“Journalism is not a profession, but a mission.”

–Benito Mussolini

One can learn from absurdity, and the Catch-22 of our current reality. As we watch the reaction to our government dissemble before our eyes it’s entertaining and worth wondering whether it was always so easy to eliminate all of the controls. Did Eisenhower realize that all it would take to steal the levers by rounding up a few twenty-somethings and take over the Treasury? Why did Nixon resign? He could just have easily threatened Goldwater with a few lawsuits and told Elvis to come back and become Attorney General — then give him a badge and a gun and fire Mitchell. Well, the Democrats will fix things. They’ll protest! I understand that Rittenhouse joined the pardoned J6 group along with the people who now have 300 million guns in the midwest.

Here’s a little relaxing vignette from my stay in prison — where those in power want Democrats, Liberals, Socialists, Feminists, Blacks, Latinos and LGBTQ people all to end up. Let’s all wave from a bygone era when people believed in America and Freedom of Speech without lawsuits, character assassination, vindictive prosecutions, threats and Truth. In the land of right-wing white supremacy — the Hamptons.

Looks like we’re getting there!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

From The Gulag:

“Regret is caused mostly by not having done anything.”

— Henry Bukowski

“So, you know Joe, who’s in my dorm?” 

“Yeah, I don’ know him but I heard a him.” 

“He’s in 50 years.”

“Wha’he do?” 

“Killed two cops.”

“Ah, he never gettin’ out. You know what happens? The PBA sends people to the Parole hearin’, writes letters, gets politicians to write letters, gets the family to write letters, protest. They go all out. Once in a while a guy gets out. But, most a the time — forget it.” 

Jose, of course, had his own problem. Right out of the army, he was an unemployed sniper who needed money and assassinated two guys for the Mob on a contract for $20,000 cash.

“A guy I know WAS a cop and he killed a cop. He’s in 30 years now. Think he’ll get out?” 

I was talking about a guy I worked with in the Law Library.

“Maybe,” he said. “Hard  to tell. Maybe he has a chance.”

I could hear screams from the SHU, the two story building that was long and low with barbed wire and razor wire around it. It looked like a large concrete motel. As the weather got better the guys in the Box made themselves known and proclaimed their presence loudly by hurling obscenities at anyone passing by. They especially loved screaming at visiting families when the annual picnic was being held.

A bird landed. 

Brown with an orange breast. 

A living being in a place where it was questionable. 

It was strange to see in prison. I was sad instead of happy that it should seem so unusual. 

It was as if prison meant one could not mix with other forms of life. 

****

Benware, the CO who had obviously done too many tours as a medic in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Reserves had been on duty but I paid little attention to him. LIke his wife who had divorced him years ago. He’d again left the lights off in the dorm which was always pleasant. But when I walked in from the Yard, I passed him in the Bubble.

“Hey.”

I turned and looked at the CO. 

There were dark glasses sitting up on top of his head. He was straight-faced. 

“They find the plane yet?” he asked me.

I looked at him, realizing that he was bored and that the Malaysian plane which had recently been in the news and had been lost was one of the only ways he knew to connect with anyone. I turned and walked over to him at the Bubble.

“No. But, I think they’re still looking.”

“Do you know that the Chinese conduct environmental terrorism in this country?”

I looked at him. I had no fucking idea where this came from or what the connection was.

“What?” 

“Environmental terrorism.”

“No,” I said, “I really have no idea what you mean.”

“Do you know that we have Carp in the Great Lakes that eat everything in sight? We have giant prawns that are a foot long and mussels now that are totally not indigenous, eating everything?”

“No,” I said, “I had no idea. But, it sounds like the giant prawns might be good with about a pound of butter.”

The CO laughed. Maniacally. “Well, I guess so,” he said. “But, these are NOT indigenous organisms. It’s Chinese.”

“Well, they have the restaurants. Maybe it’s a supply issue.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Very possible.”

Then he pulled his dark glasses down from up on his bald head and covered his eyes looking like ‘Ahnault,’ The Terminator. 

“Bye,” he said, “I’m goin’ to sleep now,” he said with his feet up on his desk

I looked at him. “Oh, okay, nice talking to you. Am I dismissed?” 

“Yup.” 

I walked to my cell.

  ****

It was another painful sleep. Enough to keep me alive but not enough to promote any kind of restfulness. I had dreams which were full of violence. In one, some guys had attacked a woman and someone was finishing the job of beating one of the attackers by periodically hitting him in the head. His head would receive the blow, hit a wall and bounce back, deliriously, with a smirk on his face. Every few moments another blow would connect and it would keep happening.

  *****

It was the glasses again.

The daily comments about my ridiculous glasses were increasing.

Actually, they were now starting to bother others, mostly COs, more than they bothered me. This morning, in fact, there were several comments from the CO in charge of the Law Library.

“Why don’t you get new glasses, those are shot.”  I’d had the glasses for nearly two years now and had half an inch of scotch tape holding them together.

I laughed. “It’s a long story.”

“Why don’t you just go get a new pair?”

“Well, I’ve been down that road. I have to wait two years.”

“Talk to the Superintendent, she’s a nice woman,” he persisted.

I laughed again. “Because I’ve already written to her and SHE’S the one who told me to go to Medical.”

“So go to Medical.”

“I did. The doctor looked at me wearing the glasses on and both he and the nurse laughed at me.” 

Then, he said, “Well just go down to see the eye doctor.'”

“I did that too.”

“And, what happened?”

“That was 3 months ago. Nothing.” 

“Can’t your wife bring you a pair?”

“No, That’s not permitted. In fact, on her last visit, the guy who does the searches asked me if I was the one who’s wife brought up a pair of glasses into the Visitor’s Room. He was checking to see if I was violating the rules. 

He knew, like everyone else in the prison, that I needed glasses. So, naturally, I was the obvious suspect.”

“That’s nice,” said the CO. 

“I ordered a pair through a catalog for prison inmates and when it arrived the package room guy pulled it out and, staring at me with my scotch-taped glasses on, said  ‘You can’t have these.'”

“Okay,” I said. He just stared at the cop who was waiting for the opportunity to deliver the punchline. I said nothing.

The cop got tired of waiting and said, “because you’re not allowed. You can have glasses if you brought them in with you or transferred here with them. But, you can’t order them from here. Unless, the eye doctor lets you.”

“Okay,” I said, again. Prison logic.

“Why don’t  you just wear them when the Superintendent comes through on an inspection, she’ll  probably take a look at you and say, ‘Why the fuck don’t you get a new pair of  glasses?'”

“Yeah, well, then what?” Then I said, “What would I say then, ‘Well you wouldn’t let me have them when I wrote to you?’”

“She’s nice, I’m sure she’d help,” offered the cop.

“Maybe. But, I’m not looking to cause trouble. I think they bother other people more than they bother me. It shows how everyone cares whether I can see or not, since I work in the Law Library.”

Lamont, the drug dealer who was on his second bid and who was now in charge of the Law Library, chimed in. He was sitting at his desk near the rear EXIT door in the back of the Law Library. It opened to a section of the Yard which, of course, was inside the prison fence. But, were anyone to step outside that door, even if it had been opened by a cop to get some air and was wide open, the prison sharpshooter in the Tower would shoot any inmate. 

Since it was Saturday morning, there were no inmates or the five clerks normally using the library services. They could talk.

“Probly a good piece for a book about prison,” he said, smiling at the absurdity of the story about my glasses which I had discussed in front of everyone.

I looked at him from across the library and said, 

“Who’d write about that? It’s too stupid.”

Copyright 2025 The Gulag

“My doctor is wonderful. Once, in 1955, when I couldn’t afford an operation, he touched up the X-rays.”    

—   Joey Bishop

My education in the arms of a corrupt prosecutor who is now in a half-way house for obstruction of justice and essentially running a “criminal enterprise” out of the Hamptons D.A.s office gave me quite an education. And it was free. As long as you don’t count ‘A Civil Death’ — the loss of several hundred million dollars in cash, assets, employment, pension, and destroyed family life. Having trained as a psychoanalyst, drug counselor and therapist was an education that I thought I could rely on. Unfortunately, background checks make any employment impossible — despite the law. You can be President but getting a job as a therapist or dog-walker is off the table.

And, in fact, what I learned cannot be taught at Columbia or NYU — but it should be. Mental Health workers, in prisons and those dealing with former inmates, drug addicts and drug dealers, take note.

Here’s a little taste of what we’re all missing.

_______________________________________________________________________________

From Gulag, a five volume account of my prison esperience::

“Since I was called to see the nurse in the infirmary unexpectedly, I feared the worst. Being called to Medical made me very sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. It was the feeling that I had no control over what would happen to my own body. Since inmates were possessions of the State, they could do to us as they chose. Any objections? The Box.

In this case I was told by the nurse to “take your medication in the morning.” That was a nonsensical comment for her to make and it was a complete non sequitur. To call me down to see her to tell me this could mean only one thing. A Medical Trip. When asked if I was being sent on a medical trip she responded, “I don’t know.” Of course, since she didn’t expect me to ask her based upon this remark about taking my medication, she was clearly lying. All of this evasiveness was based upon the so-called security measures that an inmate should not know when or where, or even if, a trip was in the offing. 

This supposedly guarded against sudden escape attempts related to gangs of bandits that could be sent to rescue someone from a Corrections van. They watched too many movies. As if I were going to call my gang of mortgage felons to hover around the entrance to this upstate New York prison – hoping to free me from chains and spirit me away maybe to Rome, New York, where I would be debriefed.

In any event, I assumed that this little charade was about being sent on a Medical trip in the morning and that they either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me where. Of course, I already knew that this had to be about seeing the dermatologist and assumed that’s what this was all about. Tight security and all, notwithstanding. Besides, since the doctor told me that I’d be going to a doctor in Ogdensburg, about 40 minutes away, I wasn’t all that concerned. I’d wanted to check out the possible skin cancer and the rest of my Scotch-Irish skin.

