BAD GUYS: AMERICA'S MOST WANTED IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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Part 1 of 2

THREE: Same as It Ever Was

"Guys say, 'Prison keeps you looking young.'

"Hell, I known guys never been to prison look young. I don't need to come to prison to try and stay young, man.

"They say, 'You get a lot of knowledge, you get sharp in prison. Man, you acquire so many things in prison.'

"Hell, I could have got sharp in the streets. I haven't acquired anything. I messed up a lot of opportunities. I honestly believe I could have went to college, man, and been something. I'm not saying it's too late, but the odds are out of my favor now," says Howard the creeper, assessing all the years that he has spent in corrections institutions.

"The first things they build at a prison are a fucking weight pile and a basketball court. They want you to play all the time. That's how you got here, playing. I don't play no more. Nothing's fun no more. I wasted too much time already playing. I be tired a lot, I'm mentally exhausted from playing this game."

America is spending $30 billion a year to keep people in prison, and it's not nearly enough money. California needs twenty new prisons in addition to the sixty now in operation to handle the influx of prisoners expected as a result of their new "three strikes" law. The state of Florida is building eight new prisons, four new work camps, and adding more than twenty new dormitories at established institutions by the year 2000. The federal corrections system has added thirty-four new prisons since 1982, bringing the total of federal penitentiaries to seventy-seven, but they still house 30 percent more inmates than the prisons were designed to accommodate. There are small tent cities inside prisons in both New Jersey and Arizona to house the overflow of inmates.

No matter how up-to-date the facility, despite any rehabilitation programs and educational amenities a corrections institution may offer, prison is a cage. Human beings in prison are animals in a cage. They pace off the limits of their confinement repeatedly like all caged creatures, looking for a weakness, looking out, looking to escape. The stress of confinement is visible on every face I saw in prison. I was repeatedly surprised when inmates would tell me their age. They almost always looked ten years older than they were. There are dark circles under their eyes. They complain about their hair falling out, their teeth getting loose. Lines mark their faces from where they wear a constant mask of anger, pain, boredom, or sadness. "It ain't natural to be locked up," says Howard, who is serving his fourth prison sentence. "It ain't nothing natural about this. Only the strong survive, and the weak fall by the wayside, except the strong fall, too, in here. There is no way you're going to come out of this situation unscathed, untouched."

They must keep their guard up against one another constantly. There is no escape. As one woman told me, "I can't even wash out a pair of underwear, hang them on the line, and walk away. I got to stand there and watch them dry if I want to keep them." Eileen has to watch her few paltry belongings -- a lipstick, a deodorant, a small bottle of perfume from her husband, a paperback book, pictures of her children. She has to keep a wary eye on her bunk, her back, the guards themselves. There is no relief from this edgy vigilance, no relief from the endless, aggressive sparring with other women, no relief from the interminable cacophony of the place. There is no privacy.

Eileen sleeps only a few hours a night. "I try to stay cool with the women who sleep around me. You never know when somebody is going to get mad at you and decide they're going to fix you up good while you're asleep." After four years, she still has no appetite and rarely eats. Eileen has her own private hell to cope with. Her guilt for getting herself sent back to prison eats at her. "I hear my son saying, 'Mommy, you're going back to prison again?'"

All these pressures have Eileen's emotions stretched to the breaking point. It's all she can do to keep from exploding. "I pray for my tolerance level, and my attitude, because these are my problems. My fuse is short. Everything can't go my way. I can't hit everybody in the mouth when they say something. Amazing, isn't it? I can't get their jaw wired up, just because I want to get out of here. I can't spit in your face, because I'd rather be at home. I know that's the lowest thing you can do to people, and I know how that makes a person feel if I do it. That used to be my world.

"I try not to count the days," she says. "I definitely don't tell nobody my release date. When they know you're going home, that's when all the trouble comes. That's when they come at you to blow your date. They want you to stay here as long as they do. Just out of meanness."

There is a widely held popular theory that criminals subconsciously want to come back to prison over and over again. Unsuccessful with the confusing choices of freedom, they secretly long for the security of "three hots and a cot," the predictability of having someone else tell them what they are going to do everyday and when. I saw no predictability in prison, except for the constant danger, the threat of being overpowered, robbed, possibly raped. As "Howard says, "There is one thing I'm always going to do while I'm in prison. I'm going to keep a weapon. You can't be in here without a knife. It's too dangerous, man. What are they going to do to me if they find it? Give me three years. I'll take the three years, man, just add them on."

If there is some deep-seated motivation for men and women to get themselves locked up, it would have to be an addiction to the adrenaline drive that the constant pressure of life behind bars triggers in the body, not any feeling of safety they may find there.

Presumably, some criminals are changed by the experience of being imprisoned, and cease to be criminals. Those successes mostly go uncharted. The majority of prisoners will return again and again to confinement until age forces them" out of a profession monopolized by youth, or until an untimely death catches up with them. Considering the violence of their lives and the high level of drug and alcohol abuse among people who live the life of crime, death seems likely to cut many of them down before the slow lessons of rehabilitation take root. Howard is only a few months from getting out of prison once again. "I'll be honest with you, man, I can't tell if I'm ready to get out. I'm afraid now. Don't get me wrong, I feel I can cope with society, but it will be the first time I ever coped in society. I ain't ever coped in society before."

***

The first time I went to prison at the age of twenty-four, I only had a year and a day. I was out in two or three months, and it didn't even faze me. I tell you, prison is not at all what I thought it would be the first time I came here. It wasn't. I was hanging out with the crowd, so it won't seem like I was in prison. It didn't seem so bad. I could go out and play basketball. I did that on the streets. I lift weights. Hang out with the guys. So you don't really see the limits of it. It's like you got blinders on. You don't see nothing. I never stopped and said, "Man, what's going on?" I just kept running, you know, just kept running.

The second time, I got two and a half years. I did six months on that. When I came to prison, I was doing the same thing I was doing on the streets. I would get with the guys that was into drinking buck, the pot smoking, the hustling, and all that. It's exciting hanging with that crowd. It gets your adrenaline flowing. You're away from your family, so you're real lonely. You want to fit in somewhere. If you can get in with this group over here, they look like they're running everything. They seem to be in charge. You feel comfortable around them, because that's what you're into anyway. You want to get high. You want to drink buck. Do crazy things. It's only feeding the sickness that's there anyway, that's the medicine for it.

Plus it's an escape from your reality -- that you're in here anyway. It makes the time go by.

When I got out, I would do the same things again. Only I would think I'm more slicker now. I can get away with it. People in jail give you all kinds of ideas. You think, "I just didn't do this right. I'll try it this way the next time."

This is my fifth prison sentence. The second and third time, I didn't even notice I was here. The fourth time, my mother passed away. That was rough, man, because you always think Mom's going to be there for you. She is the person I depended on when I came to prison. She was the connection. She was someone who cared about me when no one else did. That was the letter coming in, and that little bit of money, and a phone call here and there. You need it. When that was taken away from me, man, it really hurt.

This time the judge gave me a forty-five-year sentence as a habitual offender, because of the number of times I've been in. It kind of shocked me in the courtroom. I wasn't expecting it. I cried. "Man, I can't do no forty-five years. I'm a young man. I want to see some more of the outside. Thirty plus forty-five is seventy-five." But it happened.

The reality of it all is devastating. As a man of the age of thirty years, my life is going nowhere. That's sad, it's very sad.

***

They couldn't do nothing with me. I was outrageous when I came in this time. I came in fighting. I went to lock from Receiving and Orientation. I sure did, for slapping a girl off the bunk bed. It didn't matter to me. I told them straight up when I walked in those front doors, "I don't want to hear nothing ya'll got to say or how you want to do it, because I'm going to do my time. The judge gave it to me, and I can do it laying down in lock or any way I please." So they put me on this psych medicine for three or four months. They see that it wasn't calming me down. I was still in trouble. So they started giving me Mellaril. That stuff kind of knocks me down some, paces me out a little bit.

I have this best friend named Money, because she loves money. Me and her always play cards, or sit down and eat together, right? They moved us together into another dorm, and Money was real happy about that. She says, "Oh, girl, I'm going to introduce you to my daddy."

