Party Time_Raving Arizona

by Shaun Attwood

  From the doorway upstairs, I’m facing two storeys of cells overlooking a day room with shower cubicles at the end of both tiers. At two white plastic circular tables, prisoners are playing dominoes, cards, chess and Scrabble, some concentrating, others yelling obscenities, contributing to a brain-scraping din that I hope to block out by purchasing a Walkman. In a raised box-shaped Plexiglas control tower, two guards are monitoring the prisoners.

  Bud returns. My pulse jumps. Not wanting to feel like I’m stuck in a kennel with a rabid dog, I grab a notepad and pen and head for the day room.

  Focussed on my body language, not wanting to signal any weakness, I’m striding along the upper tier, head and chest elevated, when two hands appear from a doorway and grab me. I drop the pad. The pen clinks against grid-metal and tumbles to the day room as I’m pulled into a cell reeking of backside sweat and masturbation, a cheese-tinted funk.

  “I’m Booga. Let’s fuck,” says a squat man in urine-stained boxers, with WHITE TRASH tattooed on his torso below a mobile home, and an arm sleeved with the Virgin Mary.

  Shocked, I brace to flee or fight to preserve my anal virginity. I can’t believe my eyes when he drops his boxers and waggles his penis.

  Dancing to music playing through a speaker he has rigged up, Booga smiles in a sexy way. “Come on,” he says in a husky voice. “Drop your pants. Let’s fuck.” He pulls pornography faces. I question his sanity. He moves closer. “If I let you fart in my mouth, can I fart in yours?”

  “You can fuck off,” I say, springing towards the doorway.

  He grabs me. We scuffle. Every time I make progress towards the doorway, he clings to my clothes, dragging me back in. When I feel his penis rub against my leg, my adrenalin kicks in so forcefully I experience a burst of strength and wriggle free. I bolt out as fast as my shower sandals will allow, and snatch my pad. Looking over my shoulder, I see him stood calmly in the doorway, smiling. He points at me. “You have to walk past my door every day. We’re gonna get together. I’ll lick your ass and you can fart in my mouth.” Booga blows a kiss and disappears.

  I rush downstairs. With my back to a wall, I pause to steady my thoughts and breathing. In survival mode, I think, What’s going to come at me next? In the hope of reducing my tension, I borrow a pen to do what helps me stay sane: writing. With the details fresh in my mind, I document my journey to the prison for my blog readers, keeping an eye out in case anyone else wants to test the new prisoner. The more I write, the more I fill with a sense of purpose. Jon’s Jail Journal is a connection to the outside world that I cherish.

  Someone yells, “One time!” The din lowers. A door rumbles open. A guard does a security walk, his every move scrutinised by dozens of scornful eyes staring from cells. When he exits, the din resumes, and the prisoners return to injecting drugs to escape from reality, including the length of their sentences. This continues all day with “Two times!” signifying two approaching guards, and “Three times!” three and so on. Every now and then an announcement by a guard over the speakers briefly lowers the din.

  Before lockdown, I join the line for a shower, holding bars of soap in a towel that I aim to swing at the head of the next person to try me. With boisterous inmates a few feet away, yelling at the men in the showers to “Stop jerking off,” and “Hurry the fuck up,” I get in a cubicle that reeks of bleach and mildew. With every nerve strained, I undress and rinse fast.

  At night, despite the desert heat, I cocoon myself in a blanket from head to toe and turn towards the wall, making my face more difficult to strike. I leave a hole for air, but the warm cement block inches from my mouth returns each exhalation to my face as if it’s breathing on me, creating a feeling of suffocation. For hours, my heart drums so hard against the thin mattress I feel as if I’m moving even though I’m still. I try to sleep, but my eyes keep springing open and my head turning towards the cell as I try to penetrate the darkness, searching for Bud swinging a padlock in a sock at my head.

  Other Books by Shaun Attwood

  Pablo Escobar: Beyond Narcos

  War on Drugs Series Book 1

  The mind-blowing true story of Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel beyond their portrayal on Netflix.

  Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was a devoted family man and a psychopathic killer; a terrible enemy, yet a wonderful friend. While donating millions to the poor, he bombed and tortured his enemies – some had their eyeballs removed with hot spoons. Through ruthless cunning and America’s insatiable appetite for cocaine, he became a multi-billionaire, who lived in a $100-million house with its own zoo.

  Pablo Escobar: Beyond Narcos demolishes the standard good versus evil telling of his story. The authorities were not hunting Pablo down to stop his cocaine business. They were taking over it.

  American Made: Who Killed Barry Seal?

  Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush

  War on Drugs Series Book 2

  Set in a world where crime and government coexist, American Made is the jaw-dropping true story of CIA pilot Barry Seal that the Hollywood movie starring Tom Cruise is afraid to tell.

  Barry Seal flew cocaine and weapons worth billions of dollars into and out of America in the 1980s. After he became a government informant, Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel offered a million for him alive and half a million dead. But his real trouble began after he threatened to expose the dirty dealings of George HW Bush.

  American Made rips the roof off Bush and Clinton’s complicity in cocaine trafficking in Mena, Arkansas.

