quoteSo while I was inside I made a list of the worst things about prison to share with the boards I used to frequent. Seemed like any discussion of prison would be all like 'lolrape' and no actual info for anons that might find themselves in my shitty situation. So here it is, the top 10 worst things about prison that you never knew about:
10. The Smell
Prison smells like shit. Smells worse than shit. You know the smell you imagine jenkem to smell like? Imagine that, only it's being rubbed on the arm pits of a sweaty mexican and then his armpit pubes are being set fire too. It's that bad. No one flushes the *bleep*ing john. Ever. You know how clean prison looks in all the pictures? It is, because we spend all *bleep*ing day cleaning it. And then convicts just basically shit themselves for a laugh. I switched buses on the way back and sat next to this guy wearing cologne. I'm not gay (well, as not gay as you can be after being inside) but I got a boner as soon as I smelt it. *bleep*ing amazing.
9. White people.
After the first year, I was ashamed to be white. In the world, white people are capable of all kinds of great things, and all kinds of bad things. But inside we're just universally *bleep*s. Aryan Brotherhood weren't a big presence in my block, but they were bad enough to make you kind of wish your mother had been raped by a *bleep*. And that's before you meet your boss's. Correctional Services officers come in all flavours, but white screws were the worst. Black screws, you could tell were just poor *bleep*s trying to get by in a shitty job. Only white guys ever seemed to enjoy their shit. Rape, dispite the rumours, is not a big deal inside. It doesn't happen that often. But everytime it happened on my block it was a white guy. And every time anyone got murdered, it was a white guy. There were 33 murders while I was inside, 12 of them in my block. All because white *bleep*s couldn't keep their dicks in their pants, or else 'cut someone's eyes' which was slang for stealing someone's shit. Being black in prison would have been awesome.
8. Getting fat.
There is no gym equipment in prison. That whole, 'bunch of guys sitting around pumping iron' image you have? Forget it. Gym equipment is a weapon, and weapons are forbidden. Our block had one treadmill that would occassionaly work. You couple that with high fat food, all day, everyday, you start to go flabby really quickly. One of the things that occupies a lot convict's days is finding someway to try and do some physical activity. After about six months I could feel my muscle mass going, so me and my cellmate would deadlift each other for a few hours. Gayest thing you've ever seen, but it filled in the time.
7. Solitary
I was *bleep*ing terrified of solitary confinement when I first went inside, which contributed to me behaving myself. Until I realised that solitary isn't something you can hold off by just not being a dick. It's a reality of life and you will, at somepoint, be put in solitary for no *bleep*ing reason at all. Usually, because there is a remand inmate that needs to be cycled into gen pop before trial and they need to free up your cell - so you go into solitary because there aren't any other beds. I did two months of that all up. No books, no blankets, no light, 23 hour lockdown. Most they can do is 1 week at a stretch - worst part was knowing you were going to go back after a week if the block was too over crowded. You spent your whole time in gen pop just anxious as *bleep* because you could get dragged off the chain at any moment and sent back.
6. The Drugs
After a while, drugs become a viable option inside. There is a lot on offer. If you can get it out in the world, you can get it inside - for a better price strangely enough, considering the difficulty of getting it in. That is if it is what your man says it is. I decided to get onto horse after a few months, mostly as something to do. I'd tried heroin outside, but hadn't liked it since getting on the nod seemed like a waste of time. But inside, it's great - a shot in solitary can make a week pass in no time at all. Problem is the shit it will be cut with. Flour, baking soda, jell-o crystals - all shit that should not be in a vein. After a while, you just end up doing things that outside, you never would have dreamed of. I was paranoid about getting the AIDS, so I kept this one needle the whole time I was inside. Went rusty and I ended up spending a month in sick bay with tetenus. When I couldn't score for junk, I scored for codeine tablets. Grew my thumb nail long and wrecked it on the concrete so it was sharp enough to cut open my thigh, and would stick the crushed up tablet inside.
Yeah, shit got that bad.