The night CO, in keeping with the tight security, came to my cube at about 11:30 and awakened me to tell me that he would wake me in the morning for my medical trip. The  phones were now off, as they all were at 11 p.m., so it was now safe to tell me. Planning an elaborate escape with “the felons” waiting outside the gates was now no longer possible.

What I found humorous, of course, was the fact that the CO was awakening me to tell me he would awaken me. The logic here was circular, if not rational. So, naturally, I couldn’t get back to sleep and would now be sleep deprived for my trip.

John Milton named Pandemonium the capitol of Hell. But, he’d obviously never been in upstate in New York. Otherwise, he might have realized that Rome really was in New York. And that was where I wound up. Or, somewhere near there in a medical facility connected to Mohawk Correctional Facility called Walsh. It was about 3 hours away from where I was, which was itself one of the world’s numerous assholes.

Of course, the day started with a strip search, bending over to show off my sphincter at 6 a.m., checking out my “junk” — my testicles and penis. Most COs seemed to do this every day and I wondered if they had to pay the Homosexual Correction Officers Association to get the job. 

“Christ,” I thought.

I had asked to use the toilet twice before boarding the bus. Mainly, because when I first asked, the CO followed me into the toilet and stood there with the door open staring at me. Did he think I was faking the need to piss? Or, maybe I was carrying around someone else’s piss to switch and didn’t really need to go? Jesus. 

After being searched and chained, hands together, chained around the waist, hooked to the handcuffs and then feet chained together -­- the CO on duty in the Infirmary — where they prepared everyone for the trip — told the driver that I had gone to the toilet “about 25 times” so he now had it in for me. The cop hitched his pants over his 75 pound gut and sneered.

“Well, that’s it, if he has to go again he’ll have to piss in his pants.”

I conjured up a Rodney Dangerfield routine.

So, the three of us were loaded into a van. Me, Martinez and Zion. Martinez was about 50, Spanish, pleasant, and spoke virtually no English. He was about 5’7″. 

“Weh we gone?”

“What?” 

“We gan whey?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The showers, maybe?” 

“Huh?”

“Skin doctor, I think.” 

“Huh?”

“Skin — dok-tore,” I said, pinching my arm.

“Ah, okay,” said Martinez.

After being lined up on a wooden bench, sitting in the fluorescent-lit room at 6 a.m. with Martinez and Zion, I’d waited half an hour before one of the COs invited me into a changing room. To undress, naturally. How could I pass up the chance to show yet another North Country cop what my sphincter looked like? Not to mention showing off my hastily donned underwear and socks which had been turned inside out — my shirt and pants removed, standing naked for this high school graduate to check my testicles and size up my dick.

Then the chains came out and another hour wait until, after all of the morning COs sat around the Infirmary with coffee and donuts to clog their arteries. They sat with their 50, 60 and 70 pound paunches folded over their pants — joking about inmates and sharing retirement plans.

“Jake was down at Auburn and he finally packed it in.”

“Took it at 25. He actually took his vacation, came back and left. Nobody even knew he’d put in his papers.”

Lots of laughter. And, a lot of “no shits” all around and one, “Jesus.”

When we were finally loaded onto a van we still had no idea where we were going.

Zion was the quiet type. 

He was a black guy of about 27, 5’9″ with long dreads wound around together. He had a serious, unemotional face. He looked either bored or pissed off. Understandable. Who could be happy about being sent to the gas chamber?

Of course, there was no talking allowed in the van. 

No one wanted to cause a little “waffling” by the CO who was driving. With no seatbelts, handcuffs, chained to the floor at 55 miles per hour, real damage was possible if he had to stop “suddenly” to avoid an accident. 

The prison system was unconcerned about no-fault insurance coverage or murder by car accident.

We drove for half an hour before stopping at Riverview prison — where I had been taken on a previous Medical trip, where I’d seen the eye doctor. Today, I wasn’t seeing anyone there; they were just picking up more inmates. 

There were now six guys in the van and it was a tight fit with leg chains and handcuffs that are boxed into a little device that prevents the handcuffs from moving at all. Trying to find a position that doesn’t cut off the circulation in my wrists was not easy. After a few hours of this any help that the dermatologist could give them paled by comparison to the nerve damage caused by being sent there.

After three hours of this we pulled into Mohawk Medical Facility, also known as Walsh, for medical treatment. 

The cuffs and chains were left on in the waiting area where roughly 30 other inmates waited to see the doctor, having all come from three other prisons. My bus arrived last and we had to wait. I was the last inmate to be seen.

After having been driven around and then waiting, starting at 5:00 a.m., I finally was going to get to see the doctor. The waiting area was a 30 foot square room with roughly 30 guys sitting around watching a Glee knock-off – a T.V. show called Perfect Pitch. It was an annoyingly stupid show that featured lily-white teenagers singing in outfits that only a performer would ever be caught dead in. The inmates who were forced to watch this show were mostly black and to say that they were bored with everything about it, with the exception of the show’s minor tits and ass, was not an exaggeration. I would have preferred rap music rather than the insipid shit we had to watch.

Behind the waiting area which was cordoned off by metal railings whose purpose was to create a waiting space, there was a line of chairs that the CO drivers sat in — all along one wall behind the waiting area where they watched the inmates and also the T.V. show. 

From my view along that entire wall I could see them all sitting in a line. There were large, corpulent, adipose fat-filled bodies with fat spilling over their belts from one end of the line to the other along that wall — all of the COs watching the T.V. They loved Perfect Pitch. They were entranced by the dancing, the humor, and, even the music.

The inmates and COs were not just in a cultural divide.

It was a chasm. It was not just Country versus City. It was more like Mars versus Pluto.

Finally the nurse called me.

I got up and went into the doctor’s office where I was told to sit on a waiting room table by a CO.

The doctor came in. He was a European Jew who knew a good gig when he found it. He recognized that I was a bit different from the rest of his “clientele” and we spoke briefly. But, I was there for treatment and his opinion on whether my skin cancer was going to be a problem.

He looked at my arm and scratched his bald head. He was about 55 years old, had apparently decided to do his head like Bruce Willis before he lost his mind, and spoke with an accent.

He peered at the faded blotch that the doctor in the Infirmary had said was a sarcoma. He asked, “Did you treat this? It looks like it’s almost healed?”

I looked at him and wondered if he was delusional and said, “No, of course not, how would I treat it? The doctor in our infirmary said it was cancer.”

“Well, it looks alright to me.”

I stared at him. Quietly. My chains and handcuffs rattled a bit. 

I thought of the ordeal I’d just experienced getting to this shithole for treatment? 

“It looks alright to you?” I repeated, looking at him. 

“That’s it?” 

“Listen, I’ll take a few of these off, if you want?” he said, in mock sympathy, aiming at a minor keratosis while holding his Star Wars-styled nitrogen-gun looking like he was anxious to attack. No tests, no biopsies, just this “specialist” with his ray gun — which he apparently enjoyed using.

Looking again closely at my arm, the doctor said, “These things on your arm will last longer than you will,” he said as he zapped me repeatedly while wearing goggles and shooting off his vapor-spewing gun. It felt like a scene out of ‘Blade Runner, The Director’s Cut.’

I wondered if that meant he knew what the prison’s plan for me was – or just a friendly diagnosis meant to relax me.

Having miraculously been declared cancer-free, wondering why I had to make this stressful trip to be told that I was fine, we were all re-manacled and loaded again onto the van.

The trip back to my prison was more interesting and also more stressful. There were three additional guys in the back of the van. 

They were placed in the back because, of course, they were getting off first. There was a quiet 40-something slim, black guy who never said a word and never told anyone his name. Then there was Brown, a talkative medium height, 45 year old black guy who’d obviously had been to Hell and back. 

He was serious, constantly bitching and always looking for food. He had a point because the only food they’d gotten all day was a brown paper bag filled with an apple, two slices of fake baloney and cheese, obviously more soy product, and some juice in a little 4 ounce container. In reality, there was no juice in it but it had a chemical grape taste.

Mustard was included but, of course, making a sandwich that involved putting mustard on bread or meat with rigid handcuffs tied to your waist is like performing a vaudeville routine. Houdini could probably have done it but a guy from SoHo via the Dark Hamptons criminal justice system with an education but no stage experience would be at a loss to get it done. Rather than smear myself with yellow goop that I had no idea how I would remove for the rest of the day, I just slapped together the fake food onto slices of bread and ate it.

Brown was angry and was experienced at expressing it. He had facts to back up his thinly disguised rage. He’d done a few years at a Federal prison in Canaan, Pennsylvania.

“Place is bad news,” he said. 

“What?”

“The FBP place I was at.”

“What was it like?” I asked, murmuring while the van was moving to avoid being waffled.

“Didn’t think I’d make it outta’ there,” said Brown. 

“Why?”

“Mexican mafia, Aryan Nation, Bloods, Dominicans, Mexican cartel guys. Had to watch ya’sef alla time. The Latin Kings and Mexicans were bad there.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, it was bad. Killed a Federal C.O. when I was ‘ere.” 

“Why were you there?”

“Attempted murder. Was bullshit, though.”

I didn’t press it. He clearly was happy to have gotten out.

“Y’know ya get email, 180 minutes a month phone time, but it ain’t worth the stress.” 

“Any white collar guys there?” I said, trying to figure out how his situation would have played out if the Hamptons D.A. Spota hadn’t personally wanted to fuck me – and thrown me to the Feds.

“Oh, yeah, a few, y’know, guys who had 10 or 20 year bids. Dey theah. Dey got a tough time, tho’. Dey ain’t ready for dat place, I’m tellin’ ya.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Dey go to da Yard — they gotta have dey papers to show. You a chil’ molesta, forget aboudit. You fucked. But, snitches get the worser treemen’.”

