Going to jail is never fun no matter where you are, but Cook County jail is incredibly intimidating. It's huge, 13000 inmates generally, and there are some scary dudes there. Processing you in is one of the worst parts. You are already worn out and scared (least I was) and then you are crammed into a holding cell that is designed to hold about 50 with 150 others. And they are just as they were when they were taken off the street, dirty, angry, and a few dopesick. On that note I have to add that the idea of being dopesick in jail is absolutely terrifying to me. It sucks under any circumstances, but there, with the guards coming down on you....yeesh. From holding you move through a chain of stations, and one of them is a lab tech who takes blood from you, presumably to check for communicable diseases. The lab tech that I saw was a short Jewish guy, and when he saw my address (for some reason my Dads address was on everything) he immediately assumed I was Jewish too. He seemed very concerned, like he wanted to help me, so I said yeah. I have had so many people think I'm Jewish I just tell people I am now, it saves time. He let me use his phone to call my Dad, and what a weird call that was. He dialed and spoke to my Dad for a second before giving me the phone. My Dad had no idea what to make of this, wondering if someone was trying to extort money from him or something. Not really that wild a thought, it's Cook County after all. Following my brief phone call my new advocate pleaded with the guards to take good care of me, and at that point I realized I had made a mistake. I could tell by the amused look on the guards' faces that this guy carried no juice whatsoever with them, and now I had their attention. I did not want that. I wanted to blend in as much as possible, or maybe as much as that was possible. One guard looked at him, looked at the stamp on my hand, and said," He's going to minimum, he'll be fine." After the lab tech the next stop on the magical mystery tour was another holding cell. The guards put me in a separate holding cell with only one other guy in. I had my own suite! The were kind enough to mention the one other occupant had scabies, presumably why he was isolated.
Then came the lovely strip search, everyone lined up down a hallway, a cold hallway, with their clothes and shoes in front of them. Spread your cheeks and cough, the whole nine. I was withdrawing from alcohol, anxious as hell in general, and at that moment suddenly sure the guards would find the ten bucks I stashed in my shoe. And it was freezing. Predictably, I was shrunk up like a stack of dimes. There I am, already having a bad day, when I here one of the guards say, "man, he must be like triple Jewish!" Thanks dude, I needed that.
Processing, which began at roughly 7pm, ended about four am, and I was just dying to go to sleep. This is minimum security in county, so the deck is not divided into cells the way you would expect (New Orleans Parish Jail is, but that's a story for a different day), there are 3 groups of fifty bunk beds each, so 300 guys. Picnic stables down the middle of the floor and a few tv's. One of them was always tuned to telemundo, and I watched a fair amount of soccer with the Mexicans who couldn't speak english. They were so nice to me. The other tv's....guys wanted to watch COPS all the time. I could never understand that. I don't know if they hoped to see themselves or what, but I can tell you I had had my fill of COPS. But I digress. It's 4am and I get my bunk, they were out of pillows and blankets but that proved to be a lesser problem than this one: You can't get into your bunk until you have taken a shower, you can't shower without shower shoes which they don't provide. Just before my head exploded a felt a tap on my leg. The guy on the lower bunk next to mine, a biker dude named Kevin, pointed at his shower shoes on the floor and told me I could use them, Hallelujah! I showered then lay on my bare bunk curled up as much as I could to maintain warmth, and got a couple hours of sleep. The next day I would get to learn about my new environment.
