Little Troy was H.I.V positive and he was indeed little.  If Troy hadn’t been H.I.V positive there’s a strong chance one of the predators on the unit would have turned him out within a week of his arrival to the joint.  News of other cons with diseases spread like wildfire in lockup, however, and most men made it a point to avoid Lil’ Troy as much as was possible. Don’t shower with him, don’t use the shitter with him. Don’t play cards with him too much and certainly don’t eat at the same table as him.
One thriving myth that so many white convicts feel inclined to perpetuate is that most Mexicans have scabies and most African American men have the bug. This led to all sorts of hijinks behind bars and helped maintain an atmosphere of racist fear regarding disease in general. While some men and their sexual partners tried responsible sex and used condoms and received testing for STDs, many did not. It was joked that you are either odd or even in prison; Odd meaning you don’t have TB and even meaning you do.
Lil’ Troy was quite open about not only his infectious disease but also about his sexuality. Strike two for a convict. This prompted attempts at humor from some of the other guys, as they lay on their plastic mattresses and stained state-owned sheets on their bunks at night after final count.
“Howsabout you put a plastic bag over your hand there, Lil’ T and jack a fella off?  Just don’t drool on my shit!”
Roaring laughter from all.

Troy was under five and a half feet, frail by any means and appeared (even when I first saw him) horribly depressed. There’s not much I could determine, considering the distance I kept from him, about the particulars regarding Troy’s physical state of well-being other than the fact that he slept even longer hours and ate less than most of the rest of us. Compared to most of the other convicts, who could sleep days at a time away, Troy simply slept a fuck of a lot.  Most of his time was spent either watching television or playing solitaire in his well-developed and somber silence.
There’s no doubt that Lil’ Troy was ridiculed on a constant basis, not simply because of his disease, but combined into a rotten potpourri of racism, homophobia, and masculinity. The razzing often came from other Blacks, but in the end nearly everyone of every race gave him a  hit at one point or another. Troy was at the very bottom of the prison pecking order and this fact laid bare the utter and absolute terror regarding the infected blood that flowed, however lazily, through Troy’s veins.
He appeared to take most of the attacking in stride at first, joking back and laughing at the masculine overtures masked as prison humor.
“If I catch that shit up in here I’m gonna run right up in them insides, hear me Troy?”
Laughter from Troy in that giggly, twelve-year old way he did so well as a weak defense.
Now, to my knowledge, no one caught H.I.V. from Troy during his stay on this particular unit. In fact, I never actually heard of anyone contracting the H.I.V virus from another convict during the time I burned incarcerated. Of course, I certainly didn’t hear everything, not everyone was tested (one must request such a service), and I’d guess that if some guys did in fact contract the disease they would be reluctant to reveal such a revelation to others out of fear of being ostracized.
I was aware of more H.I.V. positive men, but most of them resigned to some long-term care unit in the any given facility. When I learned that Troy had H.I.V. I spoke with several of my road dogs and we all nervously agreed that we should fly kites and request tests ourselves. While fear was the driving factor for this decision, and I knew it even then, I thought that, considering how unlikely it would be for some of the jack-offs we lived with to reveal to the rest of us* that they were H.I.V. positive, it was simply a good idea.
Two days after I’d flown a kite to the medical office I received a call-out date for my test. Two days away, to be conducted by Dr. Bristol. I’d only found my way to prison med-call twice before in this institution ; the first time for a broken nose and the second for this fucking rash -that fucking rash- that just wouldn’t quit. Both times I’d been graciously attended to by Bristol, and both times I had to chuckle to myself at the seemingly befuddled, almost bumbling ways in which he tried to relate to me.
Dr. Bristol was elderly gentleman, short and frail with a Santa Claus beard that popped out of his face in stiff and tight curls of whitish wool. He muttered and puttered and was general a comforting presence among so many stoic and angry faces occupying the countless institutional positions of ordained authority.
When I went to the med-unit two days later, Bristol was gracious and supportive of my decision to receive the test. He advised me that no matter what the result I should be tested again in six months.
An infuriatingly anxious and nervous week went by until I at last received a kite telling me to report to med-call the next day so that I could see the results of my test. During the course of that week in waiting, I watched my road dogs go to and from their own test-result call-outs. They always left the unit white as sheets and they all returned with a spring in their step and relief on their worn faces.
I didn’t complain to them, though. Every time one of them returned to the unit they tossed tailor-made smokes out to all the road dogs.
As in prison, and so on, i just waited, as I’d learned to do so well.

***

*See ‘Ratfink’**.