“I thought snitches didn’t matter much any more?”

“In a Medium in State, maybe. But, in a Max or wid the Feds, you done, man.”

I remembered the Willie Sutton quote and kept it in mind. Here was a murderer, or attempted murderer, whatever, looking down at pedophiles – especially snitches. That was how it was.

As they rolled along listening to the cop’s classic rock, David Bowie came on after Pink Floyd. Layla played and I became aware of the fact that these COs were younger than me, talking about retirement after spending an entire lifetime looking forward to only one thing — NOT working. Certainly not doing this. They had huge guts and were walking heart attacks and their only pleasure in life was donuts and coffee and abusing prisoners.

As I listened to the classic rock radio, watching cows in the fields, I began to daydream about the gigs I’d played in Amsterdam and Mykonos, where free wine and girls flowed — as I entertained with my guitar. I looked forward to getting back to my things, my food, a shower, a change of clothes and a call to my family. We rode along for hours.

But, did not stop where we’d started out. 

It turned out that since the COs had not gotten the entire trip done by 4 p.m., apparently the prison union witching hour — after having waited nearly four hours to see the doctor – we were now going to be spending the night at yet another prison. 

Watertown was the upstate hub where all of the buses and vans transporting prisoners across and down the state had to stop for at least one night.

I would now have to stay at Watertown overnight after a full day excursion to see a doctor. We disembarked at a gothic location that made my prison look like Shangri-la. The dorms were old, the floors were worn gray-streaked tile, the lockers were banged up and scraped with peeling paint, and the dorms were nearly empty. It was like being taken to an old airplane hanger to spend the night. We were given ratty blankets that were paper thin, a couple of sheets, a tiny green towel, a fleabag hotel bar of soap, a roll of toilet paper, a 10-cent toothbrush and a tube of nondescript toothpaste. No change of underwear or shower sandals, and nothing with which to comb hair. It was bare bones even by prison standards. 

And, no phone calls.

“You know there’s no movement on Wednesdays, right?” said some guy in the Rec room attached  to the dorm. 

We’d had our chains removed and sent to the “Draft” dorm, meaning that they were there for only a short time. Sort of like a non-person in a non-existing existence system where no one knew they were there. This was how life was for those incorrigible inmates placed on “the merry-go-round.” The Hell of an existence where constant transfer was life for problem cases where no one could ever find you. Not even your lawyer.

“What do you mean?” I asked, now getting upset at this land of limbo he was in just to see a doctor who looked at my arm for thirty seconds. It was a two-day trip to Hell and  back for a thirty second glance and a Star Wars shooting. The treatment surpassed the disease by far.

“Christ,” I thought.

“You guys may be here for a coupla days — they don’ move anythin’ on Wensdees.” He was a small, emaciated, 40-something white guy who mopped the dorm floor. He looked like he enjoyed being the bearer of good tidings. Why he mopped I couldn’t figure out. No one would ever know whether he did or didn’t.

I stared at the Sylvester Stallone movie on the T.V. screen. 

He’d apparently gotten well past his Rocky period and now looked like he’d  been in a couple of automobile accidents based upon the amount of plastic surgery that he’d had done. It looked like he’d done it himself. It was scary to look at.  It was no longer Rocky Balboa. More like the Steroidal Retiree.

The rest of the day was long. Nothing to read, no phone calls, no talking in the large, mostly empty barracks-style dorm used for “draftees” but a drafty room with the window open and torrential rain to make sure that they needed their wet coats on to keep warm. At least there was a T.V. to stare at if the boredom became too intolerable. Of course, since there were guys that actually were doing their bid in that  dorm, THEY got to choose what played on the T.V. And, of  course, THEY ran the show. I’d made the mistake of asking one of the guys in the bunk next to me to lower the sound on his Walkman, fearing that he would keep the sound high all night. He went off.

“You come ‘ere and you tellin’ me what ta do?” 

He glowered at me and kept the volume up on his Walkman with the earphones on.

“Sorry,” I said. Which, of course, he couldn’t hear since he had the headphones on and turned up to peak volume. But, whatever, I figured, he wouldn’t be hearing much at all in a few years. So, Fuck him.

The hours dragged. The five hours until lights went out was an eternity. And, the thought of having to kill yet another day because there were no vans moving on Wednesdays, the next day, was making me nuts.

But, as was not unusual in prison, the inmate who’d told me that there would be no movement the following day, was wrong. At a little after 8 a.m., after visiting Mess Hall for a piece of very sugary cake and some form of Wheatena cereal, eaten while being stared at by an overly conscientious young CO looking for someone to pick on, we were all advised to get our things and follow an officer to the Draft Office. We were going back to our original prison in the van after all.

I was manacled, handcuffed, boxed, chained waist and feet again, and loaded onto the van. While being handcuffed, the driver, a 58 year old CO who looked visibly tired at doing this for a living, confided that he was retiring. I briefly chatted with him and wished him luck after mentioning that I was a journalist and that this bid was what writers got for exposing corruption and believing in Freedom of the Press. The cop looked at me and, with a wry smile. 

“Well, we all fell for believing in that, didn’t we?” He smiled intelligently and added, “Don’t forget to mention me in your memoirs.” 

I said I wouldn’t forget — especially, if he’d loosen the cuffs a bit so that my arthritis wouldn’t kill me and I could feel my fingers on the ride back. We struck a deal. 

I wondered if Hemmingway, Bukowski or Thompson had to put up with such chained degradation in order to be appreciated. I doubted it.

After being loaded onto the van, the ride back to prison was almost tolerable. It was the first time I had ever seen the town where my prison was located after passing innumerable run-down houses, trailers, dilapidated barns and open farms and fields along the route. What I saw made me much more aware of why these prisons existed. Without the prisons there would be nothing. Maybe not even cows.

The town basically existed along the highway and the Main Street reminded him of the fictitious villages that existed on sets created in Hollywood. It looked almost like nothing  was real beyond the storefronts that ran for about half a mile. There were no pedestrians going in and out of stores and only a few cars. There was a car lot with no one walking around — and  of course, there was a McDonald’s with only two or three cars and a variety of mom and pop stores with no sign of life. 

For the most part it was a ghost town except for TWO Kinney drug stores. It was the pharmacy on the prison prescription labels. This was a town that existed because of the prison. No prison, no town. It was that simple. Upstate, for all practical purposes, was a gigantic State Welfare system of support for meaningless, useless and repetitive efforts. THAT was why the Parole Boards continued to hold inmates long beyond their minimum sentences. It was the land of the body-snatchers. 

The prison-industrial complex.

The stores were empty, the houses were run-down and decaying, the roads were full of potholes, the older buildings were boarded up, and there was little sign of business or activity. It was all a front for the prison and the COs who made $60,000-70,000 PLUS overtime per year — who had huge bellies and children which they had to feed — thanks to our incarceration.

*****

“Welcome back,” said Mac, “you look like Hell. Enjoy your trip?” 

“Thanks, man, it’s good to see you too. Miss me?”

“Absolutely, and in another day, Joe would be poking through your cube looking for your stuff — assuming you’d died and weren’t coming back. He’s the dorm vulture, you know?”

“It’s good to be missed.”

“Your friend’s going tomorrow, you know?” 

“Who? You mean Animal?”

“Yeah, he’s outta here at 6 a.m.,” Mac winked at me. 

“Jesus, finally,” I said.

“You know he was a Trinitario, right?” 

“A what?”

“A Trinitario,” said Mac. 

“You got the Latin Kings, the Dominicans and the Trinitarios. Supposedly, he was high up in that gang. Retired, though, You know Chucky?”

“Who?”

“Chucky, the Spanish guy in the cube by the bubble?” 

“No.”

“Well, he’s the leader of the Spanish guys here. He’s a Latin King. Then you got Vegas, or Diandre, who’s the head of the Bloods. These are the guys that run the blacks and Spanish in this dorm,” he laughed, “and you know Boom?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s their shooter.”

“Their what?”

“The shooter. Bloods tell him what to do. To cut someone, stab them, or shoot them. He just does it and doesn’t ask.”

“Jesus.”

I thought about some of his comments or dealings with these characters and realized that it was not good to not know. I remembered Animal and the snorting and spitting and the mimicking I’d done.

I wondered if I would have some unexpected problem with Chucky, the local Latin Kings leader who’d once told me that the “old guy,” meaning Animal, or Reyes, had done 20 bags of heroin a day and that was why he was so disgusting. Of course, 20 bags a day doesn’t train you to snort and blow your nose in the sink, but it at least explained why he did it so often. Now I found out that he’d had a lot of juice at one point and I had  been making fun of him. Fuck.

“It’s the MS-13’s you have to worry about,” said Mac. “They’re the most feared gang in this country. The Mexican Mafia and the Cartels are all about on par, but the MS-13’s and Jalisco are the ones everyone fears.” 

This was from a Hell’s Angels biker.

“A guy who was in Canaan. A Federal prison — said that he’d been in for attempted murder and had worried about making it out alive. He also said that there were white collar guys there also. Not good.”

“Yeah, a bad spot. That’s a Max, not a camp. They have High, Medium and Low plus camps. Camps are for white collar guys who make a deal with the Feds. If you go to trial or blow it with the Feds, you go anywhere in the U.S. that they send you and any level prison they send you to.”

As Mac was talking to me a couple of guys came up to him. He was standing in his cube looking over the divider and by his locker as I was sitting up on my bed. He was talking to me and then turned to the guy who came by who wanted four rolling papers. 

He made his deal for a stamp to be delivered in a couple of days and walked off. Then, as they continued to talk, he started rolling joints for future customers.

“You wouldn’t have a problem even there, though.” 

