Incarceration at 1200 Baker

I was supposed to serve a full year behind bars. I went from having no arrests on my record to three felony charges in the span of a week. Two of the charges (tampering with gov docs and possession of identifying information) carried sentences of 2-10 years and one charge (burglary of habitation) carried a sentence of 2-20 years. Since I had never been arrested before the honorable Judge Vanessa Velasquez offered me deferred adjudication that included a 5-year probation, 6 months in Harris County Jail, and 6 months in SAFP (jail rehab). As long as I successfully complete my probation, all charges will be dismissed. I could have taken the felony conviction and stayed out of jail, but I chose the harder route and am betting on myself to be over and done with all of that non-sense. At the 6-month mark of my jail sentence, I was called before the judge. My lawyer told me that my interaction with Judge Velasquez was enough to convince her that I did not need to remain behind bars for another six months.

“You had never been arrested before? What got you into this burglary and credit card fraud?”

“Your honor, I developed a bad drug addiction and lost everything that I had spent my life working for. I lost my family, my career, my money; everything. I had never been in any type of trouble before my addiction consumed me.”

“What kind of job did you have before all of this?”

“I was a Wealth Manager with [my well known company] for 10 years.”

“Wow, that’s a good job. That’s a really good job.” (thanks a lot lady)

I was standing up in front of her and she looked up at me over her reading glasses. Felt like she was trying to see if I was full of shit. This all went down in a makeshift courtroom. The Houston Criminal Justice building had undergone significant damage from Hurricane Harvey so all cases were being held in the basement of some random run-down city building. She didn’t even have her robe on, she was in street clothes.

“Yes, judge, my dad was in the Navy, I went to [my private] University. I had never been in trouble with the law before any of this went down. I am sorry for what I did, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I have gone to rehab and sobered up and see now how much I messed up. I won’t do anything close to that again.”

“Alright well…I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to move on then.”

I glanced over at the DA who quickly thumbed through a manila folder in his hands.

“Uhhh, judge, you had another six months left for him to serve.”

“Well, I don’t think he needs it.”

She said it so matter-of-factly. Like she had decided to go with the fish plate over the chicken. And just like that, I had six months of my life given back to me. Talk about real power. I mean fuck. It felt like I just happened to catch her in good mood or something. I remember being stunned.

“Wait, so this means I get to leave? When do I get to go home?”

“Well, tonight.”

I floated back to my cell and told all my cellmates that I was getting out. 6 months of watching other inmates leave and be happy about leaving and it was finally my turn. Around 3:00 AM, I heard what every inmate at Harris County wishes they could hear.

[Jail Intercom at 3:00 AM]- “Alpha Tweaker ATW. Alpha Tweaker ATW”

ATW. A…T… fucking W. ATW is the jail acronym for “All the way.” It means you are being released and processed all the way out of jail. I packed up my mattress and sheet, gave my extra blanket away and all my snacks, and this dude that was waiting to get my lower bunk from an upper bunk immediately hopped in my bunk. It took another 14 hours of waiting in holding cells before I processed out, but I was just fine with that.

My lawyer had told me I was likely going to have to do a year sometime around late April of 2017. My next court date was set for July 25th and he said that I should be prepared to check into jail on that day. Knowing that I had a few months left before having to do a year behind bars, I panicked. The pull and allure of one last run in the fast life was too much for me to just sit there sober for a couple months and then just report to jail. I could have gotten in major trouble had I gotten busted in this last run. Multiple year long sentence I am sure if I were to have caught more charges while out on bail. I would have been royally fucked.

It was at this time that I reached out to Raquel and had that Facebook discussion in my other post about me coming back to stay with her. She wanted to see me, but was hesitant about my making things worse. I wasn’t as concerned about that at the time. There is a saying about the type of condition that you want your body to be in when you die. Some people wish to arrive safely and securely at the doorstep of death before they crossover. My mindset was the opposite. I literally saw jail as death and planned on arriving there barely keeping my body held together from the wild ride. If I was going to go to jail for a year and leave this fast drug-dealing type of fraud life behind me for good, I had to get one last run in. One more time.

