September 2004 Archives

Mere Details

Here’s the drama part of the comic drama that I promised yesterday.

(Note: This was for some reason placed here, although Tank had already departed. My sister was probably posting something because she hadn't received a letter from me that day.)

After repeated requests for a haircut. I found out that no one who is HIV is allowed near the clippers, as the cutter or cuttee. Yes, paranoid ignorance trumps enlightened decency. It is not even a rule from our jailers, but self-imposed from the inmates. And it was not communicated without a fair amount of black humor, which was of course lost on “Tank,” even though it was he who informed me of the regulation. What I mean by that is that once again, I was told that as a white, I was under the protection of the whites and simultaneously that it was only the whites who I needed protection from. Poor, irony-free “Tank.” He’s just being a “good soldier, following orders.” How lucky I am to be under his protection. A few years ago, when he was less enlightened, he would have cracked my head open with a baseball bat, Which would have been far more likely to cause HIV transmission than clippers ever would, but here in topsy-turvy prison world, those are mere details.

Mark

Day 239 - Blue or Red?

A most extraordinary incident occurred today.

I was sent a package from my friend, Claudia. It contained two magazines – an issue of “Mother Jones” and an issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The last I looked, neither were considered subversive (unless you’re Karl Rove, perhaps). Certainly, neither of them fall into any of the categories of “contraband” that we are not allowed to receive here. Included in the envelope was a sealed letter that Claudia was resending me because my CDC# had been off one digit on the envelope—although everything else was correct. And there was also an article that Claudia had printed off the Internet that was not in Arabic or some other subversive language, like French.

Unfortunately, the items, together, were just bulky enough to constitute a “package.” Instead of coming directly to me, they were diverted to R &R (Receiving and Release). When I received a “ducat” to retrieve the package, and tried to, I was told I had to return when a Sergeant Erickson would be there. This was told to me somewhat ominously. (At the time, I didn’t know what the contents of the “package” were. I did know that magazines are only supposed to be sent via subscription, and books directly from the publisher.)

When I did, Sergeant Erickson, who was ruddy, rotund, and repetitious, led me to a back room where he laid out a page of regulations governing material that gets sent in and told me to read it. I reassured him I had indeed told all my correspondents to have books sent directly from the bookstore/Amazon, and apologized for whomever sent a book directly to me (thinking that was the problem). He would have none of it. I had to read down the list of regulations.

Which is a good thing, because, in fact, nothing in the “package” fell into any of the objectionable categories listed. My pointing this out fell on deaf ears, as it became eminently clear the Sergeant Erickson was not interested in hearing anyone else’s voice besides his own, much less what they said. He had at this point opened up the package, as well as Claudia’s cover letter, on which by sheer coincidence, she typed one word in capital letters, which drew the Sergeant’s attention to the following sentence:

“I did NOT listen to George Bush…”

She was referring to his address to the Republican Convention, but as the bellicose Sergeant Erickson noted: “I don’t read the letters, but I have to scan them, in case there are terrorist threats. Like your friend here says she don’t like George Bush, that could be a terrorist threat!”

I was agape, aghast, nonplussed. He went on to explain that the enclosed material violated he didn’t know how many regulations, and then he described, ad nauseam, the route I was supposed to take in order to receive books. At one point he even said something as nonsensical as: “we have to know that you approve of the material being sent to you.” Why would I ask to receive any material I didn’t “approve” of? And how could I “approve” in advance of anything I didn’t know was being sent to me?

But then came the kicker, the mindblower: “Let me ask you something.” He spit when he talked, and droplets of saliva clung to his chin. “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?”

All the I-should-have-saids rush through my brain as I write this.

‘I am a convicted felon, asshole, I can’t vote.’

‘I’m an American.’

‘I’m a Trotskyite.’

‘I’m appalled.’

What I did say was, “That’s none of your business! And what difference does it make? What’s the point of the question?” (I’m going to fast forward a bit through the exchange that followed, because, as I said Sergeant Erickson was repetitious.) At one point, another C.O. chimed in belligerently, remarking “He was just asking you a question!” as if no questions could be inherently offensive, much less unconstitutional.

Finally the sergeant attempted to explain why he asked my political affiliation: “You’re in prison, there are a lot of assholes in prison. Some guys will stab you for a pack of cigarettes. I was asking you that question to find out if you had any character.” I see. It would be interesting to read where exactly one can find that duty in his job description. But since I wanted the magazines, and to read Claudia’s letter, and above all, to get out of there, I finally just told the truth. “I’m a Democrat.”

He gave me one of those: “See, it wasn’t so hard” shrugs, but I knew he didn’t really care what my answer was in any case. He just wanted an answer, as evidence of my submission to his authority.

He handed me the magazines, as he had to, legally in any case. I took them, and said “Thank you, sir,” and returned to my dorm.

MCO 2004

There are days, even here, when my life feels so pregnant with possibilities that I am almost paralyzed trying to decide what to do next. After I mop the bathrooms, my day is very much my own. I realize that sounds a bit perverse, considering I am in prison and my choices are severely limited, but the truth is, on the outside, I very much like to spend my time writing, reading and listening to NPR, and I do get to do that here.

Thank God they repeat some programs on NPR, or I would be listening to it all day. I find the world a fascinating place. I get drunk on information and I have always felt a ridiculous certainty that one day a President (not this one, that’s for sure) might call me for advice, so I must be boned-up on everything.

As an artist, I feel the obligation to be a reader, to be part of the audience as well as a creative producer of what others consume. So you can imagine the pull I feel between writing and reading, both essential activities for the writer. If one craves to be told “nice work,” one must be ready to say so to others. By the way, let me say to those who I correspond with to never worry about what to write to me. Everything goes, no complaint is trivial just because I’m in jail and you’re not. But just in case you’re really at a loss, “I LOVE THE WAY YOU WRITE” is always a safe thing to say.

So, yesterday, I listened to the radio, then forced myself to put the headset down and read some Gore Vidal. Then I wrote a poem, called “The Ketchup Kid” (below) which is about a neighbor. (I could not quite figure out how to describe this young man prosaically.)

And then I got 7 letters! It was the return of the good old days, after a lean week (for me) of one or two letters a day, max. How spoiled I am! How wonderful you all are—and that goes for just the readers as well as the writers. When my sister tells me I got 40 visits to the blog, meaning 40 different people bothered to stop in and read me, it makes my heart sing. (Oh Jeez I sound like Maya Angelou, but what the hell.)

I’m trying to make these entries a bit shorter, easier to digest over a cup of coffee and less work for my sister. I just wanted to say I feel thankful today.

The Ketchup Kid

His name is Adam Braithwaite.

And of all the unlikely characters I have met in here,

He is the unlikeliest.

He is African-American, 20 years old, and

6’2” or 3” or 4”; one of those bean-pole

kids who seem to grow an inch every time

you look away for a minute.

Adam doesn’t inhabit his body

His body inhabits him.

It seems to be pushing him upwards, like a constellation.

With just two stars, one accelerating ever north.

He is somewhat odd-looking. Unpicked hair,

a radically upturned nose,

and an attitude to match..

(He is from the Pacific Palisades,

which is as hoity-toity as California gets.)

He is obsessed with the 60’s

(worships JFK and anything Kennedy,

yet is a Bush republican)

He sings Frank Sinatra while taking a leak.

He wears his pants inside-out,

because he objects to the “CDC” insignia showing.

But he doesn’t wear his pants beneath his ass,

so he’s not a gang-member.

I don’t know why he’s here.

(He doesn’t drink or smoke or do drugs,

so I suspect computer hacking.)

He is irritable, corrective, imperious;

and in his nasal, “white,” voice, complains

when his bed is mussed by his bunky, D-Roll,

who could not be more his opposite.

Adam loves ketchup. Hoards it. Trades for it.

Ketchup is free here. Two annoying packets,

daily in one’s lunch.

But Adam likes to trade and buy more,

calling himself “a very shrewd businessman.”

So I call him “the Ketchup Kid.”

He is the saddest character I have met in here, because he is the loneliest.

MCO 2004

This morning, as we waited in line for chow, we could see other inmates leaving the chow hall, being pulled aside and searched, forced to give up their smuggled cartons of milk or cinnamon buns still in their plastic wrappings. We were infuriated.

Technically, was are not supposed to bring food out of the chow hall, but the C.O.s turn a blind eye to it 99% of the time. They seem to agree the rule makes no sense. Every day, as we leave breakfast, they hand us bag lunches that we are required to eat in our dorms, (along with the bagfuls of food we buy at the canteen, stored in our lockers.) There is no hygiene issue; besides, prisoners, despite what you’d think, are notoriously clean. Our areas are swept and mopped four times a day, every day. We live in such close quarters that slovenliness by some is not tolerated by others, as it affects them directly.

When we asked around, it was figured out the C.O.s manning the chow line exit were from East Yard, where apparently catching the convict smuggling food is a favorite past-time. As it was at L.A. County Jail, which was particularly monstrous because we had only 3 minutes to eat, and we mostly smuggled out fruit we didn’t have time to consume in the chow hall, like oranges. These items were taken from us (although about half the time our smuggling was successful) to be thrown into the garbage, (Not even turned over to Citi Harvest or a Food Bank, simply thrown out.)

