by sam paul
My friend Charles got out the other day. He sent me a book written by an incarcerated black man who taught himself to read and write while in jail. It was rudimentary but the images were so vivid and familiar when the author would describe his yearning for mere taste of freedom, that I could feel real pain. I was glad to get something from somebody who knew about where I was at and what I was going through. It meant a lot to me.
I realize now all the time I took for granted, even with the little things, out in the real world. Especially that little bit of time, most people block it out of their minds, which is set aside to masturbate. Everyone does it; it’s just a matter of frequency, location and style or preferences. I’m only writing about this in jail because it’s come to my attention that I am subconsciously tuning out the creative ways people find to isolate themselves and handle their business. They call it “killing” in here. It’s short for “killing babies”, a synonym for beating off, since all your potential “babies” just wash down the drain in the shower. Shower shoes are a critical necessity. The word “killing” is so universal that it has been shortened to just “kill” and if it’s said in ebonics it comes out sounding more like the word “keel,” like a boat.
The warden knows it too, or whatever they call the overseer of this county hell. With every meal we’re given a cup of juice, but it tastes nasty like it’s laced with something I can’t quite figure out. I’ve seen them making it in the kitchen and I know it all comes out of big bags of generic Kool-Aid but there’s an additive that’s rumored to be saltpeter in there too. I doubt it is saltpeter since that’s outdated, but I don’t doubt there’s something extra in there. I’ve had nothing but lukewarm water from the toilet/sink for the past 5 months now. They can’t make me drink their juice.
“I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?”
—Trainspotting
After six months of hopelessness and hell I was finally released from the New Holland facility and processed out of the Lew Sterrit Justice Center into freedom. I got out on her birthday. Oh God, it was all supposed to be so beautiful but now I’ve hit bottom and tonight I am going to do more than just passively try and kill myself.
I showed up on Jenifer’s doorstep like I did so many years ago when I was hoping to get her to like me, only this time I am sure of where I am at and that I belong there. I’m finally out of jail and I want to see MY girl. Milton, her father, answers the door and it was as if I could see the gears of outrage turning in his head. I watched as the anger started to seethe from beneath his skin and before it could be directed outward from him, I gave him the stone face stare that I have learned to give so many times while in jail. The look that says “you better not fuck with me old man or I will make you hurt”. And I meant it. I meant it with the same seriousness I would reserve for having to put a pet to sleep. A steely cold paralysis of seriousness that will forever be a part of me now.
“Where’s Jenifer?” I say. He slowly turns around and goes to get her without even an invite inside the house; I guess I should expect the cold shoulder. I stand on the porch for a while staring at the Lansing’s closed red doorway and eventually Jenifer wheels out and we’re happy for a moment. Milton sits in the house and seethes in his abusive off-kilter crazy way. Every once in a while he comes out to say something of unimportance to Jenifer, just so he can give me the disapproving glance. Whatever.
I’m sure at this point if I say anything he’ll go off on her or me. I’m almost hoping he does say something to me so I can fucking make his face all bloody and knock the teeth so far back into his mouth that they barely hang onto his bloody stumpy gums. I am pissed, focusing IT all—the accident, the jail terms, my parents and the whole fucking world—on him. Mess with me and get the brunt brutal temper of my situation.
Listen old man, I’m set up to fail. I’ve got one foot back in jail and a monkey on my back that weighs the fucking size of a gorilla and its whole fucking family. So fuck you, fuck your car, fuck your wife and your mom, fuck the Virgin Mary’s bloody womb and fuck your world. Fuck The World.
Just give me and your daughter a moment of peace and then I will leave yoube.
With my song
I will charm Demeter’s daughter,
I will charm the Lord of the Dead,
Moving their hearts with my melody.
I will bear her away from Hades.
Like I said, it was her birthday, October 23rd, and I tried to make everything as special as I could, but fate intervened. Everything was taken care of, after scoring some “congratulations you’re out of jail dope.” We went to a Wal-Mart to return some merchandise from Jenifer’s car. I got picked up for suspicion of shoplifting (again) since I was poking around in the back of the store while Jenifer was busy gathering some women’s undergarments in another department. She saw them take me in the back and I guess she went out to sit in her car and wait.
Let me make this clear, I had been through the return line at the front of the store already to return an electronic organizer that somebody had already stolen. I was returning it for store credit, rather than cash, since I’ve already had more than three returns without a receipt there. I had not even chosen an item to exchange yet when a fat black guy started yelling and they pulled me into the interrogation room near the front of the store. In the room there was a plainclothes female security guard and the fat black employee who said he saw me stealing something from 100 yards away. I went through the motions and let them search me every which way they could think of but I didn’t have anything on me. By the time the cops showed up I was asking that they return the organizer I left behind the return counter, demanding the name of their supervisors and managers. With the arrival of the cops though, Ms. Plainclothes got her confident attitude back and with a twist of the story and the help of her colleague, the two of them pretty much convinced the officers that I was guilty of theft before I even had the chance to speak. So the police also went through the motions of searching me to their satisfaction and after that was over, I asked for my merchandise again so I could leave the premises. One of the officers asked how I got to the store and I explained how my paralyzed girlfriend went out to her car until this mistake was straightened up since Ms. Plainclothes was being an incorrigible bitch.
