November 2004 Archives

November 30, 2004

I’ve always loved traveling by train. And isn’t it a damn shame that no American leader of the past 30 years had the courage or the vision to campaign for a United States crisscrossed by bullet trains by the dawn of the 21st century? It’s ridiculous that it took me 9 hours to make it from Salinas to LA yesterday, when the equivalent trip in France would have come in under less than 3 hours. Americans would be a lot more likely to abandon (or not buy) their SUV’s in the first place if they were offered a competitive alternative. Of course, if there was ever a President who believed "What’s good for General Motors (read Halliburton) is good for America" we’ve got him.

It was interesting to read on the way down in a magazine that I was among a whole lot of Blue Staters who were yakking about moving to Canada or Europe. I thought I was being original. I was just being melodramatic. And not too realistic. It seems you need more that just to speak French to move to Montreal. And with the weak-ass dollar I can hardly stretch out my disability income, there or in France. So, go, Euro, go! And stay Marc stay!

Well, in any event I don’t think I’ll stay on disability long when I get to Albuquerque. Work is really important, whatever the work, for the routine and sense of purpose it establishes. It’s hard to have limitless choices every day as far as what you can do, it’s why a lot of people have to take structured, themed vacations. It’s also why, when they get out of jail. a lot of people go back to whatever they were doing that got them into jail in the first place. Dealing drugs, for example, may be dealing drugs, but it is work. And apart from the money, it does give you a sense of purpose, of at least what you have to do that day. Obtain, weigh, deliver, deposit and do it all over again. And again.

It’s terribly true that human beings are largely drawn to the familiar, even when it’s painful. It explains a lot of bad relationships, attachments to destructive situations, and resistance to constructive change. The good news is that it doesn’t take too long to establish a familiar routine, but damn it’s easier when imposed from without. This is why so many men end up going back to prison. Not because they like it, but because they returned to the familiar (doing crime) rather than soldier on through the discomfort of shaping the unfamiliar into the newly familiar by building a new life.

I had only been at Andrea’s for 8 days, but after 4 days at my brother’s, was jonesing to come back to the relative familiarity of her big fluffy bed (which sounds like she’s in it—she’s not—shame on you) and to her computer. I am SO lucky to have friends like her. And so lucky to have other friends who are staying in touch, calling me, wanting to get together.

I was haunted on the ride down by the days spent with my brother. Even though I don’t think he’ll be reading the blog anymore, and most of you don’t know him and will never meet him, he is my brother and I simply can’t write about him as if he was another character in prison. Suffice to say, he evokes no less despair in me than many of the men I met there.

I did have an eerie moment on the train about prison. As we approached San Luis Opisbo, I recognized a sprawling complex at CMC-West. This was the facility I had most hoped to be shipped to, the prison with one of the best reputations in the system, probably because of the temperate climate as much as anything. I had actually managed to conjure up bungalows in my mind, instead of early ugly Projects-like mental-hospital-with-guard-towers buildings that we snaked past on the train.

I was sent to Chino instead of CMC, but my buddy Dick Brewer went there. I had sent out Dick’s story to a friend who never forwarded it to my sister, so I will repeat it now.

Dick was 55, an ex-Arkansan FOB, a funny, avuncular diabetic who was my bunkie in Birch Hall in Chino, the protective custody dorm. (Dick was there because he was over 40 and also refused to engage in any of the racial politics required in the "regular" housing.). I used to massage his feet and he used to bring me back food from the kitchen where he worked. He was one of the most popular men in the dorm.

Prior to incarceration, Dick was a pillar of his Rancho Bernardo community (ironically I first worked in R.B. when I lived San Diego, and my boss and Dick played golf a few times). Dick had a beautiful wife of 30 plus years, and several strapping sons that played in a local softball team—along with several off-duty firemen and cops.

One otherwise harmless Saturday afternoon game, when the beer was flowing (although Dick himself didn’t drink) there was a disputed call. Tempers flared, as things tend to do easily at these booze-fueled sporting events. Dick described a situation in which someone attacked one of his sons, and Dick protectively waded forth, baseball bat in hand. One of the opposing aggressors, according to Dick, was descending from the bleachers, and a gun flashed. Dick, alarmed, swang the bat at the man, aiming for his upper left arm. At that very moment, the man stepped off the last step of the bleacher, the highest step, and Dick’s bat went not against the man’s shoulder, but hit his head.

Dick put an off-duty cop into a coma.

Horrified at what he’d done, Dick fled to Phoenix with his wife, where they had a condo. He kept checking on the status of the man, and when he emerged from the coma out of danger, Dick returned and arranged to turn himself in.

If his victim had not been a peace officer, Dick would probably have gotten probation. Instead he got 8 years at 80%, I think. I know he had 5 years to go when he left me at Birch, "happy" to "land" the relatively "cushy" CMC.

I waved at him from the train, quite uselessly of course, thinking how easily it can all turn, for all of us, in a second. In a second.

MCO 2004

I've had some very intense interactions of late but I simply can't splay them on the blog because soon I'd have no friends left. Family is even more dicey.

In prison all the consequences I had to worry about were right there, I could report ANYTHING in the blog without worry.

Suffice to say, for right now, I love my dog, my sister and brother-in-law, my niece and nephew, and I made great friends with my brother's girlfriend Fumi and her good friend Katia. On the downside, I keep crawling under the covers every three hours, and I'm leaving back for LA earlier than planned because my brother Steve and I don't get along any better now than we have the rest of our lives. We did all spend a wondrous first hour at Carmel Beach yesterday which was the complete and total antithesis of prison. It looked just like the vision of "freedom" in the cheesy re-entry video I saw a week before by departure.

And last night I saw Almodovar's "Talk to Her" on DVD (thanks Katia) and it was wonderful. Then I slept with Gaza and Wolfie (my dog and Steve's dog, respectively) and that was wonderful too.

More, and more interesting stuff, when I get back to LA on Monday night.

MCO 2004

November 27, 2004

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and today I'm trying to ward off anxiety and concentrate on being with the kids (my niece and nephew). I'm so anxious to have a sense of having a life back, with a center, and place to return to, a routine. I'm just so anxious period.

We will go to the beach this afternoon, though, that will be nice.

MCO 2004

November 23, 2004

This morning I went back to Parker Center, and registered as a bad bad boy, BEFORE 10 AM.

Then I went to my Parole Officer's, who got me a pass to go to Salinas for Thanksgiving. I will see my brother, sister, niece, nephew, and beloved dog, Gaza, and will be blogging from there.

I'm starting to feel like a "normal" person again.

I wish each and every one of you the happiest of Thanksgivings, although I sincerely doubt anybody's will be as filled with gratitude as mine.

MCO 2004

November 22, 2004

So get this. I go down to register as a Narcotics Offender, all the way downtown at Parker Center. My Parole Officer had said "Get there early" but I also thought she said it was open from 10-4, which didn’t seem so early to me, but I got there at 11. I find out I’m too late. TOO LATE. That office is open from 4 AM to 10 AM. I SWEAR THIS IS TRUE.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why this is the case. I will ask tomorrow, but I won’t hold my breath for an answer. There was probably a good reason for it 40 years ago and it has just stayed that way because that’s the way it is. The Criminal Justice System (and it is CRIMINAL) doesn’t do change well, and common sense and efficiency it doesn’t do at all. And talk about encouraging meth use! Those are perfect tweeker hours!

So did I just break down in tears? No I did not. Your intrepid Outmate Olmsted walked up to Disney Hall and just gaped at the phenomenal architectural marvel wrought by Frank Gehry. Then he went to two exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and allowed himself to be completely inspired. Then he "discovered" the most charming used book store called Caravans, and bought the Memoirs of William Shirer (Vol. I. 1903-1930) from the $1.95 bargain bin. Then he had some tacos at the Food Court at the Macy’s Plaza, and got on the bus back home, where a few phone calls led him to the happy news that his private disability will be picking up the monies deducted by Social Security during his incarceration. Outmate O will be able to buy a new computer and start paying his Mom back for the gazillions spent on his behalf in this debacle.

I now am going to commence work on a new chef d’oeuvre: an assemblage of all the stamps on all the letters I received in prison. Yes I kept them all. It’s all about scissors and glue and patience, but it is going to be beautiful, even if it doesn’t hang in MOCA, (although may I just point out that that can be read a Marc Olmsted Creates Art.)