**Forthcoming.

*****

To Be Continued…

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The feeling of success that washed over me when I at last worked my tray slot open was a greater feeling of accomplishment than I had experienced in some time. Knowing I was breaking the rules and potentially looking at even more time in the hole was almost insignificant compared to the fact that I had set my spinning mind to something difficult and actually gone through with it.
These feelings were short-lived for me and it wasn’t long before I regretted my actions with every fiber of my being. I realized it was too late to undo it all and the chances of fishing the tobacco to my cell and then successfully closing the tray slot were slim indeed. Then there was the chance of a snitch calling for a Bull in the midst of it all or a Bull deciding to do a random tier-check and catching me with my proverbial fly down.
That cold and slimy bile-sweat I was so familiar with popped out over my body again and I thought I might be forced to go round two with my stainless steel toilet/sink combo. Quickly and clumsily I fashioned my fishing line and tied it to my black unbreakable state-issue comb. I stuck my hand out the tray-slot and flung it hard to the right. It tick-ticked on the cement floor and I saw several other convict faces appear at their doors, framed like tiny pictures in the plexi-windows. It took me several attempts of throwing the line out the at last land it perhaps three cells down, just two cells to the left of my road-dog. I watched sideways through my tray-slot as his fishing line shot out from places I couldn’t see and continuously fell short of the target. An awful chain of uncontrollable giggles overtook me as I watched this. I would wait, breath held, for him to reel in and toss again and as soon as his comb hit the floor I would lose my breath to the laughter. I held my nose so as not to attract the C.O. but once a loud snort escaped my fingers and from then on I reminded myself to be angry and the funny went away as quickly as it had come.
His throws failed to catch many time before at last his stretchy underwear string caught on the teeth of my comb. I fed my line out to him as I felt him pull and waited an eternal moment for him to attach the booty before I gently pulled back to see if he had released the line. By the time I reeled my comb-plus-package back to my cell and through the slot my heart was pounding with such force I could feel and hear it in my ears. Every noise that echoed down the tier spoke to my impending doom and I pictured myself being caught a thousand times in those few moments that crawled by.
I was not ignorant of the technique used to smuggle contraband into ad-seg, and it was therefore no surprise that the tiny bit of tobacco, rolling paper and match/striker reeked vaguely of shit. Considering it resided up the other mans ass for at least an hour wrapped in nothing but a plastic bag and some tape I half expected it to be too moist to ignite.
The pin-sized shit-smell cigarette gave me a marvelous buzz and I swooned against the filthy wall for a minute or so. I could hear the convict in the next cell begging angrily for a drag -just one drag- off the cig he could obviously smell but not see burning. And then the smoke was gone and I faced the task of finding a way to re-lock my tray-slot. This time I’d need to do it almost the opposite way that I’d opened it. Snake the line and loop out the top of the door, catching the loop on the latch, dropping the line to the floor then retrieving it through the crack underneath, and finally working the small slide-bolt mechanism to the right and down.
I went to work immediately and was able to quickly catch the loop on the knob. No sooner than I congratulated myself as a sure-shot I heard the clappity-clap of footsteps approaching the tier. I pulled the string hard enough to break it from the latch, pulled it in, and hid all my contraband beneath my green plastic mattress. I pulled off my orange jumpsuit and lay on my bunk feigning sleep. Begged god to make the Bull not notice that my tray-slot was still unlocked. each step the took down the hallway in the direction of my cell felt like a blow to my skull. Adrenaline pumped into me and head burned. The thirty seconds it took the C.O. to walk past my cell felt like hours.
Clappity-clap. Clappity-clap.
The sound of his boots moving so rhythmically past was hypnotic and I suddenly felt very tired. I lay in the bunk long after he had finished his stroll and stared at the door, positive he must have seen that it was unlocked. I imagined a multitude of outcomes in those moments; Would I pretend I was asleep and deny all knowledge? Would I tell the guard the truth? Would I tell him ‘Fuck yes I opened the slot and if I could squeeze through those four or five inches I’d fucking strangle your punk ass!’?
I was fast asleep thereafter; post-adrenaline-rush-crash.

*****

The Bulls found my tray-slot open the next morning and I awoke to the familiar sight of a pink infraction slip of of them slid under my cell door. Although I lied particularly well during the hearing, the hearings-officer found me guilty of the catch-all infraction “Threat to the safety and security of the institution”, fined me twenty-bucks (more than I’d made in the year and a half I’d been locked up) and slapped me with another week in the hole.
My road dog was out of tobacco, much to my displeasure, and that extra week in segregation would add that pretty pink bow to the nicely packaged downward spiral of mine.
“At least,” I thought as I lay on my bunk. “I can see the bottom.”

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A Road Dog of mine smuggled a few pin-sized cigarettes’ worth of tobacco (up his ass) into the hole with him. After a brief toilet-talk with him, he told me he would kick a bit of it my way, along with a rolling paper and a split match with striker. The problem we faced was getting the stuff from his cell, which was almost at the other end of the tier, to mine. I was locked down, unable to leave my cell other than for a shower twice a week due to several infractions I’d accumulated over the past several months. Even then, I was shackled from behind, on a leash and constantly monitored by a bull, so the chances of my buddy passing me anything were slim to none. We decided that afternoon to wait until that night, when the lights were out and count was done, to go fishing.
Fishing, as it relates to the incarcerated, is the art and science of using some form of string with a weight on one end, then (in this particular setting) working open the food tray slot on the door, and tossing the line down the tier so that the other convict can attach the contraband to the line and then the fisher can reel the line back in. In this case, because the distance was so great between our cells, I had to pull nearly all the elastic band out of my state issued underwear, tie them end to end, and attach my little black state-issued comb to the end so I would have enough weight to actually toss it any distance at all. My buddy did the same and our plan was for him to catch my comb with his fishing line, pull my comb towards him, attach the goods, and then let me know when to reel it back in. It had certainly been done before, with as much success as failure. It was risky business, and between the possibility of a guard doing a random walk down the tier and discovering us or a snitch yelling to the guards in the middle of our exploits, I figured we had a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding.
My heart pounded in my chest with such force I thought I could hear it in my ears and a clammy sweat popped out all over my body. It seemed that every shuffle of my feet, every breath I took, was so loud it would summon the bulls at any moment.
To start, I had to unlatch the small lock-bolt from the tray-slot on my cell door from the inside. No easy task and this maneuver took patience and accuracy. I took lengths of elastic from my tighty whiteys and made a five foot piece of line, finally making an inch sized loop on one end. Then I worked the string through the tiny gap above the door itself and lowered it down the center of the door until the loop hung just in front of the small metal latch that secured the tray slot. The latch was the type that in order to open it one would need to flip the small knob up and then slide it open to the right. Using my cells plexi-window to gauge where the string was I began the laborious task of swinging it slowly against the latch, hoping to eventually catch the latch-knob with the loop.
Another prisoner in the cell across the tier from me was immediately willing to help and gave me enthusiastic nods and shakes of the head when I came close or missed horribly. I could only see a cell-door plexi-window worth of his face, and though it appeared that he was making the dramatic hand gestures of a convict long versed in the art of fishing, I couldn’t see his arms (let alone his hands) to see what, if any, tricks or tips he might be trying to prevail to me. His voice was but a muffled hum through the thick steel doors. Soon, his excitement wanned and when I looked up again for moral support he had moved away from his window and vanished into the dark and cold of his own cell to do whatever it is men in the hole do alone.
I struggled for almost an hour until I finally caught the latch. I would have tried all night if that’s what it took and a wave of disbelief hit me when I felt the resistance, and because I couldn’t see the latch proper from my position behind the door I had to hope I’d snagged the right piece of the lock. Slowly and careful not to break the line, I tugged and jerked at the latch. At first I feared that it was not going to give but before long I felt it move slightly up. In another ten minutes, I figured I had the bolt vertical enough to slid it from its hole. It felt like an eternity and at one point I had to pause and spray a nervous shit in my stainless steel toilet/sink. I feared flushing would draw the attention of the bulls so I decided to sit in my own stink at least until I had the lock completely free. If a guard were to walk by I’d take my chances that he might not notice the opened lock.