  “A conspiracy of the grandest magnitude.” Congressman Bill Alexander on the Mena affair.

  We Are Being Lied To: The War on Drugs

  War on Drugs Series Book 3

  A collection of harrowing, action-packed and interlinked true stories that demonstrate the devastating consequences of drug prohibition.

  The Cali Cartel: Beyond Narcos

  War on Drugs Series Book 4

  An electrifying account of the Cali Cartel beyond its portrayal on Netflix.

  From the ashes of Pablo Escobar’s empire rose an even bigger and more malevolent cartel. A new breed of sophisticated mobsters became the kings of cocaine. Their leader was Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela – known as the Chess Player due to his foresight and calculated cunning.

  Gilberto and his terrifying brother, Miguel, ran a multi-billion-dollar drug empire like a corporation. They employed a politically astute brand of thuggery and spent $10 million to put a president in power. Although the godfathers from Cali preferred bribery over violence, their many loyal torturers and hit men were never idle.

  Hard Time New Edition

  “Makes the Shawshank Redemption look like a holiday camp” – NOTW

  After a SWAT team smashed down stock-market millionaire Shaun Attwood’s door, he found himself inside of Arizona’s deadliest jail and locked into a brutal struggle for survival.

  Shaun’s hope of living the American Dream turned into a nightmare of violence and chaos, when he had a run-in with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer.

  In jail, Shaun was forced to endure cockroaches crawling in his ears at night, dead rats in the food and the sound of skulls getting cracked against toilets. He meticulously documented the conditions and smuggled out his message.

  Join Shaun on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence.

  Hard Time provides a revealing glimpse into the tragedy, brutality, dark comedy and eccentricity of prison life.

  Featured worldwide on Nat Geo Channel’s Locked-Up/Banged-Up Abroad Raving Arizona.

  Prison Time

  Sentenced to 9½ years in Arizona’s state prison for distributing Ecstasy, Shaun finds himself living among gang members, sexual predators and drug-crazed psychopaths. After being attacked by a Californian biker in for stabbing a girlfriend, Shaun writes about the prisoners who befriend, protect and inspire him. They include T-Bone, a massive African American ex-Marine who risks his life saving vulnerable inmates from rape, and
Two Tonys, an old-school Mafia murderer who left the corpses of his rivals from Arizona to Alaska. They teach Shaun how to turn incarceration to his advantage, and to learn from his mistakes.

  Shaun is no stranger to love and lust in the heterosexual world, but the tables are turned on him inside. Sexual advances come at him from all directions, some cleverly disguised, others more sinister – making Shaun question his sexual identity.

  Resigned to living alongside violent, mentally-ill and drug-addicted inmates, Shaun immerses himself in psychology and philosophy to try to make sense of his past behaviour, and begins applying what he learns as he adapts to prison life. Encouraged by Two Tonys to explore fiction as well, Shaun reads over 1000 books which, with support from a brilliant psychotherapist, Dr Owen, speed along his personal development. As his ability to deflect daily threats improves, Shaun begins to look forward to his release with optimism and a new love waiting for him. Yet the words of Aristotle from one of Shaun’s books will prove prophetic: “We cannot learn without pain.”

  Un-Making a Murderer:

  The Framing of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey

  Innocent people do go to jail. Sometimes mistakes are made. But even more terrifying is when the authorities conspire to frame them. That’s what happened to Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, who were convicted of murder and are serving life sentences.

  Un-Making a Murderer is an explosive book which uncovers the illegal, devious and covert tactics used by Wisconsin officials, including:

  – Concealing Other Suspects

  – Paying Expert Witnesses to Lie

  – Planting Evidence

  – Jury Tampering

  The art of framing innocent people has been in practice for centuries and will continue until the perpetrators are held accountable. Turning conventional assumptions and beliefs in the justice system upside down, Un-Making a Murderer takes you on that journey.

  The profits from this book are going to Steven and Brendan and to donate free books to schools and prisons. In the last three years, Shaun Attwood has donated 20,000 books.

  About Shaun Attwood

  Shaun Attwood is a former stock-market millionaire and Ecstasy supplier turned public speaker, author and activist, who is banned from America for life. His story was featured worldwide on National Geographic Channel as an episode of Locked Up/Banged Up Abroad called Raving Arizona.

  Shaun’s writing – smuggled out of the jail with the highest death rate in America run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio – attracted international media attention to the human rights violations: murders by guards and gang members, dead rats in the food, cockroach infestations…

  While incarcerated, Shaun was forced to reappraise his life. He read over 1,000 books in just under six years. By studying original texts in psychology and philosophy, he sought to better understand himself and his past behaviour. He credits books as being the lifeblood of his rehabilitation.

  Shaun tells his story to schools to dissuade young people from drugs and crime. He campaigns against injustice via his books and blog, Jon’s Jail Journal. He has appeared on the BBC, Sky News and TV worldwide to talk about issues affecting prisoners’ rights.

  As a best-selling true-crime author, Shaun is presently writing a series of action-packed books exposing the War on Drugs, which feature Pablo Escobar and the Cali Cartel.