INTERLUDE
They speak to me
or through me, ghost voices.
I can’t hear them all
some are just phantoms
moving through my field of vision
in prison
fellow
felons.
These are my words
or their words
or just words.
I am a witness to my
own withering
and theirs.
We wither together
and this landscape is
too vast
for the telling.
They come from everywhere
and disappear gradually
like electrons free of the nucleus
freed from the binding force
back into other magnetic fields beyond telling
beyond understanding (mine). I am limited and fading
my half-life due soon to expire
this song being among the
last here (or maybe anywhere).
Understand that there is joy here too
overriding the prevalent doom.
People find some way to ease the burden always.
And move on.
Motion. Time.
Unforgivable energies that apply
everywhere.
Mostly visible here
where everything (as hoped by our jailers)
only appears to be
standing
still.
BO
America’s the greatest country in the world, bar none. And a Christian nation. I love my country. I always stand up for the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance. I think you’re just a miserable traitor if you don’t. I was never in military uniform but I deeply respect those that have chosen a military way of life to honor this great country of ours. A fella the other day said to me, “Bo how can you love this country and the Christian religion when those are precisely the institutions that have locked your ass up for thirty-five years, completely discarded you, took you away from everything you loved?”
“Well, sir,” I said, “I guess I deserved it.”
Maybe thirty-five years is a little excessive, I’ll give you that. But I got involved in things I shouldna be involved with. I won’t go into the long and short of it but I guess we’re all sinners and some of us are just more prone to sin than others. And the truth is that American prison is the best prison in the world. Hell, I read about places like that prison in Africa, in Kinchasa. It was built for fifteen hundred and they got twelve thousand folks in there. They don’t even wear prison uniforms but walk around in their underwear. There’s all kinds of disease and filth. Look at this place I’m in now. It’s relatively clean. We get decent food–ain’t no worse than hospital food. And the cops, I mean you got some that are ornery bastards, but for the most part they stick to some professional rules. At least in this place. And I’m not sure it’s all that bad elsewhere. A lot of the talk could just be them left wing liberal snowflakes trying to stir up their audience. I’m all for law and order. What’s a society without laws? Nothing but anarchy. Now I see on the news about that latest school shooting that they charged the dad for giving his son a weapon. My dad gave me my first gun when I was ten. I don’t think that’s right to charge that fella with murder. Ain’t nothing wrong with a kid having a gun. What’s wrong is all the corruption on the Internet and social media that makes these kids now crazy and depressed. You fix that with some good old fashioned religion and schooling and America will go back to what it used to be. A lot of these school shootings are just boys acting out cause they don’t know no better. Nobody’s taught them the ten commandments or talked to them about the life of Jesus. They’re just lost and ignorant, perfect prey for Satan to come in and do his dirty work. This country is going through a rough spot is all. But I have faith. We are God’s chosen people. Best country in the world bar none. I go to services every Sunday and I go to Bible study three times a week. I will be saved. I know it in my heart. I will atone for my mistakes and be washed in the blood of the Lamb. Praise Jesus and God Bless America!
JAMES
In an alternate universe, a few months down the road, I go through the gate and leave prison behind. It’s early morning. My son and my stepdaughter are waiting for me. They’ve rented a car at the airport.
My son, Phil, is older than Jenny, my stepdaughter. She takes after my wife. Phil takes after me. He’s thirty-two. She’s nineteen. Phil’s always looked after Jenny. He’s a serious guy and in the software business. Makes good money. Has kids of his own now. Jenny is a free spirit. She’s an artist trying to make it out there in San Francisco. We suspect she’s gay, though she’s never come out, and we’re all fine with whatever her life choice may be. Financially she’s always floundering, but Phil makes sure she doesn’t ever go under.
My wife is waiting at home in Denver. We’ll be driving to the airport and heading there as soon as I eat some real food in a real restaurant (not fast food!). We’ve talked about it. It will be either Italian or Mexican, I’m leaving it up to them. When we get home the rest of the family will have gathered in my house and my wife will have a great meal waiting that afternoon. Before that my wife and I will embrace. There will be tears. There will be Happy Homecoming decorations draped in the dining room. Phil’s kids will be running around in the yard with their bulldog Tuffy. We all will sit down to a wonderful meal and everyone will tell me how glad they are that I’m home at last…
All of this is happening in alternate universe. Not in this one. In this one Phil has changed his name so that he can never be associated with me. Jenny has not spoken to me or messaged me in years. Neither has my wife. The house was sold two years ago. There won’t be anyone waiting for me at the prison gate. I will take a cab to the airport. There will be no Happy Homecoming decorations. I will return to Denver to sign into probation and supervision. I will be in a halfway house, crammed in a shitty room with a bunch of ex-convicts in a similar situation as mine. After twelve years, I will leave prison homeless and will have to find an apartment before I can leave the halfway house. I will have to find a doctor and get a thorough physical because there have been years of neglect. Also a dentist. I will also have to get my vision fixed before I can even dream of applying for a driver’s license. Never mind figuring out if I can even afford to buy a car.
