Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Content Note: involuntary civil commitment, police, trauma, mental health system, domestic violence

“Books are often far more than just books.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

When the police came to handcuff me and drag me from my home on August 27, 2023 – to execute what I still believe was an invalid civil warrant for involuntary commitment – Roxane Gay was by my side.

Not literally or even figuratively. Literarly?

When good cops lie

As the two officers entered my home of 18+ years, I slid to the living room floor and forced myself to remain calm, thinking of potential ways to save myself. Running, arguing, and overt resistance would not work. So I asked questions.

My wife had told me many times that the police can legally lie to anyone. I used that to my advantage.

I asked a few test questions – could I keep my phone? my purse? could I have visitors? The officers told me what I wanted to hear, rather what they thought I wanted to hear. My preference would have been for truth, that they would look me in the eye and tell me this was more than just a 302. That they knew the truth. That educating me on what came next mattered.

Instead they lied. Cops lie without accountability so that’s not surprising although it is infuriating. Still, I did get valuable information – they might lie, but they were willing to calmly talk with me. That doesn’t make them good cops doing a bad thing. Their polite demeanor in no way offsets the harm they wrought in my life or the trauma underlying the calm exchange.

The very fact that they could have used violence or physical force, a chokehold or a taser – that it was even a possibility – underscores my point. Good people don’t want credit for not being violent in any given moment.

The fact that our mental health system sends armed militant officers to ‘help me’ when I am perceived to be vulnerable versus sending actual mental health help says everything about all the systems.

I wanted to get phone numbers written on paper in my pocket, numbers of the friends I could call for help. Numbers I hadn’t memorized. I leant into their hope I was a cooperative lady, asking politely if I could write the numbers down in case my phone died. They exchanged looks and went with it. I wasn’t allowed to use a pen as we sat on my living room couch, but I was allowed to scroll through my phone for the numbers I needed. One officer wrote them down and handed me the slip of paper.

It was from his own notepad, a small scrap just large enough for a phone number, perhaps a name and badge number.

I wasn’t being unreasonable. I was responding to their lies as if I had swallowed the darkness and was complicit in the goal to avoid a disruptive scene. To be a good girl. I carefully and quickly plotted my path, I would build on what they had literally told me in order to get my needs met. If I was allegedly keeping my cell phone, I pointed out the batter might drain so writing down some phone number was simply a backup plan.

I was so reasonable.

I asked if I could take something to read while I waited, again in case the phone – that I knew I wouldn’t keep – died. Exchanged glances again then the other officer said “I need to see the book you want to bring.”

My eyes swept the coffee table. Piles of magazines, coffee-table books, and then I saw it – The Best American Short Stories of 2018 edited by Roxane Gay. I picked it up and handed to the officer, who never disclosed the approval criteria. He handed in back and I slid it into the purse I would not actually be allowed to keep.

What would Roxane Gay think that her editorial work was deemed acceptable by two cops who knew it didn’t matter – the hospital was not going to let me have any book.  The pointless effort underscores the absurdity of the situation. They had no idea they were sending an accomplice with me because they didn’t care.

As I put my arms behind my back to be “double cuffed” dressed in pajamas and wearing rainbow bedazzled flip flops, my mind was focused on one thing – getting myself released. I was alone, but I had those phone numbers in my pocked. I had that slip of paper as a tool, I also had the presence of mind to acquire that tool.

I had Roxane Gay whom I suspected would find the entire situation atrocious. She was in judgey editorial mode, I needed a judgey ally who could clock this situation in under 30 seconds. Roxane Gay’s phone number was not accessible to me so I did the best that I could.

Parading me in handcuffs and pajamas from the stoop of our home, across the wide avenue, and into the police cruiser was a Sunday noontime event, a humiliation in front of dozens of neighbors that I could never undo. My entire role in this micro-neighborhood changed in those few minutes. I was no longer one of “us” – I was “them.”

As I was secured to the backseat of the police cruiser, my arms still painfully behind my back, I saw neighbors watching. I knew my would-be captor was nearby. Then my mouth went dry as I realized I was manacled into a car driven by two white men who were not acting with my best interests. Big thoughts of car accidents and being trapped zoomed through my mind, followed by a rising sense of panic.

Panic would not be a good look for me in this situation. The piece of paper was shifting in my pocket when I moved my leg, grounding me. Deep breaths. I got this.

So did the image of Roxane Gay, nestled in the pink and purple cat purse that one of the police officers clutched awkwardly on my behalf like an earnest son holding mom’s bag while she examines the ingredient list of each brand of soup on the shelf. Willing, reluctant, but willing. Roxane Gay would be coming with me to a scary space. When I was freed from captivity, she would be waiting. I didn’t have Roxane Gay’s phone number, but I had her spirit and those crisp printed pages she had edited.

I chose to lean into everyone’s hope that I was a nice older white woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly and certainly wouldn’t cause problems for these police officers doing their job. Every word, every glance, every movement was recorded by them to share with the hospital admission folx. They knew it. Fuck, we all knew it.

Resistance was futile, survival was optimal. Survival was resistance. This wasn’t some delusional power brag from the midst of a brash manic episode. I wasn’t the smartest person in the room. I was pulling this together on the fly and I was grounded enough to know that might not be enough.

Did they realize I knew it? I had never been involuntarily committed before, but as a social worker I was familiar with the system. I had been hospitalized by my own choice. That is how I knew about the phone and the purse and Roxane Gay. And why I got the piece of paper. I doubt they realized any of this or cared. I was just another human being they downgraded from neighbor to unwanted in fifteen minutes.

