Lucky Day

Segregation is fucked up! No question about it. I am forever damaged from all the years I was left in that madness. 

 

One morning while wasting away in segregation I was watching the news. I think it was CNN but who really knows? Life back then was much easier. Back then you were not labeled racist, sexist, Marxist, etc… based on where you got your morning full of nonsense. 

 

I was about twelve months into an eighteen-month segregation program the morning this happened. I remember being happy to have a TV and how glad I was to not be my neighbor. I remember just being happy that I was able to sit on the concrete slab the State calls a bed and turn my TV on. I remember thinking how lucky I was, having the small black and white TV to turn on. 

 

Obviously, the State’s program had cast its spell on me. There is no way a normal human should feel lucky under such living conditions. I was being held in segregation for eighteen months for something I did not do. I was twenty-two years old. I had seven hundred and seventy-four years remaining on my prison term. My life was a mess.

 

So, there I was, sipping my single serve packet of coffee, watching the news. This was during Bush Junior’s time in the White House. The war was in full swing and Guantanamo Bay at its height. Lots of bad shit was going on in the world. There were people blowing themselves up around the world based on empty promises. Our armed services men and women died daily. For a great part of the world’s population, it was an “us or them” mentality. 

 

Well shit got out of control at Guantanamo Bay; the “us” team was abusing the “them” team. Somehow the media got ahold of tapes and pictures of shit the “us” team had been doing to the “them” team. That was the morning news I was watching when I had the lucky feeling about myself. The talking heads were going on and on about the treatment of prisoners. They were correct too! That shit was not cool. Those people were being sprayed with water hoses and mace, stripped of all clothing, dragged out of their cells, to be video recorded and humiliated. That shit should never be acceptable. And there I am, feeling lucky to have my TV. Glad I was not my neighbor and hopeful that this day would be nothing like yesterday.

 

Just like the armed services men and women overseas, our dry, dusty state prison had the “us” team and the “them” team. “Them,” just to be clear, are no good, lying piece of shit criminals, and the “us” team are arbiters of truth and righteousness. I was on team “them”. 

 

My poor neighbor had mental issues. The fucker would smear his shit on the cell walls. I am not talking about a spot. I mean the entire freaking cell. No joke. Of course, for me and everyone else in this closed air pod, this was awful. Not only would he do this, but he had another twitch to his character. He would yell out his door for hours on end. In fact, they called him “Preacher” because he would yell gibberish about the Bible for hours on end. I am serious. HOURS NONSTOP! That got to me. 

 

The day before, Preacher’s medication wasn’t working, so shit was in the air, and the pod was getting closer to Jesus. This happened so often, I nearly became numb to it. Nearly, but not completely. I felt bad for the guy. Mental health services were failing him. They allowed this poor idiot to be out of his mind, instead of figuring out how best to help him find peace. My father was mentally ill like this. I know his behavior was not his fault. That did not mean I did not want to shut his mouth for him though. 

 

Someone down the way, no longer able to tolerate in the smell of human waste or Preacher’s sermon, finally snapped. Unable to process life normally anymore, the guy begins kicking his cold metal door with pure rage. No way could he have this sort of power while his mind was present. As he kicks his door like the madman Preacher had driven him to become, he too starts yelling shit in between kicks about the devil. I THINK he was just trying to fuck with Preacher, but who really knows? It didn’t seem the right time to ask about his faith. 

 

Not to be shut down or outdone, Preacher began banging his shower shoe on his hollow sink, casting out demons. This may sound like an improvement, but it wasn’t. This is a loud ass noise you can’t block out of your head. And it goes on for hours. Hours of this noise. Noise that echoes like something right out the depths of hell. Noise that hurts my head. There is zero relief. The dumb TV is useless, the sound drowned out by my peers and their battle.

 

And so, I pace. 

 

Three steps to the door, turn around. Three steps to the bunk, turn around, every so often glancing out the small window cut in my metal door. 

 

Three steps to my door, turn around. 

 

Life in segregation allows for very little to look forward to. Your three meals a day, your single hour out of your cell to shower, a call home if you’re lucky, and the chance to take more than three freaking steps in one direction. Getting out of the small cells for that brief sixty minutes is important. Sometimes it’s the single thread that holds a person together. 

 

Knowing this provides context for what happens next. 

 

The good ol’ boys working the unit finally make their appearance in full riot gear.  With shock shields, bull horns and bottles of mace, they arrive. The fat one in front begins yelling at us with the bull horn. If things were not so fucked up, I would have fallen out laughing at the sight of it. The dumb horn was full-sized but it looked like one of those kids toys in his fat hands. He yells, “All inmates in this pod are now on restricted movement! No one receives yard, shower, phone or mail for twenty-four hours!”

 

They stand there in their military gear. Shiny service boots that glint in the light. Camouflage blue pants tucked into these boots. Service belts holding mace, flashlights, plastic zip ties for cuffs, and their radios. These motherfuckers are mean too. Unprofessional and unchecked.

 

“They” stand in the midst of “us,” six men now losing our minds over this unfair decision to take our yard, shower, mail, and phone time. All that serves to hold us together, gone! Nothing is left. 

 

They joined Preacher and his counterpart in what is best described as cacophony. 

 

I stand there silently looking out my cell, trying to figure out how I lost my day. As I’m ruminating, the military-like group of fat men, now laughing, move in. 

 

My neighbor’s cuff port is opened by an officer, who sprayed into it what sounded like an entire can of mace. When the officer was done spraying and subduing my neighbor, not a move was made to help this mentally ill man. 

 

Cries now replace the words of Jesus. Gone is the smell of his waste, traded for the poisonous gas of mace. The cuff port slammed closed and the riot team, a group of overweight men with poisonous gas, moved down to the next cell. With no request for the occupant to comply, the cuff port opens, and they spray him too, and then move to the next cell.

 

By now I’ve completely lost my vision and ability to breathe.  The gas was coming into my cell as if I were being sprayed directly.  The only thing I could do was bury my face in a shirt I was able to wet before they turned the water off, and lay on the ground, gasping for breath and searching for air to cool my chemically burned lungs. How long I laid there, I don’t know. I coughed, choked and burned for what seemed like days. I could barely open my eyes.  Gone were the echoes from kicked doors, replaced with coughs and pleas for water.

 

When I managed to get off my floor and look out my window, I saw Preacher completely naked laying on his stomach, crying from his pain, begging for the officers to help him. There were two officers standing over his convulsing body.  One was holding a dog leash connected to the man’s ankles and wrists.  The other was filming the scene.

 

In the next room over I could see two more poor souls just like Preacher, naked, hogtied and crying in pain.  After a couple of hours of this they were escorted back to their cells, all the while mocked, manhandled and recorded.  They remained naked for the next forty-eight hours in their poisoned cells without water or any way to clean the burning chemicals from their skin.  Our criminal convictions seemingly bar people in our nation from caring about living conditions incarcerated men and women suffer are under every single day that seem obvious in other circumstances, like war.  

 

And so, there I sat, sipping my coffee, watching these national news commentators call for criminal charges against the soldiers for their behavior at Guantanamo Bay, and I felt lucky.  Lucky not to be my neighbors.  

 

 

Geoffrey Leon Carpenter #752058

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