In this universe I have no one to turn to for support, no friends, no relatives left, no job prospects. I will be strictly and absolutely on my own. I try to convince myself that this is liberating. I’m not being successful. There is a bank account from the business I ran before prison. It will be seriously depleted. I don’t know exactly how seriously because my wife, who had power of attorney when I went into prison, took it over and has not bothered to include me in any decisions. For all practical purposes I am a complete social non-entity. The government has essentially erased me in every way possible. My son is no longer thirty-two; he’s almost fifty. Jenny is thirty-seven. They haven’t spoken to each other in years. My wife never remarried. She’s had serious health issues and from what I’ve heard from an acquaintance that still occasionally communicates with me she’s thinking of moving to an assisted living facility.
The alternate universe I see in my head and to which I clung through most of my years in prison is nothing but fairy dust, illusion. The real universe, the one I now live in, is harsh, cold and unforgiving. But it is the one I must face, like it or not. And here’s the kicker: I look across the way at the cell on the other side of the common area. The morning sun’s coming through the small window and making a square on the floor around an empty wheelchair. That inmate in that cell is younger than me but he looks twenty years older. I never see him on the phone, and he’s never called to visits. He’s probably in the same situation I’m in, though I think he’s going to be here a lot longer. On top of that he can’t walk. Makes me think that as bad as things can get they can always always be worse.
OSIRIS
Oh Osiris, Osiris, you’re not Black or White, male or female! You be chocolate flavored! Everybody thinks Osiris is my prison name. Heavens, no! That’s my name everywhere. Okay. My real name on all my legal papers, if you can say anything in this world is ‘REAL’, is Simon Wells. I’m from Newark, New Jersey…but don’t hold that against me.
That Osiris, he’s a fibber! That’s what my boyfriend Bruce says all the time. I’m NOT, I say, hands on hips, doing my best Miss Thing imitation. Always gets him to laugh. That Bruce, he’s getting out of here in a year and I’ll be stuck here with all these goons, all these ‘real’ inmates_excuse me AIC’s, adults in custody. Me and Bruce always hang together here. We sit out on the bleachers and watch the softball games. We run on the track together. Bruce has darker skin than me and he’s built like a Greek statue. Ahhh. Takes my breath away just thinking about it. What a body!
I’m not here for a sex offense. That’s the first thing everybody thinks. I was moving product, baby, moving product. And the feds set a trap for me and I fell in it. Osiris, you’re so damn TRUSTING!
Oh, my mom was such a beauty. She got divorced from my dad when I was like six. Then her boyfriend shot her to death because she cheated on him. I was only eleven. I hated my dad, but after that happened I had to go live with him. He hated me too. Damn faggot! He would snarl. You no son of mine. That bitch fucked around on me!
Well I left as soon as I could and went on my own. Did what I had to do to survive, baby. That’s Osiris. I look out for number one! And don’t even think of messing with me because I will get even! They moved me to this prison a couple of years ago on account of I got attacked, PREA violation, okay? These white boys tried to rape me in the bathroom. Well they didn’t TRY. They DID. I told on them and they all got in trouble and I had to be in the SHU for almost a year. Osiris don’t kid a kidder. Some said that was no rape! But it WAS! I didn’t want any of those ugly dicks in me! UGhhhh! Nasty! Terrible! They jumped me while I was in the shower and beat me almost senseless. How can you say I liked it? Osiris, Osiris you’re SUCH a fibber! Am NOT!
Listen, I was moving product. Yeah. Smack. Big time. Big money. I never did the stuff neither. Not me. I like flavored drinks, pina colada, rum and coke, Long Island tea baby. I don’t do hard drugs. I like to go out on the town and dance and get buzzed, not nod out on the fucking subway in a puddle of piss alright? I miss the big city. The big city at night. There just ain’t nothing like it. Most of these people in here are all small town, small places, small minds. They’re all right wing Trumper Foxers! Ughhh! It’s hard to survive for Osiris in this environment. I’m not in that kind of head space, baby. I’m trying to figure out my journey right now, okay? I’m trying to put all the pieces together. But trouble just follows me WHEREVER I go! Osiris, Osiris you’re a case! Bruce, I know what you like and you know I can make you feel good. Osiris, not male or female, not Black or White. Osiris is a UNIQUE individual on this planet. Unique, baby. UNIQUE! What do you think of this nail color?
ALEX
I’m about done with this place. I’m tired of all of it. The surly Blacks (not to use the ‘n’ word) slapping high fives out on the walkways, yelling across the compound to each other, yo this, yo that. The stupid nerds talking about dumbass superhero movies and fantasy books. The jock sex offenders pretending they’re not sex offenders. Trannies or weirdos who paint their nails. The quiet expressionless menacing guys with thickly bearded faces that have convinced themselves they are intimidating. Guys who mutter to themselves or make stupid noises with their mouths while they are walking around. All my cellies with their insufferable idiosyncrasies and habits. The gay guys with their wheezy snarky nasal voices and sashaying walks. New guys who don’t know where anything is and who are constantly asking stupid questions. The inmates making cheesecakes and sweets and wraps to sell in the unit, smelling up the place and making everyone who can’t afford any of their shit hungry. Cause its all about the stamps, the flats.
