The ear is the road to the heart.
– Voltaire
How was I in 2019 after filling out the extradition paperwork? Worried about the unknown. Previous visits to Florida, the last being in 2004, had not gone well at all. Fifteen years later, I had no idea what to expect, especially when it came to where I would be housed. I had just spent over nine years in a cell by myself. In Florida, if they put me in a population area, how would I respond? I truly didn’t know, though I wanted to believe I would be okay. I felt more stable than recent events suggested, so I was ready and cautiously optimistic.
By the end of August, those feelings were heightened when I caught chain to the Walls Unit. While there for a week on L-Line, I was able to rent a radio, and across the way, I could see the 13-inch TVs in population cells. Hot showers, great food, respectful guards and clean living areas. All of that easily offset the small cell, where the bunk looked like a mildly overweight elephant had dented the frame!
The Mexican SSI there was helpful and friendly, bringing hot water for coffee. He also had an interesting story to share.
“When I was in Mexico,” he explained, “I worked to monitor pipelines, so they gave me a truck and a phone. I made okay money for my family. Then my brother tells me, ‘Come to Houston, you can make so much more.'”
I sipped the coffee and smiled. “And did you make more?”
“Yes and no, but first I had to get here,” he said. “Lucky for me, a Coyote is a friend, so he crossed me cheap. When in Houston, staying with my brother, sure, I found work. And sure, the money was good. But no one told me everything cost more too!”
I laughed. “Why didn’t your brother tell you how it would be?”
“To trick me over here!” Leaning on the bars, he continued, “But it’s okay. I’m here, so I work, and want more, so I find a better job. But then, I find some guys talking about fast money…”
And, of course, the dollar signs danced before his eyes. The “fast money” was to come from stealing tools and lawn equipment they could resell. The “it will be easy” got him hook, line, and sinker, all the way in to a ten year prison sentence.
“I get out soon,” he said.
“Will you go back to Houston?”
“Hell no, I’m going home!”
I certainly hope he made it back to his family in Mexico and the work he once left behind. At least he wasn’t lost to drug addiction, or involved in the darkness of that world.
At the end of my week, I was escorted to the administrative offices. One benefit of TDCJ still wanting to suggest I was an escape risk and “a threat to the safety and security of the institution,” was that my High Security status prevented transferring me interstate by van or bus. Instead, I would fly.
I was dressed out in khaki slacks, a white t-shirt, with a maroon pullover. A belly chain was secured underneath the pullover, and my hands were cuffed inside the front pocket, out of sight.
“If you’re cool and don’t give us problems, we won’t use the shackles,” one of the Sheriff Deputies told me. There were three of them there, all a part of a taskforce connected to the Marshalls, to transfer prisoners.
“No problems here,” I told them. “Where are we going, though?”
Out the front door to start, which meant past the “golden gates” – the highly polished brass bars forming a gated area leading to the entrance. It was September, so the weather was cooling off. It was pleasant out. Our ride was a Ford Flex, all leather interior. I sat shotgun. The other two Sheriffs were in back. All of the guys were professional and cordial, and I was able to relax into the trip.
The last time I was in an airport was 2005. I’d never been to Bush International, though. I received an eye-opening reminder of what a congested world was like. All the cars, people walking in every direction toting, carrying, rolling, lugging bags, and the combined noises were sensory elements I’d been separated from for a long time. My spatial awareness had been reduced to less than 70 square feet most days, with moderate increases when walking to different places in the prison, but everything here is caged, blocked or sectioned off by design. Airports, by contrast, are wide open spaces, and distances can seem never-ending, especially when needing to reach the gate where actually getting ON the plane would take place.
Massive lobby. Check-in counter. We were flying Delta, and the lines there were thin, so the process was quick. Video screens or boards took up whole walls, which was another major change I was introduced to: how much technology was on open display! I remember books and magazines, newspapers, the REAL things being common, and billboards or posters, but every aspect of Bush International seemed in motion or plugged in. To find someone without earbuds, like me, was not normal. Nor did I have a phone or tablet to watch or interact with. Virtually everyone else did. In the areas such devices were in use, the noise was different, or more absent. Ambient sounds of flipping pages, setting down physical objects, or the unique shifting and conversations that existed around reading physical media mostly didn’t exist. I was in a new world, an alien from another planet dropped among people who only resembled me. Their colors and scents and presence were more vibrant, alive.