And tonight, dinner with a friend to catch up. I know all of this is rather banal, but for me it was all stuff I never could do in prison, and very rarely did when the drugs took over my life. I’m finally engaging again with the world, in a way I wanted to very badly and it’s very gratifying.

So tomorrow I start on a 3000k Walk Across America to raise money for---just kidding. Tomorrow I register as a Narcotics Offender, before 10 am, and then rush back here because my Parole Officer is supposed to show up and make sure I’m not living in a crack house. I’m tempted to lay out some Sweet & Lo on a mirror, but I don’t think she’d appreciate the attempt at humor.

I’ll just offer her a V-8. And spike it with Finlandia. JUST KIDDING.

MCO 2004

Sunday Evening November 21, 2004

Here’s what prison and doing drugs have in common. They reduce your sense of choice, but in so doing can increase your sense of purpose—not in the cosmic sense, but in the sense of what to do for the next 4 hours. Drugs make one’s first priority serving the needs of the high, and also getting more of the drug. Prison is about surviving and filling up the time with a limited amount of options available for filling up that time. You may have a job, but it rarely is a full-time one, and mostly you read or play cards or watch TV or write letters, go to chow or listen to the radio or sleep and that’s kind of it. No going to France, out to dinner, or to the movies. No picking up your kids at school or walking the dog or buying a CD or any of the 10,000 things you can do on the outside, (at least in principle).

I sort of feel like an East German in 1989, venturing into West Germany. I have so many choices and it’s a tad intimidating. Of course I had all these choices a year ago, but for years I used alcohol and drugs to fill up much of my leisure time. The results in general had to do with satisfying the libido, but not always, as I learned to work---both writing and bartending—under the influence. The point is, if I didn’t know what to do, I could always depend on the high to determine what next to do for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I much prefer West Berlin to Dreary Dresden. I no doubt will soon enough be working two jobs and will lament my lack of free time . Right now I’m a bit paralyzed. I can call anybody, read anything, watch anything, take the cross-town bus or a cab to a play or a movie or to see a friend. How do I decide what to do? It’s wonderful but discombobulating, especially for a Libra who has trouble making decisions in the first place. Except for these two: to stay clean and to never go back to prison.

And, a third, I guess. When in doubt, write it out.

Oh look, and it’s time for bed. I made it.

MCO 2004

I saw a great singer/songwriter perform last night, (Hunter Payne, I think add a dot.com and you'll have his website) and I remembered song lyrics I wrote I'd love to have put to music. I thought I'd just post mine and see if I have any talents composers out there who'd like to give it a shot. (These little baubles of mine are posted on the main part of my site, please feel free to peruse if you haven't already...)

This Man True

Sometimes you’re the tracks

Sometimes you’re the train

Sometimes you’re the land

Sometimes you’re the grain

Sometimes you’re the roof

Sometimes you’re the rain

Sometime you’re the balm

Sometimes you’re the pain

All men are made

From the very same stuff

Whether ashes or ashes

Or dust to dust

And it pleases me none

To tell you this truth

But there’s never been a one

Who’s never once been a fool

Sometimes you’re the game

Sometimes you’re the player

Sometimes you’re the news

Sometimes you’re the prayer

Sometimes you’re the sand

Sometimes you’re the wave

Sometime you’re the drowned

Sometimes you’re the saved

All men are made

From the very same stuff

Whether ashes or ashes

Or dust to dust

And it pleases me none

To tell you this truth

But there’s never been a one

Who’s never once been cruel

Sometimes you’re the heart

Sometimes you’re the break

Sometimes you’re the lamb

Sometimes you’re the snake

Sometimes you’re the hope

Sometime you’re the fear

Sometimes you’re the loved

Sometimes you’re the tears

All men are made

From the very same stuff

Whether ashes or ashes

Or dust to dust

And it pleases me none

To tell you this truth

But there’s never been a one

I loved as much as you.

November 20, 2004

A One and A Two...

I’m happy to report that I’m finally pretty much sleeping through the night, and when I get up to pee can pretty much get back to sleep. Boy, it sure is nice not to have to climb off a top bunk, and hobble down a long hallway with your eyes half-closed. (I say hobble because I had a fairly common prison ailment of painful sensitivity of the bottoms of your feet that seems to come from sleeping high up off the floor. It dissipates after some walking, but it would be a serious impediment to getting out of there fast in a fire. It did permit me to get a prescription for Neurontin, which did nothing for the pain in my feet but has some value as an anti-anxiety med, of obvious value in the joint).

Prison is one of the worst places in the world to be pee-shy (that would be me), and the worst place in the world to be shy about doing your other business in public (that would be everybody). That’s right. No doors. It’s a pain in the obvious, made somewhat more annoying by the evident belief that seems to persist with many inmates that all manner of disease must be primarily spread via sharing toilet seats. As they meticulously line the seat with T.P., one can practically hear their Moms clucking about never knowing about what kind of "dirty" person last used the john.

Even more comical is the practice of "courtesy flushing." The idea is to flush as soon as would be feasibly indicated to reduce the propagation of unpleasant odors, but since these are industrial strength stainless steel commodes that could suck down a raccoon, guys will flush incessantly, beyond all logic, before during between and after. It’s so effortfully inoffensive that it only succeeds in drawing attention to itself, the noise alone being as irritating as any real or imagined smell.

Men being men, of course, there was the nothing-em-bare-asses-me contingent that would insist on engaging you in conversation as if you were seated next to each other at a Kiwanis dinner, and of course the this-is-just-like-my-library-at-home brigade, who would complete the latest Anne Rice while puffing on a cigarette and listening to their walkman.

I am SO happy to have a door to close again. Appreciate the little freedoms you have, my friends, lest you have to learn the hard way not to take them for granted. (Although I have the feeling I just did my part to deter an entire crime wave. "No doors! Ooohh! I could never go to prison!").

Nice weekend planned, but I think I’ll share about that separately, after the fact.

MCO 2004

November 19, 2004

Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Oh no, I think I’ve become like the TV starlet who decides to get pregnant, and "retire" but finds it very hard to let go of the modest but real attention she was getting from her "Girls Behinds Bars" series. Everyone tells her if she takes a break to have just one lousy kid she’ll be anonymous dust in this town again in no time. Plus the higher profile made her feel she could be a real voice for animal rights, even if that means doing cheesy benefits more than actually working with abused giraffes at Tipi Hedren’s Nature Reserve.

Before I flog this metaphor to death (I call them my "metaphorrors"). I might as well face facts that being out is going to present a whole new set of challenges as far as what to say than being inside did, and just as in the case of my starlet (Let’s call her "Lesbianne Warren") having a baby—being free--might be a lot more fulfilling-but much less interesting to the public—than making a TV series. It’s not like I’m going to get myself rearrested for the sake of the blog, in any event, but I may have to accept that I’m sort of like post-hurricane, post-election Florida. An interesting state, for sure, but do you really want to read about it EVERY day anymore?

So I learned yesterday that the LA transit system is really not bad, but double-check the itinerary they give you on the MTA website, or you might find yourself wandering around for hours in the armpit of LA that exists between here and Long Beach, searching for a Parole Office that was actually two stops back on the Blue Line. Of course, God forbid the P.O. herself might have been able to tell one of her clients how to get there without a car. It’s not as if newly freed wards of the states aren’t likely to HAVE one, is it?

Otherwise, she was helpful and I accomplished several administrative necessities on my way to becoming a real person again. Hopefully my pass request will be approved to visit my brother and other sister and niece and nephew and beloved dog in Salinas over Thanksgiving, and I’ll be off to Albuquerque not too much longer after.

I also walked from one the tip of Hollywood to mid-Wilshire (no mean feat), finally retracing the steps of one of the routes I took on a bus from County Jail to Court, in shackles, when I was arrested last year. I had wished myself with ever fiber of my being off that bus at the time, vowing to walk these same streets a free man, (and with enormous gratitude,) again. And I did.

I also (re) learned how much kinder one must be to oneself than one is. This is a little tricky, because it may sound like I wasn’t giving a friend of mine who intended to visit the benefit of the doubt when he never even sent in the form to do so. To a degree that’s true, but more fundamentally, out of the two possibilities—him being organizationally challenged, or him just not caring—it is startling how readily I was willing to go for the interpretation that cast me in the most unloved light possible, even though this individual has given a fair amount of evidence that would make it just as believable that his intentions often exceed his grasp.

