3 days after freedom

“What do you want from the grocery store?” Celia asked.

All I could do was frown and shrug. Most of the meals I’d eaten in the last 4 years had been prepared for me. And the ones I prepared for myself came from ingredients that you could find on the shelves of a gas station convenience store.

I thought about how I paid $5 for an onion last week when a kitchen worker had an opportunity to smuggle one back to the pod and was looking for a buyer.

“An onion,” I answered.

“An onion…” Celia gave me a confused look, “Ok. What’s the onion for?”

I shrugged again. “You can put onion on anything.”

Celia took a deep breath, trying to find some patience within herself. “And what do you want to put the onion on?”

“Well what do you normally get? Can we put onion on that?” was my response.

“Well sure,” she said. “I just thought maybe you’d want something that you haven’t had in a long time.”

“It’s hard for me to answer. How can I make a list when I don’t even know what’s on the shelves these days?”

“I tell you what,” said Celia. “Let’s just go with my list and if you see anything you like we can get it. I’ll make sure to get everything I need to cook for us this week.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said with a smile and a nod.

30 minutes later Celia found a spot in the crowded parking lot. I opened the door and stood there for a moment to take in the scene.

In addition to the big grocery store, a store called Cloud Haven caught my eye, with pretty neon colors and stylized fonts.

“Ooh, what’s that?” I wondered aloud.

There was also a pet store, a nail spa, a liquor store, and a Chinese restaurant.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Celia was already making her way purposefully toward the grocery store.

“What’s the big rush?” I asked, trying to keep up with her.

“The grocery store stresses me out,” she said. “It’s a chore and I want to get it over with as soon as possible. That’s why I have my list. So I can get in, grab all the things I need, and get out.”

We came to the drive lane between the parking area and the store front. There were cars waiting for people to cross and people waiting for cars to drive through and I wasn’t sure about what the unspoken rules were here. So I waited a moment and followed Celia’s lead across.

She avoided the main entrance to the grocery store with the automatic sliding doors and went to another door on the right. She pulled it open and stepped through. I followed her in and let the door close behind me… right in the face of another lady.

Celia was quick to inform me, “that was rude.”

“Oh, we hold the door here?”

For the last 4 years I had been going through doors without looking back, just like everyone else around me. I never held a door for anyone else because nobody else would hold a door for me. It was the norm. We’re all capable of holding doors, why do we have to hold them for one another?

“Yea, we hold doors for people,” Celia said with some irritation in her voice.

"Ok,” I said. But how far back does someone have to be for one to not hold the door and not be rude? I wondered to myself.

I shrugged once more and then entered into a world of color. The produce aisle was before me and was stocked full of amazing fruits and vegetables. Bright yellow bananas, deep purple eggplants, dark green cucumbers. Unidentifiable green leaves were bundled together next to lettuces and cabbages. Plastic containers full of berries were next to lemons, limes, and kiwis. A whole table was full of nothing but tomatoes of all different shapes and sizes. Most were red, but some were yellow, orange, and even purple.

“Wow,” I said, picking up an eggplant. It was a beautiful shade of purple and was plump and flawless.

Celia walked over with a small cart and I put the eggplant in it.

“What are we doing with eggplant?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but look at it. I bet that thing is delicious.”

“You like eggplant?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve ever had it. Do you know how to eat one?”

“Dude, put the eggplant back. We have a list. Just follow me,” she started walking her prescribed path through the produce aisle, seemingly only seeing what was on her list and nothing else.

I picked up an onion. The label said $1.99/lb. I weighed it in my hand and had no idea if this thing was a whole pound, but I was willing to bet it was cheaper than that $5 onion I had last week.

This is going in the cart, I resolved.

I looked up to see Celia turning the corner and leaving the produce aisle.

We just got here. I haven’t even had a chance to look around. I thought.

Holding onto the onion, I continued slowly through the produce aisle, looking at all the colors I felt like I hadn’t seen in years and trying to avoid more awkward social situations with strangers who — like Celia — all seemed to be moving very quickly through the produce section.

They probably think I’m high.

It seemed like only minutes passed before Celia returned to the produce aisle with a full cart.

“You’re still here?” she asked. “C’mon, I’ve got everything we need, let’s go.”

“Wait, theres still like 90% of the store left to see.”

Still 3 years and 6 months until freedom

A part of my daily routine since the start of my incarceration was to call Celia in the evenings. I was sitting in my bunk writing a letter to her, but I hadn’t gotten very far. It was almost time to call her anyway.

Dan, my bunkie, got up from his perch below me and peered over to see what I was up to.

“Who’s Celia?” he asked.

“My girl,” I said.

“Oh, you got a little girl?” he said with excitement in his voice, “how old is she? I got 2 girls.”

“No. Not my kid. My girlfriend,” I corrected him.

“Oh! You mean your old lady,” he corrected me back.

Old Lady is the term to be used for any significant other, but when Celia learned of this she very firmly informed me not to refer to her as my Old Lady because she is, in fact, not an old lady.

Jack was my cut partner — he was in the bunk next to mine and our lockers were in the same cut of space between bunks — and he overheard the exchange.

“Dear diary,” Jack said in a nasally voice he adopted when he was making fun of me. “Today I learned what Old Lady means. Maybe tomorrow I won’t be made of wood and I’ll be a real boy!”

Jack and Dan shared a laugh at my expense, but it was all in good fun.

I put my letter away for later and hopped down from my bunk to make my way to the phones in the day room. There were 5 phones in the pod for the nearly 75 inmates to share. Back in jail there were twice as many phones for the same amount of inmates. Today all 5 phones were occupied.

The guy I saw playing chess when I first moved into the pod was on one of the phones. I walked over to the wall next to him — a respectful 10 feet or so away — and tried to make eye contact. He looked up and I pointed to him with my finger, then to me with my thumb, and them back to him with my finger — a ritual I had observed others performing when they wanted to get in line for a phone. He nodded in response.

I waited on a nearby bench, making sure I kept my place in line. A few minutes later the guy hung up the phone with his finger and then started dialing numbers again.

Damn, I thought. He’ll be at least another 20 minutes.

The phone system limited call duration to 20 minutes, but there was no limit to the number of calls you could make — except for the money on your books. A local 20 minute phone call cost something like 60 cents. Long distance calls could cost several dollars. The problem is that nearly every inmate here was not local, and the dollars for phone calls would add up fast.

Tech savvy folks on the outside would get a Google Voice phone number setup with a local exchange to save money on calls. But this was too complicated for a lot of people, so there was this guy Max who would help. If Celia wasn’t tech savvy enough to get her own Google Voice number, I could have given her number to Max — another inmate — along with $10. He’d then have his tech savvy friends on the outside create a local Google Voice number that would forward calls to Celia. And then I could call that local number to reach Celia and only have to pay the local fee of 60 cents.

Meanwhile, another 20 minutes went by and the guy redialed again. I watched as other people who had gotten in line after me for different phones got their turns to be on phones. There must’ve been 5 or 6 people who joined a line after I joined my line who got to their phones first. I was frustrated.

By the time I got to the phone it was 9pm. I picked up the receiver and wiped it down with my t-shirt as I’d seen others do. Unfortunately, the halitosis could not be wiped away so easily — I had forgotten that this particular chess player had horrible breath. I made a mental note to never get in line behind him again.

I dialed Celia’s number and she answered with a “hello.” I waited while the automated phone system gave its spiel.

“You have received a prepaid phone call from,” followed by a recording of me saying my own name and a bunch of furious beeping as Celia pressed the 1 number on her end of the call. “An inmate at the state correctional center. To accept this call press 1. To block this call and future calls from this number press 9. Otherwise you may hang up.” The message could not be shortcut with a press of a 1 until it was completely finished.

Finally the call was connected.

“It’s late,” said Celia.

“Sorry,” I responded. “I was trying to get on the phone but they were all busy.”

I could tell she was frustrated. I also got the feeling that she didn’t believe me. I asked her about her day and she told me about her new job. She was excited for something new and different. I couldn’t relate, but I listened to her talk while another guy came up to me and did the finger point thing.

“I gotchu,” I said to him.

“What?” came Celia’s voice through the receiver.

“Oh nothing,” I said. “Somebody’s just trying to get on this phone after me.”

“Are you even listening to me?” she said. “If you have something else to do then we can talk some other time.”

“No I’m here. I’m listening”

Eventually she asked me about my day and I told her how Jack and Dan were making fun of me for not calling her my old lady.

“You’re not calling me an old lady,” she said, “we’ve been through this.”

“You have one… minute remaining on your prepaid phone call. The call will disconnect at that time.”

“I can call you back,” I said.

“No it’s late. I need to go to bed,” said Celia.

“Ok. I’ll call you tomorrow then.”

“Ok.”

“I love you.”

“I love…”

dial tone

3 years and 6 months until freedom

“5b, 6 top!” shouted the Sergeant through the plexiglass booth before he pressed the button to unlock the door.

The day I had been waiting for was finally here. I was in prison. And not just locked in the receiving block awaiting a security classification. I was walking out of that block and into general population along with a few other guys who were coming from jail.

Fat Terry took a deep breath before the words “I’m home,” left his mouth. The sound of his voice resonated within his gigantic chest and echoed across the vast empty space between the housing units.

“Fat Terry, is that you?” was the answer to his call. An inmate on the rec yard who noticed our arrival was pressed up against the fence.

“I’m home,” Fat Terry responded — even louder this time.

“Ah haaa, Fat Terry’s back,” the other guy shouted with excitement before turning back to the rec yard.

I shook my head in disbelief. It would be some months before I was the guy pressed against the fence noticing a new arrival I recognized — Ricky from jail. The difference was that these guys recognized each other from this prison. Fat Terry had gotten out, reoffended, and was convicted and sentenced in a short enough time span to see familiar faces here.