I felt out of place. I knew I was different. Of course, the cuffs on my wrists and the shifting chain around my waist were constant reminders of my transient nature. Most people are aware of passing through the spaces they travel. How many feel they will never return? How many are acutely aware they are in the midst of a once in a lifetime experience?
I was a tourist. I never could have gotten there on my own, among a collection of humanity whom I had so very little in common. While sitting and waiting on the plane to arrive, I had plenty of time to watch – to recognize what I wasn’t.
I ate McDonald’s there in Houston. My order wasn’t crazy because I knew my body would be sensitive to the change in diet. Having explosive needs while in flight? No, thanks! A good burger, fries and a Sprite were good enough.
On the plane itself, we were seated at the very back. I was in the middle of two Sheriffs, while the third was just ahead. Interestingly, a younger guy in the military (though dressed in civilian clothes) was across from us. He was travelling with a German Shephard. Evidently, he’d been a part of a select search and security unit at a recent Ambassadorial event in Houston. Now, he was returning to his duty station in New York.
I naturally cleared my ears as the plane lifted off, so some of the conditioned awareness remained from all the flights I’d been on in the past. The Sheriffs had their phones and were soon setting them up on trays to watch movies. I could see the action in “The Joker” with Joaquin Phoenix, but not hear it. The hum and vibration of engines mixed with air from vents and random, if muted, conversations. Attractive flight attendants delivered snacks and juice, engaging people with sweet voices. I breathed, smelled freshness, and relaxed.
I don’t know if the airport in Atlanta, where we had a 45 minute layover, was larger, or if more people were around. My spatial awareness was forced to stretch into the magnitude of the area as a whole, unable to make comparisons. The common theme of giant video boards, technology everywhere, riotous colors, variable sounds mixing with scents too numerous to discern, made where we walked or stood and sat seem like a mere extension of what existed in Texas. Once again, I ate McDonald’s.
The next plane had inset screens in the headrests. Lacking headphones, I watched “John Wick 3” in silence, but that was okay. The humming plane, cool air, pleasant scents, and general kindness, especially by flight attendants, were soothing. It was a softer world of cushions, lumbar support, neck and arm rests. Windows that were truly clear, providing panoramic scenes, and dim lighting placed me in a meditative state. I was content and could just be.
That was, until we reached South Florida. It was a shorter flight, and that airport actually was smaller. The parking lot was massive, though! I could easily imagine I was walking more in one day than in the past nine years combined! The sun was out. Palm trees swayed. In the Dodge truck, black, of course, we were soon navigating roadways, heading to Fort Myers.
I remembered more than I thought I would. Buildings and streets – the design of the place was likely etched in my mind because of its association with acute trauma. I didn’t visit the Sheriff’s office/police station in 2004, so that was a “new” experience, yet a sort of general ambience exists where detectives work. The cuffs and belly chain were removed but shackles were applied. After getting explosive content out – thanks Mickey D’s! – I was seated in an office alone where I… waited. No doubt, cameras watched me, and I was surely an attractive sight with overgrown hair (with my own private runway on top) and full beard. A shaggy, older guy in a pseudo-hip get-up is who they watched stretch. My back had some kinks I needed to work out!
The two investigators I’d interacted with back in June-July entered the room and introduced an already prepared plea agreement. I read it through, read it again, took a deep breath and nodded.
“I am okay with this, but I do have one question.”
“What about?” one guy asked.
“Time credit. None is indicated here.”
“You want me to go make a call?”
I said, yes, and they left to do so, leaving me with the written out plea. Accepting responsibility for Mary’s death had been a horrible journey, and so much was still undisclosed in my mind, but that was a reality I struggled to help others understand. Describing blackouts or fugue states, no memories, and how depression could irrationally impact thoughts and behavior, simply didn’t compute to investigators. That was fine. I wasn’t there for them, I was there for the family, to hopefully provide closure.
