Guys inside are so often, so alike.
They fall into pre-defined categories, caricatures of “typical” inmates.
There’s the dirty, hillbilly crack head. He’s with four other guys who look –
and sound – the same. Four dumb white guys “talkin bout the time I hit the pipe
and the rock. Oohh doggie it melted good,” and they laugh and say “shit man”
and nod. They are a portrait, a snapshot of what I think of when I think of
rural, blue collar, poorly educated white guys from Southside Virginia who are
hooked on a crack, crystal meth, and pills. They’ve stepped right out of Daniel
Woodrell's “Winter Bones.”
There are the young black guys –
more teen than men – who preen and walk with “authority” because, well simply
because “they from the streets.” Many are “bangers” – bloods and crips mostly,
a few offshoot groups pop up. They talk big about guns and armed robberies and
turf battles. Yet, to a man, they exude fear. No, in a pack they are dangerous
because fear of your peers is a driving force to act tough. Most know that
there’s a whole world out there they’ll never see. So they talk about “Henny”
and clubs and “makin it rain” with twenties and hundreds except, except most
have never seen a paycheck, or a home with a yard.
The molesters – those middle aged,
middle class white guys with their contempt for the system and the “dumb” drug
users. Not to be outdone by the rapists – mostly young black men who “took it”
they’ll say, but not too loudly because up the road, at higher levels, rapists
– like their molester counterparts – are hunted and extorted.
Yeah, it’s like that inside. Guys
fall into categories so easily. Uniqueness means aloneness, and alone you can
fall victim.
Which is why I watch for the “other”
guys, the ones who aren’t character sketches. Like my buddy ‘DC.’ No one is
like him. He was one of the worst, a rogue; murderous, quick to settle scores,
feared throughout the system. And today? I feel like he’s an older brother; I
trust him, I respect him, I like him. He’s genuine. He’s like our own “Forrest
Gump” – he knew, he knows everyone from the District. Take this little “drop”
story:
“Main man. You know (CBS
Sportscaster/NFL host with initials “JB”). He’s from the district. I used to
put a ladder up against his house go in and (have conjugal relations) with his
sister. So one day he pulls up on me and says, “Bird” (DC’s name in the
district), you gotta stop sleepin with my sister or …” Or what, I say, and
nothing. He goes to Harvard, I go to robbing banks …”
Unique. That describes two guys I’ve
recently met: Ziggy and Sparks. Two different men: one black, one white; one
from rural North Carolina, the other from the Bronx. So Ziggy, he’s a big,
burly “country” fellow with a Carolina accent that drips of butter biscuits and
pulled pork. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he’d spent over half his life
behind bars. And Sparks, with his shaved head and daily quips about the
Yankees, it’s hard to imagine he’s down to two years on a straight seventeen
(fourteen with the Feds and three with the Commonwealth) after a prior five in
New York.
I first met Ziggy shortly after he
arrived here from a higher level. I noticed his CDs – there were a lot of
Southern rock discs: Skynard, Marshall Tucker, the Allman Brothers, all bands I
remembered from my own days in the ‘70s and ’80s going to school in Tennessee.
And his voice, that accent, it reminded me of my parents’ church in Raleigh
with the distinct drawl North Carolinians maintain.
A day or two later, Ziggy pulled me
aside. “You used to be a lawyer, right?” Yes, I told him. “You have a blog,
don’t ya?” I wondered how he knew (I’m always surprised when someone comes
across the blog). “I have a friend, from a church in South Carolina. She reads
it.” And after that, Ziggy and I were ok. I noticed his tattoos – many of them
relate to his “race.” He’s “tatted” up like a lot of white guys in here who’ve
done serious time at higher levels. Just like the young black guys who get into
“bangin” so too do white guys. “Stay with your kind.” “There’s safety in numbers.”
Ziggy – a man who’d done long stretches in solitary – was part of that side of
prison life I’d always avoided.
A side story. While at the jail in
’09 waiting for transfer to DOC two young “Aryans” tried to recruit me. “No
thanks,” I said and then stealing a Groucho Marx line, I told them, “I don’t
join any group that wants me as a member.”
But Ziggy, he isn’t like that. He’s
a nice, friendly guy. He isn’t a bigot; he’s not a racist. He’s a guy who came
in the system and, out of fear – or a sense of loneliness – lined up with what
he was familiar with. Did he have to? Race is a reality “inside” and I can’t
help but think that prisons push racial hostility – separate is easier to
control than united.
But Ziggy proves a tattoo is just a
tattoo. The heart matters more … which is why Sparks is so like Ziggy.
Sparks is a big “OG” in a particular
street gang. But what was once of utmost importance to him – that street life –
isn’t that important anymore. Like Ziggy and his “Caucasian” connections in
days before, Sparks has grown beyond the street life. He has plans for a
janitorial business. During computer class he uses lab assignments to design
and hone his business model. And, like the dozens of other long-term
incarcerated I’ve met who decide college isn’t just a choice but a necessity,
these two men are well read and comfortable about themselves and their futures.
I see men like Ziggy and Sparks and
can’t help but think of Hemingway’s words, “Everyone is broken in life, and
some are stronger in the broken places.”
So often, we go through life trying
to fit in, trying to be who we think the crowds expects. Safety, security can
only happen that way, we tell ourselves. We’re wrong. We are much better as who
we are supposed to be – no matter alone or how difficult the circumstances –
than to be a caricature.