And all of them trying to pretend like prison isn’t affecting them and making them insane. Granted most of us had some issue or other. But in here, whatever you were on the outside is magnified and distorted a thousand times over. You become a cartoon version of yourself. A lot of these guys talk like cartoons, like sitcom actors, like TV commercials. They talk too much or too loud or not at all. Or they find something really so dumb and so funny (to them) they laugh themselves to tears. Or they start fights for senseless reasons. And the bathrooms–why is there soap on the floor in the shower stalls? Why is there food and hair and fingernails in the washbasins and sticky stuff on the floor in the toilet stalls and shit and vomit? Can you not clean up after yourself knowing that you are sharing this space with hundreds of people? Are you that ridiculously narcissistic and out of touch? Maybe you, you autistic doofus, should stay here forever and ejaculate on the bathroom floor all you want. Although this is low security so more than likely you’ll be out in a couple of years.
Listen, I try to contain my own insanity. I try to figure out what I did and why I did it and how I can try to be better even if the government doesn’t give a shit about who I am or what I think. I’m in here because putting people in prison has become a game of numbers, a big business. Half of the people in here shouldn’t even be locked up. A lot of them need psychiatric help or physical therapy. Now I read in the news about how they are putting away the parents of school shooter kids and that the laws are being used ‘creatively’ to do that. Well they’ve been using laws ‘creatively’ for a long while now which is why a guy like me and thousands of others like me are now ending up in here. I was the principal in a high school in the Midwest, a family man. I could barely make ends meet and now I see the Dallas Cowboys are paying some quarterback meathead sixty million bucks to play football? Not only are the punishments in this society completely out of proportion, so are the rewards! Actors and sports people make a thousand times more money than people working hard in the trenches of society_teachers, first responders, social workers. What all this does is it makes me hate the system, hate this country and all it stands for. Sad but true. I can’t help it. I hate stupidity. And here I’ve ended up drowning in it. And to think I still have five years to go. Maybe I’ll lose it too, or end up like my friend Al in the terminal ward at a medical compound. He started complaining that his throat hurt seven months ago and they ignored him until it was almost too late. He was no longer able to swallow, speak clearly or eat solid food. When he left here he looked like a concentration camp victim. “My country, right or wrong?” Not for this guy. I’m about done. Done with all of it.
‘MASTER CLASS’ KEVIN
Some people around here think I’m arrogant. And they’re basically right. I AM arrogant. Why shouldn’t I be? My IQ is far and above the median. I was learning Beethoven sonatas at eight, playing piano professionally at ten.
Prison for me is mostly an opportunity to pursue my academic studies in depth, something I would not have been able to pursue out in the world. I’ve been a bright student at the top of the class throughout my life. Why should a twenty year sentence slow me down or change me? I was brought up by a stern evangelical father but in my early twenties realized religion was a crock, a delusion. Society should be built on science and not superstition. Unfortunately, the majority of people are mindless sheep who follow whatever they’ve been taught and whatever their government tells them. Growing up, I was one of the faithful. In fact, I went to seminary and was prepared to preach the Word. But as my eyes were opened the Word lost its meaning and I saw that it was based on the ideas of an agricultural, post-Neolithic society. Basically: it was mumbo jumbo. There was no proof of any supernatural and almighty being. God was a ghost and I could no longer stay on the path I’d been on. But I also learned that it was best to keep my atheism to myself since I was musical director in various Christian organizations. Some of those people saw through me, but I was able to snow the rest, because I’ve learned to get by.
I lost my Southern accent as soon as I could so that I could move in classier circles. I became a business manager at a food distribution company to supplement my income from music and became head of financial there in a short time. I married and had a child. But I was restless. I like to be in control of my life and I felt trapped. I left the business world and returned to music and studied composition, music theory, and music education.
My restlessness was not only intellectual. I began to feel I was in a dead end life. I left my wife and child and stumbled into sexual adventurousness with a younger woman, a path that eventually led to online activity that the U.S. government punishes severely. I won’t get into the details. I don’t discuss my case because it’s pointless and so much like the cases of other men in my situation. The U.S. is the only society in history that punishes men this brutally for their interest and interaction with adolescent females. I don’t know what the endgame might be for this society but for the moment all it is managing to do is destroy lives, families and communities with such extreme criminalization.