*****

To Be Continued…

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My acting career began one cold morning in solitary when the prisoner in the cell next to me *suggested that I try and act out my favorite films in front on my suicide-proof steel mirror to help pass time and keep my mind working in a positive and creative way.
“Try something you’ve seen a few times first, brother.” His voice echoed through the filthy pipes at me. “You’d be surprised how much you can remember.”
He was absolutely right and I was able to go through ‘Star Wars’ with particular (I thought at the time) accuracy. At first I was hesitant, my character voices sounding similar and my body language restricted and uncomfortable. But as I grew more confident my imitations flowered into over-animated near-perfection.
“…You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…”
I stood on my toilet seat and looked out over Mos-Eisley.
“…Darth Vader, I should have known. Only you could be so bold…”
My Princess Leia voice had much room for improvement but my Chewbacca howl got better with every try. I discovered that it’s all at the back of the throat. I ran through the entire movie with relish, jumping around my cell during action sequences and using the mirror to perfect some of the more pronounced facial expressions I could remember (think Bens reaction to Solo telling him he made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs). I planned to reenact ‘Blade Runner’ that evening after chow.
When the first movie was over I masturbated furiously and cried myself to sleep and I dreamed I was in a ‘Star Trek’ episode and was running around the Enterprise like a madman looking for my phaser that I’d misplaced, terrified Captain Kirk would be
angry at me for losing my weapon.
“CHOWTIMECHOWTIMECHOWTIME!”
I woke with the typical ‘Oh-shit-I’m-In-Prison’ start and moved slowly to my cell door to wait for the small metal plate to slide open and my food tray to appear. I could tell by the squeal of the food cart wheels just how many cells it was away from me. The sweet smell of Apple Crisp reached me and that meant beef-mac was on the menu. They always went together. The food was, as usual, lukewarm and unsatisfying. Mushy corn and two pieces of brown pear, also mushy. I ate it all with quick prisoner intensity and moved my apple crisp onto a bit of toilet paper I’d set aside so I’d have a bite to eat before bed. After my next film. I was sure Rutger Heuer and Harrison Ford would help me work up an appetite.

*****
Several days later I started making my own movies. Movies about prison escape, revolution, and science fiction that put me in the lead role of protector of the earth from a violent alien race. On several occasions I caught guards watching me through the small plexi-window on my cell door with a sort of dumbfounded awe. I paid them no mind and simply stopped, staring at myself in the mirror, and waited for them to move on to the next crazy fuck down the tier.
I at last ended up, much to my chagrin, in the same place I always did doing time in seg. Bored. I lost much of my interest in film-making and found myself acting out the same sequences over and over and over, then reverting to self-abuse of some sort, either self-inflicted or by giving bad lip to the guards or throwing my food onto the tier in anger or maybe worst of all telling Officer K. how much I’d like to hypothetically rip his head off and fuck it while simultaneously punching his dead body in the stomach until his innards burst out his colon. This incident, followed by several other nasty bits, enlarged the head of my shovel therefore helping me dig my hole so deep I at last could not see out. Hence the ‘Not-Caring’ bit which in turn projected me towards a series of misfortunes that kept me confined in that hole for longer than I would have preferred.

*****
To Be Continued…

*****

*A common form of communication in ad-seg was talking through the toilets. All the units had interconnecting pipes so it was easier to talk back and forth by kneeling down and talking into the stainless steel pisser than it was to yell out your door, a practice which sometimes drew the unwanted attention of the jigs.

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I’d been in segregation for over two months when I finally came to the conclusion that I would either have to compartmentalize my feelings or just go plain nuts. I’d been in the hole before (several times in fact) so the experience wasn’t exactly a new one. In the past, however, my stays had been brief; Three days, a week, two weeks. When the time is so short, as in those earlier instances, it was fairly easy to maintain some semblance of control over myself as I could see the end of the proverbial tunnel. In this case however, I’d not only committed an offense that could have earned me more time in prison, but had pissed off several staff members as well. Without directly implicating any particular guard of setting me up for failure so that I would earn even more time in the hole on top of the month I was originally sentenced to, I will say that it appeared that all eyes were on me at the time and every opportunity to hit me with various institutional infractions was taken, with apparent vivaciousness. How my one month sentence to ad-seg turned into over three months is to this day a matter of great and strange particulars and pondering on my part.
In retrospect, I suppose it was fruitless to voice multiple complaints to the day shift Lt. on duty at the time. I told him about the horrendous state of my cell, with its ever-present grime and dried snot on the walls. The gelatinous like piss that lay siege to my combination toilet sink. And that shit, hard as dried mud, encrusted every crevasse of said toilet/sink. As if the last occupant smeared and squished it into every possible nook and cranny. The stench was sometimes overbearing when the cell warmed up during the afternoon and when I asked for proper materials to clean it up, the C.O snorted derisively:
“So you found a friend in here already, huh?” he giggled at his own wit and walked away.
I can only hope now that the people I wronged on the streets might have some satisfaction in the fact that I experienced this particular detail. What else can I offer them now but this?

