Why I Committed Suicide

by sam paul

  Let’s ponder a moment and think about the definite. ONE DAY THE MAJORITY OF THESE PEOPLE WILL GET OUT OF JAIL. Why is it so easy to accept that one day the people we put away will come out totally unsuper-vised and unable to handle the changes society has been gradually going through while this person, this human being, has been stewing and becoming an instinc-tually surviving creature. This creature is no longer a man by society’s standards. We think we want our creatures manageably stupid and uneducated because we take away the books, education and reintegration programs. We establish conditions that allow this creature who is becoming stronger, meaner and more disgruntled to eventually re-enter society. The beast was sentenced to be punished, so we took away its rights in the name of punishment sent the filth into a concrete jungle where being the strongest and meanest are the only dominating traits worth developing. The creature is given handlers, which dictate when IT may eat or interact with others. The creature is continually at war with others of ITS own species so IT learns to fight, or to kill, or at the least the value of strength over knowledge. And then one day the gates that keep the foul stench of the dregs inside ITS properly sealed barrier suddenly swing open and the creature is told that IT is no longer an IT but a man and sent on ITS way to the proverbial happy ending. Except the happy sunshiny people that now call IT a man expect all to be forgiven and the years of instincts that kept IT alive to be abandoned instantly. A “yes massa, ise be good now, I learnt mah lesson” mentality to be firmly implanted into ITS thick dense skull. Except our creature has been tattooed with a mark on its forehead that informs anyone who might mistakenly take IT in and offer IT work or shelter, that IT may look like a man but inside, IT is still an IT. The creature is introduced to the things it missed out on—the sensory untouchable pleasures of the flesh of society’s daughters and granddaughters (or sons and grandsons depending on ITS preferences now)—unable to comprehend why the men that walk and talk just like IT are blessed with these things. IT becomes confused, frustrated, jealous and lost like a freakish Frankenstein monster that eventually fucks up so that the townsfolk have to chase IT to ITS cage or burn IT alive.

  Okay, so I’m going on a melodramatic rant here right? Then let me back pedal and reduce this to its simplest form. History supports that segregation doesn’t work, so we’ll have to establish that rule as a given. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or you would have them do unto your surviving family.

  It is really that easy.

  I’m learning to savor the books that I read in here because it is so infrequent that I am blessed with a good one. I used to read about a book a day and read them as if I was trying to finish them in order to complete an assignment or something. As the supply dwindles I am forced to read more slowly. My comprehension level remains the same although it was already close to perfect. I liken the trend to a connoisseur of fine wine. I spend more on one bottle and savor it slowly instead of drinking tubs of Boone’s Farm. The only thing is, in here, I am drinking Boone’s Farm and savoring it as a bottle of fine Scotch. I always establish myself as the library person. Once a week or month or whenever, someone goes to get books off the library cart. You can trade whatever books you have into the library one for one. I always hide more magazines and extra books in my socks and pants though. Some people are able to smuggle drugs into jail with them or cigarettes into the court holding tanks. I have to smuggle extra books. Pretty fucked up.

  If you get up early enough in the morning you can watch this little closed circuit TV show that they run on the television that is supposedly put on by the inmates. There is a black guy and white guy sitting in a room with about 20 records, musical discards from some guard’s Goodwill pile no doubt. They play these records and just sit there looking into the camera while the music plays. I suppose there is someone working the camera because he pans around the room sometimes to let everyone know there is nothing of interest in their booth and sometimes the camera just tilts slowly up to the ceiling and stays there for a few minutes. I asked around about these guys at first trying to glean how they got such a tasty trustee job but nobody knew, then one day I realized that they must have only taped about five of these shows because they repeat every week or so and it’s the same damn recording. I guess that’s not a bad thing since even I didn’t notice that the shows were repeating until about six weeks into the series. I have a lot of time on my hands to ponder these sorts of things too.

  Another thing that is odd is that in order to have a hot cup of water for coffee, or to simply heat a cup of water for sterilization purposes after getting it from the sink at the top of the toilet, you have to buy or use these things they call stingers. Stingers are such crude devices; I would never even have thought they existed in this modern world. Basically it consists of a plug that goes into the one live socket in the dayroom of our tank, and the other end is a metal loop that gets really fucking hot. I’m not a rocket scientist but I think the concept of channeling raw electricity into a cup of water is inherently a dangerous proposition. Plus if you leave these “stingers” plugged in without the metal part being in water the end of it gets glowing red-hot and will explode into molten chunks of metallic pain. These explosive properties are known to happen even while in the cup of water on occasion, which can destroy the only assigned cup that they issue each person upon containment.

  In case I haven’t given a rundown of the basic admission supplies, when you get here they give you a tortuously uncomfortable mattress, a sheet, a blanket, a cup, a spoon, and a pair of very worn and usually stained boxers. If any of these things get destroyed, the jail can fine you or charge you with destruction of county property if they have a bone up their ass. If your cup gets destroyed then you don’t have anything to shove through the slot in the door for tea or juice at mealtime and you have to drink directly form the toilet/sink.

