The writer is the engineer of the human soul.
— Joseph Stalin

There was literally no limit to the number of guys who were trying to get into ASAT, the drug program, while in prison. It had nothing to do with recovery or addiction. It was all about qualifying for early release. The guys who were accepted to the program were either drug dealers, addicts, rapists or even killers looking for an easy out. I’d signed up hoping to get some good material along with shaving some time off of my sentence and escape without being attacked or killed. There were some dicey moments and circumstances but I got what I was hoping for. without paying a price.

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March 19th, 2015

We’d had two “Life Stories” in the last couple of days in ASAT. Lynch, the young kid from Harlem, and Henry, the dealer, gave us a lengthy performance.

Henry talked about his days as a drug dealer, drug user and disappointments as a child and as a father. He’d been abandoned  by his own father when he was 9 years old even though his father lived only a few blocks away from him. He’d made several attempts to see him and reconcile with him but, apparently, his father wasn’t interested.

So, to help the family survive, he turned to selling drugs. A few things stood out about his heartfelt description of his life and the transparency of his story.

“Ma dauda was 15 when I was in prison the firs’ time. An’ my baby momma was livin’ wid dis dude who hit my dauda — an’ killed her.”

The Rec room, the ASAT group, was silent.

“An’ when I foun’ out, I coun’ do nothin’ so I waited until I got out. An’ den I traveled an’ got a hotel room where dey were living and went tada prison where he was.” Henry stopped briefly.

“Bud, I coun’ ged in. So, I jes left.” 

“What were you gonna do?” said  Green.

“I was gonna do whateva,” he said, seriously.

“So, I was sellin’ drugs an’ makin^‘  good money. Sometimes, $10,000 a week, livin’ good, usin’ and increasin’ whad I used. By th’ time I stopped I was doin’ 10 bags a day. It was up there.”

“You gonna go back to usin’ an’ sellin’ when you gedout,” said Cuba.

I smiled to myself and wondered about the job prospects for someone used to making $10,000 a week. At 71 with 44 felonies, 30 years of education and a new license required to be a therapist, I’d be lucky to become a dog-walker. Or worse, a writer on social security with no agent.

Henry smiled and said, “I’m gonna try an’ get a job. But, I’m not gonna lie. I gotta do what I gotta do. As far as usin’? I’m gonna’ try an’ stay clean. When I stopped, after they arrested  me it wasn’t pretty.”

“What was it like,” said Lynch.

“Took me 3 1/2 weeks. I had diarrhea fa all dat time, couldn’ eat, chills an’ stomach  pains, shittin’ an’ pissin’ an’ throwin’ up, couldn’ sleep, nightmares, hot one minute, cold the nex’.”

“Then what?” said Green.

“After dat I started ta eat. But, I was snortin’ it ya know.  My nose is all fucked up from it.”

Henry had done a good job and told us all about his extensive family life, his drug use, and his drug sales.

The next day, an officer came around and asked for Henry to accompany him to the Infirmary. He was the only one to be taken out. He was being subjected to an unannounced “piss test.”

So much for the promised confidentiality in ASAT. They were teaching Trust, after all.

Assuming you believed anything that anyone told you who worked for the prison. Henry wasn’t fooled and I said, “You know, Henry, even Corleone in The Godfather, said, ‘There are no coincidences.’”

“I know.”

So Henry went up to Roddy the next morning, and said, “You know, Ms. Roddy, the day after I did my Life Story, I had a piss test.”

“I didn’t tell them to do that,” said Roddy, defensively. “If I had, I wouldn’t have done it the day after you told your story.”

“Bullshit,” I said, to Henry, later. “She told Massey and then Massey called it in, allowing Roddy to tell you that SHE didn’t do it.”

Lynch did his Life Story and spent an hour talking about how he started causing trouble in school by the age of 8 years old and was thrown out. Who gets thrown out of elementary school, I thought. But he went on, describing his “girlfriend” whom he had lost to his friend and then made a bet with him — that he’d get a new belt and his girlfriend back — if he won the bet.

He was now 22 and talked about his first bid, at 15 when he did 4 years for a gun charge. Apparently, he’d started shooting people at the age of 13 and developed  a reputation as a killer.

Lynch was about 5’5” tall and just seemed like a typical, smiling, young black kid. He was pleasant and friendly. But, he was a little off. You could tell. Something wasn’t quite right. It could have been the cultural thing but then he described a meeting he had with a guy who owed a friend of his some money.

“I started carryin’ a gun. Den, one day we was walkin’ along an’ my fren’ says, ‘Yo, dere’s da dude who took da money an’ drugs.”

“So we goes upta ‘im an’ I says, ‘Yo, my niga, you got some money fro’ my fren’ an’ his stash, he wans it  back.'”

“So, what happened?” said Green, smiling mischievously.

“I goes ‘cross da street, an’ he sees me, an’ I start firin’ ad ‘im.”

A few guys are laughing now at this report of street violence. “I stahted taget a rep an’ when some shit happened dey’d call me taget involved,” he said  smiling.

“But, y’know, at leas’ nine a my frens is deyd. I gotta stop that shit.”

We had a break and Lynch turned to me and said, “You listenin?” 

“What?” I said, since I along with mostly everyone else had said nothing at all during his story. I was fighting off falling asleep after having awakened  at 4 a.m. with “MESS HALL WORKERS GOIN OUT.”  I couldn’t get back to sleep after that and was sleep deprived.

“You hear ma story?” I looked at him, this 22 year old assassin with a serious, deranged look but I answered him.

“Yeah, I heard it,” and turned back to see everyone heading to the bathroom break.

“Whad I say?”

“What do you mean?” I said to him.

“Tell me one thing that you heard?” He had a slight grin on his face.  I looked at him. “Well, you had an 8 year old girlfriend.”

“What else?” he said.

I looked at him. 

“What is this a test?” 

“Yeah,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t take tests,” and headed to the bathroom. 

There was always risk.

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