I was sure I’d catch disease and worried about it incessantly, once reaching a level of paranoia that left me sobbing on my bunk in the corner. I saved bits of napkin and what little toilet paper I could spare and over time was able to make stiff probing devices (using toothpaste as glue) so that I could scrape the old shit out of the cracks on the knobs of the sink and the flush button on the toilet. I pride myself on the fact that I didn’t puke at this task and after some days was pleased with my handiwork. I cleaned out all the poop I could find. My pleasure was short lived, unfortunately, as the bulls soon found my cleaning tools during a routine shakedown. They were more than unhappy at my attempts to clean my house in an unauthorized manner. I overheard one guard imply that I was a sick freak trying to scrape the shit out so that I could eat it. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or simply making light of the whole ordeal. Either way, the fact that my deeds were discovered left me even more embarrassed and perturbed and frustrated. I woke up the next morning to a disciplinary slip. My cleaning tools were indeed contraband and I would attend a hearing in two days to determine if my stay in segregation would be extended. Two nervous days later I was found guilty of possessing contraband and sentenced to three more days in the hole. I accepted my punishment without protest but the heat in my gut was almost unbearable. I’d been angry before but then I was scared angry. Now I was just angry angry. I desperately wanted to argue my fate and contest what I considered unfair treatment, but instead learned how to punch the whitewashed concrete walls of my cell. Exhausted, I fell into and disturbed and nightmarish nap that lasted until dinner was announced in that screeching wail over the intercom: “CHOWTIMECHOWTIMECHOWTIME”.
My left hand was so swollen from hitting the wall I could barely make a fist. My fingers looked like small red sausages and my knuckles were so white I could see purply veins beneath and feel them pulsing. This physical manifestation intrigued me to no end and it wasn’t long before I found new ways to abuse my body as a method of self-medication. This, along with my brief yet successful acting career, got me though my three-plus months in seg. Nothing compared to some fellas I knew who spent years alone in a cell, these ninety and some days took something out of me I can’t begin to describe. It replaced this missing piece with something else. Something much more primitive and something much more natural, perhaps. I learned how to not care. Everything I had done in life; My crimes my anger my fighting my love my fear my intolerance my joy. It all led to these days. It all gave me the ability to process the immediate situation with a sort of clarity that only a person in solitary confinement might achieve, maybe. I call it the ‘Not-Caring’.

*****

To be continued…

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When another convict stole my tennis shoes one day while I was out at yard, I decided I needed to become more fully versed in the concepts of stealing as it related to my fellow prisoners. At this point, I had sworn off the idea of taking other peoples things as counter-productive, in the sense that doing so had landed me in a stinking and soul-rotting cell for several years. This thought, typically, should be enough to deter even the most pathetic and desperate of souls who took other people stuff and pretended, however futilely, that it was their own. I was quick and soon to realize, however, that taking peoples shit was an art I had merely dabbled in on the streets. Its roots ran deep and wide, strong and thick, into the depths of our culture. So deep, that we had inadvertently created a culture of stealing within stealing. We now witnessed the formation of a union of sorts among those who took stuff from others, with histories reaching back to all of our old-countries. This phenomenon had honed itself to such to an edge that only the most desperate would risk running it over their stubbly and unshaven throats. For sure, this union is sharp. And Powerful. And completely and utterly preposterous.

Here’s what I came up with, over a period of time, regarding the rules of thievery :

• Rule Number One: Don’t steal from your celly or road dogs.
• Rule Number Two: Don’t steal from your own race unless it meets the criteria of Rule Number Six.
• Rule Number Three: Don’t steal from punks if they pay out to another convict for protection.
• Rule Number Five: Don’t steal from a convict you think can kick your ass.
• Rule Number Six: Steal from rapists, child molesters, anyone who says they are a *bank robber, weak suckers who you could just take from, or fools who would just give shit to you if you simply asked.

Oh, and don’t forget

• Rule Number Four: Don’t ever admit to stealing. If another fella accuses you of stealing, deny it until you think he’s on to you. Then just say : “YEAH MUTHAFUCKA I TOOK YOUR SHIT, PUNK! WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT!?! HUH? WHAT!” Then attack him and don’t stop until the bulls pull you off. When you get out of the hole you’ll be moved to a new unit and you can start stealing again.

These rules subject to reinterpretation/reevaluation in the future, at any time, and with prejudice.

While we understand that these are simply a few guidelines to enhance our understanding of a somewhat obscure science, we should understand that they lay groundwork – a framework, if you will – for the foundations of discussion, dissection and critical observance of the concept we hold in such regard and so doublethinkingly named ‘Thieves Honor’. It should also be noted that manipulation of these guidelines are common, prevalent, and oft perverted to suit the needs of those engaged in the act of thieves tasks.
Unofficially, it might be generally accepted to nick something from a new fish, like the batteries from his radio, or the headphones for his radio if they are better than yours, or just the fucking radio itself. This is frowned upon by some of the more fundamentalist Takers, as it can serve to undermine solidarity among the Stealer Elite. And who knows what connections the fish might have? Taking their shit now might adversely affect future dealings or arrangements. To clarify : if a fish enters the unit and is a **freak, it is accepted that any convict on the appropriate level of the heirarchy may indeed begin to exploit and steal from them. This rule applies as well to child molesters, rats, punks, ***gays, and racial outcasts.

