Deviant’s Edge 2.0

Siyani was a 6’4” 250 pound black man with finely toned muscles from daily sessions on the weight pile. He wears his long hair relaxed and straightened, and always immaculately neat, with every hair in place.

After a number of weeks of working together we became friends and would talk at length in the evenings. I was treated with a new respect and friendliness; once people saw that I was kicking it with Siyani

I don’t know if people thought that I was his “bitch” or what, but I didn’t care. Siyani’s black friends would ask him “What you kicking it with that crazy ass white boy for?” but would rarely push it beyond that. If they didn’t like it, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Siyani was respected, and feared, with a reputation he’d built since coming into the system as an angry nineteen year old murder convict. Now, at the age of forty he had no need to fight, and no interest in doing so, but he lamented at times that the new “Young Guns” in from off the street, with reputations of their own to build, would feel the need to test him, to see what he was about. At those times, he wished that he did not have his formidable physique and almost legendary prowess as a fighter.

Siyani liked to watch pro wrestling on TV. When I asked him why, and pointed out how obviously choreographed and planned the wrestler’s moves were, he pointed out that their performances still required great strength and agility, and were not without danger. He said for me think of it in terms of “Men as big as Braxton (6’8” 300 lbs, by far the largest man in the prison) slamming into each other and falling down on those mats.”

Siyani was a convicted killer in a high profile case. He readily admitted his complicity to me, but maintained steadfastly that he did not cut the victims throat, and that the killer had fingered him to save himself.. Eventually I was to hear his side of the story in detail.

Siyani Masamba (Freddy Glenn) was one of four men convicted in a high profile murder. Their victim was Karen Grammer, sister of actor Kelsey Grammer, of “Cheers’ and “Frazier” fame.

Siyani and his associates were depicted as “psychopathic soldiers from Ft. Carson” (1) The same “Crime library” article details the religious conversion and 1st parole hearing of one of his co-defendants, Michael Corbett AKA “Hasani”. Detective Lou Smit (Now Captain Lou Smit) of the1 Colorado State Police is quoted in the same article, as saying “Corbett was a man completely without a conscience...”

The article’s author, Seamus McGraw characterized Siyani as Corbett’s #1 disciple.
Though he lacked Corbett's force of personality, and didn't share his almost psychopathic detachment, he was Corbett's devoted disciple.

The story of Karen Grammer’s murder, and numerous others committed by Corbett, Glenn, and a cooperative witness named Larry Dunn, who was granted immunity from prosecution, (although the story, even as he tells it incriminates him as much as any of the others involved)is a matter of public record and has been retold in detail many times. All those interested in the blood and gore of it, or the other crimes attributed to the co-defendants need only to look to the internet.

What is not widely known is the person I knew as “Siyani” some 21 years after the murder had been committed. His prison reputation was certainly fearsome, but unlike many who commanded that type of respect, he for the most part was admired as an honest, peaceful, and honorable old-school convict. I don’t know what might have become of me, had I not had the good fortune to get hired as his protégé in the prison infirmary.

He was a good and patient instructor, who cared about the job getting done, not just to pass Sergeant Margaret Storm’s daily inspections, but also for the benefit of the patients themselves. After a few days, I got the rhythm and technique of this assignment down and would show up at 7:00 AM each day and work ‘til 11:00, go to chow, lock down in my cell for count, and return to work shortly after 1:00 PM. On most days, Sgt. Storm dismissed us by 2:30 PM. I learned little bits of prison lore, and the names of notorious outlaws and convicts he knew in his youth, who were all starting to mellow with age too.
He spoke of his days as an enforcer and collector for a prison gang, and also told me how young and ignorant he’d been.

He learned to respect gays, “I didn’t like fags you know, but these fags will cut an M.F.’s throat before they knew what hit ‘em!” and had his first encounters with heroin, cocaine, and LSD in prison.

Things weren’t quite so mellow behind the walls during the 70s, in fact they averaged about 1 stabbing per week, and Siyani recounted that back when the cells only had bars instead of an inmate-controlled locking door as they do now. Sometimes people were set on fire with a flammable liquid, perhaps some gasoline from one of the many gas-powered grounds maintenance machines, or lighter fluid that an absent minded guard kept around for his Zippo, but left unattended, which would be thrown through the bars, dousing the intended victim. This would be followed by a well-aimed torch, usually a rag soaked in the same liquid. There was no way out of the cell, and the only recourse available was the toilet which in those days each cell had. Siyani recalls watching a man and hearing his screams, as he stood in his toilet making a futile effort to put out the liquid fueled flames.

Siyani denied giving in to the temptation of a warm mouth offered by a sexually ambivalent inmate, although he admitted that many of the drag queens were convincing enough to make him lust after them as females. He still denied ever having had sexual contact with another male.

He smoked cigarettes, but not all that many of them, and worked out on the weight-pile to maintain the formidable musculature on his tall and slim frame. At this point he was not trying to “bulk up,” or “get buff,” as the weightlifters called it. He was just trying to stay healthy, and maintain the strength that he had with him.

