When Will They Ever Learn?

As I was working out a few weeks ago, Pete Seeger’s song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” ran through my head.  After each stanza, from flowers to girls to young soldiers, to graveyards, Seeger ends with the same refrain, “When will they ever learn?”

To say I was unprepared for arrest and jail would be an understatement.  I was taken to the jail – in shackle and handcuffs of course – wearing my navy blue blazer, oxford collared shirt, khakis and Kenneth Cole dress shoes.  As opposed to most guys who know they’re about to get picked up and have on four pair of t-shirts, boxers and socks, I had one v-neck tee and a pair of green Italian silk boxers.

They took everything from me except my underclothes.  I was given two sets of puke green, elastic waist scrubs and a set of “Jackie Chans”, jail lingo for the 99 cent shower shoes they give out.  I was told by the property C.O. I could order my own sneakers, boxers and t-shirts from commissary.  And, feeling sorry for me – I was a pathetic mess – the officer helped me fill out my first “store” order.  I’d shown up in jail with $400.00 in my wallet that was immediately taken and put on my “account”.  I ordered three sets of white tees, boxers and socks and a $20.00 pair of Velcro sneakers.  “You’ll be able to get your stuff next Monday”, the officer told me shortly before I found myself in my first jail pod with no daylight, no quiet, and no hope.

That first week was horrendous and I fought desperately against self-destruction even as my whole “real” life was crashing around me. I barely survived that first weekend, had my moment of begging God to not abandon me, and somehow made it to Monday morning.  And, shortly after 9:00 that morning, the intercom called me to commissary.  That entire first week I lived in the same t-shirt and underwear.  Each night in my cell, I’d wash those clothes out with my state issued bar of soap and hang them to dry.  And I’d sleep “commando” in that uncomfortable jail-issued scrub set.

The sneakers.  I put them on at the commissary window and headed back to the pod.  It was the first moment of normalcy I’d enjoyed since my arrest.  Back in my cell block I walked around feeling – well – better than I had in a week.  Then I saw him. 

He was a young, muscular black kid, no more than eighteen.   He was sitting on a table, saw me and climbed down and began heading toward me.  I noticed his smile, devious is a good way to describe it, and also noticed the ten or so other guys in the dayroom suddenly moved toward the walls.

“Nice shoes”, he said.  Before I could respond he added, “Give em to me or else”.  My mind raced a thousand miles an hour.  I was forty-nine and wanted to die – or so I thought.  But, his words did something to me.  I put myself in a fighting stance, on the balls of my feet, hands fisted.  Then and there I decided I might get my ass kicked, but I’d always keep my dignity.

Divine intervention?  At that precise moment the young, female psychologist walked by our pod windows in a silk blouse and jeans that accentuated her petite frame.  My would-be assailant saw her and turned his attention to her.  In one of those tragic-comic moments you only see in prison, he began uttering lewd, grunted words to her while exposing himself.  In a matter of seconds the dayroom door sprang open and three beefy officers lifted “Casanova” off the floor and out of the pod.  I never saw him again.

There have been other situations where I’ve been threatened, sometimes by guys for whom violence has been a way of life.  It’s funny, but I don’t worry about it.  As I told a friend one time, it’s better to get beat up and keep your dignity intact than live with yourself out of fear.  But, those experiences have convinced me of the needless waste that is violence.

The other night a fight broke out in here.  Like most fights this one arose out of a stupid thing, a wager gone awry, and one skinny loudmouth telling a much larger guy “you ain’t gonna dispect me, bro.”  Within seconds the big man had lunged at skinny, landed at least six heavy “Whumps” to the head and chest, then began to choke him out.

And as with most fights in here, we all stopped and tried not to look, but also didn’t intervene.  In a minute or two it was over.  Skinny slinked off to his bunk gasping for air, only the blackness of his skin hiding his bruised and bloodied face.

I’ll never get use to the violence in here.  It jolts me and offends my sense of dignity and compassion.  And the more I see of it, the more I realize it’s just a stupid, stupid waste.

Were it only in here, I’d write it off as some depraved state of the incarcerated; you know “what do you expect from criminals?”  But then you watch the news; Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Chicago, Richmond, on and on the news details fighting and killing.  Gandhi once said “with an eye for an eye the world will soon be blind.”  Gandhi was a very smart man.

Violence is never the answer.  Violence begets violence.  I have watched too many men beat each other senseless in here.  Then again, I saw too many young men die and kill in the rice paddies of Vietnam and the sands of Iraq.  “When will they ever learn?”

I shared with a friend in a recent letter how much prison has changed my outlook on life, on people, on things in general.  Years ago, after that initial confrontation over my sneakers, I began getting up at 4:00 and reading the Bible.  I guess I wanted to understand why, why God, why things were the way they were.  I found more questions than answers.  But, I began to come away with a deep sense of awe over the infinite mystery that is God.

And I began to understand that we are all flawed.  Perhaps that’s why I keep thinking it all boils down to kindness, mercy, and forgiveness.

