Why I Committed Suicide (37 page)

Here is a picture:

There are four of these buildings next to the main jail, three men’s buildings and one women’s, each with an “A” and “B” Unit. Five of the six men’s Units house the “trustees,” usually the people who are in jail for minor enough offenses that they’re trusted enough to go out and perform all sort of meaningless tasks; everything from mopping up puke in the drunk tank to cooking meals for the prisoners. It’s free prison labor and almost all the guys all do it without objection because it helps pass the time. Hell, one day I rolled a whole pouch of tobacco into cigarettes for a guy in exchange for a single Snickers Bar. I don’t know much about rolling tobacco but I learned quickly with hunger as my main motivation.

Since I’ve got a felony I’m in Unit 3B, the only 1/8 of the four porta-potties that doesn’t have or allow trustees. I’ve put in an application to be one because
I’m told that if you work in the kitchen you can find semi-edible cuisine on occasion.

There’s a commissary form we can fill out to buy things if someone on the outside deposits money into an account, it’s called “having money on your books”, but I’m not sure why it’s called that since all the funds are encoded into a security chip on a bracelet that’s permanently attached to every prisoner’s left arm, unless they are missing their left arm, then I assume it goes on the other one. Once a week or so they bring by the items from the form and people with money get things like ‘real’ soap or ‘real’ toothpaste or even deodorant for God’s sake! You can also get candy bars and chips which you can either eat, trade or bet like cash. No one I know is willing to put any money on my books so I’ve had to learn how to roll tobacco and other things to get by.

The stuff they give out when you get booked into jail is sort of racially biased. And I say this from a white boy perspective with absolutely nothing to gain. You get booked in and the guards give you a plastic baggy with a mini-bar of soap. It’s actually called Bob Barker soap and its buddies are the Bob Barker toothpaste and the Bob Barker toothbrush. I’m guessing Bob Barker’s got himself a sweatshop someplace that makes cheap-ass-spike-bristled toothbrushes and soap that crumbles and falls apart in water. I bet that the kickbacks for even the smallest things in this jailhouse must be a lucrative side endeavor for some official way up the ladder. Follow the money.

As far as taking care of my hair goes, there’s a tiny black plastic comb with broken teeth that comes in the bag with everything else, although this doesn’t do the black guys any good because of their short curly hair. What I’ve noticed they’ll do instead is melt 3-4 Bob Barker toothbrushes together into a sort of miniature ‘brush.” It’s really a rather ingenious way to adapt, except whenever there is a “shakedown”, the guards confiscate all the contraband and makeshift hairbrushes qualify as contraband since melting down a toothbrush is also the easiest way to make a crude “shank” to defend yourself.

Surprisingly, it’s mostly white guys out here with me and I’ve got a bunk next to this old skinny guy named Eddie who’s pretty cool. Eddie’s so old he owes Jesus a quarter. He’s let me use some soap and toothpaste until my next indigent care package comes in so he’s alright. Eddie’s got a wife who is in the portable building next door to us and they write each other one letter
every
day but since you can’t send mail from an inmate to another inmate they have to mail their love letters to a friend who mails them back to the jail. Stupid huh? Once a day he presses up against the screen and watches for his wife to walk by and deliver meal trays to the other female prisoners and every day they deliver us mail he has at least one letter in there from her. I didn’t ask him what they were both in for—it’s considered very rude to say the least—but I know it’s for two separate charges. It trips me out that an entire family is in jail though. If I ever get married I would hope one of us is morally fortuitous to keep me in line or at last manage to keep her own ass out of jail. Sheeesh.

I actually feel reasonably safe in here. I’m not in an aggravated cell and I think I could kick about anybody’s ass that’s in my little place if I had to. It’s basically like a big summer camp for the most part. Towards the front there are two picnic tables and a TV (with cable!) mounted on the wall. I’ve learned some good card games and then I learned how to cheat at the card games. I’ve also heard some of the funniest convict stories that I’ll have to try and jot down at some point, no matter where I am there’s always somebody who’ll try to convince me their situation is a hell of a lot worse, and then give me detailed reasons why. It passes the time and the hardest part of being here is just finding something to occupy my brain. I’m enjoying having time to write long letters of salutation and atonement and I do enjoy detailed debates about the merits of Mariah Carey’s ass-shaking in her new songs, but I’m only writing in
this
when I’m feeling pretty good. Jail is a lot like hanging out with my Delta Lodge buddies except nobody is drunk, and half of them are just stupid.