I had a digital camera in my room I had gotten off fraud and without any notice, I hobbled out of my parents house on my crutches and took an Uber to a nearby pawn shop. I pawned the camera and had around $140 to get started. I texted my parents something about not worrying about me and that I would be OK and they didn’t pursue me. I later found out that the first thing they did was call my IOP Drug Counselor and ask what they should do. “Let him go.” He said. Aside from physically restraining me, there was nothing they could have done to stop me. I was determined to not go quietly. I called Raquel as soon as I left the pawn shop and let her know that I had dipped out of my parents.

“What the fuck alphatweaker you did?!? You fucking dumbass! Are you going to report to jail?”

“Of course I am going to jail. I have to go to jail. They caught me! You’re cool with me coming to stay with you for a bit right?”

“Oh my God yes! Come down and you can stay with me. I have been working near Willowbrook and making good money. I need my co-pilot back. I’ll get you a bus ticket right now.”

Bless this girl’s heart.

This awesome friend of mine missed me and bought me a bus ticket to come be with her. On a quick side note, someone commented on my Raquel posting that she had probably been waiting for a moment of safety and comfort before committing suicide/overdosing. I wonder if she had planned to do that when I arrived all along. She did seem a bit overly excited to get me down with her. I’m not sure. I guess it doesn’t do any good to concern myself with such thoughts. I guess I will never fully know.

I hopped on the bus, made it to her hotel in Willowbrook, and an hour or so later, had found her in the tub. Raquel’s death sparked off a series of unfortunate events that helped affirm the thought that was festering in the back of my head that there is no good end game to this fast life. In the months leading up to my court date on July 25th, 2017:

– Raquel died

– I broke my leg

– Arielle was lost in DMT obsession

– Phil completely sold me out

– I caught three felony charges

After Raquel died, I bounced between Houston and Dallas for a couple of weeks aimlessly getting high, running fraud, and then gambling away my cash and repeating the cycle.

I drove down to Houston the day before I was to appear in court. I spent my last free night with a Mexican girl that I had grown quite close to over the previous 2.5 years. “Janessa” was a girl that I had met on Craigslist early on in my run. She was removed from the fast life that I was living, but we still had a close relationship. She wasn’t a full-blown meth addict, but called me whenever she needed that type of release an escape. She had always had a serious boyfriend, but he was very controlling and her way of getting back at him was meeting up with me. Janessa and I stayed up all night and had one last good night. I couldn’t have asked for a better send off. I had purposefully stayed up for a few days leading up to that night with the thought of crashing hard in jail. This last night, along with ice, I had GHB and Xanax. Right before I walked into the courtroom, I took one last big swig of GHB, snorted a rail of ice, and took the Xanax bar.

My parents had come down from Dallas for this. I sat with them in the courtroom benches and waited for my name to be called. My mom must have sensed that I wasn’t all there. She looked me in the eye and whispered asking if I was OK. I remember almost bursting into tears and wanting to just release and tell her everything that I had been through these last few months. Instead I just nodded and mumbled “yeah, a friend of mine died in front of me…this girl…I found her in the tub and she died….” I tried to start explaining it, but just gave up “yeah…I’m fine.” I had so much I wanted them to know, but that wasn’t the time and place for that conversation.

My name was called and my lawyer went up to talk to the judge for a few minutes. He came back to us and said “yeah, they are going to take you in today, come up to the bench.” I walked up to the judge and stood in the exact same place as this inmate pictured below in front of that very same judge.

“alphatweaker, you will now be taken into custody of Harris County Jail for a term of 6 months and then SAFP for a term of 6 months (a rehab wing in jail) for a total of 12 months. I will see you 6 months from today. Bailiff, please take the inmate.”

Awwwwww fuck… here we go. Time slowed down in those last moments. I remember becoming very self-aware and thinking, well, here it is; the first minute of a year-long sentence. 1 minute down; 525,599 more to go type of mentality. One full year of jail set out right in front of me and this was day ONE. A journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step and here comes my first step.

Thinking about that moment now is bitter sweet. I am very grateful to be on the other side of that jail sentence. I am typing this out on my laptop right now a free man. That shit is behind me. I did my time. It is this feeling right here. Right now. This sense of relief and gratitude is why I blog. I can’t allow myself to forget that depressing and dark feeling of the first day of a jail sentence. And I only did 6 months! My friends that did multiple years came out and got right back in the shit. I refuse to let that happen to me. I remember every day of jail. I remember how many times I didn’t want to be locked up. I wish there was a way to bottle up that desperate feeling of helplessness. If I could share that feeling with other addicts, I am sure it would help deter them away from taking their addiction as far as I had.