Of course, I was separated from all of those things, including Roxane Gay tucked neatly into my purse. I didn’t feign indignation because it was waste of energy and I needed to pivot to my new captors, the hospital staff.

*Use of the term “captors” is intentionally provocative and hyperbolic. It is not a metaphor.

The hospital

The slip of paper was in my pocket. After the preliminaries, I located the no-cost payphone and started making phone calls. I called friends and my therapist. All of them made calls to figure out the situation and help me with a plan. I did not trust the systems or my spouse, so I chose to trust my support network.

I had nothing, literally or literarily, but my pajamas and flip flops. UPMC gave me a bunch of warmed lightweight sheets. No pillows, no little hospital socks, no information. I was exhausted and worried deeply about my pets, a nap seemed nice. However, my captors were surely charting each move I made. They had twice lied to me that my therapist wanted me to stay just one night. I knew with certitude they were lying. I didn’t want excessive sleeping to be an issue. Pacing around was also inappropriate. I could only go to the bathroom so many times before that seemed odd.

My goal was not to outwit them, it was to make sure I was conveying accurate signals and indicators about my state of mind.

No yelling, no murmuring to myself, no fidgets, make partial eye contact, speak pleasingly. Shove every perfectly typical human reaction down to avoid giving them a reason. I planned on walking out of that ER with my purse and Roxane Gay’s book, on my own two feet. It takes a lot of commitment to your truth to manifest a lie for all those hours.

I feel that I have to keep explaining each sentence so I am not willfully or innocently misunderstood even here on my own blog. The lie was that I wasn’t angry, that I was agreeable, that I understood they were just doing their jobs. The lie was that I was cooperating when in fact quite the opposite.

It took hours, but eventually they acknowledged I did not need to be committed. They continued to pitch having ‘a little rest’ for one night like it was a guest cottage with complimentary artisanal products. I was nervous about that because I was afraid of sexual violence behind those locked doors. If you know, you know. Those captors know, but we certainly weren’t going to have THAT conversation. I told myself that they just wanted the insurance money and held firm

How much better those hours in the waiting room if I could have read a book. Not my phone. A book to escape, to remember, and to keep hope. There was nothing. No magazines, no brochures, no tracts, no paper at all. No television, no music that I remember. Just a sterile blindingly white hospital space with uncomfortable chairs filled with a cast of characters from all walks of life.

At some point, a staffer shoved a tray onto my lap and said “dinner” before moving on. I remember a sort of brownish cutlet representing meat, boiled potatoes, and not much else. I ate to reinforce that I was cooperative and because I was hungry. My tray and plastic spork were removed as quickly as they had arrived.

The room was more crowded.

Fear and anxiety coursed through the room, leaping from chair to chair as we began to shift uneasily, but collectively.

Roxane Gay beckoned to me during these terrible moments, reminding me of thousands of women in similar circumstances. I would have similar thoughts a few days later applying for a PFA, but that’s a post for another time.

Finally, I was permitted to leave, handed my purse and making my way quickly to the parking lot. Friends who knew facts I didn’t at the time were in the parking lot, ready to load me into their car, and take me to their home. I stayed for over six months in a room decorated for two young boys, right up to the fluorescent stars on the ceiling. The book sat on my bedstand. It traveled with me when I returned to my own home in March 2024. It now sits next to my computer.

Yes, I did get myself home and that wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card. So who knows what else I can do?

Being underestimated seems to be my superpower. Within 24 hours, I had connected the dots from my personal trauma to the big picture. And I was frightened. You should be frightened.

So here we are now at the three year mark.

What kinds of trauma have I layered onto my core childhood experiences? Humiliation in front of my neighbors, terror of law enforcement, the glowing embers of my sexual abuse trauma poked by the prospect of one night inpatient. I could not ride in the backseat of a car for months, then I could only ride with a driver I knew. This made rideshares a challenge so I mostly didn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t’ t start physical therapy I needed with my PFA documented injury. My startle reaction was off the chain, still is. Nightmares. Anxiety about if I could call 911. Or should.

Anxiety pinging when I hear the key in the lock. Anxiety about leaving the house, Sanctuary trauma from being dragged from my safe space in a violent, destructive, and deceitful way. Apprehension I’ll be separated from my beloved cats again so I need to spend as much time as possible with them. Fear of losing my healthcare, housing, and hope. Then there’s trying to blog, especially the memorials, whilst this all goes on.

And a constant worry that this could happen again at any time. Nothing protects us. No law, no governmental body, no sense of decency, no public outcry.

how many examples do I cite?

Three years I’ve been juggling returning to a normal life with preparing for a wholly unknown future. I’ve made strategic decisions on when and how to revisit the past and leave it there.

My “Legal and Living Expenses” crowdfund is a permanent fixture for the foreseeable future. I need to pay my lawyers, to buy things, to pay for food, medication copays and more. If we appeal the length of marriage to include domestic partnerships, that’s a lot more money. It will be considered “impact litigation” which means higher profile and more filing fees.

As of now, I have nowhere to go when the divorce decree is issued if it is a 2.5 year marriage alone. Well, I can go on a bunch of waiting lists for safety net programs. None of my friends have a spare room, in-law cottage, or garage apartment. They have couches and cots, but only for limited time periods.

I have no affiliation with Roxane Gay and she has no affiliation with me, this blog, or the crowdfund.

If you’d like to affiliate with me, here are the links.

• GoFundMe
• Venmo @Pghlesbian
• Paypal.me/Pghlesbian
• CashApp $Pghlesbian
• Zelle sitnscoop@gmail.com

And subscribe to this blog. It isn’t a book, but it might offer you some occasional solace and/or valuable information.

“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist