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
