ugh

Jury Duty today @ 9:15.

Law and Order Week Begins (The Jury Room)

I’ve decided that it will be Law and Order week on Gordonzola LJ., I haven’t done a theme week for a long time. It’s amazing what sitting around in a jury room will do to you.

The singular most noticeable thing about the Bryant Street Jury Room is that nothing is interesting, not even the people. Maybe one or two are dressed outrageously, looking to get thrown out of the jury pool as quickly as possible. But the majority of people are a typical downtown shade of drab, waiting for their "service" to be over so that they can go back to work. Most sit quietly and suffer.

As I do. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it in this space but I tend to be nervous and high strung around coercive authority and events out of my control. I have a weak stomach in general, but entering government buildings stresses me out even if I’m not the subject of interrogation or sentencing. Maybe that’s why I started hanging with the anarchists as a teen.

I always wanted to be one of those nerves-of-steel people. Instead, I’m one of those having-stomach-pains-and-going-to-the-toilet-a-lot people. Sigh. And there I was at the Hall of Justice today being oppressed by boredom, bad fashion, and institutional design. Well, I guess it was the site of my first ever arrest with my now-dead friend Rachael so there is some reason to be freaked out.

I actually walked all the way down to 850 Bryant because I figured it would relieve some of my stress. It was a good idea, until I entered the building and remembered how cold they keep it, as if to remind everyone of the cold steel bars of prison. Or something. My head sweat started congealing and I really hoped I would be there too long.

The Jury Room, which seems as though it’s been spruced up fairly recently, is still painted a dreary government building beige. It’s large, filled with festively alternating banks of orange and gray officey-looking chairs. Well, they’d look officey if office chairs were fixed in rows and couldn’t move. And they’d look more festive if they weren’t kind of dirty. There are a few tables thrown in, indirect fluorescent lighting, a thankfully dark TV area, and a rack of unused hangers (for the rainy season?). There were also a couple of small hotel room-style paintings long too faded to be able to make out from where I sat. Were they fruit still lifes? An Italian village scene? A big-eyed "Senorita"?* I just couldn’t tell. A stained and wrinkled, plastic, American flag taped to one wall reminded us why we were all there.

When I wasn’t reading my book, This Band Could Be Your Life,** I started counting the different kinds of boredom in the room. Now, not everyone was bored. Some important people were yelling at their employees and prowling the room for the best cell reception spot. It seemed like their own personal protest saying, "you can coerce me to be here, but you can’t stop my control issues." Many people were reading. A few slept.

But most people were blankly staring. I never knew that boredom had so many looks. These are the ones I counted:

The Absolutely Blank Other jurors started to think about asking for mirrors to put under the Absolutely Blank people’s noses. Just to make sure they’re still breathing

The Sneer This bored look seems to say "Ask me how I’d run things if I were in charge"

The This Hall of Justice Food Really Sucks but I Must Eat The trick here is never actually looking at the food while you eat it.

The My Neck is Going to be Fucked Up Tomorrow Cuz I’m Looking at the Ceiling To Show My Disgust Lolling side to side with no support. Ouch

The I’m Way too Important for This This usually starts in the morning as a seethe, then relaxes just a little as the bored potential juror’s stamina wears out.

The I Should Have Brought Another Book They haven’t turned the page for ten minutes.

Readers, can you name any others in your experience? This seems like the start of an important anthropological work.

There was one other look I saw on a couple of people. I will call it the I Can’t Believe I’m Here as a Juror and Not a Defendant. These people crept into the room slowly as if wary of one of those scam contest give-aways where undercover cops tell a whole bunch of wanted criminals that they need to come to some location to accept their two-week vacation in Hawaii or new washer and dryer or something, then bust them all.

After a couple of hours, and many bathroom trips, I couldn’t sustain my nervousness and it began to mellow out a little bit. Plus I had distracted myself by writing all these notes about the other jurors and learning all about Black Flag, The Minutemen, and Mission of Burma. I was finally relaxing and feeling comfortable when they called my name in the group that could have a two and a half hour lunch break and return in the early afternoon.

I went home, made lunch, watched "Extreme Dating" and worried about whether being sent away was a good or bad thing. How should I interpret this? Finally, I returned back the Hall of Justice and took off all my metal, spiky, and steel-toed accessories to get through the metal detector again. When I got up to the Jury Room, my group was excused for the year within five minutes.



*How the hell do you type a tilde over an "n"? Anyone?

**Thanks again vestalvixen! The perfect book for jury duty. Weirdly, the guy next to me was reading that Re/Search Women in Rock book. He was also wearing a pentagram and obviously hoping for the early exit.