When will they ever learn?  After the fight, the big guy came up to me to talk.  Everyone else was joking on him, he said.  “Not you.”  And he told me he felt like crap about doing that, pummeling the loudmouth, skinny guy.  “I hate that.  Hate getting so angry.  Hate how I feel afterwards.” 

When will they every learn?  Maybe never, or maybe….

Fraternizing 101

We had a troubling incident hit on B side Thursday.  “A”, a mid-forties, married, black lawyer from Richmond, was taken out of the building in handcuffs and led to the hole.  Right now, he’s “under investigation”.  People are pretty tight lipped, but it’s obvious this isn’t your run of the mill visit to the hole.  They don’t take guys out in handcuffs or “cease all movement” on the boulevard when leading an inmate from the building to the hole.  “A” broke a major DOC taboo.  He was fooling around with an officer.

I’ve had an interesting three year experience with “A”.  The day I was arrested and hauled to the Henrico Jail, he was already there.  That was his second visit to jail.  Both times, wheeling and dealing with client trust funds.  He knew all the “big hitters”, the top criminal lawyers in Richmond and had heard me speak at a continuing ed seminar a few years earlier.  A likeable guy, he was none the less, a first class bullshitter.  I knew that when I saw him at the jail so I had no illusions what dealing with him entailed.

June, 2009 rolls around and he tells me “I’m going home; getting my law license reinstated”.  I’m there; mired in deep depression and despair just into my first year of imprisonment and this guy – with his second conviction under his belt – is heading home to rejoin the world.  Sure enough, the next day he’s called out.

Two months later, I get introduced to receiving hell.  For the next four plus months after my transfer I suffer, genuinely suffer, in the worst conditions imaginable battling each day to maintain my dignity, humanity and sanity.  Then, on November 20^th in ’09 I’m transferred to this Shangri La and who is the first person I see as I’m pushing my cart up the boulevard?  “A”.  The bullshitter leaves this July 15^th.

He and I view the world – this world – differently.  He carries himself around the compound like a political candidate telling fellow inmates how he’s going to say this and that to the warden.  Me, I avoid discussions with the administration.  They have a job to do, but so do I.  There job is to hold men here and enforce sentences according to their interpretation of the law and DOC procedures.  My job is to get out of here as early as I can and point out the insanity of the system that keeps them employed.

“A” thinks he can work with them.  He plays up his legal contacts all the time.  Yet, his knowledge level is low.  That’s the thing I’ve learned about bullshitters.  They talk a good game, but they don’t back it up with facts.  “A” comes to me when he’s asked about the law.

“Pride goes before the fall.”  I’ve lived that.  There’s a reason Micah told the people of Israel that the Lord wants His people to seek justice and “walk humbly before your God”.  Hubris kills.

“A’s” been bullshitting a female CO.  She’s attractive enough.  Of course I define attractive through the eyes of someone still reeling over heartbreak from love lost.  But, she’s OK.  She treats the guys well, very pleasant and fair.  But, she’s an officer.  There is a weird psychological occurrence in prison in which guys believe females on the compound dig them.  I don’t get it and the vast majority of times it’s just guys fooling themselves.  But it does happen.  Female officers, female counselors, female psychologists and teachers, fall for inmates and engage in inappropriate relationships.

“A” and this officer had such a relationship.  It was common knowledge.  He’d end up in the office with her and the lights would turn off.  Something happened recently that even went further.  No one knows exactly what – but “A” crossed a line and the fraternization came out and now he’s in the hole and she’s under investigation. 

As I’ve written before, prison life imitates the “real world”.  It’s not called fraternizing out there, but it’s the same thing.  One only has to turn the TV on and see “Aanold” or John Edwards or Congressman Weiner (there are so many jokes I could make here) who followed their groins instead of their brain.  It’s not just a man thing.  Each of those men was involved with a woman.  And those women they were involved with all knew those men were married.

And the really strange thing is, I don’t get it.  We spend our lifetime looking for that one person and then we look for physical intimacy elsewhere.  “A’s” jeopardized his release and his marriage for a couple of carnal connections with an officer.  She’ll probably lose her job.

It all comes back to my alter-ego Dr. Gregory House.  In an episode from five or six years ago, his former lover shows up with her husband who is dying.  House is a broken man – physically, with a damaged leg and Vicodin habit to dull the pain; emotionally, with a broken heart from losing this woman.  He’s fragile and, in a recurring theme season after season, finds it nearly impossible to love another woman.

As with every “House” episode, he finds the correct diagnosis and the husband’s life is saved.  His ex comes to see him and says the following:

“You want the truth?  I still love you.  I always will.  You are the one, the only.  But this life is easier.”

Fast forward.  House is alone in his home.  There’s the background music, Mick Jagger singing:

“You can’t always get what you want

             But if you try some times
             You just might find
            You get what you need.”

House pops a pain pill.   It dulls him.  But, it doesn’t completely take away the ache he feels in his heart for this woman he loves.  Pain, loneliness, heartbreak suck.  Yet, they are preferable to the quick empty feeling of fraternizing.  Ask Arnold if it was worth it; or John Edwards.  Ask “A”.  I think they’d tell you they’re just a bunch of weiners.