rad.

One day I'm driving and I see this really sweet spot. We go out to explore it, except it's later and there's a fence. Well whatever I'm not afraid of no fuckin fence. So we hop it. And we start poking around, my husband (then boyfriend) packs us a bowl, we head to the roof, and oh shit I see red and blue lights flashing against the wall.

Police.

Husband, despite this being my idea, despite these being my little brothers and my spot, immediately takes over. He says okay, everyone stay down, we're gonna head back down the stairs and back through the other exit. Me and my ginormously tall brothers hunker down and creep low so they can't see us. Except we get to the exit and there are two cop cars parked by it. Okay, husband says, there's another exit this way. So we creep back through, across the site, and fuck there's cops parked there too.

Okay, husband says, we'll try waiting 'em out. Maybe if they don't see anything they'll leave. So me and my little brothers and my future husband sit down cross-legged and wait.

Then the cops announce with a megaphone, "We know you're in there and if you don't come out on your own we'll send the canines in."

Here is where I pause and wait for the rest of the group to express their disbelief. Dogs? They really threatened to send dogs in after a group of white kids in their early twenties?

Yup, I say, but wait, it gets better.

My husband, even though this whole thing was my idea, and even though it's my little brothers with us, husband immediately says "You guys stay here while I go talk to them." We argue a minute as he tries to get me to stay and I insist I'm coming too. Husband shouts back "We're coming" and we walk out of the construction site.

When we clear the walls, we see they have us surrounded, all with large intimidating rifles pointed at us. There are at least 12 cops. This is not an exaggeration, and we find out later that this suburb literally sent their entire force out after us, save the 3 or so people back at the booking station.

Head cop starts screaming at us, despite our compliance. Husband screams back, asks him for his name, his badge number. I, through my tears, try to shush him. "Baby it's the cops, just do what they say, it's not worth getting shot over."

"No," he says, "I want the name and badge number of the asshole who's aiming guns at me even though I'm following his fucking orders."

We never get his name and badge number. But we do get handcuffed, and driven in separate police cars to the station, and booked. They put my littlest brother, the minor, in a set of chairs in the middle of the room between the cells. They put me in the cell for ladies, and my husband and older little brother in the cell for men. I can see husband and brothers through the clear windows of my cell.

I watch husband chat with brother and put him at ease. I watch little little brother watch some TV, and then get released. Later we learn they let him go because he was a minor, and technically under the influence of the legal adults around him. My husband stays near the window so he can make silly faces at me and put me at ease.

An hour or two later they let us go. I turn on my fliphone and call my parents for a ride with the last 3% I can squeeze out of it. Dad is upset but not furious. He finds our group shuffling along on a main road of the suburb just past 3am, and pulls over so we can get in.

And my husband. My amazing, brave, brilliant husband, who has already taken over as leader in a tense situation, who has screamed at the cops and socialized with my nervous brother and kept me calm from across the fucking building, my incredibly husband who I have only dated 6 months at this point, my husband who has never met my father because we have only dated 6 months, my husband opens the car door. And he extends his hand towards my father. And he says "Pleased to meet you, unfortunate it had to happen like this."

And my father laughs. And takes his hand, and gives him a firm, cheerful handshake. "I was thinking the same thing," he said.

That's my husband.

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