"Your daddy?" I looked at her. It kind of freaked me out at the beginning. So we get over there, and we are playing cards. I won the first game. Here come this girl called Two-One she's talking about. Money says, "This is my daddy. Why, Daddy, you can play with Mama."

I thought, "This little sneaky helper, she's trying to fix us up, put us together." I say, "You're the one used to try and talk to me when I passed by getting my daily exercise."

"Yeah," she says. "You sure know how to wear that purple lipstick, don't you?"

"I sure do, and I wear it only for me."

"You're so sexy," she's saying.

"I know I am. You don't have to tell me." I was real snappy. Don't worry about me is what I'm trying to tell her, nor how I look, because I'm going to be me.

So I was sitting in the dayroom one day, eating soup, fish sticks, and some rice, drinking a Pepsi. Two-One came in and sat at the table with me, and she say, "What's your name, can I ask you that?"

"Pudding-tain. Ask me again and I'll tell you the same."

"You is spunky. How old is you?"

"Old enough. Probably older than you. You look young yourself."

"I just want to talk with you. You ain't got to get smart with me."

"You can talk. Sit down over there. There's plenty of chairs." I was just eating and she talks.

"I like you," she says.

"Oh, you do?" I say, "I ain't going to be here that long."

"I sure want you to be my girlfriend until you get ready to leave."

"Be your girlfriend? I'll have to think about that first and see what I'm getting into."

"I'm serious. I'm a real person, 'cause I'm gay on the streets."

"Nobody can't play with my head. I ain't going to let them. You think you going to play with me, you're going to mess around and get hurt. Then, they sure enough are going to ship me out of here."

"I'm not about that," she says. She takes one of my hands in hers. "I really do like you. Can I take you to the movies?"

"Sure, I'll go to the movies with you."

We had sex one time. The first time I ever had sex in my life in prison with a woman. I thought about it when I gave her my coochie -- that's how I say it -- when I gave her my coochie I started having these feelings for her. She would call me and say, "You know something? You fucked up, because when you gave me your coochie, you thought you were just going to give me a little bit, and just keep on stepping. But that ain't how it is. You belong to me now."

I looked at her like she was crazy. I was ready to fight, too. I said, "Girl, I belong to me. I own me. Do you understand? Read my lips. I belong to me, and you belong to you. You ain't going to tell me what to do. And if you start anything with me, I ain't going to take you to lock, I'm going to take you a little further past lock."

But I was tripped out. I got permission to braid Two-One's hair one day from the officer. "Sure, but if anybody come in here, you're on your own."

"Okay," I say. "I'll just look out for myself." So I'm braiding her hair and her old girlfriend come up saying, "Two-One, you better tell that girl who I am."

"No," I said, "let me tell you who I am. I am Nadine Elizabeth Turner, and you is irrelevant to me. I don't see you or hear you. If you got anything to say to me, don't go behind my back. Please be woman enough to come and tell me, because I'm woman enough to tell you anything I want you to know."

"Fool," she said, "didn't I tell you, Two-One, that you weren't going to have none other girlfriends?"

"I don't think so," I said. "She belongs to me now." She didn't know it, but I had a razor on me right then. I had took it out of my pocket and put it between my fingers. Two-One is holding me back. She say, "Hey, Baby, please, Baby, don't fight."

"She had her chance and she lost out. She sent you to lock, and now she wants you back, because somebody else sees something in you that she didn't take the time to see. But I seen it." Two-One is a very warm, loving person. She got a lot of friends on this compound. And I'm in love with her. I sure am. She calmed me down a lot. She don't like for me to get in trouble.

They separated us, just because they seen us eating together, sitting in front of the TV, and going to the movies. If you're a correctional officer, it's what you see with your eyes that you can use to penalize a person. They listen to another inmate -- can you believe what they saying? That me and my girlfriend had sheets around the bunk bed, sucking and licking. I'm going to tell you like it is. It wasn't like that at all. I might have got sucked a few times. But me? I couldn't see myself doing it. She don't let no woman touch her anyway. She don't like that. She say she likes to do all the work.

The most dangerous time is near the end of your sentence. I had a couple of them last night, kicking and juggling, saying kiss this and suck this. I just looked at them and smiled. I went to my room, and I got down on my knees. I prayed to God. I say, "Lord, give me a peace of mind, because I refuse to let Satan take me over like this, just because of their stupidity, their miseries." I'm not about misery. I'm happy. All the time I been coming up here, I finally found happiness.

***

They were pretty sure I'd get killed if I was put back in the regular population. So when I got out of the infirmary, this old prison guard I was friends with got me on this job. They had all of Cell Block Q and Cell Block R, which faced each other, empty. I was to keep the whole area clean. Didn't nobody come around there except to go out to the showers or to go outside for recreation three times a week. My cell was open all the time. There was only one other inmate in there. I'd seen this whole souped-up cell, but they didn't tell me nothing about it. They had the bean flap way up high, like a window, except with flap on it. I looked in there and I seen all this hair coming off the side of the damn bed, real long chestnut brown hair. "Damn, that's a pretty ass faggot. Wait a minute. He'd have his hair cut off if he was a man." I said, "Hey, come here."

"What the hell you want?"

"Oh, God damn, lookee here. Excuse me, honey, but you in the wrong prison, ain't you? They fucked up. How'd you get in here?"

"Fuck you, bastard. Get away." She was the only woman on Death Row. I was the only person to get to see her. She was gorgeous. Ain't like this trash you see up here all the damn time. I swear to God, they don't lock any pretty bitches up in this county jail. They must fuck them and let them go. I'm serious, man. I've been down two and a half years, and I still wouldn't fuck these damn things with your dick, much less mine.

Her name was Delila and she was down there for a videotaped murder. Her boyfriend had killed a couple of people, and she had seen it. So he made her kill somebody, and videotaped it. He told her, "If you ever turn on me, I'll have this against you."

They ended up catching him, he copped out to a plea with the tape, and put her on Death Row. They built a separate Death Row for women now, but then Delila was the only one, and she had a special cell.

All them male guards and all them male inmates, you can imagine what she had to go through. I'm a real nice person, especially when it comes to women. I'm a sucker for women. I get taken advantage of so many times, it's pitiful. I'm serious. She was a pure bitch with everybody. The more that I tried to be nice to her, the meaner she was to me.

Now, you can get towels, shoes, socks -- everything but shirts and pants -- sent in from the streets. I had four towels. You can only have two towels, and two wash cloths. I could get extra because I had one of my boys I was taking care of up there. He didn't have no money, or anything. I'd look out for him, if he'd do things for me. You know, hold marijuana for me, or order stuff that I can't order anymore of.

Sometimes, I'd have a full pound of weed in the prison at one time. I'd have a kid hold it -- somebody they wouldn't think would have it. There was this old man -- I called him Pops -- he smoked weed like I smoke cigarettes, a pack a day, so he went through about four ounces a week. He came to me and said, "Just go up to the front gate, and get it for me, and I'll give you an ounce a week."

They handed out bag lunches at this institution. "Yeah, this is a bag lunch for Number 0247," which was Pops. I knew what it was -- five ounces of weed. He smoked four and he gave me an ounce. I split that in half, sold it to the boys around there, and I kept half to smoke for me. I usually got it from a trustee. One time I got it from a sergeant, and that really freaked me out. I had to take it round the corner and look in there to make sure I had what I was supposed to have before I took it back to him.

I had all kinds of things I used to do around there. I had a big washtub in my cell, and I used to give a guard twenty dollars to go get me a big box of Tide, a couple of jugs of bleach -- real bleach -- fabric softener, those Bounce things. I was doing people's laundry like they'd have it done at home. I'd fill that damn tub up in the shower, and I'd wash their damn clothes. Then I'd put it in their bag to have the laundry man put them in the dryer. When he'd give them back, I'd take them out of the bag, and I'd fold them up. I knew whose clothes were whose. They'd get them back nice and neat.

So I did that with Delila. Hell, I used to snort her panties sometimes, buddy. I know it might sound sick. Oh, her bras -- God!

"I think you enjoy doing my laundry."

"I just enjoy doing things for you. I'm a nice guy."

"Yeah, right. I never met a nice man in my life!"

"Well, you just have."

"What are you doing in prison then?"

"I'm here for being stupid."