I don’t spend a lot of time like others here trying to fight the laws or even understand them. It’s immaterial. I’m more interested in learning French, Russian, German, Hebrew, and Greek. In sociology, mathematics, and philosophy. I am a highly efficient person. I set schedules for myself. Everything in life is numbers. Even when looking at Playboy magazines as a teenager I studied the numbers defining the physical shapes, height, breasts, hips, of the women and soon realized which were the numbers that most triggered my arousal. I keep a tight schedule and never waste a single moment in prison. Time is fleeting. I can learn many disciplines in twenty years. I’ve reduced those years to days, those days to hours, those hours to minutes.
Quantifying the world is how I stay sane. That and I’ve been teaching music here (for profit, naturally.) Nothing in prison is free. I charge three flats per month, one lesson per week, which is extremely reasonable in comparison with what music lessons would cost in the real world. Also, the prison pays me to teach music courses for beginners through the Recreation department, another very small income stream. As far as the cops here, I hate them all. They are troglodytes. I view prison in a simple way: team cop and team inmate. I will never take the side of the opposite team. I will never excuse anything they do. And when inmates do underhanded stuff I applaud it. Not that I would do anything to break the rules. I will stay under the radar and avoid any unwanted attention from my jailers. I am laser focused on my academic mission here, which some might view as pointless. I do see that regardless of my achievements from here on in I will always be a second class citizen as a sex offender. But I don’t see any other way to survive this experience. I like to be in control of my life and though the idea of being in control of anything here might be a mirage I have no other options.
Am I arrogant? Am I racist? Am I selfish? You bet. White European culture is at the top of the evolutionary chain, no doubt about it. And everybody is selfish. Everybody is out only for themselves, regardless of what they say. In here it’s best to know yourself, truly who you are, if you plan to survive. No bullshit. Hard honesty is the only salvation.
GENE
Man, it’s hot out on the rec yard today! That Texas sun…I had to pull my sweatshirt up and let my belly get some air. I’m sweating like a pig, even with just shorts on. I’m soaked! I bet those chomos are getting an eyeful. I’m a good looking jock. Did some wrestling and boxing in high school. Dropped out and got into meth. I was never too bad into it. Had enough brains to sell it and not lose my shit. There’s nothing like that high. Man! You feel on top of the world! But that’s why I’m here. For selling ice. I’m not doing time for messing with kids or crap on the internet. No sir. I’m no chomo and I’m no faggot and I let all’a them lowlifes know it.
Can’t stand those slimy bastards, too, with their filthy habits. The other day I heard one talking to his butt buddy about how he saves his boogers in a pill bottle and makes a paste that he spreads on bread or crackers. “It’s an acquired taste,” he tells his bud. Acquired. SERIOUSLY? Hell it’s frigging DISGUSTING! How can you eat your own boogers?
That’s the kind of people here in this low security place. Pinheads. Retards. Mentally unstable motherfuckers. I’m pretty sure he’s a chomo. Bald fucking bastard. They shave their heads bald and get tatts but they’re still CHOMOS!
Tonight there’s football. The Cowboys and Forty-niners. I got money on the Cowboys. But they been disappointing me lately. But anyway, me and my friends in the white boy car, we get to whoop it up and keep the chomos from going to bed early. Tomorrow, bright and early, I’ll be on the weight pile. Then I’ll do a few laps on the track. Keep in shape so I can go after some good pussy when I get out in three years. Sheesh! That seems like a long time. But I’ve already been down five. Time goes quick here if you keep busy and don’t let it get to you. Those chomos are screwed when they get out. They’re on paper for the rest of their fucking lives. For drugs you’re off after a couple of years. Sure you still got a record but you don’t have to go see no parole officer or check in or get your name plastered all over the internet.
I’m glad I’m not a chomo. But screw them. It’s wrong to mess with kids like that. Although…sometimes I’ve seen some real sweetheart fourteen and fifteen year olds. But I never went there. That’s jailbait, son. I know how to keep my impulses in line. There’s that dude Master Class. That guy’s out here every day for hours teaching people guitar. He’s making bank left and right. And he don’t look like he feels the heat. Motherfucker’s as cool as a cucumber. Another fucking phony chomo. Fuck them. Music’s for faggots and loonies. Don’t get me wrong. I like some good man music, some hard rock and things like that. Not the crap these diaper sniffers like. In this place guys like me are a minority. We gotta stick together. Circle the wagons, know what I mean? These chomos are taking over the system. No shit.
BRAD
Rocking in prison! Who woulda thought? I’ve been playing guitar and singing since I was twelve, mostly country and rock. I played with bands in bars, parties, state fairs, rodeos, anywhere I could get a gig. Now I’m playing in the prison band. We got some decent musicians here. We could use some better bass players. So if you play bass and you’re out there and you’re thinking about coming to prison… Ha! This is the place for you! No, you can’t bring your instrument. We got instruments here. Not very good ones. They used to be worse but as more people who could play ended up here we started asking the cops for better stuff, sound equipment AND instruments, and we pointed them in the right direction, places like Sweetwater Sound where they could get a catalog and order online. Still, the recreation cops got too many regulations on who plays in the bands. That can be a pain in the ass, especially when your band members get released and you need new ones.