Some early observations...minimum was a workers deck, everyone had a job, and these jobs covered all three shifts. People were coming and going at all hours, and the lights were never turned all the way off. I was on an upper bunk, with a florescent light 5 feet above me that never turned off. Sleep was just not happening and not only for that reason. 13000 inmates to feed at Cook County. Our deck was fed first. Sounds good huh? Breakfast came at 3:30 am! Just about the time you are really getting to sleep you had to wake up to eat. Yes, you were welcome to sleep though it, and I made that mistake just once. They feed you just enough to survive, skip a meal and you will be starving. At least the open floor plan allowed people to wake you up to eat. Of course, the lack of bars also meant anyone could get at you, at anytime. I'll come back to that later. This was 2004, and smoking was still allowed in jail, everywhere. Commissary sold cigarettes, and they also sold tobacco and papers, which was a cheaper alternative. All those people with idle time, so much smoking....I was a smoker and a week of that air and those damn hand rolled smokes and I thought I was gonna horc up a lung. I felt for the non smokers. When I woke up that first day I wanted a smoke bad, and my mission was to find some. I did, after all, have the ten bucks I smuggled in. Found a guy who would sell me some, funny enough he thought I wanted a dime bag of weed. Weed makes me paranoid, and I needed no help with that, so I bought 20 handrolls for ten bucks. I know, I know, I overpaid terribly. If the guards had seen that transaction they would have known for sure I wasn't a Jew. But you really aren't allowed to have money, so it's not like he could give me change, and the number of people who will take money for something of real value was small. Why would you want cash? Money on your books for commissary, sure, but cash? Nothing to spend it on, unless you hold it for a trip to the Popeye's across the street on your out date. So I smoked and endeavored to learn about my new place. The people around me. Their hopes and dreams.
That was when I met Satan. Satan was a Puerto Rican gangleader who was on the top bunk directly behind me. The bunks were spaced so close you almost had to turn sideways to walk between them, maybe two feet apart at most. Satan. I kid you not. He had Satan tattooed across his upper back and an enormous pentagram. Had a copy of Anton's Satanic Bible. I really didn't care much about that, in fact we had an in depth conversation about it at one point. Everyone in his life was Catholic, and no one knew a thing about it. I'm no Satanist, but I knew enough to hold a conversation. Here's what I did care about. Because he was a leader, there were Rican gangsters clustered around his bunk at all hours, which meant they were clustered around me too. I'm not intimidating now, but at least I'm big. I wasn't then, I was white and skinny. They would fuck with me from time to time, in retrospect just trying to scare me, and mission accomplished. To my credit I never showed it. In fact, the first day I'm in there a few of his guys were talking to him and one called him Satan. I looked up and, no shit, said, "Oh Satan! I thought your name was Santa, and these guys were like your elves." He must have been high, cause after what seemed like an eternity he laughed. Know what they did to cover up the smell of pot smoke? Blew baby powder into the air. Worked damn well. So that was my neighbor to the back, I got luckier with the others. Next to me and below, Kevin, biker, friendly guy. Above him another white dude about my age, we became fast friends but damned if I can remember his name. In front and on top was a black dude named Eric. I mention color because although most people in the place were ganged up, everyone seemed to divide by race. When you're one of maybe 7 white dudes, that leaves you rather isolated. Eric was a good guy, not ganged up, he had a carpet cleaning business, wife, kids...the whole shot. The cops pulled him over for a routine traffic stop and pulled him out of the car and hassled him. The bent him over the hood and had one cuff on when he went nuts. "I started swinging my arms like a gorilla man" were his exact words. The dangling cuff caught the female cop in the head, and when back up arrived they worked him over pretty good. He was doing six months for it. Eric and I talked a lot. He had a carpet cleaning business, and two cars. His beater, and his Chrysler Concorde with only 40,000 miles that he never drove. Wanted it to stay nice forever, I think it was the first nice thing he ever had. While other guys spent their commissary money on cigarettes he bought envelopes and stamps. He wrote his family frequently. He also bought food, and he let me keep my stuff in his box. My stuff would be immediately stolen, but no one touched his. He wasn't in a gang, but he was big and black. He was left alone. The things you remember, my first day before we had ever spoken, I was sitting on my bunk hating life, and I saw him go into his bin and get a Little Debbie oatmeal pie. As he opened it to eat it he glanced my way, and I must have looked so sad, because he stared for a minute then grabbed another one and tossed it up to me. I wish I had the words to describe how much that meant at that moment. Later, he taught me how to make dip. Dip is a jailhouse tradition that extends across the country, I met a guy who was in county in Denver and they called it spread, but it was the same thing. You buy ramen noodles, a summer sausage, fritos, and save some bologna from lunch. Cut the meats into small bits, crush the noodles up, and put them in a plastic garbage bag. Fill the bag with hot water and shake for about five minutes and the noodles will soften. Serve and enjoy. Commissary came Saturday mornings, and Saturday night me him and another guy made dip and I swear it was the best thing I had ever tasted. I went to sleep with a full belly that night, a rarity. That same night some guys at the other end of the floor made hooch, and Satan went over to get drunk. I was horrified at the idea of him being drunk, way to easy to go from messing with me to messing me up. As luck would have it, the hooch made him massively ill. My night was great on many levels.
