by Damon West
Surely he knew I was there. He did not see me, but I saw him. He was right outside the car. I could hear him moving around. I sat completely still inside the vehicle so the dog couldn’t hear me. He eventually lost interest and moved on. My heart pounded for minutes after that close call. When the next tow truck came through making noise, I started the car and drove it, sans lights, around the lot, positioning myself about one hundred feet from the gate.
If the gate was home plate, I was halfway between third and home. The guard shack was between home and first, with an entire infield full of cars obstructing our views of each other. The next truck would come in the gate and follow its way around the diamond, headed to first. Now it was just a waiting game. I killed the engine and stared at the gate, willing it to open before the guard made his rounds.
Within minutes, I heard the gate start up. A tow truck had arrived. The noise was much more pronounced this close to the gate, something I was counting on because I had to start this damn sports car which just had muffler enhancers added on. Headlights off, I waited until I saw the end of the tow truck coming through the gate. Then I floored it.
The driver of the truck picked me up in his peripheral vision and stared at the sports car coming in to T-bone him. I was counting on him to take evasive action. Thank God he did, accelerating his tow truck to get out of the way. At the last moment before home plate, I turned the car hard right, at ninety degrees, keeping my foot on the accelerator. The car spun out and did a few doughnuts. When I was finally motionless, I looked up and saw that I was outside the impound lot, with nothing but road in front of me. I breathed out, hit the accelerator, and made my way quickly to the garage of the home I had broken into.
Once the car was safely in the garage, I went out to my car, parked on the street, and got my pipe and my dope. Despite the adrenaline high after stealing the car from the police impound, all I could think of was getting high on meth.
It took me a few hours to clean up the car completely. I wiped off every surface of that car, inside and out. Knowing this garage would eventually become a crime scene when the owner discovered a sports car in their garage, I made sure I left no evidence of my being there. I left the house from the back door where I originally entered and walked around the house to my car. It was around 6 a.m. when I left, and the sun was coming out. Curiosity got the best of me, so I passed by the impounded lot. The activity there was terrifying. Police cars were everywhere, and the place was lit up like it was noon. Once on the interstate, I called Steven.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I’ve been freaking out. Did you get my bag?” he asked.
On my end of the phone, I was smiling. “No, I didn’t get your bag. I got the entire car.”
Excited, he was firing questions off at me. I promised to tell him all about it later, that I was going home before rush hour got too bad. “Your burglary bag and everything else you had in that car is safe with me. Call you later.”
I hung up and drove to my apartment, replaying the events of the night in my mind. I had a nagging feeling that our days were numbered. Just because they did not have the evidence they wanted with that car, didn’t mean they did not have a huge lead in the Uptown burglaries. Because of that damn body shop Steven went to, the authorities now had an idea where at least one piece of stolen property from the Uptown burglaries ended up.
You would think this would have scared me into ceasing what I was doing. You would be so wrong. I could no more stop than I could fly an airplane. The burglaries paid for my drugs; the drugs controlled my life.
With the sun rising and the stakes raised higher, I started to wonder if I would survive much longer.
CHAPTER 15
You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive!
Prison Diary
Monday, January 21, 2013
After I sufficiently acclimated to prison life, I began absorbing more intricacies about the institution. For example, you can go to jail inside of a prison. I’m not kidding. If you commit a disciplinary infraction severe enough, the guards will handcuff you, confiscate your property, and escort you to a separate building in the prison. It has the old-fashioned jail cells you see in all the movies, with iron bars and everything. Part of this jail building is just a holding area, while the other part is solitary confinement.
The guard who arrests you is then responsible for writing up your case and presenting it to their superiors, who eventually send it to the kangaroo court in TDCJ, which determines restrictions on your privileges. The custody and institutional punishment level is known as the Unit Classification Committee, or UCC. This committee is made up of three people, who are always revolving. From what I can gather, department heads, ranking officers, and wardens usually sit on this committee.
Once you are in jail, you are given a date for your hearing. This is when you can either plead guilty and take your punishment or, if you feel you are innocent or just don’t enjoy taking responsibility for your actions—a lot of guys in here have issues with this—you can ask for a trial. If you go with the latter, you will be given a trial date and you will even be able to call witnesses.
THE WORD ON THE STREET is if you choose this route, the court will max you out at sentencing for wasting their time. Punishment for non-felony infractions can be loss of day room privileges, loss of phone use, loss of recreation, loss of visitation, and the fiercest punishment for many, loss of commissary. All of these things are privileges, not rights, and the denial of them can therefore be used like a hammer over your head. Many guys have difficulty understanding that concept. I do not.
An even worse punishment is to lose your custody status and be sent to a punitive part of the prison system. This comes in three forms.
