Memoir 3
The time comes to go see the dermatologist; a couple of guards from a private security company chain me up and take me to University Hospital. The dermatologist examines the tumor.
It’s an adenocarcinoma, a tiny gland gone haywire; it has the potential to spread over my whole body. About a week after my initial examination, they take me back to the doctor, who numbs the area and starts slicing. They remove every last fragment of cancerous tissue from my finger using a new surgery that involves removing the tumor in really thin layers, and examining each one under a microscope, until finally a layer of tissue with no visible cancer cells can be found. It’s all done within an hour, and the guy is nice enough to prescribe some T3s for afterwards too.
At the infirmary, “vacation” continues; for five days, I can just push a button and say,
“Can I get my pain meds now?”
A gay male nurse encourages me to take care of my personal grooming more carefully.
Who am I trying to look pretty for?” I ask him.
“Look, I try to look my best when I come in here, and you should have the same attitude;
you look like a homeless person right now!”
“Well I have been homeless before.”
“But you’re not homeless now.”
The guy seems to be OK ; I make an effort, but not much of one.
1995, perhaps the longest and most hellish year of my entire life was finally is ending. While I’m still resting in the infirmary, the County of Boulder calls me in to court, and sent a pleasant mannered female deputy, a country girl in her forties, to come get me for my day in court. She frisks me before letting me climb up into the van, chains shackles and all. She ends the frisk with a couple of little pats on my balls. This was a much intimacy as I‘d had with a woman for a very long time now, and in my deluded fantasy, I see those two little pats as a sign of affection (in reality, the crotch area is fair game for officers of either sex, although many officers would just as soon leave that part out of their search routine). As a result of the minimal pat-downs that the crotch area generally receives, it is in fact a favorite place for contraband, at least when a strip-search seems unlikely.
The lady-deputy helps me into the van, and on the ride up, she asked if I was comfortable, if the heat was working properly. Her apparent concern for my well being seems strange.
I appear in court in Boulder. I’m informed of the charges against me. I accept a plea agreement for four sentences of twelve years run concurrently. I’m allowed to enter a plea of guilty and receive my sentencing in the same session.
One of my victims is there. She asks me, via the DA “why?”
I choose to answer, saying that I’d been shooting a lot of coke and wasn’t really thinking right when I did the robberies.
I apologize, “for any additional stress,” I’ve caused her. On the way back to the holding cell, a guard lets me know that she said to tell me “thank you,” for explaining and apologizing.
Christmas, then New Year’s Eve and Day pass unceremoniously. The only indication of the Holidays is Christmas dinner; some halfway decent real turkey, with all the trimmings, and a little cup of ice cream for dessert.
I take the bus back to the joint; spending another couple of days with a cell to myself in Cellhouse three, before being ordered to return to Cellhouse Seven.
Roommates are chosen on an informal basis; this one guy named Red said ‘Yeah, I know —-, he’d be a good cellie.” I’ve been exchanging small talk with this guy since DRDC, and I got the feeling that he was all-right too.
“That OK with you —-?” he asked. I nod and the guard, Sgt. Holden, gives us the go-ahead. I move in with Red, and we get along. He’s got TV, I still have no appliances. Mainly we both just like to read; we don’t really talk much.
Red’s job is graveyard shift in the boiler room and I still don’t have an assignment. I’m not going out of my way to find a gig.
Sometime in march of ’96, Red moves on to a single cell, and this younger white dude, who I’ll just call Chris, (If I wanted to use his real name I couldn’t anyway, it’s been long forgotten) moves in.
At that time, I call a friend who’s been holding some of the money from mom ‘n dad for me, and I ask him to send it to me. I order at small, 99.00 color TV that the prison sells for 215, and a 80.00 typewriter for 140.
I type out a few letters to friends and relatives, and when the urge hits, I take my first stab at some creative writing, just a poem or two.
Yet again my tranquility is disrupted, and I have to go to the Denver county jail, to enter a plea on a dope case. The charge was possession of two tenths of one gram of cocaine, in powdered form. I get five years. The judge also orders that the five years are to be served concurrently with my other sentences. I enter my plea of guilty and accept the symbolic punishment. I’ve seen child molesters get less than five years.
The system has me, in terms of sentencing, somewhere between Joel Steinberg (basehead mob lawyer who beat his stepdaughter to death, and got twelve years on manslaughter one) and Manuel Noriega (He “just said no” to George Bush Sr.; they had to invade a country to arrest him, and American boys died in this “police action”). Yeah, they gave him more time than me, but the guy who killed the little girl got less time than “The BB Gun Bandit”. “Go figure” as they say here in the weird new west.
When I get back, I’m assigned to the dish-room, and ordered to cell with Mr. Edwardrunningfox Goode (actual spelling). I already know him. After finally finding a reserved spot in the chowhall, I know Mr. Goode as one of my table-mates.
