Chapter 11: “Bronx Detention Center (or, What Alex Doesn’t Know)” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

I published Bronx Nights in June 2025. It’s now February 2026. I left a dozen chapters unwritten “for the future.” Right now, I’m celebrating my full recovery from my two worst Long COVID symptoms: Brain Fog & Chronic Insomnia.

I’m finally at a place where I can share one of the darkest, and yet brightest, moments of my life since I moved to New York City in March 2023.

Dear Alex:

Now everyone knows about Nova. I’ve been told by readers that it’s not that simple, as far as either of us are concerned. We are both to blame. I appreciate such candor from a reader.

“Nova” was one of those ‘unfinished’ chapters that I intended to release well after formal publication of Bronx Nights.

The timing just needed to be right.

As it turns out, the timing is right now, because I’m finally my old self again. I was going to say, “from my Uber Nights days.” But that’s not true. I’m someone altogether different now.

I am fully recovered from the godawful Long COVID symptoms of Brain Fog and Chronic Insomnia that destroyed my life for six years.

Writing this book was an important part of that process. I wasn’t just able to process these past few years through Bronx Nights, but my whole life.

And, yes, A., I have a “real” mental health team. They’ve been by my side for nearly three decades. I’ve been open about this throughout the book. Question is: do you? (I mean, all of us should.)

There’s no literary undertow to this chapter. Think Dragnet: “Just the facts.” The emotional postlude will be obvious.

June 2023

Finally. I get to sleep at a decent hour. 9 p.m. After everything with Alex, the dog, this damn illness, Godzilla & the waking dreams…

To sleep, perchance to…zzz.

I am ripped out of bed in the middle of the night. Being arrested. I am confused. I resist. I am manhandled. Must be a dozen cops.

It’s okay, Arik, you’re just having a waking dream.

Waking dream? Why does it feel like my wrists are being strangled by a python? Nope, real handcuffs. And I am on my back, my shoulders are burning with pain.

I’m being driven somewhere. Where? Why? The two officers won’t reply.

I am booked at the local Bronx police precinct. Not told why. Believe me, I asked.

Just two cells in the precinct, and one has a detained female. So it’s me and…um, ten rather less than jovial black men. Just the facts.

More than one of them expresses that, upon seeing me, they would like to see me dead in the next several moments.

I didn’t take the time to ask why. But it did occur to me that it was entirely possible one or two of them had been dumped in this rancid tank under suspicion of truly violent crime.

What’s an autistic man on the brink to do? How about a little standup. Yep.

“So, what brings you here tonight? I see they’ve penned me up with a bunch of white-collar Wall Street offenders. Hey, weren’t you involved with Enron?”

I did what I could. And then an officer walked by the cage. “Holy shit.” He sprinted out of the room.

Three minutes later, an alarm sounded, and my cell was opened. Two officers grabbed me under the shoulders and removed me—probably saved my life.

I was taken to an office and handcuffed to a bench next to a restrained, crack addict homeless man.

I mean, I ignorantly assumed he was an overdosed bum, until he woke up and called aloud, “Officer, a cigarette, chips and candy!” The vagabond looked me over. “And some for my friend, too!”

Two cigarettes, several bags of Doritos and Fritos, plus a pile of lollipops, arrived. An officer even lit both our smokes.

Make a long story short. I spent the night sharing life stories with the former head of one of the biggest gangs in the nation. He explained that, once in a while, for fun, he goes on a heroin binge, then simply turns himself into the cops once it’s time to go home.

“Watch, amigo,” he puffed. “They’ll come about a half-hour before you get sent over to the detention center, let me go.” He looked toward the door again. “Officer, how about some M&Ms?!”

M&Ms arrived.

“Yo, gringo, you’re a smart dude. Maybe I can offer you a job.”

Thankfully, a bus-driving gig came along.

That was Night One. I don’t know how much I want to reveal about Nights Two & Three, spent in the Bronx Detention Center—other than to say, at one point, I put in a transfer request to Guantanamo.

And there you were, in my apartment, eating my food, drinking my wine (there were two wine glasses in the sink when I returned home), everybody having a good time (ooh, U2 lyrics there), while I was literally being tortured.

I’ve always wondered, what were you watching on my TV when they did what they did to me?

Day Three. 1 a.m.

My cellmates and I are vertically huddled. No blankets. No pillows. Well, that’s not true. I took five inedible peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and used them to buffer my head from the concrete.

My cell is comprised of myself, a middle-aged white man accused of beating his wife, a Cuban-American man in his 60s accused of something financial, along with two young adult Uruguayan cousins who seem to have partied their Gucci sneakers into detention.

Everyone is finally asleep, except me, the Chronic Insomniac. I haven’t slept a wink since officers ripped me from the sheets.

Noises. Like Jabba’s Palace being disturbed by Leia in disguise while the galaxy’s worst criminals dream of piracy and loot.

The disturbance arrives to our cell. Our hearings are scheduled for tomorrow morning. This can’t be related—

“Everyone, up!” a voice bellows. “You are hereby released.”

Our cell door is opened. We are led by a half-dozen NYPD officers out of the cellblock area, jeered by the detained jealous wanton, who still face whatever justice has in store for them.

A man in a suit approaches me. He apologizes for the injustice that has been done to me. Will I press charges against the woman who lied to the police?

Rewind.

I’ve been promising short chapters since page one of this book. Well, like I said: Just the facts.

Things had become so bad between Alex and I that I installed cameras in the apartment. It wasn’t just for her. It was for me as well. I knew how ill I was. I needed my own safeguard.

Also, I had given my apartment passkey to Natasha, the woman who helped place Nova in a new home. I had also given her the credentials for my surveillance system.

That was my one call from jail.

“Natasha, please go show the camera footage to the police. I was asleep the whole night. Whatever Alex says happened, didn’t.”

Natasha did precisely that. She saved my life that night.

Because the camera footage clearly shows me asleep in bed for hours. Alex arrives after midnight and calls the police and says she’s being presently abused by me.

The police arrive. Without questioning me, as I described above, they rip me out of bed and haul me off in cuffs.

You can see now why a man in a suit showed up to drop all charges and release me. Only, he didn’t just release me. He also released, and dropped all the charges, of the four other men in my cell.

And their families were waiting for them to take them home.

You put 2+2 together.

But here’s why I waited to save this chapter until the day I could finally tell the world, “I am no longer ill.”

Because the man in the suit told me: “Don’t worry. We’re going to arrest her for what she did.”

Alex, my love, the only reason you weren’t arrested—and you would have been easily convicted thanks to crystal clear video—is because of my reply.

“No. Please don’t. I won’t cooperate. I refuse to press charges.”

My other cellmates were taken home by family members. But not me. It was the middle of the night. I had no phone, no wallet. Hadn’t slept in three days.

I finally found my way home. I opened the door to the apartment. You weren’t here. But you had been, and you had cooked for more than one.

I sent you a text. I’m sure it surprised you. “I’m out.”

Can’t help but think of one of those Evangelical slogans from my youth: The truth shall set you free.

This time, it did.

But grace set you free. All I had to tell them was yes. And you would have endured far worse than I did, and for far longer.

But I loved you, despite all you had done to me.

I was trying to get to the other side of the Long COVID river. To find healing and recovery. I knew I could get there someday, and if I did, then people might finally understand what had happened to me.

Here we are. I’m me now. Rather, a totally new me.

I don’t regret giving you grace. There’s a reason you never went to jail and prison. I turned the other cheek.

xxx