One day, I took her white state issue towels. I had one towel that was a bright yellow, and it had been washed so many times that it looked like a shit yellow, canary yellow. I had another towel that was bright red that had turned pink. I didn't use that towel for nothing. I took them two towels -- they were still in real good shape, just faded -- and the wash cloths that matched them, and I folded them up. I'd just gotten my shot of weed for the week from old Pops. I rolled two big, bad joints and put them in that towel. Then I put all her stuff on top, folded T-shirts, folded bras and panties, and everything. I walked up to her door, and I sat the bag down. "All right, Delila. Come get your laundry."

She'd kind of lightened up on me. She's not saying too much to me, but she's not cussing me out like she usually does. Sometimes she smiles when she thinks about what I'm doing with her panties while I'm washing them and shit. I hand her the towels, and she says, "Them aren't my towels. It looks like you got them mixed up."

"No, these are your towels."

"Those are not my towels."

"Those are your towels now, so don't fuck with me. And be careful when you open up the pink one."

"But these ain't my towels!" I shoved the bag in there, ignored her, and walked away down the mainline.

I come back thirty minutes later, and I could smell that smoke. I looked in there and she's laying up on the damn bed fucked up.

"Come here," she says.

"What?"

"Put your head up here." The top of the door was inset bars, but below that was the place where you could put the big tray through. She pulled my head down in there and laid a lip lock on me. Whoa, that made my day right then. It generated from there.

I made her my last stop of cleaning up. Then before I cleaned up her cell, I dumped everything out, I put a fresh mop on the handle, fresh hot water, new pine oil in it, and let her clean her self up and do all kinds of extra things that nobody was supposed to do. I really took care of her. She was the only woman in there, and it was as close as I was going to get to one.

One morning, we had bananas for breakfast, one of them big old fat bananas. She sanded down one end, so it was good and smooth, and baby-oiled that bad boy up. I get down there, and see her watching through the little crack of her door. I was always excited to get down there. When I got down there this time, she was laying on her bunk, stark-ass naked. She had to work with this bad boy to get it going the way she had it. She had her legs spread wide open, and she was running that banana all the way up in there, and all the way out.

I couldn't even get it out of my pants. I done it right there all over myself. In the time that I have been with women on the street, pictures I've seen, anything, that is the most erotic thing I ever seen. Nobody fucked me up like she did that day there. That just really fucked me up when she done that. I didn't even have to touch it. I done had a bad accident then. Oh, man.

I fell in love with her, buddy. When I left there, she went to crying. I told my wife, "If that girl gets out of jail, you're history. That's all there is to it." I tell every one of them, "Listen here, I got a girl down there on Death Row. She'll probably never get out, but if she does, you're history."

"That's nice to know," they say.

"That's all you need to know."

***

The vibes in a place like this, the negativity is so thick. When you first walk in here, just the look that people give you is horrifying. They check you out to see if they can see a weakness in you. Even if you're not a bad guy, you got to play this bad character. You got to put up this big facade. "You're not going to fuck with me," because if they see any weakness, they going to try you. They going to try you anyway. I don't care what you do, you're going to get tried.

They have a little thing. They might whistle at you, or say something about whatever your physical build is, comment on it in a real slick way, right? But me, I don't play that. "My name ain't no fucking Slim. You don't even know me, brother. I don't know you."

It's just so much negativity, you can see it like electricity in the air. You got to always keep your awareness up. You can't even go to the shitter without taking your shank, because you never know when somebody might just want to try you.

The conditions is so animal. You see people getting taken advantage of, the weaker people. They take a man that never had any type of need or wanting to be a homosexual, put pressure on him or they trick them. The guy be so scared that he just falls right into the trap. They forcing themselves on him sexually. You might wake up one-thirty at night, seeing some guy and another man having sex. You see some guys crying, because they don't want to have sex with a bigger, rough guy. They just take advantage of him, and do him anyway. A lot of these guys just give up. He says he can't win. He just becomes all right with it, and then he labels hisself as a fuck boy. You got two types: You got sissies, and you got fuck boys. Fuck boys are turned out in the joint. Sissies are ones that come in sissies.

This animal that we are is so animalistic. I have a good friend, I won't call his name, but all he did was go around and rob Cubans and whites, and some blacks, too. 'Specially if he thought he could get a bomb. A bomb in prison is the drugs. A big thing -- maybe an ounce -- they call that the bomb. If he wants some money, he'd just go around there, and he'd take it, you know? We have a couple of guys now, they just walk around and rob people in the prison system.

One time, we robbed this Cuban guy, and the guy wasn't going for it. Two days later, the Cuban saw this friend of mine down by the basketball court. The Cuban had these guys with him that were his friends. The guy taped a shank to his hand, so it can't cut him, and the guy he's after can't take the knife away from him. The Cuban walked up on the dude, and he just started stabbing him in the neck. Killed him right there.

The officers are so scared. When a fight breaks out, they know there's weapons all around the institution. They're not going to risk their lives. I can't much blame them. For instance, you got eight inmates jumping on this cat, kicking him, stabbing him. Lot of these guys got two or three life sentences. They ain't ever going to get out. What do they care about taking your life? Ain't nothing. An officer's not going to run up into that until he gets a whole lot of help. Even then, they're going to call certain people's name out that they know have a big reputation for being bad. "Look up! Back up, So-and-so!"

The administrators and the superintendents at these violent camps, they try to have law and order. But it's kind of hard, man, when they're not going to risk their lives for the undesirables of society. Most times they build state prisons in rural areas. And the people who work here, they ain't very intelligent. I ain't calling them dumb. I'm just saying that they ain't very, very intelligent. Being in here is traumatic. This is terrible. Ain't nobody got a handle on this. Officers be victimized by it when they end up staying here all day.

And you got nuts here, I'm talking some serious bugs. You got guys will pull out they johnson and jack it right in front of the women officers. The women officers, they immune to it now. They just call on the radio and get another officer down there to put handcuffs on him, lead him off to a padded cell.

Then the keepers treat you like shit in some of these institutions. You get one shower a week, and the water is cut on and off from inside the officers' unit. So they put it cold and hot, be laughing and fucking with you. You can't do a damn thing about it. They flush your toilet from the outside, you can't flush it. You go ahead and call one of them down there to flush your toilet. Shit, man, I been through it.

You got inmates, man, who just don't care, even about themselves. You got officers can get you killed. And then you got your so-called friends who will set you up and cross you before the next man will. So this environment is just a whole big rat race. I don't recommend it for no one. I really don't.

***

The cells there was three stories high in tiers across from each other. My job at night was to go around and mop up all the tiers about eleven o'clock after everybody else was locked down. So I was up late every night.

There was this great big nigger they called Jabbo used to come by my cell first thing every morning, grab the bars, shake them and growl, "Hey, white boy, you lucky you in that damn cell where I can't get ahold of you. I could get with your pretty ass."

"You don't know me too well, do you." It was an every morning thing.

Now in them cells starting by the bars on one side, you had your bin where you kept your shit, went right up to the bars. You had your table behind that. The toilet was in the corner, and you had your shelf. Then the beds finish it up back at the bars on the other side. You sleep with your feet to the cell's open bars. That way nobody can reach through and stab you in the head or anything. If they hit you in the foot, they won't do much to you, just cripple you up for a day or two, and end up getting killed in the process. Revenge, you know? If you're going to reach through those bars, you want to make sure you do some permanent damage. Which was my mistake.

I had a really bad ear infection as a kid and every once in a while it comes back on me. That night my ear was about to kill me. It was so bad that it hurt to talk. Early that morning, I finally fell asleep. Jabbo come by there, and rattled that damn cell, "Cracker! Get your ass out of that damn bed."

"Let me tell you, something, you dumb fuck nigger. If I ever get my hands on you, I don't care how big you are, you've had it." He laughed and he went on out the hall to go to work. I was sick, he pissed me off, and, boy, was I mad.

Now, sodas up there was only twenty-five cents apiece. Name brands, no generic. So I was pouring Cokes down all day long, and only pissed when I had to, saving it up. Boy, when eleven o'clock came around, and I had to do that final clean up, I had to pee so bad my eyeballs was floating, and it was coming out my ears.