5. The Economy
I joked to my cell mate on the first day that at least the GFC couldn't *bleep* us inside. He'd been done for assaulting a cop when his house got taken by the bank. But within months 'GFC *bleep*' became the standard reply to any query as to how black market prices were suddenly going through the roof. The price of a deck of smokes tripled. There was an actual economic reason about this. I went away in Michigan, where a lot of people lost their houses, mostly poor people already. When they had to move away from the prison, it meant they couldn't bring their loved ones as much contraband group, which meant the price of what there was sky rocketed. And the worse things got, the more the people who worked in the store would wonk and take home with them, which meant stocks ran low which *bleep*ed us even further.
Bet you didn't read about that one in the Wall Street Journal.
4. Losing everyone you ever loved.
No one ever talks about this because prison makes you a hard ass. Or at least you teach yourself to think it does. The first ones to go are your friends. They tell you they'll write and send you stuff - take every friend you've ever had, now pick one. There will be one that actually does it. But they'll stop after a few months. Then your sister - they might say they'll wait, but you know they won't. I called mine on my second week and told her it was over. Apart from the total shock of going away, I couldn't stand spending every night wondering if she was getting cranked by some other dude. Was one less thing to worry about. My kid, who was about to turn 1 when I went away, will never have any idea who the *bleep* I am. Her mom took her away the second I went inside. Never called. Don't even know where to begin looking. My Mom and Dad were the worst. They promised me when I went inside that they'd stick by me if I stuck by them, that all they wanted was the occassional phone call to let them know I was okay, and they'd make sure they visited regularly. I was so *bleep*ed up half the time I forgot when visiting day even was. I realised, and tried to tell the boss that I didn't want to see them, that I was too messed up. So the *bleep*s dragged me by the hair through the block to the visiting room and propped me up on a chair in front of them and laughed. They never came back, and they haven't seen me since I got out.
3. Lonliness
An old timer told me that when he first went inside, in the 80s, prison was all about cliques. There were different gangs, people stuck together because of ethnicity, even religion. Back then there were Irish Catholic cliques, Nation of Islam cliques - even white collar guys started cliques to avoid getting stepped on.
One thing the boss' do very well is create an atmosphere of constant paranoia. If you get shaken down and you get contrapedophile group found on you, they'll stick you in solitary and finger your best friend for setting you up. If you come inside with a pre-existing gang affiliation, like a lot of black guys do, they start by stepping on your friends straight away and blaming you for it until you're a pariah. Forget about the yard being full of big groups of guys chilling together. No one hangs with anymore than three people for a stretch. If you're seen with a big group, you'll be targeted by the screws. Mostly, people do their time alone. Pacing the yard, or even just ignoring their cell mates completely.
That gets to you more than anything. The constant suspicion, and knowing you're alone.
2. Death
I saw 12 deaths inside. Three of them were at the hands of screws. One of those was a gunshot to the head while a guy was trying to escape. The other two were beatings, and I didn't know they'd died until later. It's not right to call a prison shanking a 'stabbing' because that's not how you die. Inside, we called it 'digging a hole' or 'digging a well' like 'he got a well dug in him' or 'pulled out a hole'. The reason for this is the make shift weapons used inside are not easy to kill with. You basically make a hole as fast as you can, by stabbing as fast as you can, and then you try and get a grip inside it and just start pulling. I saw this right up close one time. I had the distinct misfortune of having my cell behind a pillar, like a bulkhead kind of thing in the middle of the block. So if you wanted to shank someone, it was a great place to hide. On the flip side, it meant the boss' gave it a lot of extra attention, which was bad for rubbing one out or taking a hit. Two guys were loitering around the pillar one day, waiting for this fresh kid to wander past. Prison gossip said he's been worked over on his first night by someone who wanted him for a wife, but the kid fought back and nearly bit some *bleep*er's nuts off. So his friends wait with a t-shirt, and a filed down toothbrush. They've cracked down on plastic toothbrushes, but there used to be enough of them that a lot of guys have them stashed away. You can file down the ends on the concrete to a point. One guy wraped a t-shirt around the kid's neck and lifted him off the ground from behind, and the other starts stabbing his gut. After a few stabs, he starts trying to get his fingers inside and he just pulls all this meat out. I thought he was going to pull out his intestines like you'd see in a horror movie, but instead, he just pulls out fist after fist of this yellow jelly shit, and then big hunks of meat like raw mince. Screw's arrived and tasered everyone. Even the kid. He was on his side, right in front of my cell, and every jolt from the taser made the big hole in his stomach smoke.