  Another sad part is that the boxer shorts Dallas county issued used to all be white, but so many people were taking them home with them upon release, for souvenirs I suppose (?!?!), that the newest boxers they issue are (and I’m not fucking joking or exaggerating) FLOURESCENT PINK. You probably can fathom that it doesn’t go over very well to walk around all day in jail wearing nothing but bright pink underwear. Instead of exchanging mine on monthly laundry day, I now have to wash them in the sink with a bar of soap or rinse them out while I’m in the shower. Plus I’m thinking of taking them with me when I leave, out of protest and to stick some other unlucky sod with the new issues. Denton jail had microwaves and cable TV. Dallas has repeating closed circuit TV, stingers, and pink boxer shorts.

  To a dog, the act of me wielding a crude instrument such as a knife must seem amazing. All I’m saying is that there are still some things that people view as amazing which could hypothetically be common place to some of us.

  Here’s some great jail-yard terminology that I heard the other day when two ‘bruthas’ were about to throw down, including “bizzaatch,” “blow-holed she-goat,” and “stanky mackerel crotch”. Think of how many extreme reactions you can get when you announce to someone that you’re going to “watch them in the holding cell getting their buttery cornhole gangraped by a bunch of drunk bikers.” It’s so extreme that it cracks me up.

  Today some people came by in white lab coats and said they were giving mandatory flu shots for the entire unit. I became pretty suspect but they did a roll call and there ended up not being any way to get around it. I asked them specifically what they were giving us and got a standard flu-shot answer that didn’t seem quite right to me. I asked them what company they were with (no response) and why a private laboratory would sponsor a jail-related act of good will (no response). I did notice they charted everyone’s skin color and racial makeup when they administered whatever it was. There is one guy that has been in here for over a year, Junior, and he said they gave him this right when he came to this tank about a year ago. When they realized they had the same person from last year the people in the coats
got really excited and took him off somewhere. He said that later they asked him a whole bunch of questions about how he felt and if he had noticed any unusual symptoms and how often he’d gotten sick in the past year. He also said they held him down and drew blood out of his back! I’ve got to get out of here soon. I suspect a pharmaceutical company is sub-contracting without the states-knowledge or something. I’m tired of being a second class citizen in here.

  I read somewhere that teenagers retain forty percent more when they get more sleep. The amount of quality REM sleep allows them to process information and think about new ways to approach situations and incorporate new skills. I am getting more sleep than I have ever had in my life. So much sleep that it doesn’t feel good to sleep anymore. 14-16 hours a day is not the way our behavioral cycle is naturally supposed to rotate.

  A lot of what I learned is that I never want to forget this experience, ever. Whether I climb above it or sink down into more sorrow and eventually sweet death, I’ll never forget what I’ve seen and Jack, a friend of mine, finally got around to doing my “hook,” or first crappy tat. I traded one jar of peanut butter for my first tattoo and it was all done with a sharpened staple melted into the end of a pen. The ink was just charcoal from a burnt piece of paper mixed with some water and my arm bled like crazy. I got this crazy but talented black kid named Crispy to design it for a candy bar. I said I wanted a sun with an acrylic “S” in the middle and he created a really funky design for me to use. I can’t have the sun on my face so I want to at least have it somewhere on my body.

  Why did I need to learn that laptops are the best thing on the market to steal right now? People don’t pay any attention to them and you can take them easily from airports. Why did I need to learn a few different ways to steal car? Why did I need to learn that Home Depot accepts returns for cash without receipts? Why did I have to meet new guys who can get me the same drugs I’m trying to stay away from?

  There’s a bond when you spend even a little time with somebody in jail. They trust implicitly that you’re not a fucking cop. It’s like a confessional disguised with bragging in here. The people to avoid in county are the ones who won’t tell you what’s going on in any part of their lives. The troubled ones that are on the phone all the time and have that crazy haunted look in their eyes.

  My sister has been up to visit. I watched as her belly swelled up with life and then one day she brought a little girl wrapped in soft blankets to see me. It was my first glimpse of my sister’s little girl, Kalinn, and she’s amazingly beautiful even behind bulletproof glass. Good for her. Everyone has given me and Alecia shit about our lives and our decisions, but she’s accomplished something beautiful. Thank you, Alecia. You might never know how much it meant to have you visit me then, but to see my amazing niece the other day was truly awesome! The best I’ve felt about anything in a long, long time.

  The only means by which I have to see myself in here is the piece of corroded stainless steel above the combination stainless steel sink and toilet. It is old and covered with toothpaste flecks and other bodily fluids too numerous to get into. I bring this up only because of the reflection of the person I see looking back at me.

  It’s been close to 5 months now and the eyes that stare back at me are still the pale eyes that have been there since I came in. My eyes that have won me friends with a glance, broadcasting their stern defiance. Eyes that look better to be allied with, but I’m not trying to convey that I am a badass in any sense of the word. Even though I have come along way in these months from the soft sickly man that shuffled through the doors and lay in his bunk for the first month, barely eating and shitting arduously one day a week. The food is repulsive as always but its minimal nutrition is feeding my wiry frame. No bulk, just aggressively strong sinew. The body is healing, but the mind…the mind is still not right, the decision to live isn’t always the easiest one. I look in the mirror and I still see the same eyes peering out from beneath the dirty film. The dark circles are shrinking but still gaunt. My skin is far paler than it has ever been since the Texas sun first laid its kiss upon me so many years ago. All that I have done and all that I am as a man, all that I have learned has come down to this reflection of a person I do not even know in the mirror.