My relationship with Terry started on my first day in jail. I remember being locked in my cell in phase 1 of the jail — bored out of my mind — when he entered the pod dressed in the white scrubs of a trustee while pushing a cart full of books. Our cells opened for a few minutes giving us a chance to grab a book from the cart.

“Any recommendations?” I asked him.

“Yea,” he said as he picked up one of the books. “The Shack is real good. Take this one.”

And I did.

When I went back to my cell I read the story of a father who’s daughter was kidnapped and murdered before he underwent a supernatural journey in an effort to confront his grief and explore forgiveness.

It was a book about faith.

A few months later I joined a casual game of poker that would meet and play every evening. We’d play high/low games where each person would be dealt 4 or 5 cards and a board of 10 or 20 additional cards would be laid out. The person with the best poker hand would split the pot with the person with the best padooki hand.

We’d wager commissary food — represented by face cards from an older deck of cards with a different backing. But very little money actually exchanged hands. It was just a way to pass the time.

Until Terry moved into the pod and was invited to join us. I quickly realized that with Fat Terry at the table I was losing commissary food at a much faster rate — he always seemed to have the best hand.

I watched him closely during one hand when I noticed there was an ace of spades on the board in addition to the ace of spades in his hand.

“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “Why are there 2 aces of spades in the deck?”

Terry tried to laugh it off and play innocent. “Man, that’s a misdeal. What ya’ll doin with extra cards at the table?” He threw his hand down. “Sort out that deck and deal ‘em again,” he said.

The other guys at the table laughed. Everybody knew somebody was cheating. But now that it was out in the open, it seemed like everyone just saw it as an opportunity to cheat harder.

I stopped playing poker with them after that.

Today we continued walking for a short way before Fat Terry turned left at the fork in the sidewalk to building-6 — the housing unit where those who needed more medical attention were kept. Older guys, guys with diabetes, guys in wheelchairs, etc. Building-6 had the shortest walk to the chow hall and was also the closest to medical. Nobody was very sick there though. If someone had a more serious medical condition, like cancer, they would go to a different facility altogether that was more equipped to handle that.

I walked to the next fork in the sidewalk before turning left toward building-5 — a mesh laundry bag full of all my stuff slung over my shoulder. Nobody familiar to me joined me on this leg of my journey. As the building loomed nearer, Hankley’s words echoed in my ears — another guy I met on my first day in jail.

“Get on down the road,” he had said. “They got softball, volleyball, horseshoes. You can buy peanut butter by the jar. They got vocational programs, so you can work on small engines. You can go to school, get your GED. Yea, there ain’t shit like that here, man, get on down the road.”

I was down the road. I was supposed to be excited. I was excited. But I was also anxious. People get stabbed in prison right? What if I get stabbed? Are there gangs? I don’t wanna join a gang. Will they target me if I don’t join? Will they steal all my stuff and beat me for no apparent reason? I had no idea what to expect.

I approached building-5 and pulled on the door handle. Locked. I looked to my left and saw Fat Terry had already disappeared into building-6 a hundred feet away.

How’d he get in so fast? I wondered.

Buzz was the sound that came from the door in front of me.

Oh, somebody’s watching me from somewhere. It must be unlocked now.

I reached out to pull the door again but I was too slow. The buzzing had stopped and the door was still locked.

Not off to a good start so far.

I peered in through the plexiglass and all I could see was a 20 sq. ft. sally port and a bunch of guys in t-shirts on the other side of that — one of whom was staring at me. There was no expression on his face.

Buzz went the door again, and I grabbed it in time to feel it pull open. I walked into the sally port and buzz went the next door. I continued through into my new housing unit.

In front of me were a few stainless steel tables bolted to the floor — a couple of guys playing chess on one of them. To my right were a couple of microwaves and a hot water dispenser — a man filling up a plastic coffee mug with hot water.

A 5 foot tall cinderblock wall separated this room from the bathroom. Someone walked out of the saloon-style doors and I saw the urinals and the toilets. 4 urinals. 4 full-sized toilets. No dividers between any of them.

Beyond the bathroom were the bunks — 4 rows of them.

The man who was staring at me a moment ago was the first to address me. “Ay, you come from receiving with Fat Terry?”

Damn, does everybody know this guy?

“Yea, we were in jail together for a few months,” I responded. “Just got out of receiving.”

“I’m gonna have to go look him up later,” said the man before turning back to stare out the window through the sally port. “We go way back.”

I turned back to the bunks to try to search for mine. “6 top,” the sergeant had said. The bunk on the row to the left had a big black “1” painted on it. The bunk on the row to the right had a big black “49” painted on it. 12 of the beds in the middle of the room had no top bunk.

I started walking down the row to the left until I got to bunk 6. There was someone sleeping in it.

Well that can’t be right.

I turned around and went back toward the front door to the officers’ booth. There was a little metal grate at eye level that looked like something to talk into.

“Where am I supposed to go?” I asked into the metal thing.

“They can’t hear you through that,” said Fat Terry’s friend without even turning around. “You gotta talk into the mail slot,” his arm extended behind him to point at the big slot at knee-level in front of me.

Really?

But before I could bend over and talk into the slot I heard a voice shout over a loudspeaker.

“WAHH WAHH WAHHH WAHHH, COME ON LET’S GO!”

And then through the slot I heard, “hang on.”

A moment later and one of the officers exited the booth into the sally port and then entered the pod. He looked at me and said, “hang on,” again before continuing his walk to bunk 6 to rouse the guy in my new bed.

I didn’t let my eyes pry too hard into anyone’s personal space while I waited, but I did get a gauge of the guy sleeping in my bunk. In particular, I wanted to know how thoroughly I needed to sanitize the area before moving into it.

Decently thorough, was the conclusion I came to.

I turned my attention to the game of chess happening next to me. I liked chess and thought I was quite good at it before I went to jail. I was wrong though.

One guy at the chess board was a dark-skinned guy. I would later learn he was a devout Muslim. He was very quiet and kept to himself. But his breath was so bad that I could smell it from 6 feet away.

The other guy at the board was a middle-aged white guy. I would later learn that he practiced Ásatrú — a religion that worships Old Norse gods like Odin and Thor. Really — at least at this institution — it was a front for white supremacy. In the days that would follow this guy would repeatedly use the N-word in conversation with me to describe many of the people who lived here.

I have no idea how many years they’ve been doing it or how many years they continued doing it after I was gone, but these two diametrically opposed individuals would come together every day to play chess.

I never asked either one of them if I could play.

Before long the previous tenant of 6 top had loaded up his own laundry bag and was on his way out the front door. I then made my way over and started unloading my stuff into my new locker.

My new home.

We weren’t in disciplinary segregation, but it sure felt like it. Locked in our cells for 23 hours a day. In the 24th hour the size of our confinement grew to include a hallway. We would awake each morning at 6am to the sound of a whistle blowing — forcing us to get up out of our bunks and stand with two feet on the floor while two officers walked the length of the hallway, looked into each window, and counted us. We’d go back to sleep for another hour until the tray slots in the doors would slam open and we’d get our hot delicious breakfast. Another hour of sleep after that before the cells would unlock and we could roam the hallway.

At least the hallway had phones and hot showers.

I had developed a routine for my hour out, starting with a 20 minute phone call to home. There were only 2 phones in the hall so they had to be shared. At first I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get a turn, but it seemed like I was the only person interested in the phone.

The door popped open and Jared — my cellie — took his chair from the cell out to the hallway. He set it down just outside the door of the cell and plopped into it, arms crossed while people from other cells did the same.

“Damn, those fried eggs were good,” someone said.

Followed by, “I can’t believe they bake fresh bread for every meal.”

“Wonder how many days we got left here in receiving.”

“I heard it’s fast, like a week or two.”

“Well it’s already been a week. What do they have to do anyway?”

“Paperwork.”

Instead of joining in the small talk, I went to the phone.

Do they envy me that I have someone to call?

When I first went to jail I felt like the people on the inside were interesting. Nearly every one of them had some wild story about how they were arrested. When I’d get on the phone I’d relate these stories from the inside out — from the people I didn’t have relationships with to the people I did have relationships with. But as time went on, the strangers on the inside became more familiar to me — but no less strange.

I only had an hour outside of my cell, and I chose to spend 20 minutes of it tethered to a wall. I ended the call with an, “I love you,” or an, “I miss you,” and filled with longing for a place that I wouldn’t see for another few years. I put the receiver back on the hook and made my way back to the group of people sitting in their chairs.

They were all roaring with laughter. “Man that’s wild!” said Jared.

…I missed something.

The laughter faded a little, leaving me standing there, feeling left out.

Do I envy them that they don’t have someone to call?

Every day was more or less the same that week, until Tuesday when more inmates arrived from different jails across the state.

Fat Terry was in one of the van loads — a guy from the same jail Jared and I came from. He was a body builder in a former life. A lifestyle that demanded a lot of calories. But at some point he stopped lifting weights, and now he was a massive 400 pounds. He worked in the jail kitchen for about a month before he was kicked out and given a new job. The rumor was that the jail had to double its usual order of peanut butter that month.

He had a gray vinyl mattress in his hands.

A new mattress was about 4 inches thick, but after a week of sleeping on it the foam would collapse to half that size. It wasn’t uncommon for people to steal a second mattress from another cell when someone moved out, but they’d get caught quickly and be forced to give them back.

Much later in my sentence I met a guy who had the means to combine the stuffing from two mattresses into a single vinyl cover. Making 4 inch thick mattresses that stayed 4 inches thick. That was luxury.

Fat Terry found his cell and tossed the mattress inside before joining us in the hallway.

“Don’t that cell already have a mattress, Terry?” asked Jared.