Back to my first day. I have to share this, cause this is one for the ages. At the far end of the floor, relative to my bunk anyway, was a small room with the stairs that led out. Work groups assembled here, and you were not allowed to be in there unless you were going to work. Well I didn't know that. I was looking out the windows at the same end of the floor and saw a guy I had sat with in processing sitting in the room. I reached in to slap hands with him. Bad move. The guard, nicknamed the beast, whirled at me at informed me with several trenchant remarks I'll not repeat that I shouldn't be in there, not even reaching in to slap hands. I tried to explain it was my first day, but he really wasn't trying to hear all that. So here is what he made me do. It's mid day, the tv's are on, people are milling about playing spades and what not. Open time. He made me walk out to the middle of the floor and yell as loud as I could "I have angered the beast and ruined it for everyone". After which they called 1 on 1, which meant go to your bunks, tv's off, etc.. As I walked across the floor to my bunk I felt certain that I was walking to my death. Thank all gods big and small my bunk group , my "house", was the furthest away from where this happened. I jumped on my bunk and laid there, listening to the guys around me asking each other what happened. I did not volunteer the answer to that question.
As my first night in approached I knew I would not be able to sleep, or even stay still. I had known that I was going to jail for awhile, and I had been drinking heavily. I was now detoxing. The guards asked for a volunteer to work overnight and I jumped at the chance. The called it waterworld, and I soon saw why. It was kitchen cleanup, they put you in rubber boots and a suit and you sprayed trays. 13000 inmates man. That's a lot of trays, and indeed I got soaked to the bone, but at the end of the night I got a great meal. The work crews were run by outside employees, not guards, and they were pretty nice. Aramark, I think, did food service. Once work was done they made a meal just for us, noodles, chicken, can't remember what else, but man was it good. I got back up to the deck about an hour before my real job was supposed to start. The guards were going to pull me off because I just worked but I protested. No way I wanted to sit around all day. I pulled lawn duty, outside weed whacking around the super max facility, and they told us if you find a weapon and turn it in you get two days off your time. I was instantly alert and attentive. I didn't find one, but here's what did happen that was almost as good. We had split into two groups, and mine finished first so we were just laying in the grass waiting on the others. The guy leading my crew, again, not a guard, an outside employee, started talking about how he was screwed in his car loan. My eyes lit up. I was a sales manager at a car dealership! I knew exactly where he was, and how to get him out of it. While the other guys went back to work I spent an hour with this guy detailing my solution, complete with the names and phone numbers of people to call. He appreciated it, and he did me an enormous favor. He switched me to laundry.
Let me explain what a coup this was. Laundry is not done on premises, it is shipped out. There were about 8 of us working in laundry and all we had to do was roll these massive bins onto a scale, record the weight, then wait for the truck. Roll them into the truck, then wait several hours. Another truck came back and we rolled that stuff in and weighed it. That's it, but that's not the half of it. First, because we worked in laundry, we got brand new clothes. This sounds hard to believe, but clothes are a big deal in jail. Lots of guys wearing threadbare DOC stuff that won't even stay around the waist. The gangsters wanted to look good. I could smuggle clothes out and trade for damn near anything, and I sure looked sharp too. Second, we had tons of free time, and a tv with cable and movie channels, as well as a radio. The one guard who spent the day in there was cool. We never gave him any trouble,so he was free to do whatever he wanted. Third, and best of all, we got food. The people in processing would get pre packaged bologna sandwiches and a little bottle of kool aid. The extras were put in a milk crate and dropped off to us. We had a microwave and a fridge, and that bitch was stocked with bread, bolgna, cheese, and kool aid. Microwave bologna till it's crisp and it's not half bad. So we watched movies and ate as much as possible. Once a day the women who were processed were marched by our open door. We all gathered to watch that parade. Granted, the looked pretty bedraggled, but they were women, and the sight of a live woman was uncommon enough.