As I was standing in front of the judge, the Xanax and G started to wash over me like a warm wave of joy. Yes, this was a terrible moment, but damn I took the perfect cocktail of substances to override anxiety about jail with shots a dopamine to my brain. My mood elevated and I loosened up. I made my way over to the bailiff on the side of the court room and turned and faced my parents. I remember half-smiling at them. Smirking at the absurdity of that moment. Your honor student and successful CFA son is now going to jail.

“Well, this is it.” I said.

I took off my gold necklace and my I-watch and handed them to my mom along with my cell phone and wallet. I then gave both a big hug. I think we all agreed that this sentence was going to suck, but was necessary if I were to ever try and get back to anything close to a normal and happy life. The bailiff handcuffed me right in front of my mom and dad and I will never forget the look of disappointment and fear in their eyes. My parents had never seen me in handcuffs before that moment. They are both devout Catholics, started dating in middle school, and raised my sister and I in a perfect loving home. They did not deserve to feel like that. I won’t let them get close to feeling that again. I know for sure that they felt worse at that moment that I did.

Handcuffed, I turned and was escorted through a door on the side wall of the courtroom. I stepped out of the Texas themed wood paneled fancy courtroom and into a cold, concrete hallway with a cement bench. I was officially a resident of Harris County Jail. The Harris County District Courts are located right next to the jail complex and they are connected to the jail units by secure underground tunnels. As you can imagine, the world on one side of that courtroom wall is completely different from the world on the other side.

Harris County Jail is the 4th largest county jail in the country with approximately 9,000 inmates. I was escorted down a hall and joined up with other inmates that had been taken in from court. They took our clothes and issued us our orange jail clothes. We were then each given a single small mattress, a white sheet, and an itchy wool blanket. I’m not going to lie. Some of the inmates of Harris Country are big and scary motherfuckers. Demographically speaking, I would say that approximately 50% were Black, 25% Latino, and 25% White. Couple of Asians sprinkled in there, but not many. The guards lined everyone up and I witnessed my first act of rebellion immediately. This young black kid was talking and not paying attention and the guard called him out to quiet down.

“Hey shut the fuck up over there”

“Man, FUCK YOU NARC!”

“Bracelets” (He motioned for another guard to come and escort the kid out of line to a holding cell off the hallways.)

As the handcuffed kid walked past the guard that told him to shut up, he glared at him from top to bottom and back up, kind of sizing him up, and yelled

“Mark ass NARC!”

Mark ass? What the fuck is “mark ass?” I had never heard that term before. And why is this kid talking back to the officer? What good is that going to do for him? So many questions right off the jump. I later heard other inmates use this term. “Mark ass” is basically used the same way as “punk ass.” Could either be used degradingly or jokingly. For example, there was this big dude named Cali that would come into my pod to wake up his friend AJ and be like “AJ! Get yo’ mark ass up!”

As they led us down the tunnels (I hobbled in my boot) we were separated into inmates that wanted to speak with the psychiatrist for meds and ones that didn’t. I decided to see the doc and try to get some type of medication. Shit, maybe I could finagle a painkiller if I played up my leg injury. I was taken to a holding cell and waited in a cold concrete room with nothing but cement benches and stainless-steel toilets for what literally felt like 20 hours. I took off my boot and used it as a makeshift pillow and crashed out on the cold, hard, floor.

After meeting with the doc (I received a sleeping pill prescription and I was also able to finagle Tramadol for two weeks,) they took a group of us to our new home on the 6th floor of 1200 Baker Unit. My first cell block was 6H1B. As my name and a couple others were called, the door popped opened and I walked into a large open dayroom. There were a couple of showers off to the left and 4-5 steel picnic tables in the middle. 6H1B is structured exactly as the picture below.

One small 18-inch TV was mounted up in a steel and plastic enclosure on the wall. A guard sat in the opposite wall of the entrance in a little glass room where he monitored our cell block and the cell block next door. There were 5 pods that connect off of this main dayroom. The cell bock consists of the large dayroom and all of the adjoining pods. Each pod held about 5-6 stacked bunks sleeping 10-12 inmates. There were approximately 60 inmates in this cell block. Each night they close and lock the doors that lead from our pod into the dayroom. During the day these doors are open and we can come and go from our pod to the dayroom as we please.

