Super Bowl … And Winter Inside

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY, 2015.

 

            Past couple of weeks have been interesting in here. There’s been the security audit – a sham of a process where everything looks good for a few days; then the “system” goes back to normal and cluster rules the day again. There have been fights, dirty urines, new tattoos, more weed, more tobacco, no bagels on commissary, even after 22 day stretches. Days pass … but it’s like the movie “Groundhog Day;” you’ve seen it all before. The shifts change, the rules are rewritten, and then everything returns to how it was: poorly run.

            What breaks the monotony? Super Bowl for one thing. In my former life there was always a Super Bowl party. First, at our house with twenty or more friends and the table packed with food and drinks. Later years, there was Vegas – special invitation to high roller casino parties with more food and drink than is imaginable. Beautiful women everywhere. It was hedonism to the nth degree. Then came arrest, and lock up, and the Super Bowl didn’t matter until …

            I got here. Sports matter inside; and, the Super Bowl is celebrated in here just like on “the street.” It is an event that allows you to feel part of everybody else. You’re doing the same thing everyone else is.

            Food is everywhere: Pizzas, dips, nachos, wraps, cheesecakes, banana puddings, snack mix; it’s all here and it’s all made “fresh” (as fresh as prepackaged foods can be when mixed with Ramen and Rice and block cheese). Hours upon hours guys line up for access to the microwaves. Meatballs, pepperoni, bacon, ham, roast beef – the smells fill the air. Popcorn, cheese doodles, Fritos, Doritos – chips are unbagged and placed on newspaper. Kick off and tickets: bets for a dozen lines with quarter boards (1 soup equals 1 pick) flood the room. It’s loud and exciting and as close to “not here” as you can get. And as the game progresses into the 4^th quarter every eye is on the field. Nothing can break the feeling except “Count Time. TVs off.” It’s 9:30 count and for five minutes the building is silent and we remember, we are still inside … Football and the Super Bowl, they remind you of what is beyond here.

            Then, winter hits. First the arctic blast – it’s 0° and no rec is called. The snow starts and by Tuesday we have over six inches. No school. Stuck in the building, you read, watch TV; some play cards or bones (dominoes). You watch the news and again you’re reminded the world outside, real life, is so much like yours in here. They can’t keep the weather out. They try and take away your dignity, truth, self-respect, freedom. But those things, like the weather, find their way in here.

            The playwright Eugene O’Neil, remarked that “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”

            As I walk out the door and head down the boulevard to chow I think instead that the grace of God is snow. It is cold - 5° with the wind chill – and it is pristine and it is quiet; and it pierces the despair that is life behind bars. Winter, contrary to so many poets’ words, really is a fresh season, a new beginning. Keep your spring; I’ll take Super Bowl and snow and running shirtless with my breath hanging in the air. Prison has no answer for winter.

 

Transitions

Nothing remains constant in here, least of all the population. It didn’t used to be that way. Years earlier, you went to a prison and you stayed there for years. You knew who was living around you. Every week just two or three would leave and two or three would take their place. Now, it’s a whole new world of corrections – which is odd because the Virginia state budget is such a mess, you would think they’d quit locking people up for stupid, short sentence stuff and then moving them from low custody facility to low custody facility. Transitions are part of life; in here you move, things change, just for the hell of it.

So last week, “Randy” left, He was supposed to have gone in February but he’s a “civil commitment” guy. You know, his sex crime was so severe, so abnormal, that he has to be civilly committed. Here’s the funny thing – he spent his entire time in low custody. I’ve met violent predatory sex offenders who have been at high security levels worked their way down here, who aren’t civilly committed. Meanwhile, this guy “Randy” spends his eight years here (that’s right, 8 years for sick child porn) then goes through a due process hearing for the last 6 months before heading to the “behavioral science” center.

Early in the morning last week (before 6:00 am count) they woke him up. “Get all your stuff. They’re coming for you at 6:30.” And that was it. Randy will be held in sex detention for a year. Then, they’ll be another hearing to determine if he’s “cured.” Can you ever be “cured” of aberrant sexual feelings?”

Transitions. They moved a gay guy into the building the other day. Change that. We’ve had gay guys in the building before. We’ve never had a guy who sits to urinate, plucks his eyebrows, and calls all the officers “sugar.” I’ve seen all this before, the flamboyance and exaggeration. Is it real? I’m not sure, but prison is a mass of guys wanting people to think you are something/someone other than who you really are. Guys aren’t just gay in prison, they’re “Bird Cage” over the top gay.

The whole building environment changed when he swished his way in. There’s an air of uncomfortableness. A few closeted fellows feel emboldened and become more gay; others more homophobic. The building is tense. Meanwhile, he sings show tunes in the shower.

Football season kicked off last weekend and with it, gambling tickets flew around the compound. One of our college guys runs back and is pretty good on his lines. Just on Saturday he took in over $500 in tickets. I watched him sweat out a few “10 pick” tickets late Saturday – they could have hurt him; instead, it was a profitable weekend; very profitable. 

Fall is always a transition time in here. Football keeps things moving. Forget New Years; the first Thursday night catches almost everyone’s attention. With football season you know fall lockdown is coming. After that, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So stamps thousands of them – change hands with tickets: 5 picks, 8 picks, parlays; gambling is back with a vengeance.

Every week, twenty to thirty new guys show up and the same number leave. DOC spends millions each year “transporting” – i.e. moving 3 or 4 guys at a time on old school busses to various prisons around the state. It’s a stupid system which makes perfect sense in a money wasting backward operation which is DOC. And yet, the “new” guys coming in aren’t new. So many are back for round “3” or “4.” The “system” hasn’t worked; it hasn’t rehabilitated them. They grease the wheels of the system; they keep DOC in business.

And the guys showing up are uneducated and ignorant; many are plain dumb. They have little – if any – hope of success outside. Prison time becomes just another season for them. They cycle in and out. They “remember” on their last bid that “chicken on the bone” was served every week. “They don’t feed us like they use to,” they moan. Maybe, you should stay out, you think.

It’s a mind-numbing process. Like a hamster on a wheel, you move at break neck speed hoping to outrun this time. You try to ignore the predilections and violence of so many around you. You try to find humanity in your surroundings. You try and block out the guy who lies about his military status as he seeks to con a free education. You think “I can do this; I can get through this.” Like Andy Dufresne in “Shawshank Redemption” you try and hold on to beauty and joy and hope so you don’t transition into just another DOC number.

Transition may be the wrong word. It’s a conveyor belt in here. And for far too many, the belt runs into a wall. You have to be better than that.