My transfer to laundry made life infinitely more bearable. I snagged Satan some brand new fits and that chilled him out (a bit, anyway). You know, he terrorized me from time to time, but he never really did anything to me. Gave me a hot foot once, but that's more prank than terror. And he was kinda funny. When he was high we had some long conversations and he would actually be nice. On the topic of weed. Two bunks in front of me was a white guy named Steve, also in laundry, and Steve smoked like 5 joints a day. In jail. He had friends on the outside pay whoever, and he got it inside. You ever hear on tv that the guards bring drugs into jail? 100% true. They collaborate with the gangs.
One more funny moment. I'm sitting on my bunk and Satan nails me in the back with an orange. I turned around, said oh haha, and threw it back. He then decided to throw it at Steve, who was two bunks in front of me. He overthrew it and hit the guard sitting at the desk open on the floor. Needless to say, she went ballistic. "Who the fuck threw that? Who was it? I'll burn this whole deck till I find out!" (meaning no tv or anything else). Everyone in our house knew, all 100 of us, and no one said a word. After a minute she said we would all be on our bunks till she found out who it was. And walked away. After a couple minutes some grumbling started. The black guys in our house were not thrilled with this. Then a young black kid stands up and says, "Y'all know who it was, but I'll take the hit. I'm not gonna see the whole deck get burned all weekend" and starts off to the guards office. Now the grumbling from the black guys is turning to outrage that one of their own is taking a hit for something Satan did. The three "houses", groups of bunks, have a fair amount of space between them, but not so much that everyone else couldn't hear the whole thing. The black guys in our house start to get up and band together. The Ricans start gathering around Satan's bunk, and almost magically, guys of both groups from the other houses slip in. That really was amazing. They just appeared, so now the groups are getting big. I'm sitting indian style on my bunk in absolute glee. I was no part of it, and no way I would catch a stray shot up on my bunk. I had a skybox seat to a gangfight. I'll say this for Satan, the guy had balls. He put on some work gloves, looked at his boys and said, "You ready to do this?" and jumped off his bunk. They were heavily outnumbered. The Ricans were the biggest shit starters in the place, but they had no chance against the black dudes. We're talking 18-20 against 50, easy. And if the whole floor got into it it would be even more lopsided. The two groups squared off and approached each other, the black guys screaming about how wrong it was for the kid to take a hit for Satan. Just as they closed to fist range guards came flying out and it dissolved. I was thoroughly disappointed. In the end Satan did own up, and when he explained to the guard he was throwing the orange at Steve, jokingly, she was ok with it. Oh the drama a piece of produce can produce.
And then my out day came, and I was glad. I went directly to Popeye's chicken, something everyone talked about inside. My taste of jail was different than I expected. My biggest fear became my own lack of control over the situation. The guards didn't want to hear anything, there was no one to talk to. Some guys missed their out dates and served extra time because of a clerical error, and the guards wouldn't take the time to check. I feared I could bounce around that place like a red rubber ball. All's well that ends well I guess. Wish I could have kept my DOC uniform. It looked good on me.
Then came the lovely strip search, everyone lined up down a hallway, a cold hallway, with their clothes and shoes in front of them. Spread your cheeks and cough, the whole nine. I was withdrawing from alcohol, anxious as hell in general, and at that moment suddenly sure the guards would find the ten bucks I stashed in my shoe. And it was freezing. Predictably, I was shrunk up like a stack of dimes. There I am, already having a bad day, when I here one of the guards say, "man, he must be like triple Jewish!" Thanks dude, I needed that.
Processing, which began at roughly 7pm, ended about four am, and I was just dying to go to sleep. This is minimum security in county, so the deck is not divided into cells the way you would expect (New Orleans Parish Jail is, but that's a story for a different day), there are 3 groups of fifty bunk beds each, so 300 guys. Picnic stables down the middle of the floor and a few tv's. One of them was always tuned to telemundo, and I watched a fair amount of soccer with the Mexicans who couldn't speak english. They were so nice to me. The other tv's....guys wanted to watch COPS all the time. I could never understand that. I don't know if they hoped to see themselves or what, but I can tell you I had had my fill of COPS. But I digress. It's 4am and I get my bunk, they were out of pillows and blankets but that proved to be a lesser problem than this one: You can't get into your bunk until you have taken a shower, you can't shower without shower shoes which they don't provide. Just before my head exploded a felt a tap on my leg. The guy on the lower bunk next to mine, a biker dude named Kevin, pointed at his shower shoes on the floor and told me I could use them, Hallelujah! I showered then lay on my bare bunk curled up as much as I could to maintain warmth, and got a couple hours of sleep. The next day I would get to learn about my new environment.