Jabbo was on the middle tier, and he slept with his head to the cell bars. I'm up there sweeping and everything. Now, there was an outlaw across from me they called Cat, 'cause he was a burglar. I had to piss so bad I was hurting. I said, "Cat." He got up to his bars. Everybody is hollering and bullshitting.

"What's happening, Snake?"

"Man, check this out," I said. I whipped my dick out.

"Man, why you playing with me?"

"I ain't playing you, bro. Watch this here." I turned around right in front of that motherfucker, Jabbo. I was just inches away from him, and I pissed all over his head.

Now he's laying there, curled up on his side. He starts slapping at his face like it's mosquitoes. Everybody done quit talking on all three tiers, and they're looking at him. "Look at that down there, man!"

I'm telling you, I just cut loose. Man, it was really good, too, I had to piss so bad. He's still swatting at it like it's bugs, so then he rolls over so I can get the other ear. Same thing over there. Everybody is about to die laughing. His roommate's looking over the bunk at him about to die. People got they little spooks out, looking, just laughing their asses off. Even the guards were laughing. 'Cause this guy was a big asshole. He was huge, and he liked to push his weight around. He was a loud-mouthed, obnoxious, son of a bitch. Nobody liked him.

He rolled over and opened that big ass mouth of his, and when that bad boy breathed in again, he started choking, banging his head on the damn bunk. He had piss all over him. I pissed so much it was falling off his bed on the floor.

It took him a minute to realize what it was all over him. Then he starts roaring, "You pissed on me!"

All night long, that motherfucker was crying. Everybody laughed at him. "Hey, Jabbo, you woke up with a pissy deal, huh?"

"Golden shower, huh, Jabbo? You said you liked it kinky." They fucked with him hard.

I was ready for him the next morning. I'd done rolled up all my shit I had in my cell, my blanket and everything. I knew he was going to come by there with a couple cups of piss or something. I already had my mop bucket in there with me, and a whole jug of Pine Sol.

He comes up there and I just hold my sheet up in front of me. He starts in, "I'm going to kill you. You ain't going to get away with this. I'm going to get my hands on you and kill you!" And every morning it was the same thing.

About three days later, I had a call out to go to the dentist. I should have knowed something was up, because it was the only morning he didn't come down there and fuck with me. But I didn't think about it. Jabbo played hooky from work.

When they called me, I went down there to the dentist and got my teeth cleaned. I'm walking back, and I see Jabbo's partner out in the hallway. He was acting like he was talking to some person. As soon as I cut that corner, this guy threw his hand up. Soon as I walked around that corner -- Smack! -- I ran into it. I mean a good hard, solid punch. I had just turned my head around and had my mouth wide open to say something to somebody. That fucker Jabbo hit me, and I mean"he hit me hard. I about choked on one of my teeth, and the other three hit the floor. I didn't even know what happened. He hauled ass, because the goon squad around there was nothing to be fucked with, buddy.

If I'd fought him head to head, I probably would have lost, but he's still in that prison, and I bet you they still talk about the guy who pissed on Jabbo's head.

***

If I ever had illusions about being a handsome guy or a cute guy, that place took care of it. I turned nineteen years old there. There were a lot of bandits in that prison that liked young boys, plenty of deviants. Any young kid could be in trouble up there. They tried psychologically to get you to offer them things. But no one ever did that with me. When they had a new busload of kids coming in from reception, kids with big sentences like me that they didn't want to keep down there, these old guys would be saying, "Hey, Martin, look at that kid. He's cute, ain't he?"

"What do you mean him? I'm younger than he is."

"Get out of here. You couldn't get hit on in the Greek Navy, you bear."

So I never had any illusions about being a nice-looking man. Even the guys don't think I'm cute. I said, "The least you could do is put a carton of cigarettes on my bed, so I think somebody likes me. You fucking guys are mean." Nineteen years old in the state prison, and nobody hits on me.

I had everything pretty much under control. I was doing a nice bit. There was really nothing happening around me that looked like jail. It was like a big college campus. I had my routine down. Days were going by. I had no complaints. I was just marking off my time, making the best out of a bad situation.

Then one day I seen guys by the windows. "What's happening?"

"It's a fight."

I went to the window, and I looked down across the way to the school. There was a fight going on. "Yeah, a fight. Look at that." I see a hack is trying to grab one guy off another guy. The hack gets pushed away. It looked to me like the one inmate was hitting the other guy with a ruler. The guy getting hit was lying up against the blackboard. "What's he hitting him with, a ruler?"

"That ain't no ruler. That's a shank."

"My God, that's a fucking sword. Looks as long as a ruler to me." About that time, he stuck it into the guy's eye. It was real brutal, and we were watching this thing go on for a long time, because there was only one officer. The guy who was assaulting and killing the other guy kept pushing the hack, so he wasn't stopping him from stabbing and slashing the inmate.

It really shook me up. I had forgotten where I was and who I was with. It really brought me back. It was happening right there.

Up in the tiers that we lived on, they didn't have any hot water in the cells. If you wanted hot water, they gave you an empty five gallon paint bucket, and you put that at your bars. A guy who was the waterman would come along at night with the hot water spigot and give you hot water to wash with and fill up your thermos. You only got one shower a week.

People would leave their buckets out in front of the tier, so when you came back from work at night, you could just pick up a bucket of hot water and take it into your cell. I was all alone when I got back up there for some reason. Everyone else on my tier was at work. Totally alone, no one else around. The hacks opened my cell block to let me in, locked the thing, and then left. I started walking through the tier, and I kicked an empty bucket, accidentally. I said, "Excuse me." Then I said to myself, "Look how fucked up you are. You just said excuse me to a fucking bucket." I didn't want to offend nothing. Not even an inanimate object.

***

I stabbed a guy the first two weeks I was in prison. In the West Unit at The Rock, you had the juvenile section, and then you had the men's section -- the grownups' section. Because I was only seventeen, I was in the juvenile section. When I first go in there, I went and had me a knife made, and I kept it under my pillow. About three in the morning, I wake up, and there was this man had his hands in my shorts. I asked him, I said, "What do you think you're doing?"

"You know," he said, "I want some of that."

I'd done made up my mind. I'm going to stop this right now. So I said, "Go on in the shower." You had just a little light bulb in there, and it was real dim. The officers counted every hour on the hour. I grabbed my knife up in my towel, and I went on in there. He was already in the shower. I was going to kill him, but sometimes you don't have to do that. I stuck him, and he changed his mind. He didn't bother me no more.

That's the type of thing you have to do. People make you do things like that. If you tell somebody to leave you alone, that's what you want them to do, not fool with you. If they keep on, that's the best way to deal with it.

I got a friend of mine, Duke, killed a guy here not long ago. It was a dude kept messing with him. Again, it was a sex game. Duke kept telling him not to mess with him and not to mess with him, but the dude kept on.

Out on work crew, Duke got hold of a bush ax, broke the handle off to ten inches, and slipped it down his pants. You can cut down a tree as big as your wrist with a swing from a bush ax. The blade is about a foot long and as wide as a regular ax head. With a long handle on it, you use it to cut bushes and clear brush.

Duke caught the guy sitting on the commode, went in there, and hit him in the head -- three times. His head was just hanging on his neck when Duke got done. So my friend come in the door with three years and picked up a life sentence here. That's the type of people that I've built time with.

Between me and you, there was a friend of mine asked me just last night did I have a shank. I said, "No, I don't have one," and I asked him why. He had got into an argument with a black dude. He was in the canteen and the dude asked him for a quarter. He said, "I don't loan money."

"I need some cigarettes," the dude says.

"I don't give cigarettes either." That's his right. Then the guy went to running his mouth at him. That's why he wanted the knife. He said, "I will fuck his world up, if he fucks with me."

"I know you will," I says. "That's why I'm not going to get you no knife. You don't need no more fucking time. You ignore that. If he jumps on you, it's a different thing."

My friend told me, "If he thinks I'm scared of him, he's badly mistaken." The guy's my age, maybe younger, forty-five or fifty, can't fight a lick, he uses a cane. But you don't have to fight. As soon as the dude closes them eyes, he never wakes up again. That's the way it works in here.