I’ve been told it’s not impossible that some Chino authorities are now reading this blog. If you are, I want to ask you what can possibly be the rationale behind the confiscation? Most of the time we bring food back to eat later; there are a lot of indigent inmates who don’t have access to canteen, and they get hungry, particularly at night. Some (like me) detest the 5x a week pseudo-baloney for lunch, or find some of the breakfast fare hard to eat first thing in the morning—but okay for lunch. Yes, sometimes smuggled breakfast buns, for example, might be traded for a tomato, or a few stamps, or even a cigarette. So what?

Is there a downside to this I’m not seeing? Then fine, EXPLAIN IT TO US. Nothing is ever explained in prison by the authorities, inmates must depend on their experience, hearsay and their assumptions. Is anyone really surprised that inmates conclude that food confiscation exists mostly because the officers get an obvious kick out of relieving the inmates of their paltry treasures? That they just wanna “show who’s boss” or, worse, just want to “be assholes?” Is this any way to earn the respect Corrections Officers so often complain they don’t get?

MCO 2004

P.S. Some good news. “Tank” left today. I found out he was a largely self-appointed tyrant/protector. Maybe now I can get my hair cut.

I guess they named the area around here “The Inland Empire” because it sounds better than “Baking-in-the-Desert Land” But the heat could not dent the joy of a visit from my friend Andrea today. Thank-you my darling, for so much.

However, the heat has got me—and everyone else here—a bit cranky. I’ve been in a largely gay cocoon for years. Have straight men always been this annoying? Yesterday, 3 minor incidents begged this question.

Since we had mandatory yard because of inspection. I found myself wilting in one of the few grassy shaded areas of the yard. I had my t-shirt off and was sitting on it. Suddenly I noticed a chunky white fellow standing over me. I looked up from my dog-eared copy of “US News and World Report” and he had the gall to ask me if “that t-shirt might be big enough for the both of us.” (Believe me, this was not a romantic overture. At the same time I doubt he would have asked it of a straight guy. How did he know I was gay, or did he even know it, as he was someone I had never met before? It usually takes a paragraph or two of my David Hyde-Pierce mode of expression before people guess, or so I think). What was much worse than him asking the question, was me answering, “Yeah, sure.” Part of this was due to my legendary inability to say “no,” the other part has to do with my prison-honed fear of saying “no.” As he sat there, hogging the shirt and way too close to me, I started to fume, mostly at myself. I finally just said “I’m going for a walk,” and he grudgingly moved his rump enough for me to extract my t-shirt. I then tried to act as if I truly wanted to embark on a little stroll into the 101 degree sun.

I see now the Devil wanted me to experience my 2nd run in with idiocy. I was lucky to find the only other sliver of shade on the yard, underneath some slats that cover a bench next to the cement blacktop where some exercise equipment is located. I had no sooner laid my butt on the bench than the “paisa” (latin) to my right asked if he could “check out” my magazine. In my head, I answered with dripping sarcasm: “Now gee, I know we’re going to be stuck out in the broiling sun for an hour, and I bring a magazine. Do you think maybe I actually brought it along to read myself? Do you? Do you?” But do I say this to him? No! I respond with “sure” and hand him my magazine. (Truth be told, I did have my Walkman on and didn’t really mind having to listen to the NPR weekend movie reviews, but still.)

Then, last night, even I couldn’t resist checking out the end of the season football game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. No, I don’t care a whit about football, but in an effort to be “one of the guys,” I had joined a football betting pool ($35 jackpot, or 175 soups) and wanted to see if I chose my first game winner correctly.

Now, take note that neither of the two teams are California teams, so no one was rooting for a “home” team. But clearly, each of the men watching had a favorite, and the degree to which they were personally invested in the fortune of “their” team astonished me. The “oohs” and “ahhs” of anticipation and disappointment rivaled those at a bullfight. At one point there was a fumble recovered by the opposing team, and cheers erupted. Directly in front of me two black guys embraced. Yes it was a backslapping, one-handed embrace, but it looked to be a more heartfelt expression of affection than that I’ve witnessed between two bunkies who have lived on top of each other for six months when one is released. The celebration by the winning team’s fans when the game was over was such that you would have thought a little girl had just pulled from a well after being trapped there for 36 hours.

I did overhear something very telling though. One of the viewers, to no one in particular, exclaimed: “We did it!” WE did it. This doesn’t need much explanation, does it? My late dear old father (whose wisdom grows in retrospect with each passing month) used to quote a favorite French proverb: “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,” To understand all is to forgive all.

If my dear Andrea can understand and forgive me (and there was much to forgive), I guess I can understand and forgive these bozos.

MCO 2004

There have been several requests over time to know exactly what my schedule consists of. If you are not one of those curious about such mundane things, skip this entry.

Every morning lights go on at 5:30AM. Happily, it is perfectly possible to continue sleeping for a good half hour or so, as most do. My internal clock is completely used to waking up at this time, and I usually spend the 30 minutes fighting off a sense of dread at the direction my life has taken and how I could ever, ever have come to this. More recently, I have been trying instead, to repeat a mantra of sorts that, with every good night’s sleep, I am 8 hours closer to freedom. Then I take my pen and draw a line through the calendar over the date just completed, and feel heartened by all of the diagonals preceding it.

I get up, pee, and fix myself a cup of instant coffee. Then I dress for breakfast, get back in bed and listen to NPR’s Morning edition on my Walkman. At 6:30 or so, Lynn appears at my bed and we wait together on the benches in the TV room to get called for chow, which is anytime between 6:30 and 7.

The chow line snakes through the yard, against a fence, and we are admitted to the cavernous dining hall 50 or so at a time. We line up along a wall, and grab trays pushed anonymously through a slot from the kitchen, and then are directed to the color-coded section that is announced to be in current use by watching C.O.’s….”Green” or “Blue” or “Red” etc. The blacks eat on one half of whatever section, the whites and Latinos in the other. It is a no-no to eat in someone else’s section, but occasionally a new inmate does so, and believe me, he doesn’t do it again.

It takes about 10 minutes to eat, and then we put our empty trays through other slots to the dishwashers. Keeping our cups and spoons (that we brought with us), we grab bag lunches that we take back to our dorm. Lynn always takes mine back for me because I go in an opposite direction to the infirmary to take my morning HIV meds. Then I walk back to the dorm, arriving at 7:30 or so. I listen to NPR again until about 8, when 5 days a week I report to the central hallway where I get cleaning supplies and attack one of the bathrooms. I don’t really mind it, after all. All work has dignity, and it only takes 30 minutes or so. Still, today I had my counselor put me on the “clerks” list, which will enable the library to hire me if there’s an opening. I dropped off an application there last week. Hopefully the handsome clerk Armando will put my application at the top of the pile. I sure ain't doing it for the 90 cents an hour I’d be paid. But it would be many more hours than a porter job, so I figure my last 2 months would go faster.

From 8:30 to 11:00am I listen to NPR, punctuated by reading or letter writing. Actually, these three activities fill up the bulk of my time, which is why I am not complaining too much about being here, although I sure as shit want to no longer be. (Knowing I’m being read on a blog has transformed by time here.)

At 11:00 am, another round at the bathroom, but it’s understood to be rather cursory, a quick wipe, sweep and mop. I’m usually finished by 11:20, and except for Inspection once every 2 weeks, I am “off” for the rest of the day.

At 11:30 am we have our first count, which means we have to be on our bunks for ½ hour or so, until it “clears,” Afternoons, I sometimes go to the yard or the library, but it’s really too hot for the former and I usually have a book I’m already reading. Plus, the inevitable NPR, and usually a snooze in the afternoon. Oh, this is after the 12:30 pm bag lunch, or ramen soup, prepared and shared on my bunk with Earl, my best buddy. At all times during the day or evening, there is significant interaction with my neighbors. And always, always, once or twice an hour, someone comes by for a shot of coffee, to borrow the sewing kit, some creamer, trade something for a soup etc.

At 3:30 people are on their bunks, generally, and at 4:00 mail is handed out (except on the weekend). This is always the best part of my day. At 4:30 there is the 2nd count of the day. Right after count clears I go with Earl to the infirmary for afternoon pill call, which, unlike the morning, everyone goes to at the same time. This means waiting in line in the hot sun, but also is an opportunity for people watching and some socializing with inmates in other dorms, especially gay ones there for HIV meds.

When we get back to the dorm, around 5:30 pm, I do my pushups and then take a shower. When I get back to my bunk, I usually have a half an hour or so to read or reread my mail and get in some more NPR (on KPCC, Pasadena, by the way. I love all the people who work there, they have no idea.). Dinner is between 6:30 and 7:00 pm. I return to my bunk at 7:30 and read and write until 9:30 count and 10pm lights out. Two days a week it’s the same except no work, and on the weekend KPCC is even better. Saturday night there’s a play on at 10:00pm I always attend, at least in my head.

I am promptly asleep around 10:30 and that’s about it. I hope you’re all still awake, after reading this.

MCO 2004

It is impossibly hot, and this place is not air-conditioned. It is the only explanation I have for my bad mood, besides the fact that I am in prison, of course. That and, as usual, the day after a three-day weekend, when you most hunger for mail (there is no delivery on Saturday) also seems to be the day of the least mail. I did get a note from Sandra along with information on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. If I apply, I don’t know whether to choose poetry or fiction. I think I like the idea of applying to UNM@ Albuquerque better, but maybe I’m just in a mood. Maybe I’m just afraid of being in an unfamiliar, isolated environment again, and I am comforted by the prospect of being near my sister in Albuquerque.

I really don’t want to be here today. And I was through with work at 11:30, and have been able to listen to NPR and read “The Valley of the Horses” and nap much of the afternoon. This is the way it’s going to look pretty much for the duration.

But more than at any moment, since my incarceration, I really feel like getting high. Booze, pot, crystal meth, it doesn’t matter.

But I’m not going to get high. I’m writing this instead and putting it in the mail and taking a nice cooling shower and maybe calling my sister.

MCO 2004

Last night we had a little industrial accident here, as it were.

Very close to me, a neighbor was “burping” his pruno. That’s the part of the homemade “winemaking” process that involves blowing CO2 into a plastic bag and letting air in. A fair amount was being made, as it was for the black “band of brothers” to have a Sunday night party. My neighbor pulled the plastic bag up and out of the industrial bucket in which it had lain, and suddenly…. Schpooft! The bag broke.

Several gallons of homemade pruno, replete with bits of fruit, spread in a large pond under three bunks, including mine. The holder of the bag uttered “Oh, shit…!” And his buddy added “We’re in trouble…” and everybody just stared in shock and horror. If the prunomakers were caught, extra time on their sentence was a certain consequence. Count had just cleared—that means the C.O. had just came through and counted all of us and was back in the guard booth, from which our wing cannot be directly seen. But the nightly clean up had already taken place, and the mops were back in the cleaning closet under lock and key. I finally managed to sputter out, (marooned on my top bunk) “the yellow laundry bin in the shower room, there are plenty of dirty towels in there!” (It is where I throw the cleaning rags after wiping down the bathroom.)

It seemed at first like an incomprehensible disaster, defying solution, to which everyone reacted in slow motion. But little by little towels and sheets were found to mop up the mess, lockers were moved and cleaned under, a mop and a bucket were somehow produced. During the middle of this, the C.O. appeared at the end of the hallway, going into the barber’s booth where he opened a circuit box and turned the key that turns off the lights for the night. We all sort of held our breath, but he did not turn and look down the wing, where he would have surely noticed several beds pulled out from the wall.

Slowly but surely, the mess, and the stench was cleaned up (someone found some bleach and Pine Sol). I had to wash off my wine-soaked sneakers, but that was pretty easy.

The kicker: I woke up in the morning to see a complete discoloration of the brown floor, virtually outlining the spill. I was worried, no one else was. They knew the C.O. wouldn’t notice a thing, and of course they were right.

MCO 2004

I’m having the slightly odd sensation of experiencing a weekend, in the sense that this is the first time in eight months that I’ve worked the five days previous to the current two. Of course we’re only talking about one hour or so a day of actual work (at 8am and 11am I sweep and mop the bathrooms or the hallways, 30 minutes a pop.) I suppose it feels like more than it is because everything in prison seems somehow magnified. Any moment a small mistake can ricochet into an event with bad consequences. I’ve pretty much settled into a routine and gotten known and “have my back covered,” so to speak, so it is unlikely in the extreme that anything I do here will have serious untoward ramifications. It is also equally unlikely that I won’t witness something dramatic or ugly from now until my release, but I guess most people who commute daily on the freeway can say the same thing.

What I wonder is whether the stress of incarceration itself is not up there with the stress of almost any job. I’m pretty sure the answer of that is yes. The difference is that the stress of work is defined by what you have to do, the stress of imprisonment is characterized by what you can’t do.

But not entirely. What I can do is considerable, and much of what I spend my time doing is what I might choose to be doing on the outside. In fact, I doubt if I’ll ever have so much time to devote to reading and writing and listening to NPR at any time for the rest of my life, (not to mention sleep all I want.) Still, this afternoon I lay here, at one point wondering: 1) Do I exercise? 2) Do I watch the prison softball game? 3) Do I write a blog entry? 4) Do I write a letter? 5) Do I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez? 6) Do I listen to NPR? 7) Do I read Newsweek? The anxiety that this avalanche of choice provoked led me to do some serious thinking, which coincided with the receipt of an article my mother sent me.

It was an observant piece from no less than The New York Times about the impact of crystal meth on the fabric of gay social life in New York. It noted the tendency of users to isolate and reconfigure their social lives to long solitary hours on the computer, hunting for sexual liaisons. In my view, this was somewhat reductionist, but it certainly reflected much of my experience and that of many I knew.

I remember when I was had been on disability for a while, but was healthy, with a lot of free time and some disposable income. I could easily get overwhelmed by all of the choices open to me. At times, I was literally paralyzed with indecision. But one puff of meth on the pipe guaranteed an immediate sense of purpose, a complete surrender to the dictates of the libido. The hunt this entailed, by the way, was often successful and—sorry—often gratifying, if transient.

In almost all reportage of crystal meth, this part of the story often goes unmentioned. Reading The New York Times article for example, one would never know what the big payoff of using meth was. At risk of glamorizing it, the truth is, it is a potent aphrodisiac. This does not make it all “worth it,” and it does not negate the horrific consequences of the drug’s abuse. It does however, go a long way to explain why, after the crash, when one might be expected to recognize that meth use is creating serious problems, users will go right back to it. In prison, I’ve heard this perpetual return called “chasing the dragon,” as rarely is the high as good as it was in the beginning.

Eventually one’s tolerance to the drug does increase, and if done daily, the point of its use becomes less to get high than not to crash. One often becomes able to do all the things one did sober—although technically high— like eat, sleep and work. (Most users do work. I know because I sold to them. But I would say their rate of job loss is significantly higher than that of the general population.).

This is not intended in any way as a defense of crystal meth use, but its pandemic status begs us to investigate what aspects about the times we live in seem to be making it the drug of choice for so many. I think in the case of gay men, its genesis is inextricably linked to the AIDS epidemic, which has had as a consequence a distortion in how gay men apprehend time itself.

With AIDS came a creeping encouragement to both those infected and those fearful of infection to focus on the next week, weekend, or next six months at most. The future was for others, the present was for us. Then, in walked meth, the ultimate facilitator of instant gratification. Add to that the glorification of youth and dread of aging that pervades society and gay culture in particular, and the stage was set for a perfect storm of crystal abuse on a grand and destructive scale.

Even the advent of effective medical treatment couldn’t get the genie back in the bottle. The drug became our second epidemic, with its own dictates, almost like a wily retrovirus that will do whatever is necessary for its own survival.

But above and beyond (or behind and below) this catastrophe, I perceive a more subtle but pervasive factor, an existential angst that runs the gamut of affluent modern life, filled with ample leisure time and endless options. Whatever we choose to do with our time, we are aware of the million other choices we are not making, Should we be backpacking, or going to a concert? Writing a screenplay or visiting a friend? Walking the dog or traveling to Romania? The list could go on forever. Even in prison one is not immune to this feeling of being overwhelmed by choice, and the subsequent yearning to have choices made for us.

Meth closes all those doors and answers all of those questions. It shuts up that little voice asking “What should I do now?” When you are high, you do whatever the high dictates, period. Meth is the wrong answer, but the questions are real, and the anxiety caused by the sheer volume of them all should probably be recognized in trying to get a handle on overcoming the crystal epidemic.

MCO 2004

I’m coming back from morning Pill Call, and D-Roll comes up next to me, walking his people-to-see, places-to-go Hustler’s walk. He says to me, “C’mon, Square, put some get in your go, and walk with me!” It is very rare for a black and white inmate to walk with each other in prison; it happens, but accidentally. D-Roll is suggesting I do so purposely. What the hell, I speed up. (I am a fast walker, but D-Roll makes a sport of it.) I ask him how it is that he seems to have leeway to go everywhere on the yard to carry out his various hustles, and he pulls out a paper that has been folded and unfolded many times, that details his status as an umpire for the prison softball league. This allows him yard access during all times yard is open, not just the times it is open for his particular dorm. Of course there is hardly a softball game underway at all times, nor does D-Roll umpire more than a fraction of them, but D-Roll is the type of guy who could have convinced a Nazi policeman in 1938 he was President of German Swaziland, and had full rights of passage in Berlin.

I ask him why his nickname is “D-Roll” and he tells me the following story. “When I was 8, I used to have a thing with this 15-year old ho’, and we used to do the ‘nasty.’ No kidding, a couple of times a week, and she would give me a dollar every time.” (D-Roll is about my age, so this would have been 1966.) “And back then I used to sell candy bars—I was a hustler from the very beginning, so I did well—and between what I made and what she gave me, I always had a roll of dollar bills. So when this bitch would see me, she’d say ‘Hey D, where’s your roll?’” ( I assume the first initial of his real name is D) “and that’s how I got the name D-Roll!”

Yes, it has also crossed my mind that if there was a flow of bills, it was from D-Roll to the lady in question, not the other way around, and that his age in the affair has probably crept down from 15 to 8 over the 30 years or so that he’s been telling that story. But D-Roll is someone Richard Pryor would have patterned a character on, and I certainly do believe that many things that might appear unbelievable or outrageous to my white middle class experience may not be so foreign to the kind of childhoods familiar to Pryor or D-Roll.

But while I sang the praises of the surprisingly non-hostile incarcerated black males yesterday, D-Roll’s story did set the tone for a contrasting reality check. Some of the other black guys got into a conversation about Vietnam and Iraq, 9/11, Japan, immigration and foreign policy, and I’m very sorry to report the degree of misinformation and ignorance I overheard was astounding. (It made me think the right-wing is stupid wanting to deprive felons the vote, because convicts generally have a kick-their-ass-before-they-kick-yours mentality, and when it comes to foreign policy, at least, largely consider any war American are in to be justifiable self-defense.)

What shocked me most was the mishmash of fact and history, the screwing up of time-lines, and distorted half-truths like: “There are more American babies born over there than are born here, but they treat them like shit” and “The Japanese are just waiting to take over, just like the Russians, they just want to see if we’re weak!” There was even nodding assent to an assertion that “they” (the Iraqis, Al-Qaeda, the Japanese, whoever) are about to devastate us with nuclear bombs AFTER they start a civil war here—between whom I’m not exactly sure.

Where do they get these ideas? And such an ignorance of basic history? Some of them couldn’t tell you whether the Civil War and World War II were 5, 80 or 100 years apart. (I asked). Worse, some of these guys who do try to read or listen to the news are just not equipped to understand it and interpret it. They seem only to reduce sound bites to the simplest subjective denominator. This is why it s pointless for me to try to educate then, any more than it would be for be to try to convince a fundamentalist the Bible was written by men, not God. Some people don’t want uncertainty, gray, nuance. They want black and white, the good guys and the bad guys, us and them. And that’s exactly what they get, at least in how they apprehend the world. (Ironically, inmates are viewed as the “bad guys” by society, so you can imagine the internal conflicts they must experience, as they basically agree with the assessment, whatever their external pose.)

After listening to this bullshit, I was anxious to escape into a good night sleep, which lasted until my 4am bladder break. Across the way, I could hear the (blessedly classical) music through Scott’s Walkman headset, as he “engraved” a cup with eagles and various decorations, a sideline that earns him the money for the meth that was keeping him up all night.

I tried to get back to sleep, but the tubercular coughing of Earl’s neighbor, Tefunk, was relentless. I swear that boy should be in the hospital. I don’t care that his chest x-rays and TB test are negative, the boy is seriously ill, and one night he is going to start coughing up blood or simply won’t wake up. Obviously Tefunk couldn’t sleep either, and, evidently cold from the giant overhead fan, got up and unplugged it. This meant there was no “white noise” to cover the sound of the coughing he promptly resumed.

Then my bunkie, Steve, who was up reading, decided to light a cigarette. I am no longer craving cigarettes, but am now easily irritated by the smoke when there is no fan to move it along. So I opened the window, to get a blast of cold fresh air, forgetting it would be laden with the pre-dawn stench of cow-manure.

I gave up trying to sleep and wrote this less-than-sensical poem instead.

Wake Me Up When It’s Over

Today is the first day

of a test of your life.

Or maybe the worst day

of the rest of your wife.

You may just have a date

with hurry up and wait.

Or you may be running late

To a rendezvous with death.

The evil might be live

Your dog might be God

You may have gotten up on the right side of the bed

But the wrong side of your head.

Playing both sides against the middle

Nero played the fiddle

When Caligula was little

Children live what they learn

Strike up the band, watch Rome burn

It occurs to me

You rarely see

The bus that runs over you.

That Labor Day,

Is a day of rest

And that God’s way

Is to constantly test you.

I’ll stick with my dog, thanks.

MCO 2004

Something a bit odd has been happening. I imagine conversations ahead of time, and then they occur almost just as I imagined them. This first happened when I was eating with Earl—a late snack at my bunk— and saw Jimmy, “King of the Woods,” (I call him this, no one else does) saunter over. I just knew he was trolling for an offering of food. Of course, Earl and I could not offer him what we had just cooked, because no one who is not gay or HIV+ is allowed to eat “after” us, nor eat anything we’ve prepared. However, offerings of unprepared or packaged food are okay (like crackers or a package of soup). Even Jimmy did not wish to appear the beggar, so he sort of just said hi, and just as I had anticipated he would, Earl got him going on about his responsibilities and duties as “keeper of the keys.” This was prompted by a bandaged hand Jimmy purportedly injured laying down the law to someone who “was being an asshole” (The crime is always the same) This carried over to what was expected of us “should something go down” (i.e. should the whites be compelled to exhibit intimidating unity and a show of force to either of the other races) to which Earl threw in—like that would make a difference—that since we were HIV he didn’t know what was expected. After veering between reassuring us we were under his protection and letting us know he regularly kept the recalcitrant in line (where and where these enforcements are meted out is rather a mystery to me) I told him straight out that I very much appreciated that we can come to him if anyone “hassled us” (They haven’t – directly—but indirectly with warnings that one shouldn’t be “too gay.”) but that above all, I wanted it understood that I am congenitally non-violent, and though I would defend myself or my property if required, that would be the extent of it, and I wanted that to be okay and understood. (I recognize that this previous paragraph is somewhat tortured, but so was the conversation.)

Like Tank, Jimmy went on and on, in prison jargon that dulled the senses. At least it would have, had my senses not already been dulled by the deepest set of blue eyes imaginable. Truth be told, Jimmy is handsome—soap-opera stud handsome—and it’s a damn shame he didn’t get his ass into a casting director’s office before he did whatever he did to get here. If he had, he would now be memorizing lines like “Valerie, is that my baby you’re carrying?” instead of saying things like, “See, the paisas will stab you in the back every time, but I don’t trip on that shit.”

I finally sent him away with a handful of crackers. I had no idea if I felt more or less secure as a result of our conversation, in part because I wasn’t really sure what he had even said. And yet, it was very close to the amorphous conversation I had with him in my head prior to having it.

In a much more interesting vein, I was sitting back observing the “band of brothers,” the 8 or so black guys who “hang together” in this section of the wing, while imagining I was telling them that I was increasingly astounded at the chasm between the popular perception of them as angry, hostile, and dangerous; and my personal experience of them here as friendly, funny, and largely unacrimonious—to me or to each other. One in particular, a 25-year old, recent arrival named Cutty, has a killer smile and ready laugh that seems to cool the room like a blast of air conditioning. He has rapidly insinuated himself with the others who have been here longer. He’s charming and curious and while sitting on my black neighbor Dusty’s bunk, suddenly decided, for lack of a better word, to interview me.

In the hour before chow, he insisted on knowing everything about me and how I got here, but in the most disarmingly affable way imaginable. He followed up in the same vein this morning. “So, Marc, what are you doing?… Oh, who are you writing?… Am I annoying you?” Before you knew it, he knew all about the blog and my relationship with my sister and my relationship with the first and only girl I had carnal relations with back when I was seventeen. (Invariably, most straight men always want to make sure gay men have at least “tried” it with a woman. Like I would ever expect them to confirm they were “really” straight by sleeping with a man.) And I shared with him and Dusty—a pretty sharp cookie whose witticisms I told him I had noted extensively over the past 3 weeks—the very observations about the gap between perception and reality of black men that I had imagined sharing no less that 24 hours previous.

Here’s where it got almost spooky, I had literally in my hand the piece I had just written, “My Secret Heterosexual History,” that I was about to put in the mail to my sister, There is a line in it where I lament the C I got in 3rd grade, marring a grade school academic record otherwise exclusively consisting of A’s and B’s. When I told both Cutty and Dusty that it was a damn shame they were in prison instead of college, and that’s what I hoped for them both when they were released, Dusty exclaimed: “Damn, you are right! I used to do so well in school, till I started gang bangin’. I used to get all A’s and B’s, man I remember when I got a C it burned me!”

Now I’m sorry, that’s like oooo—eeeeee (Soundtrack: eerie music please) Bottom line, I’ve made some new friends who I can’t eat with, exchange food with, and who I’m supposed to be ready to fight “if it comes down.”

Not likely. This is no ordinary inmate they’re dealing with. I just successfully started smoking again, and stopped again.

MCO 2004

(King of the Off-Whites)

I did something stupid on Friday. I was so distressed at being assigned the porter job that I took the offer of a cigarette. And I’ve smoked all weekend.

But there is hope for me. These are not those smooth, filtered menthol lights that were my downfall in lives previous to this one. They are hand-rolled, unfiltered and non-mentholated, and make your heart beat fast and your head spin. I experienced some temporary satisfaction for about 10 minutes after smoking one, but on the whole it has ratcheted up a wired feeling in my head and dried up my mouth and I’m hoping, hoping it’s not too late and I can pull back from the brink of re-addicting myself.

I admit I did like the social aspect of it, which is probably the real reason I picked up again. “Let’s go have a cigarette” is such a lovely excuse for a good gossip. And after eating, walking back to the dorms, and while waiting in line, it gives one the illusion of doing something. Cigarettes are the death knell for people who need to think themselves productive. Writer’s Block feels a lot less like Writer’s Block when you’re smoking, as if it’s a visual manifestation of the thinking process that may or may not be occurring in one’s head. But it is beyond stupid for me to re-addict myself, because it is out of the question that I smoke upon paroling, and I’m just recreating the likelihood of that awful withdrawal that was physically even more difficult than withdrawal from the meth.

I remember after my first arrest, when I was sans cigarettes for 72 hours. I was finally bailed out and disgorged onto the pavement, outside Twin Towers, (penniless of course, because they take all of your money) at 4 in the morning. An enterprising Armenian taxi driver with a cell phone immediately walked up to ask me where I wanted to go to, meaning was there someone who I knew would pay the cab fare when I got there? But before I called to warn ahead, he knew to offer me a cigarette. He didn’t even smoke, he told me in the cab, but to a man, the cigarette was always gratefully accepted. I’m sure it also clinched the deal every time.

So I’m using the technique of a public confession to see if it helps me get back off the nicotine. If this doesn’t work, I may have to become addicted to SNUS, a Swedish nicotine chew that is odorless and non-cancer causing. I doubt that it can be sent in here, but I’m hoping I just liked nicotine because it went with the meth use, and without meth, smoking has lost its grip. I didn’t particularly miss it before Minimum, but smoking was not allowed in Reception, so it was easy enough. Then everyone was suddenly puffin’ away. For those of you who can’t imagine surviving the nightmare of all the smoke, there is a huge fan at the end of the dorm hallway that not only cools us admirably (we’d have been dying in the dog days of August without it.) but keeps the smoke dissipated efficiently.

This morning, at 8 and 11, I swept and mopped C-wing, and at 8, also swept and mopped the bathroom floor. The reason this simple menial work drives me nuts is because there are always a few inmates who don’t want you to sweep their “driveways,” or don’t think you do it right and take the mop from you and do their area themselves, or who get irritated because they are trying to sleep and you accidentally clang the foot of their bunk trying to do your job well. Most porters don’t think twice about these sorts of problems, but I am always tense that any little thing is going to get me yelled at or worse.

Part of this can be ascribed to my congenital nervousness, the other part is a legitimate picking up on the reality that there is an implied threat of violence that runs under the surface of almost all interaction among the criminal class, in or out of prison. So many of these men are ready to feel themselves insulted at the drop of the hat, and they see violence as part of the solution, rather than the problem. Well I suppose it does resolve the issue sometimes, if your goal is to intimidate, dominate, terrorize or control. In the case of the U.S. in Iraq—control.

This is the problem with US foreign policy. We want to control the world and we wonder why the world is rebelling. Bush is, quite honestly, I think, under the delusion we are a benevolent power. He can’t really quite grasp that what’s good for America isn’t automatically good for the world. He suffers from the same terminal subjectivity that is rampant here.

And while I’m dumping on Dubya, let me point out that he’s not really against drugs or drug use, he’s just against getting caught. Otherwise why didn’t he turn himself in for his past use of cocaine?

All right, all right. I’m obviously irritable either from the nicotine or my anticipation of withdrawal. This was an odd day because we waited in the yard for 45 minutes to go into breakfast, and no one had any idea what the cause of the delay was. (It is often violence elsewhere, which is why delays make everyone tense).

I had a chance to observe that young black men aren’t really comfortable wearing their pants under their ass, because they have to continually suppress the urge to pull them back up. There is not, never will be, nor ever has been, a fashion that is more guaranteed to cause intense embarrassment by its wearer when they look back on it 20 years from now. On this I would stake my reputation, if I knew what my reputation is at this point in time.

MCO 2004

It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting on my bunk listening to Garrison Keillor and all would be right with the world, except for the obvious little detail that I have 50 roommates and none of us can move more than 50 yards in any direction. When you think about how many people go ballistic over the habits and behaviors of one roommate with whom they share, say a two-bedroom apartment, it does put things in perspective, doesn’t it? It begs the question, not why are prisons so violent, but rather, how are they so relatively non-violent? In the month (almost) I have been in this dorm, there has been one fight among two hundred men. I bet the statistics are better than those of military barracks during basic training.

Last night, in fact, the black men in my corner of B-wing, (frankly a generally nice group that has considerably altered my attitudes about young African-American men) got tipsy on a big batch of “Pruno” (homemade prison wine) that had been fermenting all week. They didn’t get rowdy, but took advantage of “late night” to hang out and swap stories and laugh a lot. I took advantage of having a ¼ Seraquil left and not having to start the new porter job unit tomorrow (Sunday). But poor Earl was up rather late, telling me this morning that he was too afraid to go to the bathroom all night. I told him I thought the fear baseless, but after talking to him, it turned out not to be a new fear he was experiencing, but an old one. Evidently there were nights Earl, as a child, would go to the bathroom when his father was drunk. Nights he was lucky to make it to the back to his bedroom unscathed.

I used to think that abuse of whatever kind occurred in a minority of families. I am starting to think the true minority consists of those families in which abuse of any kind does not occur. I heard a report on NPR about rape victims, who, as an act of empowerment, have started insisting on being publically identified. Why, it was asked, are we encouraging a sense of shame on the part of the victim?

Shame is so toxic. And so pervasive. The second most difficult part of this experience for me, after the grief I caused my family, is the sense of shame that is inescapable even though I sincerely feel that the laws which convicted me are unjust and will one day be repealed as archaic and backward. (Though I do admit guilt, on all counts).

One of the side effects of Seraquil was that I had a lovely morning and afternoon drifting in and out of sleep. The kind of daytime dream-filled sleep that to me, feels almost like a meditation. During one of the waking hours, I heard a show on—you guessed it, NPR— from the humorist Michael Feldman (I think) that was taped in Charleston, West Virginia. I can’t begin to tell you how attractive he made the state seem, and I relearned a lesson I periodically forget; that the populations not living in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles are generally doing so unapologetically. There are plenty of things to do, local culture, and intellectual stimulation all over the country, and often a much better quality of life to boot. Not a bad lesson to relearn, of course, as I eye a future in Albuquerque.

So I drifted into a dream in which the dorm was being renovated, from former horse stables that allowed for a marvelous expansion, privacy and creative construction. Hell, it was practically loft living. Then somehow I went for a walk along a winding road that looked like bucolic New England but I knew was somewhere in West Virginia. At one point a fantastic glider appeared over a house, and I somehow felt I had had something to do with its design, and it folded itself into marvelous shapes, even a beautiful box, that floated gently out of the blue to the ground. Then a limo pushed by me, and a front gate opened, and the car went up the drive to a lovely white ranch house, and I thought ‘These are rich democrats, friends of Bill Clinton. There’s hidden money in these parts, lots of it.’ And I thought I could probably join them for cocktails and they would welcome me, and find me interesting and witty, and not care that I lived in the prison down the road.

I was awakened gently by the announcement of afternoon meds, and retained the feeling of the dream as I went to Pill Call. Every day, swarms of men pour out of the dorms like bats, most of them going to the much longer separate line for psych meds. I go to a shorter line for “other.” Next to a similar line for diabetics, of whom there are a surprising number.

I had Earl next to me, bitching about his bunkie Scott, who is an interesting case (there will be a character sketch of him sooner or later) and I found myself explaining Scott’s passive/aggressive behavior to Earl and and two other inmates in line, Moses and Jersey II. (Moses is Earl’s neighbor, older, black, generous and wise, and Jersey II is also black, but young, white-teethed and handsome, and personifies the word “dapper,” even inmate garb. He’s rather the opposite of Jersey I, the white guy).

Anyway, both Moses and Jersey II had worked with Scott, the passive/aggressive bunkie, in the laundry, and nodded in agreement at my detailing of the pathology of his behavior. Soon, Frank (a minor supporting character, for now) was listening and I threw in a few jokes, and they all laughed. I had the marvelous feeling of having broken past the tension of semi-anonymity, the kind that you feel when you go to a party and don’t know anyone, as opposed to when you’re immediately called over to join a group who’s been waiting for you to arrive.

Because there was a new tech distributing drugs, who was very slow, I got back late from Pill Call, and was locked out. I simply sat on a ledge, awaiting unlock, and struck up a conversation with a young black guy in which we ended up discussing the horrific waste of food we’d both witnessed daily at County Jail, all the more sickening because Twin Towers is located in an impoverished area and the food they throw out could easily supply enough to feed the very families of some of the incarcerated men. Then the doors opened for chow, and I walked to it with Lynn, who is turning out to be the bearer of a personality both effervescent and pedestrian. She is fairly talkative but says little of substance, all the while cracking a lot of bad jokes. But she has her repertoire of one-liners that she has put together over the years to deflect the invariable remarks directed her way. She actually gets a lot of attention—attention that is fairly ambiguous. It actually reminds me of walking with Cheri—a black female roommate I lived and worked with for years in New York. The catcalls from construction workers, the slightly hostile remarks from men of color who objected to my light complexion. Was this good or bad attention? Did they want to sleep with her or beat me up or both? Or did they simply crave the attention they got from their buddies by making us an object of their catcalls?