When the investigators returned, the guy told me the D.A. agreed to six months, “but that’s all.” I inwardly sighed, knowing it was not the time to push. I agreed, and they gave me some general insight into what would come next before leaving. My shackles were exchanged for handcuffs, then I was driven in a Sheriff Deputy’s Mustang to the main jail complex.
Talk about acute déja vu! Into the sally port, through doors, down hallways. A brief intake to relieve me of what I carried. Out of normal clothes (though I kept my socks, boxers and white shirt), into a jumper and stupid orange shower slides. I was released to wander in the expansive waiting room where processing took place. Chairs in rows. Bright, bright lights. Phones on walls. A flat screen TV scrolled through random information. The massive desk at the far end: I stood before it and spoke to a plain-clothed person who transferred information on the form I’d filled out into a computer. After my finger prints were taken and a picture, more waiting.
When another guy and I were told to head to a specific room to be dressed out (again?), that wasn’t expected and I balked. Or, rather, I had questions.
“Why am I having to put a gown on?”
Neither of the guards felt they had to explain and they were rude. I, however, had been incarcerated for a long time and knew my rights. One of the guards tried threatening me with gas and being tased. I called him a steroid baby, and suggested it was so much easier to have a ranking officer provide a simple explanation. I was not “refusing.” I wanted to know “why?”
The explanation was slow in coming, but I got it: my charge warranted, as a precaution, placing me under observation.
Fine. “See,” I told Mr. Aggressive with the sour expression. “That wasn’t so difficult.”
From there, the places I went were new to me. Wide and long halls, to a distant section of the jail, evidently designated as the “Psych Ward.” The cell was much larger than any you’ll find in a Texas state prison. A sink-toilet combo, typical stainless steel, was in back. All light gray concrete walls. A solid magnetically-locking door, and large windows fronted the cell. It was clean and smelled that way, but no mattress. I guess no one thinks the mentally ill should rest in comfort when in a disturbed state? The unique, hard-plastic bunk called a “boat” was on the floor, though – it could be flipped over and slept in (like a sort of canoe), or kept righted to sleep elevated about a foot off the ground. At least the gown provided a modicum of warmth.
Spartan living didn’t bother me. I had long adapted to the reality of having nothing, even comfort. And trying to sleep on a hard plastic surface when it’s ice cold is never comfortable, but I managed. When food was delivered, I ate – basic slop in Styrofoam containers and a stupid white spoon.
I slept, fitfully, and was up early. Showers were interesting because they handed me a squishy ball about the size of a grape and a “barely there” towel. I think butt-flaps cover more landscape! Minus the gown, I was already naked, so in a see-through, fully observed space, hot water soaked me. I squished the ball and it burst. I spread the ooziness on my body, yay! Lather and rinse and pat dry – didn’t take long at all.
It also didn’t take long before I was escorted in my clean and green, super-duper indestructible, kind-of-warm gown to where court video conferences are held. I sat in a holding cell alone, initially, then strutted in looking crazy to appear on camera and talk on the phone. Less than five minutes later, after being arraigned and the plea agreement introduced, I was back in the holding cell changing into a jumper. What a circus, and I was the clown!
The testing really began when I reached the 4th floor, passed through the sliding doors, and stepped into the population tank where I was destined to be housed. My fear was before me in a day room full of men. There were two rows of cells, three men lived in each one. I needed to lug a boat to 2-Row, into the far corner cell by the shower, but first I had to meet Kilo.
“New guy, just leave that,” the older and scarred, slightly hulking black guy said. He motioned to the boat. “Not needed. Where you from?”
I leaned the boat against the indicated wall and turned back to him. “Texas.”
“So we call you ‘Texas.’”
“No,” I replied. “My name is Daniel.”
