Number 655321 Dec 8, 2005

This vicious young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition.





Plans were made on the visiting yard over the next few weeks. I'd show them, oh yes I would.



After paying several of my inmate friends large amounts of money to assist and maintain secrecy, one day a ball went behind a backboard, my papers and important items were shoved under some bushes, and so was I. I leapt into the trunk of my Girl's waiting car, closed it above me, and she drove. And drove, and drove.



We couldn't go back to her place, really, so I got on a bus and high-tailed it to my brother's house in another state, where I stayed until she could tidy things up and move inconspicuously to a town out west.



My brother describes it as the most surreal moment in his life. He's at home, minding his business when he gets a call. "Hey, its me." "HEY! you're out of prison? Where are you?" "Oh, downtown XXXXX, I need you to come pick me up", "When did they let you out?" "Oh, they didnt let me out." "Then how... OH MY GOD, I'LL BE RIGHT THERE".



My brother was a saint taking care of me for the next few weeks while we awaited my girl's arrival. When she showed up she stayed for a couple days and we relaxed, put our minds together, and got on the next Greyhound out west.



When we arrived at our desination we immediately set about getting poo poo together. We both got jobs - She at a camera store, and I used my previous retail management experience to land a full time job as a manager in training for a chain music store. I got a second job as well, at a resale shop, sort of an upscale salvation army - Rich people would donate their clothes, computers, toys, etc, and we'd resell them to generate funds for a battered womens' shelter.



This resale place was right around the corner from that place's county jail. So we were dealing with lawyers, deputies, jail employees, judges coming in and browsing during their lunch breaks. I couldn't help but bask in the surrealness of looking people who would be my future captors in the eye knowing I was an escaped convict.



I made pretty good friends with some, even went out to coffee on the corner with some deputies and shot the poo poo.



This all went on for months, both of us working our lil' tails off, me doing 70+ hours a week. I didnt know how it would end but I knew it couldnt go on forever. My intent wasn't to evade capture forever. My intent was to PROVE to them what I was capable of. And yeah, life was pretty good - A decent roof over our heads, thanks to some caring souls, money in our pockets, regular sex, decent food, etc.



One morning we were walking from our place to catch the bus for work, standing there just talking about mundane life-things, when out of all directions comes a poo poo-load of city cops, about five federal agents, and a god damned tv news crew, guns and cameras pointed, shouting different things all at the same time.



Jesus christ they had GUNS pointed at my girl. The only thing I could think to do was drop all my stuff, show my hands and step in front of her, in case one was trigger happy. She didn't deserve to get shot for being a supportive, caring girlfriend.



So they dropped me and cuffed me. One of the cops knew me from the resale store. "I would have never guessed in a million years", he said - he was good enough to fish my keys out of my pocket and give them to my girl. She, poor thing, in tears, went at my instruction to my store, called my manager, and, bless her heart, OPENED the store with my manager on the phone, until she could get there.



This is the real weepy and like tragic part of the story beginning. O my brothers and only friends.



Well sort of, anyway.



So into the county jail of THAT state I went to. But I wasn't without allies!



I was placed into the "pod" with high-profile offenders. If you'd been on the news or had a high-profile case in any way, you went into this pod. So here we had a seventeen year old parental muderer, a multimillion dollar embezzler, a couple other hackers, etc. Interesting to say the least. My cell had a great view of the corner, some many stories below, as well as the river.



My girl would come and stand on the corner, and tie large flowers to the lamp post every day. and wave. She could see my cell by counting windows up and over. She could only see me backlit and we would do puppet shows for an hour or so at each other. Pantomiming drawing hearts in the air.



She'd come visit me, through the glass again, sadly - but if I was REALLY good, I'd get a panty shot or two to keep my mind occupied during the week.



Having lost more than half of our income, she had to move to a hostel, but her work was kind enough, after hearing our story to allow me two collect calls during the week, on them.



Meanwhile, turns out my case manager was one of my regular customers and borderline friends from the resale shop! I fought extradition, she even wrote letters to the governor of BOTH states (the one I was in and the one I'd escaped from), asking them not to extradite me, as I was a fully rehabilitated upright citizen, and no further incarceration was necessary.



All this support from my "host" state really lit a fire under the governor of my escaped state and they accellerated my extradition hearing - which I of course, lost.



So I was extradited back to the state from who's loving arms I'd escaped from. Since my neither the original crime nor my new charge (Escape from a State Correctional Facility) were not Federal, I didn't get to go Con Air. They stuck me in a van which drove all around the country. But i didn't go directly to my Home state. it took TWELVE days of driving through states all over the place to get me back. TWELVE DAYS in a van with full shackles on. Handcuffs with the immobilizer, Leg irons, and a chain that connected the two.



