Periodically I go to a psychiatrist to discuss any problems or progress I've been having over the past several months and how I'm coping with my overall situation. Here are some excerpts from the transcript of the latest session:
Psy: You said before that you had some trouble "fitting in" with the people at the Salvation Army Vocational program. Could you elaborate on that?
Me: You know, before I entered this program, I had never known anyone who had been incarcerated. None of my friends had ever been to jail or prison ...
Psy: That you know of.
Me: Well, yeah but ... Okay. Anyway, the only thing I know about prison is what I've seen on TV like "Prison Break" or in movies like "The Shawshank Redemption". Now I'm around men and women who have been in prison, and have experienced it firsthand. Some of them have been behind bars for years, for some really heavy offenses.
Psy: They intimidate you, then. Do they physically threaten you in any way?
Me: No, I haven't had any direct confrontations with anyone there. I try to keep a low profile. But these guys I'm talking about seem to have carried their prison experiences into the SA program, which results in something like a prison atmosphere where I live.
Psy: A prison atmosphere?
Me: It can be something as simple as some of those guys going around and calling you, "cellie." As in cellmate, you know? When I think of it, the SA dorms where I live could be seen as a kind of minimum risk prison. You have to sign in and sign out whenever you leave the property, and surrender your ID at the desk. They have strict curfews which if broken can result in harsh penalties like being kicked off the property for 24-48 hours. You have to take a beathalyzer test whenever you re-enter the SA campus. All your actions are monitored on video. Stuff like that.
Psy: SA likely has those restrictions and rules in place for a reason.
Me: I know. I'm just saying that it all tends to make me feel somewhat sequestered at times. And to be honest a lot of that stuff shouldn't apply to me anyway. I've never been in jail, and I don't have drug or alcohol addictions. Sometimes I think it's unfair I'm subject to the same restrictions as the others.
Psy: You believe you're better than your fellow clients at SA?
Me: Not better ... Well, maybe I do think I'm "better', in a sense. I mean, I can read and speak in complete sentences. A lot of these guys are nearly illiterate. Their speech is so ridden with accents, twangs, regionalisms and whatnot that it can be difficult to understand them at times. They probably think I'm hard of hearing because I have to ask them to repeat themselves so often. Often, there is a lot of street slang that I've never heard before. Usually, I'll just smile and nod when I don't completely get what they're saying. And it's not just the clients. The caseworkers -- who are often former clients and recovering addicts themselves -- have a tendency toward bad grammar like "Ain't none of y'all going anywhere til we get your IDs" or the like.
Psy: And you feel that separates you from them?
Me: Not to brag, but my speech and diction are clear; I worked in voiceover, so it had to be intelligible. I don't have a college degree, but I have taken some college level courses and wouldn't exactly call myself a dimwit. Put it this way: I'm smart enough to admit my ignorance when or if the occasion arises. And I'd like to think I possess a fair degree of common sense. I actually value that quality over a formal education; I can find plenty of people who possess degrees but are still lacking in common sense and common courtesy for that matter.. Present company excluded, of course.
Psy: What's that? I was posting on Facebook.
Me: I said, 'Present company ...' Never mind. It's just that sometimes I feel like I've been dropped into a foreign country and I don't know the language. Like the other day when I was walking down the hall. I hear two white guys reminiscing about their prison time. Talking about walking the yard, and how much fun it was lifting weights and smoking with their homies. About how they would hang with the whites and Mexicans, but not the n*****s.
Not that they were racist, of course; it just would look good. The Aryans might take it upon themselves to frag them as race traitors if they hung around blacks. They started talking about all the changes made since they were inside, and compared all they prisons in which they'd been incarcerated over the years. Did you know that in California prisons that snitches and 'cho-mos' were kept separated from the general population and had their own yard?
Psy: I can't say I did. And what are 'cho-mos?'
Me: Prison slang for child molesters. See what you can learn if you're listening? The thing that freaked my out was the tone in which they talked about prison, like they were nostalgic. Like they missed it and wanted to go back. Frankly, I don't doubt many of them will return. It's amazing that they continue to focus on those experiences instead of putting them in the past and moving forward. You'd think the last thing an ex-con would want to do is keep re-living the past.
I was brought up to believe you obeyed the law, stayed out of trouble, and never saw the inside of a jail or prison. From the viewpoint of these SA clients, I've got it all all backwards. They make it sound like a badge of honor to have been incarcerated. When they talk about their experiences, they sound proud of their 'accomplishments'. It just doesn't make any sense to me. What do you think, Doc?
Psy: About what?
Me: Haven't you been listening?
Psy: I had some important texting to do. Go on.
Me: Right. It's just that hearing that sort of subject matter spoken of in such a casual manner is bizarre to me; I just can't understand how they consider their experiences to be 'normal'. There's apparently some sort of sign language developed in prison, too. You'll often see guys flashing their fingers in weird configurations and other ex-cellies will understand it. It's sort of like gang signs, I guess.
And it's not just the guys. A lot of the girls in the SA program often talking about how their participation is part of their parole; that's a word you hear thrown around a lot: Parole. It's not uncommon to hear them talk about seeing their PO (parole officer), or comparing notes on which PO is a prick and which isn't. It can be sobering to hear them say that if they give up on the program or walk away, they'll be in violation and immediately be subject to re-incarceration.
Rain Man, the guy on my culinary class team is one such. His parole is contingent on staying with SA. Otherwise he'll go back to the joint here in Nevada. As if that's not bad enough, he's also subject to doing time back east as well. He obviously has a lot riding on this, but he's also given hints that he could buck and run is so pressured. He says he's spent most of his adult life in various prisons around the US.
Psy: You were talking about the women?
Me: Oh, now you're paying attention. Yeah, the women seem just as proud of their jail time as the guys. One of my kitchen co-workers and fellow students is a large black woman named P. She actually has experience at the Cordon Bleu school of cooking but dropped out before completing the course. It may have had something to do with the story she recently told in the kitchen:
She'd been doing drugs with her baby daddy and had been dealing as well. One night the cops smashed down her door and raided the apartment in which she stayed with her family. The kids are screaming, cops are barking orders, and she ran to the bathroom to hide her stash. She flushes the toilet to make it seem she flushed the drugs, but the cops aren't fooled.
Two male officers take her to the bedroom and tell her to spread. She says, 'I almost hope they do search me, except one of them's a n****r with big-ass hands and looks like he want to go digging down there. And if two dudes try it, then I can get a lawyer to go after them.' But a female cop is called in to do the search. And, 'that bitch went all up inside my p***y. I mean all up in there, like she was gay or something. And yeah, she found it all right. Called it buried treasure and all those motherf*****s laughed. I said, s**t, I already got two busts, now I gotta go back inside.'
And she was laughing about it. Acting like it was a great time in her life, getting searched and arrested, and having to go back to prison. It makes no sense to me. It's crazy, right?
Psy: About as crazy as a man talking to himself by using the device of holding a conversation with an imaginary character.
Me: Like a psychiatrist?
Psy: That wouldn't be crazy. That would be insane.
So there's a little taste of what goes on behind the closed doors of my shrink's office. Next time I'll get back to more updates on the travesty that is my experience in the culinary class and how it's taking over my life. Whether that's a bad thing or a good thing is still open to debate. For now, that's a wrap. Having a good day?
Quote of the Day:
"I'll worry about dying in the next life."
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