I can get a knife. Anybody can get one in here. But I don't want one. I've had them before, and I've done things with them. You don't need a knife. If I know a guy's done stabbed seven or eight people, maybe killed one or two, and I have trouble with him, I'm going to kill him, because I'm not going to close my eyes and have to worry about this man a-coming up, creeping me and stabbing me. Shit, I'm going to just kill him, and I'll take my chances in court -- if I get caught. If I don't get caught, and he's dead, I don't have to worry about it anymore. That's the code that's in prison. I've seen killings over nothing. One friend of mine killed another guy over an egg. One guy killed another guy over a pork chop. I seen one man stab another guy for fifteen cents -- a dime and a nickel. It's the principle behind the thing. It wasn't the egg, but the argument started over the egg.

Tattooing is one of my sidelines. I like art work. I used to draw portraits all the time from photographs. Guys have a picture of their girlfriend, and I draw them a big portrait out of it. Guy asked me, "Did you ever tattoo?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did." You got to make a homemade tattoo gun. You use a little battery operated rotary motor like in the little toy race cars. You put a cam on the shaft, so when it goes around it will make the needle go up and down like a sewing machine. For the shaft, you use a ball point pen. Sand the tip till the ball falls off, and the needle will come through that hole. Then you take a toothbrush handle, and melt it into an L-shape. Sit the motor on the top, put the pen shaft on there and run the needle down the middle. Hook it to the shaft, and you got a rotary tattoo gun. That's what they used to use in the old days before the magneto guns came along. They work pretty good. They're real good for outlines. All I do is black and white. I haven't got no colors yet, but I got a guy working on it.

This guy had a nice photo of his wife's face by a professional photographer. He showed it to me one day, and he said, "Can you make me a picture?"

"Yeah," I said. "Do you want me to draw it on paper or do you want me to tattoo it? I can tattoo that on you perfect."

"Man, do it!"

His old lady was crying in the visitors' hall when he showed it to her. You put the picture next to it, and you couldn't tell the difference.

***

[admin]

Part 2 of 2

They had took my radio and wrote me up. It was just a fuck-with-me deal, so I really showed my ass. I smashed the damn announcement speaker off the damn wall, smashed the light off the wall, tore the shower out of the cell, just got real destructive on them.

They jerked me out of that cell and put me in the one next to it. I tore that cell up the same way, smashed the light, kicked the vents out, and the whole nine yards. So they come down there and put me in full restraints -- those plastic strips like they use to hold bundles of electrical wiring. They tightened them bad babies up, and Boy! I was hollering.

After everything settled back down and they fixed everything up, they put me back in that cell. I'm in there playing solitaire, and some asshole over the top of me is fucking banging. The officer hears the banging, came and looked in my window. I wasn't doing anything. She. said, "That boy in there is beating." They report me again, and they come in there and take all my property away. My deck of cards got knocked across the floor. I said, "You going to pick all my cards up?"

"They ain't all there."

"Bullshit, it's a brand new deck."

He picks up one of the cards and rips it in half. Now that's really pissing me off. They took everything from me. I'm in my underwear with a mattress, and that was it. I didn't deserve none of that. This cell I'm in now has a full set of everything -- the call box, the speaker, the sprinkler system, the light, the shower. I started working on that call box, and finally got it unhooked and disassembled, just fucked it all up. I got a metal plate off the call box. I went to the window and said, "Sarge, come here. I got something for you." He come running up. I said, "Lookee here, man!" He looked right at me, and I cracked that window just as hard as I could with that damn metal plate. The glass spider webbed and a piece flew out the other side and hit him in the face.

"Yeah, now I done something for you to write me up on!" They snatched me out of there, and called maintenance up there. That's two reports that officer that tore up my playing card had to write now, and by this time it was four in the morning, so there wasn't nothing else they could do to me.

Soon as they put me back in there, they fed us breakfast. After I got done eating, I took a little piece of milk carton and shoved it in the lock in the door, so they couldn't open the door. I took that metal speaker cover back off, and I said, "I wonder if I hit that sprinkler up there if it'll bust off?" I started hitting it, and I kept hitting it and hitting it. It wasn't doing nothing. I missed and hit the top of that damn thing, and -- WHOOSH! -- the water come out of there so fast, I mean gallons. It burnt the walls. There's hundreds and hundreds of pounds of water pressure behind that.

They couldn't get the door open. I had a piece of paper over the floor drain, and the room started filling up. "Oh, shit, I'll be swimming here in a minute." I was drenched, soaked. They can't get in the door, so they're pissed off. The sergeant, all he can think about is all the paperwork he's got coming now.

What saved my ass from drowning was an inch-wide crack under the door. The water went gushing out and ran across the floor of the prison. It knocked out three elevators. It flooded every floor up underneath me, from the fifth floor down. They couldn't find the way to turn this water off, and they couldn't get me out of there.

Finally, they got me out of there, and they got me hogtied. It's early in the morning and every piece of brass in the department is there. They couldn't jump me, for all of that brass. I'm laughing my ass off. I said, "Now, you stupid son of a bitch, I've done something for you to write a report on, you sorry motherfucker." I didn't do nothing to deserve this.

I wasn't near done. I'm going to give these motherfuckers the blues. Every time that son of a bitch comes on duty, I'm going to fuck with him.

So they got a new sprinkler head on there. They took all my clothes from me, took my mattress and everything. I didn't even have a set of drawers on when they put me back in that cell.

My enemy come back on that night, and I was ready for him. Oh, man, all hell broke loose. I tore out the call box, and the speaker box. I tore the shower out and kicked it loose. I ripped the mirror down and put it up in the window, so they couldn't see in. I'd already set the door so they couldn't get in like the last time. Now, behind the holes where the speaker box and call box came out, there was a chase that holds all the plumbing and electrical work. I called to one of my buddies in the cell behind me, "Take paper and put it in the locks of both utility doors on my side right here so they can't get in there."

There wasn't nothing but a couple of pipes coming up out of the floor of my cell by this time, and the whole shower is laying all over the cell. I'd stack shit up on the bed to make room to work. I stood on my damn table, and I rocked that light back and forth, and finally twisted it right off the wall. But the sergeant is an old guy, and he don't hear none of this.

"Well, guess it's about time for me to hit that sprinkler head off again!"

I had me a long piece of that shower. I stuck it up there and -- Boom! -- knocked that sucker off. It started raining. I had about an inch of window where I could see him out there reading the paper. The fire alarm goes off, and he jumps up to go look at it. He's on the phone. The next thing the floor is all flooded up, and here we go again.

This is what really scared me though. He went around to all the other isolation cells and put paper over their windows, so they couldn't see out. I thought, "Oh, no, now they're going to kick my ass good. I got a trick for them. They ain't going to be able to get me so easy." I'm laughing at them, singing, "I'm singing in the rain ... " I look like I live in a damn tropical rain forest.

"Get this damn door opened." They had one guy holding the key and this other guy beating it into the hole with the damn phone book. They can't see me too good unless I get right up in the window and fuck with them, which I was doing from time to time. I hear that key hit the back of the lock -- "Oops, time to go!" -- and I squeezed my shoulders through that hole and into the utility chase.

They come storming in the damn cell.

"He ain't in here."

"Hell, he's got to be in there."

"But he ain't!" It took them a few minutes to figure out where I'd gone to. I'm about to laugh my ass off. I'm about to have a fit. I'm stark-assed naked, soaked to the fucking bone, with pruney wrinkled fingers by this time, hanging in the utility tunnel like a monkey.

"He had to have climbed up into the vent. He had to."

I climbed up to the top, and I'm talking to my buddy through his vent. He said, "They're going to kill you. They going to fuck you up."

"It won't be the first time I've had my ass kicked, and undoubtedly, it won't be the last."

"They're going to fuck you up, man. I heard them. They're mad."

"Yeah, I could tell they were mad when I knocked that sprinkler head off again."

The guards come on the floor and locked everybody down. They had to do the same key hammering trick to get that utility chase open. I'm at the very top of this thing where the air conditioning system vent come in that sucks all the return air through. The duct is a good twenty-four inches around with a flip door that opens and closes. I knew you could escape through that damn thing, somebody had done it before, but I didn't even have clothes on. I'd get arrested before I got two blocks away from the jail for streaking. So I just sat up in that duct.

