22 Apr 04

Books

My brain is feeding from literature at rates faster than the jailhouse booklice. I've read twenty-nine books in three months, some over 1,000 pages long. I read for over twelve hours a day, and depending upon the size of the print I can manage over two-hundred pages.

Bookworms face two difficulties in here. Bleeding bedsores - I have one on my left buttock. And dealing with the mail staff, who periodically frustrate my book deliveries.

Last year, the mail officer rejected Security Analysis, a thick hardback book. The Mail Rejection Notification stated the book was not a book, but "a weapon." Last autumn, I was initially denied The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. The Mail Rejection Notification stated I was "jeopardizing the safety of the jail operation." Last week, I was denied three books my aunt Ann ordered from www.traderspress.com. The Mail Rejection Notification stated "books must be delivered directly from the publisher or on-line dist [sic]." As www.traderspress.com is both a publisher and online distributor, I lodged a complaint, using an Inmate Grievance Form. I was visited by a friendly hearing officer who stated that the mail officer had made an error and that the jail would accept redelivery. I reordered the books at the cost of an additional redelivery fee and I thought that would be the end of the matter. Unfortunately the mail officer had been offended by my complaint and I received a threatening note taped to my Wall St Journal. The note stated, "You need to contact the Wall St. Journal and advise them of your new facility /bunk No. All papers from now on will be thrown away...Mail Officer."

Upon analysing all of my Mail Rejection Notifications, it's obvious the mail officer has determined I am a weapon-seeking revolutionary. The threat to throw away my newspapers seems to be a call to arms. I never imagined that an affinity for books could be so dangerous. Hopefully, my newspapers will not be thrown away and the three financial books will be successfully redelivered this week. Without something to read, I would be reduced to playing with las cucarachas, which can be hazardous to one's mental health - not that I've ever been well-stocked in that department.

8 Apr 04

Fasting

On Saturday evening, I resolved to fast on Sunday. What caused this? A combination of factors including general boredom, sympathy with my atrophying cell mate, being inspired by Gandhi after reading one of his biographies, reading yoga teachings advocating overcoming our desire for food and letting the digestive system rest, and getting to shock my neighbours by offering them my chow.

Over the past two years, I have slimmed thanks to jail food. But bear in mind, I was slim to begin with. Since my arrest, my trips to the toilet have more than halved.

On Sunday, I donated my Ladmo bag to my neighbours.
"Good lookin' out, dawg!" they both said, and fought over the food.
At noon, my stomach roared nonstop. I drank plenty of water, sucked on a few slices of grapefruit, and told Mark I was determined to make it through the day.
"You're not enjoying fasting, are you?" Mark asked.
"Its quality suffering" I said, unable to offer a relaxed smile.
By 6pm, my hunger subsided and I felt better.
The frequency of my urination increased and it became clearer.
I slept fine.

I was satisfied with the books I received from the library. The Prince by Machiavelli, The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato, and I Ching.

April Fools' Day 04

Chow
Being fairly new to this game, Mark is stuck at the unable-to-eat-the-jail-food stage. Never in trouble before, he was arrested three months ago for conspiracy to commit murder. Since then, he has shed thirty pounds and no longer resembles his booking photo. If it wasn't for the Cheez-Its, chips, granola bars and mixed nuts available from the store, he would be skeletal.


The prisoners call their meals chow. Chow is served twice daily. Breakfast is delivered around 8:30 in what we call a "Ladmo bag." It includes six slices of stale white bread. The mould on the bread comes in a range of beautiful colours, and most of us just scrape it off because we are starving all of the time. Raw breakfast meat, usually green bologna. Rotten grapefruits or oranges collected from rat-infested neighbourhoods during clean-up campaigns/publicity stunts for Sheriff Joe Arpaio who runs this jail. Slices of cheese that melt into oil if you don't eat them immediately. A half pint of fat-free milk.

