Living with Dopes

Part 1 “Caught Smoking by the Urinal”

            Guys inside are getting dumber. I know, to get caught up in most of the stuff we do requires a certain level of dumbness, me included. After all, how can you ever think you won’t get caught? But, in my four plus years here I’ve noticed a change. When I first got here most of the 1200 or so men had been down for a good amount of time. Re-entry didn’t exist, just transitioning out. Oh, there were knuckleheads – prison is synonymous with knuckleheads. But, guys knew how to act. You didn’t act like a dope, you didn’t disrespect your neighbor or his space, and you didn’t bring heat on the building.

            But “re-entry” has brought a new breed of inmate, guys who cycle in and out, who have drug and alcohol problems. They’re young, dumb (uneducated, unskilled, and unmotivated), and loud. I was a fan of the AMC show “Breaking Bad.” Let me tell you, their portrayal of meth heads was accurate. Crack addicts, meth heads, heroin junkies, “dippers” (weed roll ups dipped in formaldehyde). I see them every day. It’s like living in the land of the walking dead. You think you’d get used to it and the resulting fights when a long-term inmate gets tired of the dirt and noise, and then you see two meth heads arcing a spark off the urinal …

            That’s right, arcing a spark off the urinal. We don’t have matches or lighters – usually – in here. Instead, you get two batteries, a razor blade, and the top of the urinal. The batteries “arc” off the razor and urinal cap and viola, a rolled up cigarette is lit! So, three guys huddle over a dirty urinal and they smoke this nasty smelling homemade cigarette, and the bathroom stinks, and the officers smell it, and the dopes get locked and lose their good time, and then they bitch because their eighteen month sentence (with good time) is now twenty months.

            Do they learn? No. I’ve seen dozens of these guys leave and come back to prison within six months after leaving. It’s what keeps the system running. And what of their self-respect? How does a man hunch himself over a foul urinal because his addict mentality won’t let him see how undignified he’s become?

            If it wasn’t so tragic it would be hysterical. It’s drugs, and ignorance, and a dozen other social problems and it’s lining the pockets of the prison-industrial complex while destroying families, and neighborhoods, and nations. It’s just a little spark arced off a urinal but it says so much more about this place …

 Part II “Leave the Officers Alone”
            There was a time in prison when you wouldn’t dare flirt with a female officer. Being friendly with officers was against the code. Violate the code and you were fair game. Those days are gone at this level. Here, dozens of young inmates, mostly African-American, almost all in on sex charges, spend hours talking to the female officers.

            Sex crimes. Here’s what I’ve learned the last five years: inmates tell you they hate sex offenders, but race trumps crime. Hundreds of men here are doing time for rape and sexual battery. Hundreds more are in on child porn charges. Daily conversations take place about “the white perv in bed 8” who is facing civil commitment. Nothing is said about the young black guy doing ten years for slipping a date rape drug to a girl and “takin it.”

            There’s a double-standard in here. I had a confrontation with an “African” leader about a year ago. He’s a black drug dealer from Baltimore who took a Swahili name, yet he knows nothing about Africa. He approached me when I came to the defense of a thirty-year old white guy who (as a teacher) the population discovered was in for having sex with a fifteen year-old student.

            “I hate snitches and sex offenders” Sankofa told me as he explained why he was urging everyone to shun this guy. I said, “I hate hypocrites.” See Sankofa regularly ran around with five young guys all in on sexual assault charges. And each of those guys would daily shout out to the female officers, “Hey baby!” Or, they’d stand in the dayroom and talk to the officer for thirty minutes. Snitches? Sankofa’s closest friend was a guy who told on his co-defendants to get a reduced sentence.

            No, the issue was race. The one guy was white, the others were black. I hate that as much as I hate those crimes.

            I struggle with dealing with inmates in on sex crimes. They are in my way of thinking sick and predatory and wholly devoid of empathy from me. How do you sexually violate a child? How do you sexually violate a woman? It makes no sense to me. Worse, when I see these guys behaving inappropriately around female officers I get incensed. Many of them are being released soon and their behavior has not changed.

            My friends who’ve done “real” time, hard time at higher security level prisons, tell me black or white this stuff wouldn’t happen up there. In the ruthless world of level 4 and 5 prisons acting like a sexual predator with the women officers lands you in trouble.

            But this is re-entry. And guys act like dopes down here. I don’t think I’ll ever get use to living like this; and I guess that’s a good thing.