*****

*Bank robbers go to federal prison and therefore whoever tells you they are locked up in state for robbin banks is a liar and therefore most likely a rapist, child molester or cannibal.

**A freak might be defined as anyone who fails to meet the criteria predetermined by prison culture in general. This definition assumes the right to change at any time depending on the immediate situation presented to a convict. For example, if a convict finds an opportunity to hussle a carton of smokes out of a rapist every week through manipulation, intimidation, etc., they might ignore the fact that rapists are normally considered the enemy and actually make life easier for said rapist for as long as the cigarettes flow.

***While there may be some confusion regarding the use of gay and punk (see: ****’Are punks gay?’) , it should be clear that the distinction is particularly vital to our understanding of who it’s acceptable to steal from and who it’s not.

****Forthcoming.

*****

To be continued…

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…Continued from Convict Mythology 1.

After I made one of the biggest mistakes* of my time in prison, I decided to minimize close relationships with most convicts I came across, which is, I suppose, a good idea, generally speaking.

******

* I was on a dorm unit for a bit during my second year of imprisonment and that’s where I met Mike. Mike the Satanist had long brown hair that hung straight to the middle of his back and tattoos of demons and pentagrams and tits. He introduced himself by presenting me with a satanic meditation worksheet. Seeing as this fell directly in the midst of my ‘Religion as Salvation’ phase, I was intrigued.
“Take the elevator down and give recognition the Bephomat, guardian of the fifth level.” The paper told me. “Meditate on the unholy alliances and realize the authority of the Disenfranchised.” It sounded like a page ripped from a Dungeons and Dragons rulebook.
Mike took short, audible rips off a cigarette and moved his weight from foot to foot as he talked to me. His shoulders dipped forward and his goateed chin jutted out. “Try meditating to that shit, brother.” He muttered to me before taking another quick, almost viscous drag off the smoke. “That’ll take you to a place outside of here.”
I was skeptical but tried it that night. The next morning he ignored me but later that evening he approached my bunk area and offered me a had-rolled smoke.
“How’d that meditation shit treat ya?” I was taken aback by him genuine inquiry.
“Well,” I swallowed and held the papers out for him to take. “I think I felt something…” I pondered. “Yeah, it was weird…”
Mike grinned and lit a smoke. “Keep it.” He gestured to the pages I was holding out. “Just make me a copy up in the library, cool?” It doesn’t make much sense to offer something to anyone in prison without asking for something in return.
So it was a deal. I made him a copy of the meditation the next day and that was when he offered me a pack of smokes to copy some other things he’d drawn. Mike liked to draw women with huge breast sitting on thrones with dragons snaking around them. It was actually good drawing, content aside.
“Gonna send these to this biddy I got hooked up with. Writing her for a month now, brother.” He walked back to his bunk area, picked up a picture off his bunk and handed it to me. It was a picture of an extremely obese woman who was posing in lingerie on a rug.
“Don’t say nothin’ bout this though, cool? She’s been hooking a brother up, hear me?”
I didn’t mention it to any of the other convicts.
Over the next few weeks Mike and I made great strides in our prison friendship. We ate together; watched movies in the day room together; played cards together; shit together; worked out together; told ridiculous war-stories together. Apparently, Mike was in the joint for robbing a gas station and then having a high-speed chase and then a shootout with the state-police. He was in for thirteen years and this was a third of the way in already. He was in his mid-twenties.
Then mike told me he was getting married. All he needed to do was find a way to get transferred to another institution in the state that allowed folks to tie the knot, then he could marry the woman from the picture.
“She put two-hundred bucks on my books last week, brother.” Mike told me in a hush one evening. “She’ll do anything for me, know what I’m sayin’?” He grinned and flipped through a series of photographs in which his future wife was laying about her house in various forms of sexy dress.
I asked if she had a sister and Mike laughed so hard he cried. But I was serious.
Later that night, just before count time, Mike told me to keep the marriage thing between him and me and I did.
Well, for a few days I did.