Since I’m totally sober now, the darkness and ghosts get bad at night. There are a lot of nightmares and sadness creeps in around everything, but I guess it is better that I’ve got time to cool off and deal with it on my own since it looks like
I’m
the only person who’s going to help me. You definitely find out who your real friends are when you get tossed in jail.

To get a visit, the guards call your number out loud, guide you through the real jail and then put you in a long glass hallway with phones along each side. The walls along the hall are made of bulletproof glass and you can see through to the waiting area on the “free” side where there are always children playing and screaming, or families huddled in close to one phone trying to talk about everything to the person inside with me in the allotted 15 minutes they have. There are usually hot wives or girlfriends waiting against a far wall dressed sexily to either infuriate the guy inside when she tells him the bad news that she’s leaving him for Billy Jack or they’re dressed to put on a little show for their man. Either way about half the visits are psychological torture for any prisoner, a brief glimpse of a former life through scratched glass and scratches of audio. It gives some people hope and it tortures others. I’ve learned to stay away from anyone after visitation, whether it went good or bad, they are all fucked in the head for a while afterwards.

Jenifer’s been up to visit once and it wasn’t very easy to have to talk to her through the thick glass. To be so close and then not be able to reach out and soothe her hurting body is torture for me. She said it wasn’t very easy to get in and she mentioned a couple of things that let me know she’s been scoring lately. I can’t really fucking blame her for that since it’s exactly what I did.

I definitely think that when we get punished by society and have to do menial labor for a bunch of fat pigs, pigs who could easily be in any one of our shoes given different circumstances, it just doesn’t motivate anyone to do anything remotely close to the same thing when they get released. If you’re not being punished any longer why the hell would you want to continue doing the same things you’re doing when you were being punished? A minimum wage paycheck? Please. All I’m saying is that doing crappy labor for
the man
has an opposite rehabilitative effect. Do
they
really expect us to get out and say “Excuse me sir, I just got out of jail and I was wondering if you would hire me to mop your floor, or maybe you have some shoes that need shining?” Fuck that, when I get out of here I’m going to feel like the world owes me a vacation or at least some therapy.

My request to be a trustee finally came through after about a month and even though I felt really settled and comfortable in Unit 3B, you’ve gotta go when the guards say you go whether you’ve changed your mind or not. I gathered my mattress, Ramen noodles and notes and moved to the building right next door, Unit 2A, where I got put on the Auto Repair crew with four other guys already in there. The rest of the people in that Unit deliver food from the kitchen a few times a day and they all seemed fairly straight-laced, milder than the bunch I just left because they’re scared to lose their trustee status. If you’ve only got a misdemeanor offense, trustee time credits you 3 days for every 1, and you want to be really damn submissive and careful not to screw up or else you could end up having to spend 2 extra months on a 90 day sentence. The guards know this and treat the other guys like shit but the Auto Repair crew is usually made up of people like me with felonies who are not getting 3-1, so they don’t fuck with us too bad. Their main reasoning is that it takes too long to have to retrain people for the auto yard, so in a sense we’re allowed to be the bad apples in the bunch.

I got approved to be put on the crew because I listed that I could do all kinds of stuff to cars that I really didn’t know that much about, but since I worked on my VW numerous times I knew I could figure it out if I had to. Most of my work consisted of stuff I had never done before but they kept it really simple and I was a fast learner. I mostly learned minor repair things like how to balance and rotate tires, change brake pads and install extra lights or expensive chrome accessories to the various pig-mobiles. It’s a weird gig, changing the brake pads for the police cars and fixing their tires, almost like working for the enemy. I would have loved to fuck over their brakes too, but the garage has actual city mechanics on staff that would supposedly check over our work when we were done. I couldn’t help but think about all the misery I was helping cause for some poor guy who would get pulled over later. Some of the cops even insisted on watching us do the work which was intimidating at first but after a while I got used to it. Paranoid is as paranoid does. I can’t count the number of times officers would swing by to get a free tire rotation and kill some time on their shifts and sometimes they would get one of the guys to install a new stereo or a fancy horn in their personal vehicles. Most of the cops seem like they’re good guys, but since their uniform is blue and mine is orange there’s always a power trip going on in some fashion.