What do I think about federal low security? It’s all a bunch of bullshit. But I’ll tell you what they’ve done, and why security in places like this is so good nobody tries to escape. What these people have done is given inmates an alternate lifestyle. The system burns away who you were in the world so you got nowhere to go if you do run away. And here you got free meals, a place to sleep and time. TIME, brother! Time to go after things you’d never be able to do out there what with paying bills, taking care of kids, buying groceries, making sure your insurance payment is on time. All that bullshit. All that is gone here, and I can focus on playing my guitar, on learning new songs, on practicing. We get four or five concerts a year and monthly acoustic nights where you can sing with unplugged guitars, no drums or keyboards. I get to write songs and try them out. Some guys rap or do poetry or stand-up.
I won’t tell you prison is great. Prison sucks. But you go with the flow and stay out of trouble and do your time and hope you can get a life when you get out. Me? When I get out I’ll probably go back to playing in bars for a while. My folks will help me with a place to live. They own some acres so it won’t be a problem like it is for some guys here. They converted this old barn on their property into a nice house. They sent me pictures. I’ll be alright. I’ll land on my feet.
What did I do to end up here? Drugs and sex, dude. Drugs and sex. What else? That’s what American prison is all about, my friend. Drugs and sex. They ain’t made rock -and-roll a crime yet, otherwise this place would be packed way worse than it is. I still got a year or so to go. I won’t get into how unfair some of the sentences are that I’ve heard about, or about how insane some people get in this place, but I’m at least seeing light at the end of the tunnel…and I’m rocking on, brother. Rocking on.
JOSH
Prison-induced insanity. PI syndrome. That’s what I call it. Everyone in here releases their demons in various ways. Music guys play music. Gamers play RPGs for hours. There’s a guy that’s here on a short sentence, a quiet sort of timid, unremarkable guy, thin with glasses, looks like an accountant, who worked in city government before prison. Here he gives out laundry. We used to pick up laundry at the laundry building but since COVID the laundry is returned in carts to the units and these laundry orderlies, like our city government accountant guy, give it out by shouting the names on the laundry loop tags. This dude shouts the name on the tag exactly twice, whether the inmate is present or not, the second time louder than the first. You can hear a vicious anger in his voice and see it in his demeanor. Before prison he was probably a quiet stable guy. Here he is the laundry fascist releasing demons he’s had penned up for a long time. And when inmates have laundry bags or loops that are missing name tags he rebukes them sharply. Or when the inmates form a crowd around the laundry carts and one of them is late in arriving to laundry pickup, even if our guy sees that inmate coming, even if the inmate is pleading for him to wait, he will toss the laundry back into the cart where the inmate will have to fish for it after the laundry has been distributed if he doesn’t want it sent back to the laundry building.
When the prison became overcrowded guys would not find spaces to put their chairs in the common area to watch TV. So it was standing room onl, and some inmates became annoyed when strangers stood beside the doorways to their cells and sometimes ran them off. I saw one guy block a walkway for hours, mesmerized, statue-like, in his bathroom slippers, watching television because he had nowhere to sit. Eventually somebody told him to find somewhere else to stand…or else.
As for me, I’ve been here long enough to have a TV watching spot in front of the TVs. But I’m not Mr. Sane exactly. I’m on antidepressants. I crashed seriously after my arrest.
My life was quiet and orderly. Mornings I would sit in front of my four computer monitors with my coffee and study the market trends, read articles, engage my trades. What I did was foolish, and more foolish yet was that I thought I would get away with it. I ended up tricking investors out of about sixty million dollars and ended up with a series of charges and sixteen years of prison. The feds came to my house on one of those peaceful mornings and destroyed my life forever. My cup of coffee was left on the desk, half full, along with a half-eaten apple pastry while agents ransacked my house. I found myself in a county lockup first, surrounded by angry and vicious people as well as some that were obviously insane or on serious street drugs. Then I was in a cell with an old alcoholic black man who kept asking me if I was sure I was not a child molester. I guess I sort of fit the stereotype. Late middle age. Well to do. Clean pressed shirt. One guy in that jail asked me if I’d been arrested at the country club.
It all became a nightmare and after I was sentenced and sent to this FCI. I went to the prison psychologist, an overweight black woman with thick horn-rimmed glasses. She put me on SSRIs, antidepressant meds. First Proza,c which caused bruising on my arms and didn’t work right, gave me nightmares. Then Celexa, which has made my time here at least bearable. There are a lot of us on meds here. One guy is on Cymbalta and it makes his hands shake. At first I thought he might have Parkinson’s although he’s relatively young. Then I ran into him at pill call one day and saw what he was on. Another guy has serious PTSD from his stint in Vietnam back in 1970. He has a long sentence and honestly, doesn’t look like he’ll make it to the end.