In making these denizens of my world here objects of your attention, I am humanizing some individuals who would never have penetrated your consciousness otherwise. That is not a reproach, but perhaps a reminder. By my being here, suddenly there’s a face in the crowd that you recognize; and my giving faces to others in the crowd brings on an awareness that there are so many people we conveniently wall off from our consciousness as somehow having earned anonymity by breaking the law, being mentally ill, or by being poor and a step away from shame. This awareness is moves these faces into the light.

Love from the shadows till November.

MCO 2004

Well, I got a job assignment. as a porter, here in Redwood Hall. Twice a day, 5 days a week. I will be either mopping or sweeping or some such, and on Thursdays I will probably distribute the laundry bags as well. I start Sunday (it’s Friday)

I don’t know why this should make me so anxious. Let’s face it though, I am a very anxious person. I come from a long line of anxious people, at least on my mother’s side. I am always rather ready for something to go wrong, in the case of this job, something like accidentally spraying Fantastik on the uniform of the warden during inspection. After all, being a nervous type, I am a bit of a klutz. I move jerkily, I am not smooth. And I can very easily trip over my words, as well as my feet. Yes, the word “hyper” applies rather exactly to me. And, to make things worse, I am filled with a sense of culpability about it.

Yet my father supplied half of my genes, and was notoriously mellow (a family story recounts my mother awakening my Dad in Chile, where they lived at the time, during an earthquake in 1956. “Steve, Steve!” she cried out, “un tremblement de terre!” To which he replied “It’s only an earthquake,” and went right back to his renowned nightly 8-hour slumber). So, I am somewhat suspicious of a completely genetic basis to my anxiety. I honestly believe it is not unrelated to the deep abiding fear gay children (yes, Virginia, it starts before puberty) have of being beaten up. At least this gay ex-child.

Obviously my tendency to be a bundle of nerves is not likely to be attenuated by my presence here as guest of the governor. Although, I am happy to report that my homophobiaphobia (that would mean a fear of those who fear homosexuals) is lessening daily. Tonight that secure trajectory was solidified by my visit to Canteen for (at long last) my monthly shopping spree. I spent 136 dollars and change, contributing both to the “Woods’” (Whites’) kitty and to the personal stock of merchandise of the “King of the Woods,” a fairly personable and rakish gentleman by the name of Jimmy. I also threw a few soups around here and there and no doubt will be the go-to man for a cup of java for next week. This is a role I am comfortable with. I have always been the recipient of such beneficence from my family, that I do not feel my bounty is quite “earned.” I didn’t feel that way about my ill-gotten profits dealing drugs either, which is why I didn’t just pay off my credit cards and get out of the business. I felt such easily earned money would have meant bad karma if I didn’t give most of it away.

I interrupted this to go to the bathroom, and on the way back was stopped by “Tank.” What a Drama Queen! He asked me: “ Will I get a direct answer if I ask you a direct question?” I answered: “yes, but only if I think it’s your business.” He then proceeded to embark upon the most indirect question imaginable, so steeped in prison jargon that I don’t even think I can accurately convey it. As he droned on (Pruno on his breath). I was reminded of Dr. Phil’s belief that 90% of questions are actually disguised statements. Very thinly disguised, in this case.

From what I could unravel, basically Tank wanted it known that B-wing is his sandbox. Ergo, he wanted to know if anyone else is trying to build castles in it, and if so, with whose pails. And was I getting sand kicked in my face? (Tank’s the kind of guy I am tempted to approach with my hand outstretched, but sticking through the open zipper of my crotch). Instead I just reassured him no one was “fucking” with me, I had not been approached to cover anyone’s drug debts, and no, I wasn’t passing out slips of paper with my locker combination on it. Ironically, the phrase that sums up that everything is copasetic in prison is “I’m straight,” so I told him just that. You can’t even tell the truth when you try, sometimes.

Luckily such ironic wordplay, though lost on Tank, has been the source of immense enjoyment for me all day, as I took out from the library “The Pocket Ogden Nash.” What a brilliant wordsmith and social critic he was, and absolutely perfect to read in tiny bites while waiting in one of the many lines that characterize life in prison.

In one of these lines this morning, waiting for chow, I saw a very attractive black female corrections officer at a table, sitting on one of the protruding steel seats. She was doing something I’ve never seen done by a woman. Her left foot was vibrating up and down in the nervous movement normally associated with adolescent males, particularly around the eighth grade. Another bundle of nerves besides me, it would seem. I can’t say that I blame her. After all, imagine, working here, where her imagination takes her!

MCO 2004

Day 226 – The Skin of My Teeth

A difficult day. I was reprimanded this morning because yesterday it seems I left my “Bridging Program” worksheet in the courtyard, where I was reading a book after collecting the worksheet. (The whole thing is a charade. We get our daily worksheets, and go back to our bunks and toss them. They do not collect or check them, which is all for the best as I have little use for “Thinking is a Skill- the PMI method.”) But evidently my lost worksheet was discovered by the Big Boss, the Capo di Tutti Capi, and the Bridging Program Director said “Don’t front me off like that.” It’s an interesting expression I’ve heard a few times in prison that means: “Don’t Make me Lose Face.” I’d be fascinated to understand how it came to mean that.

I don’t think I’ll get an “A” day, which would mean I would get out a day later, but it’s possible. That would make my release date November 17th. My mother’s birthday is November 18th, so I’m cutting it very close as it is.

Speaking of my mother, I received some correspondence that reminded me how truly terrible this ordeal has been for her. The unspoken question of the letter-writer seemed to be the one my mom, in her boundless capacity to love and forgive, has not asked me. That question is “How could you…?” And, I imagine that same question has alighted in the minds of almost everyone.

I have explained at various times that living with AIDS distorted my sense of consequences. Overcoming the fear of death had as a side effect losing the fear of a lot of things, or more accurately, fear of the future. I didn’t have to worry about bad things happening to me, like prison, because I wasn’t going to be around for them to happen to me.

But then, when it started to look as if I would survive AIDS, it inflated my sense of hubris, and this fueled by by the high. I had gotten but by the skin of my teeth for so many years, I think I was addicted to that rush as much as the rush of the drugs.

I had a job interview scheduled for the day after my arrest. I sincerely hoped that would be the step that led to another step that led back to a “normal” life. This was probably an unrealistic scenario, given the hold of crystal meth on me. But I was hyperaware of the possibility of going to prison, and my legal misadventures in constructing a new identity testify to my intense desire to avoid this very situation, as much for what it would do to my family as for what it would do to me.

I think the War on Drugs is wrong and immoral, and I defy anyone to come up with a credible argument for why drugs should be treated by the law any differently than alcohol. But I do recognize that their illegality was all I needed as a reason not to sell them, and my love for my family should have been enough motivation for me to refrain from any activity that could have such a devastating impact on them. The solution was not going there at all, not getting away with it by the skin of my teeth.

I thought I was going to end my drug adventures on my own. I intended to write of the educated white boy submerging himself in the demimonde of drug-dealing and living to tell the tale. But I didn’t know how I was going to carry that out without my family figuring out that the reason the account seemed so authentic was because it WAS authentic. The ultimate irony being of course, that I am indeed finally documenting the submersion into the demimonde by an educated articulate white boy.

The way of the world does seem to be one of balance, or reciprocity. I had said it many times when I was dealing that I had yet to see anyone emerge from it unscathed, out of debt, and without a criminal record, and I turned out to be no exception. It’s not too different from an intense love affair. I have never had one in which every moment of joy was not accompanied by an eventual moment of pain. (Very often, in my case, it seems to be two parts pain for one part joy in the love department.)

Everyday for 3 years or so I artificially induced euphoria in myself. The body, the psyche eventually seemed to say “you cannot live on cake forever, you must have the meat and potatoes of real life.” Right now I am eating all the meat and potatoes I didn’t eat for so long, although it’s all rather half-baked, or overcooked, depending on your metaphorical preference.

My mother told me once my birth was one of the highlights of her life, because she had had difficult pregnancies prior to mine, and it was her first completely natural childbirth. It seems as if the universe demands some sort of payment for that joy. I can only hope that I can translate my grief and guilt over being the source of such pain to her into a birth of my own.

I hope my writing can result in a work which will seem inevitably necessary in retrospect. A worthy grandchild to present my mother, one that also emerged after a difficult gestation. There’s a Latin phrase that says if I remember well: Through Art, Redemption.

I want to live those words.

MCO 2004

IDay 226 – Blind Spots

3:00 pm I write looking at a half-filled Scrabble board on the next bunk. The game has been temporarily suspended because its players went to watch Olympic boxing, leaving a clear view for me of a board with submissions such as “zoon,” ”ret,” and “removels.” They have a Scrabble dictionary, but Player 1 knows Player 2 won’t challenge him, as Player 2 thinks Player 1 has memorized all the 3-letter words. So Player 1 bluffs with words like “ono” and “adz” and isn’t even asked to define them.

