Life on the Beach

Here's a guest post by a friend; thought you might enjoy it:
  

I live on the beach.  Well that’s what we call it.  If you haven’t read along with this blog, you may need some background.  See, in the 1990s the U.S. decided to lead the world in incarceration, so it ramped up its prison population, I mean way up, and things in here got crowded.  To fit everybody in, they pulled the tables and chairs out of the common area and welded in place four sets of bunk beds, thus the beach!

The beach is right out in the middle of everything.  The lights never go out, ever.  And anyone who wants to go anywhere passes just inches from your bed.  In our block, a room designed for maybe 70 people, 170 now live and with that many guys in a confined space, the coming and going all day and night is constant.

So how does one end up on the beach?  Newbies often times spend a few weeks there while hoping for a bunk in a less conspicuous corner to open up; if you’re not homeboys with the guards or counselors the smallest infraction can land you on the beach, too.  I spent a week there when I first checked in and returned recently for a minor infraction.  Apparently, I left a sweaty shirt to dry on the back of my chair during the daytime.  Now, if you’re a counselor’s homeboy, you can drape your clothes on chairs and even hang clothes lines with nary a comment.  But I’m not that guy, so up to the beach I went and here I sit.

When you first try to sleep on the beach (sleep meaning lying there with your eyes closed), you notice how loud this place really is.  At 11 o’clock, about an hour after supposed quiet time, the tv room begins to empty out so that dozens of people come pouring forth paying no mind to those in their bunks trying to sleep.  You hear loud debates over whether Lebron or Steph is the best or whatever else has been on the tube that night.  When the tv room finally empties out the bathroom runs start.  My bed on the beach is about four feet from the bathroom door.  Many of my 170 roomies are past middle age, so all night there is a constant stream (pun intended) to the toilet.  You may not know that prison protocol requires us to flush constantly while sitting on the pot, then to wash our hands, and hey, why push the hand dryer button with a finger when you can pound it with your fist as hard and loud as possible?

At some point amidst all the bathroom visits, it’s time for evening count.  Which means that guards with a known aversion to this concept called numbers strut up and down the hall with flashlights blazing and keys jangling.  It never fails that Tweedledee and Tweedledum end up with conflicting totals.  They yell “Recount!”  And start all over again.

And then there’s our obsessive floor buffer guy.  Our geri-curled transgender orderly fires up the buffer and sets to work some mornings at 4:30 am.  If you work in the cafeteria, you have to get up at 4 to be ready for work by 4:45.  Insulin call is at 5:30 am.  Breakfast call is 5:45.  Medical call at 6.  The first interesting arguments start up around 6:15.  And there you are, bleary-eyed, wondering what sleep must feel like for anyone lucky enough to be deaf and blind in this place.

Once I’m up and unrested, I get to hang out with my fellow beach mates.  Since everyone starts out on the beach, you meet all sorts.  Guys that just arrived from country jails look shell-shocked; those that dropped down from medium security sleep in their boots, keep their shank handy, and rag about how this place is no real prison.  I currently share the beach with a guy who wears a colostomy bag (after a hospital screw up) and another we call Louis Farrakhan (constantly preaching Nation of Islam while pointing a finger at someone in this loud staccato voice claiming he used to be a rich securities trader (this is normal in prison, where guys will claim with a straight face that they used to make $150k a day and drive a Bentley and live in three mansions and by the way, if you want a good stock tip all you have to do is send his people a couple thou.)

So that’s a typical day on the beach.  Never dark, never quiet, no sleep, and crowded like you can’t imagine.  Don’t get me started on the smells.  But, you know, I guess it’s not as bad as living in a cube with a floor polishing tranny and Dr. Strangelove.  But that’s a story for another time….