The first kind, Medium Custody, means you have very limited movement outside the cell you share with another man. You basically get to come out of your cell and go to recreation and the chow hall. This can take guys anywhere from six months to a few years to get out of, depending on the kind of trouble they find. That’s because the majority of the inmates around you are head cases, disciplinary problems who generally do not mind living like an animal. You will fight a lot if you are sent to Medium Custody.
The next is Closed Custody. This is where you are locked in a cell with another man for about twenty-two hours a day, only allowed out for recreation and showers. Your meals are brought to you in your cell because you have abdicated the right to move around the prison. Life in Closed Custody would be like a ninth circle of hell for me because I cannot stand mindless conversation. Being trapped in a cage with another man for twenty-two hours a day would all but guarantee he would want to talk to me. No thanks!
The last is Administrative Segregation, or Ad-Seg. This is where you are locked up for twenty-three hours a day, alone in a cell. It has six different levels, A-pod through F-pod, with F-pod being the worst because you are only allowed a Bible (or whatever religious book you choose) and little else. Working your way up through Seg means you regain privileges along the way, including mail, library books, your property, and commissary. The existence is Spartan at best, and some men must navigate Closed Custody and Medium Custody on their road back to earning the right to return to general population.
It can be a never-ending cycle. Some men get sent into this punitive section, never to be seen for five to ten years. Even if you are doing the right thing, most of the natives around you are not, and they do not care. They are accustomed to living like animals and delight in sharing their miseries with you.
All of these punishments carry with them an added kick. When you go into that part of the prison system, you lose your “good-time” credits. These are days you accumulate toward parole when you follow all the rules. The state gives you an extra day for every day you are there that you comply. They can also take all of your good-time away when you don’t comply, pushing your parole date back by years. It’s an absolute nightmare on top of the nigh
tmare of navigating your way back to the most normal part of the prison, general population.
This is the hammer hanging over my head today as I am writing from solitary confinement, otherwise known as “the Hole.”
No one put me here. Inserting myself into some drama that was not mine bought me this trip. One white guy stole another white guy’s Scrabble game. Not normally something I would even notice, except for two things: I hate bullies; and this bully was a sex offender in prison for kiddie porn, so I loathed him on general principle. When I saw the theft, I immediately saw an opening to confront this arrogant pedophile. To his credit, he stepped up and hit me when he sensed danger. I was not expecting it. Not only that, but the guards were in the pod, letting people in and out of their cells.
No one starts a fight in front of the guards like that in prison. It is a guaranteed trip to lockup. It also guarantees there will not be much of a fight. This little bastard was counting on that because he knew I would be coming for him after he hit me, which I did. I had no choice. I did not see this going down like that at all. It was, perhaps, the lamest fight ever because it was broken up so quickly by the guards. Regardless, we both were taken out of the pod in handcuffs, marched into 11 Building, and put into solitary.
Because I violated the number one rule—mind your own business—I am now in a place where my few privileges have been suspended and my parole review date will probably be pushed back by years. Not to mention I may be sent to Medium Custody, which could put me on an odyssey back to general population for even more years to come.
Being in solitary has not been all negative. For the first time since I was arrested, I have my own cell. At first, I was not quite sure how to act with so much privacy. It was as if I was given back some autonomy, some freedom. It’s crazy to think of coming to solitary confinement as being free. There was no need to over-analyze this. I was treating it as a halftime of sorts, a chance to collect my thoughts as I prepared to go back out into “the game.”
About a week before, when I was booked in, I discovered the only property I would be allowed for the first ten days were hygiene products and a Bible. This was not going to work for me. All my property was locked up in the property room downstairs, so I decided to get it out. I saw another inmate named Bootleg, a black guy I knew from the chapel. He was a janitor in 11 Building, where I was being held, which meant the guard he worked for was reliant upon him to make the operation work back here. It was Bootleg’s job to make the guard look good to his superiors. Therefore, if anybody could get my property to me quickly, it was him. He went by Bootleg for a reason. I knew an opportunity when I saw one, so I decided to call him over and get the ball rolling.
“Bootleg!” I yelled, sticking my hand through the bars. “It’s West. You know, the white dude you always see at AA. Come see me when you get a chance.” I couldn’t be sure he was alone, and I didn’t want my business out there, so I waited until we had some privacy to discuss my property. I would only get one shot at this.
He shuffled down the run with his mop and bucket, the latter being his vehicle with which to traffic and trade goods from one cell to the other. This was his hustle, how he made his money. He controlled solitary during his twelve-hour shift. Armed with this knowledge, I felt confident I would have all my property soon.
Approaching my cell bars, Bootleg smiled, and looked confused. “West, what in the hell are you doing back here? You’re the last person I ever thought I’d see in lockup.”
“I got into some business that wasn’t mine and this little bastard hit me right in front of a guard who was doing an in and out. Worst fight ever because the guards were on us immediately. So here I sit.”