I was a bit concerned that I had to be there in my fracture boot. I wouldn’t be able to really fight or defend myself as much as if I had two good legs. I wasn’t sure if the other inmates would see that as a weakness and try to exploit it. I had no idea what to think. In the end, my broken leg ended up working to my advantage. Nobody wanted to beat up a gimp with a boot on and it was a great conversation starter. When I shared with them how I broke my leg jumping off of a bridge fleeing a burglary scene they either identified with my running and getting caught or just remarked that it was bad luck.

One of the first things I noticed in Harris County was all the unique names people go by. Mostly street and nicknames. If it wasn’t a street name, people went by the city or neighborhood they repped. Cali was a heavy set black dude with an black panther-esque afro from California (he also had “Fat Daddy” tattooed on his arm and I thought that was pretty funny), South Park was a black dude from that neighborhood of Houston. There was a Tennessee, a small white guy named Boston, and N.O. (from New Orleans) to name a few.

One of the first jail friends I made was this older black dude who went by “Baytown.” Baytown was in his 50’s. He was pretty jacked and physically fit. Baytown had the Houston Texans logo on his hand, a huge stamp on his back that said “Baytown,” a city skyline on his neck, and “El Jefe” on his temple. He played a lot of spades and dominoes, but spent a majority of his time reading his bible and jotting down religious based rap lyrics on paper.

I am not a huge spiritual person. I tend to lean more towards agnosticism, but I do believe in the existence of some type of higher power. What that higher power is I am still trying to figure out. I was raised going to church every Sunday and my parents are both devout Catholics. Partly to pay respects to them and partly because I didn’t think I had a good excuse not to, I accepted the daily invite from Baytown for the nightly prayer circle.

Of the 60 or so inmates in 6H1B, 10-15 of them would gather in a circle every night for prayer. They do this in every pod. I saw it in the pod next to ours through the guard’s window and then in the third and fourth pods I eventually spent time in. At 10:00 PM on the dot, this dude would start yelling “Prayerrrr Callllllll! Prayyyyerrrrr Calllllll! Come one Come Alllllllll! Prayyyyerrrrr Calllllll!” This mimicked an auctioneer type of yell. We would start off standing in the circle and each saying a short prayer. It reminded me of Thanksgiving when families go around the table stating what they are grateful for. “Lord just wanna thank you for another day with food in our stomach and shelter over our heads.” “I ask that you watch over my baby mamma and my homies out there in the struggle etc..” Having participated in the prayer circles of different cell blocks, I noticed each circle follows the same structure and has the same following call and response type verbiage.

After each person has shared their prayer, we all get down on our knees. Most people take off their shoes or chanclas and place them under their knees to cushion them from the hard concrete floor. All kneeling, we then stick our closed fists out to our sides and place them on top or below the fist of the inmate next to you. No hand holding. We did fists, and I always liked the way this looked. A circle of inmates in bright orange on their knees trying to repent for the sins that got them there. Each holding their fists out together with each other in solidarity. The prayer leader would then bark out loud like a drill sergeant… “WHOSE FATHER!?” and everyone would yell back “OUR FATHER!… who art in heaven…hallowed be thy name… etc” The call and response was militaristic. Lowered and deep male voices proclaiming the words with purpose and conviction.

“WHOSE FATHER?!?!?”

“OUR FATHER!!…”

I always liked that part.

After the Lord’s Prayer, everyone would again chant together while raising and lowering their fists “PRAYERS GO UP! (fists up) BLESSINGS COME DOWN! (fists down) BLESSINGS COME DOWN! (fists stay down) … PRAYERS GO UP! (fists back up.)” Shit literally gave me goosebumps a couple times. Lastly, we all stand up and do a homie-style hand shake and single arm hug with each other. “Bless you dawg” “Aye God bless you mane” “Alright alright yes my nigga God bless, good looking out.” I had seen two inmates that got in a fight in the afternoon, hugging and praying together later that night.