If there’s one thing I learned from the last time I was arrested, it was to never to carry any dope on my person for any reason, just in case something goes wrong and I end up getting searched. The rule of thumb in any criminal enterprise is that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. My six-month harsh lesson from Kroger reminded me every day not to carry dope into a store and it looked like it was paying off this time because I had just been repeatedly searched by the police without any problems. However, things got seriously fucked after the second officer decided to go out and talk to Jenifer just to “make sure she was ok.” I wasn’t out there but somehow the cop convinced her he was a friend and just wanted to confirm there wasn’t any stolen merchandise from the store hidden in her car. Even though we had just scored dope, which was just sitting right inside her console, she decided to live in fantasy land and gave fucking Officer Herrera permission to search her car. What?!!
When the officer came into the store with a couple baggies full of fresh brown heroin, my self-confident smug look of self righteousness fell to the floor. I couldn’t believe they had gone out and busted Jenifer for possession. I was already thinking of what I could do to get her a lawyer or bail her out when I noticed the officers murmuring to each other.
It turns out there wasn’t anything in the car with the paralyzed girl at all, but I had secretly kept the bags of heroin in my pocket the whole time they repeatedly searched me! They brought the fucking drugs into the goddamned store so they wouldn’t have to deal with the paperwork and hassle of arresting a handicapped girl. The next thing I knew I was in cuffs and as we
walked out Ms. Plainclothes was yelling to the entire store how they had just busted a shoplifter at “your neighborhood Wal-Mart!” I stopped and looked at her for a minute just to give her the dead eyes and explain they actually had taken merchandise from me. The cops almost broke my arm (fucking break it off you pigs!) when I did that and I also requested the police immediately confiscate the store videotapes for my legal defense and impending lawsuit against Wal-Mart. They laughed at this as if I was joking even though they knew I wasn’t. To Protect, Honor and Serve, my ASS!!
The absolute worst part was being led in handcuffs out to the squad car in the pouring rain past Jenifer who had this look of malice on her face that hurt me more than anything in my life. She let me know it was over right then by saying “Bye Sam” in a voice tinged with anger that meant it really was finally over. That’s all I hear again and again and again in my head right now, the only person in my life worth anything has finally given up on me.
I’m going to kill myself. No meticulous planning. No slow degradation. Straight Richard Cory all the way. My old belt should be good for a simple hanging, maybe strong enough to crack my neck if I do it right. No note. She knows I love her and everyone else knows I’ve tweaked, what could I possibly put in writing that might explain it all? One last call to my mom to let them know not to be afraid. I’ve finally figured out a permanent solution to my permanent problems. I have the advantage of knowing it gets better on the other side.
Goodbye Jenifer, I loved you so much.
Suicide Watch
Thankfully I’m still here on this plane of existence, but I’m royally pissed at my mom for doing something I can’t bring myself to forgive her for right now.
God intervened in my misery right after I wrote my last note of desperation, when my thoughts were still at their darkest. I retired to an empty cell in the 72 hour holdover tank wearing the same clothes I had been wearing when arrested 6 months ago and then released and re-arrested last night. Six months of stink plus one day and I smelled like a corpse. I took the old leather belt from around my waist and worked it into a loop that would tighten around my neck as I leaned forward to hang from the bottom bunk, hopefully cutting off my air supply long enough to die before anyone checked up on me. It was the only way to do it without someone noticing and intervening, long enough for me to finish the job.
I got down on my knees and said one last prayer for forgiveness. A year or so before, after the accident, I had asked God to show me a better way within 2 years or I would terminate my existence for the benefit of society and I apologized to Him for ending our agreement early and not living up to my end of the bargain.
But as I put the loop of belt over my head and around my neck I heard a commotion down in the dayroom. People were gathered near the front windows like the guards were passing out free beer, so in spite of the welcome distraction, my curiosity got the best of me. I figured my business could wait another minute anyway and I walked down the thick metal steps to see what was going on.
Apparently somebody in the 72 hour holding tank next to ours had hung himself during the same moment I was praying and contemplating the best way to hang myself without botching the job. There’s nothing more pitiful to see than an unsuccessful suicide attempt except maybe a heroin addict killing himself slowly. I pushed through the crowd of miscreants and watched through the unbreakably thick windows as a group of guards were carrying the anonymous body of a man wrapped in a prison blanket out of the next tank. Part of the blanket had fallen open and as he bounced past I could see the empty eyes and tortured expression of his poor soul reflecting back at me. Dead.
While the other prisoners around me started crazily hooting and shouting insults at this man’s body I just stood slack-jawed and realized right then and there how stupid it would be to give in and actually die in this place. All the bastards were getting me down and I was about to blindly commit the only unforgivable sin. Seeing that guy’s face was the only thing that could have kept me alive that day and as I watched his body being taken away, it was if all my worries and sins and troubles went with him.