If people out there could see all these old crippled men in wheelchairs and on meds and all the hopelessly autistic inmates I don’t know that they would condone such long prison sentences. They still might. It’s a cruel world. None of it makes any sense. Me, I still have some wits about me. I get Barron’s and The Economist magazines in the mail. I have a couple of friends I call on the outside who are making trades, and they tap into an account I have in Belize that the feds never found. When I leave here I should be alright, at least financially…maybe not so much psychologically.
As for romance…the truth is, as a gay man I’m an outlier here. I don’t relate to any of the other gay guys here. But out there I’m sure I’ll find a young man looking for a rich sugar daddy, who won’t care about my prison record. I’ll be choosy but I won’t be stingy. Being here has taught me one important lesson, and it may not be the one my prosecutor and judge were hoping for. Life is short. Live it up while you can. As the Romans used to say: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. Meanwhile, stay sane.
FRED
A bathtub needs to be six feet long. Not five foot seven. Not five foot eight, where you have to sit there with your knees up to your chin. When I get out, I’m gonna have one built for me six feet and I’m gonna lay there for hours. I mean, what’s the use of settling for one ‘a them small tubs? No. A tub should be six foot. Accommodate everybody, know what I mean?
The way they build houses now, it’s all shit. Cheap wood and cardboard. And small fucking tubs. People say I’m a know it all. Duh! I can’t help it if I’m smarter than most people. These inmates around here aren’t even aware of what’s going on half the time. I know the names of every officer on this compound. I know how much money this place makes every year on the commissary. That money is supposed to be OUR money. TRUST fund money. Well, that’s all bullshit. Upper management is stuffing their pockets with it and asking the government to help them out when they can’t pay their bills. They spent thirty grand on a fucking expresso machine that they used for a few months and then stuck in a closet when it didn’t work right. All their equipment is shoddy. Every time they install something, it doesn’t work right. Idiots and losers. That’s who is running this place, and more than likely the whole prison system.
Inspections. Ha. They get all these certifications that are just bullshit. The certification places are run by people who worked in the system. Like the wolves looking over the henhouse. All bullshit.
But I’m telling ya. A tub has to be SIX goddamn feet long! No two ways about it. They shouldn’t even MAKE them smaller than that. I mean who wants smaller tubs? Dwarves?
And don’t get me started about what goes on in the chow hall here. Who knows what kinda crap they’re feeding us? What kind of meat is that they use? Who knows? Everything tastes like cardboard. When I get out I’m going to the best fucking restaurant I can find and ordering everything I can afford. And the next day I’ll go to another restaurant and do the same thing. I may not have a fucking place to live right away but I’ll tell you what, I’ll be eating like a goddamn king. And when I find a place it’ll have a tub. And the tub will be six feet long.
DAN
I’ve got a basketball between my thighs. Not a real basketball, a flesh and blood basketball, a giant growth on my inner thigh up near the crotch. I was a fireman before prison. I was working my way through a blaze in a warehouse when a hot steel beam grazed my leg, cutting and burning. This was a year before I was indicted. Another year went by before I was sentenced. In that time, though the burn had healed and I’d been treated, something weird happened to the tissue in my leg and it started to swell. After three years in prison it was about the size of a softball. Cops searching me for contraband would ask, what’s this? I would tell them, It’s all me. It’s skin.
Now, eight years after that injury, the skin has swelled to the size of a regulation basketball. It’s difficult to walk, to sit, to sleep. They’ve given me a wheelchair and promised surgery and sent me out for consultations, but they’ve all done nothing. I guess guys who talk to imaginary teenagers about sex on their computers deserve to have nothing for them. They deserve slow painful death. The thing between my thighs, now a cancer, will eventually kill me. Blood clots will travel into my heart or brain. I’m not even forty yet. I have a thirteen year sentence. I know what I did was wrong and I have repented and accepted guilt for my actions. Nobody cares. They’ve done some testing and probing in these consultations but I can’t help but think that the doctors hired by the BOP are compromised. Or maybe bills go unpaid. Or maybe they look at the chart and see ‘sex offender’.
In any case, I’m stuck with this situation. And honestly, I may be one of the lucky ones. I’ve seen several people here die from neglect. One guy–Al, an old mean cuss, a curmudgeon–complained for months about an obstruction in his throat. They did nothing. Admin didn’t like him because he wrote a lot of officers up for infractions. Turned out he had throat cancer. Now he’s lying in a terminal ward at one of the medical facilities. Another guy, an Iraq veteran, got into a scuffle with guards and they shackled him too hard and left him for days. He lost his legs and then died of sepsis. I can go on and on. There are so many cases that it’s just an acceptable thing now. “Don’t get sick in prison.”