Kilo was his name, and he attempted to be aggressive or confrontational, and he was in a way, but I wasn’t impressed. When he mentioned my scars, I didn’t hide them – all the rends in my flesh over the years, a visible display of self-induced harm to find a release from inner-suffering. We bantered back and forth, direct and to the point, until I made a gun with my hand and pointed it at him.
He smiled, “I think I like you.”
“Well, I’m not here to make enemies. Just to resolve a case and return to Texas.”
Turns out, I didn’t need the boat because a top bunk was available. A mid-30s black guy already slept on a boat. Chris, mid-20s white and pure Greek, occupied the bottom bunk. There was enough space for us, just no instructions. Something I could have desperately used BEFORE I plopped down on the toilet.
Putting up a sheet to cover the bars forming the front of the cell was easy enough to figure out. But touch-tensor toilets in a jail that limited flushes? WTF? And no, not the “Wow That’s Fantastic” variety! Two flushes in and I wasn’t even halfway done. I tapped the disc again and… nada. Tap, nothing. Tap-tap… Mash and still no action!
So, there is this saying: “Put some water on it!” Some people seem to enjoy their stench entirely too much! I couldn’t believe I’d broken the toilet my first day. I think Chris, from a safe distance, of course, sensed my distress (or noticed my extended process!) and took mercy on me by explaining I could only flush twice every five minutes. What a relief!
I learned about phone lines, and how to avoid spending a long time typing messages at kiosks. Excited about the connective opportunities, I wrote everyone I knew the first day… then happened to glance back at the line behind me. Four men, impatient stances, all glaring. They had NO problem teaching me about the save function!
The TV was on all day and I was fine with whatever was showing. The shower was always available, but guys had their set times for them. Basically, the first few days, I figured out a routine that fit in with others’. And because I liked to work, feeling my body in motion, I took it upon myself to wipe down tables after meals and sweep floors.
Generally, even being in the minority as a white guy, and with 25 the average age, I didn’t have any problems engaging anyone. I listened a lot, played chess, avoided gambling, then asked and answered questions to gain an understanding of the environment I was in.
For instance, commissary is VERY important. I had no real hygiene supplies. Sure, my cell mates graciously loaned me soap (mostly body wash), and indigent supplies existed – soap balls, and awful toothpaste in tiny tubes – but that barely took care of daily needs. Absurdity reigned supreme with the toothbrush! It was a clear plastic cap that fit on a finger with some not-at-all-effective bristles. In my travels, hanging out with guys in other cells, I found a replacement. Used… But, hey, don’t judge! Bleach made it as good as new, and my mouth was much cleaner for the effort.
I also collected random, old and torn socks, boxers, and shirts. After breaking off a tine from a comb, poking a hole through it with a staple, I became a sewing fiend. By the end of the first week, I had a comfortable rotation of clothes – a vast improvement over waiting for boxers to air dry. It was easy to tell when others had showered by the wet clothing hanging on bars.
I missed the first commissary, and that was depressing. The problem with showing up early in the week: Wednesday deliveries were ordered on Sunday via the kiosk, and Wednesday orders arrived on Friday. I watched men eat burgers and chips, drink juices, and spoon pieces of brownie in to their mouths in wonder. And I think I sent Dad four messages that day, reminding him to, “Please send money as soon as possible!” The saving grace, I guess, is that it also happened to be recreation day – every Wednesday our block and guys in another block next to us could all go to the roof. It was all enclosed by walls with a fence, but had plenty of room for the volleyball net.
Looking at my shaggy hair, balding top, and full beard, no one believed I could play. I didn’t blame them for doubting my small stature and the oversized slides on my feet. The first few games, I just watched from the side. I was reminded of being the kid waiting to be picked for flag football or basketball. At least those other kids knew I was fast and had skills, so I was never picked last.
Then I was asked, “You want to fill in?”
A player was limping away.
I shrugged, said “Okay,” took the ball to serve, and though I’d love to say I aced a beautiful overhand serve, my underhand effort was a bit off and clipped the top of the net. Teammates grumbled and gave me side eye. The ball changed sides. I watched the serve coming, dug it well, and almost fell. Running was impossible! So, without much thought, I kicked the slides off to the side… and then I began to really move.
