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Today’s artistic offering is a print of the bottom of my jail sneaker. The art teacher wanted us to do some homework that we could accomplish in the pod, i.e. without any pencils or crayons, pastels, or anything of the sort. She gave each of us a small rectangular piece of cardboard and sent us on our way. For my project I used a very thick mix of instant coffee, as thick as ink, and dabbed it on the bottom of my sneaker which fit perfectly within the cardboard. I “printed” my sneaker sole and let it dry. Then I brought the result into class and used oil paint sticks, some colored pens, and a scraping tool to finish the work. I call it “Size 11”, which is my show size, of course.

The overwhelming feeling that I felt in jail was one of extreme apathy. To say that the majority of the inmates in jail (any jail) are down on their luck is an understatement. For them a period spent in jail (a bid) is a time to eat, sleep, get healthy (think free medical/dental), and stay out of the weather. The jails are most full during the colder, winter months with many of the inmates being street people who are rounded up every year for the crime of ‘public intoxication’. The saddest thing in the world for me was understanding that going to jail was a viable alternative to living in the free world for these guys. They weren’t even criminals. They were sick, mentally ill, homeless and jobless. They were, and are, invisible to most of society. They are the great unwashed. Some of them were even driven to levels of desperation by their plight to commit crimes. I often think of one fellow, Dean, who threw a brick through the window of a police cruiser so he would be arrested in late September and serve an 8 month sentence for destruction of city property. He was a local guy, everyone knew him, and he was not a threat. He was just another human being living in his own painful hell.

The drug dealers were another sad bunch. Many of them had become convinced that the gold chains, shiny cars, and sexy women shown on TV was the real thing, the end all and be all of life. The believed the hype, and the hype was this: If you want to be a gangster, then you want to be man. You live the gangster lifestyle and part of that lifestyle is doing time. These guys would be making $1000 a week selling crack, living high on the hog, for 6 months, maybe a year, and then they’d get busted and end up doing 18 months in county. For them, that was OK. That was the trade-off for the lifestyle.

These guys will never get clean and sober. Sobriety does not pay them the benefits they want. There is no ‘bling-bling’ in sobriety, but what there is is honesty. Getting honest is not part of the gangsta life. Being kind and truthful does not pay, nor does respecting all people as people and not pieces of meat.

All of this made me sad. I also began to feel far superior to many of these guys. I thought of them as ‘idiots’ and ‘scumbags’ and ‘worthless street trash’. This was a very bad thing for me to do, but thankfully I came to my senses. It was easy, really. One day I looked around at my surroundings and I realized that I was wearing the same clothes as they were, eating the same food, and damn if my cell wasn’t exactly like all the rest. That was when I became humble and learned to love my fellow man. That has made all the difference.

Inmate #1229

Here is one of the paintings that I made in the jail art class. The class was run by this old hippy lady who went around to prisons and taught art. Her name is Joyce. This piece is called “Culture of Fear”. It’s kind of a self-portrait.

At one point during the first few weeks I was presented with a roommate. I was not happy about this but neither could I object. He was a young guy, around 19 or 20, and seemed as out of place among the other inmates as me. Perhaps that’s why they stuck him with me. In any case he turned out to be pretty much an idiot, and I called him on his idiocy. One morning I came back from breakfast and found a note lying on my pillow. I wish that I had saved it, but it later became ‘evidence’. It was from Chris (the roomie) and it essentially said “I know what you’ve been doing, and I want you to stop. If you don’t I’ll tell the CO.” For the most part that was it. There were no specifics, only this vague accusation and a threat. So of course I asked him about it. He refused to tell me, responding that “If I didn’t know what was going on, then fine, let’s drop it.” I had to get to the bottom of it. So I showed the note to a guard, a real jerk named Gagliardi, who then spoke to Chris. The next thing I know Chris is being moved out to another cell and I once again have a single. Next the pod is called to lock down and in. So I do that along with everyone else. Then suddenly my door opens and 4 (yes 4!) guards come in, handcuff me and shackle my ankles and take me down to solitary confinement.

3 hours go by when the Captain in charge of security comes in my cell (I’ll tell you about solitary later) and asks if I have any idea why I am down here. I answer honestly “No”. It turns out that the moron is accusing me of molesting him while he slept. It turns out that one night I woke up around 2AM to take a leak and had to move his arm out of my way to get of my bunk (he was on the top bunk and his arm had fallen over the side) and then walk the 3 feet to the toilet. I guess it woke him up and he thought I was trying to feel him up. So anyway, at that point I proclaim my innocence, and promptly tell the Captain that I want to speak to my lawyer before anything else happens and I want my phone call immediately! The phone call is granted and I am able to call home and tell my mother what was going on and to get my lawyer on the scene ASAP. Needless to say I wasn’t all that brave. I was god damn scared of what was happening. Rumors in jail spread like wildfire and I was about to be branded a molester! It didn’t make anything any better that I was being railroaded by the jail. So I spent the weekend in solitary.

On Monday my lawyer shows up and says that everything has been cleared up, and the jail is very apologetic. I go for a chat with the Captain. He says that they believed my story anyway and that I didn’t have to get my lawyer involved (yeah, right!). At that point I was given my choice of pods, because I was through with D Pod. I chose F Pod, which was painted a sunny yellow color. The rumor followed me, however, and I was to have my own cell for the rest of the time that I was in jail. Not that living solo was tough, but I caught a fairly good amount of flak (all verbal) from some of the idiots while I was there. I never got into any fights, was never struck or attacked, and actually ended up having some minor friendships through my AA work while I was there. I guess it was a form of 12 Step work.

That was a very brief account of that incident. I prayed a lot over the weekend in solitary, if only to stay sane, and I was pretty terrified of the whole scenario. I could have been charged with another crime, another felony, and railroaded straight to the state prison in Cedar Junction. Thank God I had a family to call and a lawyer to take charge.

#1229