The county wherein the facility was located that I escaped from was a verrrrry small county. Wich meant they had a verrrry small jail. Pretty much a mom and pop operation. I had to stay in jail to face the new charges and couldn't go back to a yard until that matter had been settled.



Funnily enough I earned myself the position of "trustee", having experience in legal matters, I was a needed resource - So eventually I got to be outside of my cell, helping other inmates with their things, and doing other chores, like laundry,etc.



Again, like I said, this was a tiny little jail - so I knew everyone from the sheriff on down to the dispatchers in no time. Before long I had free reign of the place, and hardly ever had to go back to my cell, only to sleep.



I was also still rather handy with computers, and through doing some big favors with their system, I slowly earned priveledges. Within a couple of months my cellmate and I had in our cell WITH PERMISSION from the jail staff: Carpet. Pictures. A laptop computer. A large color television. Real blankets. Tools. tapes and CD's, handheld video games. A microwave and our own food. Weekly trips to the local market to buy said food. You name it - And we could call anywhere we wanted provided we had a calling card, and we could wear street clothes, provided our shirts were stencled with "XXX County Jail Inmate" on the back, which we did ourselves.



So my Girl and I decided to stick this out - and we also decided to get married and make it official. So we registered with the county clerk in the same building, got our blood tests, and got hitched, in the recieving area of the jail with the Jailer and a Deputy as our witnesses (She (The jailer) was in tears as we said our vows).



Of course, what good is a wedding w/out consummation, right? Remember I had free movement until 2300. So one night when I was supposed to be cleaning out the courthouse side of the building I snuck my Wife in through a side-door, and we scurried up some stairs, into the court records office and into a closet. So, yeah. We honeymooned in a courthouse closet.



This was to become a regular occourance while waiting for my trial to come up. it was funny making appearances for motions in court, standing near a closet I'd hosed in the night before.



Never hosed on the judges bench though - I wanted to, but they lock that specific part with another key.



By the time it came for my sentencing hearing on my escape - which carried typically five to seven years ADDITIONALLY, I had a two page letter from the Jailer on sherrif's department stationery, stating how they'd never seen an inmate so determined to get his life on track, etc etc, and to please go lightly, and it was signed by about fifteen members of the jail staff.



The judge was amazed that I was working while escaped, and asked me why I did what I did, and I told him, to show that I could be a productive member of society.



So he said "I've never said this before, but I wish I could get away with dropping this. But I can't, so I'm going to fine you court costs and give you two years' concurrent to your remaining three on your original sentence".



What this meant is that it would run along with my remaining sentence. Essentially he sentenced me to NOTHING, except a fine.



So back through the assesment part again, head shaved again. Poked, prodded again.



This time I was assessed at Maximum Security.



Not only that but I was going to a particularly notorious yard. Rumored to be the "hardest" yard in this entire section of the country. There were pretty regular killings, and a riot some ten years before burned down over a third of the prison. Hostages were taken. Inmates were killed.



I almost peed myself when they told me what yard I was going to. I was going to get assraped and murdered. I was sure of it.



I later learned that the Governors office had an indirect hand in this.



So off I went to Maximum security.



When you arrive at the facility you get off a bus, and go through the main reception office where your identity is confirmed, your property box is taken, you're unshackled and officially booked into the facility. Then you do "the walk".



"The walk" is when your group, usually about 20 or thirty skinners are walked through the middle of the yard toward the orientation dorm. All the inmates line up on either side of the sidewalk on the way and stare you down, to put the fear of god into you. One inmate with a missing loving ear asked me, as we were walking "HEY! You play baseball?" "OH MY GOD NO, I DON'T PITCH OR CATCH OKAY gently caress YOU".



Razorwire. Oh god was there ever fences, coils of shiny razorwire, on top, then a loving PILE of razorwire on the ground, then an outer fence with razorwire and barbed wire on top of all that.



Gun towers. Yep. 40 foot high towers with men with guns pointed at you in them.



Rapists. Killers. Murderers. people serving life sentences without parole.



People who were seventy years old who had been in since they were fifteen.



This was the Real loving Deal, Bubba.



I took about a week to settle in in the orientation dorm. It was built in the early twentieth century, and looked like it. It used to house Germans during world war two while they were "relocated" during the war. (Up to that point I thought they'd only done that with the Japanese). There were places you could still see German words scratched into the walls back behind the Charlie's office.



After a week in the kitchen I was assigned to the Law Library once I proved my worth to the Boss. From there I started working some cases.