“Why?” I said, incredulously.

“Well, your age for one thing. Spanish guys especially respect older inmates. They leave you alone. And, if you came in to a place like a Federal prison they’d ask you for your paperwork first — if you have no rape or pedophile rap you’re good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you’d have no problem there.” 

“What happens to pedophiles?”

“You pay.”

“For what?”

“Everything. You just pay. They never leave you alone. Not good. You pay to stay alive. Then you pay some more.”

“With what?”

“Everything.”

As they were talking, who showed up to see Mac at his locker, but Chucky. They spoke in murmurs and Mac shook his head and said, “I got you” and turned back to me.

“So, what’s your deal here, cigarettes?” 

“Drugs.”

“Holy shit,” I said, surprised not only at what his answer was but that he had no compunctions about telling me.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Okay, I don’t want to know, don’t tell me anything. Not my business,” I said.  He laughed but was completely serious. I did NOT want to know anything. Not what, how much, how frequently. Nothing.

Mac laughed, understanding me.

“I ever tell you about my drug deal?” he said, laughing. I was glad he veered away from what he was doing now and it deflected his nervousness about his business which, while I suspected what it was, he’d not been told the details. Like the mob friend he had who’d taken him on a guided tour of the real Little Italy in Manhattan. He’d made it clear that he did NOT want to  know. Anything.

“No,” I said, realizing that whatever he was about to tell him was history — not current affairs.

He began by laughing. “I had a girlfriend  over one night and we were in bed and I decided  to call a former girlfriend and ask her if ‘E’ was still available from her homo friend and she said ‘probly’ and she said she’d get back to me. Meantime I decided  to order a pizza from another girlfriend I knew who’d had a small pizza shop. She said she’d deliver it herself so I said, ‘great’ so I asked her to bring change of a $100 when she  came over. So she delivers the pizza and I give her the whole hundred in a bag for her since she was having a tough time and I figured ‘what the fuck’ and essentially gave all my money to her.”

“Then what?”

“So a little later the homo shows up and says he wants to buy some coke from me and I say, ‘What? I don’t have any coke, what the fuck are you talking about. You were going to  bring ME something.'”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, I’m scratching my head and thinking, ‘what’s this guy up to?'” 

“Yeah?”

“Next thing I know, it’s 6 a.m. and the doorbell rings and I think, ‘Okay, this isn’t going to be good. My girlfriend’s naked upstairs, I’m wearing shorts and who the fuck is this?'”

“And,…”

“I open the door and there’s a gun in my face and 6 guys in SWAT outfits coming running in and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ and we go upstairs, my girlfriend is stark naked and standing by the bed and the cops are eyeing her and looking for drugs and cash. And, of course, they find nothing. No drugs. No cash. Nothing. Until one cop picks up an ashtray and there are a couple of empty bags that once had coke in them. You know, for me and my girl. I wasn’t SELLING anything.”

“Sure. Recreational, right?”

“Right,” he says, missing my sarcasm.

“So we get to the station and I start tellin’ the cops that they’ve got nothin’ and after a while I’m in the cell and one a them comes to me and says the judge wants to see you.” 

And, I say, ‘The judge?’ and the cop says, ‘Yeah, wiseguy, the judge.”‘

“No shit?”

“No shit. So, I follow the cop and, whadda y’know he takes me into the judge’s chambers. And, the judge is sitting there, pissed off, an’ he knew me an’ I knew him. I’d been in front of him before. An’ he says to me, ‘Okay wiseguy we got you now. you wanna plead this out now and we let your girlfriend go?’ and I say ‘What’d you have in mind?’ and he says, ‘How about 12 1/2 to 15?’– as in years.” 

“An’ I say, ‘How about you drop the charges?’ an’ he looks at me like I’m nuts.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

“I say, first, you got no cash. Second, you got no drugs, Third, you got no recording,’ — I’d learned that they recorded my conversation with the homo — ‘So, you got nothin’.’”

“No shit?”

He laughed. 

“So, the judge says to me, ‘What do you mean we have no recording? an’ I  say, ‘Play the tape, they’ll be nothin’ on it.'”

“What?”

“I bought this device at Radio Shack. It’s a $60 item. Worth its weight in gold.”

“So, what then?” I said.

“Judge says, ‘Tell you what, I’ll cut you 12 1/2 to 15 and we’re done here.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said,” as he laughed, ”How about 6 months and I walk outta here right now. You got no cash, no drugs, no recording, you got nothin’ cause they ain’t anythin’ on any tape.’ He  already knew that, though.”

I laughed, “Jesus, you have some pair of  balls.”

“The judge looked at me like he wanted to strangle me and then said, ‘How about 6 months and I cut you two months on that and then you owe us four months. Deal?'”

“Unbelievable.” I said.

“I had him by the balls. They had nothing. Everything they recorded was scrambled.”

It was good to have an education, I thought.

Copyright 2024 The Gulag

“Those who escape hell never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.”

— Henry Bukowski

Several times I’ve been asked about the danger of being in prison. That depends. Mostly, it depends upon what you are in for. Murderers get respect. Con artists are tolerated. Drug dealers are a dime a dozen and are left alone. But, rapists and pedophiles are treated badly, especially in a Max. For them, it’s open season.

Even if you’re innocent.

________________________________________________________________________________________

I found Blue to be in a talkative mood. He was in his late twenties, muscular, about 5’9” and weighing in at about 200. 

He’d made adjustments in ASAT, the drug treatment program, where they now were more interested in others who’d been aggravating the smooth operation of the program. He was no longer in their sights.

“Maybe it’s because I’m not feeling that good, but they ARE leaving me alone,” said Blue.

“What’s the matter?”

“Ahh,” he said, shaking his head, “I think I popped a vessel.” 

“WHAT?”

“Well, you know when you hear something pop? You know, like in your arm?”

“No,” I said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Yeah, I’ve popped vessels before. From exercising.” 

“Where is the vessel that popped?”

“Back of my head, right here,” he said and turned to push up the hair just above his neck.

“You see a doctor?”

“Nah,” he said, “I’ve had this before. But, this time I have spots in front of my eyes. Maybe I should.”

“What did you do?”

“Just doin’ the leg machine. You know, you sit down and push weights up at an angle?”

“How much were you pushing?” 

“Oh, about 800 pounds.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I guess I was pushin’ it.” 

“That’s a possibility.” 

“How long have you got left?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” 

“But, you’re out of here soon, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I only got a few months left. But, I’ve been in this time for almost two years. My last time was worse. Was in a Max.”

“I’ve heard that guys like the ones in our house don’t do well, for, you know, sex charges.”

“You kidding? I was at Green, Coxsackie and Elmira. They don’t fuck around there. Twice, the COs gave me the green light. Guy was in for makin’ kiddy porn movies. CO sent me out to the Yard and told me to fuck ‘im up. I said, ‘If I get out there the other CO is gonna’ hit me with a Tier 3 ticket,’ an’ he says, ‘No, don’t worry I got you covered’ so I go out and beat the shit outta this guy and they did nothin’.”

“Is it still that bad?’

“Are you fucking kiddin’ me? There’s nothin’s changed for pedophiles, rapists, kiddy porn guys. An’ they beat them, an’ leave ’em. One guy who was in for kiddy porn was facing 25 to Life. He finally took a pencil and stabbed himself in the neck and bled to death right in fronna me. Took about 4 minutes. Fucking blood all over the floor. He just couldn’t face it, being beaten all the time. You a rapo or kiddy porn guy in a Max, you’re done.”

“No shit? What about gays?”

“Gays? Forget it. They’re protected now. But, dey sell ‘em inna Maxes.”

“Sell them?”

“Yeah, one time I walked into the shower at Elmira and here’s this huge black guy gettin’ a blow-job from some white guy on his knees, an’ the white guy had tits an’ everything — y’know they let ‘em have operations an’ all — an’ the black says to me ‘you gotta’ problem?’”

“‘Nope,’ I sez.”

“No shit?”

He laughed. “No shit. But, the black guy had just bought the white guy.”

“Bought him?”

“Yeah, couple a packs of cigarettes to the pimp who owns him – gets you a blowjob from the tranny-whore. The COs know. Sometimes they run the trannies them­selves. S’a fuckin’ cesspool.”

“You in a Max long?

“I was in the Box at Greene for a while.” 

“That’s where I saw the worst treatment.” 

“I was told to fuck up a pedophile there — went up behind him and hit him a few times with a lock in a sock. Nearly killed him. But, they didn’t care. The accident report said that he fell in the bathroom and hit his head. You can’t win in this system. If I went into the bathroom and a CO was in there, if he wanted to fuck me up, all he’d have to do is say that I attacked him and I’d catch a new charge. It’s my word against his and he’d ALWAYS win.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. An’ I saw a couple of guys hang ‘emselves. One guy did it with sheets. I watched him tying the sheets together and I said to my cellmate, ‘what the fuck’s he doin?’ and he says to me ‘min’ your own goddamn business — he gonna’ take hisself out’ — and that’s what he did. By the time the cop saw him and cut ‘im down he was gone.”

Blue got up and climbed up a couple of steps on the bleachers we were sitting on to grab his sweatshirt and then came down — but slipped on the bottom level where we were sitting.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I just slipped. Got a little dizzy for a minute, I’m okay, though.”

“You really need to see a doctor, Blue. Don’t fuck around with a blood vessel in your head. Come on man!”

As we were leaving the Gym on the walkway, Blue brought up the subject of pedophiles again and said “you know, if one of those guys went near my kids…”

“Yeah,” I said, “I hear you.”

“One a those guys like Irish, in your house…” 

“Irish?”

“Yeah,” he said, “you know, ponytail, a few teeth missing, he’s a rapo.”

“He said he was in for beating the shit out of some guy who stole a car from his brother.”