Some early observations...minimum was a workers deck, everyone had a job, and these jobs covered all three shifts. People were coming and going at all hours, and the lights were never turned all the way off. I was on an upper bunk, with a florescent light 5 feet above me that never turned off. Sleep was just not happening and not only for that reason. 13000 inmates to feed at Cook County. Our deck was fed first. Sounds good huh? Breakfast came at 3:30 am! Just about the time you are really getting to sleep you had to wake up to eat. Yes, you were welcome to sleep though it, and I made that mistake just once. They feed you just enough to survive, skip a meal and you will be starving. At least the open floor plan allowed people to wake you up to eat. Of course, the lack of bars also meant anyone could get at you, at anytime. I'll come back to that later. This was 2004, and smoking was still allowed in jail, everywhere. Commissary sold cigarettes, and they also sold tobacco and papers, which was a cheaper alternative. All those people with idle time, so much smoking....I was a smoker and a week of that air and those damn hand rolled smokes and I thought I was gonna horc up a lung. I felt for the non smokers. When I woke up that first day I wanted a smoke bad, and my mission was to find some. I did, after all, have the ten bucks I smuggled in. Found a guy who would sell me some, funny enough he thought I wanted a dime bag of weed. Weed makes me paranoid, and I needed no help with that, so I bought 20 handrolls for ten bucks. I know, I know, I overpaid terribly. If the guards had seen that transaction they would have known for sure I wasn't a Jew. But you really aren't allowed to have money, so it's not like he could give me change, and the number of people who will take money for something of real value was small. Why would you want cash? Money on your books for commissary, sure, but cash? Nothing to spend it on, unless you hold it for a trip to the Popeye's across the street on your out date. So I smoked and endeavored to learn about my new place. The people around me. Their hopes and dreams.
That was when I met Satan. Satan was a Puerto Rican gangleader who was on the top bunk directly behind me. The bunks were spaced so close you almost had to turn sideways to walk between them, maybe two feet apart at most. Satan. I kid you not. He had Satan tattooed across his upper back and an enormous pentagram. Had a copy of Anton's Satanic Bible. I really didn't care much about that, in fact we had an in depth conversation about it at one point. Everyone in his life was Catholic, and no one knew a thing about it. I'm no Satanist, but I knew enough to hold a conversation. Here's what I did care about. Because he was a leader, there were Rican gangsters clustered around his bunk at all hours, which meant they were clustered around me too. I'm not intimidating now, but at least I'm big. I wasn't then, I was white and skinny. They would fuck with me from time to time, in retrospect just trying to scare me, and mission accomplished. To my credit I never showed it. In fact, the first day I'm in there a few of his guys were talking to him and one called him Satan. I looked up and, no shit, said, "Oh Satan! I thought your name was Santa, and these guys were like your elves." He must have been high, cause after what seemed like an eternity he laughed. Know what they did to cover up the smell of pot smoke? Blew baby powder into the air. Worked damn well. So that was my neighbor to the back, I got luckier with the others. Next to me and below, Kevin, biker, friendly guy. Above him another white dude about my age, we became fast friends but damned if I can remember his name. In front and on top was a black dude named Eric. I mention color because although most people in the place were ganged up, everyone seemed to divide by race. When you're one of maybe 7 white dudes, that leaves you rather isolated. Eric was a good guy, not ganged up, he had a carpet cleaning business, wife, kids...the whole shot. The cops pulled him over for a routine traffic stop and pulled him out of the car and hassled him. The bent him over the hood and had one cuff on when he went nuts. "I started swinging my arms like a gorilla man" were his exact words. The dangling cuff caught the female cop in the head, and when back up arrived they worked him over pretty good. He was doing six months for it. Eric and I talked a lot. He had a carpet cleaning business, and two cars. His beater, and his Chrysler Concorde with only 40,000 miles that he never drove. Wanted it to stay nice forever, I think it was the first nice thing he ever had. While other guys spent their commissary money on cigarettes he bought envelopes and stamps. He wrote his family