MY FOURTH CELLIE ... HE SHOT A MAN IN THE THROAT AND ANOTHER IN THE CHEST ...

BUT OTHER THAN THAT HE WAS A NICE GUY ...

DAY 26 … Dear diary …

At last ... he is gone ...

My third cellie - Eric the terrible - was called to the window and he’s on his way out! At last! I have the cell to myself until? I’m taking the bottom bunk for the time being; there’s a premium on the bottom bunk. It’s a pain to climb to the top bunk but worse is the overhead light which is always on. It’s dimmed at night after 10 pm, but it’s still horrendously bright and hard to sleep by. Why do they do this? Because the COs make their rounds with what seems like a searchlight, once or twice each night to see who is dead and who is still alive! That seems macabre but it has happened in some jails when an inmate had expired and no one knew it for a day or two. It’s very rare but makes for bad publicity and bad policy. So the jail protocol is to keep the cells always lit, even if only dimly lit at night. You can’t cover your face with a towel because it’s forbidden. They have to see at least the flickering of an eyelid to know that you're still alive. Some of the nicer COs just let it go. Over time, you discover the personalities of inmates but you also that of the COs.

I’ve written before about Eric the Terrible, but honestly, he was not all bad. He was an odd bird. He waxed extremely hot or extremely cold. He was a devout Muslim, having converted in “the pen”. He even learned to read a bit in Arabic while in prison when he joined with “The Muslim Brothers”. He had a Koran in the cell and he showed me a few phrases in Arabic. He had served 10 years for robbery and attempted rape. He got out in 2004. Think about that for a minute. That means that he had consistently registered as a sex offender every 90 days for nearly ten years, but one day he forgot and landed back in jail. I have made the point before, but it seemed to be pretty clear to me that his memory was failing. A man who remembers to register every 3 months for nearly 10 years, and then one day forgets for no good reason needs a better solution than to be thrown back in jail for 90 days.

Inasmuch as I had a (stress-related) body odor problem, Eric was not just clean, but hyper-clean to the point of being compulsively obsessive about it (cleanliness is next to godliness in prison. That’s a chapter in itself!) He would rinse out his socks and his underwear at least twice a day, and he kept his prayer corner meticulously clean. I have to confess that seeing his underwear just hanging there to dry every day above my head felt disconcerting. What kind of a neighborhood was this anyway?

But he kept clean not just his cell. The pod as well. In spite of having over 25 men with varying standards of cleanliness, the pod was meticulously clean; and that’s because Eric saw to it that it would be. “What are you … a man or a boy?” he would yell. He swept the place clean several times a day. And you could tell it made a difference days after he left. The pod started looking slovenly, a bit ragged at the edges. Crumpled pieces of paper were slowly gathering, like truant kids in various corners of the pod, something Eric never tolerated. He would have chased them out with a broomstick. You never realize how valuable someone is until he’s gone.

So, he was gone, and I had a single cell, the envy of the pod. Inmates want a cell to themselves for obvious reasons. Privacy. The younger inmates wanted some private time alone. But that was the furthest thing from my mind. The very idea horrified me. At the time I think I would have willingly cut it off and become a eunuch like that ancient Christian monk Origen did. I wanted a single cell just for the solitude.

Origen emasculating himself

I couldn’t have done that. I only had a spork.

It felt like I had been here already forever, and I had already written over 200 pages in my diary, but barely a month had passed. I had that cell alone for 3 days. My fourth cellie came on day 29; he was 43. He called himself TJ.

When he came in I knew almost right away that he would want the bottom bunk. He was a bit overweight, and climbing to the top bunk would be an issue. He made it a point to let me know right away that he had a bad back, and that he needed to have the bottom bunk. “I can show you the paperwork if you want me to,” he said. I should have replied, “look, I can see you’re overweight, and getting up there won’t be easy; but OK - we’ll just pretend you have a bad back”. But I didn’t. Maybe I should have asked for the “paperwork”. What would that have looked like I wonder?

That’s as basic as it gets. No chairs. No ladders. Nothing but your imagination. I hated that top bunk.

About two weeks in with my new cellie, he started telling me about his past. He told me of the men he had killed. One he shot in the throat; another he shot 4 times in the chest; the next he shot until he ran out of bullets; and the last man he killed, he just wouldn’t say how. Was that his real-life or something he saw on Netflix? I do not know. But he said these were all bad guys and he was, after all, in the marines at the time, doing a mission in Cameroon in North Africa.

