You Can't Reason with Crazy

Big news around the unit the other day because G-Money decided to shave.  Just in case you did not know, being clean shaven and relatively young in prison signals that you are gay.  No use wondering whether this makes sense or is fair, it’s just the way it is.  You may be secure in your sexuality and not care whether someone thinks you’re gay, but you will still be hassled all day by propositions and pursued by a portion of the prison population. 

Meanwhile, back to the story.  One guy notices that G-Money has shaved and another says, “Yeah, he wants to look good for a visit.”  This makes sense, and he can just grow it back if he wants to avoid all the attention.  But then there’s this crazy -- actually as I see it batshit crazy -- thing.  This guy Tim joins the conversation.  Tim is a self-proclaimed Biblical scholar who claims to know the Bible better than anyone else on the compound.  He claims to live with one foot in heaven, the other foot on earth, where he serves as a beacon of God’s power.  His dimension-straddling power leads him to speak in tongues, and he claims to be able to perform miracles with his voice, heal through laying on of hands, and exorcise demons. 

But this, believe it or not, is not the crazy part.  I have no problem with his beliefs, but what he said in this conversation struck me as, well, odd.  Tim said that G-Money would be able to grow his beard back almost instantly.   "Why is that," we asked?  Tim responded, “Because when you become Jewish, by birth or conversion, God reaches down his hand and gives you the power to grow your Jew Beard!”  Stunned silence.  We’re all waiting for some kind of punchline.  But Tim says, “I’m totally serious.  That’s why Jews look so Jewy.”  At this point, I could take no more.  I invited him to explain how he could tell the difference between my Italian beard and what he called a Jew beard.  He nodded and replied that true believers can tell, adding that maybe I have some Jewish ancestors? 

I walked away.  One thing I’ve learned in prison is that you can’t reason with crazy.   Of course, one good thing did come from this.  We can now tease G-Money about his Jewy beard (poor guy, first it’s the walk and now the beard!).

The Prison Economy

One of the things that I find most interesting about prison is its economic system, where there is both a primary (commissary purchases) and a secondary (barter) market.  At the commissary, as you might expect with a literally captive clientele, you see at least a 30% markup.  That price gouging is what has created the secondary market, which I think is really fascinating, especially since it is totally, completely, without a doubt, AGAINST the rules.  This is the definition of a black market, which thrives in prison.

The black market has three facets:  (1) barter, (2) commissary, and (3) currency.  Bartering is mainly used to exchange skills and services.  For instance, because I have access to a typewriter, a guy comes to me to get something typed up, but maybe he doesn’t have anything tangible to offer in trade.  Well, it turns out that he works in the laundry, and I could use a new pillow.  He gets me the pillow, I type up his document, and we’re square.  The only problem is that one of us could get caught using prison property for personal gain, but frankly that’s a minor risk.  After all, I’m allowed to use the typewriter and he’s allowed to hand out pillows, just maybe not in trade.

The commissary black market works a little differently.  In this case, in trade for typing up a guy’s paperwork, he offers maybe two bags of Taster’s Choice instant coffee.  Now I know that the dude in the laundry room loves having a cup of java while handing out linens every morning, so I take the coffee, do the typing, and then swap the coffee bags for my pillow.  While this, too, is a type of barter, unopened commissary items are valuable commodities, especially to those who don’t have any cash to buy them.  Things can go wrong, however, if I don’t have an item that the pillow guy wants.  That takes a little more hustling.  Maybe I’m offered a can of tuna instead of coffee bags.  I don’t decline the offer, but I make a second swap with one of the muscle men workout guys who seek protein 24-7.  If he’s got coffee, we’re good.

Finally, there’s a hard currency black market, too, which on our compound is not cash but postage stamps.  I’ve heard that in some prisons the hard currency is cans of mackerel or radio batteries, but here it’s stamps.  They have to be unused and mailable, because their ultimate worth is that they can actually be used to send a letter.  Stay with me as we follow the next scenario:  I need a pillow and the other guy needs a 4-page document typed up.  I charge him three stamps per page, which is the going rate (and I know I need at least 10 stamps for my pillow, planning to save the other two for a two stamp Coke or a couple letters home).  Everything has its price in postage stamps.

Another twist here is that you pay a different price with either stamps or commissary.  There’s a sort of service fee attached if you go the commissary route.  For instance, in our example, two bags of coffee cost way more than six stamps, but I can charge a premium if I let a guy pay in commissary.  Say you have a guy walking around trying to sell something for 20 stamps (worth $9.40) or $15 worth of commissary.  Sometimes there’s room for negotiation or a combined payment method, such as, “Okay, I’ll do one load of laundry and pay you five stamps for the headphones!”

It seems that barter is your best route when you want something done that you should not be having done.  For example, I wanted to get the scoreboard repaired at the softball field, but the staff couldn’t be bothered.  But when I offered book delivery service and first access to the Wall Street Journal for two weeks to a guy from Facilities, he made up an excuse to check out some tools and repaired the scoreboard, a win-win all around.  (A couple weeks later, the CO asks about the scoreboard, and we all just play dumb, as if we don’t even remember that it was ever broken (playing dumb always works, because the staff assumes we’re all idiots).

