Justice Notes: Origins of A Memoir
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
One of the earliest versions of A Prison of My Own wasn't written as a conventional memoir. This excerpt comes from the original hybrid manuscript, before I found the narrative structure that ultimately became the book. The stream-of-consciousness style was a deliberate attempt to capture the breathless disorientation of entering prison.
THE CAMP
I was released from solitary after three days. Turns out they send every new guy there. A warning, the guys tell me. “Scare your ass so you don’t fuck around inside,” said Rasta, one of my new brotherhood along with Mohammed, in fact two Mohammeds, Big Mohammed and Little Mohammed, The Codfather, Lumi the killer, Mac the Knife, Primo the Spanish brawler and Steve, regular, nice guy Steve. And thank goodness for Steve till I met Mike the Greek and Dark Tony and sad Bob, not scary but old and still in prison and compromised, can barely walk to meals and back, which will be me in a few years, and Smitty, a long timer, ten years and counting, a once wealthy guy, bitter, no longer fighting, angry at those who still are. I mentioned my appeal, which pissed him off, so hard to know what will trigger reactions, and hard to figure out a seat at meal time even though my bunkie, a young Spanish guy with a long sentence and sad eyes but a good attitude, tried to break me in, a kid younger than all my children and all of them looking at me like what did I do?, a life sentence, an old man like me, and I learned early on after that to craft your bio like everyone else so that you were screwed by somebody: a lawyer, a judge, a girlfriend, a colleague, whatever; but whatever it was, it “sure as shit” wasn’t you.
And then there’s the staff. The motherfuckers, the assholes, the douche bags who have it worse than us because they don’t get to leave as if that’s really something even though they go home at night, take vacations, have wives, children, lives, even divorces—so what, they have lives. At least that’s the way I see it but you don’t let on. You just go with it because you better learn early to make your way in prison and I’m just getting started.
Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.
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