On to greet another day conquering bureaucrats. This weekend, I’m going to the movies and out to lunch, and then to a concert at night. Imagine that.

MCO 2004

My Mom's 79th Birthday Poem (With thanks to my Sister)

Who says you need a jet

To have jet lag

Change moves at the speed of life

And sometimes you miss the plain

Truth that shows up at the gate

Saying goodbye as you leave

Or waiting for you as you arrive

Most leavetakings aren’t a clean break

You parole from relationships

If you’re not already on probation

Your mindclock stays a few emotions behind

Taking off is hard to do

Let’s not even talk about crash landings

Spring forward

Fall back

But there’s only one time stamped on your passport

Entry visas

Sometimes leave exit wounds

Hibernate a season

And you’re still a season older

Back springs

Make you fall forward

Don’t ever change

As if you could

But life does

Life lags

Behind you

As you run in place

Faster and faster

Pay attention from the train

They have real lives out there

Those people you see through the window

But not as real as yours

Not as real as yours

MCO 2004

November 17, 2004

LUCKY GUY

This is how lucky I am. Andrea, in whose apartment I’m staying, used to work in a mattress store. She has one of the deluxest mattresses on earth, laden with fluffy, luxuriant pillows. Holy contrast, Inmate Man! (Although now I think I may christen myself an "Outmate." How does that sound?")

I was still up at 5:30 am, acclimated to 10 months of that wake up time. Every day, with no fail. 7 days a week. Actually my head is so full that I don’t think my dreams can contain it all. I needed to write.

I was up rather late just re-reading the blog. I had forgotten so much of what I had written, it was a fascinating experience to read ones own words as a member of the audience. I have to say I must have channeled some of that, because it felt almost like someone else had written it. And the work of my sister, and later on, Mom, was positively prodigious. Anyway, at the very least I know that there is NO one else in the entire prison system who has a sister who would go above and beyond the call of all duty for a writer brother in the slammer as she did. I can be sure of one thing if/when I try shopping this baby –no one will say, "oh, no, not ANOTHER prison blog!"

To recount a little my last day at Chino:

Poor Merle. It is very, very rough to be left behind, especially by your gay bunkie in a depressing environment. Luckily he will be out in April, and he is fairly popular. He gave me a big hug and turned away fast and didn’t look back. I left him my walkman and showed him where NPR and Pacifica were. That will ease his pain considerably. (If I could afford it, I would send flowers to each and every one of the staff members at both stations. They literally saved my life).

Jimmy, to whom I bequeathed my dictionary, came to say goodbye. He’s here till 2006 and I still find it hard to reconcile this charming, witty guy who should have been an LA actor with someone who had to have done some pretty bad things to have spent so much time in prison. He gave me a big hug too and I promised to send him segments of the blog and interesting letters. I’m thinking of posting the letters I receive from the inside in Volume II. Maybe, by sending them stuff I’ve already posted, I can stimulate their competitive juices and improve their writing skills. I can also send them back what they wrote after it’s posted, as my sister did for me, and they can feel a bit connected with the outside world. Maybe readers will write them and they can develop a semblance of a support system, that makes all the difference whether one makes it on the outside. I’m feeling dislocated and disoriented, and I was only in for 10 months.

I did hang out with an old buddy from County Jail, Skip, who happened to be on the grounds crew outside where we waited., I did what I could to encourage him, as with Jimmy, to rewrite his personal "story." Skip has been "down" (in prison) for the better part of 10 years for armed robbery and a parole violation. He spoke to me of resigning himself to the likelihood of life in prison. This guy is bright and personable and frankly, should be a Hollywood dialogue coach. He’s got that pitch-perfect urban ethnic voice that’s half-Italian and half-Puerto Rican that would lend such authenticity to any villain role your up-and-coming actor would want to land.

I had of course been fearful of a final hitch, so was very grateful when I saw my name on the official "getting-out today" list. But my presentiment was not completely unfounded. Someone who had been my neighbor in Redwood for all of two days interrupted my conversation with Skip. Kenny, to put it charitably, is "country," as in bumpkin. He manages to irritate the hell out of anyone of any race and is always arguing, trying to explain that all his "mama have to do is get on the phone and straighten these people out." When I explained, for the nth time, that Texas and California did not have an agreement to exchange parolees, and nothing his Mama said could change that, his stubborn refusal to absorb reality led me to ask him to leave Skip and me alone, as this was our last talk before I went home. Kenny said: "I see. You wanna be with your friend. But I’m your friend too." And I said: "Sorry Kenny, we are not friends, you irritate the hell out of me just like you irritate the hell out of everyone else.(He has moved three times because he creates so many problems for himself). To which he trotted out: "Well obviously, you just don’t like me because you don’t like black people."

I really had to watch myself because I could have seriously hurt this bozo and been in there for another year. Not to mention it wouldn’t have shored up my case if I expressed the utter ridiculousness of his accusation with my fist down his throat. Luckily, I was saved by a Sargent who told Kenny to come back after count and summoned us soon-to-depart inside. I bid farewell to Skip and promised to write.

Two hours later, after all the perambulations involved in the exit process, I was greeted by my most excellent buddy Nick, who had been through exactly what I was going through 4 years ago (I joke that we switched lives). I also noted with pleasure it was the first time we’d ever been together completely sober both, and the friendship, though forged under the influence, survives quite well without it, thank you very much.

For any of you out there who think you have a busy day ahead, I swear I got you beat. But I couldn’t disappoint my faithful readership. One note: Be skeptical of all these mainstream media reports describing the "clean-up of insurgents in Fallujah." Anyone remember Vietnam? All those "Vietcong" who were really civilians? There is a terrible massacre of non-combatants going on in Fallujuah. In L.A., listen to KPFK, 90.7, elsewhere find your Pacifica station. And make no mistake about it , there was massive fraud in Ohio on November 2nd.

The corporatization of the mainstream media has come to roost my friends. Inform yourself through the alternative press. (Their reports from Iraq are right off the ground, not through embedded (in-bed-with) media).

I suspect you’ll be hearing from me tomorrow. Let’s all say a prayer for the soul of Margaret Hassan.

MCO 2004

Liberty

I am the world

The world is me

From Colorado

To Chile

From NPR

To just TV

From crystal meth

To sobriety

I am the world

The world is me

I range the land

I swim the sea

From Proust to nuts

Prose poetry

I am the world

The world is me

I greet the sun

With humility

I mock the moon

With quick glee

I love the laugh

That comes from me

But I love more

My family

I am the world

The world is me

I am a man

Who’s finally free

MCO 2004

A Marc,

pour célébrer ce jour tant attendu.

Liberté

est un mot

Que l'on ne peut comprendre

Si l'on en fut privé

Liberté

Emotion

Presqu'intouchable et tendre

Comme un doux soir d'été

Liberté

Mot chéri

Je t'attends, me voilà

Sens mon cœur palpiter

Liberté

Tu es mienne

C'est un Alleluia

Une réalité.

Avec tous mes vœux pour que la secondre étape de ta vie te sois indulgente, harmonieuse et satisfaisante.

Des bises de ' l'autre" Françoise

Live and Learn

I am presently in my Reentry class watching a stultifyingly boring video that tries to jam an entire course in rehabilitation into a TV program. To be fair, it is not completely horrible, but it is no more effective than trying to learn French in 2 hours. It ignores the nature of learning. In essence, it is a fig leaf for a system that has given up on realistic forms of rehabilitation that take time. The keyword is money.

I am actually supposed to be on “S” time, but the “DMS” sheet listing S timers won’t come out until later. so I was summoned into the class for this one day only. Almost immediately an inmate asked to look at my New Yorker and I let him. This irritated me. Number 1, why the hell can’t anyone else ever anticipate the likelihood they will be bored in a situation here and bring a book or a magazine? (The only one I have seen do so is Hippie. Number 2, why didn’t I just tell him no? (On break, he returned the magazine to me, asking if he could hold his place in it. I asserted myself, telling him I brought the magazine so I could read it. Now, of course I started this entry but will be returning from break, so I will feel obliged to read the magazine rather than continue writing this. Errch! Anyway it’s all a pretty good opening for the blog topic of the day “Pet Prison Peeves.”