An officer, who's supposed to be "a friend of mine," he shines his light up there where I'm sitting naked as a jay bird. "All right, Hank. Enough of this game."

"Fuck ya'll. I want to see the superintendent. I want to see some brass down there. If I don't see no brass, you can kiss my ass." I was fucking with them hard.

"Okay. Now don't make me come up there and get you."

"Man, I got this big old duct open up here. You want to follow me all over this jail? We'll go down to the third floor to the women's section and get some pussy, come back, and say we done it. I'll run you all over this damn jail if you want me to."

"Just come on down, and let's talk about this."

"Talk about this? Hell, ya'll are looking to kick my ass. I ain't no dummy. You think I'm one of these new cunts around here. I ain't about to crawl down there and get my ass whipped."

"Just come on down."

"Ya'll going to jump on me?"

"Come on."

"I don't want to hear all that bullshit. We going to talk about this thing, or are you going to go to blows?"

"Nothing's going to happen to you. Just come down."

"You got to promise me." Finally, I got him to promise me, and I come down.

Boy, when I got down there, the arms reached in, those motherfuckers snatched me out of there, and damn nearly killed my ass. Fucked up my knee real bad. Messed up the other leg. Kicked in my ribs. Fucked me up pretty bad. But they didn't send me to the hospital, didn't want nothing where they'd have a permanent record on it.

***

They will shoot you now. That's their job, and I don't hold it against them. If I can beat them, they shouldn't get mad at me. It's their job to keep me here. It's my job to try and get away. That's the way I look at it.

I've escaped from a road camp where they guard you with a shotgun while you get out in the mud and water in the ditches and work. We were working on the side of the Interstate up in another county, and it just hit me. I was working beside a guy named Willy Maloney. I grew up with him. I looked at him, and I said, "Willy, I'm fixing to go to the house."

"God damn," he said. "They're going to kill you."

"How far do you think he is from me?"

"About thirty yards."

The shotgun guard's name was Fennel. He used to carry the shotgun up on his shoulder, and he was always looking out there in the woods. I was shoveling that dirt, and I told Willy, I said, "You want to go with me?"

"No," he said. "I think I'll wait and make sure I get away."

"Well, shit, I'm going."

I just kept watching Fennel. He had that gun up on his shoulder, and when he turned his head off to the woods, I was gone. I was running, and he shot at me. They shoot double-ought buckshot in them shotguns. The first load, it come down on me, and went by my head and my back, and never hit me. You have to cross a hog wire fence to get into the woods off the Interstate. I was running to the fence. I knowed he was going to shoot at me again, and I was praying the whole time. I said, "Jesus, please let this next load miss me." Fennel shot at me, and it come by me the same way. Everybody says you got a guardian angel, if you believe in Jesus -- and I do. I believe in my guardian angel. That shot whistles, and it will tear up the dirt. I hit that hog wire and I said, "I got this motherfucker now." That's exactly what I said, and I hit the woods.

I'd run and walk, run and walk. I run from Pasco County down to Hillsborough County, and about half of it's three feet deep in water. That's right. They had hound dogs hunting me. They had two airplanes, a helicopter, all the law enforcement, and me on foot. They couldn't catch me.

I looked like a wild man when I come out of that swamp. I stepped in a friend of mine's house, and it scared him to death, because he didn't know who I was.

"Take me to Mama's," I said. I left about nine-thirty that morning and stepped into Mama's house at ten o'clock that night.

I also escaped from this prison here one time. It was pretty neat. This camp, they used to count every hour on the hour. If you was watching TV, whatever you was doing, when the hour came up, they'd holler count time, and you had to go to your bed. They'd count. I got to talking with a boy named Wayne Sharp. I told him, "Wayne, I'm going to leave this place."

"Hell, let me go with you," he said.

"All right." Then I went to figuring out how to do this. And I figured it out. I had a friend of mine worked in the laundry inside the building. He told me there was a vent from the machines to the outside. I counted all the officers came to work that evening. I was set to go. As soon as they come to work, one goes around on the perimeter after you're locked in, and checks the grounds. Then he comes back in. I waited till the eight o'clock count cleared, and that one guard went out and came back in the building. I went around and counted all the officers to make sure they was all in the building. Then I told Wayne, "Come on, now, we got an hour." I went out the laundry vent. We crawled the fence. That main road is one mile from this institution. When we got to the road, a ride picked me up -- but I won't say his name.

Hell, I wasn't out but about a month. Then you get wild, and you get caught. I got myself pulled over by a highway patrolman going back to West Virginia. I was by myself. I didn't have no I.D., and that's the bad part.

"Go ahead and get in my car," he said. I went around there and acted like the passenger side on his car is locked.

"Your door's locked." So he goes to his side, opens his door, and crawls through to open the lock. When he was halfway across the seat, I hit the woods and was gone. It was March, a-drizzling rain. I just had on a T-shirt, and it's cold in the Carolinas where I was.

"Come back here!" He was chasing me hard. Shit, like I was going to come back. II I'd a mind to come back, I wouldn't have run in the first place.

I went in what they call a bay head. It's a swamp. Run through a briar patch, eat up with briars and shit. Went on through that bay head, and made it back out. I got on a hard road that's got the creosote pack on it. That and the rain helped me.

I was tired. I found an old barn out in the middle of this pasture. It was falling down, but it had this coarse hay in it. I went in there, and -- shit -- I dug me out a wad of hay and covered up because I was cold. Rats run on me all night.

The next day I made it to a truck stop. It was a small town. I give a guy two dollars to let me go upstairs and lie down, because I was waiting for a ride to come get me. Somebody said I was scratched up, and I looked suspicious. When a stranger comes through a place like that, and the cops is after somebody, everybody knows it. They come and got me.

Oh, this highway patrolman was pissed. He come to jail. I looked at him and said, "Why are you mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you."

"Sure you are," I said, "because they been telling me you could run, and you let another old country boy outrun your ass. I beat you. Now you shouldn't get mad about that." Then he got to talking and he got nicer. I said, "That's better. It don't hurt to get beat."

Then two forest rangers come down to talk to me. They explained to me that they weren't police officers, but they wanted to ask me some questions. "What do you want to know?"

"Will you tell us how you beat the dogs?" They had the best dogs in the state for hunting people lost in the forest, and kids, and like that. What I could tell them might help them find some lost kid. I told him everything he done wrong.

"Did you find where I went in the swamp?"

"Yeah."

"You went right in behind me?" He took his shirt off, and he was skint up worse than I was. Right through the briars he went. I said, "Why did you go through the briars?"

'Cause you went there."

"Why didn't you take the dogs, go on around the swamp and see if I come out the other side? If I hadn't, you'd know I was still in there. You could have surrounded the swamp, and you'd have had me."

"I didn't think of that."

"You found where I crossed the hard road, and got me a drink of water out of a drainage pit over there because I was thirsty?" You do a lot of things when you really need something.

"Yeah, but then we lost you."

"That's because you figured I'd be back down in the woods. I knew the dogs would lose my scent on that creosote road in the rain, so I just hightailed it down the blacktop." I picked up six years for that escape there.

You do enough time, you just get tired. You just want to go to the house. You know you're going to get caught. You just want to get out and have a little fun. And that's what I done.

***

I was hoping to be out of prison before my kid was born. My fiancee was out of work two months after she had the kid. Nobody didn't help her. Her parents didn't, my parents didn't. She just struggled through on her own. Now she's behind in all the bills. The state won't help her, says she makes too much money. She makes $6.50 an hour. She's got a daughter in high school, graduating this year. She's got a daughter in ninth grade, and now the baby. She's got a mortgage payment of $575 a month, plus insurance, electricity, and all. Then they tell her she makes too much money for them to help her.

She's standing behind me. My main problem is getting out. I just know by June of next year when it's time for me to be free, she's going to already lose the house. She can't keep making payments like that. The kid's going to have to start going to get his shots and seeing the pediatrician regular, and she's not going to be able to afford it. We lose the house and we're fifty thousand dollars in debt, plus the fifteen thousand dollars her parents loaned us for a down payment. I'm sitting in prison, so I don't know what's going to become of us.