When he got around to telling me his version of the Karen Grammer case, I heard a sad story not all that different than the published accounts, except for one thing. He said that one of the other men in the car actually cut her throat although he didn’t name a name (I’m guessing Dunn) and that he had refused to testify against any of his comrades, holding onto the belief that no matter how despicable a crime has been committed, it is still more despicable to give up your supposed friends to save your own ass. Freddy Glenn wouldn’t snitch. Subsequently he was fingered by one of his co defendants as the man who murdered Karen Grammer. As he went on with the story, I saw tears forming in his eyes.

Sure, what he told me could have been self serving and self-justifying, but what possible reason in the world could he have for trying to deceive me. I was just some crazy-ass white boy whose opinion didn’t meant shit, and even if he’d told me, flat out that he had cut her throat, and felt nothing, the man I knew in the present moment inspired nothing but respect and admiration in me. My instinct at the time was to believe him, and even though he left out important parts of the story, like the alleged gang-rape described by Dunn, I still believe that what he told me was the truth.

He recalls the brave and indomitable, but foolish Karen Grammer sealing her fate by telling her captors that she had all their descriptions memorized as well as the car’s license number, and how much trouble they would all be when she turned them in. Siyani remembers begging her “Shut up girl, please, just shut up!” hoping ‘til the last minute that somehow their original plan, which was to cut her loose, alive, would still be carried out. He said that the only way he could have saved her life would have been to shoot one of his companions, and faced with this dilemma, he watched as Karen Grammer’s throat was cut.

I have never been able to determine from his words, whether he wishes now that his actions had been different at that late point in the chain of events; his regrets are for setting out with his friends that night for a little adventure, including an armed robbery. But his remorse, his heartbreak over the death of Karen Grammer was unmistakable. Certainly a parole board member, looking at the facts of the case and Siyani’s role in it might have cause to doubt his sincerity. But I, having no power over whether Siyani ever sees the outside again, have no reason to doubt him. Again, why should he lie to me?

Upstairs from the chow hall, there’s a large auditorium and recreation center. There are chess sets and jigsaw puzzles, Nintendo video games with strict half-hour time limits of them and long waiting lists. There are guitars, acoustic and electric.
I ask Sgt. Williams, a gruff, foul mouthed and somewhat anti-social person, redeemed by his readily available sense of humor, if I could check out an electric guitar.

He says, “Yeah, after we see that you can play, and can be responsible for taking care of an instrument.”

He asks an inmate to bring him an acoustic guitar.

“Well, let’s see what you can do”

I pick up the guitar, sit down with it, and plunk out a few rudimentary blues notes and changes.

“What’s that, blues?”

I nod.

“What’s the song’s name?”

“Oh I don’t know, it’s just some blues thing I do.”
“You wrote it?”

“Yes, a very long time ago,” I said, and I remember discovering and plunking out those same notes at the age of fifteen.

The audition ends and I have acoustic guitar privileges. I hang out in the auditorium when not working and try to jam with anyone who's around playing a guitar. There are a couple of sound-insulated rehearsal studios behind the stage.

Sometimes walking by outside of the auditorium, I hear the energetic and defiant sounds of loud electric guitars, bass, and drums, finding their way through the insulation, seeking cracks in windows and walls and finding my ears. I think about how it would be fun to be in a band again, even in prison. I also think it’s unlikely that I will ever play in one. Guitarists are a dime a dozen, everywhere, even in the joint. Im was sure that there are many more accomplished players around.

I keep practicing on the acoustic guitars, and have a little fun here and there, as I progress, from dish-room, to school, to janitorial school, and to my “cushy” infirmary job.

Jesse is one of the people I play a little blues with. He’s in one of the rock bands, playing keyboards mostly. A large, heavy, older ex-marine, with his gray hair grown long into a slightly rebellious pony tail, Jesse’s brilliant, easy-going and just downright weird. We become good friends. Jesse decides that his rock band needs my guitar skills, mostly for bass playing, and he eventually persuades Sgt. Williams to give me my “electric” privileges.

Video games and rock-bands in prison are issues that right-wing demagogues use to get people to listen to their drivel. The prison guard’s unions, organizations not know for their liberalism, nonetheless favor various “perks” and “privileges” for inmates. To be in a rock band, or even to hang out in the auditorium and do various “arts and crafts” projects, (etched mirrors being the most popular, for their high resale value) a prisoner must be “Report Free” for some arbitrary number of days, usually around ninety or so. The same goes for the weight-pile and the gym.

These little behavioral rewards go a long way to making a guard’s life easier. Not only are there less actual infractions, but inmates who have learned to enjoy and depend on these perks to pass the time will be generally more polite and respectful, knowing that this further reduces the odds of a write-up, which can happen at any given time, for little or no reason.
Playing electric guitar, in a band in prison seems too good to be true.

“Be careful,” warns Mr. Goode, “They will torture you by learning what you love, and taking it away from you.”