The trick to being a skinny whiteboy in the pokey and not being raped is this: Become a law clerk. Then, get the cases of someone in the Black faction and someone in the white faction. Therefore, nothing will happen to you during this time. This way they won't surprise sex you because you're working on one of their cases and if you catch out, nobody will. This gives you time to prove yourself on the yard, but do it without rectal penetration.



Use this "grace" period to buddy up with someone of your own race. (You have to - this isn't a racist statement - its the way things work behind the wire). Preferrably someone who weilds power on the yard. In this case, my saviour was Lefty.



Remember that guy who asked if I played baseball? Turns out he was sincerely curious if I played baseball, the game. They were building teams since spring was upon us. His name was Lefty. "'cause I only have one ear left," said he.



Well I didnt play baseball, but gently caress was lefty ever smart. And he saw pretty much instantly that I was no dumbass myself. We'd talk philosophy, music, etc. His story was simple, and later I'd confirm it was absolutely true.



He was seventeen, and somebody sold his sister some bad poo poo. It killed her. He killed the person that sold her the poo poo. He was sentenced to death. In the '70s the death penalty was overturned for a brief while, so his sentence was commuted to life w/out parole. Later they reinstated the death penalty, but the law prevents anyone from being put back "on" a death sentence.



So here he was, forty-something, I guess. And one of the kindest, smartest, wizest people I've ever met. If there's anyone that deserves to be out in the free world it is that man.



He took me under his wing, and introduced me to the guys. A mix of Aryan brotherhood and lifers. These were the people that ran the yard. And they all liked/respected me. I was safe.



Everywhere I went one of them always had an eye on me. If I was out walking the track, one of them on the hill playing dominoes was watching. As long as I was here, nothing bad would happen to me.



Let it be said here, though. Prison is prison. You have to handle your poo poo. So when a black guy tried cutting in the lunchline, you have to speak up or be shamed. So we were set to fight.



The way prison fights work is like this: everyone gathers out in the domino hut (a little covered place with benches, outside by the band room). Blacks behind their guy, whites behind theirs. What this is for is to ensure a fair fight. the rule is, when a man goes down, the fights over. No weapons, no bullshit.



The "groups" of people are there to ensure that. If the fight gets dirty, your guys jump in. This is often how people get killed. You're not armed, but the men behind you sure as gently caress are.



Well I lost. I was the man that went down. Busted a tooth and my lip. "You know what though," said lefty - "You fought, you took your hits, and you went down. This is over - thats all there is to it. Had you run away or hid or tried to get one of us to settle your poo poo for you, it'd have been a different story and you'd be on your own."



This is one of the many lessons I took with me. You may lose, but standing your ground and stepping up for yourself is what matters.



A year passes.



In this time I get really situated in the Law Library, gaining my certification, litigating like a motherfucker. I win cases, get inmates out of prison who had been fighting for years, I even have a few cases that are now caselaw in p2d, with regard to Double Jeopardy as it relates to administrative punishment. My wife visits every weekend, I join the band - actually join several, as there's a shortage of drummers on the yard. I'm in the rock band, the blues band and the OTHER Rock band. I eventually take over band room maintenance, too.



Larry was the singer and guitar player for the blues band. He had been in for most of his life - he was almost 70. But that motherfucker could sing like no other. I'd have been proud to take that band out and play "real" shows, we were that good, particularly him. Lefty was in the rock band. He was a great guitarist and had an outstanding work ethic. Nate was someones punk, but still a good bass player.



I've got money coming in from law clerkin', my lockers are all chock full of goodies, I'm getting letters from inmates on other yards for help with their cases via my reputation. (the letters are removed and destroyed, as inter-facility communications are forbidden), and I've "settled" into accepting this is my fate for a couple years.



My cellmates range from good to horrible. Jason was in for murder, he was stinky and messy. Ron was the leader of the AB, he was in a wheelchair from being stabbed to much. Chris was the Second in command of the AB, he ran dope, but he was my favorite cellmate, he had good porn, and was also pretty bright.



Inevitably one of you will ask for some gross stuff I saw.



Heres the story of a young kid named Jake. He came in from another yard, but really didnt have a clue. He fell in with the AB guys, and was really desperate to fit in. So he went and paid a TON of money to get AB tattoos on his arms and legs and back so he could be accepted with them. He was the kind of guy like on the forums "HAY GUYZ!" type. Nobody liked him, and he was too much of a pussy to gently caress with the big boys.



Word gets around the yard about what he's done. One thing you DON'T do is get a set's tattoos without someones approval. So when it gets to Ron that he's gone and gotten AB ink, he is confronted in the cell (I'm on my bunk trying to read) and told that he has one week to get them covered up or its going to be done FOR him.