The warm meal in the evening is cold by the time it gets here. We call it “red death.” It’s a mystery-meat slop that looks like carroty blood mixed with vomit. It comes on boiled potatoes – often just a mound of potato peel encrusted with rot and hairs. At Towers jail in 2002, dead rats were sometimes served in the red death. The vegetable is the same every day for months on end – the worst being the leathery eggplant. The salad is stale, as is the bread. Sometimes the mould on the bread comes in fantastic colours, and looks like works of art.

Being a yoga-practising vegetarian, I receive peanut butter and veggie burgers instead of meat. The peanut butter often has the foul taste of burnt peanuts, and the veggie burgers are as hard as discuses.

This week, more of my neighbours became ill due to the heat. On Sunday morning, a diabetic collapsed and was stretchered from the pod. As temperatures rose, so did the tempers of the inmates and guards. Two fights broke out as a result of guards shoving inmates.
Library books are delivered next week. As some of my neighbours can't read, I've purchased their allowances - three books each, payable in cookies upon delivery. An Inmate Request Form only allows topics of interest to be selected, so I requested philosophy. I am hoping for a repeat of last month's success when I received a Gandhi biography, Plato's Republic and the third volume of Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, which includes the ferocious North African desert battles, in which my Grenadier Guardsman grandfather sustained life-threatening shrapnel injuries fighting the Nazis to preserve our freedom.

Mar 25 04

Sufferer Of The Week

I am allowed out of my cell for one hour each day to make a phone call and to take a shower. During my first "hour out" in the new pod, I was serenaded by the inmates, who performed a husky version of "A Yellow Submarine." I was touched by their demonstration of high spirits in a part of the jail known for extreme suffering.


My new neighbours are enduring the twin evils of a broken swamp cooler and a cockroach infestation. They are proving to be the crème de le crème of good sufferers.

A seventy-year old downstairs became the first victim of the soaring temperatures. He was stretchered from the pod after suffering chest pains. Before he collapsed, he became delusional and made a variety of bizarre comments that disturbed his young cellmate:
"Take me to the hospital, so I can put on my clothes."
"Take me out to the desert and shoot me."
"Let's go! Grab the key to the front door."
"I have a broken back. I can't walk!"

A neighbour who is asthmatic happily described his experience with a cockroach that had crept into his inhaler during the night. When he woke up, he grabbed the inhaler and blasted the insect down his throat. Feeling the cockroach moving around, he promptly vomited his stomach contents. Unfortunately, the cockroach was not ejected, as it was lodged inside of him. He was subsequently awarded “sufferer of the week,” a title I came up with to entertain my neighbours.

Mark and I have used six tubes of AmerFresh toothpaste and six ounces of Razorless Beard Remover cementing cracks in the walls. The cockroaches still flood our cell every night and I have awoken numerous times this week to observe my hair stood on end and a cockroach crawling on my body. I previously considered my apelike fur coating as one of nature's cruel jokes, but now I have discovered it to be a useful defensive shield against verminous insects. My upright hairs must seem like an unwelcoming forest to the little foragers.

I once read about a lady in Australia whose ear was entered by a cockroach as she slept. It chose not to come out. She was hospitalised, operated on, and she successfully sued the Australian government for failing to eradicate the cockroaches from her council home. She came to mind this week when a cockroach climbed a pink flannel I had hung below our tiny steel table to dry. It gravitated toward some earwax residue on the flannel, stopped, and breakfasted on it excitedly. I told my cellmate about the Australian lady and he now sleeps with his pink towel wrapped around his head.

Chicken Wing is in a neighbouring pod and I am trying to find out if Church on the Street will accept him when he leaves.

18 Mar 04

Roach Attack

One of the unsettling things about cellular living is that the jail can randomly uproot you and transplant you to a new environment at any time. During my two-year stay, I've been "rolled-up" (moved) numerous times. A new cell equals a new garrison of cockroaches to battle, and I have learned to travel armed with enough AmerFresh toothpaste to block cockroach entry points effectively.

