14 days to go

Strange fight today. A 20-year-old, happy-go-lucky Samoan kid, nickname ‘Oose’, who the hell knows why, has been itching to fight for three weeks now. No reason really, just pent-up stress and energy I guess. Thing is, he is really nice so opportunities don’t come up for him.

This past week he, I, and a few others have been practice fighting, doing martial arts, and hitting a mattress rolled up into a heavy punching bag. No one so diligently as Oose.

This evening was laundry exchange. The way this works is that the trustees (inmates like us, only with jobs and privileges and superior attitudes, or so we pretend) bring bins of clothes. They lay a rolled up sheet on the floor and we are not supposed to cross over it. Standing on the other side of it they feel sage. Hah! In addition there are always 3 deputies close by as we file along to get our scratchy towels and stretched out underwear.

Some times there is some shit-talking across the feeble barrier.

Tonight that is all Oose needed.

In a blink of an eye he was over the line, pummeling the mouthy trustee. No anger, just targeted practice. I had already gotten my clothes, so I stood on the other side of the room and watched the show (does this sound as stupid to you as id does to me?). The highly trained crack-troop of deputies reacted like frightened little girls.  Backing away, hands fluttering. After 20 seconds or so (a long time in a fight) Oose had pounded the guy into the 6 foot tall, stainless steel rack of t-shirts. At this point one of the deps got the brilliant idea to tip the rack over on the top of them, trapping them underneath like hamsters in a crowded cage. This squashed the festivities, so to speak.

By now we had 6 more deputies rushing in, yelling, “Lock it down. Back in your quad! NOW!!” We moseyed slowly back inside, calling support to Oose and laughing at the trustees, members of the other quads pounding on their glass with muffled hooting and arm waving. Just like in the movies.

As I strolled back, the gang of guards were pulling Oose to his feet. He stood calmly and put his hands behind his back for the inevitable cuffs. They forced him onto one of the stools and shoved his hard down onto the table. His face was turned to me.

He was grinning from ear to ear. Happier and more satisfied than I have ever seen him. Even with three days in the hole looming moments away.

What a ridiculous place! I gotta get outa here.

Footnote:

All the whites got covered in blood so all those who had already thrown their old ones in the dirty bin were out of luck. That’s why I’m always first in line.

21 Days to go

Now I’ve seen it all.

Today a deputy came in with a new body. he was holding by the arm with a look of revulsion. They really don’t like to touch us, always wearing rubber gloves when we are near. Anyway, he leads this guy into the quad. As they walk the new guy wobbles, careening into a support wall and a bunk. He looks drunk, or otherwise out of it. The deputy dumps his bedroll on to the bottom bunk and helps the inmate to sit down.

“This is your rack,” The dep says, standing up and turning away. “They’ll take care of you in here.” And he walked out with great haste.

The new guy, 50ish, grey, balding, scruffy, looked around with bewilderment. Great! another junkie, homeless guy going through detox. The I noticed the red and white cane folded into his hands.

NO FUCKING WAY.

They just tossed a blind guy into a tank with 40 unknown criminals, to sink or swim, without a single comment. Everyone seems afraid to get near him. He looks just as lost as you are imagining right now. I instantly know that no-one is better equipped to help him than me.

“Hey, what’s your name?” I ask him. “Just how blind are you?”

“Completely blind,” Bill answered.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

His face changed instantly from despair to hope. “Really? Could you show me to the phone?”

“Sure. How would you like to do it?”

So he took my left elbow and I led him to the phone describing important landmarks along the way. After his call I gave him a tour of the dayroom and our quad. 4 windows on this of the door, 6 windows on the other. 3 bunks to the left is his rack, 2 bunks more to the bathroom. Sink, sink, sink, URINAL! Don’t touch!

I spent the next hour answering his questions, calming him down, listening to his story.  He just came from 3 days downtown where he suffered the same unceremonious dumping into the cell-living dorm from the start of my story here. Rather than a helpful tour he was threatened, robbed of his commissary, jacked for his phone time, then ignored to fend for himself. Somewhere in his tapping around to het his bearings, he bumped into someone who promptly punched him in the face.

I introduced him to the tank captain, found him a cup for water, and passed him off to the weary hands of his bunkies. As I turned to go he stuck out his hand for me to shake.

“Thank god for you,” he said with a sincerity that was unbearable.