Housed in a solitary cell a minimum of 23 hours a day for over nine years didn’t mean I’d completely slacked on my fitness. With plenty of sun and a cool breeze, I became a kid again, as I laughed and played. Three hours later…
The concrete had cheese-grated my socks, caused blisters, and I was limping with a sore knee. I was satisfied with my performance, though. Every game had been close and intense. Eyes were opened and the praise was generous.
Several guys assured me, “I want you on the team next week.”
I didn’t make any promises, mostly because that was the MOST exertion I’d displayed in nearly a decade! I just knew I’d be sore as hell, and I was right. But long hot showers were amazing. I was also able to get sports cream from medical. My physical recovery was a lot faster than I’d expected.
What I didn’t expect was to grow close to anyone. I figured my time in Florida would be brief. However, living amongst those 47 other men turned out to be a life-changing experience. Chris, Edey, Ant, X, Kilo, Tom, and many others told me about their lives, and they became like sons and brothers to me.
Chris was amazing with cards, always winning more at poker than he lost. Each night he shared food around, usually soups. Though racked up at 10pm, with the cells closed and TV off, many stayed up late. Nighttime conversations became one of the things I appreciated most.
The first extended conversation with Chris was about a girl he’d met from Illinois. “She just found me and wrote, and now we are close, talking all the time.”
“What do you mean by ‘found me’?”
“Long story,” he reclined on his bunk.
I was seated on the ground. “Which are the best kind.”
“It was Dr. Phil.”
“What?” I laughed. “That’s not a story!”
“Yeah, I know, but still the truth. I went on Dr. Phil ’cause of another chick, and that’s how the other one learned about me.”
I took a moment to not blast him with a million questions. “How about you start from the beginning?”
And eventually he did, although the telling took several days. We ate soups, drank… water because there was NO coffee. I know, I know, a near heart-attack inducing shock when I first learned that. But I adapted. As I did, Chris became the boy with his mom and dad, but his mom sold drugs, living the fast life to provide for her children – giving them what she believed they deserved.
“That’s why my parents separated. Mom would get locked up and Dad got tired of it, so he left. Mom got a boyfriend, and we moved to Daytona.”
He’d been a good student, and really close to a certain girl. Then she cheated on him, and that crushing betrayal scarred him in such a way that he never felt he’d ever get close to another woman. With his mom’s boyfriend around, lots of drugs were in the house, so Chris started sneaking weed and cocaine to do and sell. Before long, he was mirroring his mother’s life, moving into his own house. Money came fast, and so did women.
“I started meeting chicks in college, girls who came from good families, who wanted to make more money. They asked if I could connect them to clients.”
Which was how Chris caught the most recent charges related to organizing a prostitution ring. Five attractive women in one house: he protected them, found clients, got them in and out safely, and made sure they were paid well.
“Then, one day, I’m in a corner store with one of the girls and she gets a call. She tells me it’s her mom, something about wanting her to go on Dr. Phil. This girl’s parents had money and didn’t like the life their daughter was living. She asked if I’d go with her. I’m like, what?”
I swallowed a spoonful of noodles. “Didn’t want to be famous?”
“I lived a certain way and was happy with it. Didn’t want it exposed.”
“Did she go?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, especially when she found out about the shopping spree and staying in a select hotel.”
“Did you go?”
He nodded. “Like a fool, yes. She was persuasive. And I… I don’t know, I was protective.”
Chris was also quick to anger. While waiting backstage, he heard Dr. Phil calling him a coward, talking shit, and before long, Chris stormed the stage and vented.
“Who was he to question me?” Chris hissed. “He didn’t know me or my life. Accusing me of abusing the chick was bullshit. Evidently, she’d made up all sorts of lies, telling her parents that she was manipulated into what she asked to be a part of!”
I couldn’t imagine going on national TV in that way. For Chris, the exact thing he didn’t want to happen did.