Well unfortunately he'd spent all of his money on getting the tattoos in the first place. He was broke, and in debt. A week passes. Two. Three, and still he has his tattoos.



One day I'm sleeping in my cell and hear a scuffle and the door slams shut. I open my eyes and see three AB's pushing the kid onto the bed. I really cant get off my bunk because the cell is very small and full of people and I do NOT feel that it would be a good idea to try to say "excuse me" through a pile of enraged racists.



The next twenty minutes I spend under my covers, listening to the muffled shreiks of this kid, as he is, literally, skinned alive. Guitar strings are superheated, and dragged over his skin, burning off the tattoos, like some kind of heated cheesegrater.



Finally they all leave, and the kid is discreetely dragged to his cell, and told to keep quiet. He ends up cellbound for a week with "the flu" while he peels and grows new skin.



The people I saw killed or stabbed were killed for being dumbshits. Not much to say there.



Then one day I saw a kitten.



I was walking from work to my cell. I saw him in a little drainpipe. Scrawny. A runt. THe mother abandoned it because it wasn't going to live.



I picked it up, put it in my jacket and it mewed, I couldn't just leave it.



At this time Jason was my cellie. It is a violation to have pets in your cell, but what the gently caress were we going to do? I called my gangster racist murderer friends over and we made a plan.



Cell inspections happen twice a week. Different days for each unit. Lefty would take the kitten on inspection days since he was in another unit and they didn't inspect on the same day.



It was sickly. It was mostly blind. It had poor muscle control. It could barely hold its head up, and whenever it tried to jump up on something, it would miss, usually hitting a wall.



But every day, someone who worked in the kitchen would come by with bits of stolen food. And guys would bring milk from their breakfast every day for the kitten. And every day, guys would pop in to see how he was doing.



One day we had a random cell inspection, and we tossed the kitty in the locker when we saw the Unit Manager coming our way. But it was NOT sleepy time for kitten, because he was getting better! Healthy kittens love to play and talk! So while the unit manager was in our cell inspecting our beds, cleanliness, flushing our toilet,etc, the kitty wanted to come out and play.



I never thought it would work and it probably didnt, the unit manager probably knew, but every time the kitty would go "merewlll" WE would cough or shuffle our feet or say "HAY WHATS UP UNIT MANAGER?" "DID YOU SEE THE NEWS ABOUT THE WEATHER!!!!?"



Yeah. close call. Since I was a short-timer, I decided I didn't want the heat for the kitty. But I couldn't let him go either. He may be a little better but he was still half blind and retarded.



I did the only thing I knew to do.



I went to my boss at the Law Library. "Ron," I said... "I've got a problem..."



"oh no 655321! Is someone threatening you?"



"no"



"Are you in trouble?"



"not yet"



"WHAT, FOR GODS SAKE IS THE PROBLEM, 655321?"



"I have a kitten, boss."



"You... have a.... kitten? As in a cat?"



"yessir. It was sick. I found it by the admin building. I brought it to my cell and it wa...."



"You know that if a Law Clerk gets even a MINOR misconduct they're fired, right?"



"Yessir. And I had a close call, today, sir - That is why I need your help"



"How the hell can I help you with a kitten 655321?"



"Well if I could just somehow get it to my wife, sir.... She could take care of it"



Thus began operation Smuggle a Kitten out of Maximum Security Prison.



So Ron (not the cellmate, My boss), sent me with a box to my cell, under the pretense of getting some papers that I'd been working on. One of the new guards stopped me with my box, on my way to the unit. Because an inmate should NOT be carrying a box. If it were a guard that had been there for a while it wouldn't be a problem, most of them liked me and let me get away with poo poo. Like me and bezo's spider fights. Some would even bet with us.



Anyway this new guard stopped me with my box and asked me where I was going, and I said "to my cell to get my papers - I'm a Law Clerk". "I dont care if youre the goddamn pope you shouldn't have a box". I said "call Ron at the Law Library, he can verify".



So he does, and ron confirms I should, indeed have a box. But he doesnt let me go until he is satisfied that I dont have contraband in my box, by looking inside.



"poo poo," i thought, this fucker better be gone when I'm on my way back up.



So I make it to my cell, and put the pussy in the box. I get back up the hill without incident and surrender the pussy laden container to Ron.



Ron then puts his career and everything on the line and meets with the wife of an inmate, off prison grounds, some days later, to deliver the kitty.



