“Normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, but you happened to pull this shit while I’m in a transitional period so I don’t wanna kill you, I wanna help you.”

                 — Pulp Fiction (1994)

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Occasionally, politics makes me nostalgic for a different kind of stupidity, the prison kind. At least you knew why the people you talked to were there — they didn’t have money to pay off or know someone to issue them a pardon. Here’s a slice of what I learned — by not having money which I theoretically stole but couldn’t afford to pay anybody off with.

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June 15th, 2015

Actually, today was my release date. IF I had gotten Merit Board. And, IF I’d had Merit Board when it was originally scheduled. 

Everything worked here to keep you from leaving.

Of course, I wasn’t leaving. I still had no idea when I’d be leaving.

As far as I was concerned, that would be never. Nothing ever worked. No positive eventuality EVER came through. I was living in a human Roach Motel. Except some of the roaches seemed to be able to leave.

Like Gia.

I met him in the infirmary where I was seeing the doctor who would be giving me my latest round of bad news. My blood pressure was up to 190/100 again. And, the suspicious neuropathy in my legs, according to the doctor, was passed off as due to “running too much.” 

I suspected that the Agent Orange seepage from Fort Drum and the effluent from the local mines were contaminating the water we drank as well.

“Spsnnsspp, goin home,” he said.

“What?” I said. Gia’s wormy hairdo still annoyed me, like his attitude. He was sitting on one of the benches as that fat abusive slob, CO Plowman was leaning back and looking around for someone to shoot down.

“Spsnnsspp, home,” Gia said again and I still couldn’t make out what he was saying and did not want Plowman to have an excuse for writing a ticket.

“No,” he said to Gia.

“No?” looking at me with a disapproving look. 

“What?” I said as he shook his head.

“Goin’ home.”

“No,” I said, “I’m just here to see the doctor.”

“I’m goin’ home, tomorra,” he said, annoyed that I didn’t understand him.

“Oh, that’s fucking beautiful,” I thought to myself. A fucking gun charge and this shithead, who could curdle ice cream in a freezer with his charm, was leaving. Tomorrow. 

I should be happy, right?

“Gotta go,” I said, not wanting to give Gia the courtesy of a benevolent gesture. He should drop dead — as a stand-up in the Catskills might have said it.

“Y’know ya gotta wear ya greens and bring only what ya can carry. F’ya people’r pickin’ ya up they gotta be here by 6:20 tomorra or we gotta putya onna bus. Got it?” said  Plowman to Gia.

Fucking guy. I hated his ass at that moment. Both of them, in fact. My patience and positive attitude was disintegrating.

A hundred thousand spent in legal fees and I was no closer to going home and this shithead with a fucking gun charge was going to waltz out of here tomorrow morning. What was wrong with this picture?

Brad came up to me just before I went out jogging. The doctor had given me another pill to take. 

I’d gotten the lower number down on my blood pressure and was now working on the higher number. It occurred to me that this way, I’d only have a half stroke.

In the part of my brain where I’d brilliantly decided which article to write exposing the corrupt politicians in the Hamptons. I had no clue as to what the neuropathy and numbness was about. 

Neither did the doctor.

“Can you answer a question for me? You work in the Law Library don’t you?”

Brad was a kid who was 22, about 5’7″ tall, slim, a face that looked like he was still in high school. He had a pink complexion with rosy cheeks. He looked like a kid that didn’t even know how to curse. And, he looked afraid. He looked like he didn’t belong here. Because, he didn’t. I understood that because I didn’t belong here either. I was a journalist who was only guilty of stupidity and extreme naivete. 

I didn’t have the $67.5 million in stockholder cash to pay off the Feds as Angelo Mozillo had — and who was then suddenly only guilty of a CIVIL matter instead of the CRIMINAL matter that had been entertained before the fine was paid. My crime was in taking $82 million dollars that didn’t exist. 

“Maybe,” I said. “What’s the question?”

“I hadda 5 to 6 and I did 4 but before I finished they re-sentenced me to a 3 to 9.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. 

“You had a 5 to 6?”

“No, I’m sorry, I had a 6 to 5. Six months with 5 year probation. Then, after only 4 months they re-sentenced me to a 3 to 9.” 

“Really?” I said. “How the hell did that  happen?”

“I had a Public Defender. I should have gotten a 1 to 3, maybe, but my mother was sick and  we ran out of money.”

“What was the crime? Having no money?”

“Oh, well, I had an accident. Pretty bad one.” 

“How bad?”

“Bad. People got hurt. There was a lot of damage.” 

“Hurt? How bad?”

“Dead.”

“Oh, I see. So, what’d you get charged with?”

“Well, I was legally drunk. I blew a point oh-eight. You know, like the legal limit?”

“I see. Well, who got hurt Or, sorry, dead?”

“This friend of mine. She was with me in the front seat.”

 “What happened to her?”

“Well, I forgot to make a right turn and I went into a ravine and she kept going.”

I looked at him. “What do you mean ‘she kept going.'”

He had this look on his face like he’d put his hand in the cookie jar and it had gotten eaten by something lurking at the bottom of the jar.

“Well, she wasn’t wearing a seat belt and she just, you know, kept going. Through the windshield, y’know like, forward, into the ravine after the car stopped.”

“I don’t like seatbelts either,” I offered.

“Then, there were a couple others in the car too. The girl behind me got pretty fucked up so they charged me with assault on her.”

“Assault? What did you do to her?”

“Well, when they want to make you responsible for another person’s physical damage they can charge you with assault. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt either.”

I understood that. 

Like, I hadn’t stolen any money but in order to make me responsible for money I didn’t steal the D.A. turned NOT Stealing money into Grand Larceny, a sleight of hand legal trick used when they wanted to get you.

“So you got charged with vehicular homicide AND assault because of the crash – because you were legally drunk?”

“Yeah, that’s  pretty much it.”

“Well, you could do a 440 motion and try to overturn the conviction. What’s the max you could’ve gotten for this?”

“Fifteen years for the death alone. They could even try to make it manslaughter and that’d be 15 to  25.”

“Look, I don’t think you should screw around with a 440 because if you did get a new trial or got it overturned, they could come after you with the 15 to 25. That would NOT be good.”

“I know. Someone was tellin’ me that pedophiles, sex charges and DWIs, especially with a death, get no breaks in the courts.”

“You’re right. And, you can add arson to that. But they only give breaks to people who’ve made payoffs to the prosecutors or the D.A. or to politicians who are connected.

Cuba came and said hello to Brad. He pulled me aside. 

“He tell you about his charge?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Talk ta him,” he smiled. “He wants ta learn aboud Real Estate.”

Copyright 2025 Confessions from the Gulag