frequently. He also bought food, and he let me keep my stuff in his box. My stuff would be immediately stolen, but no one touched his. He wasn't in a gang, but he was big and black. He was left alone. The things you remember, my first day before we had ever spoken, I was sitting on my bunk hating life, and I saw him go into his bin and get a Little Debbie oatmeal pie. As he opened it to eat it he glanced my way, and I must have looked so sad, because he stared for a minute then grabbed another one and tossed it up to me. I wish I had the words to describe how much that meant at that moment. Later, he taught me how to make dip. Dip is a jailhouse tradition that extends across the country, I met a guy who was in county in Denver and they called it spread, but it was the same thing. You buy ramen noodles, a summer sausage, fritos, and save some bologna from lunch. Cut the meats into small bits, crush the noodles up, and put them in a plastic garbage bag. Fill the bag with hot water and shake for about five minutes and the noodles will soften. Serve and enjoy. Commissary came Saturday mornings, and Saturday night me him and another guy made dip and I swear it was the best thing I had ever tasted. I went to sleep with a full belly that night, a rarity. That same night some guys at the other end of the floor made hooch, and Satan went over to get drunk. I was horrified at the idea of him being drunk, way to easy to go from messing with me to messing me up. As luck would have it, the hooch made him massively ill. My night was great on many levels.
Back to my first day. I have to share this, cause this is one for the ages. At the far end of the floor, relative to my bunk anyway, was a small room with the stairs that led out. Work groups assembled here, and you were not allowed to be in there unless you were going to work. Well I didn't know that. I was looking out the windows at the same end of the floor and saw a guy I had sat with in processing sitting in the room. I reached in to slap hands with him. Bad move. The guard, nicknamed the beast, whirled at me at informed me with several trenchant remarks I'll not repeat that I shouldn't be in there, not even reaching in to slap hands. I tried to explain it was my first day, but he really wasn't trying to hear all that. So here is what he made me do. It's mid day, the tv's are on, people are milling about playing spades and what not. Open time. He made me walk out to the middle of the floor and yell as loud as I could "I have angered the beast and ruined it for everyone". After which they called 1 on 1, which meant go to your bunks, tv's off, etc.. As I walked across the floor to my bunk I felt certain that I was walking to my death. Thank all gods big and small my bunk group , my "house", was the furthest away from where this happened. I jumped on my bunk and laid there, listening to the guys around me asking each other what happened. I did not volunteer the answer to that question.
As my first night in approached I knew I would not be able to sleep, or even stay still. I had known that I was going to jail for awhile, and I had been drinking heavily. I was now detoxing. The guards asked for a volunteer to work overnight and I jumped at the chance. The called it waterworld, and I soon saw why. It was kitchen cleanup, they put you in rubber boots and a suit and you sprayed trays. 13000 inmates man. That's a lot of trays, and indeed I got soaked to the bone, but at the end of the night I got a great meal. The work crews were run by outside employees, not guards, and they were pretty nice. Aramark, I think, did food service. Once work was done they made a meal just for us, noodles, chicken, can't remember what else, but man was it good. I got back up to the deck about an hour before my real job was supposed to start. The guards were going to pull me off because I just worked but I protested. No way I wanted to sit around all day. I pulled lawn duty, outside weed whacking around the super max facility, and they told us if you find a weapon and turn it in you get two days off your time. I was instantly alert and attentive. I didn't find one, but here's what did happen that was almost as good. We had split into two groups, and mine finished first so we were just laying in the grass waiting on the others. The guy leading my crew, again, not a guard, an outside employee, started talking about how he was screwed in his car loan. My eyes lit up. I was a sales manager at a car dealership! I knew exactly where he was, and how to get him out of it. While the other guys went back to work I spent an hour with this guy detailing my solution, complete with the names and phone numbers of people to call. He appreciated it, and he did me an enormous favor. He switched me to laundry.