And that cockroach, Skip. Ugh. He’s the head orderly–trustee, they would call him in state or county prison. He has a list of who is in what cell and whether they are upper bunk or lower bunk. Guys pay him off with flats or commissary to get lower bunks or to get rooms with their buddies or people in the same car. He’s an old guy and has scoliosis and walks around like an insect. Everybody hates him. He inspects the bathrooms to see if the other orderlies are cleaning right. If they are slack he reports them and has them lose their jobs. When I came back from a consultation this cockroach tried to put me in a twelve man room even when I’d been in my cell for two years. He also tried to put me in an upper bunk knowing damn well about my mobility issues. I went to the unit manager and complained. I still ended up in the twelve man, but at least I got a lower bunk. Skip hasn’t talked to me since then. And I’m glad because if he did I’d just punch his lights out. He’s always out on the rec yard circling the track like the cockroach he is.
Anyway, I’ve been told I will get surgery soon, soon. I don’t trust those people up in medical. They look like diversity and inclusion hires. I’m not sure they are competent, and, bottom line, I think they just hate all inmates and sex offenders worst of all. Sex offender. That’s the label I’m stuck with. My crime? I talked to a person I thought was a fifteen year old girl online. It turned out to be a cop. I got thirteen years but at least I’m eligible for FSA credits, First Step Act, the only thing Trump did that was any good for us. It’s a bunch of bullshit, but if I take classes and get credits I might be able to lose a year and a half off my sentence. In the meantime I walk around with these extra-large khaki pants bulging at the crotch and I push my wheelchair when I’m not using it. I can still walk. In fact it’s more comfortable than sitting in that contraption. Life goes on. Until it doesn’t.
AL
I’m lying here in a two man hospital room looking up at a blank white ceiling at Butner Medical FCI thinking about my life. The journey is coming to an end. I was a lawyer, a business lawyer, a good one, part of a large Indianapolis firm. That was twenty five years ago before my first conviction for child porn. What can I say? I’m a pervert. I like teenage girls. I’ve never been married. Don’t have any kids that I know about. I left that all to my two brothers, neither one of whom speaks to me. The first time I was in prison, it was for two years and I took the absurd sex offender therapy program. That only pissed me off. There was no therapy, it was all about guilting and shaming us into some sort of compliance. After I got out I couldn’t practice law anymore. I was a clerk at another firm. Everybody knew about me and I eventually lost that job as well. Then I went back on the internet and back to porn and back to prison, this time for seventeen years. I can’t help liking what I like. I’m a child of the sixties and seventies. This society has swung in the opposite direction and a lot of people in my generation ended up on the wrong side of the law for drugs or sex. I regret what I did, but I’m past guilt and remorse. Now I’m in the closing of the final act. This could have been prevented and that pisses me off but what can I do? The fight is over. I applied for compassionate release and didn’t get it.
Many inmates who end up in my situation get similar results. But the truth is that at this point, even if they had granted me compassionate release I might not want to take it. I have nowhere to go and I don’t want to be a burden. I have some good memories of my time in prison. I made some good friends. Good old Kevin, Master Class, they call him. Trying to teach me guitar. I love music, but man, maybe it was a little late in the game. I gave him a hard time. The boy thinks too much, he lives all in his head and is nervous, high strung. But I tend to give a lot of people a hard time. What the hell. Life sucks and then you die. But I believe you come back. I don’t think this is the end. There’s all those stories of people, and children, remembering past lives. This can’t be all there is. It wouldn’t make any sense. I think there is some supreme power in the universe. Now I don’t believe in a lot of that religious malarkey most people subscribe to. But I do think there is something. Otherwise what’s the point?
I’m actually going to die before my mom and my dad, who are in their nineties. Both of them had cancer, but they weren’t in prison. They got treatment and they beat it. I got a raw deal. My “crime,” if you need to call it that, should not merit a death sentence by oblivion and neglect. I look up at that blank ceiling and I’m drifting. At least they keep me well sedated. I’m not in pain. It’s all very humane. You get to be forgotten quietly. You get to slip away unnoticed and unheard.
Well…I fought the fight. I wrote up those bastards hundreds of times for anything that made sense. But nothing changed. The system is like a steamroller. It just keeps grinding on. Now, it’s strange, my most vivid memories are from the years I’ve been locked up. The time before that, even though it was three times longer, is like a dream. Like something that happened to someone else. Before I got sick, a long while before I got sick, I had lost interest in porn. Not that I didn’t appreciate a pretty girl on TV when I saw her but it just wasn’t the same.
Thinking about it I did have good friends in prison but just a few, very few. I saw guys out on the rec yard all buddy-buddy, bros. I never had that. I never felt I was one of them. And…it seems I’ve had a long life but…like I’ve missed out on so much, like there is so much of the world I never experienced. Now I’ve ended up in a special club. The club of catheters and colostomy bags and feeding tubes and oxygen and beeping hardware keeping track of my biology. The TV is on but I don’t care to watch most of anything. The news of the world is terrible. Everything out there is going to shit. Maybe I picked a good time to bow out. One memory that comes to me now and then: I was running at sunset in the rec yard. I always spent that last move of the day out there, running. During COVID, we weren’t allowed to go out so I ran up and down on the stairs in the unit. I made some idiot inmates mad, but I didn’t care.