He’s a black man in his late fifties who claims to be part Native American, hence his name. He practiced his own version of Orthodox Judaism fanatically. His personal hygiene isn’t the greatest, and he snores loudly at night. He’s got some serious PTSD symptoms; he would get a glazed look in his eyes if we watched a moderately realistic war movie set in Vietnam on my TV. His snoring sometimes makes it impossible for me to sleep;I had to devise schemes to make him stop. None of them work very well.
We become friends anyway, and walk the yard together and talk about things. One day he asks me, “What’s up?
I answer as vaguely as possible. “Well the moon she goes around the earth and the earth she goes around the sun.”
“Who told you that? That’s a lie!” Mr. Goode responds, in defense of the geocentric model of the universe. I choose not to argue this point.
He asks me not to smoke in the cell, and I an entirely reasonable request, so I go smoke in other people’s cells, or outside when possible. Sometimes that’s not good enough. I can’t return to the cell too soon after smoking.If I do he starts going off about:
“I can smell the smoke on you, that’s just as bad as if you smoked it in here!
I tell him that he’s welcome to watch my TV whenever he wants, while I’m out at work or on the yard. I get an hour and a half long break in the mid afternoon from the dish room; I take advantage of this free time by napping, or at least laying on my bunk and doing some relaxation techniques.
He insists on standing next to the bunk and watching TV while I do this. He keeps the little earphone plugged in, but this bothers me too, his movements and the flashing of the TV make it difficult to really rest. I insist on turning off the TV He grumbles a little, but lets it go after that.
At night, when his snoring sets in, first I try moving around on the top bunk and making some small bumping noises. Sometimes these noises half-wake him and change his breathing pattern.
When that doesn’t work, I raise the whole center of my body up and let it crash down. That works most of the time, but on some occasions I have to simply bring my fist down on the bare metal of the bunk, where my mattress ended, with a loud “Bam!”
One night this works a bit too well, and he wakes up in a Vietnam flashback. When he finally figures what’s happening, he’s angry. He tells me that I just need to be patient, that when he’s sleeping deeply enough, the snoring stops. We’re never able to reach an agreement on this issue, and realistically, you can’t tell someone to stop snoring.
I use the time to fantasize and masturbate. (The prison shrink discontinued my Mellaril, and at least I can wack off again). It’s bad form to masturbate in your cell while anyone else is in there. I don’t think he noticed; I’m sure I would have heard about it from him otherwise. Mr. Goode’s vehemently opposed to all forms of “perversion” as he calls it. Worst of all, he hates the homosexuals, both the overtly gay and effeminate ones, and the “real men” who take a gay lover while in prison. I debate this with him too, and then I give up. I just tell him I have no interest in other people’s sex lives, period. He cites examples of such indifference and tolerance bringing down divine retribution in the Old Testament.
It’s impossible to constructively debate anything with a religious fanatic. I learn to steer clear of controversy with Mr. Goode. He always angry, at me, at the system, at the other inmates for being gay, for not standing up to the man, for smoking, for being Moslems and not following all the rules. I learn that watching someone else’s anger is tiresome, and realize how many people had probably found my own anger tiresome at different times in my life.
I read Mr. Goode’s court documents, and it seems to me he’s been fucked over by the system badly. He’s got a good lawyer, or at least it seems so from his pleadings. I’m not too happy with “the system” either, but I’m fucking tired, feeling the last vestiges of youth drain from my body and soul. I often tell Mr. Goode that he’s preaching to the choir, but nothing stops his endless diatribes.
One day, Mr. Goode is stricken with some violent gastro-intestinal disturbance. He saves the strange green liquid he’s puking in a plastic bag, for purposes of proving that it’s a medical emergency to the guards. We walked all over the prison as he tries to get someone to send him to the infirmary.
We walked, from cellhouse, to guard-shack, to the Captain’s office. I’m just there to vouch for him later if someone tries to accuse him of snitching .By the time arrive at the captain’s offices, I’m hearing “oh no, it’s Goode and his bag of puke!” before we even make it to the door.
Finally he’s sent to the infirmary, and promptly discharged again for refusing treatment. He says they refused to tell him what medicine they wanted him to drink.
One day, I return from work in the evening. He’s watching my TV.
“Sorry, I’ve seen this one already,” I tell him and change the channel. “
“You have a very rude behavior!” He tells me in a stern and threatening tone of voice.
I tell him that he’s not the politest person in the world either, and he grumbles again about what would happen in “real prison.”
After a month with Mr. Goode, and working hard in the penitentiary dish-room, my name gets to the top of the waiting list for single-bunked cells. I make the move promptly, and for a day or two I was in heaven. Finally, I have “my own place!”
No one seems concerned about my rehabilitation here, in spite of all the “diagnostic” mumbo-jumbo that had taken place at DRDC. I actually start wanting to be “corrected”
‘Yes, I can use this time to ‘get my life turned around’ and to ‘start being positive!’