We also had to wash and clean their cars for them too. The rule among us guys was that whoever cleaned out the backseat had to share with everyone else whatever they found stuffed down in the cracks. So while someone is cleaning the inside of the car the other people move in to distract the officer that’s watching or we would call attention to something interesting on another side of the garage. Deep down in the backseat is where
everyone
who’s going to jail gets rid of any extra incriminating evidence, usually just coke or weed. I was really only interested in smoking a little pot to pass the time but that only happened for me once while I was out there.

I learned two different ways to hotwire a car from one of the guys on my crew. There’s the simple old fashioned way that involves jamming a screwdriver where the key would go and forcing it to turn over with a wrench or there’s the way you see in the movies where you actually pull the wires out of the ignition and start the car. Since there is nothing but free time once we were back to the Unit I got a long detailed discussion complete with illustrated diagrams and elaborate ways to get around different alarm systems. I guess people that are destined to teach will always try to pass along useful knowledge, no matter the circumstances of their life.

Since the auto garage is actually a fenced-in building a couple blocks away from the jail, every night when we returned the guards would make us “assume the position” and pat us down just to make sure we weren’t smuggling tools or anything else back into the jail. After a point, you know the routine and everyone knows everyone’s face so eventually it’s just a quick cursory pat down, then off to the Unit for well deserved showers.

One night when we got back, a replacement guard was there instead of any of the usual guys and during the pat down I didn’t spread my legs far enough apart to his satisfaction so he took out his nightstick and smashed my left knee on the side as hard as he could with one wide wooshing stroke. I fell down in pain and he gave me a good kick in the back, then laughed and let us through, me limping behind.

Whatever he did, my knee is totally fucked up and it still hasn’t healed right. I filed a complaint against the guard for the record. I know they won’t do anything about it in here, but one day I’ll get out and sue him or find his ass on the street and return the favor. I can tell already that any quickness I had in that leg is gone and I have to be very mindful of how I position and bend my joints when I walk now. With my knee went any chance I still had at an athletic scholarship (ha!) and if I ever find myself in a tight spot with mall security again I can forget about outrunning them.

One night after work I was feeling pretty depressed. I hadn’t seen Jenifer since that one time a month or so ago and I wrote her another long letter filled with a lot of emotion and a hidden request. Since I was working at the garage outside the jail with only an ordinary chain-link fence around the property, right across from public roads and a shitty apartment complex (where we would ironically watch people selling crack during our lunch), I drew her a crude drawing of where I was working everyday, hoping that maybe one night she could stop by and throw a joint or two near the dumpster for me to find.

It turns out that someone saw me drawing the map on my bunk and tipped off the guards, who then opened my mail and found the picture that I had drawn outlining the layout of the jail and location of the garage, along with the best place to park and have someone make a mad dash to the fence with some joints.
They
came and picked me up in the middle of a tire rotation right before lunch and I got charged with “Planning an Escape” which is supposed to be an automatic 5 years in jail and it got me tossed directly in solitary confinement after a few redneck guards beat the living shit out of me.

Unwittingly my prisoner status changed to “Solitary Confinement, Maximum Escape Risk” or in jailhouse terms “Bad Motherfucker,” which meant I was only allowed out of my 6x6 cell for one hour a day (with leg cuffs on) and I couldn’t get any visitors. Solitary is in an old small damp area of the jail with eight cells, four on each side. There are no windows and my only exercise consisted of walking around the four person table in the middle of this group of 8 cells filled with the meanest motherfuckers in the entire jail and a few people like me who got caught up in something they didn’t understand. You can’t exercise or walk for shit with leg cuffs and a fucked up knee, so I usually just sat at the stainless steel table or tried to call Jenifer to let her know what happened to me in case she had been trying to visit. It was almost better to know she couldn’t visit than sitting around waiting in vain for my name to be called twice a week. Though I guess I deserved that for not visiting as much as I should have while she was in the hospital.