THE RUBBERROOM ALURE

After describing what the Rubberroom is, most people will ask, and what did you do all day? And after I tell them, nothing, you just go in and sit down and read all day, most people shrug their shoulders and say, oh, that's not so bad.

But the truth is that you are in this nether place. And you can read all day, sure, you can read the paper, all day, and scour all the sections. Shit, you can even bring in a portable DVD player and watch movies all day. But then, after the first week or so, you realize that you are not being kept in but kept out. Out of sight, out of mind, out of cognition, out of place and out of order. You are all out and you have to share this shame with other broken souls.

There are chess marathons and people will read aloud headlines to bounce them off the walls and you better hold on to your chair because many a fight has been started by taking someone's chair. There is a creepy, jail vibe. No one discloses what they have done to get there and people are all secretive about who they know and what they know. But there is also this like Laboratory of Jurisprudence going on like they do in prisons where every inmate is a counselor and every counselor is an inmate.

The whole time I was there I felt like I was being kept out of the way of proceedings; I felt like an democratic orphan because the machinations that were to spring me or keep me interred were never transparent to me; it was really like that Kafka novel where the protagonist wakes up and he is being charged against things that he doesn't understand. Almost as if his persecutors are speaking a different language.

Chau