I witnessed many, many, jail fights. On average about one every 2-3 days. There is a very distinct noise of a fight between inmates. It sounds like someone beating their chest quickly and hard in random patterns. Like… Thud!..thud!…thud! thud! thud!. The sound of a flesh covered fist slapping against the skin of a face or the body of the inmate being struck. You don’t always hear a lot of yelling and jawing before jail fights. They just break out all of the sudden and it was this “thud” noise that would click off the signal in my brain that they were squabbling. The dayroom had a thick cement pillar between the guard shack and the entrance to my pod. This blocked their view. By default, this made my sleeping quarters the “fight pod.” When two inmates decided to throw down or “squabble”, they would rip off their shirts and come to the fight pod and throw down right in front of my bunk. I lost count of how many times I was woken up by those “thud” noises. Talk about a rude awakening and a front row seat to the action. I went from deep sleep to full on awake and alert in about 1.5 seconds.

Inmates love fights. Everyone steps back and gives them space to fight. It’s not like in normal society where people jump in and yell “Hey guys come on stop! Break it up!” In jail, inmates are all crammed in living in close quarters with another. Tensions run high. They are bored, angry about being in jail, and many have anger or mental issues; it’s an atmosphere that just breeds altercations.

My second week there, this young Mexican kid that that looked like he was 16 years old suddenly appeared with two tattoos on his face. You read that right. Tattoos on his fucking FACE! He didn’t have any other tattoos anywhere on his body. I did a triple take when I saw it. “Is that pen?? Marker?? Surely, he couldn’t have…no way did he…omg yes… he did!” This dude decided that his first tattoo would be right smack on his cheeks. In the same place that baseball players put those black marks on their cheeks to reduce glare. He got two words; one on each cheek with the letters about an inch-high. It said… “Don’t Hate.” “DON’T HATE!!!” The D and H were capitalized, all other letters were lowercase. It wasn’t even good lettering. It was sloppy old-English type letters done with a razor being dipped in jail-made tattoo ink. I saw him right after he got it done and he was smirking at himself in the stainless-steel mirror above the toilet. Playing with his hair and looking very proud of himself. He was a short kid, probably around 5’6”. He was standing next to me waiting to get his tray and asked me what happened to my leg. I told him and he was like “daaaamn bro, that sucks.” I didn’t know if I should say like “yeahhh… so uh, you got your face tattooed huh?” or mention anything about it. Felt super awkward talking to him.

When the face tattoo kid asked my name, I told him and he responded with “they call me Little G.” Damn dude really? Little G? I thought that was the dumbest most unoriginal and generic name ever. Whatever…guess I shouldn’t hate on the kid 😉. I didn’t talk to Little G much again after that, but because of him and his new face art, I did make another friend.

Nevon was a 20-year-old light skinned black kid that I could tell was fairly smart. Our first conversation there was a group of us sitting around the bench eating and I just kind of threw it out there asking if anyone else had seen Little G’s new tatts. I couldn’t get over the fact this kid had done that to his face and I was curious if I was the only one. I really wanted to jump up and down on the table and scream “hey yall!!! This dumbass just tatted ‘don’t hate’ on his fucking FACE!” It bothered me that other inmates weren’t more wtf about this. Thankfully, when I said that, Nevon jumped on board immediately and was like “YES! Bro! I saw that shit! Not only did he tatt his face, but some dumb shit too.” We laughed our asses off together and I immediately liked Nevon. Finally, someone else was on my level.

Nevon asked what I did and I told him the whole AirBnB story. He told me that he and his friends got busted for robbing ACE Cash stores. I didn’t see him as the type that would do that. Had never met an armed robber before so not sure what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t a clean cut and well-spoken kid like this. “Yeah man, we would get there early in the morning when the manager arrived and force him to open the safe. We would walk with like $25,000 cash and split it between us three. That next day after we would all roll to the Galleria with $8,000 in cash a piece and go shopping.”

I was able to make it my entire sentence without getting my ass beat or in a fight. Closest I came was this dude randomly getting in my face out of nowhere. I was walking between the steel bench and the guard window and this guy was leaning over talking to the guard. I kind of scooted in between his back and the bench and must have brushed up against him. This guy looked like a cracked out mini version of DMX. He had gold teeth and a wispy beard. Out of nowhere he just turned around and got in my face.

“Yo nigga, what the fuck you walking up on me for like that?!! You see me talking here nigga?!” I literally had done nothing to this dude.

