Ziggy & Sparks

            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.