Prison Camp: The Arrival
A Forum for Stories of Incarceration, Justice, and Redemption
On certain days, prison feels like afterlife, other days, like a typical work day, and most days a bad dream enduring the slow torture of meaningless, menial tasks. I lived among one hundred other inmates, more wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.
I arrived at the camp late fall, the darkest season, temperatures falling, days shorter, and dazed from three days in solitary. A warning, Rasta told me. “Scare your ass so you don’t fuck around when you get to the camp.” Rasta, midnight black with long dreadlocks, was the jailhouse lawyer for most of the black guys and a fitness guru for the old white guys. He was one of my new brotherhood, along with Ralph the boss, a Don Rickles look-alike—but without the humor—who ended every conversation with “Go Fuck Yourself, Big Joe, an ex hockey player about sixty with a huge gut but still a lot of athlete evident in him, Simi the killer, a bunk mate from Albania who killed a guy with a screwdriver, Mac the knife, a former UFC fighter, Tony the Spanish dishwasher, with dark eyes like black ice who broke me in working the kitchen, Jack, the sea-food king who bunked with Nicky Pizza right behind me when I arrived, and Steve, a former day trader who was screwed by the system. Thank goodness for Steve, who mentored me from day one. Later on, there was Mike the Greek, my last Bunkie, a clueless palooka who kept “stepping in it,” his brother Constantino, who arrived with the rest of their family, Richard (Bubba) Lema, a former NFL star, the Codfather, a legendary fisherman who destroyed the ground fishing industry in Massachusetts, and Scotty, a long-timer, ten years and counting, a once-wealthy guy, bitter, white-white hair, hunched over and no longer fighting, for his release and angry at those who still were. He claimed the system fucked him. He operated a legitimate investment fund, he said, but ran afoul of an ambitious prosecutor from upstate New York. But Steve told me it was a Ponzi scheme. That taught me early on to craft my 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.
Hundreds of guys rolled in and out during my time there, but these were the main guys I interacted with. Every day, someone left and someone arrived. To be honest, I hated them both, but the leaving was worse.
They all weighed in on the staff, and according to the inmate Brotherhood, the “motherfuckers,” the “assholes,” the “douche bags” all have it worse than us because they don’t get to leave. I didn’t get it. They go home at night, take vacations, have wives, children, divorces (so what), they have lives. At least that’s the way I saw it, but you don’t let on, you go with it because you better learn early on to make your way in prison, and I was just getting started.
Up next on White-Collar Journal: Sunday Posts
Becoming an Inmate: The difficult adjustment to survive prison life.
Up next on Notes from Exisle: Thursday Posts
Taking Stock
Thank you for sharing this glimpse inside!