I hate to admit, some of these pet peeves break down on racial/ethnic lines. But I feel pretty safe that doesn’t mean they are racist/culturally superior in nature. You be the judge.

1) It drives me batty how much the African-American men use the N-word. I fully understand that they don't mean it “that” way, but to my ears it betrays a stunning ignorance of their own history. I’ve heard this same observation from Oprah. By the way, five of her best shows would make for a better pre-release program than the video I’m watching now.

2) I can’t stand how rappers seem to want to both alienate and shock you at the same time. Yet they take offense when you show this very reaction when you do listen to the music.

3) What is it with Latin men and not using Kleenex (Called toilet paper in here but is readily available)? They insist on holding one nostril closed while blowing out the contents of the other nostril. They do this outdoors sometimes, but often enough, they do it into the bathroom sink. Yes, they wash down what comes out, but it is disgusting nonetheless (I have seen this habit in old French Villagers; I imagine it is a holdover from Kleenex-free childhoods).

4) I can’t stand the way white inmates call each other “dog” and “homie” incessantly and use “fuck” or “fucking” every other word, even when recounting the simplest, most inoffensive of stories. It is an abuse of the language and hopelessly conforming to the lowest common denominator of conduct.

5) I’ve hated the way C.O.’s and often other inmates assume that prison regulations, procedures, mores and slang are familiar to everyone sans explanation. Yes, I know this is so because they have known such things themselves for so long that they can’t imagine anyone else not knowing them (I know the reasons for most of the things I complain about, but that doesn’t make them less irritating).

Or does it? My father used to quote a French proverb “Comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” (To understand is to forgive everything) But I just saw it cited in the New Yorker, as the opposite: “Ne Rien Comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” (To understand nothing is to forgive everything). This poses an interesting quandary. Which is it? Meanwhile, Mr. Magazine came back late from break, because he ran to his dorm to get a magazine of his own to read.

I think this is progress.

MCO 2004

P.S. I take it back, the video is horribly done. What’s my solution? Fund schools, not prisons. The cure is prevention.

P.P.S. An unexpected moment in the class. A student actually answered a question from the teacher and opened up a little about his life. “This is my first term, my mom is in C.I.W. for her second term, for bank theft. My problem is alcohol. I had a job, a car, a baby daughter, and then I started drinking again and then everything fell apart. I don’t know what to do.” The poor guy was obviously petrified of drinking when he got out, and very brave to share his fears in a class that was being completely non-responsive.

The instructor is not a bad guy, but he offered some pablum about changing ones thinking. Obviously the boy needs intense, one-on-one counseling of the type that the system does not supply.

This is not one of those blogs where I end up talking to the inmate in trouble, thereby throwing a bone to myself and to those of you who like to think one person can make a difference.

I will point out that his identification of alcohol as the “drug” that gets him in trouble is something I’ve heard said in here as many times as I’ve heard the same about crystal meth. Yet I never hear anyone proposing we re-illegalize alcohol. But people will cite these sorts of anti-social consequences of drug use to justify its prohibition.

If drugs were legalized,( as I advocate) the illegal behaviors that stem from their use, like driving under the influence, would remain against the law and subject to the Force of Law, just as they are now as they pertain to alcohol. But I have yet to hear anyone come up with a convincing argument that drugs do any more harm than alcohol. In fact, mortality rate would suggest otherwise. Welcome to my campaign platform for 2012.

(Written November 5, 2004)

I awoke this morning, and Merle handed me a large, oversized home-made birthday card, although I didn’t know that until he told me.

“For me?” I asked.

“Yeah, Jimmy brought it over last night after you fell asleep” (He had learned about my recent birthday a few days ago).

On the cover is a picture of some hands clutching a fortune cookie from which a $20 bill was sticking out, with a headline reading “Imagine Getting More.” Inside it reads “More Street Dreams” As the prison term for outside is “on the streets,” he was wishing me the fulfillment of my dreams upon release.

He signed it “Happy Birthday. Love, Jimmy”

I was of course touched and flattered, and immediately put it up on my locker. I did not go to thank him personally because I was betting he made the very well designed card on the sly, probably telling his buds in “A” wing where he resides that it was for a girlfriend or a relative. When he came over this morning on a pretext of asking Merle something, he saw the card on the locker and was visibly pleased. I told him I was someone who almost exclusively sent home-made cards myself, eschewing store-bought ones, so I was not only touched but impressed. He gave one of his funny flattered looks (he has quite a repertoire of facial expressions) and added: "And I don’t make cards for nobody, not my sister, not my mom, not my friends,” and with that admission sidled away. (He returned later for coffee and heart-burn medication, but then again, half the wing is over here at least once a day for something or other). At breakfast I coined a new word to Earl. “I’m having a passionate Nomance,” I told him. Frankly I don’t know quite what to make of the attention. It’s a fun diversion for the final stretch, as odd as it is anything else.

Yesterday Jimmy started reading my 10-page excerpt from Rhett and Belle a prequel. (5 chapters written) to Gone with the Wind, and so now he just came by showing me a copy he unearthed of Gone with the Wind that he intends to read.

Again, this is not a man who sets off my Gaydar. I think, however, that he is perceptive enough to know when he’s met someone who means it when he tells him he is absolutely capable of self-redemption and a life on the outside that can be a lot more fulfilling and less dangerous than the existences he has fallen into in the past. 90% of what he hears from others is about what he can do in here, from me it’s about what he can be out there. I think he may be infatuated with the vision of his potential self he sees in my eyes.

Unfortunately, if I had to make a bet, it would be that Jimmy will screw up again just as he has many times before, but if I am in a position to help him, and he shows sincerity in wanting to change, I will. For the immediate future (he gets out in 2006), I will be happy to correspond, and if any of you lonely ladies are intrigued, I’ll “hook you up” The man is heterosexual, but as he’s just been locked up a while, he’s not above flirting with gay boys for ego gratification. This gay boy is nibbling the bait, but not swallowing the hook. I know when someone's fishing.

MCO 2004

P.S. The evil Terry sauntered over to my bunk while I was distracted lending a book of essays of E.B. White to an inmate (I’m uncovering the odd literate reader in here). When Terry (the evil one who told Earl he was “full of AIDS” in the library, started fingering my Newsweek, I took it from him and said, “Move on, Terry.” He mumbled, “I was going to borrow something, but I see you’re busy. And I replied “I’m not busy. I just don’t like you,” And as he walked away, just in case he was clueless about the reason for my hostility, added with slow deliberateness “Watch what you say.”

Oooh, I felt so tough….

(Written November 3, 2004)

Jimmy and I were having a conversation about child-rearing and discipline. It was the usual back and forth I have come to expect in here, both from myself and the other party. I contended that it is never okay to hit a child, and speaking autobiographically, that it is eminently possible. They agree, up to a point. That point being that when the child (and they are also speaking autobiographically) does something “to deserve it,” then it is okay. It is clear to me, that even as adults, they are compelled to justify the abuse which they themselves suffered as children. This is less painful to them than seeing their parents as simply wrong.

Jimmy was initially raised by his mother until she married when he was 5 years old. He characterizes himself as a demon seed child who was out of control and deserved the physical punishments he received for his acting out, no doubt from the stepfather he probably hated.

Inevitably, Jimmy sometimes cared for with the children of the girlfriends he had. Often he was one of a series of “uncles” to the children of his drug-using girlfriends, and not surprisingly, they were angry children. Jimmy and I discussed how he dealt with them, and he recounted a funny/harrowing story or two that illustrated, to me, children screaming for attention and willing to get it anyway they could.

Jimmy said: “I always had a foolproof way to get any kid in line when he was going berserk. I’d tell him that if he didn’t calm down I’d beat his mom when she got home.” Thinking this rather an astute approach, he added “It always worked. No matter what little devils they are, boys always love their mom.” My reaction was overwhelming and visceral. “I can’t believe you said that! I can’t believe you did that! Jimmy, that was a horrible, inexcusable, terrible thing to say to a child!”

Jimmy was nonplussed. I suppose he thought I would think him a sly disciplinarian. I certainly didn’t believe he would actually carry out the threats he made, but making them was no less reprehensible.