“Yea, well now it has two,” he answered.

“How you get two mattresses?”

“One ain’t enough for my back. I make ‘em give me two,” Terry said. “You get your weight up and they might give you a second one too.”

Jared laughed, “alright then, let me get your lunch tray when it comes.”

Terry gave him a wide-eyed look when he said, “hell no you ain’t gettin’ my lunch tray.”

Some days later I decided to join a hallway banter session instead of hop on the phone.

A long haired stranger limped over to join our conversation. “So what's this receiving all about anyway?”

“We sit in these cells for two weeks while they figure out where to put us,” said Jared.

“I hope they keep me here,” said the stranger. “I’m pretty close to home here.”

“This is a level 2 facility,” Jared continued. “Most people stay here, but if you got more than 10 years or anything violent you’ll go to a higher level.”

“Oh yea, I got 14 years,” said the stranger.

The hallway went silent for a moment while people waited for him to volunteer more information. Everybody wanted to know, but nobody wanted to ask. And if he didn’t tell, then the general assumption would be that he was a child molester or a rapist and he would no longer be welcome in the hallway banter sessions.

So he continued. “I was serving 12 months for possession, but I couldn’t stay there. So I jumped off the top tier, landed hard on one of those metal tables below, and busted my ankle pretty bad. They put me in a van to take me to the hospital and on the way there I started messing with the door handle on the sly, just trying to make it look like an accident.”

He paused, a glint of pride in his eye. “I didn’t think the handle would actually work, but it slid right open. The guard driving noticed when we were coming up to a red light in town near Main Street. Only, instead of stopping he slammed on the gas, hoping to spook me. But I wasn’t spooked. The second we hit the intersection, I just dove. Did a tuck-and-roll, bruised up bad, but I was moving before they even knew what was happening.”

Everyone was staring at him with wide eyes. Not daring to interrupt. He continued.

“I knew this maintenance shed nearby — I’d done some work there before. They kept the keys in the trucks there. I was able to run on one leg fast enough to get in one of them and I was gone before they could turn around.”

Jared blinked in disbelief. "How’d they catch you?”

“Well it was my own damn fault really. I was willing to do anything to stay out — I didn’t care who I had to kill. So I tried to buy a gun from a pawn shop for protection and there was an off-duty cop in there who tackled me on the spot. He recognized me. If I had the gun before he recognized me, he’d be dead and I’d be free.”

Everyone stared at the floor for a bit, trying to think of how to respond. It’s hard to excuse yourself from a conversation when you’re locked in a hallway together.

Jared broke the silence. “If you got an escape charge you definitely won’t stay here. You’ll probably go to a level 4.” He then stood up and found his excuse, “Welp, I need to take a shower before we lock down.”

Shortly after we were back in our cells Jared said to me. “Damn, am I glad I got you as a cellie and not someone like that motherfucker. Anyone who says he’d kill someone to stay free is crazy. I wouldn’t be able to sleep in a cell with him.”

Moments later we heard a deep, low rumbling sound.

“Is that thunder?” I asked. “It’s January. Weird time of year for thunder.”

“Sounds like thunder,” said Jared.

The rumbling continued in rhythmic intervals for the next few minutes before Jared figured it out.

“That’s Terry!” he said. “He’s over there snoring. Jesus Christ, you can’t hear someone yelling at the top of their lungs through these cinderblock walls but you can hear that motherfucker snoring. Damn am I glad I’m not in a cell with him either.”

“Stock up on soups before you go so you won’t be hungry in receiving. Oh and body wash! They only sell bars of soap down the road, so people will pay big money for some body wash," Mark had told me when we were back in the jail.

Our morning so far had consisted of a van ride, a strip search, and some shouting. 5 of us were being transferred from jail to prison. Sergeant Skinner was leading us down a hallway in the SHU — the Special Housing Unit. We would spend the next few weeks here locked in our cells for 23 hours a day while we were evaluated based on our crimes and our mental/physical needs to determine our security level.

The Levels

Level 1 offenders go to a small road camp or a farm. These guys typically have jobs that require them to be trusted while outside of a fence. Some jobs include running farms and orchards, roadside cleanup, and maintenance at higher level facilities.

Level 2 offenders go to prisons where they live in open barracks-style housing units with 60-90 offenders in a single unit. There are no cells and these facilities tend to feel a bit more free and privileged than higher level facilities. Although we were unclassified, we were currently in a level 2 facility and I would remain in a level 2 facility for the duration of my sentence.

Level 3 offenders live in housing units with cells, similar to Shawshank Redemption.

Level 4 prisons are similar to level 3, but more oppressive. Picture armed officers and trained police dogs.

Level 5 prisoners never leave their cells. Picture death row. Showers roll up on conveyor belts to cell doors 3 times a week. Isolation. Insanity.

The first door on the right led to a small day room. There were a few metal table/chair combos bolted to the floor, a decently-sized flatscreen TV, a microwave, a tub of clean dog blankets, and a tub of dog food.

“Oh shit, they keep the dogs here?” Jared asked with some excitement. We had seen a few dogs playing around the rec-yard with the inmates on our way in.

Across the hall from the day room were two private showers — each the size of a cell — with mosaic tiled walls and floors.

“And look at these showers,” Mark said in response. “It’s like moving into a palace. No graffiti or nothin’”

I’d later learn that there is a floor covering vocational class at this facility. These tiled showers were the result of their work.

At the mention of the word “graffiti”, the Sergeant chimed in, “and let’s keep it that way.”

The remaining doors in the hallway led to individual cells and there were 2 phones attached to the wall at the far end.

We continued down the hallway a short way and saw whiteboards on the walls next to cells with our names on them — my name next to the word “TOP,” Jared’s next to the word “BOTTOM.”

“Into the cell with your name on it,” ordered the Sergeant.

Moving into a new cell comes with a fair amount of anxiety. Is my new cellie gonna snore? Is he gonna stink? Does he have any diseases I can catch? Are we gonna fight?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jared. I had shared a pod with him in jail for a couple months and knew he was loud, brash, and assertive. If he didn’t like something, he wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion about it. It was also not his first time in prison. Was I going to break some rule I didn’t know about and offend him? Yes, but not for another few hours at least.

I walked into the cell and sat down in one of the two plastic chairs and slid a property box out from underneath the bottom bunk. One chair and one box had a “T” on it, one chair and one box had a “B” on it — leaving no room for disagreement on who got which.

I unloaded my laundry bag into the box — 5 white t-shirts, 5 pairs of socks, 5 pairs of white boxer shorts, 1 pair of sweatpants, 1 sweatshirt, a denim jacket, a handheld radio, a pair of headphones, 5 ramen soups, a bible, a pad of paper, a few pre-stamped envelopes, a flexible ink pen, and a deck of cards. Back in jail, this stuff filled the entirety of the rubbermaid tub issued to me. Here in prison, this stuff didn’t even fill half of the property box.

A few moments later we heard the sound of locks being released as COs in the control center unlocked the cells of the regular inmates who lived farther down the hallway.

These guys were permanent residents of this level 2 prison and this housing unit was considered an “honors” unit. The offenders lived in cells — offering more privacy than a level 2 prison typically allows — while maintaining the freedoms and privileges of the low-level facility. Among the residents were dog handlers and guys with level 1 classifications who had maintenance jobs outside of the fence.

We were still unclassified — in a place known as “receiving” — where we would remain until they determined our classification. We shared a hallway with the level 1 and 2 offenders who were trusted not to interact with us.

Jared quickly pulled his body wash out of his laundry bag and turned back around to the door and held it up to the window.

It caught the eye of one of the inmates on the other side. “I’ll give you 6 soups for it,” shouted the stranger.

“Nah,” Jared responded. “I got soups. I want something new. What else you got?”

The guy on the other side thought for a moment and responded with a question, “refried beans?”

“Ok, and what else,” Jared continued his negotiation.

“Refried beans and a block of cheese,” the other guy said.

“Deal,” said Jared. “How do I get this to you?”

There was a 2-inch gap under the door, but it wasn’t big enough for the bottle to fit through.

The guy on the other side said, “leave it in the tub of dog blankets next time you get rec.”

“Aight bet.”

Jared turned around to me and asked, “you got soups right?”

“Yea I’ve got a few,” I answered.

“Cool. I’ve got refried beans and cheese. We can eat tomorrow.”

“Wait, you don’t have soups? You just said you have soups.”

“I lied. But you got soups. So we can eat tomorrow,” he said.

The rest of the day was spent lying on our bunks and trying to make conversation, but Jared and I didn’t have much in common. He was serving a 5 year sentence for violating his probation. I was serving 4 years for wrecking a sports car at 120mph. We came from very different backgrounds.

“5 years for a piece of crack this big,” he would say with a lisp while holding out the tip of his pinky finger. I think I was supposed to be surprised at the excessive sentence for such a small amount of crack, but I had no baseline for how much time corresponded with how much crack. To this day, I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen a piece of crack.

At intervals throughout the day a meal cart would roll through and we’d be served trays through the slot on the door. The food was delicious compared to jail food. Dinner was Chicken à la King over rice, freshly baked dinner rolls, garden-fresh veggies that came from one of the farms run by a level 1 prison, an apple, and freshly baked cookies.

After dinner we made a card table by stacking our property boxes on top of each other.

“You know how to play war?” he asked.

“For sure,” I said.

He dealt out the deck of cards — half the deck to each person. We’d each pull the top card from our decks and lay them face up. The player who played the higher card would take both cards back to the bottom of his deck. The player with all the cards at the end was the winner.

We played a few uneventful games to pass the time until there was a fun moment in one of the games. We had both played an ace face up.

“Alright it’s war,” Jared said with some excitement.