On Tuesday, our pod was moved to a different floor and I used my entire stock of AmerFresh to seal the cracks in the walls. The cell was quickly and expertly fortified against the enemy. That night, I admired the bug-free environment, relished the room's minty-fresh aroma and slept soundly. Little did I know the jail was about to sabotage my hard work.

On Wednesday, I was moved back to my original floor, into one of the most infested pods in the building. Completely unarmed with AmerFresh, I watched helplessly as the cockroaches sized me up from the myriad cracks in the walls. I knew as soon as the lights went off I was doomed. My cellmate, Mark, and I didn’t get much sleep. We stayed awake watching the legions of cockroaches conquer the room. Slowly gathering into larger numbers around us, they swarmed the floor. The walls. The ceiling. Our commissary bags. And finally, our bunks.

After Wednesday's defeat, I obtained a 170-gram tube of Mild Magic Fragrant Cream Shave Razorless Beard Remover, and I spent two hours filling in the cracks. The enemy emerge like clockwork when the lights go out, so I shall update tonight’s skirmish in next week’s blog.

My new cellmate, Mark, is mellow. The swamp cooler is not working properly and my favourite Radio show Coast 2 Coast hardly tunes in.

4 Mar 04

Chicken Wing

Chicken Wing lives in cell 6. At age eleven, a car crash left him with brain damage and partial handicapping of his left side. His left arm was mangled and now sticks up uselessly in the air.
In a holding cell at Medical, he once divulged to me that a convict named Bacon had repeatedly raped him at a federal prison. Chicken Wing is institutionalized and does not have any outside support. Using the Inmate Canteen Order Form, I buy him cookies every Thursday. When he receives his cookies, he barks excitedly. Like a dog anticipating a walk.

On Tuesday morning, Chicken Wing had a seizure.
“Man down! Man down! Man down!” yelled Chicken Wing’s cellmate, Leprechaun.
"Man down! Man Down! Man Down!” boomed a chorus of voices until the guards finally responded.
“He’s not breathing!” screamed a female guard.
Guards swarmed the day room. They stretchered Chicken Wing to Medical.
Later in the evening, Chicken Wing returned looking somewhat better.
"Are you OK?" I asked him during my hour out.
“Am I still good for cookies?” he replied.
I laughed.
“I’m sentenced now. I got probation,” he said in a sad voice.
“That’s good. You’ll be out of here soon.”
“But where will I go? I have nowhere to stay. How will I be able to do probation?”
"You should see if Pastor Walt at Church on the Street has any beds available."

The jail’s psychiatric examiner recently decreed that Chicken Wing has sufficient mental competency to take care of himself, so after his release he will get no help from the State of Arizona. The majority of the inmates here expect him to rejoin us soon. I doubt anyone would have cared if Chicken Wing had died last Tuesday morning.


11 Mar 04

The temperature suddenly rose this week. We are lounging in our cells wearing only the jail's standard-issue pink boxers. Each cell receives a trickle of swamp-cooled air, which does little to alleviate our suffering in the summer months when we feel like we are being baked alive in concrete ovens.
On Sunday, our drinking water turned orange-brown, and had particles of rust in it. The discolouration lasted for three days. I relied on the small carton of milk served with breakfast to quench my thirst.
On Tuesday I was sitting on the toilet, about to wipe, when the door slid open.
"Get on your mattress!" said the armed member of the "goon squad" accompanying the bug-spray man.
“We’d like to refuse being sprayed," I said, waving the roll of toilet paper I was about to use at him.
“Get on your mattress!” he yelled, raising his weapon.
Suppressing the urge to pelt him with the toilet roll, I pulled up my pants and retreated to my mattress.
Our cell is sprayed every month, against our wishes, with us in it. We inevitably ingest some of the spray, and we feel sick and dizzy afterwards. Spraying has zero effect on the cockroach population. Inmates have a right not to live in an environment infested with insects, but spraying enables the jail to flout the law by claiming on paper they are addressing the problem.