Mike went to the hole several days later. It was a minor infraction (like hanging his socks on his bunk to dry overnight or using his coat as pillow) and he only spent two nights in that solitary hell. I wrote him a letter while he was down. I had my buddy Greg use his tiny, almost incomprehensible handwriting fill in the return address on the envelope and I wrote the destination address myself. Then we used another buddy’s institutional stamp (he had liberated one from the mailroom) to stamp the letter “Return To Sender”. This pretty much guaranteed that the officer on duty in seg wouldn’t sift though its contents. The key is to fill in both the ‘to’ and ‘from’ lines on the envelope with the same destination. Only seal the envelope slightly, so it almost hangs open, and fill it with one sheet of paper, written on both sided. Then take a hand-rolled smoke, tear off a small bit of match-striker, tear a match in two and tape the three items together and fold them up in the single sheet of paper. This gives the appearance that the envelope has been rejected and already been searched. It looks like the letter is simply catching up with the convict to wherever he has been moved. The mail room generally just looked at the ‘Return to Sender’ stamp, assumed a mistake had been made and moved it through the system and back to the guy who sent it out in the first place. If not, it just vanished and went into some contraband locked, the contents of which might be used to frame up other poor saps who rubbed some C.O. wrong.
The day after Mike was released from the hole I saw him on the yard.
“Thanks for the smoke, brother.” He tucked a pack of cigarettes into my coat pocket as payment.
“I’m on the lookout, bro.” I said, glad he had received the cigarette.
The next day Mikes other friend John moved up to my unit and took Mikes old bunk. I’d met John several times previously, and was glad to see him move in. I engaged him in conversation immediately and I though I sensed some bad vibes from him, I continued to try and use Mike and our friendship and a bridge.
“Damn, John,” I told him one evening just before lights out, “How bout that shit with Mike, huh?”
John was about ten years older than me, a heavy weight and a gladiator. I saw the way he eyes punks and kids on the unit and it always unsettled me, simply because he was such a massive dude. His arms were the size of basketballs and his neck like a tree-stump. The thought that he might take it in his head some day to go after some kid on the unit freaked me out, even though I thought I had little to fear from him myself.
“What shit you talking bout?” John jumped up from a set of thirty push ups like it was nothing and swung his arms in little circles in front of him.
Before I said anything, I knew I should just shut my mouth. I knew that rule of prison culture: Do not talk about other convicts. Period. Oops.
“You know”, I thought he must already know as Mike and John were pretty fast partners. Maybe I thought he didn’t know and was glad I had a bit of something to share with him about his road-dog. “About him getting hitched…”
John raised an eyebrow and stopped making little circles with his arms. He turned away from me and shrugged.
“Nope.” He picked up a book and sat on his bunk, still not facing me. “But that’s pretty crazy shit.”
My reality was the crazy shit that jumped off the next day when John reported to Mike that I told him about the marriage idea.
I was part of a crew of twenty or so younger convicts, most of them street kids who spent some of their youth in and out of juvenile facilities (I had passing acquaintances with several from either county jail or juvenile hall years a few years earlier), who stuck together, looked out for each other, and generally caused trouble together. We were ‘Brood’.
That afternoon at yard I approached a large group of Brood as they stood around smoking near the weight yard. This was the normal congregating point for Brood on the yard so I didn’t think much of it at the time. Maybe fifteen guys stood around in a loose circle. When I approached several of them cast glances over at me and leaned into on another for a bit of hushed conversation. This was when I realized something was amiss.
The circle opened up for me as I got nearer I noticed Mike standing at the other end of the gathering. He looked up from the ground as I reached the collective and shook his head, stared me down and muttered under his breath. John stood next to him and whispered in his ear. I swallowed and realized the gossip that came out of my mouth earlier might have some particularly negative implications. It looked like Mike was feeling that he had to defend his honor.
Another Brood member, Shawn, stepped up next to me when he noticed my arrival and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Listen, brother.” He said quietly, stepping in front of me and blocking my line of sight to Mike. “Mikey is pretty pissed about the shit you let loose, know what I’m saying?” He looked me square in the eye and I could see something that might pass for sympathy in his face.
“Damn, man.” I breathed. “I meant no disrespect bro. Let me square this up with him.” But in my heart I knew that it was too late for words.
Shawn shook his head and looked at the ground. “Don’t think I didn’t go to bat for you brother.” He said. “This shits gonna be squashed real quick though. Just let this shit happen and don’t fight back, you know what I’m sayin?”
I had no idea what he was saying but I felt my legs go to jelly and my mind swam. “What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded, Immediately regretting my tone. “Let what happen?” I shifted in to a defensive stance. My first thought was that I was about to be jumped by the Brood in its entirety. Or worse.
“Look man,” Another Brood stepped up next to Shawn and raised his hands, palms towards me. “This shit can be over now if you give the man his blow, get what I’m saying? He’s got a right to beat your ass man, but he’s just gonna take one punch.” He pointed a finger at me and then jabbed me in the chest once. “If it was me I’d kick the shit outta you, bro.” He took a step back, looked me up and down with disgust, then walked back into the circle, shaking his head.
I buzzed with adrenaline and fearful uncertainty. I’d never heard of anything like this before. I didn’t trust it at all, either. Take one punch? And not fight back? How could I ever consider such a thing after I’d worked so hard to be taken seriously, to defend my own honor against predators and bully’s and chicken hawks? It would be better for me to just fight. Run over right now and punch Mike as hard as I could right in the face.
“Don’t be a punk, bro.” Another Brood said behind me. “Take your punishment like a man.”
I pondered again in the next few seconds how it made sense to take a punch from another guy in prison without fighting back as a way to retain respect.
At that moment I felt a part of myself wither a bit. I could almost see the winding staircase that let to a chair just above my body. It could swear I watched myself for the next few moments from above my own self. Out-of-fucking-body.
The circle of Brood tightened around me and Shawn stepped aside to reveal a tooth-barring Mike, who had his fists raised in front of him, knees slightly bent, and his eyes narrowed when he saw me see him.
We were both edged forward by the circle of men and that was when I saw Mikes eyes change.
They got all watery, not from crying, and this glaze spoke to me with more force than the punch with rocked my temple and the stun from my brain sloshing around in my skull. It said, very plainly on the manila envelope of prison-conditioning : ‘A man gotta do what a man gotta do’. I dropped my arms from in front of me right before he hit and pretended this was the right thing to do.
“This is right,” I said as I saw his fist arc in from the right. His knuckles were white and even I knew you shouldn’t hit someone they way he was about to. You might break a knuckle with a swing like that.
“I’m doing the right thing to maintain in here. This is how a convict acts when he’s part of a crew.”
Mike pulled his punch, that’s for sure. I wondered how much was for show and if he really hated me and if I had done the unforgivable – not by talking shit about him, but by letting him punch me. It hurt, no doubt, but it could have hurt worse.
The circle of Brood immediately closed in around us and Mike spun away from me.
“And keep my name out of your mouth!” He called out to me over his shoulder.

*****

Back on the unit I approached another Brood member, Tin Man, and asked him if this cleared shit up for me.
“Is it all cool now?” I didn’t even try to hide the shake in my voice. Besides, the shaking in my legs would have betrayed any attempt to hide that I was freaked out and amped up.
Tin Man turned slightly away from me and didn’t look directly at me as he spoke, as if afraid my newly contracted leprosy might infect his status. “How the fuck should I know, bro?”
I stood a moment in uncertain terror, thinking everything I’d done to protect myself thus far in the pen was down the drain. I took a deep breath, rubbed the egg on my temple and turned away.
“It’s all good, bro.” I heard Tin Man say as I started walking back to my bunk. “Just chill and watch what you say. You hear that?”
I heard it and felt it and added it to my checklist of convict rules of engagement.