We each played 3 cards face down, followed by a 4th face up. Two queens this time.

“No way,” I said.

3 more face down cards came out, followed by a 4th face up. A king for Jared. A 10 for me.

“Ah, bitch,” I said in defeat as he grabbed the big stack of cards on the table and returned them to his deck.

I played out another card, but Jared hesitated. Instead of playing another card he got up from the table and walked over to the window in the door of the cell. But there was no movement out there — nothing to see. The energy had changed, but I didn’t understand it. He was still and silent while staring out into the hallway.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“There’s one thing I can’t stand,” he started. “If someone calls you a bitch and you don’t do somethin’ about it, then everyone’s gonna call you a bitch. I’m not gonna be called a bitch.”

“Ok?” I said in confusion.

“Some people come in here from the streets saying, ‘bitch this,’ and ‘bitch that,’ like, ‘all my friends call each other bitches all the time,’” he continued — the pitch raising in this voice. “Well, it ain’t like that in here, yo. Never in my life have I called a friend a bitch. A bitch is someone beneath you. Someone whose face you wanna rub in the fuckin’ dirt.” He turned to face me, and I saw the anger in his eyes. It looked like he wanted to hit me.

“Ok.” I said. “I get it.”

“I won’t be called a bitch,” he said firmly.

“Alright,” I responded.

He returned to his bunk and laid on it, staring at the bottom of the top bunk. I put the cards away and went back to my bunk.

Did I call him a bitch? I thought to myself.

I had completely forgotten that I just used that word a few moments ago, because it was such an innocuous word to me at the time. I don’t remember if I apologized, but I don’t think I did.

Prior to that moment in my life, the word “bitch” had no power over me. If you called me a bitch in a game of cards I’d probably laugh because it meant I was winning. But if you call me a bitch now I don’t laugh. I look you in the eye to make sure that you’re someone like I was at that card table. I don’t lecture you, but I certainly don’t encourage you. Later in my sentence I would come to learn how people used the word “bitch.” It’s certainly not a word I want ascribed to me and I’ve all but eliminated it from my own vocabulary.

The rest of that evening passed in silence.

The next morning we awoke to the sound of the tray slot opening. This time each tray had 2 large fried eggs, grits, a banana, fresh baked bread, a big scoop of butter, a big scoop of jelly, a plastic pouch full of apple juice, and a small cup of shitty coffee. Compared to the cereal we got in jail this was a massive breakfast. I could hardly stomach all of it.

“God damn, the food here is good,” Jared said. It was a new day and I think he was ready to put the discomfort of the previous night behind him.

Shortly after breakfast the permanent residents of the hall locked down and then our doors popped open. We’d have an hour to shower and socialize. I took a shower and then got on the phone to call home. After that I still had about 30 minutes to socialize before we had to lock down in our cells again for the rest of the day.

Jared stashed his body wash in the tub of dog blankets — trusting that the guy he had spoken to yesterday would hold up his end of the bargain. Long term residents could be trusted more than transient ones like us. After we locked down, 2 bags of refried beans and 2 blocks of cheese slid through the crack under the door.

“We’re gonna eat good tonight, cellie!”

They took off the cuffs, I exchanged my orange jumpsuit-of-shame for green scrubs, and they returned my laundry bag to me which contained all my property.

“5A, 23 bottom. Go,” was the command given to me.

The officer in the booth pushed a button, the front door lock kicked open, and I walked out. I took my time walking down the boulevard — the main sidewalk that connects all the buildings — breathing in the fresh air as I made my way to building 5.

Each main housing unit was separated into two sides. I went through the door marked “A” and made my way to bunk 23 where I was greeted by a guy named Griffin who was sitting in a chair next to the adjacent bunk

Griffin was an old friend. We had met in jail more than a year ago where we bonded over a daily calisthenics routine. We would do 1 pushup, walk the length of the concrete pad that was the rec-yard, do 2 pushups, walk back, 3 pushups, and so on. When we got to 25 we would start counting down until we got back to 1.

“I wonder how many pushups this is,” Griffin would ask.

I didn’t know, but I was pretty confident I could figure out the formula with pen and paper and a few hours of time — something I had plenty of.

“650 pushups,” I told him the next time I saw him.

“No way it’s that much,” he said.

I tried showing him the proof, but I think that made things worse.

When I arrived in building 5, Griffin greeted me from his chair with a smile and introduced his friend Bill who was sitting up in his bed. The two of them were sharing Bill’s TV.

Bill was an older guy — maybe 60 — soft-spoken and frail. I came to find out that if given a choice, Bill would live his life under the influence of anything other than sobriety. If he wasn’t high on something then he was asleep from his trazodone prescription. Or maybe it was seroquel, I don’t know.

After exchanging pleasantries, Griffin gestured for me to come closer. He had Bill’s locker open and he was doing something inside. When I got near I saw he was rolling a joint.

“Look at this stuff, ain’t it weird?”

On the rolling paper I saw what looked like white confetti. Maybe 10-15 little flat squares inside the paper. The joint would be 99% paper and 1% whatever this stuff was.

Bill kept an expressionless face as he continued watching TV.

I went back to unpacking my stuff and got settled into the new location, while the 2 of them waited for the next opportunity to light this thing up.

Bill never really said much to me, but I had one exchange with him that was quite memorable a week or two later. I was coming down with a cold from the petri dish that was 90 inmates packed into a sardine can so I pulled out a bag of cough drops from my locker.

Bill perked up like a dog that just heard the crinkling sound made by a bag of treats. “Those cough drops?” he asked.

“Yea, you want one?" I held out the bag and he reached in to grab one.

“Thanks. I like to eat ‘em like candy,” he said. “Hey man, you like dragons?”

I followed his gaze to the tattoo on my forearm. “Yea, I like dragons.”

“Well how about dragon deez nuts across your face,” he said.

There’s a strange phenomenon when it comes to reputation in prison. If someone calls you a bitch and you don’t do anything about it, then everyone will call you a bitch. And if everyone knows you’re a bitch then you’ll be an easy target for theft and abuse.

On the other hand, beating up a frail old man is a lose-lose situation. If you lose the fight then you got beat up by an old man. If you win the fight… well you just beat up an old man. Some old men — like Bill — used this fact like armor so he could tell jokes.

I looked around to see if anybody else had heard, but it was just us. Bill had made sure I didn’t have any reason to defend my reputation.

“Damn Bill, it’s like that?!”

The ear-piercing screech of a whistle rang through the air, signaling count time. Everyone in the pod stood at the foot of their bunks while 2 COs walked through and counted everyone. When they finished counting us on A-side, they would go through the door to the adjacent pod on B-side of the building and count the inmates over there before returning to the booth to call it in. Each pod took 2-3 minutes to count.

One day after count, Griffin beckoned me as he walked briskly by my bunk on his way to the bathroom. “Hey, come on man. Hit this with me,” he said.

“Where’s Bill?” I responded.

“Fuck if I know. Probably fell asleep somewhere,” was his answer.

I hesitated hard because I knew how this stuff could fuck people up.

Griffin reassured me, “It’s good man, come on.”

But I didn’t trust him. “If it’s good, then why you tryin’ to give it away?”

“Just come on man, we only got a minute,” he whispered urgently before disappearing into the bathroom.

The pod officers knew people would go into the bathrooms and smoke after count, and they tried various things to stop it.

The Blitz Tactic

Immediately after finishing count on B-side they would rush back into A-side and try to catch people smoking in the bathroom. But whenever an officer would enter the pod various “whoops” and “tweet tweets” would be shouted out by the inmates who saw them first. An officer could never enter unnoticed — the first “whoop” would be followed by the sound of flushing toilets and the disappearance of all evidence.

“Why you sittin’ on the toilet with your pants on!” they’d shout over the saloon-style bathroom doors.

“Why you creepin’ on me?” would be the answer, also accompanied by a homophobic slur.

The Slow Play

It wasn’t hard to know who was actually smoking in the bathroom. What was hard was proving it. No better way to catch someone breaking the rules than to put them on the list of people who need to be “randomly” drug tested right?

Well that worked when weed was weed and delta-9-THC could be detected in pee for weeks after a single toke. But these drugs were evolving to avoid detection and delta-9-THC was no longer the primary psychoactive compound.

The Squeeze

When the first two tactics didn’t work, the whole facility was squeezed. Rec-yard time was limited. Shakedown frequency was increased. Evening count would be delayed till 11pm and morning count would be pushed up to 5:30am to make sure nobody got a good night’s sleep.

No better way to prevent people from using drugs than to make sure every other aspect of their lives is awful right? Maybe at least the snitches will crawl out of the woodwork to help.

The reality is that the facility had a drug problem and there was nothing they could do about it. Getting away with smoking in the bathroom was easy.

But the evolution of the drugs often came with unexpected consequences.

One quiet kid was found with his pants around his ankles on the bathroom floor begging for his mommy. Another kid was last seen running naked out of the shower and trying to hug a CO. A normally big and loud guy was heard screaming incoherent nonsense while his friends tried to get him to chill out so he didn’t get caught.

Oh and vomit. Unexpected vomit was pretty much everywhere.

I was chatting with my buddy Felix about it one time. “Man I feel sorry for these guys gettin’ so fucked up when they don’t expect it,” I said.

“You feel sorry for them? I envy them. Give me some of what they’re having!” he responded.

I didn’t understand. “So you wanna run around naked and screaming and puking everywhere?”

“Hell yea! You’ve never been high before have you?”

“I’ve smoked weed a few times in my life. Always enjoyed it, but never made it a priority.”

“Weed high ain’t high man. You’ve never been high before. You should try this shit. There’s no better feeling than the complete loss of control. Especially in here.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said — fully intending to never be so high that I lose control.