“When I got to talking,” he explained, “I couldn’t shut up, calling the girl out, her lies, blasting the parents for not truly paying attention to their daughter. I admitted all the crimes on live TV, so when I returned to Florida…”
“Cops were waiting for you?”
“Pretty much. I did have time to clean some things up, but I knew most of what’d been good was over.”
We didn’t become the type of friends where lifelong fidelity was promised, but I appreciated his cool demeanor. He was good looking, comfortable with who he was and confident. When we wrestled, he had a size and strength advantage. I had age and guile! What shocked me then, and I still wonder about now, was how I remained lucid the whole time. That had never happened in my life, ever. Any physical contact would send me into a fugue state. To stay in the moment continuously as we grappled and sweat, pretty much trashed the cell, yet had a great time doing it, was a revelation.
Speedy (Edey), Ant (Anthony), and X (Xavier) were all cellies in a middle cell at the bend on 2-Row. Their space was a bachelor’s pad if I’ve ever seen one. Of course, they were all in their early- to mid-20s, with some shared interests and lots of energy. Always wrestling or working out. Those guys were carefree in the space they were given, and yet each carried wounds.
X was the youngest of the trio. Son of a black father and white mother, he had mahogany skin, curly hair, and keen intelligence. He liked technology and business, which meant he was into high-end scams – when drugs didn’t send him spiraling out of control doing stupid shit. He broke into some houses, earning a one-way ticket to jail.
When younger, he lived with his mother and step-dad in Vermont and loved it. Then his mother went to Florida and got into porn, something she still did, even though she lived in Massachusetts. To his misfortune, X fell in love with a Florida girl who, even though she gave him two children, simply couldn’t keep her clothes on. Not only did she do online porn for money, which he got her into, but she snuck around with other men.
A friend had him check out a video and X was enraged. “I couldn’t see her face, but it was the same dress she was wearing when I left the house. And it was definitely her bare ass. I’d recognize it and the tattoo anywhere.”
X had intended to track the guy in the video down, but one pill led to many, and before X knew it, he was in another time and place, soon to be locked up. X knew his “wife” was a whore but he loved her anyway!
Edey was 23, Cuban, tall and muscular. He looked like Mario Lopez from “Saved By The Bell” with his curls. Edey had the same magnetic charm, too, always laughing, rapping. Each set of lyrics were sad expositions about struggles he’d been through, and it struck me how much pain he’d internalized so young. I was easily reminded of myself at the same age, although his circumstances were quite a bit different. His dad was locked up in Arizona. His mom struggled, living in the Florida Keys. I never figured out whether the brother with cancer survived, but his daughter was vibrant and alive.
Every night, Edey would yell out, “I’m going home!”
He wanted that more than anything. But after reviewing his case, I knew he had a long road to travel. Through that awareness, I could only try to imagine how I would feel if he were my son.
Men awakened to spiritual paths don’t always recognize what it is they seek or why, they just know there is more. That was Edey, and for all the Fourth Dimension books he read, striving to manifest a way home, my approach was to sit with him and help him accept reality. My hope was to ground him in basic truths and an awareness of possibilities. Desiring release wasn’t wrong, just naïve. Denial, not wanting to accept things as they were, and uncultivated emotional intelligence were some of Edey’s hurdles. Not to judge or condemn. I’d suffered from similar delusions – far worse ones, actually. My empathic approach to sitting with him, reading texts, and having deep and meaningful talks were all to instill in him the knowledge that he wasn’t alone.
He still isn’t. Sadly, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison. But, from a distance, I continue to walk with him, encouraging him toward growth and success.
Ant was a bit older than Edey, and even though not as tall, Ant was easily as big. He was also fiendishly strong. My first interaction with him reminded me of being in Hawaii. He had an Islander’s laid back demeanor. That calm disposition was the exact reason I stole him! Yeah, see, when Chris left, the bottom bunk was open. The black guy had left sometime before and a cool white guy was there, so him and I plotted and schemed to lure Ant into OUR cell with the bottom bunk. And it worked! Getting to choose whom I wanted to live with was a unique experience, and well worth the effort. It was like a magic trick: Ant moved in, and Kilo stayed far, far away!
