I return to the bar where my, I say, my – not truthfully, but in my mind – my prostitute had been waiting but she wasn’t there. I was triumphant and alone, and I drank two more drinks. I started noticing that every girl in that bar had at least four big guys around her, but I couldn’t keep myself from staring and feeling like I was getting in trouble. Then I saw a gas mask on a shelf on the wall and I thought to myself, “Nobody, nobody, not one person, is going to escape a gas attack. Not one person. Why? Because they’re privileged, because they’re strong enough to take it from everybody else.”

So I rip it down, my shoes and my bag are completely ready and I run. I don’t even take it; I just rip it down and throw it on the floor and I run out of the bar. I’m running in my bare feet, down the streets of Manhattan, down Eighth Avenue, and the bartender is chasing me, which I didn’t expect. And I turn on an avenue. I hear the footsteps approaching closer. I turn around and it’s a cop. The cop grabs me and wrenches my arm, wrenches my arm up behind me. I’m screaming now, of course, because I’m in pain, and I hurt, and when I scream my voice echoes off the wall and bounces from the buildings. It is very loud. I’m screaming, “You are in complete control, there’s no reason to hurt me.”

There is a cop on each of my bare feet – one cop holding my arm wrenched up behind my back while my face is pressed against the back of a squad car. I start to realize the helplessness of my situation. I look into the crowd of cops – now there’s 20 cops; It started with two. My face was against the back of a squad car, and I was staring at this huge fat cop like a stereotypical pig, little beady eyes and a huge fat unused body. So, my face is pressed against the squad car, and I start licking the dirt off of the back of it. I’m staring into his face. I’m thinking, “What these guys really want is my supplication. What these guys really want is my humiliation and my degradation.”

I was standing up and they try to press me back down onto the cop car, but I refuse. I have knowledge at this point that the cop’s spatial pressure on my body cannot force me down; there are not enough cop hands to make me bow if I don’t wish to. An ambulance pulled up, right? I get in. They strap me in, still handcuffed behind my waist. I’m yelling at the cop who’s with me, and there’s this, uh, girl cop whose bending to get out of the ambulance. You have to duck your head, and I fucking sweep my feet out, slip kind of under my belt, and kick her right between the legs. I can’t even say ‘ass shot’, because it was right between the legs and not even that hard. I got thudded over the head by a cop. Just for the record, I have no record.

Then, I’m in the ambulance, I’m trading cops with insults, I mean I’m trading insults with cops, all the way to Bellevue. They take me out. I’m able to wiggle around in my handcuffs. I take my hands and I lower them below my feet and I step over them so they’re in front of me. The cops are a bit stupefied at first and then they accept it. After they’ve tied me to a gurney, they just let me go. I’m at the Bellevue emergency psychiatric ward. I talk to a psychiatrist, assure her that I love my parents and that tonight really just kind of, you know, got out of hand.

And that’s that. I got my own room. I told the people behind the glass that I was hungry. They gave me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich along with a half pint of chocolate milk, which I get to eat in my own room. I wake up and some people are taking my blood. I fell asleep again. I had French toast with a very pretty girl, who was also in the emergency psychiatric ward, and I had an interview with a psychiatrist who told me that I should take a good look around and see if I wanted to come back here. By the time I went back to take a look around, the pretty girl I’d been talking to was doped up on her meds and already asleep. They had called my work and told them that I was in the emergency room. They did not tell them that I was in the psychiatric emergency room, and they did not tell them that the police had taken me there, for which I’m eternally grateful.

So I left the Bellevue Emergency Psychiatric Ward. I picked up my wallet again. I bought a Payday on my way to the subway. The sun was shining and the world was beautiful. I felt great. I had the day off, and the next day I went to work and told them that I was mugged.

You can hear Jeff Dickinson's complete interview and other 86'd stories at Jennifer Blowdryer's website.

Related Stories from The Fanzine:

Talk Show 24: First Apartments with Joshua Ferris and others

Talk Show 26: Favorite Albums with Dennis Lehane, Aimee Bender and Dana Spiotta

Talk Show 1: First Rock Concert with Rick Moody, Pagan Kennedy and Elizabeth Searle