The shrink in the county jail had also told me that it was my chance to finally make the break with drugs. That’s not on my list of things to do however. I’m doing much in the way of drugs, but it’s only because as a newcomer I’m not privy to the dope channels, or trusted by the people who are.
However as April moves to May, I decide to make a break with the dish room. I ask me case manager, to enroll me in “Drug and Alcohol Class.”
He’s more than willing to do this for me (many people need to be coerced into attending these classes).
The class is not without its interesting moments. The amount of what I consider to be propaganda and disinformation being dispensed is very offensive and irritating, but I know where the line is. I question, argue, and bring up issues that the class seems to be sidestepping, but I always let the instructor have the last word, giving some monosyllabic response like “oh,” to let him know that he’s succeeded in sharing his insight with me.
“Mr. Buzzard,” as we call him (which is very close to his real name) is a blowhard; he tolerates little or nothing in the way of tardiness, missed classes, or failure to complete assignments. The class-work is simple and boring, and most of the homework is easy; I have no problems meeting these basic requirements.
Mr. Buzzard’s intelligent, opinionated, well educated, and his odd, right-wing libertarian views in his own words are “bordering on antisocial.” The class actually addresses the issue of arrestable versus unarrestable antisocial behavior, and although Mr. Buzzard’s got a “tough on crime” stance with regard to violent offenses. He also repeatedly makes the point that antisocial behavior by the powerful in society goes unpunished or is treated with excessive leniency and that this in his opinion is unfair.
He favors legalization of drugs. He also says strange things like “I think there should be factories where addicts can work and be paid in drugs and whenever one of them dies, their body should be processed into food for the other addicts.” He details this morbid sci-fi fantasy almost with a straight face. To this day, I’m not sure how serious he was about it.
We watch a movie a about a problem child, a little girl who’s been the victim of torture and sexual abuse during the first three years of her life. She’s adopted by a kindly couple, with a young son of their own.
The damage has already been done; she tortures and sexually assaults her new little step brother, and tortures the house pets too. As she grows older and stronger, she becomes increasingly dangerous.
Professional intervention becomes necessary, and she’s was taught to say “When I hurt others, I hurt my good self.”
She talks candidly on camera about her past behaviors, and seems to be genuinely concerned about her own “change process.”
The guy sitting on my right writes on his folder “When I hurt others, I feel good about myself.”
The guy on my left, a tall skinny speed freak named Shakey with a punk-rock Mohawk draws a wobbly, warped, and bubbly syringe on his folder, falls asleep and gets expelled from the class shortly thereafter.
Every Friday we watch a full length movie in class. We’re expected to write a review of it over the weekend, usually with three or four questions about the motives and morality of the characters that need to be answered in the review. It’s a good idea to take notes.
The selection of films is eclectic. We watch “Parenthood,” with Steve Martin and “Clean and Sober,” with Michael Keaton.
There are many other movies, usually with a theme of interpersonal dynamics within a family, or of sobering up and relapse. One especially poignant film with Robert DeNiro starring in it, has to do with the discovery of L-Dopa, and its seemingly miraculous initial effects, followed by the discovery of its horrible and debilitating side effects. I write about the individual vs. institution conflict in the movie, and also tie it in with another film, shown in the afternoon “personal relations” class, having to do with paralyzed junkies who shot up a bad batch of some street Demerol containing the compound MPTP. It left the addicts alive, but unable to move. The substantia nigra, the group of dopamine producing cells in their brains was destroyed by the MPTP, much as this same group of cells dies off in Parkinson’s patients. Mr. Buzzard gives me an “A” on the review.
The concept of how criminals function in a kind of denial, never believing they’ll get caught comes up in a discussion. I remark that I’d been counting on either getting shot or overdosing before they could catch me. The “hail of bullets” from police revolvers was my favorite death fantasy.
A morose, pale white man in his twenties with little round glasses and some kind of hillbilly accent says in a low, threatening tone, just loud enough for the whole room to hear “If this were a real prison, you would be dead.”
Maybe he’s right, but not for the reason he’s implying. He believes the “rat” rumor. Having no snappy comeback, I ignore him. Mr. Buzzard says “See, go to a state where they have real prisons next time.”
Much later, in an episode of repartee after the fact I come up with “If you were real person I’d give a fuck about what you had to say.”
The class is over all too soon. I’m given an “Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement,” by Mr. Buzzard. I’ve graduated from drug and alcohol class with honors.
Not wanting to start working again right away, I sign up for janitorial school, a two hour long class in the morning, supplemented with various little “hands on” work study assignments at different times.
I get my basic, and then my advanced certificates, with an “A” average. The teacher, Jerry Canterbury, tells the infirmary sergeant that I’ve been doing good work cleaning the halls and the restrooms down there at the school every day and I’m promptly hired by the infirmary upon my graduation.