Our prison economy runs quite smoothly, though, since we are in a federal prison, you always have to keep an eye open for some former financier running a Ponzi Stamp Scheme!

Control.

You would think that prison might be set up to help people develop the everyday skills needed to make good choices, adapt to varied circumstances, work on becoming a productive member of society.  But no.  Basic decisions like what to eat, what to wear, when to wake up, it’s all controlled by others.  Your very existence depends on the capriciously arbitrary whims of the staff.  You try to help yourself.  Reading, working out, taking a class or an independent study, going to church services, maybe socializing or catching a little tv or playing a little softball.  You feel a slight inkling of something almost like self-determination happening, but it’s an illusion.  You’re starting to feel a little less oppressed.  That’s when they get you.

The shorts with the hand-sewn pocket for holding your radio while walking the track, suddenly it’s contraband.  They shorts are confiscated and you're threatened with a disciplinary report, even though you’ve worn them with no problem or complaint for the previous two weeks.  For months it’s okay to read a book on the Yard, then WHAM! it’s off limits.  Bringing a packet of condiments to dinner, wearing a hat in the library, I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  Even your job assignment is up for grabs.  You can be cruising along in the library, doing a good job, getting along with your co-workers, and one day find out you’ve been assigned to Landscaping.  You have no desire to mow the lawn, pull weeds, and prune trees, but off you go.  Why?  Maybe you annoyed a staff member or even an inmate who fancies himself a staff member.  A few well-placed gripes and cleverly worded snitches and Voila!  You’re a lawn doctor.

It’s this deadening routine spiced with sudden upheaval that drives some guys crazy.  If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know that my strategy for dealing with pretty much anything is just to grin and take it in stride.  Try to coast over the pettiness.  Get above the power trips and mind games.  Who knows, maybe there isn’t any out-to-get-you agenda anyway.  Sometimes shit happens and that’s just the way it goes.  What’s the big deal?  Life goes on, just let it roll.

Walk this Way

My new buddy G-Money is adjusting to life in prison, but we've run into a problem.  It's his walk.  It's not good.  To illustrate, picture the glittering pianist Liberace walking onstage.  (If you’re too young to have seen him on tv, check out a Youtube video.)  Now exaggerate that sashay to make it ten times more feminine and you have G-Money’s stroll around the prison yard.  We all know that a walk does not define a man, at least not in most places, but here in the Bizarro world of prison sashay = gay.  G-Money is secure in himself and open-minded.  He doesn’t really feel any need to defend his sexual orientation, and he doesn’t judge the inmates who are openly gay, but with that walk of his, he’s getting propositioned in the most overt ways you can imagine pretty much all day long, and that is annoying. 

So G-Money returns for another consultation.  Laughter ensues when it turns out that he is the only person on the compound unaware of his sashay.  All the jokes about shaking what his mama gave him, his “milkshake bringing all the boys to the yard,” etc. (even a move to hold an inmate-sponsored fashion show just so he can walk the runway) have left him confused and clueless.  Clearly an intervention is in order.

Well, I have learned that thirty-three years of practice cannot be unlearned overnight.  We’re aiming for a month-long project.  In week one, we’re starting with posture, hoping that standing tall and (pun intended) straight will help him look more stereotypically manly.  Sadly, early returns are not encouraging.  The walk I’m afraid may not be changeable.  We’ve suggested he at least grow a beard.  Meanwhile, we’re moving on to arm swing.  I’ll keep you posted.

Unique Sobriquets

So I have a new job in the typing room at the library, and that is definitely better than the old gig in the video room.  The video room was basically an unventilated closet -- no conversation, no mental stimulation, and a location directly across the hall from a doorless bathroom.  Three straight hours a day of listening to the melodic sounds of men on toilets, well I can't say I'll miss it.  Anyway, the real point of my post today is the wild names people have in here, which I find endlessly entertaining.  In the past two days, I've chatted with the following people:  G-Money (see earlier post about how this mild-mannered Jewish guy got that name), Road Rage, Cheese Puffs, Tin Man, Big Cheese, B-Rad-Bono (the artist formerly known as Half-Baked), Pookie, Puma, Ant, Two-Soups, Cockroach, Twin, Strongface, Christian Gangsta, and D-Lo.  Occasionally, of course, there are problems, such as when a guy wants to fill out a form in the library and you have to ask for his "real name."  Then you have to explain why the name "I always use!" does not count.  Weird, too, when you hear a name called over the Intercom and have no idea who that is, because everybody is only known by their prison nickname.  Nothing profound coming to mind about this, nothing introspective or deep in the slightest.  Just a shrug and a chuckle.  Many of us never dreamed we'd be spending our days with fellas bearing such unique sobriquets.  Now if you will excuse me, I'm off to teach Cheese Puffs and G-Money how to crochet!