“Nah man I didn’t see you there bro, my bad yo.”

“MAN, say some dumb shit like that again and IMMA slap the shit out of you!”

“Nah man I’m good.”

I walked my ass away from him quickly and back to my bunk. Not more than 30 minutes after that, mini-DMX came storming into my pod taking his shirt off and Nevon was right behind him taking his shirt off too. I thought it was weird that the dude that just got in my face was now fighting Nevon, but it just proved that it wasn’t me that did anything wrong. This dude just wanted to fight. They started swinging at each other and then locked up kind of hugging each other and wrestling. This pissed off Baytown who had made himself the ref of this fight and Baytown started yelling “Quit fucking wrestling!!! Yall need to stop wrestling!! Back up! Back up!!! Let go of him!!” Baytown separated them, backed them up a couple of feet away from each other and then chopped his hand down in the air and calmly said “alright now yall squabble.” They went back to swinging on each other. Nevon kicked DMX’s ass and bloodied his mouth up pretty good. I enjoyed watching that.

As each day painstakingly crawled and inched by, I began to settle into my groove. I developed the following routine:

4:20 AM: Wake up and eat a shitty breakfast. Usually milk, an apple/orange, and a hard-boiled egg. Just about everyone then just goes back to sleep. Don’t ask me why they serve breakfast this early in the morning, but they do.

8:30-9:00 AM: For the first 2-3 months I would wake up and immediately it would all come rushing back to me that I was in jail. When something really bad happens in your life and you wake up in the morning, for a brief couple of seconds, you exist without having remembered that the bad thing happened. When you do remember it, a depressive cloud falls over you. Every day for the first few months, I would wake up from a peaceful sleep and exist for about a half of a second in a world where I wasn’t in jail. Then it would all come back to me and everything would play back in my head… “ohhh yeahhh, I had a good job, then got on drugs, walked out on my family, blew all my money, committed crimes, jumped off a bridge, broke my leg, got arrested, now I find myself laying on this steel cot and shitty mattress in Harris County Jail.”

This was my new reality and I had no drugs to numb the emotions. Awesome and amazing sleep is over and it’s back to jail. I would lay there and hate the world for a few minutes. Wishing I could sleep all day every day. When I couldn’t lay there another minute I would get up, brush my teeth, and head into the dayroom and have a cup of coffee. I am not a coffee drinker. I hate coffee and always had. However, for some reason, I drank coffee in jail. I would make a cup of instant coffee and then find and read the newspaper. When the guards are done with the paper, they give it to the inmates and 60 of us pass it around and share it. I would also walk a lot of laps. Walking around the outer edge of the dayroom, hobbling in my black fracture boot in circles for hours. The TV would typically be set to Extra TV, Daytime court shows, or some other bullshit that people hardly watched.

11:30 AM: First roll call and lunch. The trustees of the jail (inmates with jobs) roll in stacks of trays in through the cell block entrance with a couple of guards. One of the guards has a stack of 3×5 cards with every inmate’s picture, name, and SPN number (inmate identification number.) They call out the last name of every inmate and each inmate has to respond with the last 3 numbers of your SPN number to get your meal. They would call “Abbot!” and Abbot would yell “372!” and then walk up and grab a tray from the trustee. The food was always room temperature; never warm and never hot. They serve fake meat, a terrible side, a half-assed dessert, and a white paper packet of juice powder. The powder is some type of nutrient supplement drink that tastes like chalky juice. All water comes from the water fountains that barely spit out warm water on top of the steel toilets.

After lunch I would typically read a book my parents would have sent me or a borrowed book from another inmate. I may also bullshit with other inmates or try to pass the time playing games. Of all of the games in jail, nothing takes up more hours than Spades. Some people start playing Spades in the morning and don’t stop until night. We also had dominoes and I learned to play a pretty fun game called “Knock.” Knock is mostly played by the black inmates (not being racist, that’s just how it went.) Baytown showed me how to play and I came to love playing that game. We gambled, and since I always had a lot of commissary and was a beginner player, they were all about taking my snacks.