Absent his complete and immediate disavowal of what he said, I ended our conversation right there and sent him back to his wing. Needless to say, coming on top of Kerry’s loss, it constituted a second low point of the day.

There were no more visits that afternoon from Jimmy. I napped heavily, after having had a fitful sleep election night. When I got up and got ready for chow, Jimmy sauntered over, addressing Earl as if I weren’t there, while sampling Earl’s homemade salsa. “Well, I would have been over earlier, if Marc hadn’t stressed me out so much. He literally sent me to bed, I was so upset.” Two days ago, after I had similarly challenged Jimmy on violence being a legitimate expression of his role as caller of the shots, he was similarly afflicted with stomach upset, and actually threw up.

While it certainly could have been the stomach flu, it is my hope that Jimmy’s physical tribulations are manifestations of conflict awakened in a man who is not more intrinsically violent that I am. Raised in my family, I am quite sure he would have not only not been a demon seed; he probably would have been President of the Senior Class and more.

One bright—sort of—post script came when Jimmy visited just as I was writing this. He felt the need to finish his story. “What I didn’t tell you was that one time it didn’t work. There was this kid, Justin. When I told him I would beat his mom he said, ‘Go ahead.’” I observed: “Jimmy, don’t you realize that it probably means the mom beat him so much, he actually wanted to see you beat her?” He answered: “Worse! I found out that her ex-boyfriend had gotten out of jail and was beating both of them! So I waited for him one day, and knocked the shit out of him, kicking him all the way down this huge stairway.”

“Aha” I reacted. “Finally, an appropriate use of violence.” I may be a Gandhi-wannabe, but I have no mercy for the victimizers of woman and children, and I took Jimmy sharing this with me as his stab at redemption in my eyes.

MCO 2004

(Written November 1, 2004)

Well, I never thought I‘d have certain problems in prison.. Of all things, Jimmy the Handsome, keeper of the keys, shot caller, King of the Whites, likes me too much. People are talking. On the surface this is not my worry. It’s “on him” as they say here. But it’s not that simple.

Last night, for example, he waited for Earl and me to join him for dinner. He is (not surprisingly), spoken to at chow by a variety of inmates trying to joke with him, curry favor, and sometimes, discuss business. Business that I don’t want to know about, because if something “happened” and an informer was suspected, I could be on the list of people who conceivably knew something to tell. No, thank-you. The trade-off is, of course, that being a favorite of Jimmy’s means no one is going to mess with me, but it also means proximity to a possible target.

This was underlined on the walk back from chow, when Jimmy was abruptly asked by a homeboy: “if someone said ‘gimme a light, punk’ to you, you’d clip him right?” This was a loaded question. “Punk” is prison slang for an inmate who will service another inmate sexually, and being called a “punk” is considered legitimate grounds for a fight. The inmate asking knew damn well what the answer to the question was, and asking Jimmy within my earshot was a clear reminder that he had been noticed eating dinner with a queer, although the question was indirect enough not to be overtly provocative.

I’ve noticed an increase in these kinds of questions or comments the more Jimmy comes to hang out at our bunk, and ironically, it makes me more uncomfortable than it makes him.

On the way back to the “house,” when Jimmy got talking to some others in front of a neighboring dorm, I continued back to Redwood, leaving him to his conversation. Later, Jimmy semi-jokingly, semi-seriously, reproached me for “abandoning” him. “You’re supposed to be my ‘wingman’ in case something goes down!” I told him he should have said, “wait for me” if that’s what he wanted me to do, but frankly, if he wants a “wingman” not to look my way, because I am completely non-violent and I would be useless in any fracas or melee. (This is not completely true. If Earl was attacked, I would react like a Bengal Tiger. The gay thing, for me, is a legitimate basis for mutual self-defense).

Poor Jimmy. He is torn between a prison culture that is second nature to him, and an attraction, not to me sexually (I think), but to the world of ideas that I represent, chief among them the rejection of violence as a legitimate means of expression. When I hear him trot out his tired old crap that “the whites have to stick together as a race because the other races are out to get us if we let down our guard,” I point out to him the other races are espousing the same creed of no first-strike self-defense only. This makes no sense. If no one ever makes the first move, then there’s nothing to defend against, is there? The truth is, both sides are equally capable of offensive and pre-emptive strikes.

In any event, I told Jimmy, I personally didn’t fear any blacks or Hispanics because my relations with them were excellent and even warm. I told Jimmy that the only inmates I feared were the white ones, and if he was so concerned about respecting the prison political rules he shouldn’t be undermining his status by hanging out with me. But that if he did, he couldn’t expect me to play by the rules of a system I reject. The CDC has been playing divide and conquer with inmates for years, and in my view, as the saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Jimmy rejects my arguments out of hand, of course, but I know he is conflicted. He is an auto-didact who plows through my New Yorkers and even my Noam Chomsky book. He does a crossword puzzle every day and reads the newspaper. And despite the truth that he has had to fight a fair amount to get where he is, his charm and strategic thinking has been far more essential to his rise than his fists. He is a natural leader, and his acolytes like him (or want to be like by him) far more than they fear him.

That he doesn’t give a shit what people think (or pretends not to) is both his strength and his Achille’s heel. I identify, on a much reduced scale. My espousal of non-violence is tolerated because as a gay person, I’m already marginalized and conversely, allowed alternative beliefs. If Jimmy dared to agree with my embrace of non-violence, ironically he would probably have to fight to do so.

In any event, as I told him, I have 2 days left here and no way am I going to get caught up in anything. Call me Diane Keaton in The Godfather, except I’m not getting in that big black car. (Not that Jimmy would ever say “I need you, Kate,” to me either). But it was a striking moment when Bear, a hulking black gentle giant neighbor of mine stopped me in the wing and said about Jimmy “That tall one? He likes you.” (So does Bear actually. In that way, although I wonder if he’s just trying to get a pen pal on the outside who will send him money).

Anyway I asserted my views in so many words to Jimmy, and he’s smart enough to know he could use me as a friend on the outside more than he needs me as a friend on the inside. He read the blog statistics that my sister sent me (I would love to know who’s reading me in Finland) and he was reminded there is a much bigger world out there than the one behind these walls. I do hope he makes it out of there eventually, and stays out.

Phil left today. He occupied the top bunk to my right and engaged in those endless Monopoly games with his bunkie Sharif, an epic love/hate relationship if there ever was one, as Sharif is way worse than me when it comes to giving advice. Phil was one of the most affable guys in here, and it broke my heart to hear him recount how in the last 10 years, he had only spent 2 and 1/2 years of them out of jail.

He gave me a hug—a rare gesture across the racial divide—at the door, and I hugged him back and gave him a stern lecture. “Phil,” I told him, “on the bus down to LA, I want you to ask yourself how your plans are different this time in any substantive way than the last 2 or 3 times you got out.” (I had heard those “plans” and they were conspicuously devoid of any realistic attempt to construct for himself a support system that will keep him working and off drugs). I continued: “If you can honestly say you want to do things differently than the last times, then you have to actually do something differently. There are lots of programs for men to start over, but you have to find them. You can’t track down your old drug buddies and expect to stay sober and show up sober for your parole officer. Do whatever it takes, just remember, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

He listened and thanked me. He wants to have lunch back in Hollywood, and who knows? He’s a smart guy, he has a 7-year old son, and it is insane that he is caught on this merry-go-round. If he doesn’t get off it, his son is bound to follow. So send him your prayers (he said he will be checking this blog. I very much doubt he will, but if so, Hi Phil!)

MCO 2004

There is a tall, slightly goofy white guy here who I think is named Russ. I don’t know for sure, as he picked up on my playful habit of nodding to him as we pass, addressing him as “Doctor…” as if we are medical colleagues meeting in a hospital corridor. My nickname for him stuck though, and now he’s called “Doc,” at least in B-wing.

.The other evening, Doc was talking to Jack Daniels. (That’s his real name.) Jack is about 23 and extremely handsome, he looks like he just walked out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. He’s also real nice, it’s hard to believe he’s here. Actually that applies to Doc as well. To most of the guys here, really..

Somehow or another, I was drawn into a conversation Doc and Jack were having about sex. Actually this has become a fairly routine occurrence, as I am the “go-to” guy whenever an authoritative gay point of view is required on this topic.