*****

To be Continued…

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Convicted, I awoke to a crackle and pop of the C.O.s* yelp over the unit intercom.
“Chow line!” Pause. “Chow line!”.
The few times the voice over the speaker system didn’t wake me up, the noise of the unit rousing for chow was sure to pull me from that special kind of prison-sleep**.
There was a tightening in the gut as soon as I once again realized why I slept with my back so pressed against the cold cement wall. A person forgets, you see. I got used the shock of waking up in prison by tightening my gut as soon as my mind focused. I tightened my gut and grit my teeth and made crazy eye in the mornings.
Crazy eye was something I worked on in segregation. However useless or naive, working on my crazy eye and perfecting it ritualistically was something I could depend on, like the bulls voice over the intercom or the shifting of my cellmate on the bunk above me as he scrambled out to piss first.
Crazy eye, or the practice of raising one eyebrow higher than the other while at the same time narrowing one eye and widening the other, is a staple in the roadside emergency kit of prison existence. This, coupled with things like proper convict language, yard-strut, racial recognition, and thieves-honor, are vital to raising a healthy, strong, and capable prisoner.
So I do my crazy eye, shift out of my bunk and slide on my brown plastic slippers. I watch the cell bars while my celly loudly expels his funky prison-pee into our stainless steel toilet, scratches his rear end with one hand and tugs on himself with absent-minded who-gives-a-fuckness with the other.
I pretend I don’t have to piss so I don’t have to go second. Soon, I’d learn to get up before my cellmates and piss. Loud and angry, the way it’s supposed to be in prison. That way (technically) I’d gone first and from then on having to wait or go second was never an issue. Otherwise I just held it until after chow and after I’d been down a while I couldn’t help but notice that some guys lower on the hierarchy than me did the same thing. Comforting, I suppose.

This mess, my head, I tried to wrap it around my surroundings. A cell with two men, both paying their debt to the system, woke up and thought about whatever things we as individuals thought about. For me it was sitting in a bathroom with the door closed. Sit there and read a book or magazine and work things out in my mind. Sit there and not have to sit by anyone else or see anyone else or let anyone else into my space. For my celly maybe he imagined his own bed, pulling the covers up tight and dangling his feet over the edge. No socks and even maybe rolling over on his stomach to sleep late.
Personally, I just thought about the bathroom, door locked and even thought about what that meant. That’s okay, though, ‘cause crazy is good.
All the convicts shift out of bed and slide plastic sandals over their yellow toenails. They piss then mumble then button their shirts all the while thinking their prisoner thoughts. The cell doors will crank open soon and the convicts will line up, wait for the outer unit door to open, walk down the stairs, across the paved walkway and through the guardhouse to either get frisked or not. Then, into the chow hall all the prisoners will proceed, until they find a seat and eat their grub before heading back to the unit for count.
Then it’s yard time, an hour later, and I wonder where the morning went.

*****

* Stahl, the post middle-aged ex-marine who had the shiniest black boots I’d ever seen stood at the officer’s desk on the evening shift. He was tall and thin, tight and intense. He busted my ass once for taking a picture from another prisoner who happened to be giving me advice on drawing, a talent for which I have never had any even slight aptitude. I still can’t draw, but I had a particular urge while behind bars the express myself in whatever way I could, so I persisted when Stahl told us to sit on our bunks. In his high-pitched, bark of a voice he chastised the two of us for stepping out of our bunk areas and ignored both of our attempts at reason in the matter. He told us to roll it up, get our shoes on; we were going to the fucking hole. The other prisoner, Fergus, looked at me and pulled several times on his short, red beard.
“Damn, bro.” He said with an edge of weariness. “Show you the pictures when we get out, eh?” He leaned back onto his bunk and covered his face with his forearms. But we never saw each other again, I didn’t see the pictures and that’s probably good as one typically needs to just put some shit that sends you to seg in the past. Just forget it and move on.

** That prison-sleep that feels like there’s a radio on all the time in your head and you can’t turn it off now matter what.

*****

To be continued…

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The system is broken. It cannot be fixed or maybe it just can’t be fixed in its current incarnation. Experts agree, the Prison Industrial Complex is a failure and always has been. Since the first ideas of incarcerating citizens for crimes against society, to later ideas of solitude and penance, and then to post-slavery and Jim Crow laws, putting humans in cages as punishment or as a means to gain dollars has done little to serve the needs of either the victims of crime or the criminals themselves who, arguably, need help the most. People who are not in prison and who support the now-old media adage “Tough On Crime” (this signifies that anyone who does not support this ideology must then be ’soft on crime’) typically use deterrence as a justifiable technique when arguing for longer and harsher sentences for their neighbors. What this opinion fails to consider is that so many of the convicts barred-up in cages have either already been to the joint before or they will go back again (recidivism rate = 80%) . While no one who has been to prison wants to go back (rationally speaking, of course), once a person experiences a bit of life in prison, they lose the bulk of fear that is the supposed key ingredient in the stew of tough on crime deterrence. Therefore, someone who has done time might be less likely to be deterred by the threat of prison than someone who has never been to prison, and has a less likely chance of ever going.

When over fifteen percent of the people behind bars have some form of notable mental health issue, society should question the way in which we deal teach the most volatile and desperate fellow of our citizens. When prison guards are the gatekeepers of our most troubled minds, we should challenge the authority that locks them up and instead demand they receive the help they need and that we can at least attempt to provide. Logically, society would do this before the criminal justice system ever had an opportunity to lay its dirty hands on them. Some civil liberty restricting, cowboy-boot wearin’, racist-ass, under trained and underpaid, probably-disenfranchised, contraband introducing, power hungry C.O. should never have the opportunity to put his mitts on a person who got caught in a Safeway counting bread with three different peoples fingers in his ski-jacket pocket. These poor bulls are so completely and utterly unable to deal with societies most feared that the fact that prisons are this countries mental health facilities should scare the bullshit out of anyone.  Even if they wear a tie.