I can’t help but remember the Scrabble playing of my father, for whom 45 minutes between word placement was not uncommon, and who tried to put down at least two 7-letter words per session. He used to drive us a little batty, but of course the one time I played in prison, I found that I wanted to play exactly the same way as he did. I couldn’t bear my opponents putting down “eat”, “send,” and “yes,” without even hunting for a double letter score for the “y.” Hell, they wouldn’t even rearrange the order of the letters looking for the right words in which to fit their “th”’s,”br”’s and “ing”’s! I ended up insisting we play with our letters open-faced so I could help them find decent words, then when I did, had a disastrous run of picking o’s and u’s almost exclusively. But I hardly took 45-minutes to find a place to put “lout” or “uomo” (what do you mean, Italian’s not allowed?), more like 5-7 minutes. I have never been so happy to hear “Day-Room Recall” in my time in prison. Scrabble is not a game I’ll be likely to play here again.

I slept most of the day actually (It’s 3:00pm). Last night, Steve, my bunkie, offered me one half of a Seraquil, the sleep aid prescribed in prison, and I took 1/2 of that. I know from experience that if you don’t take it for a while, not only do you have a lovely sleep, but the next morning—after dragging yourself to and from Chow—you can go back to sleep for an entire morning and then some. After a day like yesterday, where the morning just seemed to yawn into eternity, heavy with hurt and regret; I needed to simply close my eyes and wake up to lunch. (Ever sweet Earl had something prepared for me, sitting in my locker. My soups, his cooking.) Now it’s only ½ hour until mail call. I think I’ll doze until then.

7:00 PM. Had a lovely nap, shower and dinner. I walked with Lynn to chow, and decided to ask if “on the streets” she always operates as a woman (yes) and if and how regularly it is noted that she is “in transition.” She answered “yeah, little kids… the brats… they always grab their mother and point and say: Mommy, that’s a man!” I thought that was pretty funny.

We also discussed internalizing the taunts of others—well I discussed it. I pointed out that if someone, in the most vituperative manner, accused you of being “a dirty chink” or “slimy chinaman,” and you were not even Asian, there would be no part of you that would feet hurt by that. You would simply—along with everyone else—see that person as evidently deluded. And yet, “faggot” cuts deeply, even if intellectually we understand it to be a reflection of the one using the word less of the one the word targets. I finally realized a couple of years ago that the part that hurt was the part of you that felt it was true, and deserved, and now, pretty much, I let the haters have 100% ownership of the hate. It is not pleasant to be the object of hostility of course, but it is their hostility. Don’t internalize the lies and you’ll be okay, I tried to tell Lynn, but I think I lost her with the Chinese metaphor.

I also had an interesting encounter with a guy around my age known as “Jersey,” who often comes to hang out with my bunkie Steve. “Jersey,” as his name would indicate, has a very strong accent from guess-where. As for his looks, he (how can I put this nicely?) would definitely be cast more as the sidekick than the leading man, in a movie, if you catch my drift.

He was high on something, and very talkative. He covered an enormous range of topics without my uttering but a few words. He told me that he trusted no one, except children, as he had been “stabbed in the back” so many times. He told me that he couldn’t take a compliment because he never heard one growing up. (So I told him I bet he looked good in a tuxedo, and he turned red, allowing only that he “cleaned up good.”) He also discussed at great length the relationship he had with his ex-girlfriend’s children, when they were living in a hotel housing homeless families.

Here was this man who truly has a very good heart, telling me he tried so hard to be a good “daddy” to these clearly abused children. “I would do anything, anything for kids” (He has 2 of his own). I thought, ‘yeah, anything but stay sober and out of jail!’ And I do not mean this in a condemning way, after all, I wasn’t any better at doing what was necessary so that my mother would not have to get that unimaginable phone call that I’d been arrested. It was just so poignant to see how this man who lamented not being able to trust anyone and who wanted so much for his children and his girlfriend’s children not to have that experience of losing affectionate role models, ended up doing just that, by becoming a trusted father figure and then disappearing. Part of the blame lies with this misbegotten parole system, snatching parents or parental figures away got bullshit violations, and of course, too many people are having children who shouldn’t be having children.

But really, hasn’t that been going on for generations? Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Before you go to sleep tonight, send some love to all the kids in homeless shelters.

MCO 2004

Sunday is a difficult day here, unless you get a visit, although that has its own set of emotional ramifications. Mostly, I hate the lack of mail that normally punctuates my day, though no mail comes on Saturday either. I hate the weekends, basically. On Sunday night I even go to sleep visualizing all the letters I wrote over the weekend being picked up at midnight.

Knowing someone who goes to prison for a year is not quite like knowing someone who goes to France for a year, is it? Writing to someone in jail makes it very hard to duck that reality of where you are writing them, and human beings being human beings, we tend to project ourselves onto most situations, We don’t like it when friends go to ugly or depressing places, like jails and hospitals. We tend to get angry at them both for being in pain and reminding us of our own vulnerability and mortality.

On a bigger scale it is not so different from compassion fatigue. We can barely make it through the day with our own pain caused from relatively luxurious problems like a stressful boss, demanding kids or an unresponsive spouse (to name but a fraction of possibilities). To have to readmit into our consciousness, willingly, the unpleasant feeling that empathetic imaging of a day in prison, or a day in a refugee camp for that matter, conjures up—well we tend to put it on a shelf to think about it tomorrow. And then do the same again, tomorrow.

In my case in particular, there are some friends who were part and parcel of a lifestyle that led to my eventual arrest. They have anger that I did not get out of it when I could; they have guilt thinking that I may have stayed in because of the financial, social and personal upheaval transforming my life would have caused them. Of course the upheaval eventually came to us all. But I’d like to think that if I can discharge them of any responsibility for this outcome, they can forgive me for getting caught. Let’s be honest; the consequences you have suffered because of it rather pale next to those I am suffering.

And because I have (finally) chosen abstinence, does not mean I invalidate anything that occurred under the influence of drugs, neither do I think it is an excuse for anything. If those who I considered friends while I was using are still using, it may mean that as a practical matter, we cannot spend time together upon my release, It does not preclude expressions of love and support and continued friendship.

I miss you and I want to hear from you. If you want to know if there is life after drugs, there’s plenty. But my affection will never be conditioned on your making the same choice I have made, even though, as a matter of health alone, of course I encourage it.

With that off my chest, the prospect of the rest of my Sunday feels a little lighter. For those of you finding yourself checking in on the blog for its soap operatic qualities, (like you furtively turn on “One life To Live” when you come home for lunch) here’s the latest from B-Wing:

Two C.O’s searched through Wizard’s possessions today. They didn’t find anything, but they might well order him to take a drug test. If he fails, it’s another 120 days (I think). Earl (who has a big crush on him) tells me Wizard was originally supposed to go home last November, and keeps getting discipilinary add-ons to his sentence that have prolonged his stay almost a year. I cannot even imagine.

(It is rather ironic that when it came to the details of everyday life, I was always one of the most law-abiding, civic-minded goodie-goodies you ever met. I littered maybe once, in 1966. When I smoked, I even used to take my cigarette butts back with me to throw out at home!)

As for Lynn, I continue to eat with her, and realize I am not the only one who thinks of her as a female. Although she really is rather plain, evidently a few of the homies have propositioned her and at the very least flirt with her, although I doubt they want her mouth for kissing, if you catch my drift. She also seems to be the favorite of Lil' Bit, the A-wing cat. (I’m in B-wing, we have mice, but no cat). So, I am happy to report, Lynn is not as forlorn or embattled as I feared. And it’s nice for me not to eat alone as well. Sometimes we walk to chow with Robin, the other “queen” in the dorm in tow. But Robin is black, and I’m afraid none of us are quite brave enough to cross the racial lines by having her actually sit down with us. To put a new twist on an old saying; “Strange Bedfellows Make for Politics!”

Not that there are any bedfellows on my horizon, strange or otherwise. The oddest part is that sex, such a big part of my life for so long, not only has become a barely thought of footnote, but that it doesn’t really bother me that it has. How does it feel to have become the vessel of my sublimation, dear readers?

And a post-script to those addressed earlier in this blog entry. Some of you I used to call collect from County Jail. But since I did not hear from you via letter during the long phoneless drought of reception, I now no longer feel quite confident picking up the phone, particularly when you’re paying. If you want me to call again, you need to let me know, and if you have a new number, I need to know that too.

Great affections to all.

MCO 2004

The last 24 hours have been bookended by two encounters. One, with an new friend, and one, with a old friend. (I use that term very loosely. It’s more poetic than “prison acquaintance” but somewhat less accurate.)

First, the new friend. Lynn is a recent arrival in an adjoining wing. Although a biological male, Lynn has breasts, and in my book, tits trumps a penis every time. In “the streets,” Lynn self-identifies as a woman, and even stripped of make-up or female dress, her demeanor and hairstyle (always the hair) is unambiguously not that of a man.