  The talk around the block is always the same. Typical clucking braggadocio about loose women or what they will be doing with their wives when the mythical period of punishment and atonement is finally over. The sex, the beer, the freedom to be nothing. No talk of the magic dew on the grass as you struggle into the shower before climbing into a truck for a day of working wherever. No talk of life, just the fantastical rewards of men that have survived a battle. The battle with their government. The battle that others have forced them to wage in their own minds. See the demons you are, or have in you, with no distractions from everyday life! Nothing will make you not feel what you are.

  There are no glass mirrors, you can’t smash polished steel to cut yourself or another and I’m sure they learned that requirement the hard way a long time before I was introduced to this system. All my education, all the things I have been taught and raised with as qualities worthy of a man are gone. I am soul-stripped naked and I lay bare for the world while they hide me away to protect my shame.

  I have no common talk or prattle to offer about the things I will do when I am out of here. I have nothing outside of here. I am homeless, family-less, friendless and I am marked with the shame and duty I rightly deserve. The crimes I committed are not what brought me here for I am a monster that needs to be locked away. Yet they can’t see it. The things I have done will never ever be better. I could have all the money in the world, all the sex, all the political power and not one little bit of it will ever change what I did. Nothing will ever change what has happened to the woman I loved. I laugh at the weak reasons they have used to keep me here. They should give me the same slow death penalty I dished out. They should whip me and beat me, but instead they gave me a home and put me in a place where I have shallow friends. A place where I have a TV and a deck of fucking cards and some goddamn Cheetos for everything I did. They are hiding me from the world but I can’t hide from the cold eyes I see looking back at me. How do you punish a man that has done the deed to himself for years? Who’s going to make me want to embrace the life again? Say it with me. Irre-fuckin-pairable spinal cord injury.

  That my life is forfeit to make hers live.

  Done.

  That I switch fates and live my life as hers.

  Done.

  God convinced me not to die. Saved me. Intervened in the course of another’s life to give me back the gift of my own. Do I inhabit these dens of prison and squalor or do I learn to be me again? No, not me anymore, the cold person I have become, infected and dying for the love and joy that I was convinced would be eternal. Some of these mornings are easier than others. The burden of my life is no longer the path of detraction and distraction. The drugs are too easy and too good and not helping. God has given me a gift. Told me that “the marrow of the Earth is mine to suck from the bones of my past.” The thing is, I have to learn how. Normal again. Me. The egotistical bastard smarter than anyone in this entire jail will be as helpless as a child when they finally let me go. I have forgotten how to be free. Institutionalized is what they call it. It happens to people that are in prison for ten or twenty or thirty years and I have it after 5 months. I’m scared and bored with the idea that this is my fate. Tired of the taste of blood and puke and the mildew growing in the corners. Too tired to talk about fucking. Too tired to even sing over the voices.

  I thought I was crazy for a long time because I have had a song in my head every second of every day for my entire life. Sometimes mine, sometimes off the radio, but always a song, beat or a groove. The wilds of the Earth, one of my many gifts and a curse. The song isn’t there anymore. Not always. It’s the reverse equivalent of a deaf child suddenly being able to hear for the first time ever. Except the sile
nce is disconcerting, my mind a wasteland, as cold as a snowstorm in the woods with thousands of little eyes gleaming out at me through the trees.

  I have had a lot of nightmares while I’ve been in jail and recently I keep waking up in a sweat after having the same dream. I’m driving down the road in a car that I can’t really make out exactly what it is but it’s a small Honda/Nissan/ Mazda hybrid of some sort. The road is always filled with emerald green Mustangs. It doesn’t seem to matter exactly where I am driving but I am always familiar with the road every place I seem to be, even when the scenery changes abruptly. I run to get a hamburger and there is an emerald green Mustang parked in the sun outside glistening. I show up at work and someone shows me his new car and it’s an emerald green Mustang. I visit my dope dealer and I see him in a shiny new emerald green Mustang offering me free heroin. My parents are taking me back to their house and in the driveway is an emerald green Mustang for my birthday.

  The worst dream takes me to a place where I am driving along in a familiar place and the shiniest, tricked-out, flossing, rimmed Mustang brighter than the sun pulls along side my little car with a gorgeous girl driving. Her windows are down and her college-length blonde hair is shimmering in the morning sunlight but she’s staring straight ahead. Her face and skin and beauty are always perfect beyond comprehension and sometimes she’ll make a sort of sly sideways glance with a slight smirk just to make sure I’m watching and to let me know that I know she knows I’m watching.

  In my dream I often try and distract her; I roll down my windows and smile or wave, but the more I try, the more intently she focuses on the road ahead of her. She tears off down the road at a speed that seems casual but there’s no way I can match it in my little bucket. I put her image out of my mind and drive to where I am going.