But anyway, there was this one time I remember, must’ve been in early fall and there was a beautiful sunset, a red orange globe sinking into the North Texas horizon. I was out there almost by myself. A softball game had just wrapped up and most of the inmates had gone off the field and gone inside the leisure room or by the gate to wait for the move. It was just me on the dirt track and every time I circled around the sun was a bit lower. You couldn’t look right at it because it was still really bright. But it was so red, an almost unreal shade of red. And then finally, just before they called the move on the PA speakers, it was gone. Maybe that’s what the last sunset on Earth will be like. I don’t know if there will be anybody to see it, a glowing burning ball of energy disappearing forever. Nothing is eternal. Or maybe there is no such thing as time. Time is a creation of biology. Without life there is no time, and no reason to count down to an end or to a new beginning or whatever happens. Without life everything just is. Static. Like what prison administrators would like life for us inmates to be. Only it’s never that and never will be. Prison is a waste and a mistake. I hope society comes to its senses and changes this idea of locking up people for years. I won’t be here to see that if and when it happens. At least not in this body. My last hours are ahead, my best years behind and forgotten. I don’t know what they will play at my funeral but I can only hope it’s something from the Grateful Dead, something sixties. Sixties. Free, youthful, and wild.
C.O. WORTH
I guess times have changed. It woulda been impossible years ago for a black female to work as a guard in a federal prison. Couldna happened! Now, here I am. Aisha Worth, corrections officer. Hey, the pay’s good and they got good benefits, right? It’s the government. I got my GED and saw an ad and took a shot. Why not? I’m five foot two and I thought that might be a problem. But, heck, they got all kindsa people in here so out of shape you’d never think they would be prison guards.
Do I like this job? I guess s’alright. I’m kinda bossy, so it fits my personality. I like to keep these inmates in line. Well, we not s’posed to be calling them inmates now. They’s AIC’s. Adults in custody. To me they’re still inmates. Convicts. Criminals. Derelicts. Low lifes. When I interviewed they axxed me would I have a problem working in low security here, at this place. There’s a lotta sex offenders. I said, no sir. Why would I have a problem? They just inmates, right? I didn’t tell them about what happened to me when I was eleven with my mom’s boyfriend. He put the moves on me. Good thing she threw him out before anything went down, know what I mean? But these people here, they be baby rapers! They either done rape a child or watch some poor child be raped on the Internet! Uh-uh-uh! They’s scum and I ain’t gonna treat ’em with no respect. They don’t deserve no respect. Summa these jokers go ’round with no shirt on. I tell ’em they best get dressed or I’m sending them to the SHU. What I like the most is yelling over the PA system to ‘nounce chow or count time. I been told I gots a real screechy voice and I knows how to use it. I hear them makin fun of me. They think I don’t know what they say, that I don’t know what they call me? Ghetto rat. Hoe. Nigger bitch. I know. I know. But I don’t care. You know why? Cuz I’m on the side that’s got the guns, that’s why.
The United States government. Thass who I represent when I put on this uniform and come to work. And I’m proud to do it too. Now, summa these other girls that work here, they gone off and got in trouble with gettin involved with inmates and drugs and whatnot. I ain’t goin down that road. I’m on the straight and narrow. I’m a church-on-Sunday kinda gal and I don’t believe in no shady business. I’mma be here for a while. I’mma get a promotion and move up. Maybe be a lieutenant. Maybe be captain one day. Maybe warden. Why not? We got a black lady warden right now. She is a fine, upright lady. I jes gotta go back to college and get me an education. The government got programs for us that work here. But hey, on the flip side, I don’t know if I wanna spend my whole life doing this. Sometimes it feel like I’m an inmate too, in here with all these…A-I-Cs. And I seen summa these COS been here for years and never moved up and end up sick and depressed and shit. And then too, I don’t know if I wants marriage or nothin like that. Not for now. Most men ain’t gonna like my line of work. And I don’t lean in no other direction, know what I’m sayin? I mean sexually. So I’ll just see how it goes. Maybe I’ll meet somebody from church or somethin. I sure ain’t one for the whole bar and club scene. Anyway, gotta go. I’m on duty in ten minutes!
EPILOGUE
Too many voices
low voices
like whispers
like wind in the trees
lost
gone.
There’s constant motion
molecular and unpredictable.
The more I try to hear them
the more faint they become
the voices of these strangers
indistinct.
I’ve offered what I could
limited, I know
caught in passing, in motion
in the moment
in the rush
a lost chorus of broken spirits
mid-journey
bound nowhere
in particular.
I’ve passed this on with
no expectations.
Look on with disdain
if you will
but realize
such disdain is partly for yourself
for what you hate in yourself
for what you can’t live with
that is nevertheless
alive
and
kicking
and will not be stifled.
We are all innocent and guilty
We are all free and trapped
We are all, in one way or another
Inmates.
What you may hear in their voices
is your own voice
if you listen,
if you
really
listen.
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