Trivial Pursuits

After nearly two years of reflection and writing, I still don’t think I’ve been able to convey how it feels to be in prison.  I do know that I’ll never be able to listen to complaints about being “trapped” at home during inclement weather or “stuck” in an airport or "delayed" in traffic again.  Prison is a whole ‘nother level of all that.  Yet we find ways to fight the mind-numbing boredom, after all, I’ve learned that it is not necessity but incarceration that is the mother of invention.   Life here sometimes reminds me of the contrived hi-jinks I remember so well from childhood sit-coms like Gilligan’s Island and Hogan’s Heroes.  The island castaways and World War II POWs of these old shows found ingenuous ways to while away their 30 minutes a week, but you can take their creativity and multiply it by at least ten in here.  Got a tin can, some paper, tape, cellophane, a pair of old socks?  Guys in here can build you a home-made deep fryer, a tattoo gun, an amplifier, a speaker, a sandwich press, a cheese grater and slicer, locker shelves, a hot plate.  I’m leaving out a lot of the improvised inventions, but you get the point.  I’ve even seen eyeglass lenses ground and fitted to new frames!

We’re like a Silicon Valley think tank in here, minus a few things like California weather, gourmet food, awesome pay checks, and general hipness.  But otherwise, like those think tanks, we’re just people who have all day every day to solve problems and devise new products.  Oh yeah, another difference:  Whereas the tech geek’s reward for a cool new device may be a big bonus, ours is more likely an extended stay in a private one-man suite in what the administration calls a Special Housing Unit, but that you will remember from old movies as “the Hole.”

When we’re not inventing sleep masks out of old underwear, we have found that an entire day can be happily spent debating 70s and 80s sit-coms, guessing locations and main characters.  For example:  What's Happening?  (L.A.); Different Strokes? (NYC); Good Times? (Chicago).  Without irony, I can say that every day here is an extended game of Trivial Pursuit.  So what’s the big deal about being in prison, then?  Just remember that we do all this stuff primarily to keep from dwelling on the fact that we’re stuck here.  The human spirit is amazing, after all.  I have met some of the most mentally and spiritually strong men in prison, men who can hold their heads high whether they’re leaving soon or not so soon with their dignity intact.  Let me sign off with an apology for the lack of focus this week, but at times my mind drifts.  Hope you enjoyed the ramble.  Much peace and love to all!

Schoolin' G-Money

A new guy, G-Money, dropped by my cube a couple of mornings ago looking overwhelmed.  Before I go any further, let me explain the origin of his nickname.  G-Money is Jewish.  His cellie claims to have never really known a Jewish guy before now, his knowledge limited to, “They’re all rich!”  So that’s the Money part of his moniker, but why “G”?  Does his real name start with G?  Does his hometown start with G?  Nope on both counts, so what is it?  We asked the cellie, who looked at us as if we were total complete morons, then took a long pause and replied, “G-Money – as in Jewish money?  G-E-W-E-S-H Money!  Got it?”  Well, after that story the name stuck.  We now have a prim and proper upper middle class Jewish inmate who will forever be known by the incongruous nickname G-Money.

But now, back to our original programming, G-Money perches on the stool in my cube with that old familiar What-the-F-K-is-Up-With-This-Place? look on his face.  How, he asked, can anyone be so nonchalant when surrounded by such odd people and behavior?  I tried to recall if anything particularly unusual had happened that morning, but then wondered if maybe I’ve just grown immune to the things this newbie found weird.  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a minute and then opened them again trying to meet him where he was, attempting to erase the past two years from my life.  How does prison look and feel, I tried to recall, to a newcomer?

G-Money waited patiently, no doubt counting this as yet another oddball behavior he’d have to deal with, as I walked a lap around the unit.  What had thrown off his equilibrium?  What had him questioning his ability to cope?  Was it the pre-op transsexual Native American with a shoulder length perm and homemade red bra showing through her t-shirt as she ran – yes ran! – down the hall mopping the floor?  Explaining to anyone who asks that running somehow makes the floors cleaner?  Was it the guy ironing his boxers, the same boxers he ironed yesterday, and the day before….?  Was he thrown at the sight of a guy getting his, um, man parts tattooed with a homemade tattoo gun?  Quesadillas grilled with a clothes iron?  Perchance, the storeman smuggling fruit out of the chow hall in his underpants, then selling it as “Fresh from the Warehouse?”  The guy shouting at the top of his lungs, making sure he can be heard throughout the building and disrespecting any human within earshot as he raves on about "MF’ers got no respect!” 

I returned to my cube and sat opposite G-Money, then looked into his eyes and calmly said, “Nope, nothing unusual going on here – seems like a normal day in the unit.”  Pause.  LAUGHTER.  When we stopped laughing, we had a serious talk.  Human beings, we agreed, are incredibly adaptable.  A survival adaptation in prison is developing a behavioral filter.  You learn what to pay attention to and what to ignore.  If you can’t find some way to live at peace with your reality you cannot grow or flourish as a person in this trying environment.  I think G-Money can get there.  For now he’s trying to grasp what I’ve written about many times before:  1) you can’t make this stuff up! and (2) If you don’t laugh, you’re gonna cry.  So you might as well pop some popcorn and enjoy the show.