The questions I’m asked in this situation are hopelessly similar and unsophisticated. They almost always stem from basic misunderstandings of the similarities and differences between heterosexuality, homosexuality, transexuality and transvestism. The subtext of the questions is also invariably the same. A startling degree of straight men seem to be somehow afraid they can be “turned,” that by some unknown means they will wake up one day and find themselves wanting to have sex with other men, or worse, not wanting to but having it anyway. They want reassurance that being gay is too fundamentally different in is very essence to be a risk to their “normalcy.”

Perhaps they are insecure because, like any healthy men, they have fetishes or kinky fantasies that they don’t realize almost everybody has. They wonder if the first step to becoming homosexuals involves getting excited at the idea of a dominatrix in a leather body suit, or fantasizing about being watched while having sex, or finding certain sex toys erotic. They wonder if they edge into these realms, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the other side of the street entirely.

My approach was, at first, unsatisfying. They wanted reassurance about how different they were from gay men, and I told them precisely the opposite. “Listen, you know all there is to know about being a gay man,” I informed Doc and Jack, who widened their eyes at this bit of information. “You’re thinking we’re so different from you because the objects of our attraction are different. But that’s not what’s important in attraction. It’s the process involved. You’re not lusting after a woman’s vagina, any more than I’m preoccupied with a man’s penis. Not that those things don’t count, but what counts far more, is the way her hair smells, the touch of her soft skin, the way she laughs, the sensual curve of her hips. And beyond that, the excited way she makes you feel, that funny feeling in your stomach and your groin, the way you anticipate getting together, the way you replay your conversations in your head, the way you fantasize about her. I do exactly the same thing. Just with me it’s the deep voice, the square jaw, the masculine manner, the low laugh, and so on. What counts for both of is the excitement, the anticipation, the fantasizing, the experience of feeling attracted to someone. The process is exactly the same. Do you see what I mean?”

They did. I swear. “Doc” actually stepped out of character and later took me aside and said “Marc thanks for that information. It was really helpful.” No kidding.

MCO 2004

(Written October 29)

I am happy to report that Jimmy the Handsome’s disciplinee backed out of his encounter with Jimmy. So no discipline was meted out by Jimmy, and a potential episode of violence was happily averted. I understand that in this type of forfeit, the unpaid debt was likely paid. The debtor probably owes his “homeboys” now instead, but this is only a guess.

Don claimed it was the talk of potential trouble that led him to ditch Earl and me for chow this morning. He told Earl he didn’t want us involved if something “went off.” If I could count how many times in prison I’d heard this crap. It is a self-perpetuating myth that one must always be at the ready for a race riot. I find it highly unlikely that anyone would ever choose to settle a score and expect back-up from his race in the chow hall, where we are surrounded by C.O.’s and punishment would be swift and guaranteed. Don, more likely, was invited to chow by his new neighbor, who I would wager suggested he ditch the gay guys. But of course Earl completely swallowed Don’s explanation.

Yes, I am sure there have been fights, even riots in prison chow halls. But to hear it from most inmates, one would have to believe they occur at a frequency that would make it mathematically impossible for me to never have witnessed one. And neither have they ever witnessed one, you’ll find out if you prod a little.

So I was eating with Earl, and he offered two of his untouched portions of breakfast to neighbors, both of whom declined.

I was astounded and said so. “What are you doing? You know no one can eat ‘after’ us!”

“I didn’t touch it!” Earl asserted.

“I know that, I know it’s perfectly safe, but you know the ‘rules’ don’t differentiate!”

“It’s fine! I know what I’m doing,” answered Earl, with finality.

Earl, I’m afraid, is in denial. Since we are only recently eating together, I can’t know for certain whether his offers have in fact been accepted in the past, but in a setting where everyone is supposedly on the alert for any signals to go battle-ready, I sincerely doubt anyone would risk direct defiance of known protocol that strictly prohibits taking from the plate of a known gay inmate, much less one who is HIV positive.

Earl insists they occasionally accept his offers. Perhaps some inmates don’t know “the rules,” or don’t care. But when they say no, I’m reasonably sure why, and I also think I know why Earl makes the offer despite “the rule.” He is wired to be provocative, which is not too surprising given the distressing stories of his abusive childhood. My experience of such individuals is that they dwell in the kingdom of drama. One law reigns above all: Attention Rules. Positive attention is great, but it’s far less familiar than negative attention, as its far harder to get. And human beings will almost always choose the familiar over the unfamiliar, even if it’s painful.

As if to illustrate this, when I returned from chow, we discovered someone had switched our locks. While we left them hanging, unlocked, someone had taken Earl’s lock and put it on mine and vice-versa. When we then locked our locks, we couldn’t reopen them until we’d figured out the switch. This was a harmless prank anywhere else, but in the current atmosphere, a tad unsettling. I was annoyed, but Earl seemed secretly pleased. “They’re just fucking with us” he explained, suppressing a smile. Negative attention was still attention. This kind of asinine, time-consuming, chop-busting pain-in-the-ass adolescent bullshit drives me up a wall, but Earl, like most of the inmates here, have more than anything else this one thing in common: Immaturity. I joke about it being the third grade here, but it’s not far from the truth.

My female readership is probably rolling their eyes, thinking about the men in their lives, and wanting to tell me “believe me, it’s not confined to jail.” It’s true, adolescent behavior, or “arrested” development in the case of prison, seems to be epidemic among adult males. Has it always been this way, and only now getting press? Is this a specifically American phenomenon? If it is a symptom of modern society, what does it stem from? The lack of male adult role models? Smothering mothers? An overextended childhood run amok?

I’ve never tried to initiate a “Diablog.” But this topic seems as good as any. Comments welcome.

MCO 2004

P.S. Lest you think I can’t poke a little fun at my own guy, politically, I thought I’d share a term I thought up to describe Kerry, particularly in debates: “Infactuated.”

Halloween Animist

Every night

When walking back from chow

I have a conversation with the moon

Hello my friend

You’re a jester

A changeling

By eighths

Sly and subtle

No brash and brassy Sun, you

Daily proclaiming

Her record-breaking reign

As Queen of Life Eternal

I so prefer

The Prince of Things Nocturnal

Brother Moon

Welcome guest at evening constitutionals

The perfect after-dinner speaker

To the point, never rude

Always thought-provoking

Your anecdotes

Antidotes

To thoughts confined or confused

To boot, a seasoned traveler

At home in every sky

But don’t blink

You’ll miss his wink

There’ll be no rocket

In your pocket

Goodnight, moon

And thanks

MCO 2004

Jimmy the Handsome has been over here in “Gaywood” a lot recently. In fact, sometimes he actually administrates some of the white domain from here, as various supplicants come to him to adjudicate minor issues. For example, we have just gone to “store,” and those who have spent more than $25 are expected to contribute some tobacco and a hygiene product to the white “kitty.” The tobacco is distributed to detainees in Cedar Hall, where they are cut off from regular prison commerce during their orientation. The hygiene products are for indigent inmates. So last night, for example, Jimmy had to decide whether to get harsh with someone who kept promising to contribute “next month” but never did. (I am always extremely prompt with my contribution!)

He also shared about an exchange he had with a C.O. here named Miss Gaither. First let me describe her. She is young, around 30, African-American, and more attractive than would be indicated by her nickname, “Chewbacca” —which probably stems more from her personality than her looks. None of her colleagues, of all genders and races, feel compelled to lecture us about being on our bunks and quiet at count time, and to threaten us with searches if we are even just next to our bunk, instead of on it. She is the type of nitpicker that one comes to expect from C.O.’s who have something to prove, often young women with a chip on their shoulder who feel they have to be tougher than the men to be taken seriously.

I had slight difficulty with her on my first day here, when I didn’t know where to go for pill call, and she said oh-so-condescendingly “We don’t hold your hand here, Mr. Olmsted.” Since then, we’ve had a little more contact over perfunctory matters like ducats and passes, but nothing remotely untoward. Yet this morning when I said, “Good Morning, Miss Gaither,” she practically snarled back a return “Good Morning.”

Still, I was surprised earlier today when Earl told me that last night Jimmy told him, quite seriously that he was “tired of having to stand up for us to Miss Gaither.” According to him, she’d said “they’re getting too comfortable in here.” Earl has been alarmist before, and he tends toward melodrama. But he knows when Jimmy is joking and he said Jimmy was quite serious. And this had a ring of truth to it.