But Griffin had reassured me. “It’s good man,” he had said. And Griffin knew me. He knew I wasn’t the type to seek out a total loss of control. If he told me “it’s good” then he must mean this isn’t the crazy stuff that’ll have me stripping off my clothes and running around screaming.

Right?

I mean, I just came out of the hole. What’s the worst that could happen — they send me back? Can’t get any worse than that.

I was about halfway through my sentence. The last time I was free felt like forever ago, and the next time I would be free was too far away to comprehend.

Fuck it.

I walked into the bathroom and found Griffin crouching next to the low wall beside a urinal — a ritual I had seen him and Bill perform countless times. I crouched next to him and he pulled out the lighter. A playing card wrapped carefully around 2 AA batteries with a staple on top. The tip of his thumb was brown from being burned by this thing so often.

He had rolled up some toilet paper into a fluffy wick that would catch a spark quickly. He lit the wick and then held it up to the joint and took a drag.

It smelled kinda like weed. I think.

He took another drag and then passed it to me.

Puff puff pass was the cadence. A good pace to ensure everyone a fair share and also to ensure quick consumption of any lit evidence.

In 30 seconds it was gone.

Next thing I know the door to the rec-yard was open and I was walking towards it. A CO was standing there holding it open for me.

Fuck, he knows I’m high, I thought. Gotta keep walking — keep it together. He has to smell it on me at least. Fuck, he knows. Fuck. He Knows! Jesus why is the door so far away? Fuuuuuuck!!!

I held my breath. He was standing in the doorway and I had to pass just inches away from his nose to get through.

Why didn’t I just go to bed? Why am I going outside? Oh my god the sky is so blue.

“Damn, it’s a beautiful day,” I accidentally said out loud as I walked through the door.

“Yes,” the CO responded. “Today is a beautiful day.”

I had made it outside. I had my clothes on. I didn’t feel like I had to vomit. And the sky was a shade of blue that I had never seen before. Such a beautiful shade of blue.

“They can’t take your bible from you, even if you go to the hole,” he told me. “Always keep a few stamps hidden in there, and maybe an envelope. That way you can at least write your people when you go in so they don’t worry.”

The day I moved into the cell with him he started telling me the rules.

“The first rule is that you spit your toothpaste in the toilet, not in the sink,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you wanna keep the sink clean,” he replied.

I thought this was just one of his weird quirks, but I came to learn that this is a pretty universal rule in jails and prisons. The idea is that you never know when you’re going on lockdown for an extended period of time.1 In those situations you want the option to cook food or do laundry using the hot water in a spit-free sink. Although in my 4 year bid I never saw someone use a sink for anything other than hand washing, but I did see someone do his laundry in a toilet.

“The second rule is that if you have to shit in the cell, you put some water on it. Allow me to demonstrate.”

He sat on the toilet (pants still on) and ripped a long, loud fart while holding down the flush button.

“That would’ve made you gag, but these toilets can suck down a whole bed sheet, so you won’t smell a thing. You’re welcome,” he said.

My previous celly had actually shown me firsthand how powerful the toilets were. His name was Bordo, and true to his name, he was the bored and destructive type. He wanted to test the theory that they can suck down a whole sheet. So he tore off a 6-inch square from the corner of his sheet and moved toward the toilet.

“Dude, you better not flood the cell,” I said to him.

“Don’t worry man, come watch this.” I watched with him as the small square disappeared into the void and the toilet continued blasting water down the chute for another 10 seconds afterwards.

“Oh yea! We can go bigger,” he said.

“So, what, you’re just gonna sleep on that vinyl mattress pad without a sheet?”

“Naw man, they’ll give me another one,” he said as I looked at him in disbelief.

He continued tearing off bigger and bigger pieces and flushing them one at a time until the last remaining bit was practically half a sheet.

“You ready?” he asked.

“I got nothin’ to do with this man, this is all you,” I said while returning to the dry safety of my top bunk.

He held the sheet up high above the toilet, letting the edge of it hover just above the water while he held down the flush button. He gave me a meaningful look before he let it go and sent it on its way.

10 minutes later when the CO was doing another round he shouted through the door.

“Hey, I need a sheet.”

“We just gave you a set of sheets,” she said.

“No, I just got the one, see,” and he held up his one remaining folded sheet to the window for her to see.

“Alright, sit tight,” she said. And a new sheet showed up at the cell door a few hours later.

I guess that’s one way to do laundry in a toilet.

A few weeks after Saget showed me the etiquette of the sinks and the toilets he turned into a downright disrespectful asshole.

It was mid-morning when a lockdown was called. Most people slept through the morning rec period and it was typically a peaceful time of day. I was in the cell reading when Saget backed into it while shouting at other people across the pod — shattering the silence.

“Dude, read the room,” I said.

He turned and gave me an aggressive look, “what did you just say to me?”

“I said it was peaceful in here until you came in yelling and screaming.”

He snapped and got in my face. “Man fuck you! You think you can talk to me like that? You don't know shit about respect in here!”

His voice was rising, and the vein in his forehead bulged as he continued. “I've been locked up longer than you’ve been walking around free, and you think you’re gonna lecture me? I don’t owe you a damn thing! You ain't nobody in here!"

He jabbed a finger toward my chest. “You won't last a day in prison.”

I wanted to punch him right in the face, but he was a scrawny dude and I was afraid I would seriously hurt him, maybe even kill him. I had just heard a story the day before about a guy who punched another guy in the face and accidentally killed him.

But I was mad and wanted him to shut up, so I grabbed him by the throat instead and shoved him into the wall. His face turned bright red and he was silenced immediately. I held him there for a second before letting him go.

It didn’t work. Instead of shutting him up, he went straight to the door of the cell and started banging on it.

“CO, this guy just attacked me! Help!”

I knew I fucked up, but the desire to hit him did not get any weaker. The only thing that held me back this time was the fear of getting hit with pepper spray in retaliation.

The COs came up to the door moments later and looked in the cell carefully before taking any action. They saw a hysterical Saget standing by the door yelling and screaming and a calm, but angry, me sitting in a chair at the back of the cell.

They opened the door and led us into separate areas of the pod.

“Dude, tell me what happened,” the CO asked. He was one of the trustworthy COs. He knew right from wrong and wasn’t a stickler for the rules. But a fight had just been called in over the radio so his hands were tied.

I recapped the scene for him and he stepped away for a moment. When he came back he said, “Saget said you threatened to kill him. Is that true?”

“What?” I was shocked. “No. Dude is crazy.”

“I know man,” he said, “he has gambling debts and he’s just tryin to get moved to a different pod. You fell right into his trap. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong man, but the captain says I gotta take you outta here.”

90 other inmates watched through the windows of their cell doors as I was put into handcuffs and led out of the pod. A few of the shouts I remember hearing were:

“Man, fuck that little bitch Saget.”

And:

“Ey CO! You’re taking out the wrong dude!”

They thought I was a hero. I thought I was a sucker.

Saget’s bible tip was a damn good tip it turns out, but I didn’t quite get it right. I kept all my stamps inside the envelope in my bible. And when I was taken to the hole they took out the envelope before handing over my bible. The only way I could get more stamps was to buy them off commissary…. 10 days later.

I got that peace and quiet I was fighting for, but my veins were full of adrenaline and I had no outlet for it. All I could do was pace back and forth for a while — 3 steps at a time — until my heart rate returned to normal. I felt better when I learned that I was given 7 days in the hole but Saget was given 14.

I took a piss and tried to flush the toilet but… it wouldn’t flush. I was confused. I had to yell out the door to get another person in the hole to help me out.

“What?” he shouted. “You gotta yell into the crack of the door, otherwise I can’t hear you.”

I had been yelling at the top of my lungs at the door window but he couldn’t make out my words. I could hear him loud and clear though. It was surprising how much of a difference it made to move my head 2 feet to the left and shout into the crack.

“How do I flush the toilet?” I shouted.

“You gotta wait til the CO does his rounds and then you can ask him to flush it for you,” the kind stranger told me. “Just put a towel over the toilet to keep the smell in."

In an effort to prevent troublemakers from purposely flooding their cells and the entire hole, the toilets were flushed by the COs from the pipe chase. They would also shut off the toilets before a lockdown to prevent inmates from flushing any contraband.

Several months later I was in phase 3 of the jail2 when someone shouted, “god damn, come look at this!” to no one in particular. Every cell in the pod had its own toilet, but there were also 4 community toilets in this pod. 2 on the bottom tier in the corners of the room and 2 on the top tier just above. A curtain separated them from the rest of the pod. This shout came from one of the community toilets on the top tier.

I was personally not too keen on investigating anything exciting in the community toilet. But Cornwhistle3 heeded the call before repeating it, “holy shit, ya’ll have got to see this.”

This time a CO answered the call and came to investigate. His reaction was to get on the radio and call more officers into the pod. Moments later, a group of 5 COs entered the pod, walked up the stairs, and stepped into the community toilet area.

“Jesus Christ that thing’s the size of a softball!”

“How the fuck did that come out of someone?”

“That’s a dope turd!”

“Dude must’ve been backed up for weeks.”

“Will it even go down?”

**toilet flushes**

“No! Holy shit, I’ve never seen something conquer one of these toilets.”

“Who did this? Was it you?”

Nobody ever admitted to it.

Just a wake-up now!

Every morning Mark would tell me the number of days until Tuesday. And when Tuesday would arrive and we’d find ourselves in the same old jail he’d shake his head and start the count over again with, “6 and a wake-up!”

Mark was an older guy, mid-50s maybe, with a big scar across his face. Not sure how it got there, but I’m sure it’s related to the cause of his heroin addiction. Almost every addict I met had some sort of physical flaw — the type of thing you’d see on the face of a villain in a Disney movie.

