Prison Camp: Day One
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
When I first returned to writing in prison, I didn’t have the luxury of long stretches of time or quiet spaces. Writing had to be done in scraps—on my bunk or in a noisy common room. I turned to a stream-of-consciousness style out of necessity; it let me get words down before the noise, or the guards, or another inmate’s needs interrupted them.
What follows is one of the very first things I ever wrote inside. My attempt to capture the disorientation, the breathless, ineffable experience that marked this new world to which I arrived as if falling down a well.
WELCOME TO PRISON (from my original prison journal)
I thought I was ready for prison but not even close and maybe because I could self surrender and the false comfort of that and my lawyer telling me all along that everything would be all right but things kept not working out all right and when I finally arrived and the door closed behind me I was standing alone in a stark waiting room with overwhelming despair and panic as one man and then another man checked me in and then another man told me to go to another room and then another man told me to strip and bend over and put on some clothes and then another man told me to go into another room and a pretty but scruffy girl in a Red Sox hat came in and told me that prison is not like TV and that I had to go to solitary for three days before I was checked into the camp where I thought I was going but not yet she said and it sucks she said but that’s the way it is and then she left the room and another girl came in who was older and heavy set and said she was a psychologist but didn’t look like a doctor and she asked me if I wanted to kill myself or kill anyone else and I asked her if anyone answers yes to those questions and she said yes they do and then she left the room and another guy called me out of that room and told me to go into another room with a large glass panel in the front and a dirty stainless steel toilet in it and I waited there thinking that was the room I would be in for three days but after a while another man came in who didn’t speak English very well and kept motioning me to do something but I didn’t understand so he pulled me up and handcuffed me and took me up a staircase and then outside where a long block building loomed and we walked along a stone path with barbed wire until we stood at a steel door that looked like it never opened but then it did and suddenly we were inside a dark hallway filled with men in orange jumpsuits and guards with tattoos and long beards who looked like inmates shouting at one another and all the inmates in cuffs like me and one guard who seemed like the one in charge shouted to the guy holding me to take me into another room where they uncuffed me but told me to strip again and gave me an orange jumpsuit and said put this on asshole and then another guard with a long beard like the baseball players wear nowadays took me down a narrow hall lined with steel doors with tiny windows and frightening faces staring out and somewhere in the middle they opened one of the doors and pushed me into a dungeon and I heard the steel door slam and the keys jiggling as he walked away and I looked around at the dirty slimy cell and the filthy toilet and the dirtier shower stall and the steel bed and a ceiling twenty feet above my head with a fan blowing cold air right in my face and as he walked away I heard the guard shout Welcome to prison.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform Efforts
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More Streams from prison
If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.
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Bravo, John. So plain and direct. Fear yes, self-pity, never.
Wow! What a powerful description of your introduction to prison life. I felt I was walking right beside you, terrified and shaking. Thank God you survived that living nightmare!