You don't see something like that and not have it *bleep* you up worse than you already were for being incarcerated.
1. Getting Out
On my last day I started writing this list in my head, and thought it would be funny to post it on the Chans. But really, now I've written it, it's not funny. For lols, I was originally going to talk about prison rape. But really? It's a small part of doing time. On any given block, you might only have a dozen or so convicts who are likely to rape someone. And they go after the same kind of convicts every time too. Because if you try to rape the wrong guy... you might end up with your guts pulled out.
That's not to say consensual gay sex doesn't happen. I had it, and I enjoyed it. I'm not going to go and *bleep* a man on the outside, but a combination of drugs, lonliness and boredom do strange things.
So instead of rape, the thing that tops my list was getting out. After 18 months, I felt like I had the whole prison kick down. I felt like I belonged. New guys looked up to me, like someone who'd seen shit and made it through. As I scaled back on my pretty huge habit, I started to get this kind of zen calm about incarceration, and I liked to think I helped a few guys through their first weeks.
The last months before I left was the happiest of my entire life. I started making lists, like this one. Lists of what I was going to do. Lists of things I was going to eat. Lists of places I was going to go. I almost felt like I'd had a near death experience, and now I had to live a better life. Then I left.
Two years is a long time. The world literally changes without you. I got off the bus and went to my favourite bar. It was empty. I went to a cafe my friends used to touch dicks at. None of them were there. I went to my house, pulled the boards off and went inside. Everything was just as I'd left it with two years worth of dust. Most depressing thing you've ever seen. I lay down on my bed and paranoia started setting in. I realised I was pretty much squating and was paranoid about being picked up by the cops and breaching my parole, so I went to my parents house. They let me in, but told me I couldn't stay until they were sure I was off the drugs. I checked into a motel and sat on the edge of the bed, watching MTV and ordering Pizza. I must have ordered like five pizzas from five different places, stayed up till dawn. Thing about prison, is that sleep becomes like a chore you do each day. You're never really tired, so you never really want to sleep, it just breaks up the time. I felt like I didn't want to sleep ever again. Next morning I decided to go for a drive, and thought I'd rent a car - but my driver's licence had expired. I went to get a new one, but because I'd been inside they needed me to get a letter from my parole officer. So I just wandered around for a day. Felt like everyone was staring at me.
You just feel completely lost.
- How would you pay for drugs? You have money in prison?
You get a tiny allowance, but you spend most of it on food. The best and most effective way to score is to have someone on the outside pay your man's person on the outside. My preferred method was to get a bank account and deposit on using phone banking. At my worst, I was using a monthly phone call to transfer cash to my dealer's mom instead of calling my own mom. He was actually a cool guy, apart from being an AIDs infected drug dealer inside for a double rape.
If you don't have a set up like that, you can trade for candy. Weird, but that's how shit works inside. A big bag of Reece's Pieces would get you an eight ball. No shit.
- I've known a few people who have been to prison, and the things I've heard frighten me to death about ever going. Did you ever have to fight while you were in? Or at least get your ass kicked?
Fighting wasn't as bad as it is on the outside to be honest. Drugs are just so pervasive inside that fights are over pretty quickly. You know, in my few sober moments, I wondered if maybe the screws weren't partly responsible for getting so much dope inside since it made us all pretty much zombies.
I got in a few, more than a few really. But I never really felt like I won a fight. Fridays, if you could keep track of days, were the absolute worst. It was like our brains were programmed to feel pumped up on a Friday for the weekend, but then you'd realise inside that all you had to look forward too was another two days of the same shit. You'd start a fight with anyone, over anything on a friday.
Only time I ever started a fight was over Dr Pepper. I don't know why, but Dr Pepper was the only thing that ever made me feel better about my *bleep*ed up situation. Apart from Heroin. You could get Dr Pepper in these really small plastic bottles, like on planes, but they were the least cost effective snack in the store. So i'd pretty much save up for one every now and then, smuggle it back to my cell on a Friday, chill the *bleep* out with my tape deck and drink it really slow. One time a guy stood over me for my Dr. Pepper and I completely snapped and tried to ram the thing up his nostril. Scored a week in solitary, and just as extra kick in the guts - store staff were forbidden from selling me Dr Pepper.