When racial statistics speak to obvious and blatant racism - a racism so deeply rooted in the system itself it is inseparable, we should begin tearing down those concrete walls. When our most disenfranchised and marginalized are used as cogs in a multi-billion dollar industry that profits from their failure, we should wonder if these people have been crushed before they ever had a chance. When the most powerful elites who support the system are those who profit from it, we should make sure they have no further profit. We should accept the fact, that as a society, we will always assist our fellow citizens when they are at their worst. Is this not the entire idea of community and fellowship? At what point do we finally reach the magic number that frightens even the most lawful and at what number of our fellow peoples do we say ‘enough’? One-million? No. Two-million? Nope. Three? Considering that number is just around the corner, I wonder at the structural integrity of this madness. Budgets are as big as ever, privatization is on the rise, and fear is a successful tactic that influences votes and public perception.

Two distinct and particularly fascinating characteristics that might detail societies fault-line of success so enduringly known as “The Clink”, are convicts and bulls. Each possess their own unique strengths and weaknesses in regard to the complex make-up of the willingness of society to allow a mass-imprisonment of itself. A strange coincidence then, that the mythology of the convicted is where I will start…

*****

To be continued…

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…Continued from Shake Down 1.

1 thermal underwear/wool

1 electric razor (Ooh! Small motors of any sort equal convict joy.)

1 musical instrument (Just unstring a guitar, stash some shit in
the hollow, and restring it.)

1 handkerchief

2 pair socks

1 pair work boots (Unstring and re-sew the padded parts of work
boots. Get thread and a needle from your celly or his buddy.)

2 towels (Just don’t go anywhere near a prisoners towel. *shudder*)

1 gym trunks (Or, ‘Commissary Shorts’, in which “Commissary” refers to the items purchased by another prisoner from canteen and presented to a punk, who in turn wears these tiny red shorts - either extremely tight or washed and bleached to a dull whitish/pink - to the yard, representing, then, the dominance of jocker. )

1 pillowcase

2 pair tennis shoes (Keep extra pairs of shoes floating around the
unit with road dogs. Get a brother from laundry to print you up a patch with your name and SID number on it. As these patches are required on all clothing a prisoner possesses, get your pal to print you up a reserve (maybe ten spare), then, when u need to put your name on a pair of sneakers given to you by a buddy (who snatched them from some rapist over on H unit). If you’re careful, you can use matches to heat a patch onto blue jeans, though one would need to trim off the inadvertent burn marks on the edges of the patch. Or a lighter, if some guard snuck one in or some fella brought one up the river from county jail, stuck up his be-hind.)

2 wool blankets (3 winter)

3 denim shirts

2 sheets

3 denim trousers (As with most clothes, keep extras floating through laundry and the only time you’ll lose them is when you go to the hole.)

1 radio (Every once in a while, some dude would show up from
another joint with a tape player that somehow made it through intake and promptly appeared on the black market and was sold for parts.)

1 radio phone set (Good headsets, as opposed to the crap headsets
issued to fish or rapists, were nearly invaluable, especially
considering at least once a week some con would get his old lady to call into the local radio station and have them play a song as requested by
convict, who would in turn get major props. The listening was better and what convict wants to be seen on the tier with crap headsets!?!)

- Candies, cookies, coffee, tang, (purchased by inmate from Canteen)
(Canteen offered some of the best and most creative exploits in the
Prison Industrial Complex. So much of the prison economy flowed
through canteen that to get a job there meant a somewhat secure position in the convict hierarchy.)

**Indicates items accountable by the inmate to the Security Manager, and logged on the back of the housing ID card.

* *

Obviously, the possibilities for misuse of state issued property are nearly endless, and with a little ingenuity, a convict might find methods to obscure or hide much contraband.
When the time comes for a shakedown, however, nothing says “Don’t touch my contraband” like knowing the right people. Particularly, the cellboss. Now, not all prisons use the cellboss method of controlling prisoners and maintaining racial tension. In this institution, though, nearly every unit had one particular convict who took initiative (was white or black enough), rose above the other prisoners, and had major pull with the C.O.s. In this case, Mikey was the Man. If a shakedown came our way we would literally form a line in front of Mikey’s bunk and ask favors, plead with him to stash stuff, or see if we could arrange for him to put in the good word with the staff so they wouldn’t confiscate our stuff. Depending on who you were in the convict heirarchy decided how much it would cost you to stash your goods. If you were a rapist or snitch, forget about it. If Mikey did agree to hold their contraband they would never see it again.
At this point and time, I didn’t know Mikey too well. When the bull announced the shakedown, I panicked. Did I have anything unauthorized in my property? What would happen if I did? Did the last prisoner who slept in my area stash a shiv somewhere it might be discovered by the guards? If so, I’d be held responsible. As I watched a line form in front of Mikeys bunk, I realized I would have to begin to to network with some of these guys if I wanted to participate in the joy of using contraband. This was were many of my problems began.
As we lined up to exit the unit and wait for the bulls to search our property, I cast a paranoid glance back at my bunk, desperately hoping my extra bag of Top-Raman noodles wouldn’t be confiscated. The C.O. at the door frisked us as we exited the unit.
“Wouldn’t touch that towel if I were you.” The guy behind me said jokingly to the screw. “My babies are all up in that motherfucker.”
Everyone laughed and as we walked out the unit door and onto the prison yard I saw two C.O.s snapping on latex gloves and heading into our unit to perform the shake down.

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