He laughed and assured me it wasn’t a big deal, and said that after I did some time in solitary they would send me back to population. “You got yourself a break from normal prison for a few weeks. That’s all.”
I liked the way he thought. A break was exactly what I was thinking when they threw me into this single-man cell. Except for those pesky thoughts about the damage I may have done to my parole good-time credits.
I made my play. “Check this out, Bootleg. I know this is your hustle, so I need to get with the program. My property was just brought in and there are five bags of it if my cellmate didn’t steal anything before the guards packed it. Everything in there is what I will need to make my stay here pleasant. There’s money for you in there too.”
“What kind of money you got?” he asked, wondering what kind of commissary I had in my property.
Normally, you could trade just about any store-bought food for anything else. Bootleg, on the other hand, didn’t have that luxury. He would have to take something he could smuggle back to his building. Something he could put down his pants, in his sock, or in his shirt. It was winter, so he had his green, prison-issued jacket. Guys who trafficked and traded loved jacket season because the jackets were more like backpacks after hidden pockets were sewn into the lining.
I assured Bootleg I had “good money”—coffee and pastries. “Black bag coffee too, not that cheap gunpowder stuff. Get my property. No need to haggle on price. I wanna get this done right now, before your shift ends.”
He grinned a mouth full of gold teeth, what was known as a grill. “Be right back, West.” He shook my hand and took off, his mop bucket wheels working overtime to keep up with his hurried pace. I had no doubt he would come through.
Fifteen minutes later, Bootleg and a guard were at my cell door. Without saying a word, the guard took out his big cell-key, opened the door, and turned his back on us. Bootleg personally put all five bags into my little cell. Like a hotel bellhop, he was going to be tipped.
“Damn, Bootleg, that was fast,” I said. “Tell me what you want.”
“West, it don’t usually go down like this. Usually I got to go back and forth to get to my price. Gimme two bags of coffee and five pastries. That’s about ten bucks.”
Damn, Bootleg, let go of my wallet, I thought, but said nothing. I dumped the bag with commissary in it on the floor, grabbed everything Bootleg wanted, handed it to him, gave him the half-hug/handshake common to men who were cool with each other, and told him how much I appreciated what he did.
“West,” he said, “you’re good with me, bro. I respect the way you do your time.”
He told me at first no one liked me because I talked “funny,” and that I carried myself like “rich white folk.” But, he said, I proved them all wrong. “Ain’t another white boy like you on this farm. I’ll come check on you every day. You need something, just let me know.”
He shoved his loot in his jacket and left. The guard locked the cell behind him without ever saying a single word, exactly as he was supposed to do for the inmate who took care of him.
Aware of my good fortune, I said a prayer of thanks and set up my cell. Solitary’s stinger had just been removed. Now I had a library of books, all my appliances (night light, fan, radio, and hot pot), my writing utensils, my commissary, everything. It was as if the only thing I shed was my cellmate and some square footage, a trade-off I would take any day.
That was over a week ago.
I’m so angry at myself for the choices I made to land me in solitary. Every self-inflicted wound punishes my family more than it does me. For the most part, I have learned to be selfless in recovery. But every now and then, flashes of that selfish addict reappear. When will I truly become that selfless person I so want to be? The guilt I feel in this cell today, because of the consequences of my stupid, selfish behavior, is like a black cloud hovering about me.
Focusing on resentments, especially the ones at myself, is a sure way to relapse. The tools in my program of recovery tell me I have to surrender to God every day, and that only He can take away these defects of character.
Knowing I need to refocus my thoughts from the attacks I want to make on myself, I shift my energy to something else. Having rece
ntly been in a fight made me reminisce on the last fight in which I participated. It was more akin to going to war than any other fight I had ever been in, where my life was, literally, on the line. It was a fight I would never forget.
* * *
It had been a few weeks since J-Blood and those guys on the basketball court had accepted me. The men on that court took me in after that, and went out of their way to make sure I felt like I belonged. Most days, one or two of them would stop by my cell, bang on the door, and say, “Come on, West. Let’s go to rec and shoot some hoops.” They invited me to “spread” (eat) with them, seeming to enjoy the time with me as much as I was enjoying the time with them. I finally started feeling like I belonged.
What I did not foresee was the negative attention this camaraderie was generating with the whites and even some of the blacks. Many of the whites hated me for my independence and ability to overcome prison without having to join into a gang and assume the collective ideological and emotional baggage of their “family” members. Some of the blacks just couldn’t let go of their ingrained belief systems, which told them I did not belong at the table with their kind.
When J-Blood told me I would have no more problems with the blacks, he promised me something on that basketball court that he could never deliver on. You see, race is such a primary force in prison that there is no way he could stop another black inmate from fighting me. To be in a gang and sell out your own race by taking up for a white boy is an offense punishable by extreme violence, and even death.