“Nah, he in fa rape. Raped a 13 year old girl. He a fuckin’ animal.”

“No shit?”

“Oh, yeah, I was in your dorm. He a fuckin’ sex criminal.” 

“Huh.”

“Yeah, fucking guy like that came near my kids, I’d kill’im an’ not a thought about it. Tolally jusified.” 

“I’d do 20 years for dat and never think twice.”

I thought about this macho routine. He’d heard it all before. They’d do this, they’d do that.

“But, Blue, tell me something. You got a few kids, right?” 

“Yeah?” he looked at quizzically.

“So, you kill some guy who raped your kid. What happens to your other kids? Now they don’t have a father. What about that?”

No answer.

“Know any Italians?” he said.

Copyright 2024. The Gulag

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”  

 — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The next time you look askance at the person cutting you hair, remember this little True Crime vignette. Suddenly, politics and concern about the Right or Left has little enduring meaning — as I found out.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

“It was difficult at Auburn,” said CO Ward, who had worked there for eight years. 

I mentioned what had just happened, a fight in another dorm. But, of course, the CO already knew about it. All of the cops carried radios. It was like a part of their uniform — baseball-styled Corrections cap, matching blue shirt and pants with the New York State Corrections emblem on it, and black boots. Like the Gestapo. It was “Springtime for Hitler.” With no gun, dangling handcuffs and other assorted paraphernalia hanging from their belts, the CO outfits were reminiscent of Victor Willis, the cop from The Village People video from the 1970’s. But, not nearly as entertaining.

“How?”

“This bullshit about putting people in the Box for a fight over a missing or stolen razor,” he laughed, “in Auburn they’d just go back to their cell.”

“Why was it different there?”

“In a Max, it’s a whole different story,” said CO Ward, and as he turned toward the glass separating the dorm from the Rec room and then relaxed behind his desk. The scar on his right cheek was evident, even though partially hidden by his beard. The hair wouldn’t grow there. “You got guys who are never going home in a Max. They don’t give a shit. What’re you going to do to them? Putting them in the Box is like threatening to kick someone in the kneecap after they’d lost the leg.

“So, what is the place like?”

“Completely different,”  he continued.”You’ve got three, or, I don’t remember, maybe four levels of cells stacked on top of each other with walkways around them, two yards — both concrete, no grass, trees or any other sign of life on it — and Rec time with maybe 600 or 700 guys milling around at one time.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Yeah, great. So, they all have individual cells — there were no T.V. ‘s in each cell when I was there, but, I don’t know, maybe they do by now. Lots of other Max’s have them. Keeps them occupied and out of trouble.”

“I’ve talked to guys here who were there and say they prefer it,” I said.

“You gotta understand,” he said, “for those guys and the Lifers here, it was better since there’s privacy in the cells. There’s none here.” 

“Here, you’ve got cubes with half walls, a Rec room and a dorm. No privacy at all except, maybe when you take a shit. A lot of guys can’t tolerate that.”

“Yeah, I gather.”

“It WAS interesting, though,” he laughed. “But, the knifings and killings were not fun.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Couple times a week the guys in the Tower would announce to get down. Inmates had to get down, or else,” he said, smiling.

“What?”

“If there was a problem, you know, a cutting, a fight, or a knifing, especially in the Yard. They’d tell everyone to get on the ground with their hands behind their necks. If anyone stayed standing, the sharpshooters in the Tower would just shoot them. They didn’t give a shit. It was fun for them.”

“Nice.”

                                                  ****

Black had been at Auburn. He was one guy who talked little about why he was in prison. He was a 5’9″ black man of about 45 who had already done 20 years. He expected to see Parole in roughly 4 years. And, they usually “hit” guys like him the first time — meaning he would get another two years before being able to come back to see Parole, and see if they would release him. Likely, they would “hit” him again. Some had already been “hit” five or six times. It was a routine that Lifers had to come to expect. Any inmate with a 20 to Life or a 25 to Life sentence knew to expect it even if they convinced themselves they were different. Only one guy, who had a 15 to Life sentence had gotten out at fifteen years. 

It was talked about as if it were miraculous. Of course, when he shot and killed that drug dealer, he was only 17 years old.

But, Black had an animalistic quality about him. Not because of any stereotypical racist analogies about black people — but, because of his muscular look and slightly stooped, forward manner of walking. He had that look along with a halting, rapid, staccato speech which was very polite. But, after all, the inmates knew he was a killer.

He cut my hair.

“Yeah, Mr. M,” he would say, simultaneously buzzing the back of my head with the beard trimmer in the  bathroom — where everyone hid to get haircuts — watching for the Sergeant who routinely patrolled the area. No one wanted to get a ticket for having their hair cut. It was illegal to cut hair or let someone cut your hair except at the barber shop. 

In the barber shop you had to tip or wind up looking like you’d gotten trimmed at Dachau. Tipping was also illegal. 

“S’better in a Max,” said Black. “Dis’ is boollshit, alla dese keeds, no respec’, s’much betta’ there Mr. M — got privacy, got you own T.V. Dis here’s  boollshit.”

“You actually liked it better there?”

“Yes sir, Mr. M,” as he continued buzzing the back of my neck, starting to shave the part near his ear. 

I was hoping that Black didn’t decide to use the razor next on his throat. “…s’much better in a Max, no kids, dis is boollshit” he repeated himself over and over again. I realized that this was no doubt due to some kind of psychiatric problem — certainly, in addition to PTSD — complicated by a very dull mental capacity. But, he was circumspect in dealing with an older, married, solid-citizen type of white guy to whom he showed some deference. Yet, all during his brain fog of mental illness and questionable intelligence he had a razor at my throat.

One needed to pay attention, I thought.

Black was a Lifer. He might not ever go home. The Parole Board could jerk him around for another 10 or 15 years if they wanted. There were no appeals left, attorneys or family members to help him out. This was it for him. Not quite nothing to lose, but close.

According to prison gossip Black brutally murdered two guys for making eyes at his girl. It was grisly because he’d used an ax and continued chopping for nearly 15 hours according to the police report. 

But, who knew? 

I wondered — how you could even manage something like that? What do you do, chop for an hour then take a break? Go out for a drink and then come back to finish up? It seemed physically impossible to keep chopping for 15 hours straight, didn’t it? 

The place must have looked like an explosion in the back of a butcher shop in Bensonhurst after one of Vinny The Chin’s murders. 

If you looked at Black, who had a certain resemblance to King Kong, he certainly looked capable of overcoming any physical adversity and getting the job done.

Black continued to chatter as he trimmed my hair. Others in the bathroom moved about, moving off into the stalls instead of the urinals which were blocked as he worked on me. Seeing Black, they quickly moved away. 

They all knew to respect his minimalist way of making his wishes known with “doing Mr. M’s hair now, go ‘way,” — and they left immediately. They all knew, or sensed, the protocol and danger. His obvious strength was not hidden and his level of intelligence just made him more dangerous.

They knew about the ax.

It felt like I was having my hair done by a brute of unimaginable strength. I could only imagine what Black was like after he did drugs, had some booze and was pissed off.

When Black was done, I offered him a chocolate and marshmallow mini pie. One of those chemicalized goodies sold in the prison commissary. Black looked at it, very straight-faced and without any obvious emotion. 

I began to worry. He looked at it like he was trying to figure out what it was. There was no disguise, no filter. It was just a fucking pie, for God’s sake, I thought. 

Fear started to rise up in my throat like an attack of GERD, and I envisioned Black throwing the saucer shaped treat on the floor, stomping on it and jamming the trimmer into my mouth while it buzzed, chewing up my tongue. 

Black continued to stare at the treat in his hand for another minute without saying a word. 

Was he pissed off? Was he insulted by the offering?

No, I realized. He was just slow. 

He didn’t know what I had given him.

“Well, thank you Mr. M. You don’t gotta’ give me dis.”

He shifted from one foot to the other like an animal rebalancing its weight, “you a good man Mr. M, you don’ hafta gimme nothin’, Mr. M.”

I exhaled, relaxing now, “Don’t be silly, take it Black, and thanks for doing my hair, my wife’s visiting and I want to look presentable.”

“You look fine, Mr. M.” he patted me on the shoulder, “ya wife’ll love it, looks good, you good man Mr. M,” he repeated several times, always saying the same thing, over and over, never smiling, continuing to pat him on the shoulder. 

Then he put an arm around me with a hug as if to say “you okay, man.”

Of course, being hugged by a brutal murderer wasn’t a relaxing event for a 70 year old middle-class white guy. It wasn’t like having a drink with a friend at the bar in the Peninsula Hotel or at the Patio Bar in the Hamptons when that friendly hug unexpectedly occurred. 

It was the kind of conviviality that could kill you with one wrong word or gesture.

“I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.”

–Dan Quayle

Of the many areas of scenic wonder in the Hamptons one still must be aware that there are towns and villages you may want to steer clear of if you’re a Manhattan dweller. Much of the money which supports the Hamptons comes from us in New York City. Many of the current residents once were NYC families or now are second generation escapees seeking an easier, more lucrative lifestyle compliments of Hamptons Civil Service where in Southampton or Westhampton Beach one can draw several pensions simultaneously. You can even be a convicted criminal like former D.A. Thomas Spota or Chief of Police Jimmy Burke and still collect — even while in prison!

The Preservation Fund is an example of the Long Con which is the brainchild of former assemblymember Fred Thiele of Sag Harbor. This multi-billion dollar scam, collected from each one who buys a house in Southampton, purportedly to be used to buy land to set aside away from developers in order to maintain the pristine shores and pastoral beauty. Its real use, however, is to support local politicians, assist in buying votes, reward cronies in office and maintain slush funds. It functions ahead of its close second — the auctions of seized vehicles that support law enforcement budgets. Not a word about building affordable housing though, folks.