19 Feb 04

Deep Shit

The toilet I sleep next to is full of sewage. We've had no running water for three days. Yesterday, I knew we were in trouble when the mound in our steel throne peaked above sea level.

Inmates often display remarkable ingenuity during difficult occasions and this crisis has resulted in a number of my neighbours defecating in the plastic bags the mouldy breakfast bread is served in. For hours they kept those bags in their cells, then disposed of them downstairs when allowed out for showers. As I write, inmates brandishing plastic bags are going from cell door to door proudly displaying their accomplishments.

The whole building reeks like a giant Portaloo. Putting a towel over the toilet in our tiny cell offers little reprieve. My neighbour, Eduardo, is suffering diarrhoea from the rotten chow. I can't imagine how bad his cell stinks.

I am hearing that the local Health Department has been contacted. Hopefully they will come to our rescue soon.

I received a card from Claudia saying she is going to stick with me no matter what happens. Through her brother, Jay, I was able to coordinate a delivery of roses for her on Valentine's Day.

20 Feb 04

My cellmate couldn't hold his in any longer. He pinched his nose and lifted the towel from the toilet. Repulsed by the mound, he said, "There's way too much crap to crap on. I'm gonna use a bag." So as jail etiquette demands in these situations, I rolled over on my bunk and faced the wall. I heard something hit the rim of the seatless toilet, and him say, "Damn! I missed some! " When he was done, he put the finished product by the door and the stink doubled. He had no water to clean the errant piece off the toilet, so it remained forming a crustation on the rim. We were hoping to be allowed out to dispose of the bag, until a guard announced, "There will be no one coming out for showers and phone calls, as we have to get one-hundred-and twenty inmates water from an emergency container!"

The water came back on in stages. In our toilet, its level slowly rose.
“Oh no,” I said. “It’s about to overflow, and we’ll be stuck in here with sewage all over the floor.”
“One of us needs to stick his hand in the crap to let the water through,” my cellmate said. “And you’re the closest.”
The brown soup was threatening to spill from the bowl, so I put a sandwich bag on my hand. "I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said, plunging my hand into the mound. The mound took the bag from my hand. Almost up to my elbow in sewage, I dug until the water level sank.
“I owe you one, dawg,” my cellmate said.
“It’s your turn next time,” I said.
Because the tap water hadn’t come back on, I couldn't wash my arm. Not wanting to contaminate anything in the cell, I sat on the stool until a guard let us out for showers hours later.



26 Feb 04

At 7am, I awoke to a cockroach tickling the palm of my hand. Like everyone else in the jail except for the staff, it was probably hungry. I flicked it toward the door. It took the hint and headed west.

The excursion of the week was to the Medical Unit for a "general wellness checkup." Four of us were summoned from our pod. At the nurse's desk we were interviewed one after the other:

"I slept with a woman from a trailer park just before I was arrested," said one of my embarrassed neighbours as the nurse diagnosed him with scabies.
Next up was our chow server. I was shocked to overhear that he has had infectious tuberculosis for the duration of his stay.
The third inmate complained that he had gone two days without his seizure medication and as a result was unable to sleep.
When it was my turn, the nurse insisted I should take a TB test. I protested that I had been tested twice already. She looked at my medical history, and snarled, "Well, you'll have to take another test before June, so you might as well have it now."

At least our water is flowing again. Inmates are still trading stories about defecating in plastic bags and urinating in pop bottles. The inmate the media has dubbed the "101 Slayer" boasted he was able to hold his business in for the entire three-day outage. It was also his mum that called the Health Department and got the jail in trouble. Hopefully, our toilets will continue to function normally, at least, until we are moved to the new jail facility, which should be this summer.