Society shunned him and made him feel like an outcast. Dope welcomed him and made him feel warm.

I’ll admit that when I first met him I was intimidated. He was a big guy, a fast talker, and people seemed to respect him. But as time went on and I got to know him, I realized he was a lot like me. He liked to laugh and have a good time, even though we were in a shit-hole.

Mark and I were sentenced on the same day about 7 months prior. Inmates who were sentenced were transferred from jail to prison on Tuesdays. We weren’t supposed to know this officially, of course, but it’s not hard to spot the patterns. Tuesday was the day — we just didn’t know which Tuesday. And the fact that it was early January meant we had just gone through a bunch of Tuesdays that fell on holidays and Mark kept restarting his countdowns.

When I got to the kitchen for work that Monday morning, I was called into the supervisor’s office.

“Show Dee Tarrow how to cook today,” she ordered.

She was referring to a guy named de la Torre, but she was too obtuse to try to pronounce it correctly. De la Torre had been dutifully washing dishes for a couple of months - ever since the Starbucks incident.1

Ricky overheard the supervisor’s command and came up to me right away with an outstretched hand. “Well man, it’s been good doin’ time with you,” he said.

I grabbed his hand and clapped him on the back. “You too man. Hurry up and get sentenced so you can join me down the road.” Ricky had been in the kitchens for almost a year while he was going through the courts for his crimes. He had something like 37 felonies to deal with.

Cornwhistle overheard the exchange too and chimed in. “Ey yo, you’re goin down the road? Hell yea man, get the fuck outta here. I was sentenced about a month after you were, so I should be joinin’ you soon.”

The kitchen supervisor stormed out of the office and shouted, “nobody’s going anywhere, now get back to work!”

She was trying to keep her poker face (and her job), but by the end of the shift she called me back into the office and wished me good luck in my future. Must be hard to run a kitchen to feed a thousand people with workers coming and going, especially if you only get a day of notice and you aren’t allowed to tell anyone that it’s their last day.

Back in the pod that evening I picked up the phone and called my old lady.2

“I don’t know what the phone situation is gonna be like after today, so you might not hear from me for a few weeks,” I told her. “But I should be able to write you. Just keep an eye on the website3 and you’ll know where I am and how to write me. I’ll call you when I can.”

“I’m nervous,” she told me. “I know you’ve been looking forward to getting out of that jail, but at least you’re close to home right now. The closest prison is over an hour away.”

Mark was in my ear while I was trying to reassure her, “just a wake-up now, ahh ha ha,” his fists were in the air in his excitement. He had been to prison before and could personally vouch for it.

“Receiving is gonna suck,” he’d tell me. “The first 2 weeks you’re stuck in a cell for 24 hours a day. It’s like being in the hole except you can keep your property, at least. Any books you have, or a deck of cards or whatever. Commissary food too — but ain’t no microwaves in the cell. After receiving you get to where you’re gonna be though and it’s a new kinda freedom. A big rec yard and you can see trees in the distance. Trees man! And grass under your feet. Real grass! Fuck these concrete pads man. Oh yea, just 1 more wake-up now, ahh ha ha!”

All I could do was try to pass on Mark’s excitement through the phone for the remainder of our call until it was time to lock down for the night.

Pack your shit. You’re moving.

The knock on the cell door came at 4am and it didn’t take long for me to get my t-shirts, underwear, socks, and stationery into my laundry bag. There’s usually no warning before you get moved — especially when moving between facilities. The theory is that people could make arrangements to get help escaping if they had prior knowledge of when they were being transported. But I’m not El Chapo.

I was taken back down to booking and fed a hasty breakfast. I gave back the state-issued scrubs and was put into an orange jumpsuit before being shackled up like I was when they brought me here.4

Legs cuffed and chained together. Hands cuffed in front with a little black box over the chain forcing the insides of my wrists to face each other at all times. Another chain to go around my waist and attach to the black box and the chains between my feet. Apparently the guy who invented the little black box was a former inmate himself. Fuck that guy and his little black box — that thing is awful.

I was put into the back of a van with Mark and a couple other guys I had been doing time with for the last few months. The guy driving the van was the same guy who strip-searched me when I arrived at the jail. The woman in the passenger seat set a loaded shotgun in the mount between the front seats. The garage door lifted, and we set off.

It was the first time I’d been in a moving vehicle for 7 months. The driver was driving like he was in a racing simulator — almost certainly doing 15 or 20mph over the speed limit at times. Luckily the roads were fairly straight or I might have felt a bit of motion sickness.

When we arrived, the van drove around the new facility to the sally port at the back. Along the way, we could see hundreds of inmates through the razor wire walking around a massive rec yard. Several basketball courts, a soccer field, a softball field, a volleyball court, a weightlifting area, and dogs. At least 2 dogs running around the yard off-leash and interacting playfully with everyone.

“They got dogs here?” said Jared. “Damn, I want a dog.” In jail I shared a pod with Jared for a couple of months — and I was about to share a cell with him for the next 2 weeks. He was big, loud, brash, didn’t smile much, and had a lisp like Mike Tyson (his physical flaw). He was also full of quirks that surprised me at first, but I would later come to adopt a few of them myself.

“Don’t stand behind me, man,” he had said in the jail pod. He was sitting in a chair and I was posted up on the wall about 6 feet behind him right by the door to my cell. I had just arrived in the pod that day and didn’t really know where I wanted to be, but he told me where I couldn’t be. “I don’t like when people are behind me,” he said.

The van pulled into the sally port and stopped. We got out one at a time and were taken into a small building where we were strip searched and our laundry bags were searched and put through an x-ray machine. Then we were led down a short sidewalk to one of the smaller L-shaped buildings — the administrative housing unit. One wing of the L was the hole. The other wing was like an honors dorm. Some inmates with special jobs — like dog handlers, and grounds maintenance crews — lived here. A few cells in the honors wing were reserved for us — the new arrivals awaiting processing.

Welcome to the rock.

Said the Sergeant who could never be seen without a toothpick in his mouth as he led us down the short sidewalk. To our left, through a chain-link fence, we could see inmates at the commissary window filling up laundry bags so full of food that they had to sling them over their shoulders, the bottoms damn near dragging on the ground as they made the long walk back to their housing units.

“What, you think you’re Sean Connery or something?” said Mark.

Before the Sergeant could respond one of the guys at the commissary window yelled out, “fresh meat!”

I was caught off guard when Mark responded, “hey, fuck you! You just wait a couple weeks and I’ll be on the other side of this fence and you can say that to my face. I’ll show you some fresh meat then motherfucker.”

"I've been meaning to ask — when you were in prison, how did you shave?" my old lady1, Annie, asked while we were enjoying a campfire .

And the answer to that question depends on whether you’re in jail or prison. In jail, if you wanted to shave you had to sign up for razors. They'd put out a sign-up sheet at some point and then in the evening about a half-hour before lockdown they'd bring around a bag of these shitty safety razors. Short, orange-handled, single bladed shaving razors that felt like dragging barbed wire across your face. When you were done using them you had to turn them back in and they all had to be accounted for by lockdown or else they would shakedown the facility2 to find it.

In prison you could just buy double-bladed Bics from commissary. The administration made no efforts to track them. Razor blades are useful for lots of non-nefarious reasons too, so pretty much everybody would have a naked blade stashed somewhere. You’d just stomp on the Bic, break out the blades, and voila — now you can cut your summer sausage without breaking your plastic spork. It was technically against the rules to do this, but nobody cared.

“I’m sure blades were also useful for protection too, right?” was Annie’s next question.

“Oh no,” was my answer.

Not where I was anyway. If you got caught with a weapon you would immediately be shipped to a higher level facility. There was a guy in jail with me who had previously done some fed-time in Oklahoma who was addicted to making weapons. He would tell a story about going out to a steakhouse after he was released from his previous bid and when the cutlery was put out he stashed the steak knife in his lap out of habit.

He ended up in the same low-level prison as me, made a weapon, and got tore off3 the same day. I was in the hole when this happened and I remember overhearing his conversation to one of the shift lieutenants as he was being brought in.

“I don’t know where that thing came from. Somebody must have put it under my bunk, man. I mean, I’ve only been here for a couple of days, how could I have even made one in that time? And what would I need to do with it anyway?” his rhetoric sounded confident to me.

“Oh yea,” the LT’s voiced boomed back at him. “We can’t prove it’s yours.”

“So ya’ll can let me go then?”

“Yea, movement’s closed for the day so sit tight for now and we’ll get you taken care of in a minute.”

…the next morning he was gone. Shipped overnight to a high-level facility. Most transfers to other prisons happened on a schedule of once every 2 weeks, but this one was special.

I put another piece of wood on the fire and waited for her next question.

There was a bit of a pause before she asked, “how did you cut your summer sausage in jail?”

The most common way was with your teeth. Just take little nibbles, let the cubes drop into a bowl, then mix it in with your soup or whatever. Most new inmates would try to use the side of a spork or spoon and would inevitably break it. The most creative offenders would sharpen one side of a spoon a bit on the concrete rec-yard pad, but these would often get confiscated.

Only on one occasion did I see a naked razor blade in jail. It was shaving time with the safety razors and a guy came running down the stairs from the top tier toward the COs’ desk.

“I didn’t mean to I swear,” he shouted. “I just dropped it accidentally and accidentally stepped on it and it accidentally broke and I’m sorry and everything’s all here you can check look it was an accident,” I’ve never heard a sentence spoken faster in my life.

Everybody in that pod — including the COs — knew he was lying, but nobody was bleeding and all the bits of the safety razor were accounted for so he got away with it. No way he’d get away with it a second time.

“What about hair cuts?” she asked. “In that picture you showed me you had a shiny bald head.”