What is so insulting to the average New Yorker is the fact that there is no apology for ripping us off. And, there is no pretense of the Democracy that we are in the process of watch slip away. In Westhampton Beach Village, for example, the former Mayor now runs Southampton Town, and the newest chieftain is a real estate agent. The Westhampton Village Attorney, a character named Tony Pasca, is a local law firm partner at Esseks, Hefter, Angel, Di Talia & Pasca and also runs the legal show along with a few others who make inside deals and divvy up power. Attempts at breaking into this little club are impossible without showing fealty and paying the price. Legal motions without making the right offer result in denials and defamatory legal motions. Lies and defamation are well-tolerated in the Hamptons and there’s a price if you need to go through a committee like the ZBA in Westhampton Beach Village to build a house. Its a Kangaroo Court that requires stupidity, fealty, or cash. Take your pick.

If you hit the mark look to that beacon of defamation, The Southampton Press to support you in print.

But, wait, the Republican Party Chairman in Southampton is a former Village cop. We can relax. And, the former D.A. was just released from prison. Funny, the Southampton Press never even mentioned his conviction.

Stay Tuned

 “During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture.”

— Frankenstein

Out of the mouths of babes, my father used to say — when he described unexpected kernels of truth. Of course, Truth was what fucked me and my old man would have recoiled in horror that speaking truth to power could get you a few years in the slammer. But, truth be told, I learned a lot bout truth, justice and retribution. No one ever forgets in prison. Just like George Washington II, according to Sly Stallone, is well known for remembering vendettas. So here’s a little tidbit about truth, justice, retribution and prison life should you ever accumulate too many parking tickets or, maybe as things become testy in the New Fascistic environment you curse at a cop or a Republican. Here’s a little True Crime for sadists out there.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

January  18, 2014

I awakened at 5:30 am after a fitful sleep. They had been doing the Rec room floors all night. First removing wax, washing, then applying wax, using the cheapest and most toxic version available — and this process had been going on for 4 days. Since they’d been doing it since just before the weekend, Late Night was canceled. No games and T.V. for days. Martin Luther King’s holiday would be eaten up by this inconvenience. For me it was a matter of fearing that when I got up to use the toilet in the middle of the night, the bright white lights like Times Square would hit me with machines whirring. In the night I had made the trip among the wires and machines and was hit with a mop as I moved past the workers on the way to the urinals. Despite this I got most of a night’s sleep. But, of course the guys were still up at 2:00 a.m. chatting since Late Night was canceled.

It was morning and I awaited the arrival of the CO and expected that there would be some respite from the fluorescent lights since it was Saturday. Especially, after having been deprived of Late Night.

“ON THE COUNT!” blasted Benweird. Louder than normal into the P.A. mike.

The fluorescents went on full blast and he walked around chewing his gum. After rounding the dorm in silence he got up into the Bubble and continued.

“Since the dorm is not being cleaned properly, WE WILL ALL GET UP AT 9:00 AND HELP THE PORTERS CLEAN — that is all.”

The lights went off and he sat at his desk and started singing a version of “Yesterday” by the Beatles, which was where he was apparently stuck in time. “SHHH” is heard from a cube where someone was trying to sleep. Then he started rattling a small bottle as if he were trying to mix paint.

A continuous round of annoying sounds of rattling, singing, and movement came from the Bubble.

I went out into the REC room and saw Cuba getting ready to go to Mess Hall.

“What is wrong with him?” I asked.

He laughed. “Now you see what I mean about this guy. Remember Martin talking about the Secret Squirrel Society?”

“These guys are on a torture trip. They pull this shit just to drive inmates to doing something. Not too long ago one of them snapped and he seriously beat the shit out of one of the Sergeants and a couple of the COs.”

“I mean really, you leave the lights off for people to sleep then you lecture them and rattle and sing so they can’t? What the fuck do they expect?”

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s why Benweird’s wife left him. She couldn’t take the shit either. Fucking asshole.”

I was happy I had a job that I could go to on weekends.

“Well,” I said, “I’ll be happy to get out of here. Maybe if my 2 year preference transfer comes up.”

“No kidding. My friend had told me that I was going to one of those ‘Ticketron’ places — where they give out tickets for anything. Well, this is it. Anyplace you go to after this will be a vacation spot.”

I went back to my cube and sat in the darkness drinking coffee and thinking about being tortured by assholes and living with people who had a low tolerance for frustration. A bad combination. And, he bemoaned having to put up with this at 70 years of age.

Then he thought about Brake, his neighbor — who described his year in the Box for having had a weapon.

“So, I’m laying down in my cell, at Wende, a Max about 10 years ago.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d just come back from the Law Library where I worked at that time,” said Brake.

“Uh-huh.”

“And, this Sergeant comes and raps on my cell and opens the gate and I say ‘Hi Sarge, what’s up?’ — cause I knew everyone and was on good terms with the COs — and he starts sticking his fingers into the chain mechanism above the cell gate that comes across to close it.”

“And, what happened?”

“He puts his hands up as if to say, ‘Wait.’ so I wait as he thinks and looks away for a second.”

“You’ll see,” said the Sergeant, as he continued  to play with the gate mechanism. And, then two other COs arrive and he says, ‘Step out here, Brake’ and I say, ‘Okay Sarge’ and I move out of the cell and then he says, ‘Okay, now put your hands behind your back’ and I say, ‘Okay, but what’s going on?’ — and he says, ‘You’ll see in a minute, So, they take me away and I have no idea why.'”

“What the fuck?” I had looked at him, as both of us stood facing each other over the locker in my cube, the ‘wall’ of their cubes coming up to my waist as they talked quietly, almost in whispers so the CO didn’t notice.

“Yeah, really,” he says. 

“Next thing I know, I’m in the Box and all of my shit is dumped in with me and I’m finally taken to a Tier 3 hearing.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“So, the Sergeant produces a broken off blade from a hack saw that had been lodged in the sliding mechanism above my cell where the gate moves across.”

“Jesus.”

“Exactly,” he said, “it had been made into a shiv that was long and slender and was able to be  slipped into the space above the gate sliding mechanism. And, not by me. How they came to know that it was there and found it is beyond me. But, all I knew is, it was NOT mine.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told them I worked in the Law Library. I filed grievances and appeals for 43 straight days.” 

“And … ?”

“Nothing, nada, zilch,” he said. “Could not fucking get anywhere.”

“So, what finally happened?”

“I did a year in the Box for having a weapon.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I wish,” he said. 

“A couple of years later I saw the guy who’d  been in my cell before me.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

He shook his head. “I looked at him in the Yard and said, ‘You know that shiv you left in your cell?’ — and he looked at me and I could see the light come on in his head and he said ‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.’ and I said, ‘Yes, you do.’ and then said, ‘At least you could admit it and remember what you did to someone else. You know I’m here for murdering someone,’ and the guy looked at me with a little fear in his eyes. ‘I did a year in the  box for your little mistake, man. You got that? You’re lucky I’m in  a forgiving mood,’ and I walked away. He shit a little over that.”

“I would think he would.”

“Yeah, but you know, later on — when he wasn’t expecting it. I had one of my guys return the blade.”

“That was nice of you.” 

“Yeah. Put it in his neck so he wouldn’t misplace it again.”

Copyright 2025 Gulag

“Trust, but verify.”

–Ronald Reagan

In the midst of this political season where the sides of this new great American debate unfolds, I provide an alternate reality to offset the Space Lasers and preparations for the invasion of Greenland. I submit a little conversation that provides contretemps from my nearly five years in prison for having offended the criminal Hamptons politicians and banks — like Capital One — who reportedly stole from 2 million customers — WaMu, whose mortgage workers were snorting meth — and MortgageIt which Deutsche Bank bought after paying $200 million for committing mortgage fraud. So, for a little Night Music as fascism plays itself out — here’s a conversation in prison which will soon become available from my publisher in book form..

________________________________________________________________________________________

A New York State Prison —

“As I walked around the basketball court with Mat, the mortgage broker, we talked about business in general and his “business” which landed him in prison. I had originally thought that he’d come there with a case involving mortgages — then learned about the attack that got him the nine flat, then dropped to an eight flat after the judge received some letters.

“I got into some shit on the side while I was at Wells Fargo,” said Mat. 

I didn’t ask but listened as they walked aound the court. News reports had outed a few operations that involved drugs. 

Like Washington Mutual. Bankers were creating phony applications while high as a kite. 

A guy named Parsons, he remembered,

“oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily,” he said. “In our world, it was tolerated,” said Sherri Zaback, who worked for Mr. Parsons and recalls seeing drug paraphernalia on his desk. “Everybody said, ‘He gets the job done.’ ” At WaMu, getting the job done meant lending money to nearly anyone who asked for it.. and its precipitous collapse was the biggest bank failure in American history.” — NYT 12/27/08

“Guy calls me one day and asks me to come down to this bar for a drink. I get there and there’s some celebrities, mobsters, cops, like the place in East Harlem where all the politicians go, you know like Rao’s…”

“Yeah,” I said, “I forget, Giuliani had a table there and a lot of CEOs keep tables there. Crazy. I just read the Wolf of Wall Street and he met an FBI agent there.”

“Anyway…,” said Mat, as we walked around and around. 

“I get there and my friend introduces me to a guy who pulls me aside and says ‘so, I hear you’re a mortgage broker,’ and starts pumping me about what I do — meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘what does this guy know about me, I’ve never met him before.'”

“Uh,huh.”

“Next thing I know, I’m being treated to drinks and he’s smiling and suggesting we talk again. I’m impressed at being important to this guy, obviously, a Mob guy, and I move around at the bar.”

“So, what happens next?”

