Why I Committed Suicide (38 page)

By law, the longest they can put a person in solitary confinement is 2 weeks, beyond that it’s cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a rule that came about because of the conditions at Alcatraz back in the 30’s. I was in solitary a week before they dragged me into a room with three old guards who told me I would have to do 2 solid weeks in solitary, starting then, and THEN be transferred to a more secure area AND I would still be classified as a high escape risk, even though I wouldn’t be officially charged with an attempted escape (big sigh of relief). I was also notified that I had the right to appeal their decision AND that I had been granted time served on the theft charge from the book store while I had waited a week in solitary. Apparently I was deemed too dangerous to appear at my misdemeanor court case so they let it go. Naturally I went back to my cell and worked on appealing the two extra weeks in solitary right away; spending one week with just a toilet and the floor had already been enough to drive me batty and I was anxious to write again.

Oh, my English teachers would have been proud to hear me. Finally given a piece of a pencil and a sheet of paper I assembled a ten-minute speech that touched on the emotions of the heart, included historical references and cited current case laws, some of which I just made up to suit my purpose. When they pulled me back into the room with a different group of three old guards, I gave an oratory address that would have made Abraham Lincoln weep. My voice rose with triumph to the rafters and then fell back down in sorrowful repentance and shame as I presented my motivations, telling my tale of woe to their blank uncaring eyes. I inspired them, I moved them and finally I used simple raw logic to behoove them to get me out of solitary hell by explaining I had no reason to try and escape since I would get automatic probation on my first felony case anyway. I clearly outlined the fallacy of the logic behind ruining the rest of my life for a mere few days of freedom and then I thanked them for taking time out of their busy schedules to address this petty concern. I wish I could say that I saw tears form in each of their eyes as I left the room, but the best I can say is that they listened politely and took about ten seconds to pass around the paper and sign off on keeping my sentence as it was. It’s the old boy network so I don’t know why I should have expected anything different.

I spent another two weeks in solitary, getting to know the other guys as they moved in and out after serving their own disciplinary time. One guy in the cell next to me stabbed another guy in a fight over a candy bar and got only one week in solitary.
He got one week for a stabbing and I’m doing three weeks for a letter!?
After that psycho left, another kid got put in his cell for a week for giving another guy in his Unit a swirly (head in the toilet, flush-flush, that kind of thing) on his birthday. It turned out that the kid had been in County Jail for over a year awaiting trial for a murder charge that sounded like he actually didn’t commit, but get this, he had the same court appointed attorney as I did and since I hadn’t received a response from my lawyer or even heard from him at all, he told me that he would talk to him for me since he has to see him a lot for his trial. That gave me a little hope.

I passed the time by singing to myself a lot and shouting back and forth to the other guys in there, swapping stories, learning who did what. Everyone pretty much agreed that what I did was dumb but also acknowledged that I got a raw deal with the extra time. I did whatever it took to keep from going crazy. Since I was alone I jacked off a lot thinking about faceless bikini-clad women on far away beaches and I worked out the formula for breaking down pure heroin into street heroin and calculated the percentages of the profit margin. One guy wrote the titles to every Led Zeppelin song on the walls of his cell one day and we had a hard time coming up with more than just the popular tunes. It was hard to survive having absolutely nothing to do but exist alone with my thoughts. The nightmares got worse and not having any daylight threw my sleep schedule off so that I slept a lot more than usual and when I dreamt it was one fucked-up thing after another.

Jail is mindless toil. I’ve decided that after this there will be no point below which I will sink in the depths of my anger towards this fucked-up system. I feel like an animal since I’ve been living like an animal, funny how it only took three weeks alone in a moldy cell to strip me of all resolve and completely destroy my spirit and ego. We are given so few moments on this Earth, yet I’ve spent so many days impatiently awaiting their passing. Carpamus dulcia; post enim mortem cinis et fabula fies
[2]
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After my three weeks (plus a few days, who’s counting if nobody cares?) in solitary I finally got placed in another area. My new cell is a duplicate 6 x 6 cell like the one I just came from in solitary only it has a TV at the end of the open room that I can sort of see with one eye if I sit on the floor and rest my head on the bars in just the right spot. Not much of an improvement but a better class of convict and sweet merciful distracting TV. I also get to have visitors again (none yet though) and I get to attend church services and get out for a bit. I’m one of the last ones they bring into the room for church and I’m one of the only guys wearing ankle cuffs so I imagine with the beauty regime I’ve just been through I must look about as crazy as I feel to the regular jail population. People don’t talk to you if you look crazy, especially if you have the metal cuffs on you to prove it, but I enjoy the church services even though there’s usually a fight and they have to clear the room before it’s finished. If the fight gets too out of hand they seal the doors and pump in tear gas through pipes in the ceiling just like a Nazi death camp, but that’s only happened to me once. I just kept my head down and got my back against a wall until the cons and cops finished bashing in their own heads. It’s really morbidly fascinating and it gets so fucking real sometimes. Lesson for the week: don’t fuck with teargas. It’s nasty, vile shit.

Being in here is like driving during rush hour. Everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere and nobody is moving at all. Things move in slow motion. People speed to the top of the hills and then slam on their brakes when they see the sea of cars spilled out in front of them. You get to the peak and are confronted by your own mortality. You see the futility and that everyone is in the same boat as you and accept that the brakes need to be applied and that you will be going very slowly for quite a long time. Then it’s just a matter of keeping yourself occupied while time passes. and passes. and passes.