The game itself is pretty fun to play, but it’s the people playing it that made me enjoy spending time doing that. There are a lot of funny quips and sayings in Knock. For example, if you are starting to fall behind in the score, you better “Save yourself! Boy, you need to save yourself!” A lot of trash talking in that game. This one dude that talked a lot of shit would slam double 5’s down for a score of ten and every time he did it, he would yell “TEN-NIS SHOES ON MY FEET.” Real loud and animated. That shit always cracked me up and I tried copying him. I was a bit reserved yelling it out though. I couldn’t pull it off like he could. I would timidly say “tennis shoes on my feet. Heh…heh” He would stand up and be like “TEN-NIS SHOES ON MY MOTHA…FUCKIN…FEET…NIGGA!” I got such a kick out of that shit, lol. Cali would stand up before playing a good score and throw a super punch up in the air and yell “Baaaaht!!!” Then slam his domino down on the table. People would get pissed if he messed up the table. He would laugh his ass off while fixing it back up.

Some of the inmates also made some pretty creative arts and crafts. For four soups, I bought the necklace below and was able to sneak it out of jail with me when I left. It’s made out of trash bags. Its technically contraband, but the guards let it slide.

5:00 PM: Dinner is served. Pretty early in the evening. It’s easy to get hungry if you can’t afford commissary. After dinner it’s just more of the same shit. Walking laps, reading, talking with other inmates, spades, knock, and sometimes TV, but getting into a TV show was difficult. The TV is tiny and not loud enough for everyone to hear unless you are sitting in the bench right in front of it. The only time people gathered to watch TV was for NFL games and Street Flava. Every Saturday night at 11:00 PM, every single TV in every single cell block in Harris County Jail is tuned to MY20 for Street Flava. No exceptions. Street Flava is a public access music show in Houston that plays rap videos. It is the only time everyone agrees to be quiet enough to hear the TV. No showers allowed. The running water was too loud.

Sometime around 11:00 PM they come in for one last roll call. After roll call they yell for everyone to “rack up!” and we all go into our pods and the guards come in and shut the door locking us out from the dayroom. Sometimes we would stay up late and play spades on the floor in our pod.

As if being in jail in itself wasn’t bad enough, on August 17th, Hurricane Harvey hit. We were all glued to the news. It looked bad and just kept getting worse. They ended up shutting off the air conditioner during the day for some hurricane-related reason. They then shut the dayroom lights off during the day to try and keep it cool since the AC was off. This caused the cement floor to kind of sweat and become damp. This was a bit unsettling. What would they do if the jail flooded? How would they handle that? Nobody really knew. Because of Harvey, inmates didn’t get commissary for 3 weeks. We all ran out of coffee and snacks. Our meals also started coming in Styrofoam containers instead of the trays and we heard that the entire first floor of the jail had flooded. At one point, this older white dude started freaking out and screaming that “We’re all gonna die man! They aren’t gonna get to us! No one cares about us. We are all fucked man!” People yelled at him and made him go off into the corner of the cell block by himself. I thought they were going to beat his ass there for a second. We also lost all hot water for three weeks.

On November 1st, the Houston Astros defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series. For the last game, we made a huge spread. I loved spreads. Four of five of us would put in on it. We would get hot water from our hot pots and place it in a trash bag along with 4-5 packages of Ramen noodles. When the Ramen noodles cooked, we would use the trash bag as a tablecloth and flatten out the noodles. Kind of like a big mis-shaped pizza. We would take fake meat saved from meals, cheese spread, crunched up chips, summer sausage from commissary, tuna, chicken pieces, beans, and whatever else we could scrounge up, and add it to the top of the Ramen. We would use bread from that day’s meals or just eat it with spoons. After eating nothing but Harris County meals, spreads become a delicacy. Your standards for food drop tremendously and spreads end up becoming fine dining-level delicious. I remember thinking at times, “Damn, this is free world good. I’m going to start a restaurant when I get out and make spreads this is so good.”

That night the Astros won the championship, the guards let everyone stay up late to watch the end of the game. That was pretty cool of them to do. When the Astros won, all of 1200 Baker unit erupted and screamed. Everyone was banging on the steel tables together and yelling and high fiving each other. This was the only somewhat fun day out of that entire 6 months. Just about every other day was slow and depressing. I felt like I checked the time every hour of every day.