What a fucking stupid place this is.

 

23 days to go

I’m starting to understand why guys start fights in their final week. Now that I can see the end I realize that I have been living under a constant background fear that said ‘I am not going to survive this experience.’ with my release date nearly in my grasp I come to the fact that I have survived it. Not only did it not destroy me, but I actually flourished.

I learned things, made friends, adapted to the stresses. New bodies come in and they look like scared fish to my experienced eyes. Tattooed prison veterans give me fist-bumps as they pass. I know how everything works and people come to me for advice. On top of that I just got an early kick. I’m walking with an easy swagger.

I own this place.

At the same time, every tine, little thing in her annoys the shit out of me. I hate the scratchy towels, my bag-drawers, the guards on the speakers, the T.V. I am finding it impossible to be satisfied with any of the county food, and even the treats I can buy from stores are getting on my nerves. Wort of all, every stupid, annoying thing my quad mates do has become intolerable to me.

With 3 weeks to go I am still able to bite my tongue or put in earplugs. I still have a few culinary tricks up my sleeve to make my food choices more interesting. Writing gives me something productive to focus on and reading still helps me escape.

But it’s getting harder everyday.

My emotional tension ratchets up with incremental regularity.

Everyday I fantasize about fighting.

I want to fight.

There are two tracks, opportunity and desire, that are converging at some near future point.

Hopefully the meeting point is 25 days ahead instead of 20.

Day 158

What’s a guy gotta do to get beat up in this tank, anyway?!

O.K. So this morning I finally snapped.

As you no doubt remember from my previous posts my bunk is like a freak magnet. Last week the rack next to mine became occupied by a loud, annoying, cranky old fart. A day later a bunk near ours received a new guy. Actually the new guy is my first cell mate from the beginning of this adventure. The kid with no-one on the outside who snores non-stop.

Well, I can handle snoring. What I can’t handle is people who complain about snoring while I’m trying to sleep. Enter the old fart.

Every day this dude is complaining about everything. The deputies, food, canteen, bathroom, and always his health. He walks with a cane. on top of all this he is loudly disrespectful during prayer circle. I hat that, despite my atheist tendencies. Every day this guy is getting deeper under my skin. At about 4a.m. today I reached my limit.

Jolted out of a pleasant sleep I hear the usual grumbling to the side of me and the distant snoring of my old cellie. Then, out of the old coot (really, he is only two years older than me, but you know what I mean) comes a riotously loud mocking snore. That does it.

“Bud, will you SHUT the FUCK UP!”

I guess this was just the trigger he was waiting for.

“C’mon, mother fucker, make me shut up,” he says struggling to get out of his rack.

“Just stop you BITCH ASS Complaining,” I reply getting into the jail-house spirit of the thing.

He scooped up his cane as he charged over to my bunk. Not limping now.

“I’m gonna fuck  you up!” he thundered as I was popping out of my rack.

We squared off 3 feed apart. “Her I am Bud,” I said staring into his eyes.

“Let’s go, Mother Fucker!” he growls throwing his cane to the ground with a clatter. An image from the nature channel pops into my head. You now the one where the silver back gorilla is stripping the branches of a tree to intimidate his rival.

Standing there in my ill-fitting tighty-whities and t-shirt I take a third of a second to live in the moment. My overriding emotion is excitement. Under that is a thin, bright thread of joy.

Oh, crap.

My arms move backward of their own volition.

“Ok, go ahead,” I reply genially, sticking my chin out into the space between us. “I’ll put my hands behind my back for you.”

His eyes and nostrils flared as he sucked in two breaths. Our gaze held a moment more.

He dropped his eyes.

“Fuck you, you fucking pussy,” he grumbled in a small voice.”C’mon loud mouth,” I jibed as he retreated. I bent my knee to tuck my foot into my right hand. In the absence of pockets. I stuck my hand into my shorts. “I’ll stand on one leg with my hand on my dick!”

Who the hell is this idiot using my mouth??

I snap out of my trance and climb back into my rack, heart pounding in my chest. By now the tank captain is pushing the button. This is not the first time that the crank has tried to start a fight. The deputies took him out, now leaning heavily on his cane. He was soon back, humbled and mumbling. It took me a long time to fall back asleep.

Six  hours later, shortly before as I’m trying to catch up on the lost sleep, I hear him talking in the corner to one of the other chronic complainers.