The State of Texas dropped Denton County’s heroin charge! I always thought they would since I knew there wasn’t any to begin with, but it’s still nice to get the official papers after all the shit I’ve been through. It only took three and a half months to clear up and that’s pretty fast for Denton County so I should be thankful. It’s hard to be deemed innocent after giving up three months of your life to prove it. I’ve figured out that “innocent until proven guilty” shit only applies to people with money.

Now I’m in Dallas County jail serving out a probation violation because of that misdemeanor charge I got for stealing the watch when I was at the mall with my sister an eternity ago. Dallas is quick about handling their business. I’ve already seen the judge who gave me 30 days, which means I’ll get out in 10 since they’ve made me a trustee. Apparently Dallas doesn’t give a fuck about some trumped up County escape charge which is good news for me since it means I might have a date with freedom coming up soon!

There are a lot of anomalies to what I expected this place would be like. I am not in a cushy Unit or a moldy cell this time. I’m now in a jail that’s actually just a converted tractor manufacturing plant. The name of the facility is New Holland, which used to be the type of farm tractor that was constructed here at one point before the land and building were modified to hold prisoners. You can see where heavy machinery was mounted to the floor in some places because the thick steel brackets are still deeply imbedded in the concrete. There are also areas with faded yellow lines that mark off old safety zones close to the places where the heavy equipment probably once stood. Dallas County came in and gutted the entire building leaving just the rust stained, hollowed out framework made of cheaply constructed corrugated steel pieces.

Along one wall is a pantheon of windows covered with brown grime leftover from years of industrial pollutants and neglect. Many of these windows are broken out in a delightfully random pattern, similar to something children might do when finding windows intact in the ruins of an abandoned building.

In the center of this arena of empty filth, the City of Dallas has constructed what I can only describe as zoo cages. Imagine an entire building filled with 40 cubes of square solid steel bars about 15 feet tall and 50 feet in width and length. Each cube has one side that is an actual solid wall and this is where the two toilets and a shower have been added. There are 20 bunk beds per cell and the coveted bed to get is the bottom bunk for reasons I will explain later. As far as I can see in any direction are more cube cells with the same features and dimensions. The only variations to each cube are the people inside it and the more attention I pay to the people the more I realize even that variation is not much of a distinguishing characteristic.

The factory ceiling is about three times as high as the barred top of the cages, so we have a clear view of the space between us and the roof. If it rains, the tin ceiling thunders and quakes. When the giant air circulation ducts turn on the entire complex rattles and shakes, making me thankful for the bars above us in case pieces of the dilapidated roof decide to come crashing down. Those top bars above us are coated with inches of accumulated dust that has remained mostly undisturbed since the inception of the complex. Above the dust-coated bars are old frayed wires, reams of cobwebs and pieces of ceiling and equipment that hang in no particular pattern.

When I lay in my top bunk I see rats that run around and carry out their business in an ambivalent world that exists twenty feet above us. In New York the rats live underground but here they dominate the maze of pipes and nastiness above our tanks. I haven’t heard of a rat falling into a tank yet but I’m sure it’s happened or will happen one day when one of the fat critters accidentally slips in the thick dust. When the rats glide silently by above me there’s an occasional sifting of disturbed dust that will usually fall onto some unfortunate person’s bed. That’s one of the reasons the lower bunk is in demand and sometimes fought over, though the main reason is the spiders. All those cobwebs way, way up there came from somewhere and that somewhere is still right above our heads. I’m not fond of spiders but they’ve never particularly bothered me either. I have learned that spiders bother black people a great deal though, much like their fear of dogs, and with good reason. Several people have gone to the infirmary with spider bites that fester and turn into angry welts. The infirmary doesn’t do much except dole out Tylenol or give them cream to rub on the wounds as if they are minor skin irritations.

I have never in my life seen anything like this. New Holland is about what I envisioned a Taiwanese prison might look like, something similar to Midnight Express but all tucked inside this huge warehouse. The ceiling has invisible holes that leak a steady stream of water onto several of the beds for days after a big rainstorm. I managed to luck out with my bed situation because I stayed dry after it rained last week. I’ve only got a couple days left in here pushing the food carts around and then I should be free.

Oh Jenifer I miss you so much, I should be there for you now but I’m not. Soon.
When I get out I’ll try and do right, okay?
I promise. We go together like forks and knives. I need you. I’m not as smart as I was but I’m a hell of a lotsmarter than I used to be. Yes, I meant to say it that way. I used to be harmless but now I’m mostly harmless. Deviously harmless.

I got out. Finally. I got to see my baby and I found out everyone on Earth is mad at me. Half my friends think I shit on them and I still feel so guilty about everything that sometimes I start believing the rumors myself. I like the idea of being a criminal mastermind and I’m far from innocent, but my unwritten rule has always been to never steal from friends. Kirk’s roommate Bryce thinks I stole some CD’s from him but he’s still letting me temporarily stay at their apartment anyway. I’m not sure why, I wouldn’t. These other friends of ours, Clark and Kathy, think I stole stuff from them even though they don’t have anything to steal and I’ve been in jail while their things went missing. Clark worked at the UNT bookstore for a long time and at one point I helped him dispose of some of his large quantities of textbooks. Even my good friend Timothy thinks I stole from his girlfriend, but honestly her hot roommate only fucked me and then let me crash on their couch over night, so I’m not even sure of the logic behind that situation.

While I was in jail there was no possible way to defend myself against any of the accusations people put on me to cover their own asses. It hurts me to know that’s how they all see me, or
want
to see me, but I always assumed my strength of character would help them remember who I really am. Guess I was wrong again. Truthfully, I’m so jaded now that I don’t even feel like it’s worth trying to vindicate myself or pursue any of their friendships. It would be too hard to live in their world again and pretend they never had these nagging doubts about me all along.