One side of me says, "You got a family out there. You got a new son. You got to try and stay out of trouble and get out as quick as you can." But the other side of me says, "Fuck it. They want to be assholes, I can, too. Just say fuck it and do whatever you feel like doing. If the officer wants to say something to you, punch him in the mouth!"

I'm running out of patience. Just because my father and one of my uncles were two of the biggest drug dealers in South Florida at one time, they want me to help them set somebody up. I keep telling them I'm a roofer now. I've been trying real hard to turn my life around. They're holding me back for the main reason that I won't set nobody up with drugs. I do know some people who know guys in high places in the drug game, and they don't play. I've seen witnesses supposed to be in protective custody come out from testifying in court and get run over seven times right in front of the cops. The cops ain't going to protect my life. My fiancee's got to go to work every day. My kids go to school. How do I know one of these guys isn't going to wait at the school and kidnap one of my kids, or be down the street with a scope and shoot them dead. Some people don't play. I can't help you. Go to the guy you got to get me in trouble, maybe he can help you.

***

We have visitation here every other weekend. My father brings my kids to visit me whenever he can. It's hard seeing my kids when they come. It's worse for me when I see them. I cry when I see them, then I cry in the middle of it, then I really cry when they go, especially letting them go. My daughter and I are really close. We used to do everything together. There wasn't anyplace I'd go where she couldn't go. I'd go to Bally's to work out, and she'd go with me. I'd pick her up from school, and we'd go out to lunch and just talk. She's only eleven. I want to see her grow up.

My son is really angry. He doesn't like to talk to me on the phone. He will not write to me. He hasn't written to me since I've been here. When he comes, he's really distant. It hurt him more than my daughter. I don't know what's being told to him from his father or his father's mother. I write to him four times a week. I send him cards for just anything. I know he's getting them because his sister tells me. When I came to prison the first time, he and I weren't really close. Then when I got out, we formed a real bond and attachment. Then this happened again, and his mom was just snatched away from him. I hope he doesn't grow up to hate me, because mommy wasn't there like she was supposed to be. His friends' mothers know me, so it's all over school: "Your mom's in prison." I know he's taking a beating from that, too.

My daughter is at an age where she has lots of friends and is getting interested in boys, God forbid. I have to practically beg her to write to me, because she's so preoccupied with other things. I encourage her by sending books of stamps and paper and envelopes. I do everything but write "Dear Mom" at the top. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The first thing I want to do when I get out of here is go pick my kids up from school, and take them to some drive-through to get something to eat. I'll take them to the park and enjoy the whole day. Then I want to go home, put one of them on my right side and one on my left side, curl up and go to sleep.

By the time I get out, they'll be a grown woman and man, but that's what I want to do. I don't care how old they are.

***

It's hard. I can't hardly explain it. The idea is that this is a world within a world. Some people here are going to be here the rest of their lives. They know all the ins and outs. They know how to manipulate, how to make money. They marry a homosexual, and they say that is their wife, because both of them are going to be here for the duration of their lives. They feel like that person can fill that void that being in prison gives you.

This place gives you an emptiness. You feel isolated from the world. You feel useless. Your life is at a standstill. You're not going nowhere. You become hopeless. You feel hopeless in here.

I guess I haven't dealt with the reality. The reality is I've got the thirty years. I'm here. I've got to make the best of it. That's the positive way to look at it. But I can't look at it that way, because I don't want to be here, God knows I don't. There's a life out there for me, and I know it.

I've always felt an emptiness. I lost my identity. My problem was trying to identify, and that's why I kept making mistakes. There were people in that dope game, and that pimp game that I said to myself, "He's cool. I wouldn't mind being like that." I had an emptiness in me, a void. And right now today it's still not filled.

***

I got in the program and I had to learn the Twelve Steps. Then they got the House Rules and the Cardinal Rules. The House Rules is: Honor, Dignity, Respect, and Responsibility. The Cardinal Rules is: No possession of a nonprescriptive drug, neither manufacture or use of same. No sex. No gambling. No threat of violence. This is enforced in this program. They don't want to see you messing around with homosexuals.

The Pledge is like a recovery tool. It starts at the Morning Motivation, Monday through Friday, and it says, "We are here, because I there's no refuge finally from ourselves. Until a person confronts himself in the eyes and hearts of others, he is running. Until he suffers them to share his secrets, he has no safety from them. Afraid to be known, he will know neither himself nor another. He will be alone.

"Where else but on this common ground can we find such a mirror? Here, together, a person can at last appear clearly to himself. Not as the giant of his dreams, or as the dwarf of his fears, but as a man, a part of a whole. With this purpose, on this ground, we can each take root and grow. Not alone as in death, but alive to ourselves and others."

When I first heard that I said, "They got to be crazy! What the hell they talking about. That don't mean nothing." The more I kept listening to it and reciting it, it made a lot of sense to me. It's talking about your life. I didn't want to say nothing about myself. You got to go into that dark center of your life that you don't want nobody knowing about. You feel it ain't worth it. You don't want to let that skeleton out of the closet. A lot of people treat that hush-hush.

I had to deal with my skeleton. It's killing me. I had to surrender, because I knew I needed help.

***

The first time I was in, I did four years, and I stayed out for ten years. I got a job doing construction work. I had gotten my high school equivalency in prison, but I still didn't know I had any talent for anything but stealing or being a laborer. I worked waterproofing, putting scaffolds up on buildings. I really didn't care for it. It was all right, you know, and I was staying clean. It was nice money for that kind of work.

Then they sent me to Washington Square Park to sandblast the monument. Sandblasting entails 100-pound bags of sand, humped into a hopper. It was July, and I was picking up 100-pound sandbags, sweeping sand in July with an asbestos suit on. I said, "This fucking arch has defeated me. I'm just going to go get high. Fuck this shit." I quit. I started stealing and getting high.

***

I just kept going to jail. I'm twenty-eight years old, and I've been to jail five times. My wife finally just left me. So when I would get out of jail I had no where to go except to go live with my sister and brother-in- law. She married some guy that's a mailman, who I hate his guts, but anyways, they helped me out. I have repeatedly screwed them over, but they were going to give me one last chance. My sister had a house with an extra room. She had weights, stereo, color TV, everything I could possibly want. She practically gave me the run of the house. She knew I didn't have money, so she bought me the kind of food that I'd want, cigarettes, even beer. She was really good to me. She was separating from my brother-in-law. He was living some place else, but he'd come over almost every night, and spend the night anyways, even though they were separated.

I had a job in a restaurant. I was a real good worker and everything. But the night I got my first paycheck, I didn't go home. I went next door to the bar and cashed it all in. When I came dragging my ass in the house, I didn't have no rent money for her, didn't even go to work the next morning.

Everyone is pissed at me. My boss is pissed. My sister's pissed. Everyone's mad, but I said, "I won't do it again." My boss called my sister, and said I was one of the best workers he ever had. He wanted me back, suggested AA and said that he goes to AA. So I went back to work.

For some reason, I had an ex-girlfriend who wouldn't come back to me no matter what. I just felt so lonely. I didn't know anyone in that town. I was writing my friends who were in jail.

The next paycheck, I did the same thing. I walked in that same bar and spent my whole paycheck. I was playing five dollars a game pool. It was weird. I was running the whole table. Then I'd get to the eight ball, and I'd get nervous. I couldn't make that eight ball. This old man and old lady were there who were pool sharks, and they were saying, "God, we're pulling for you over there. Every time you get to the eight ball, you're having a hard time."

Here I lose all my money, I'm drinking like a fish. I walk home. When I got home, she had a purse on the table with a couple hundred dollars in it. I had been out of prison a month. I hadn't been laid. I'd been down all that time. So I was thinking, "I could get this money, and I could go someplace. I'd have a blast, man. Fuck work, fuck life. Just party, get laid, and whatever happens, happens."

I took the money. There was a watch on the table. I didn't know it was an expensive watch and that it was an anniversary present and all of that, but I took it. I went and took off, and I had a blast.

Then, when the money and the party was over, here I am looking sick. I'm like, "What the fuck's wrong with you?" I was in a hotel room. Buffalo Bills and the Dallas Cowboys were playing the Super Bowl, and I went to the store, and I stole some aspirin. I had a case of beer in the room. I took ten aspirins, downed a beer. I'd pass out. Wake back up. I'd take ten aspirins and drink another beer. Pass out. I did this about four times, and some guy called the police, told them I was trying to commit suicide or whatever. So I voluntarily went down to a crisis center. I told them what I did, that I stole from my sister, and can't go back home now. I feel terrible, and wish I was dead. All this shit.