In jail, a sign-up sheet would be posted once a month. The next day 2 inmates from phase-3 dressed in white scrubs4 would enter the pod and set up a couple of barber chairs. They didn’t have scissors — just ordinary electric hair trimmers. One by one they’d go down the list and give out buzz cuts.

Craig was a light-skinned black guy and he’d give out more than buzz cuts. If you were expecting a visit and you wanted to look sharp, you’d put a couple of stamps in his hand and he’d give you a nice fade.

Hollister was a white guy with a stern face who’d never cut hair before. Craig tried to teach him to do a fade but he wasn’t very good at it. Only inmates who didn’t want to pay for a fade would let him use them for practice.

In prison it was different. You could buy your own electric hair and beard trimmers. It was kinda like getting commissary but slightly different. You could make a property order once a month for bigger items and they would engrave your state inmate number into them to help prevent theft. They were expensive though — like 50 or 60 bucks.

But they also had a barber shop you could sign up for once a week. I went to it once and asked for a buzz cut with the shortest razor-guard he had. I think the guy must’ve thought I was racist because I left there with more than a few cuts on my head. After that I decided to just use a Bic on my head while showering every couple of days. A bonus was that when it was cold at night, my bedsheet would stick to my head like velcro.

“It’s funny to hear you say 50 or 60 bucks is expensive. That’s like a tank of gas,” Annie remarked.

When the highest paying job is 45 cents an hour for 35 hours a week you get a paycheck of $63 at the end of the month. You can buy an electric razor and 9 soups with that.

“You’ve come a long way since then, hon,” she said after letting the fire crackle through the crisp night air for a moment. “I’m proud of you.”

Interesting story about Hollister — I once asked him what he was in for and his answer was simply, “probation violation.”

I looked him up when I got out and found out that he was on the sex offender registry. I also found out just a few months prior to me looking him up that he was involved in a high speed chase while on a motorcycle. He did not survive.

There was no handle on the inside. Not even a keyhole. Just a solid door with a 2-inch-wide piece of wire-reinforced glass at eye level with a view of an empty, white, cinderblock hallway. The window was so narrow that I could only look out of it with 1 eye at a time unless I turned my head sideways. The door to the courtroom was visible, but it hurt my head to try to focus on it.

Inside the cell was a stainless steel sink-toilet combo. There was a hole in the side of it that could fit a roll of toilet paper, but there wasn’t any toilet paper. The walls were made of cinderblocks and a bench was built into it out of those very same cinderblocks. Fluorescent lights beamed down on me from the 10-foot high ceiling. There was no light switch.

The only thing separating me and the courtroom was a single wall of cinderblocks. Today I wonder if I banged hard enough if people on the other side would be able to hear. Not with my fists, but by turning my back to the wall and donkey-kicking the shit out of it. I learned to do that a few months later when I went to the hole, but that type of barbaric behavior didn’t even cross my mind at the time.

An unknown amount of time later I was shackled up. Legs cuffed and chained together. Hands cuffed in front with a little black box over the chain forcing the insides of my wrists to face each other at all times. Another chain to go around my waist and attach to the black box and the chains between my feet. I was taken down a secret elevator in the back with the other people going to jail that day and into a car park underneath the courthouse that I didn’t know existed.

I approached the steps of the van and thought, “this chain between my legs isn’t long enough to climb these steps.”

As if reading my mind, the deputy said, “they’re long enough. Sit in the back,” and then to the group, “girls in the front row.”

There were no seatbelts.

The gate to the carpark lifted and the driver tore out of there like a smuggler crossing a border.

“How much time did you get?” one of the girls asked as if she knew me.

“Me? 4 years.”

“Damn!" she said, “I got 9 months, time-served.”

I didn’t know who she was or what that meant, but I later found out that she was the daughter of my 3rd grade teacher and she knew exactly who I was. She had been following my case in the newspaper because it was exactly the same as hers - involuntary manslaughter for driving way too fast, losing control, and losing the lives of our friends. She had already served 9 months while awaiting sentencing so she was going back to the jail to be released that day. I was out on bond before sentencing so I was about to spend my first night in jail.

As soon as I stepped foot in jail I was treated like a liar and a thief.

I was taken to a big empty cell with a window in the side of it. The deputy was on the other side of the window and asked, “you got anything in your pockets?”

“No,” I said.

“Take off your clothes, one article at a time,” he commanded.

I guess he didn’t believe me then, so I complied. Then had to raise my arms, stick out my tongue, lift my sack, turn around, squat, and cough. A routine I would become quite familiar with over the next few years.

He handed me a set of green scrubs to put on and gave me a pair of blue canvas slip-on shoes and sent me back out into the booking cell with the rest of the people from the van. Just the men — the women were taken somewhere else.

Cornwhistle1 would tell me a story a few months later. He knew there was a warrant for his arrest, so whenever he would transport heroin he’d tie it to his nuts so that when he got arrested they wouldn’t find it.

“I was driving through town and they came outta nowhere,” he said with his characteristic drawl. “A bunch of big black SUVs pulled out from the woods — I didn’t even know there were woods in that part of town! It was like they thought I was Walter White or something. They rammed my car, pulled guns on me, tackled me when I got out the car. They did their little pat down and didn’t find the dope so I thought I was in good shape. As long as that one dirtbag ain’t workin’ they won’t strip search me once I get to the jail.”

But he shook his head, “just my motherfuckin’ luck he was working that day and he found it. So now they’re tryin’ to charge me with smuggling drugs into a government institution, those bastards.”

In the main booking cell I was waiting in line to see the nurse in the booking area. There were maybe 8 other guys there. 6 of them were transfers from a smaller jail the next county over. The other 2 were arrested that day, including Hankley2, who was familiar to most of the staff.

“You again? What’d you do this time?” they’d shout as they were walking by the cell where we were all sitting eating hot dogs and baked beans.

“Running a business without a business license,” he’d say.

“Oh,” was the usual response - more of an “oh that sounds like some bullshit“ rather than “oh that makes sense”.

The other guy who got arrested that day was in his early 20s and real quiet. He went in to see the nurse first, but he didn’t come back into the booking cell before the next person was called.

“Oh, he got the turtle suit!” everyone exclaimed with surprise.

The confused look on my face gave me the answer I needed.

“They strip you naked and put you in this green suit that you can’t rip up and kill yourself with. Then they stick you in an isolation cell with a camera in it until the doc can you see you. Shit, it’s Friday though so he’ll be in there all weekend. If he didn’t really wanna kill himself today, he will after a weekend of that!”

I was called next to see the nurse.

She asked me if I had any health concerns, medications, dietary restrictions, etc. Then she looked at me and said, “I want to recommend you for suicide watch.”

“Why?” I asked with surprise.

“Because this is your first time in jail and you’ve just been sentenced to 4 years. You’re 25 years old. You fit the profile of someone who’s gonna try to kill himself.”

“Look,” I said. “I’ve got a good family and support system. I’m sad about the sentence, yea, but I’m not gonna try to kill myself. When I was 10 years old my uncle killed himself and that devastated me and I saw how it devastated my family. I’m not going to put them through that again.”

She seemed convinced but she needed to drive her point home, “ok, I’ll let you go. But if you jump off the top tier then they’ll hold me responsible. So if I get called in to help, I’m not gonna revive you. I’m gonna make sure you’re dead.”

“Damn!” I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you a murderer.”

And off to phase 1 I went3.

Ricky Tottley would stumble out of the cell next to mine and squint at the clock on the wall. He was losing his vision and there was nothing he could do about it until he got sentenced and joined me in prison. You could get a pair of glasses there.

Charlie Cornwhistle1 would come down from a cell on the tier above, full of laughter, “Tottlin’ Tottley can’t see and he can’t even fuckin’ walk anymore. C’mon Ricky, we got some dishes to wash.”

We’d make the 5-minute walk down to the kitchens, then take turns using the only toilet available before joining the assembly line, scooping food onto trays, and stacking trays onto carts that would go out to all the pods in the jail. If there were some leftovers we could eat them. If there were too many leftovers then we had to store them for tomorrow.

As soon as we were done eating we had to wash every single tray that we had just loaded and stacked. In our next assembly line I would dump all the trash from the trays into a big trash can and stack them into racks. Cornwhistle would give them a rinse with a sprayer and push them into a big dishwashing machine. Ricky would pull them out and re-stack them onto big rolling racks so that they could be loaded with food again a couple hours later.

At the far end of the dishwasher room there was a closet that was usually locked - inside was a water heater and a mop sink. On one occasion I remember walking into the dish room and Ricky and Cornwhistle were nowhere to be found. The closet on the far end was open, so I walked in and found Cornwhistle squatting in the corner behind the water heater. I startled him, he yelled “oh”, and I walked out. I didn’t know what he was doing and I didn’t wanna know.

After 2 more seemingly endless shifts and a nap, my buddy Clint offered me a cup of coffee. He was the head cook and had just stolen a bunch of coffee grounds from the kitchen storage room. Coffee that was meant for use in the C.O.’s break room. He’d put the grounds in a clean t-shirt stretched over a cup and pour boiling water over it. I’m pretty sure he also burned the shit out of himself.

I joined Cornwhistle and Ricky at a card table.

“Welp. I got caught chokin’ my chicken today,” Cornwhistle told Ricky as I sat down2.

I waffled uncomfortably, “I mean, I didn’t see anything and I wasn’t gonna say anything. You gotta do what you gotta do,” I said.

“I just have a thing about doing it in public places,” Cornwhistle continued.

Ricky’s face was red and he was nearly in tears, “we don’t need the details man.”

The door to the pod opened with a POP and the on-duty C.O. walked in.

Whew! Smells like Starbucks in here.

