Dark Days: A Memoir

by D. Randall Blythe

  Finally, I employed the time-honored technique I have embarrassedly witnessed American tourists use on disgusted locals around the globe: I spoke English as slowly and as loudly as possible. As all Americans abroad somehow intuitively know, the best course of action when speaking to a confused looking native of the country we are currently gracing with our presence is decreasing the velocity of speech to the speed of wood, while simultaneously increasing its volume to ear-blowing levels. This, of course, automatically grants the listener instant comprehension of our language.

  “HELL-O, I AM RANDY,” I yelled, pointing to my chest “I AM FROM AMERICA. RAAAAAN-DY. A-MER-I-CAAAA.”

  My cellmate looked at me as if I were hurting his ears, then smiled and pointed to his own chest.

  “Dorj. Mongolia,” he said, at a normal speed and reasonable volume level.

  He was a Mongol! A real life descendant of the Khans, right here in cell 505 with me! What fantastic luck! Ever since I read The Adventures of Marco Polo as a boy, I have been fascinated with Mongolian history, particularly the military tactics and highly structured, horse-riding, arrow-shooting, yurt-dwelling nomadic society Ghengis and Kublai Khan led as they ran through Europe and Asia like a hot knife through butter, looting and pillaging and kicking major ass. The Mongols were so brutal the Chinese had to build the Great Wall to stop them, and that didn’t even work. A Mongol! I had so many questions! I wondered if he grilled yak often back home.

  “Dorj (rhymes with “gorge”). Mongolia!” I pointed at him, repeating excitedly, “Randy. America!”

  “Rurlandy, America,” he said, pointing at me and smiling. “Dorj, Mongolia.”

  It dawned on me that Dorj wouldn’t be regaling me with tales of riding the rugged steppes of his homeland anytime soon, as our most successful attempt at conversation so far closely resembled a Tarzan movie filmed in an Eastern Bloc prison. I decided I would have to either attempt to learn Mongolian or teach Dorj some English, because repeating our names and nationalities was already losing its intellectual appeal for me. Thankfully, Dorj motioned for me to put my bundle on the low particle board-topped table in the cell and began showing me the best way to make my bed. The bed was an old metal frame affair, with layers of brown and green paint chipping away to reveal red rust in places, as if a ghetto camouflage job had been done for a hospitalized hunter with no insurance. For a mattress there were what appeared to be three ripped up foam couch cushions laying on top of a metal lattice work with a few springs poking out here and there. Dorj showed me by gesturing that I should put down one of my two wool blankets as extra padding, tucking it around the three cushions, then topping it with the single rough white sheet and other blanket that came with my bundle. There was no pillow. Then Dorj opened the top of two stacked chest-high institutional-green metal lockers, indicating that it was mine to store my belongings. I sat down on my bed and looked at what I had been issued with my sheet and blankets.

  Toiletries: One bar of soap. One roll of toilet paper. One toothbrush. One tube of toothpaste. One tube of shaving paste. One shaving brush. One safety razor, single bladed. One purple plastic cup, stained brown interior. One large metal spoon, bent.

  Clothing: One hoodless sweat shirt, two sizes too small, same faded purple as sweatpants. One pair very uncomfortable looking (leather?) sandals, dark brown. One pair very thin socks, dark green. One set of pajamas, top and bottom, sinus infection-yellow, mysterious purple stains scattered on fabric. One extra v-necked t-shirt, tan with blown-out collar (a.k.a. “loser neck”), old panty-hose like runs and holes in see-through fabric. One pair “boxers,” grey/white, four sizes too big, no elastic in waist, missing one half of sewn-in drawstring necessary to keep on body. One extra large dish towel (for drying body after bathing?), originally white with blue pin stripes, now uniformly blue-gray.

  Missing: Books. Paper. Pen. Coffee. Equipment to make coffee. Food. Cigarettes. Lighter. Laptop. iPod. Camera. Skateboard. Skateboarding area. Surfboard. Ocean. Fishing pole. River. Friends. Family.

  Wife.

  Freedom.