It was really loving great, to hear that the kitten had made it home. A part of all of us, that we had nurtured and helped thrive and petted and played with was on the outside, a free "creature". It meant so much to all of us. Especially me. Every time I would call my wife, or see her, people would pass and ask "hey, hows the kitty doing?"



Word on kitty's progress would spread like wildfire with every update. Every new eccentricity the kitty developed (It would hypnotize itself watching the ceiling fan and get so dizzy it would fall over), would come back to me from total strangers. "Hey I heard about dizzykitty!", or when he decveloped some kind of lump on his neck and had to have a shunt attatched and my wife had to drain the kitty daily... "How's ol' spigotkitty?".



He got bigger, and dumber. More and more stories passed, even the guards were hip to it by now, so some of the "cooler" guards would ask about it, too...



Guards and inmates.... You know, one said to me once "the only difference between you and me, is you got caught". They're like inmates. Some have been there long enough, that they just want to do their time, get their paychecks, go home and watch the game and gently caress the wife. So long as we're not up to anything TOO awful, they turn their back to little things - Tattooing, smoking in the cells, weed, even consentual buttsex between a man and his punk, so long as they didnt have to hear about it. Or see it.



Some would bring us little things, like good tattoo ink, or bits and parts of stuff for us to use in our hobbycraft, etc. Some would sit and chat it up with us on a loving hot summer day out on the hill. Some would play bones with us, or say "hey, a little bird told you to get your tattoo poo poo out of the cell, you're up for a shakedown tonight".



Others. Well others were straight FUCKS. They'd write you up as soon as look at you. When it was shakedown time, instead of taking your books off your shelf neatly to see if there's contraband in/behind them, they'd toss them onto the floor. They'd try to instigate fights. They'd lock you down for no loving reason, etc.



We made the best of it. We just watched from the hill, observing, listening.



Going home...



My time finally came. All my good-time was revoked over the escape. But in the two years I was at MAX, I earned enough for the day to finally come, nearly four years after it had all begun.



You mark down the days on your calendar and it all seems like it will never end. You calculate and re calculate, and you note six months left (it might as well be six years) - Three months left (it'll never get here), One month left (Something is going to happen... Something will go wrong)... Two weeks left (your fellow convicts begin to detatch a little from you - they're still your friends but you can tell somethings a little different), Seven days left (you're waiting for a note on your bunk telling them that your Pre-release W&W check came back with a detainer in some fuckoff county), Three days left (each hour is two hours long and you can't sleep for poo poo), TOMORROW YOU'RE GOING HOME. You can't believe it. They begin the process - Your outgoing physical, all the signing of forms and papers, packing up the things that have become your worldy posessions over the years, saying goodbye to those that will be at work when you do the "walk".



The morning of. You pick up your box from the property office. You go to the main office where you're given your street clothes. You're shaking. Youre loving scared to death. What's changed in the world? How am I going to get a job? Holy gently caress I now have a WIFE to look after!



You go through the first gate, with a guard. it closes behind you. "Excited?" says the guard. you hear some disembodied voice answer in the affirmative, but everything in you wants to drop that box and go running back to where everything is regimented, where you knwo exactly what each day will bring, like clockwork. The second gate opens. You step beyond it. twenty yards away there's a yellow line. On the other side of that yellow line are your wife and a guy who you got out of prison seven years early with your law clerking, here to show his appreciation. Off to your right is the razor wire. Through that you can see fifty people, who have all gotten permission from their bosses to wave you off. Many of them will never see this side of the wire again. Many of them will never go home.



Many of them, to this day, six years later, are still in the band room, playing awful covers. Many of them are still sneaking a quick grope or a little through-the-jeans handjob on the visiting yard. They're having lunch at twelve-oh-five. Fridays they have fish.



Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to go back. Here in the world it's all me. It's all under my control. Sometimes I'm lonely. I was somebody there. I was the smart guy on the yard. I was the one to talk to if you needed help, and could afford me.



Then I remember how it felt when I got out. That I could just open my door any old time and step outside. Any time I wanted to. My first week or so home, my wife told me she would wake up and see me opening and closing our front door, just because I could. I don't remember this, though.



Who am I now? I'm your neighbor. I'm the guy with a nice car, the good house, the good job. You'd never guess me for an ex-con, unless you saw my well-hidden tattoos. I won't get them removed, I need them.



My wife and I are now divorced. It's hard to tell somebody who broke you out of prison that you dont know where your relationship is going.... But it was for the best.



Sometimes, I'll dream that I'm back there, that some freak of the law brought me back there. That the governor is loving with me some more. that my life is on hold, again. That I'm just some guy in a box behind some wire. I wake up in a cold sweat, leap out of bed, dash down the hall...



...and open my door.