I’m not particularly worried about this having any impact on me, because I am leaving in 19 days. But I am a little concerned for Earll and any of my other gay brethren who will remain here after me, so I am sharing this in the hope Chino Authorities read it. Miss Gaither also arbitrarily canceled “day room” for the afternoon, punishing all of us because one inmate was caught running to his bed at count. More ominously, she has voiced a willingness to look the other way if someone got “taxed,” i.e. beat up for “cause.” “Don’t make no difference to me if you ‘slip’ in the shower.” she warned.

I am intrigued by the sentiment behind “they’re getting too comfortable around here.” The idea behind it is that the “normal” state of affairs should be one in which homosexuals are tolerated, but only as long as they are uncomfortable. Well, hopefully, the pen is mightier than the C.O., and her supervisors are reading this, and will take note.

I got my ducat (like a pass) for “re-entry class” today. Five days of that, then “S-time,” meaning no more bathroom scrubbing until release. Yay! Hopefully, the class will provide fodder for a blog of two of interest.

MCO 2004

P.S. I just pleaded with Jimmy the Handsome not to engage in “enforcement” tomorrow of an undetermined but clearly physical nature (in another dorm). I doubt he’ll heed me. Violence has been part of his vernacular so long that he understands non-violence only in the abstract, now.

It’s particularly tragic because he’s a very sharp and extremely charming guy. Why the hell can’t he stay out of jail?

I already wrote a blog entry for today, but this has been buzzing around in my mind, and I feel compelled to put it down on paper.

Now that I have just a few weeks to go, I sort of marvel at how I psychologically survived the first few months, when I had 10…9…8…7 etc. months to go. For the first two weeks, I held onto the extremely thin hope that I would get out on bail. And to be honest, if I had gotten out, my fantasy was to jump bail and go to Canada or France or Mexico. These fantasies were really just a survival mechanism to get through some very tough weeks. Then my lawyer thought we could get me a sentence of six months in a lock-down rehab, and I thought that I had such a good rapport with the probation officer that he would recommend it. But neither the judge nor the probation officer were amused by my forging of my death certificate to vacate my probation for my first conviction for selling in August of 2003. (I had received, for that, a sentence of 3 years probation, 300 hours of community service, restitution of $2300, and the part I couldn’t face—random drug testing that would have required getting sober. It seems amazing to me now that getting off the meth seemed such an insurmountable task, but while still on it I had the bright idea of faking my death instead, in an effort to erase the entire nightmare. Which worked perfectly until someone informed them I was still around—probably the same person who ratted me out the first time. This second offense is why I received a prison sentence.)

When they offered “16 months with half” ( i.e. halftime), or 8 months plus time served, equaling a total of 10 ½ months, I immediately thought of my little sister Erica’s decision the year before to move to Malaysia for several years with her 2 adorable ones. We were all, frankly, devastated at the prospect of her and the kids being on the other side of the world, but she ended up coming back early and spending, I think, around 10 months there all told. It all passed rather quickly, and we had from it a travelogue of her wonderful e-mails to show for it.

I asked my lawyer to suggest to my family they try to look at this experience in much the same way. I had no idea how much my stay here would end up having in common with my sister’s stay there. Talk about a travelogue!

When I settled in County Jail, I was told over and over again by the other inmates that I would be offered work furlough anytime from 4-6 months prior to my date of release. (At the time I calculated my release to be sometime in September or October), so I thought all I had to do was hang on until May, 2 months hence, and then I would be in some sort of halfway-house situation.

I actually believed this was a possibility up until I arrived here at Chino, when I found out this avenue was denied the HIV+ inmates. Which I believe to be illegal, but any challenge would have cost money no inmate had, including me. (Money talks. My lawyer was very good, but he cost $5000. $5000 lawyers donn’t play golf with the judge. If I had could have hired a $20,000 lawyer, I honestly believe I would have gotten 6-month rehab; and if I could have hired a $40,000 lawyer, I might even have gotten my probation reinstated. Of course if I had that kind of money, I would never have been dealing at all. There aren’t a lot of rich people who go to prison. That’s why those who do get so much press. )

So, once I found out I would be here until November, half of my sentence was over, in fact I had but four months to go, And I was going to an environment where I could buy a pen, go to a library, receive books and magazines, and (gingerly at first) be openly gay.

And precisely at that moment, my sister, wanting to share the content of my letters home, proposed the blog. Bless her. Everyday began to have an entirely new purpose. I was not only in constant contact with the world, but quite possibly writing my first book. All this free time was no longer something to get through, but to live through, to be completely present for. (That said, if I was suddenly told I was getting out December 16th instead of November 16th, I think I would have a nervous breakdown).

This last part is a homage to my sister Sandra, the adjunct Math Professor. I broke down my the last 90 days here into uncountable permutations. My favorite has become dividing a month into percentages: 3 days is 10%, 6 days is 20% 10 days is 33%, 15 days is 50% and so on. When things got really tough, every day would be divided into 8 hour chunks and every morning I’d wake up saying, “I’m 8 hours closer or, “just hang on until 4 pm mail”(which rarely disappointed me.)

Now I’ve got the election as a marker, and if Kerry wins, I’ll float until release. If he doesn’t…. well let’s not talk nonsense. Which, I hope, this has not been. I guess writing a blog entry a day in advance gives you some sense that I am perhaps in anticipation mode! And if I haven’t said it enough, THANK-YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING ME. YOUR INTEREST HAS SUSTAINED ME.

MCO 2004

Several blogs ago, I described parenthetically why I didn’t eat with my bunkie, Earl. It was because he has a chow-mate from before he knew me. His name is Don. And Don didn’t feel comfortable eating with more than one gay man at a time.

I learned this the hard way. Back in August, I naturally fell in one day with Don and Earl in the chow line, and as we bantered back and forth, it seemed an eminently natural progression that I would join them to eat. When we got our trays, Don led the way to the table, and when it was clear I was following them, did a U-turn of sorts to find a table with two seats (two having been removed for wheelchair access). The two of them sat, and I was left out in the cold, like in a game of musical chairs.

I haven’t shared this, because I was afraid my mother might cry reading it. There I was, a perfectly personable 46 year old, playing the outcast third-grader, disallowed entrée into the cool crowd. I was startled more than anything, but recovered enough to find another seat, eating breakfast alone. I half-heartedly accepted Earl’s apology and explanation back at the dorm about Don needing to protect his reputation.

But actually I was a pissed at Earl. If I had a “friend” who pulled a stunt like that, I would have let him have it. But Earl, who was once married and has kids, is relatively recently gay, and seriously lacks a healthy dose of gay pride. I have seen him mocked as “Pearl,” and not in a kind way. He reacts as if it’s all good clean fun, and I am loathe to disabuse him too much of his illusions. In some ways, they serve him better in this place.

An example of this abuse is actually germane to the last part of this story. There is an older guy here, Terry, who is a real creep. He’ll come by your bunk and ask out of the blue, “What are you doing?” in a sniffy, disrespecting manner. For example, two weeks ago, in the library, someone knocked on the back door. Earl, to be funny, leaned forward to the door and quoted a well-known line from a Cheech and Chong movie: “Hey, it's Dave, open up. I got the stuff.” Terry, out of the blue, (he and Earl had never even spoken) said “what do you mean, you don’t have “stuff,” you’ve got HIV and AIDS.” Earl, and two others from the dorm, were aghast. Earl felt a little like I did in the cafeteria, I think, too taken aback to say anything. The others there told Earl later he would have been completely justified in socking Terry across the jaw, but blessedly, Earl is basically non-violent, and smart enough not to risk a “115” for fighting, which could add 3 extra months to his sentence.

So with this background you will be able to visualize the ‘sitcom-live’ scene that occurred last night as I chanced upon Don, Earl and none other but the evil Terry, sitting together at dinner. I did a double-take and thought, “If Terry can sit there, dammed sure I can sit there.” And so I did, with a sprightly “Hello, Don. Hello, Earl.” Don looked up, with the guiltiest “Hi Marc,” imaginable. Earl could barely contain his glee; he had been desperately hoping I’d show up. Abruptly enough, Terry, who I’d pointedly ignored, finished his meal and left. Then the damn broke, so to speak. I said “If Terry can sit here….” Don threw up his hands “All right, all right, you got me!” I could tell that he had probably wanted something like this to happen earlier, because it had become so awkward, me not eating with them, but he couldn’t get himself to acknowledge what an idiot he’d been.