“If I had hit that pussy this morning he would just have gone crying to the cops.”

I climb out of bed, resignation replacing my earlier excitement. This time I stopped to put on my pants. In a stern voice I said, “Bud, If you want to fight Im’ happy to go over to the corner. I’ll even throw the first punch if you are worried about me hitting the button.” For a second he looked like he might want to get up

“or we can’t talk for a bit.” I offered.

We sat down and talked. First thing I did was apologize for yelling at him when I should have told him how I was feeling sooner. Then I said I was sorry for the ‘stand on one leg’ comment.

“I didn’t mean to insult your injury. (It really was an accident)  It was just the first dumb-ass thing that came to my mind.”

I then went on to tell him all the things about him that were pissing me off. He didnt take it really well, but he took it silently without reaching for his cane. We left it agreeing that if he continued doing the annoying things he doesn’t think he is doing that I can politely point them out at the moment they happen.

I am me again.

A few minutes ago, as I was writing this I heard him clear his throat meekly

“Um…Pete. Do you got any fireballs?”

Day 124

Lots of tension in the quad the past couple of days. Normally all the dorms are loud but jovial. Plenty of attitude, talking shit, front’n (see I’m getting the slang), yet always with a sense of lightness. Something this weekend pushed the needle over to the other side.

In our sister bay last night the voices started taking on a more aggressive tone.Two of the members of the skin head gang, typically friends, were in each others face. One tall, young, strong and cocky. They other 40, flabby short and quiet. The young one came to his bay captain, sitting in the day room playing a heated game of dominoes hoping for someone to side with him. “Get da foock ;way from me, man!” he said, not looking up. “I’m playing dis game.”

The kid went back into the bay knowing that fighting was the next step in the argument. A growing crowd of bystanders gather around a support post, screening the combatants from the guards view. Immediately the arms start flying. Unlike schoolyard brawls the audience was strangely quiet, maintaining a low profile. Now the bay captain got up from his game, mumbling Caribbean curses. The fight rushed to its end 30 seconds later, the young guy staggering into the bathroom to clean up a swollen, bloody, crooked nose, puffy red eye, and cut on the forehead. The old fat guy was barely breathing hard. No whistles, no sirens, no guards. Good thing for both because fighting adds 16 months to your sentence.

In our prayer circle last night we gave thanks that “such foolishness” is not part of our bay. Tonight one of Christian brothers grabbed one of my bunkies crutches, raising it to smash the head of the leader of the congregation.

Three times this month members of my dorm came close to blows. Each of the quarrels was instigated by the same, sour-faced kid. I have never seen anyone less able to say “I’m sorry.” than this young man. As a result he defends his obvious mistake at the top of his voice. Tonight he tangled with the toughest person in the bay. Even with the kid rushing him, brandishing the metal crutch, knowing this kid is not the type to throw the first punch. The battled fizzled but a fog of tension lingered. Tonight we need the prayer circle more than ever.

After the opening blessing a beefy body-builder stepped into the circle “I have not stood with you brothers for months now because I decided my un-answered prayers were a waste of my time, ” he explained, “but now I need you. My little girl…”

By the end of his story he couldn’t speak and sat down on his bunk sobbing with his head in his hands. While his neighbors put their hands on his shoulders and started praying for him and his daughter. I heard quiet sniffles and moans hidden behind the towel-curtain on the bunk next to me.

When the singing ended tonight the air felt swept clean.

day 108

Finally at 1:00pm, a single sheet of paper was slipped under the door.

“After review by the disciplinary panel…” read of the skin-head evangelist.

“How long!!” We all yelled in unison.

He scanned down the page. “72 hours. Lockdown to be lifted at 12:49pm, November 8, 2011.”

As he started reading out all of the formal details agitated conversations boiled up from the corners of the room.

“Shut up!” Yelled  mayhem with belligerent authority. “I’m trying to read this!”

“Fuck you, Mayhem!” Yelled Memphis, a tall rangly black man who had returned from court the previous day with a six-year sentence. “Quit plain’ cop!”

The usually bubbly Nazis face clouded over as he stalked into the corner. Before 5 more words could be exchanged bodies were rapidly fleeing the fists that had taken over the conversation.I dove into the safety of my rack as the brawl moved to the center of the room.

“Break it up! Cool it guys!” some yelled, worried about drawing further attention of the guards.