I don’t know if Ant’s story was as much sad as it was complicated. Adopted real young by a white family, he grew up an athlete, highly active and good at school. Like Edey, though, aspects of the street life called to him. For Edey, it was a gang. Ant kind of formed his own, doing all sorts of things known as Train.
Originally from Orlando, when Ant told me about his son’s birth, I cringed in pain. I still do!
“His mother is a petite woman. She really didn’t show a lot when pregnant.” He unwrapped a butterscotch and popped it in his mouth. “And all the time I knew her, up to then, she was sweet. But then she went into labor.”
“So, having the baby changed her?”
“She is crazy now,” he admitted. “Both of her hips dislocated to have my son, and she was never the same.”
Ant’s boy was growing like a weed and doing good, though. So was his daughter, Viv – the child with his other baby mama from Miami.
“That baby mama is Cuban and adopted,” he said. “Her Moms…”
“Wait, what?”
Ant smiled. “Yeah, it was weird when I first met her, but her moms are lesbian. Cool ladies. One’s a neurosurgeon.”
Damn. Ant’s solid presence made it easy to imagine women appreciating him, but he always ended up choosing those with too much fire.
“Yes, she’s crazy,” Ant answered my question. “Not as bad as my son’s mother, but still…”
Then he told me about his parties – the extra stuff – and I began to understand why some of the crazy existed.
They had moved to Naples and he was working for her uncle, making great pay, living in a nice condo. One weekend, Ant wanted to party (it might have been his birthday), so he invited some friends over… and some whores came too. All was good. The place was smoked out with plenty to drink, but then his girl was coming home early!
“Aw, man, I was rushing to hide everything, even the girls in a closet!”
I was rolling with laughter, as he described scooting ashes under coasters, hiding trash anywhere but in the trash can. And airing the place out!
All of his best effort only helped so much, though. His girl noticed and went off on him. Poor guy, he just wanted to party with friends and be reminded, for a brief time, what it was like to be single.
Maybe finding the whores in the closet, inside the baby’s room, pushed Ant’s girl over the edge?
We discussed passion projects, like him opening a coffee shop. He also loved art and did tattoo work. For those who have tattoos, I imagine they remember where they got their first one. That is certainly true for me. I drew the pattern for the PAM symbol on my inner left wrist, and he picked it into my flesh. Each prick drew blood and reminded me of all the ways I’d endured or caused suffering, how I longed to dispel the negative energy.
Like with Edey, I’ve been fortunate to stay in touch with Ant. When Covid-19 hit, he was given a reasonable bond, so he got out and spent many months working, seeing his family. Ultimately, he was sentenced to ten years in prison, but the day is fast approaching that he’ll be out doing great things.
The last person to deeply impact me was Kilo.
One morning, over a chess game, he quietly related his story. His disabled mother was raped, which was how he came into the world. The rapist stayed around – not that the mother could complain much – and Kilo faced a lot of abuse. Time would compound the wounds until he killed, which was how he ended up in prison for over 30 years. In 2019, he was back in county expecting to be released, yet his mind had been severely warped by incarceration. I sensed it the day he asked me if I was in a gang, mentioning that I looked like some of “those” guys.
I took that to mean I reminded him of people who had once threatened him. The more we were around each other, the more my general presence bothered him. I didn’t fear him and he knew that. He would rant at times, and he could tell I wasn’t fazed. Once, he stomped into a cell where I was talking to another and demanded, “Do you want some of this?!”
I was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. I frowned and shook my head, “No.”
More than anyone, Kilo tested my patience. But his pain also caused me to be more empathic. I could see the boy within the man raging at the life he’d suffered through. He knew well that he needed to get better at controlling himself. Sadly, my presence wasn’t helping, so I just kept my distance. That was easier to do when Ant moved in.
I made plenty of mistakes, like responding sharply to certain comments. I always apologized afterward, and those experiences kept me humble while also building goodwill among others. I never felt compelled to fight, not even with Kilo – though he frustrated the hell out of me!
To be continued…
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