I went to a treatment center. It was volunteer. They were saying, stay here, go to all the meetings. We got counselors here, group meetings. I was working in the kitchen there. I'd never been in a treatment center before, or to AA. This was all new to me. I was starting to feel pretty good about myself through all these meetings.

I knew my sister was still pissed, but unknowingly, my brother-in-law was doing everything in his power to put me back in prison. He'd get off work at the Post Office, and he'd go straight down to the state attorney's office saying, "Look, we bent over backward for him. We did this, we did that. He's an asshole. He needs to go back to prison."

The people at the treatment center are saying that they would protect me. I'm sitting there, and sure enough, a month later, the sheriff pulled up for me. He said, "Your sister is pressing charges? That's a frigging bummer!"

I go to jail, and I never hear from the treatment center people again. They don't accept collect phone calls. They don't answer letters. From what I understand, they're helping to prosecute me. They done told the state attorney that I admitted to stealing the money and the watch. Really it was just their word against mine, but I was feeling bad about it, so I said, "Fuck it. They want to go through with it? I'll plead guilty. I won't lie about nothing."

I want to tell you, I've been five times to prison, and that's pretty bad, you know. But if you knew the circumstances, for every single time that I've come to prison, it's because I got real drunk and did something stupid. I've been out of control for a long time.

I wrote a letter to the judge. I was truthful with him. I told him, "I haven't really been hurting anyone except myself. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I don't really consider myself a bad person, just someone who can't get their life together and on track." When I went to court I had no idea what might happen.

"Mr. Chaney," the judge said, "I want you to know that I read your letter, and I spent more time on your sentence than I've spent on anyone's sentence before. I've come up with a few conclusions of what I'm going to do with you. I'm giving you five years with the Department of Corrections with a recommendation for the Drug Rehabilitation program." At this point, I think I'm lucky I didn't get habitualized.

I got into the program. I was only in it for twenty-nine days, and I got kicked out. They got a lot of little rules in there. It just seemed like I couldn't do it. I got a lot out of the NA and AA, and I was feeling better about myself, but I just started rebelling.

I was in school, too. I took that test that sees what level you're at. I scored college level on everything. Even though I quit high school in tenth grade, I was an honor roll student up till then. Really, I consider myself pretty lazy, but when I work, I work hard. I do a good job. When I got to do it, I just do it. But I quit school, too.

I've been kind of a failure since I've been in the system this time. Instead of turning myself around, it seems like I'm giving up on myself. Jesus Christ, man, I get to prison, and I can't wait to get out. I sweat it. Then, when I do get out, it just seems like I have no direction. It just seems like I can't get my shit together for some reason. It seems like maybe I've been fucking up so long that I've got to the point that it's just what's the use?

I think about working out with weights for the next year or so I have to do, getting to where I'm a pretty good size again. Start feeling good about myself. Then maybe when I get out, "Just smoke a little reefer like you used to and drink. Remember, Chaney, how you used to feel good when you smoked reefer and drank?" I'm not thinking like normal people: Get out, and get a job. Get a house and get a wife. I'm thinking still back to ten years ago. I'm still there. I haven't grown out of that. I still want to be that person. That was the happiest time in my life -- them two years between when I first tried beer and when my dad died when I was nineteen. I remember smoking reefer, going out and picking fights, beating hell out of people, and getting laid with any chick I wanted. To me, that's what I want again. I just refuse to grow up for some reason.

I don't know if I'm hurting myself on purpose, or why I'm doing this to myself. There isn't going to be anybody out there to take care of me. Dad's gone, sister's gone. Man, I'm having a really hard time, because I know that I'm a good person, but it just seems like I can't get my shit together, man, so I don't know. That's what's wrong with me, and until something drastically changes or I change some way, something bad is going to happen. Someone is going to kill me, or I'm going to come back with a lot of motherfucking time, because I've done started a hell of a fucking wheel, and I just keep going in the same circle, and I've been doing that for years now.

***

When I got out September 22, there were three other girls with me. We were all from the same town. They had given us our bus tickets, one hundred dollars, and all our money that we had in our accounts. We were all supposed to be friends. I picked their pockets while we were sitting together on the bus.

We got to some small town, stopped in a service station, which was also the bus station, and the driver announced that we were taking a ten minute break. I went to the bathroom, pulled down my pants, stuck all their money into my stocking tops. I had my own personal eighty-eight dollars in my pocket. I noticed the other girls went to the phone, but I wasn't paying much attention about it, because I thought they didn't even know their money was gone.

The police come charging into this little bus station, about five of them swarmed around the bus with the lights and sirens going. They asked for me by name. I said, "Can I help you, sir?"

"Yes, we have a report that you have stolen these three people's money right here." They were standing there looking at me. I know I've got their money, but I say, "How in the hell could I get their money?"

"Do you have any money on you, ma'am?"

I pulled my money out of my pocket, put it on the hood of the car. Then to make it look so good, I unbuttoned my pants, started pulling them off, and convinced the guy that I didn't have anything on me. This nice cop is saying, "Aw, ma'am, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that."

The money was right at my crotch. If he'd let me go down with those pants a little bit further, he'd have seen it. He told me to put my clothes back on, put my money in my pocket, and get back on the bus.

We got home. One of the girls whose money I stole, her boyfriend was a dope dealer. I called him and told him to meet me at the bus station. I spent a hundred of her dollars on dope. That's one time I got out of prison, and I just knew I was going to come back that time.

***

When I go out there after each sentence, I have to adapt to a new situation. I have been fortunate to have something to go to, some place to stay, clothes to put on my back, some way to get started. This time, I don't have nothing. Zap. Zero. Nothing this time. Period. No house to go to, no clothes, nothing. I don't even know where I'm going to begin. This is it. Boom. If I could have my sentence continue on, I'd be glad to keep on going. I don't want to be in prison, but this is all I know right now. From this spot right here, I got to start a new chapter, and I don't know where I'm going to put the first step.

***

I believe I can get out, and might stay out. Might. You can't say while you're in here. When you leave these gates, they give you a hundred bucks, and then kick your ass out. If a person ain't got a place to stay, and they give you a hundred dollars -- shit! -- that ain't going to last long. If a man's not skilled, his ass is done for. Four dollars and fifty cents an hour, he can't make no money. That's no money. It won't pay your rent. You can't eat, not barely. You're going to be walking, less you get you a ten-speed bicycle. You can't get no car with it. What does most people turn to? Where's the quick money? Drugs. There's no money in robbery anymore, unless you know where the score is.

***

I know a guy, he just got out in July, went home. He came back last week doing forty years with the bitch. He's thirty-two years old. If nothing don't happen in the court, which it probably won't, he'll be close to seventy when he gets out of here. His punk, his homosexual girlfriend was waiting on him at the gate. He might not make it to seventy, because I know without a doubt that homosexual has got AIDS. I seen him in the line for fucking AZT every day. I told the stupid son of a bitch that, but I guess he don't give a damn.

***

If I wasn't here, I could eat what I want. I want a steak. I want a center cut pork chop. I want something different. If I wanted to just open my refrigerator and just stand there looking, I could do that. I miss my family. They have a lot of Christmas parties, and they do a lot of fun things. I miss automatically walking out the door, getting in a car and driving. I just miss being able to walk somewhere and not look over my shoulder without somebody saying, "Hey, you aren't authorized to be in this area." I miss freedom. If I was just able to walk into a store and buy a bag of grapes, that would be just fine with me. I miss being able to turn on my television and look at anything I want without all these different people yelling, "No, we're not looking at that!" They talk the whole time, and every time a video comes on, they all are going to sing.

I miss not being able to wear what I want to wear. The color of these uniforms has gotten to me. I don't want nothing blue when I get out. I miss little things: being able to sit on my porch, looking at the sky, my microwave, little things I took for granted.

***

My release date is July 14, 2005. That's a long way off. That's a Buck Rogers date. You don't know if you'll still be on this Earth. What's going to happen in 2005? Is there still going to be a world? Is there?