 

Atlantic City

“Well they killed the chicken man in Philly last night

            And the DA can’t get no relief …”

            

So begins Bruce Springsteen’s soulful acoustic ballad “Atlantic City.” I’ve been thinking about that song a good bit the last few weeks. It’s a song about a guy who has to do a favor for a friend. He knows the favor will cost him… probably with his life. The singer is on the wrong side of the law. And, like most ballads, there’s trouble coming. He knows it’ll cost him his life. Still he has to do what he has to do. Then, the refrain:

            “Everything dies baby that’s a fact

            But everything that dies someday comes back

            Put your make up on

            Fix your hair real pretty

            And meet me tonight in Atlantic City”

            

I can’t get Springsteen’s lyric out of my mind. “Everything dies.” It’s the message of Ecclesiastes and the Book of Lamentations in the Old Testament. Everything dies. Nothing survives. It all ends. And. As I recently read, “nothing dies pretty: reputation, marriage, dreams.” Springsteen’s protagonist begins as a realist. He knows the score. He has a job to do and it can’t be avoided. And there’s a cost to what he’s doing; a dear cost; a cost so great that as you listen you hope he won’t do the “favor;” he’ll choose the other way. “Everything dies baby that’s a fact.”

            

But, I can’t mouth that first line without the second. “But everything that dies someday comes back.” And, I can’t help thinking Springsteen’s telling me something. There’s a season to mourn, but that season will roll forward. Like the tide coming in and going out, everything dies, but everything someday comes back.

            

I’ve been thinking about that a lot – the dying and coming back part – as I watch lives go on around me in here and outside. It’s a recurrent theme in literature, which means in life as well. The most critically acclaimed show on TV right now is “Breaking Bad.” The premise is simple enough. A high school chemistry teacher faces the news he has cancer. From the outside, all looks well in his life. It isn’t, his marriage – like his health – is failing. So he makes a deal with the devil. He needs to make sure his family is provided for, needs to make sure his family survives. He begins manufacturing crystal meth. And, the money pours in. What does he do? He lies repeatedly to his wife to cover up his wrong doing.

            

Here’s the funny thing: audiences pull for him. You know what he’s doing is wrong. And, you know that crossing the ethical line, the line that keeps you doing what’s right even when no one’s watching, can’t be uncrossed. And, you know that one ethical lapse makes the next one easier. Walter White, the protagonist anti-hero of “Breaking Bad” survives his cancer; but the cancer of selling his soul, corrupting the man he is, eats away at him worse than the disease ever could. We watch and we pull for him; we hope he finds his way out because we know what the story writers already know: we are all capable of crossing the line.

           

 “Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but everything that dies someday comes back.” Walter’s life dies in many ways. His marriage survives – his wife becomes a partner in his business venture. She devises the lies to hide the money, to keep their friends and family from learning the truth. But, she betrays him in so many ways. And the security, the future, that Walter sought when he made his deal with the devil can’t exist with drug manufacturing, and drug gangs, and killing. He can’t stay in and he can’t get out.

           

 Most of the guys in here watch “Breaking Bad” because they understand the drug culture. They understand the tweaked out junkies, and the guns, and the wrecked lives. I watch it because of the disintegration and transformation of Walter. I watch because I know what Walter is dealing with.

            

Atlantic City. I spent dozens of nights in Atlantic City. We’d go every month or so with friends, three and four couples. There’d be suites, and concerts, and spa treatments and shopping for our wives. Dinners were with wine and sixty dollar glasses of scotch. There’d be five hundred dollar crap tables, and cohiba cigars. We were living a fantasy life. In the back of my mind I always said I’d quit. But how? That’s the dilemma.

            

So one night we’re in our suite and the full wall length windows show off the lights up and down the boardwalk. You can see the white tops of waves crashing into the shore. She senses something isn’t right. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she says. And for an ever so brief moment I consider telling her. It flashes through my mind. I want to tell her. I want to leave the country and buy a small beach bar in the Caribbean and read and run and live with my soul intact. “I love you,” I tell her. “I always have; I always will.” I explain I’m stressed out at work. We dress and go to a late dinner with our friends. Two months later I’m arrested. “I haven’t loved you for years,” she says. “Everything dies baby that’s a fact …”

            

The “Boss” sings his soulful refrain and you know it won’t end well for his anti-hero. The funny thing is, you hope it does. “Everything that dies some day comes back.” Springsteen knew dying is just part of living. And living goes on. There is a tomorrow. There will be a second act.

            

So “Miko-bones” – a new reader: remember prison in many ways is a state of mind. Focus on the future. It’ll be different, but there will be a future. Springsteen was right:

            “Everything dies baby that’s a fact

            But everything that dies some day comes back.”