But in spite of this somewhat alarming revelation, he turned out to be a rather nice guy, always smiling, but also a bit volatile. He was generally kind and generous, and even very protective, and I came to be very glad that he was my cellie. He was 43 but tended to act more like he was 23. There was a certain kind of juvenile and volatile energy about him. But he was generous in the sense that he always gave me more than fair trades for coffee (like 4 shots for 1 cookie!) and he was always making sure I don’t run out of coffee or paper, but more importantly makes sure that the “vultures” around me give a fair deal for the meat items I traded for coffee or paper. He had a thing about detesting bullies, and he was quite vocal about it. He got it into his head that he thought I was being taken advantage of with my trades, but he pressured me to drive a harder bargain! And I did. At some point, thanks to him, I was positively swimming in coffee, at least relative to what I had before when it was a daily hunt. Sometimes I was able to just eat my dessert instead of trading it for coffee. He also always made sure that the odd fruit or vegetable would go my way. He was an incredible relief from the cellie before him, Eric the Terrible. But nothing lasts for very long in jail.

Three weeks later, Nov 16, day 53, he went to the hole! (i.e. isolation in another pod).

It's about that volatility.

My diary noted the entry rather dramatically ... DISASTER!

If an argument erupts in the pod it is almost certainly going to revolve around the TV in the dayroom. Some wanted to watch trash TV (Jerry Springer among others), and that awful awful show, Cops, an endless series of cops arresting stupid juveniles doing stupid things. (That show utterly revolted me. But it was incredibly popular, both in prison and out. It ran for over 30 seasons and was pulled shortly after the killing of George Floyd.) Maybe it makes some people feel better about themselves when they see others even more stupid than they are. It was depressing. There were TV series people had followed prior to being arrested and were trying to keep up with while in jail. The Big Bang Theory was among them. Doesn't anyone watch Masterpiece Theater? Anyone? Apparently not. Even Downtown Abbey would be preferable!

But honestly ... such an overrated show ... I watched every episode until I went to jail!

Surprisingly, every afternoon a number of people wanted Jeopardy! with the late Alex Trebek. That took me by my biased surprise. Even more surprising was that one of two of the inmates were actually pretty good, but one in particular, Tabor, was very good.

The thing about Tabor is that first impressions were largely (stereotypically) negative. He was in his mid to late 20s, quite handsome in a masculine way; you could almost smell the testosterone coursing in his veins; very well built, but always with a kind of angry scowl on his face. He was also loud and brash. He struck me as a typical Greek fraternity kind of guy. But I was quite wrong.

Tabor was really good at Jeopardy!; much better than me. But he was good not just in popular culture subjects, but in other more esoteric subjects that betrayed lengthy education and lots of reading. He seemed to excel at history and geography. Who knows where the Sargasso Sea is, or who is Cicero, or who was his opponent in Rome? He knew; Tabor knew this. He didn’t just give the answer. He spat it out before anyone else could! What the hell was he doing in jail? When not watching Jeopardy! he was doing crossword puzzles from newspapers and magazines he received!

But Tabor was also a sports fan. So was my cellie, TJ. They both liked football. Just not the same team.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and football was on. Tabor and TJ began arguing over the game. Who’s better and who’s worse. I myself have no feeling for the game whatsoever. I don't like it because I don't understand it, and I don't understand it because I don't like it. In fact, I'm completely mystified by it. But never mind all that. They were arguing about who was the better player, the better quarterback, or whatever. It got heated. And then, in the middle of the shouting match, Tabor spat at TJ.

What's a man to do who has just been spat on? a former marine, now in jail, while others are looking on, some in quiet horror, and some in hope, that a fight will break out? He did not take this lying down.

It was a tempest in a teapot of course, but it feels like a tempest if you happen to live in that teapot! One would have thought that Tabor should have won handily, being younger and more physically fit than TJ. But he didn't. He was well-matched by TJ who may have benefitted from his marine training. Neither man won. Neither man won. It was more like this awkward stalemate, where each is grappling the other, each with a secure hold on the other, and unwilling to let go, but unable to make progress. Exhausting for them both. Very boring for onlookers who prefer blood.

We all had to go back to our cells on lockdown. The COs duly arrived, asked questions, cuffed them both, and took them for a week of solitary confinement in another pod. Later when we all came back out, we reviewed the fight. Who was right; who was wrong. Lots of people agreed: TJ was just wrong about the football team. And, yeah, Tabor should not have spat on TJ.

I had lost my best cellie after only 3 weeks. Tempest in a teapot or not, for me that felt like a disaster.

Later I found out why he knew so much about the law and was well trained in self-defense. He not only had been a marine but also had been a cop! Imagine that! An ex-cop in jail. That would be something to be nervous about!