  I sighed and stowed my meager gear neatly in my locker, except for the bar of soap, which I placed on a loosely mounted particle board shelf. The shelf sat above a plain sink that looked as if it was about to fall off the crumbling wall any moment. I turned the single knob on the sink. Ice-cold dirty water rushed out. It never got any warmer, but it did run clear after thirty seconds or so. Great—no hot water for shaving. There was also no mirror in sight, and I hoped I wouldn’t make a bloody mess of my face when I attempted to scrape the four-day old beard from my bristling mug. Beside the sink was an old porcelain toilet with a cracked base missing an entire corner. It looked as if someone had begun to bolt it to the floor, but had decided mid-job to go do something more rewarding. The toilet had no handle, but a few lengths of what looked like pajama fabric were tied together as a string, hanging down from a dirty water tank mounted on the wall above the toilet. I gently pulled the string, there was a loud gurgling whoosh, and the toilet flushed with immense power and great speed, water splashing out all over the seat and floor of the cell. Dorj laughed, and I nodded and took a mental note as he indicated that I should lower the toilet lid when flushing. Neither of us wanted a post-poop urine and feces explosion. Beside the toilet hung a moldy shower curtain printed in a rose basket and swallow pattern. It hung from a curtain rod fashioned from a bent piece of pipe that stuck precariously out of the wall, blocking the view of the toilet from the small hatch in our steel cell door, but affording zero privacy for anyone sitting on the toilet from the other inhabitant of the cell.

  As I walked around the cell, I noted the ill-fitted and filthy sheet of yellow-green linoleum beneath my feet, unattached to the floor by any sort of adhesive. There were odd pieces of it missing at various places where the linoleum met the wall, and I guessed that the prison had bought remnants at bargain prices to cover their cell floors. Besides the beds, table, lockers, toilet, and sink, the cell contained two square wooden topped stools, one of which had a chess board scratched in it. There was a crumbling cork board hanging on one wall with a photo ripped from a magazine stuck to it. It appeared to be a picture of some vacantly smiling celebrity I didn’t recognize, standing at an awards ceremony with her elderly parents. Someone had taken a pen and blacked out one of her teeth. Beside the cork board, set in a shallow, extremely dusty alcove was a radiator. As I absent-mindedly ran my hand along the top of it, Dorj came over from his bed and withdrew something from the inches pile high of dust beneath the radiator. He smiled, put a finger to his lips indicating silence, then opened his hand. In it was a small bit of blade, stripped from a safety razor. I smiled, and nodded in comprehension as he put his finger to his lips again and replaced the razor, showing me where he kept it hidden.

  Seeing the razor instantly improved my morale. It was much too small to be used as any sort of weapon (unless it was somehow affixed to a handle of some sort; a fairly common practice in prison), but I knew it would be a valuable tool. Beside the pragmatic aspects of the razor, its presence in our cell was powerfully symbolic for me. The razor was expressly forbidden, but there it sat nestled in its dusty hiding place; a sharp and physical piece of defiance in this intensely depressing place. It was a tiny metallic refusal to completely accept the current conditions I found myself in, and I was pleased Dorj had already deemed me trustworthy enough to share its existence. I walked over to my bed and sat down, staring at the yellow-gray paint peeling from the high walls of our cell. Dorj dug in his locker and came back with two thin hand-rolled cigarettes, offering me one and twitching his thumb in the universal “do you have a lighter?” motion. I shook my head, and Dorj sighed and put away the cigarettes. At least he smoked, and was willing to share. I looked above me at the single frameless and barred window in the room, perhaps three by two feet in dimension, set in the wall high in between our two beds. The window had two wooden framed panels of glass, one of which was slid open, the only source of ventilation in th
e cell. I got up from my bed, hopped up on the frame headboard, grabbed two of the six square bars, and pulled myself up for a look. The ground was eye level from my basement perspective, and all I could see through the metal lattice affixed to the outside of the window was a pile of cinderblock and roofing material rubble, sitting in front of a gray wall about ten feet away. The view left a lot to be desired, but at least the window let a small amount of sunshine and fresh air into the cell. The rusty bars began to dig into my palms, and I carefully lowered myself back down onto my bed.

  Soon after I got down, I heard the cell door being unlocked behind me. I turned around as the door opened, and there stood Bradley, looking immensely pleased with himself. He crossed his arms and leaned against the frame of the door, smirking at me.

  “So, are liking the new home? Your new friend?” he asked with a gleaming smile.