“Next time I’m with my friend, his ‘friend’ happens to come by as we’re having a bite to eat. He sits down and my friend excuses himself. This guy, Tony, asks me if I could do him a favor. And, I say, ‘What kind of favor’ and he says, ‘No big deal,’ would I pick up something for him at his friend’s restaurant?” 

“I think about it and try to figure out ‘Why me?’ but I agree and stop by his friend’s place and the guy gives me an envelope to bring back to Tony. I get a REALLY nice meal while I’m there on the house and I don’t look in the envelope and hand it to Tony. He thanks me very much and puts me into something that makes me a small bundle in return.”

I don’t ask what. Mat doesn’t offer either. Clearly, it was illegal. It was drugs. And, Mat kept 100% of the take for doing the deal.

“It was great.” he said.

“And…?” I said.

“And, he asked me a couple of other times to do him a favor. Simple things. And, meantime, he put me into a couple of really simple, really profitable errands. I was making very nice money for not much effort and NO exposure as far as I was concerned. I was almost in the life, you know, like ‘Bronx Tale’ or ‘Goodfellas.’”

“Okay.”

“Then, suddenly, one day,  he asks me for his cut. And, I say, ‘What cut?”‘ 

“I see.”

“Yeah,” said Mat, smiling as we walked.

“He says to me, ‘What do you mean? ‘What cut?’ –What did you think, this is a party just for you?’ And then he takes me down to the basement of his house.”

“Shit.”

“So, now we’re in his basement and he says, close up to my face, really nasty, and scary as shit, ‘You got a couple of deals as a gift, now you work for me and I get a piece off the top. You understand?'”

“And, you understood, I’ll bet?”

“Oh, I understood alright. That’s why, when this guy was following me, the crazy guy I told you about, the one I hit with the hammer and nearly killed — that was about a deal I was handling. There was no way I could go to trial and bring anyone into the thing with a court case and witnesses and all of that shit. I had to just take it and shut up.”

“Nice. And, I thought mortgages were dangerous.”

“It was fucked up,” he said. “But, I had no choice. And, here I am. I’ve got another two years and it’s over.”

“Hopefully, I’ll be getting out with you. Merit Board in a year from this coming June and Parole two years from this February.”

“Well,” he said, “it’s a lot better than some of these guys with an L at the back end of their sentence.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You know Jose,” he said, “don’t you?”

“Yeah, he jogs a lot. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in the Yard for a while now.”

“He’s in my dorm,” said Mat “He’s really depressed. Hasn’t gone out at all. I’ve been trying to get him to come to the Gym.”

“He’s been in prison for 28 or 29 years, hasn’t he?”

“I thought it was 26? Anyway, you know why he’s here don’t you?”

They kept walking and the continuous circles were making him a little tired after having jogged for two miles.

“No,” I said, “what was it?”

“He killed a guy. Shot him six times. It was a contract killing. Just got out of the Army and he was broke.”

“Jesus. He couldn’t find a job?”

“He was young. Only 19 or 20, no money and he was a sharpshooter in the service.”

“So, I guess McDonald’s was not an option?”

“Well, looking back on it I’m sure that would’ve made more sense.” 

“So, is he EVER getting out?”

“I dunno. It’s hard to tell. I’d imagine that they’d have a hard time letting an assassin go. I like Jose, but…”

“I hear you. I’m sure the newspapers would go to town if he ever got out.”

The circular motion continued with Mat and I walking — almost two hours. Before he got back to his own bid. The flat 8 he drew.

“You know in my case I had it coming from all directions.” 

“What do you mean?”  I said.

“The night that all that shit hit the fan I was completely fucked up. It was completely unexpected when the guy drew a gun on me.”

“Where?”

“He came to my house and I let him in because we had a deal. He gets in and pulls a gun on me. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find and hit him with it.”

“Which was…?” 

“A sledgehammer.” 

“I see.”

“So, he goes down and he’s bleeding from the head. Out cold. My friends were there, couple of wiseguys and they help me carry the body out to the car and I put him in the trunk of his car.”

“Sounds like Goodfellas.”

“Well, it was like that. But, I get the body into the trunk and a big black SUV is blocking my driveway. So, we can’t get the car out.”

“Then what happened?”

“Guy wakes up, he’s all fucked up and I say to him ‘Listen, I’m saving your life, shut the fuck up and don’t ever report this.” 

“And he says, ‘yeah, thanks, don’t worry, I’ll never say a word, thanks’ and we get him into the car and close the trunk and manage to drive him around the SUV and leave him parked in front of a hospital.”

“Shit.”

“So what does he do?”

“Beats me,” I said.

“He immediately goes to the Police. Tells them I tried to kill him.”

“You just can’t trust anybody.”

“No shit.” says Mat, “I save this fucking guy’s life and what does he do — he runs to the fucking Police — after trying to kill ME!”

“Talk about ingratitude.”

“Of course, the story the Police got has no gun that he had in it. It was just me trying to rob him — when this was about money he’d taken for a drug deal and didn’t deliver to the people I knew.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, he recovered and now, who knows, after having to take a plea so I didn’t have to worry about bringing MY people into court to testify — maybe he’s still holding a grudge and will come after me when I get out?”

“After doing eight years?”

“Who knows?” he said. “I had a beautiful house with about $500,000 in equity, a beautiful daughter who’s now 6, a new Audi, and a great relationship. The house is gone, the car is gone, my girlfriend went to pieces when I went to prison and I’ve had to fight for custody of my little girl while in here — in order for my parents to take care of her. My girlfriend is gone and I have to find someone else.”

“I don’t envy you having to completely start over.”

“You know,” he said, “part of the reason I didn’t go to trial was the eyewitness from across the street. This older woman says she saw me loading a body into the trunk of a car, closing it and then driving away. It was 10:30 at night, the hood was up and the trunk was open and I’m talking to a guy who’s half delirious and bleeding in the trunk. And, the SUV was blocking her view too. How could she see me?”

“Sounds like ‘My cousin Vinnie.’”

“Yeah,” he said, unable to let it go and not listening to me. 

“But, she worked at the Chamber of Commerce and her husband was a politician. There was no chance. We couldn’t get the truth.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And, then there’s the guy who you almost killed.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “that guy.”

“Fucking ingrate.”

— From “Gulag” copyright 2025

“If you want to know who your friends are get a jail sentence.”

— Charles Bukowski

As we celebrate the New Year I reflect upon those wonderful years walking along with a close killer friend and satisfying Sunday meal in Mess Hall and conviviality of prison life in a New York State Correctional Facility. Here’s an outtake from “Gulag” for those who like True Crime and enjoy how things really are in Criminal Justice.

__________________________________________________________________________________

It was a warm August afternoon so I decided to risk a visit to the Mess Hall. The Sunday afternoon chicken was the closest thing to actual food provided at the prison. Julio walked along with me. 

His white poor-boy shirt, green chinos, and sneakers set off his half-grown beard, three missing front teeth and toothless lisp. I was in good company with my friend the killer.

I was accompanied by brutal, street-wise intelligence. Not the kind of mentor that I had been taught by in NYU Master’s program or, even at the Probation Department in the South Bronx. We began talking about two commonalities: Brooklyn and Wiseguys.

“Y’know Crazy Joe always had a BMW, did you know that?” he asked.

“No,” I said, surprised. “No one had foreign cars in those days.”

“Yeah,” he said, “after they killed him she offered it to me. I bought it for $2500 — I had plenty of drug money then, and business was good.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” he said, “she had it for a long time before she sold it to me. Great car. I won’t own anything but a BMW now. They got a ‘7’ now, it’ll probably be a ‘9’ when I get out.

We entered the Mess Hall together.

I noticed the spot where the cutting had taken place the week before. My skin crawled thinking about it and I looked around –making sure that no one was getting too close to me. 

The fact that I was hanging out with a Godfather-type — someone from the REAL neighborhood who was a Hell’s Angel and a Latin King gave me a little sense of safety. And, at 8 years younger he knew the Gallos, the Gotti’s, and quite a few of the underground people that I met on my walking tour of Little Italy that one night. The fact that I also knew people who were connected and still above ground, also impressed Julio.

“You know when my book comes out,” he said, “a lotta people are gonna want to know me. My writer — the guy whose house I lived in behind his when I was on the run — is a sweet guy. He’s the best.”

“What do you mean in the back of his house?” They were sitting at the long stainless steel table in Mess Hall with about 20 others, scarfing down potatoes that were suspiciously creamy with not a single lump — processed soy shit. The collard greens were fresh — right out of  the can that very morning. And — REAL chicken, drumsticks and breasts that we could not test for steroids — as well as a mini container of “ice cream.” 

Henry had butted into our conversation as we returned to the dorm. He bemoaned his belly. He’d grown in recent months, having been cube restricted, and unable to go to Rec didn’t help the size of his stomach. He was now 50 lbs overweight.

“Yeah,” laughed Julio, “he has a weight problem. He can’t ‘wait’ to eat. You fat fuck,” he said to Henry.

Henry turned away and laughed but was pissed off. 

Julio was not afraid of anyone.

“Where was I?” he said.

“Oh,” I said, “yeah, you were talking about Gotti.” 

“He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. They had that club over on — you know – where it splits off from Houston at 6th Avenue. What’s that? Anyway, on that block was where they had their club — you know?”

“You mean in the building where they used the upstairs for meetings?”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s it. Gravano ratted him out and got Witness Protection for all those murders and then they grabbed him in a drug deal and he was in State prison.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “and Cutler just got Peter Gotti off.”

“No kidding,” I said, “great lawyer. Too bad the Dapper Don wasn’t a little more low key.”

“I know,” he said, “and Gravano needs to watch out. I heard there’s still contracts out.”

I was bordering on not wanting to know any more.

As we talked, having just had Sunday dinner, we watched inmates in the Yard. It was a mass of inactivity. No exercise at all. Then about six officers brought a guy out of the Yard and handcuffed him, leaned him against a guard’s house and frisked him. A crowd gathered in the dorm to watch as some guy was escorted away to the Box.