In phases 1 and 2 there were always at least 2 C.O.s in every pod at all times. In phase 3 we were often left alone with the cameras, but they would still make their rounds.3

Nobody in the pod knew that his comment was a warning, so the next day when we went to work, they tossed the cells and found the coffee.

Clint went to the hole along with probably 5 or 6 others who had evidence of coffee in their cells. It felt so innocent when Clint handed me that cup of coffee the day before, I would’ve felt like a complete fool if I went to the hole for it. I was lucky not to get caught.

On the plus side, I got promoted to head cook!

Over the next few weeks I learned how to chop onions by the dozen, Ricky learned to put either Fruit Loops or bananas in the cake batter - whichever he could get his hands on - and Cornwhistle… well, he kept going in that closet.

One day he approached me kinda quiet and said, “ay man.”

He looked to his left. He looked to his right.

“If I was to - hypothetically - make some hooch4, would you want in on it?”

“At what cost?” I asked.

“Nothin man, Ricky and I got too much of it. Also, I don’t really have a thing for masturbating in public - I just made that up cuz I didn’t trust you yet.”

Get on down the road man, you don’t wanna do your time here.

I had just been sentenced to 3 years for a felony plus 12 months for a misdemeanor. It was day 1 in jail for us both, but we were at very different stages in the process.

Hankley had just been arrested for “running a business without a business license.”

“Oh really"? I asked, trying to take an interest. “What type of business are you in?”

“Not doin shit right now am I! Anyway, down the road they got softball, volleyball, horseshoes. You can buy peanut butter by the jar. They got vocational programs, so you can work on small engines. You can go to school, get your GED. Yea, there ain’t shit like that here, get on down the road man. You’ve already been sentenced - get outta here.”

Um. Ok, yea I’ll get right on that. I’ll just, what, leave through the front door and start walking?

I spent the next 7 months in that jail - going through the phases and watching people come and go.

Phase 1

It’s a weird feeling to not know what time it is, even when it doesn’t matter. Locked in a cell for 23-hours a day, much of that time is spent sleeping - or trying to sleep at least. There was a big analog clock in the pod, but it was on a wall that most cells couldn’t see.

“What time is?” was a common shout heard throughout the day, sometimes with a reply in tow.

The COs1 worked in 12-hour shifts, alternating between 3 days on with 2 days off and 2 days on with 3 days off. On day 3 inside I saw a face I recognized when the new night shift came on - a guy I used to play baseball with.

He was doing his rounds when his face came to the window of my cell accompanied by a look of surprise.

“What the hell are you doin here man?”

I said some words, but he couldn’t hear them through the door.

“Gimme 9!” He shouted down the other CO at the desk who pushed a button on the screen in front of him.

POP went the lock - loud enough to make a dog shit himself I’d later find out - and the door sprung open.

“Vehicular manslaughter. I lost control at a hundred and twenty and a friend of mine died.”

“Damn dude, that sucks. You don’t belong here,” he said before slamming the door closed in my face.

I’d find out later that most people hated this guy. He was one of those young COs who felt like he had to flex his authority. When I was in court for sentencing there was another guy being sentenced to 18 years for throwing a microwave at this very same guy. He didn’t give me any trouble though.

Phase 2

Two weeks later and it was out of the dreary quiet and into the chaos: inmates out of their cells for much of the day, playing cards, watching TV, microwaving coffee, soup, or candy.

The jail was set up to encourage inmates to get into phase 3. With 2 extra hours outside of the cell each day, “privileges” to work in more interesting parts of the jail (there were legendary vats of peanut butter that kitchen workers had access to), and movie rentals shown on weekends, this was the place to be.

“They’ll put you in phase 3 right away. You’re a good person. Not like those other idiots,” my girlfriend would tell me over the phone.

To get into phase 3 you had to complete a mandatory program. Either AA/NA2, anger management, or financial planning. Each program met once a week for a month and you’d have to wait for the schedule to cycle back to the beginning before you could join. You’d also have to sign up for pod work, which involved cleaning the tables and microwaves, sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing the showers. These workers got to stay out an extra 20 minutes after lockdown to do their jobs. Time which was often spent microwaving more food.

Most people in phase 2 didn’t want to go to phase 3, which surprised me at first. They’d never do the “mandatory” programming and they’d refuse to sign up for pod work. They thrived in the chaotic environment by getting into daily routines of TV, workouts, and cards.

The Hole

If you did something stupid - like get into a fight - you’d go to the hole for a week or two. When you came out, you’d start over in phase 1. Didn’t finish your mandatory programming? You can start it again from the beginning.

Oops.

Phase 3

People were either at work or asleep. Although it was permitted to be outside of the cells until midnight, many people had to wake up at 4am for the start of the morning kitchen shift.

I quickly came to the realization that there were no weekends or holidays. Work was every day and if you didn’t want to go, then you’d go to the hole. Not back to phase 2. To the hole.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

— The Constitution

Oops.

Hey man, you want a 8 ball?

He held out his hand and inside were 4 or 5 marble-sized, white balls. He had cut the fingertips off of some latex gloves, filled them with something, and offered one to me.

I had just moved into the pod that day. I could tell he was one of those old-timers who didn’t know how to speak at any volume other than 11. Every person in the pod can hear every word he says at all times no matter how far away they try to be.

Ey young! 8 ball?

The bottom eyelid of one his eyes half closes as his eyebrows raise.

“No thanks,” I said, distrustful of all strangers at this point - too naive to know that even in jail, strangers are mostly harmless. Unless you’re a child molester.

I knew it wasn’t drugs. There’s no way he would be so loud and open about it.

“This jail has ears,” I read once in the local newspaper. A quote by a member of the drug taskforce or something. I looked up at the speakers and thought that maybe they doubled as microphones until somebody cleared it up for me.

“Not technology dumbass. That’s too expensive. Fuckin’ snitches. They’re everywhere.”

“So what’s up with this dude peddlin’ 8 balls?”

“That’s dude’s hustle. It’s candy man. You should’ve taken one. First one’s free. Next one’s gonna cost you.”

“Damn.” I like candy.

You could get Jolly Ranchers and Now and Laters from commissary. This guy would take a Now and Later out of the wrapper and microwave it in 10 second intervals until it got soft and pliable. He’d do the same thing with the Jolly Ranchers, but more carefully. There was a fine line between pliable and liquid for those. He would then roll them out into a tube-like shape and twist them together. Mixing and matching colors and flavors and creating all sorts of shapes.

On this particular occasion he had managed to get the Now and Later completely inside a sphere of Jolly Rancher.

A few weeks later I saw a new guy in the pod sucking on one of these fancy pieces of candy - like something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

The candyman was sitting at a table watching Soul Train reruns with his stickman and eating pizza. The kind with crust made from several packs of Ramen noodles and wet crackers. Topped with actual pizza sauce they managed to steal from the kitchen, refried beans, summer sausage, pickles, several cups of tub-cheese, and ranch dressing.

I had soup. 1 pack of Ramen noodles. Water. Microwave. Seasoning packet. Belly. You were only allowed to buy 10 food items per week from commissary. I would usually buy 7 soups and 3 sweets to get me through a week. That pizza was easily 15 food items.

I walked over to their table and asked, “how much for a piece of candy?”

He hardly turned his head away from the TV and replied simply, “dolla.”

It’s like he was annoyed that I was even asking. Like he didn’t even consider me to be a worthy buyer.

I walked into my cell, grabbed 2 soups out of my locker and dropped them on the table where he was sitting. He turned to me square-on, took off his headphones, and held out his hand that was fully of shinies and sparklies.

“Pick your poison,” he said. A huge grin appearing on one side of his face.

LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN IN THE FACILITY!

The phrase cracks over the loudspeaker with urgency. Never a request. Always a command. Stop what you’re doing and go to your cell. Nothing else matters. Leave the chess pieces where they are. Stop watching Bad Girls Club reruns on Oxygen. Take your cold, wet soup out of the microwave and go to your cell. If you’re lucky, you can still see the TV from the window in your cell door. It’s less important whether your radio can pick up the audio.

Maybe you’ll be out again in 5 minutes. It’s probably just a false alarm, right? Maybe there was a fight over in the other pod and once the offenders get taken to the hole the rest of us can come out again. Or maybe it’s a shakedown and you’ll be here for the next 5 days. God I hope not, my cellie1 fuckin’ stinks.

…

Over the next 3 or 4 days the officers of the institution will search every cell from top to bottom. Unmaking your bed, unfolding your clothes, scattering your letters all over the floor of your cell. They’ll strip you naked and search each individual piece of clothing you are wearing. Looking in the sewn seams for “contraband”. Once you’re naked you can turn around, lift your sack, squat, and cough for good measure.

Realistically they’re just flexing their authority muscles and making you take the 3x5 photo of your newborn son down from the wall because it’s a “security” issue. You saw Shawshank Redemption right? We all know you’re digging a tunnel out of here behind that photo with the razor blade we couldn’t find in your asshole.

Oh well, it’s the most socialization I’ve had in days anyway. It was fun while it lasted. Why does it take 3 days to do this for the whole institution when it took 4 hours to search 1 of only 3 pods? They’re probably just relaxing in the break room and enjoying the silence while we sit in our cages like good little dogs.

…

When we finally emerge from our cages it’s July. The door to the rec yard is open and the thought of fresh air and sunshine fills my heart with joy and longing. I step through the door into the generously-sized larger cage. A 2,000 sq. ft. concrete pad surrounded by 30' ft. high cinderblock walls with a chain link fence for a lid.

It’s hot. And the sun feels great on my skin. And I want more of it. So I grab a seat on the sunny side of the yard so I can continue to enjoy these sensations for the next…

LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN IN THE FACILITY!

Motherfuckers in the other pod fighting again. Always ruining it for the rest of us.