  “Yeah. Everything’s just great,” I replied in a monotone.

  “Yes, is very good here,” he replied, smiling even wider, then began to walk out the door. The door was almost shut when it stopped, and Bradley popped his head into the room.

  “Is there something you are needing? Is there anything else you would like I can get for you?” he asked happily, like a waiter bringing the check to a dinner table.

  As a matter of fact, yes, you little motherfucker, there is something else I would like, I thought as I felt the blood starting to rush to my head, I would like it if just me and you were in a dark alleyway somewhere right about now. I would like that a whole lot.

  I said nothing in reply, staring at him briefly, then turned back around and sat on my bed. He must have seen that he had gotten my goat, because I heard him laugh as he turned the key in the door and walked away. I saw right then that Bradley was definitely going to be a problem, and that I would have to keep a strict watch over my temper around him. Like it or not, he was the one in charge here, and if I let him know he was getting to me in any way, I would be giving away what little bit of power I retained in my current situation. Heaven forbid I let him drive me to somehow physically react to anything he did—my situation would immediately go from really, really bad to unthinkable. I’m not some violent thug, but it took me a moment to calm down enough to realize that I couldn’t afford the thoughts currently running through my head. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to smash Bradley a few good ones right in his smug face. I reminded myself that these kind of thoughts get you beaten up, locked up longer, or even worse in prison, and I decided that there was no way I would allow him to make me stay there any longer than I had to.

  Dorj could see that Bradley had pissed me off, and waved his hand in dismissal at the door, hissing between his teeth and saying something that sounded like “coondta backhar.” I didn’t understand what he had said, and didn’t even know what language he had said it in, but I definitely picked up on the meaning: “Ah, to hell with that guy. He’s just a little jerk.” (Soon I would learn that bachar was the Czech word for screw, the same derogatory term used in America for a prison guard. As for cunda, just take a wild guess.) I relaxed and laughed a little, kicking my feet up and lying back on my bed with my hands folded behind my neck. Dorj was doing the same. Might as well chill for a bit.

  “Aaaaay, ya ya ya ya ya ya yaaaaa . . . Pankrác,” I heard Dorj sigh beside me, marking the first of a million times I would hear him utter this particular mantra over the next thirty-four days. For some reason, I found this hilarious, and began laughing. Dorj began to laugh as well, and before long we were both cracking up and ay-ya-ya-Pankrác-ing away. It was a combination Mongolian/Czech way of saying c’est la vie. What could we do? We were in prison. Prison sucks. Might as well laugh about it. (Even today, when I am vexed by some unavoidable annoyance, I’ll catch myself saying it under my breath from time to time. Flat tire on a beach cruiser? Computer hard drive acting up? Flight canceled? Ay ya ya ya ya ya ya ya . . . Pankrác.)

  Soon the hatch in our door opened up, and Fester the trusty stuck his head in, yelling something that sounded like “eedlow!” (jídlo= food). Lunch had arrived. Dorj went to the hatch and took two plastic trays of food from Fester, who held up a pitcher of light brown liquid, looked at me questioningly, and said “chai?” I brought him our plastic cups, and he poured us each a cup of watery tea before shutting the hatch and rolling the food cart down the cell block hall, hollering “jídlo!” and “chai!” the whole way in his high-pitched unpleasant voice. Dorj and I sat down at the low table, and he immediately began wolfing down his food with great speed, noise, and ferocity. Dorj ate like he had been waiting his whole life for that particular meal. He sounded like some sort of apocalyptic human vacuum cleaner running on a “complete annihilation” setting, great slurping sounds of sheer mandibular destruction emanating from his rotund brown face. It was impressive, as well as extremely disgusting, to witness. Well, at least it must be delicious if he’s eating it that . . . intensely, I thought, and took a look at my lunch.