I went 6 months without seeing natural daylight or feeling wind on my face. I thought there was some law somewhere that said inmates are supposed to be allowed outdoors. This is not the case in Harris County. I was locked up on that 6th floor under artificial fluorescent light for 6 months. Those lights fuck with your head. No sunrise or sunset. No circadian rhythm type shit. The artificial lights are either fully on or off. The only recreation/exercise time that we had was once a week for one hour. They walked whoever wanted to go down the hallway into a gym for rec time. They gave us one blue handball to share. Some people played handball, some did pull ups, some pushed these huge water barrels back and forth, and some like me just walked in a circle. This is pretty much the only time we got to leave our cell block for that entire time. Other than rec, they did have a church service where we also got to get out of the block for an hour a week to attend. Lastly the only other time we got to leave the block was if someone came to visit you.

Both of my parents made multiple trips to come visit me while I was locked up. My sister and brother in law came once. My aunt and Uncle that live in Houston came, my ex-wife came, and Janessa even came a couple times. Visitation is just like you see in the movies. There is a row of thick windows and stainless-steel phones that you use to speak to the other side. My dad came more than anyone else. Sometimes he would just take the Megabus down for the day to talk to me for about 20 minutes. I could feel his disappointment in our discussions and it was always kind of weird to talk to him like that. He took it pretty well. We usually just had talks about the family or my upcoming transfer to SAFP for the second part of my year-long sentence.

On January 25th, my lawyer called my parents and informed them that the meeting with the judge went better than expected and I was being released early. The day I was released, my dad came to pick me up. He rented a hotel room in Houston that night and I remember sleeping in a comfortable bed for the first time in months. You would think I would sleep like a baby, but all of the cars driving outside on I-10 made me uneasy and anxious. It was too much stimulation. Everyone was going somewhere. Everyone had somewhere to be. Everyone has important things that they are doing and awesome lives that they are living type of a feeling. Here I am a recently released inmate with no job, no money, and no important place to be. I didn’t sleep well at all that first night. When we got back to Dallas, I went with them to Walmart and again felt that same type of over-stimulation anxiety. I told my parents that I didn’t want to be in the store and asked if we could we leave. This type of anxiety only took a couple of days to get over. I am fully aware of the fact that I only did 6 months in jail, but it was enough for me to get a small, tiny, minuscule taste of institutionalization.

I cannot imagine what it must feel like for inmates that are locked up for years to have to re-enter the fast-paced world that we live in today. Having spoke with multiple inmates that had done serious time and ended up right back in jail, it’s blatantly obvious that inmates are not given anywhere near the proper tools and resources to adjust back into society. It’s no wonder jails and prisons end up being a revolving door. It would have for sure been for me if I hadn’t had loving and caring parents to support me and a basic level of financial and emotional support to rebuild my life.

I don’t plan on going back to jail. Ever. I won’t go through that again. Jail worked for me. It was shitty enough to where I am willing to completely change my life and do everything I know to keep from going back. I felt extremely out of place in there.

As of today, Arielle is locked up and looking at a long sentence. Phil is on the run out of state with a warrant out for his arrest. Sawyer has the bleakest outlook. He just got arrested again a couple of months ago. I reached out to his mom the other day. She told me the DA is trying to punish him for getting arrested while on parole and is trying to get him locked up for 25 years. Sawyer doesn’t know that yet. She told me not to say anything about that if I talked him. She gave him my number and he called me the very next day from Harris County. He told me that he had court coming up on August 1st and was hoping to get out then. He said his lawyer told him he feels good about the case. He has no idea that they are trying to keep him locked up for 25 years. I didn’t say anything about it. I just said “ahhh that’s good man, sounds good” His poor mom speaks about him in the same tone that a mother would speak about a son that passed away. Completely devastated.

While Sawyer and I were talking, I was picturing him standing there in the orange suit. He would have been standing against the concrete wall on the side of the cell block. He would have been leaning in close to the stainless-steel phone because they have short steel phone cords. And he would have been struggling to hear me because the volume on those phones sucks and its noisy in there.

I feel bad that he is locked up right now, but I told him to get out of Houston. I told him he was too smart for that shit. I told him he was the smartest person I have ever met in my life and I didn’t lie when I said that. I told him to stay out of trouble, but he couldn’t help himself. His meth addiction had too strong of a hold on him and he couldn’t stay out of the game. Hopefully his court goes well, otherwise he’s absolutely fucked.