Not that Lynn is glamorous in any way. She looks to be in her 50’s, and is missing some teeth. Her hair is gray and swept back and braided behind her. She has high cheekbones, but her complexion is sallow and she is overall, extremely pale. She looks how what you’d imagine a 20-year using hard-core drug addict drag queen without makeup and dressed in male inmate garb would look.

Two nights ago, when I saw her eating alone, I resolved to make friends with her. Even though she clearly has been down this road before, it doesn’t mean it is not brutal every time. (I have been eating alone as well. but I have not been made fun of my entire life).

Earl actually met Lynn first, and as we ate lunch yesterday, filled up a cup of our “Ramen Surprise” and suggested I bring it over to her and introduce myself. I found her sitting alone on her bed, smoking a cigarette. She was clearly touched by the offer. (Earl, for all of his eye-rolling and “whatever” smirks, is actually a big softie) and grateful that I offered to be her cafeteria companion. I still doubt we have anything in common in the traditional sense, but in these circumstances the idea is somewhat turned on its head. We only need to have in common that we are both, ultimately, put in the same category by the majority here. Yes, I can “pass” as “normal” and Lynn can’t. But she is brave enough to risk all manner of abuse to be who she is. I just have to be brave enough to associate with her, even though the 3 wings of the dorm that do not know me just enough to make assumptions about me will now have doubts as to what I like to do in bed and then some. (They will assume just because Lynn has a penis, that as a gay man, I might be attracted to her. In fact, they are much more likely to be attracted to her, and it bothers them.)

So Lynn came over at breakfast time and wondered if I had a cigarette, and I told her I didn’t smoke, and my bunkie graciously rolled and offered her one. We walked together to the chow hall and chatted amicably, and neither of us had to sit alone. I was aware of more than a few eyes upon us, and realized I could be more protective of someone else than of myself. If anyone made a remark about my association with Lynn, I think I would simply tell them to “get over it.”

I have some ambivalent feelings about trying to base this new friendship on different criteria than those I usually do, things like having stuff to talk about. Lynn and I can barely sustain small talk. Making friends with her though, is an opportunity to challenge my own discomfort, the part of me that internalizes the judgments of those I profess to dismiss.

As for the second of my bookends, after leaving Lynn to go to Pill Call, I ran into Shadow, who couldn’t be the more opposite in appearance to her. Lynn is so light as to be ghostlike, Shadow, true to his name, is so dark I first assumed him to be Bengali, not Latino. Shadow was my neighbor in the adjoining bunk in Cedar Hall, the orientation dorm that directly preceded my stay here. We were dispatched to different dorms so engaged in a quick catch-up of “where did they put you?” etc.

Shadow is memorable for three reasons. First, because he is so dark; second, because he limps (he only has a stump of a right foot and I don’t know how he lost half of it); and third, because he has a crush on my mom.

For some reason or another I had shown some family pictures around at Cedar—oh, yes, I remember, my sister visited when I was there and requests were made by my neighbors to see how pretty she is. I showed this photo of my mother at our summer home in Massachusetts, flanked by my two sisters. It was generally agreed upon that both sisters were attractive, in fact either of them could have now had a slew of pen pals if they wanted. But Shadow, who is probably between 38 and 45, noted that there was “something” about my mother, who was 76 in the photo, that was “hot.” I thought maybe he was pulling my leg, but he seemed eminently sincere.

When I met him in front of the infirmary this morning, he asked about my family, and when I said “they’re fine, my sister is still posting the blog” he interrupted to say “—your Mom, how’s your Mom, she was one fine lady!” What could I do but smile and tell him I would pass along the compliment?

Mom, you’ve still got it going on.

MCO 2004

P.S. Security update: I got a lock so my valuables are safe. Despite how close I feel to all of you, I cannot share the combination, but it does add up to my age, 45.

P.P.S. Just had a talk with my Lynn, fresh from the shower. She managed to get in and out with only one other inmate in there, so she escaped mass-ogling of her silicon breast implants. Her sharing of this tidbit broached a few topics of conversation, and I found out that when not in prison, Lynn is prostitute in Ontario (CA not Canada) and is 51. She is considering “getting out of the business” and getting sober, but I got the distinct feeling that when she gets out in 28 days, she will hit the pipe and her resolve will go up in smoke. She told me a story or two that would ruin my PG rating and open me up to a slander suit from a B-actor or two who have been her clients. My overall impression from the conversation was that she was thicker-skinned than I thought, having dealt with for years on the outside much of the same shit she deals with in here. Though, just like everybody, she still needs friends.

Office Politics

Day 222 – Office Politics

Word is starting to spread to spread about the Blog, and guys are asking “Can I be in it?” which is sort of flattering. At the same time I am a little nervous that my honesty might come back to bite me, in case some of their friends on the outside read it on the Net and report back on what’s written. So I might be a little more general about certain things…. Nah… An unfettered press is one of the foundations or democracy, right? Although I can’t help remembering how the author of Peyton Place was a pariah after the book came out because everybody recognized themselves in it. Of course, that was before Jerry Springer. Nowadays, nobody cares about how they look as long as they get some attention. 15 minutes of fame and all that. Andy Warhol was a wise man

The latest twist in the Drama of the Incarcerated Gay Male is that inevitably it has been found out by the powers-that-be that my previous dorm before moving here was a Protective Custody dorm. I had gone there because where I was (that horror week in the tiers that was like old-movie prison) was simply not safe for an HIV+ gay man over 40. The mandatory workouts alone were heart attack-inducing, frankly. But in the dorm where they placed me, Birch Hall, there were several inmates who were fleeing drug debts they couldn’t pay, or who had dropped a kite (sent a letter) to the C.O.’s about knives their cellies were hiding (for example) that they did not want to take the fall for and risk seriously extending their stay. These poor guys were branded “snitches” and were afraid to go to Yard, and wary that every new admission in the dorm is really a “plant,” sent in to “stick” them.

So I was advised that when I got here, I never mention where I’d come from, lest it be assumed that I was also a “snitch.” But inevitably, the information leaked. Geez, I’m just trying to survive. God forbid the onus should be placed on those who hide and make weapons instead of those who want to stay out of trouble..

In level I yards (that’s to say, Minimum Security) there is still a prisoner hierarchy, even if is less strict and much less violent than the level IV (Maximum Security) yards. This was exemplified by yesterday’s blog entry, by the admonishments of “Tank..” I made Earl laugh by likening it to the Director of Human Resources calling you into his/her office to intervene in a situation that had “come to his/her attention;” from which you would leave not feeling particularly reassured by his/her reassurances. I guess “friendly warning” is the more appropriate oxymoron (accent on “moron”).

When I take a step back and look at the big picture, I see men in prison simply attempting to duplicate the maneuvers they would practice in an outside workplace; a post office, a warehouse, a wall street brokerage firm. They are jockeying for position, power, prestige, dominance, status. They are practicing office politics.

Well, I know a few things about office politics, having worked in offices for 20 years before veering off onto my wayward path. So I decided it was time to embark on a major charm offensive, armed with humor and shots of coffee. It’s a dicey thing—I’ve learned from the experience that no matter where you are, one must carefully lay the groundwork. As my father advised, “it’s all about positioning.” The wit must be spooned out at first, like sugar in tea; then you can graduate to dinner, and then ladle it out like a refreshing gazpacho. These are actually appropriate metaphors, because I’m finally being invited to join neighbors at chow, at dinner (yesterday) and breakfast (today).

What amazes me is how much gay-related humor straight men employ that I would never dare bandy about. However, once they open the door, it is permissible to follow up with a remark, preferable self-deprecating. (Last night it started with a crack about a buttered roll and ended with my retort about “cross-dressing” on the salad.) At the base of it all is an American society that still, after all these years, seems to simply be just so damn nervous about sex. American men, in particular, seem to make precious little progress from high school on. It’s all so silly that homosexuality should be treated any differently than left-handedness. As if the world could ever be harmed by more forms of love. New Yorker cartoons will probably beat me to it, but it will be interesting to see the first heterosexual couple who claims as ground for divorce the unrelenting strain created on their marriage by the happy lesbians around the corner who just tied the not.

I am also feeling completely conned by all of the supposed offers of work furlough/drug rehab/ early release programs. The doctor told me without a shred of doubt these programs were no longer available for the HIV + because of the difficulty of maintaining the necessary ongoing health care for them on the outside. This is hardly surprising, considering budget cuts, at the same time, the policy goes completely against the Americans with Disabilities Act. So Earl, who by the way, has become a great friend—he has this infectious giggle that alone is worth the price of admission—tells me that I can expect an offer of work furlough around one week before release. Technically, this gives the system a legal “out”. They operate fairly certain that any legal challenge is highly unlikely because very few prisoners have the resources to challenge them, and are released by the time any challenge would ever come to court. The ACLU needs plaintiffs to mount an action, but I’m no different than anyone else; once I get out I want to go on with my life. Besides, the whole process would just feel like putting, at best, a band-aid on a cancer-ridden patient.

MCO 2004