  On my tray was a sizable hunk of dark brown bread, a small bowl of clear soup with a few bits of diced carrots floating in it, and a larger bowl of a slightly thicker brownish stew with what looked like an unbaked white sub roll stuck in it. I tore off a piece of the bread and tried it—not bad, not bad at all. (European countries count amongst their citizens superior bakers of bread, apparently even in prison.) The soup was fairly tasteless, made of a very light chicken stock and not much else, so I tried the stew. It had a bit more flavor, and a few tiny bits of what I assumed was some sort of meat in it. Unsurprisingly, the unbaked sub-roll-looking thing in the stew had the same consistency as an unbaked sub roll. I tried a few bites, and while it didn’t taste particularly bad, it didn’t exactly taste good either. I felt like I was chewing a mouthful of flour-flavored bubblegum. I gave up on my sub roll after a few hard-earned swallows, finished the stew, then drank the almost flavorless tea and finished up my piece of bread (which was by far the best tasting component of my meal). So far, Czech prison food was ranking pretty high on my list of worst meals ever—it was basically flavorless, and there wasn’t much of it. Oh well, I thought, you’re not at the Ritz-Carlton. Plus dinner has got to be better. At least there’s got to be something solid with the main meal of the day besides bread.

  Oh, how wrong I was. How wrong I was.

  Not long after we had finished lunch, Dorj and I were relaxing on our beds when the cell door opened and Bradley stood there, looking slightly irritated, instead of his normal smug self.

  “Up! Up! Come, come, both of you. We go,” he barked, clearly annoyed at having to take us wherever we were going.

  Dorj and I got up from our beds, put on our sandals, and headed toward the door. Bradley held his hand up for us to halt.

  “Fix shirt!” he said, motioning for us to tuck our shirts into our sweatpants. We did so, and walked outside the cell, where we were made to turn around, spread our legs, and place our hands on the hallway wall while another guard did a quick pat down. Then we followed Bradley to the end of the hall, where a group of eleven other men were already waiting. Bradley unlocked the gate, and we all walked single file out of the block, hands behind our backs, and up the stairs I had come down earlier. After a good ten minutes of walking up and down stairs and through gates and around corners, we arrived at a low ceilinged holding cell a bit smaller than Dorj’s and my room. All thirteen of us crammed in and took seats on the floor and benches bolted to the walls. As soon as the cell door was locked and the guards had walked away, half-smoked cigarettes began appearing from pockets and being lit up, then passed around. I took a look at the men crowded into the cell with me.

  Besides Dorj sitting to my left, across from me was a handsome young blond haired man in his early twenties who looked as if he definitely did not belong in prison. He was well groomed, and except for his prison fatigues, looked as if he had just walked out of the pages of some high-end casual clothing catalog. He kept rapidly glancing around the cell, trying not to look nervous but failing miserably. M
r. Abercrombie better tighten up or he won’t last long here, I thought. There were three young Asian men squatting together in a corner, sharing a cigarette and speaking quietly in what I recognized as Vietnamese. A tall, overweight man about the same age as the pretty boy sat on the edge of the bench near the Vietnamese, looking resigned. Beside him was a friendly looking older gentleman who had to be at least in his late sixties, smiling and clutching a soft tan leather attaché in his lap. Next to the older gentleman was a man in his thirties about my height and build who appeared to be sweating out some sort of flu at the moment, as his skin was damp and pale, his eyes glassy. To my right sat what I immediately recognized as a very strung out heroin junkie of the homeless street punk variety. He was rail thin, filthy, smelled awful, and his thin hair looked as if someone had cut it with a weed whacker. His hair and obvious malnutrition didn’t make him look punk rock, it made him look like a chemo patient or concentration camp victim. Finally, sitting and standing near Mr. Abercrombie were three different swarthy skinned men, talking amongst each other. One was thin and quiet looking, with sad brown eyes. Another was tall and beefy, and looked almost exactly like my friend Raymond Herrera, a well-known Los Angeles based drummer whom I had toured with before. The last of the dark-skinned trio was very short, had a clean-shaven head, and spoke constantly in a raspy animated voice to the other two. All three were covered in tattoos, and the short one had what I knew to be knife scars on his hands and arms. These three carried themselves in a way that immediately let me know that this was not their first day in prison. I guessed that they were Roma (“gypsies” being the more vulgar terminology), and I was correct.

  The Roma were passing a few cigarettes back and forth, and the short one noticed me looking at his. He leaned over and passed it to me, motioning for me to share with the men on my side. I took a few deep drags, and passed it to Dorj first. I wasn’t going to make him smoke after the junkie next to me—God only knows what kind of diseases he had—and spoke to the short Roma.