But here’s the punch line. Earl then lit into Don: “Well, why the hell did you talk to Terry in line?” to which Don made a reply that was my dream setup, “I just chatted with him! I couldn’t help if he followed us to the table! What did you want me to do?” There was a pause. Earl and Don looked at me, suddenly realizing what was coming: “Oh, I don’t know Don, maybe find a table with just two seats?”

I truly hope this is not a “You had to be there” moment. If it isn’t, you are laughing, but not possibly as hard as we laughed there at chow. I’d got him. Who says revenge isn’t sweet?

I now no longer have Newsweek as my sole dinner companion. I am “in” with the “in” crowd.

Mommy, I’ll make it through the third grade after all.

MCO 2004

P.S. While I was writing this, gentle Mike from the blog ‘Human Writes’ came up to me with a letter he was working on to his fiancée, which he spelled ‘fiancey.’ I promise I do not share this coming from any place of snide superiority. But I am amazed someone can make it into high school clearly not understanding what contractions are for, what the difference is between plural and possessive, and what synonyms are. I very, very gently pointed out the difference between your and you’re, hear and here, sisters and sister’s, are and our, etc. Also, what paragraphs are for and when to start new ones, the purpose of commas, and the utility of periods.

As for content,l I’m glad to report he did insert my idea of a 12:00 noon virtual “hi” every dat to his sweetheart.

And he spent some time with the dictionary I offered him, taking my suggestion to get lost in it for a while. He thanked me in a heartfelt way that made my day. (Oh, and the poor guy is the evil Terry’s bunkie!)

This last store draw, Earl bought a can of tobacco, and I bought a second one for him. This was because I am much “richer” than Earl, and being gay bunkies, we share everything. Consequently, when I leave, I wanted to shore up Earl’s relatively meager holdings. He will have what’s left of mine from this last month’s store, plus whatever else I leave him, plus the proceeds of selling single cigarettes from the extra can of tobacco. (His family sends him the occasional twenty dollars; mine made sure I had at least 6 or 7 times that to spend monthly at canteen.)

So yesterday, Earl was happily rolling these single cigarettes, and as word spread, he was already starting to sell them. (He gets paid in soups or other goods. There is no money in prison. I haven’t even seen a coin in 10 months.)

Inevitably, it was told to us to not sell to the whites, although, counter-intuitively, we could sell to the blacks and Mexicans. At first I assumed this was just so much AIDS phobia, yet again. Then I discovered our crime this time around was no more serious then our sexuality alone. While our offers up until now of unrolled cigarettes have been gratefully accepted (unsealed rolling paper filled with tobacco), it seemed cigarettes that had been sealed with a flick of our tongues were unacceptable.

I’m sorry to be crude about it, but the rationale is this: lips that have touched the genitalia of other men cannot touch the lips of the other whites. It “taints” them.

To point out how ridiculous this is: the men in question wouldn’t think twice about smoking a rolled cigarette from a prostitute whose lips would have been far more promiscuous in the preceding 24 hours than ours might have been in the preceding several months or even years. To boot, if you ask any of these men individually if they have a problem with it, to a man they will say no. Once they consult their “homies” though, they are just "following rules.” It is "out of their hands."

This irritated me no end when Earl told me. He still identifies with the oppressor and can’t understand why I should be upset about something “beyond their control.” I pointed out the hypocrisy and went a step farther. “Don’t you see Earl? When these guys are standing around shooting the shit, someone has to bring this objection up. Though all of them individually profess not to object to our cigarettes, one of them brings it up because he is going to get 'points' from the others for doing so. It’s sickening." I’m sorry to say that this analysis of conformist behavior was beyond Earl, he simply could not grasp what I was getting at.

To his dismay, I brought it up when Jimmy came over, to “help us out” by rolling a bushel of cigarettes with his lips that would go into a separate pile for the whites only. This opened up a much longer discussion that several other whites listened to with rapt attention. (I will have to paraphrase and consolidate somewhat here, my contentions were wide-ranging and my tone a tad relentless.)

They kept feeding me the old “we don’t make up the rules, we only play by them" line of bullshit. I pointed out how many rules had been bent by Jimmy (as I thanked him) on our behalf. I cited how much had in fact changed over the past several years; the way whites, for example, were much more permitted to interact with other races (a veritable necessity when the Mexicans took over the drug trade). I pointed out the prostitute contradiction to demolish the whole lip-to-lip argument, and when the discussion expanded to include whether homosexuality was a choice or not, I rolled out the big guns. “Do you really think, in a society that produces ignorance and hate like all of yours, that any 14-year old in their right mind is going to wake up one day and say to himself 'Oh well, I can choose: a) society's acceptance and the complete support of my family and friends or b) a lifetime of struggle, condemnation and controversy. Oh well, I’m bored today, so I’ll choose b.' Are you guys out of your mind? Is that how you think you ended up straight, because you chose it? Did you choose to wake up around puberty with hard-ons everyday, thinking incessantly about big tits? Did it ever occur to you for a minute to go to your parents and say 'Gee Mom and Dad, I’m thinking about woman’s bodies every waking minute, do you think I might be heterosexual?' Did you ever have to hear them say 'Oh son, you’re a little young to decide on something as important as your sexual orientation, why don’t you experiment with boys a bit first just to make sure you’re not a homosexual?'" One of them offered a lame response, another, more honestly, pointed out here one could get “stuck” for refusing to obey the cigarette (and other) rules. To which I rejoined “You know, Hitler didn’t personally go out and kill 50,000,000 people. He ordered other people to do it. If someone doesn’t follow the rules, the big hoo-hah who orders him punished doesn’t do it himself either, someone has to do the sticking at his behest. You guys can damn well refuse to enforce these ass-backwards rules.” What I didn’t say, but thought about, was a perceptive Turkish filmmaker’s observation about fundamentalist Islamic men being the guards and prisoners of their own concentration camps.

Like so much of America, these guys believe that homosexuality is about what you do, not who you are. I told them they could spend their entire lives in jail, and only have sex with men, and that wouldn’t make them one iota less heterosexual, By the same token, I could marry a woman and have sex with her only for a life time, and wouldn’t be any less of a homosexual.

“And furthermore," (this was the best part) "how is it that you yahoos won’t even obey a red light on the streets, but once you get in here, you don’t dare disobey any of the rules imposed by 'the whites?'" If ever some career criminal tries to tell you he has trouble obeying rules and regulations don’t believe him. He only has trouble with the authority that he isn’t part of imposing and enforcing (it’s not for nothing that so many Nazis were ex-convicts.)

I don’t want to paint myself too much the Martin Luther Queen here, after all, I didn’t do too bad a job of rule-breaking on the outside myself. I will say in my defense though, that I disagreed and still disagree with the laws I broke on the outside on reasons of principle going far beyond playing out dramas of attention-getting rebellion against absent fathers and neglectful mothers. And I will agitate to change those laws on the outside just as I work to change the rules I don’t like in here.

It is highly unlikely I will be successful at either in my lifetime. Neither was Adlai Stevenson though, and most of what he advocated has come to pass years after he advocated it. (Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic candidate who lost to Dwight David Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Look him up.)

Ready, get set, google!

MCO 2004

P.S. Story Heard at Chow, Sworn to be True

A man came home for lunch from work, and discovered his pet Rottweiller had somehow gotten hold of the neighbor’s rabbit and “playing” with it, had killed it. The man was mortified but was at least able to get the rabbit from his Rottweiller before too much obvious damage was done.

Sneaking over to his neighbors, he propped the rabbit against its water bowl and hoped against hope they would believe the rabbit had expired naturally.

When he came home from work later that day, the police were in front of his neighbor’s house.

“What happened?” he asked fearfully.

The cop answered, “The kid’s rabbit died and they buried it in the backyard. Some SICKO dug it up and propped it against the water bowl for the kids to find when they got home from school!”

Today I did something—or rather did not do something—unexpected. After the morning bathroom clean-