I earn my privileges, enjoy them, come to depend on them. Still in the first two years (not even two years, more like 21 months) of incarceration, nonetheless I understand that things are indeed “good”. One night, while walking the track and talking with Jesse, we reach the conclusion the “these are the good old days.”

I go to band practice 5 or 6 nights out of the week. On my days off, I stay up to the wee hours of the morning watching old martial-arts movies and drinking Folgers instant. D I almost have myself believing in the correctional cliché’s like “rehabilitation,” and “turning your life around.”

I’m even “making the break with drugs,” or so it seemed. My Mellaril was discontinued early on in my stay with no ill effect, and a marked improvement in my energy level. My few months of working in the steaming purgatory of the penitentiary dish-room sweated and purged the persistent traces of methadone withdrawal from my body.
Working in the infirmary and playing music at night helps me lose the body fat I’d picked up in the county jail.

The first concert I play is in Christmas of ’96. I’m in 1 rock band and one R&B band, which was interracial in its makeup. I also do a brief, opening/warm-up set with a little heavy metal power trio I put together, to do a couple of old songs that I’d written in my 20s. After one false start, we manage to get through both pieces without any further difficulties, and the audience responds with warm applause.

Next up is the rock-band, led and fronted by Mark I play bass on most of the songs. I switch to guitar to do another original, an odd jazz piece that I wrote at the age of sixteen and still feel compelled to play when I pick up a guitar. As a guitar player, my skills are limited and amateurish, and I am not a “well rounded” player. I can’t read music, but can follow chord progressions, and don’t need to have things explained to me too many times, so people like having me in their bands. When practice is over I’m just another old guy pathetically clinging to teenage rock dreams.

Of course, in my teens, I’d wanted to be a “guitar hero,” a heavy metal and fusion jazz improviser. While other areas of my guitar skills went neglected, I learned to play scales really fast, and then to scramble them up and improvise them and finally got to the point where if I wanted a certain melody to come out of the guitar, I didn’t have to think about it anymore, it just happened. The quarter-semesters of music school in an obscure, avant-garde jazz setting also helped me a little. The jazz piece I was playing made me remember those days, before knives, needles, guns, craziness and disease helped me murder those innocent dreams of a young man.

When the time comes for it, I rip into for my guitar solo with everything I’ve got. I receive a standing ovation eight bars into it.

That was a once in a lifetime event. I’d been in a band on the outside, back in DC in my late teens and early twenties, a “punk-jazz” band that was in the wrong town and just a bit ahead of its time, under the direction of a maniacal musical anarchist with an alto sax named Eric Ziarko.

We did nothing but get bad reviews, lose money, and since I was the guy with the van, I was usually physically exhausted after our gigs from loading, driving, and unloading equipment. When the patrons in the club who remained for more than the first minute or two started getting into what we were playing, they would get up and dance. Some of Eric’s artless but sincere political speeches seemed to get through to people at times.

At one of our more memorable gigs, playing in the “Columbia Station” bar and restaurant in the summer of 81, I spotted a young woman I had known in “high school” (it was only high school in the sense that it was called a school and we were all high) with her date, a healthy ,young, corn-fed linebacker from the University of Maryland. I saw this as rather odd, because Susan was quite obviously still the “Hippie Chick,” but I had always admired her open- mindedness. I sat down briefly at their table during intermission (we just played two long sets that night). I told Susan that it was good to see her again after all this time, and I introduced myself to the football player. Then I walked down to the corner, with my crime partner Ellen, a stripper, and dealer in various disreputable substances. I had some crystal meth and we snorted a little of that, then she pulled out a fat joint of Angel Dust, and we smoked it right there on the corner. You could still do that then; it was just so crowded, and the cops had other things to worry about . Reagan hadn’t even been elected just yet.

I went back in to play the second set twisted out of my mind, and when it came time for my big guitar solo, I managed to get through it, with feeling even, and lightning fast chemically inspired licks.

A little later in the set, Eric went into his “World Hunger” speech, which like his sax solos, was improvised for the most part. This time he threw in something about “what if you went to McDonald’s and they didn’t have a Big Mac for you, not even a cheeseburger...”

At the end of the gig, I sat down briefly with Susan and her date again. The young man was moved to tears. Eric had reached him. “I never thought of it that way, going to MacDonald’s and not being able to get a Big Mac...”

Even being in an unknown band that drove half the patrons out of the club within two minutes of starting the first set attracted groupies, and would impress the strippers and the angel dust smoking, “lude” eatin’, coke shooting women I would encounter while “making the rounds” as a young suburban drug dealer. It was good fun for a long time, and when it stopped being fun, I stopped doing it. But never once was there a standing ovation.

The ego boost is brief. I realize where I am and that even if someone had made an audio tape of the show, getting a copy of it, and then managing not to lose it in a shakedown would be impossible. But ironically I’d just enjoyed more success as a musician in prison than I ever had on the outside. Many people don’t know my name, and call out “hey, little wolf dude!” I look forward to the next concert.

People started being a little nicer, and many people gave me encouragement to keep playing. I now had new friends; members of the bands I played in.