My stomach grumbled. It was my first Mess Hall meal in about a week and the third in about 6 months.

As I passed Motz in the Rec room heading towards the bathroom, I asked him if he’d enjoyed the meal.

“Oh,” he said,”I don’t eat that food.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I only eat the kosher diet. You know, it’s real food.” 

“Real food?”

“Oh,” he said, moving from one foot to the other with his dark glasses staring at me intently. He formulated his words carefully with his mouth as if he were preparing to argue a legal brief.

“I used to work in the Mess Hall.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I had to get out of there. I couldn’t take it.” 

“Why? The early hours?”

He laughed. “No, I was in the military and saw action in the field, the hours don’t matter to me. No, I couldn’t take what went on there.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for one thing, the civilian food administrators would walk around and pick up food, meat, whatever, without gloves on and then drop it back on the trays. And, I would say ‘Hey, put gloves on’ and they were going to give me a ticket for opening my mouth.”

“Then I’d see guys, inmates, working there — and they had gloves on but they’d sit down and put their hands with their gloves in their pants and scratch their balls and scratch their asses and then handle the food. So, I’d say ‘you’re supposed to handle the food with gloves but you’re not supposed to put your gloves up your ass and then use those same gloves again’ and then again I was being threatened for opening my mouth.”

“Nice.”

“But, that wasn’t the worst part.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, “it was the food.” 

“What about it?”

“There are guys there that owned restaurants on the street. They would talk about the quality of the food. According to them it is the worst quality of food that can be bought. It’s really a step BELOW roadkill.”

“There’s a couple of companies that they used to buy food from,” Motz continued.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a company called Idaho Foods and another called, I think, U.S. Food — and these companies sell to all the prisons and sell absolute shit.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” he said, “even the chicken, which you like, once a week. That comes in a large plastic bag of frozen pieces that is nothing but grease. It’s completely disgusting. If you saw it, this big bag of grease with pieces of what ‘appears’ to be chicken in it you wouldn’t, couldn’t, eat it. Trust me.”

“I do. You know that they just legalized using roadkill for food consumption, right?”

“Really?” he laughed, “well, trust me when I say that the food here shouldn’t really qualify as food.”

“Well,” I said, “the chicken and potatoes aren’t bad.” “I mean, most of the time they have things like what they call ‘Turkey Tetrazzini’ on the menu. Who the fuck knows what THAT is?”

“Sure,” he laughed, “well, that’s mostly soy crap?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Well,” he said,”most of the ‘meat’ is some kind of soy concoction, very little meat of ANY sort, and whatever actually IS meat are meat by-products that you wouldn’t feed your dog. BUT,” he said, “the potatoes you like are, like 65% soy flakes. I know, I mixed them up. There are NO potatoes in that shit.”

I sighed. “I suspected as much.” 

“Well,” he said, “suspect no more.”

“I know,” I said with resignation, “the report about the processed soy causing testicular cancer really warmed my heart…”

“Among other things,” he said. “This shit really WILL kill you.”

“I know,” I said, “the C.O. told me that he was required to eat the Mess Hall food when he was training for this job and he said that he had diarrhea for 10 days until he stopped eating that food.”

“No shit,” I said.

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”

— George Carlin

I started to think about more graduate education. You know, more education, more opportunities, better pay (in my case any pay at all), benefits, status, appreciation, maybe enough money to walk around with so I had more than $20 in my pocket after being the victim of A Civil Death at the hands of a criminal D.A. in the Hamptons. I thought about Columbia, Harvard, Penn, NYU, and a few others. I wanted to talk to others about what’s really going on in the prison system and in our communities which are dumping grounds for those poor souls who are abused and then thrown back onto our streets. You see the problem, don’t you? I even told the so-called Graduate advisor at NYU that I’d like at least one professor who I would learn from to be a former inmate. He laughed. I was serious. I was pitching reform of the non-existent mental health and education system in New York prisons, after all.

Apparenntly, though, a lot of stupid people get in to those hot shit schools because they pay their way in for their kids or themselves — and the schools no longer have room for moderately smart people who live in the neighborhood. That’s why, heaven forbid, even Trump has a point. The Elitism is out of control and their policies are hypocritical.

But, I decided to test it myself. My kids all applied to NYU — where I got 3 degrees when they needed students — and the money. You know, before it became Elitist and accepted middle class and working class Americans — not just Europeans, Africans, and Arabians on International scholarships paid for by royalty or 501(c)3 liberals. So my kids applied. They’re smart but not “entitled.” They have the Stoic, Scandanavian values that believe “Its not what you say. It’s what you do that matters.”

They were all Wait-listed. In other words, NYU wasn’t getting any vig even though I’d spent a lot of time there, voted to support their endless expansions on the Community Board, and tried to be a dutiful alumni — but couldn’t afford it. After all, NYU’s endowment is $6 billion, Columbia’s is $14 Billion, Penn’s is $23 Billion and Harvard, fuggedaboudit, is at $54 Billion.

My kids went elsewhere.

I tried again just for myself. No go. It’s no longer for us, folks. The Little People. The evaporating middle class in a sea of billionaires who steal, anti-intellectual quislings who own the media, politically-entitled thugs, and celebrities — who can buy their way in. And do.

Varsity Blues now seems downright quaint.

George Carlin said it well.

——————————————————————————————————–

“There’s a reason that education sucks.
And it’s the same reason
that it will never ever, ever be fixed.

It’s never going to get any better,
don’t look for it,
be happy with what you got.

Because the owners of this country don’t want that.

I’m talking about the real owners now.
The real owners.
The big, wealthy business interests that control things
and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians.
The politicians are put there
to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.

You don’t.

You have no choice.
You have owners.
They own you.
They own everything.

They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations.
They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate,
the Congress, the state houses, and city halls.
They got the judges in their back pocket.
And they own all the big media companies
so they control just about
all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying,
lobbying to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want.
They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I’ll tell you what they don’t want.
They don’t want a population
of citizens capable of critical thinking.
They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people,
capable of critical thinking.

They’re not interested in that.
That doesn’t help them.
That’s against their interest.
That’s right.

They don’t want people who are smart enough
to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked
by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don’t want that.

You know what they want?
They want obedient workers.
Obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork
and just dumb enough, to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs,
with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits,
the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension
that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now, they’re coming for your Social Security money.
They want your fucking retirement money.
They want it back,
so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

And you know something, they’ll get it.
They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later,
because they own this fucking place.

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
You and I are not in the big club.”

― George Carlin

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings — to convert the population into specimens in a a zoo — obrdient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

— Angela Davis

Here’s a brief description from my series The Gulag describing, first hand, how our tax dollars are being spent in the New York State prison system — keeping in mind that those who have been relegated to doing time WILL be released into our community. After doing time, innocent or guilty and being ignored and discarded — WE pay the price for a Criminal Justice system that is abusive and ineffective. I spent almost 5 years interviewing them in prison.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

I met a 6′ tall black man with a ready smile and a Jamaican accent who was interested in helping other inmates.

“Hey,” he said, “how are you man?” he said, shaking my hand.

His hat, under which his hair was piled, had multi-colored bands.

“Remember me?” he said. “From IPA? My name’s Esam. “Dey call me Dreaddy.” 

“Sure,” I said, “I remember. Teaching now?”

“Yeah, pre-GED.”

“Uh-huh. How is it?”

“Well, dey don’ have class very often,” he said, “it’s like having a job you don’t go to.”

“What do you mean?” remembering my uncle talking about no-show jobs on the Brooklyn docks.

“The prison cancels the class most of the time so I don’t have to show up.”

“Why?”

“I dunno’,” he said. “I think mostly because they don’t want to be bothered.”

“So, what is pre-GED? What do you teach?”

“I try to teach some of these guys basic math, how to spell, how to read,” he said.

“How to read?”

“Oh, yeah, most’a these guys cain’ read.”

“How many would you say are unable to read in the prison?”

He thought for a minute. “Easily 50% of these guys can’t even read a few paragraphs in, let’s say, half an hour. And, then, they’d be guessing about what it said.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m serious. Half’a the guys in this prison can’t fill out an application because dey don’ know what it says. A guy came to me the other day. He had his social security number written where it asked for his name.”

“So, how do they function? How do they agree to a plea or sentence?”

“What d’you mean? Dey from the streets. Dey sell drugs, steal, do whatever dey need ta do ta survive. Reading a book ain’t part a that. Dunno ‘bout da legal stuff.”

“Can any of these guys spell?”

“A little. Words like bid, for their time here, yeah. When it gets to words that my five year old daughter can spell, they’re in trouble. Words like waist turns into waste. It’s pretty scary. Because these guys are going to be on the street again. With NO future. And, soon.”

“You like teaching?”

“I’d like to teach if they’d let me. Some of the guys actually want to learn but they cain’.

I was tempted to ask about how he saw the future of education in prisons progressing. How reduced time could be REALLY, GENUINELY tied to becoming literate. 

But, then I realized that they weren’t going to be discussing Aristotle’s tabula rasa and the philosophy of John Locke anytime soon.

It also went a long way towards explaining why so few people showed up in the Law Library to try to accelerate their release since they neither received nor could understand adequate legal help. Not only didn’t they know how to use a computer, they couldn’t read anything on it or in the books that accompanied it. For many the Law Library was a useless tool.

When I first arrived in the prison I’d discussed some ideas about mentoring inmates — teaching them how to read, how to spell, how to write some basic essays with well-formulated paragraphs. He got a few smiles.

I was in Civil Service land now.  I was the one getting an education. In the prison system, Mental Health and Education were only concepts for expanding budget demands, not for any actual implementation. Just like Criminal Justice.