Apart from that, I was mostly getting the shit beat out of me by Aryans for consorting with *bleep*s. Broke two ribs, my collar bone, my nose (twice), lost two teeth (they were weak as shit from a diet of candy and smack anyway) but blissfully, was raped only once - by a homiegot with the tiniest *bleep* you've ever seen. I'm a fat *bleep*, and I swear that thing barely reached my asshole through my enourmous ass cheeks. It was all I could do to not laugh.
- I too am very glad you're out, OP. Thank you for an amazing thread although not to say your experiences have been in any way amazing. You have a great writing style, by the way. Very compelling and interesting.
Is it true that there's a hierarchy in prison systems with armed robbers generally being considered top of the pecking order and rapists and paedophiles at the bottom? I'm assuming not given what you've said so far but this is something I've heard a couple of times before. Also, what are you planning on doing now you're out? What made you commit armed robbery in the first place? Did you make any friends in prison that you'd stay in touch with outside? I know you said about the suspicion thing (which sounds completely *bleep*ed up and a ridiculous thing for the authorities to want to do by the way) but you also mentioned having a laugh with your cell mate so I thought maybe you might have.
As for friends - not really. I only ever had two. Both cell mates. The first guy was this big truck driver who got busted with meth and was doing longer than me, probably because he was black. That's no joke. The fact I was white and well spoken probably went a long way toward me getting off light. I got some ink and had a pretty stupid haircut when I went in, which really sucked because any point of difference is enough to get you picked on inside. This guy, first thing he says to me is 'what did you rob? American Apparel?' and he would rag on me endlessly. He had a daughter who was the cute as *bleep* little scene girl - seriously, you ever see a half-black scene girl? They're beautiful. We'd sit around all day and I'd tell him all the Odin awful things I was going to do to his daughter if I ever saw her at a Kaiser Chiefs concert and he'd tell me how many skinner sister homiegots she'd brought home only for him to beat up on. First thing he did was help me shave my head. We'd figure out new and interesting ways of working out together, like dead lifting each other, dead lifting our bunks - we'd tie a pair of pants around the top of our bunks and one of us would hold it tight while the other would do curls on it. He got transferred, and that was when I started using. I'd been thinking about it, but apart from using meth while driving, he was a pretty straight edge guy and I didn't want to disrespect him by getting high with him there.
My second cell mate was this kid done for weed. He was scared as *bleep*. He wet the bed every night he came in for weeks. Worst thing I ever did to another human was share my junk with him. At the time, I just felt like it would help him adjust - but some people really can't handle it, or else seem to become addicted way to fast. I know my own limits, and know it takes a steady habit for months to get seriously hooked. Not this kid. He was getting the shakes after a few days without it.
One day he comes back for lock down, takes a hit and after a few minutes says - this isn't H, try it. And it turned out to be powdered MDMA, or Ecstacy. We both did it and ended up giving each other blow jobs. Afterward, things were pretty awkward until I said, you know *bleep* it, we're in prison, let's make a deal that if we can score for ecstacy again we'll get each other off.
We were good friends after that. He got out before me, and I definetly don' think I'll look him up.
-Jesus God of Thunder on a shitty dick, American prisons sound downright inhumane. Really, I don't know what to say here.
How're you acclimatizing back to normal society? What about your old friends, your family, anything? All gone? What are you going to do next anyway?
Well I'm on parole for the next year - but it seems downright impossible to find a job. I've got some money saved up and my plan is to get out of the States, head to Europe and find bar work. I haven't seen a soul I knew before since I got back, and I'm almost scared of seeing them now. I can't help but feel like I need to get away, but the Corrections system makes that pretty hard.
I'm thinking about maybe skipping parole and heading south, crossing the border in the Mexico and then catching a plane to London. But I don't know, I heard from one guy (inside, which is about as reliable as /b/) that US Customs are actually at Mexican International checking US passports for Visas. If that's true I'll have to wait.
Well tonight, I'm going to start on Wikipedia and read the entries for every single day I've missed since I was inside. Apparently Lady GaGa is huge now, who would have thunk it? I heard new guys talk about her inside but we don't exactly get the news. There is two years worth of music to get into, which is probably the thing I'm looking forward to the most. Then I'm going to hit Encyclopedia Dramatica and find out about all the memes I missed out on.