Let me explain what a coup this was. Laundry is not done on premises, it is shipped out. There were about 8 of us working in laundry and all we had to do was roll these massive bins onto a scale, record the weight, then wait for the truck. Roll them into the truck, then wait several hours. Another truck came back and we rolled that stuff in and weighed it. That's it, but that's not the half of it. First, because we worked in laundry, we got brand new clothes. This sounds hard to believe, but clothes are a big deal in jail. Lots of guys wearing threadbare DOC stuff that won't even stay around the waist. The gangsters wanted to look good. I could smuggle clothes out and trade for damn near anything, and I sure looked sharp too. Second, we had tons of free time, and a tv with cable and movie channels, as well as a radio. The one guard who spent the day in there was cool. We never gave him any trouble,so he was free to do whatever he wanted. Third, and best of all, we got food. The people in processing would get pre packaged bologna sandwiches and a little bottle of kool aid. The extras were put in a milk crate and dropped off to us. We had a microwave and a fridge, and that bitch was stocked with bread, bolgna, cheese, and kool aid. Microwave bologna till it's crisp and it's not half bad. So we watched movies and ate as much as possible. Once a day the women who were processed were marched by our open door. We all gathered to watch that parade. Granted, the looked pretty bedraggled, but they were women, and the sight of a live woman was uncommon enough.
My transfer to laundry made life infinitely more bearable. I snagged Satan some brand new fits and that chilled him out (a bit, anyway). You know, he terrorized me from time to time, but he never really did anything to me. Gave me a hot foot once, but that's more prank than terror. And he was kinda funny. When he was high we had some long conversations and he would actually be nice. On the topic of weed. Two bunks in front of me was a white guy named Steve, also in laundry, and Steve smoked like 5 joints a day. In jail. He had friends on the outside pay whoever, and he got it inside. You ever hear on tv that the guards bring drugs into jail? 100% true. They collaborate with the gangs.
One more funny moment. I'm sitting on my bunk and Satan nails me in the back with an orange. I turned around, said oh haha, and threw it back. He then decided to throw it at Steve, who was two bunks in front of me. He overthrew it and hit the guard sitting at the desk open on the floor. Needless to say, she went ballistic. "Who the fuck threw that? Who was it? I'll burn this whole deck till I find out!" (meaning no tv or anything else). Everyone in our house knew, all 100 of us, and no one said a word. After a minute she said we would all be on our bunks till she found out who it was. And walked away. After a couple minutes some grumbling started. The black guys in our house were not thrilled with this. Then a young black kid stands up and says, "Y'all know who it was, but I'll take the hit. I'm not gonna see the whole deck get burned all weekend" and starts off to the guards office. Now the grumbling from the black guys is turning to outrage that one of their own is taking a hit for something Satan did. The three "houses", groups of bunks, have a fair amount of space between them, but not so much that everyone else couldn't hear the whole thing. The black guys in our house start to get up and band together. The Ricans start gathering around Satan's bunk, and almost magically, guys of both groups from the other houses slip in. That really was amazing. They just appeared, so now the groups are getting big. I'm sitting indian style on my bunk in absolute glee. I was no part of it, and no way I would catch a stray shot up on my bunk. I had a skybox seat to a gangfight. I'll say this for Satan, the guy had balls. He put on some work gloves, looked at his boys and said, "You ready to do this?" and jumped off his bunk. They were heavily outnumbered. The Ricans were the biggest shit starters in the place, but they had no chance against the black dudes. We're talking 18-20 against 50, easy. And if the whole floor got into it it would be even more lopsided. The two groups squared off and approached each other, the black guys screaming about how wrong it was for the kid to take a hit for Satan. Just as they closed to fist range guards came flying out and it dissolved. I was thoroughly disappointed. In the end Satan did own up, and when he explained to the guard he was throwing the orange at Steve, jokingly, she was ok with it. Oh the drama a piece of produce can produce.
And then my out day came, and I was glad. I went directly to Popeye's chicken, something everyone talked about inside. My taste of jail was different than I expected. My biggest fear became my own lack of control over the situation. The guards didn't want to hear anything, there was no one to talk to. Some guys missed their out dates and served extra time because of a clerical error, and the guards wouldn't take the time to check. I feared I could bounce around that place like a red rubber ball. All's well that ends well I guess. Wish I could have kept my DOC uniform. It looked good on me.
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