“Fuck it! Let em go” chimed in the excited voice of a recently arrived Hell’s Angel.

The natural rhythm of the dance propelled the fighters to opposite corners and several guys stepped into the empty space between them.

“All right. That’s enough.” said the tank captain. “Are you guys done?” he asked, trying to make it a command.

“I don’t want to fight you, Memphis” panted Mayhem, seeming unhurt. “Sorry I hit you Man. I shouldn’t a done that. I am done if you are.”

“Are you done?” asked Julio.

Memphis stared at Mayhem for 5 long, deep breaths, an angry red bump already swelling his right eyebrow.

The tank held its breath.

“No. I’m not done.”

Mayhem’s shoulders slumped in resignation as his hands came back up. Julio looked at both men, then around him at the rest of the crowd. We all made a brief eye contact and a flash group decision. Julio shrugged and stepped back out-of-the-way.

The fight resumed passionately, silently, clumsily. Each took a blow to the face but the ultimate winner was the bunks, causing both to stop after missed punches resulted in hands broken against steel railing.

The combatants hugged, laughed, compared bruises. Blood was quickly cleaned off the floor. No whistles blew. No cops came.

Tension broken, we were a family again.

Day 80

Things are changing fast in here in our one tranquil tank. Our captain, my friend, 8-ball left two days ago. It was obvious to everyone that our community would flounder a bit without our strong and honorable leader, but not this fast. Last night we had our first fight.

A couple of weeks ago we received a reject from the bay above us (a notoriously rowdy bunch to begin with) fresh from a two-day stay in the ‘hole’. Loud, abrasive, and continuously disrespectful of others, he ingratiates himself with the strong and popular while haranguing the bottom-feeders. ‘P.T.’ shambles around, shirtless, underwear tucked into the sweaty crevice below his hanging, gelatinous gut, pants riding low on the thigh or disproportionately short legs. His deep-bass voice vibrates the metal of my bunk at all hours of the night and his shrill cackle hurts my fillings.

I don’t like him.

Now throw in several fawning toadies, drawn to him like flies to shit (I finally have the appropriate use for this offensive phrase), and one pathetic, loudmouthed weakling (the poor, crutch-wielding, fight starter from an early post) and conditions are ripe for a school yard brawl.  I won’t describe the fight in detail, so as to deny the deputies fodder for their investigation. There is not need, really. The scene was a cliché, junior-high, meet-me-at-the-bike-racks confrontation between a cowardly bully, a cornered victim, and a ring of pity-less eggers-on. It was embarrassing to witness. Worse still, lying silent on my rack, adhering to my rules for jail survival, brought me intense shame. A few glancing, ineffectual punches, some cowering and whimpering, and it was quickly over. The bruising to the psyche of the tank, however, is permanent.

Things might have settled down if the traumatized kid could have just kept his mouth shut. No-one but me had both empathy and the courage to stand up for him or even break through his defenses to lend him support. In his isolation he stepped over the line. He screamed out his impotent rage across a crowded day room in full view of the deputies. I jumped into action, hoping to avert disaster and regain some of my tarnished self-image.

Standing between him and the wolf-pack, I quietly assure him that I knew he was not to blame. With the goal of getting him out of the lime-light I shepherded him back into the bay, urging him to silence.

“You are not alone,” I said soothingly. “Please keep quiet and let your friends take care of this.”

Into the corner by his rack he retreated, as I continued to try to convince him that I would stand up for him if he could only shut the fuck up! I didn’t know I was too late.

“Out of the way, dog.” A gruff voice growled into my ear with finality.

I turned around to find all eyes of the lynch mob focused on ME. I looked into the face of the one person who I thought could save this sacrificial lamb and gave up hope.

“He’s either gotta fight it out or roll up,” he said, passing sentence.

P.T. stood by with shirt off, fists up, and a smug leer on his face. I turned back to the guy I had moments before promised to protect, looked him in the eye, shrugged at my failure,  and stepped aside.

“Why do I have to leave?” he sobbed defiantly. “I didn’t start this fight! Why doesn’t he have to go?”

The rest of the mob collected up his belongings, hustled him to the door, and pushed the button.

Over the next few hours the deputies pulled out those involved, and some clueless bystanders. Nothing happened from this perfunctory effort. The victim remains punished (in the hole), the bully loudly strutting, and me fantasizing for a chance to confront him and regain my honor.