I went back to my cell, put my belt back on the right way and just cried and cried and cried for the longest time while God sat next to me on the bunk not saying a word. Without speaking he touched my head, filled my mind with a fraction of His awareness and then when I blinked he was gone. Conversation over. I felt reborn, still angry and emotional and confused, but reborn as a child of innocence and light. I KNEW right then that no matter whatever happened next, everything would be ok. I shuddered at the thought of what I had almost done and how close I came to ending it all. I shuddered to think how that poor man had to sacrifice himself to save my life, a few minutes difference, one forgotten prayer and I could just as easily have been HIS example.
My mother made the call to the jail after I hung up on them so abruptly earlier that evening. I guess I was wearing my emotions on my sleeve and she figured out what I was going to try and do. I was still feeling good and smiling about actually “talking” to God when they came into the tank and grabbed me, dragging me down the metal stairs, down the hall and threw me in a freezing solitary 6x6 cell with a wide-angle camera in the corner. Since one guy had succeeded in killing himself today the guards decided to actually take my mother’s warning call seriously whereas normally the guards prefer to just leave the animals in their cages to wipe themselves out whenever possible. I tried talking to the SS guards, insisting I wasn’t suicidal, but their only preventive response was to toss me into the blinding white concrete room. They took my shoes, slammed the door and left me in there for hours.
…and hours…
…and a few more hours. To amuse myself I decided to see if this was an actual suicide prevention cell and I wanted to see how closely they were monitoring me, so I pretended like I had a broken neck and lay down on the floor in a crooked death-pose. When nothing happened after about twenty minutes I got bored and used some wet toilet paper to cover up the lens of the camera instead.
About thirty minutes later a huge black man came running down the hall and when he saw through the plexiglass that I was sitting there, still alive, he got pissed and yelled at me to take the toilet paper off the “goddamn camera.” I do. It’s so cold that I keep trying to stuff wet toilet paper into the air conditioning vent and block it off, but the toilet paper quickly dries out and won’t stick to the ceiling. So I decide to cover the camera again instead.
This time an hour passes before the guy comes down to yell at me, a steroid-abusing white guard with a marine haircut and veins bulging from his forehead. I tell him to let me the hell out of this meat locker and I’ll stop covering the camera. He tells me they are working on it and goes away again. I give him about 30 minutes before I cover up the camera again.
There must have been a shift change because the next time anyone comes by, it’s only to give me a bologna sandwich and a cup of their evil juice. A couple of guards with extra stripes on their shoulders walk down a bit later and tell me I need to uncover the camera. I explain to them that if I wanted to commit suicide and they were really monitoring me to prevent it, then I would already be dead. I try and compromise by asking them to put me in general population and inquiring what the basis is for keeping me under “observation” when they are clearly not observing me. That’s when I officially found out about my mom’s call.
Many, many cold hours later I eventually just stretched out trying to preserve my body heat in the most economical way possible. My lips were blue and I’d long since tired of fucking with the guards.
Sometime in the middle of the next morning I got another bologna sandwich and some coffee and then a crew of guards came to escort me to the second floor, which had a funny smell to it. They took away every scrap of clothes I had, except my boxer shorts, and tossed me in a single cell similar to the solitary cell I had in Denton. The difference is that this one looks like it’s straight out of a sixt
ies mental institution. From what I can see, I’m lucky that I got to keep my boxer shorts. Most of the people in here are buckass naked which I originally thought was their mentally unstable personal choice, but apparently the standard procedure is to remove ALL clothing from potential suicides. Perhaps it’s just in case we decide to eat our county jail uniforms and freeze to death. This floor is fucking killing me already. The people I see around me are the people I see as reflections of myself. The previous tenant of my room felt the need to write on the walls with his feces. I guess that was a while ago, but human shit is kind of like cat pee, once you are committed to decorating the walls of your room with feces there really is no Martha Stewart jailhouse solution to getting it all off. They must have hosed out the room or something but there are still nasty little remnants stuck in the grout between the tiles.
Still, feces and all, it might not be so bad if I had clothes. They strip you of all socks, shoes, clothes, mattress and blanket and put you in a plexiglas cell to “observe” just in case you invent some magical way to hurt yourself with absolutely nothing. The thick plexiglas is covered with a layer of gunk or God-knows what (He said I wouldn’t want to know), but it’s there so whatever mental help they have on staff can stare at you and make notes without having to get too close. My cell has got the standard toilet/sink and a raised section of crumbling tile and concrete that is where the mattress and bed are supposed to go. After I wiped the dirt, shit and old toilet paper off of that little area as best I could, I lay down on the cold tile to try and get some form of sleep even though there were big bugs making noise around me everywhere. And take it from me, there’s not much worse than sitting on an ice cold metal toilet seat and having a giant water roach run out from under the lip of the toilet and across your balls. Yeech.