People are always asking me about my experience in prison in Texas. I spent over a year in a typical Texas 'Prison'. People ask me, "How did you get through it?" "Weren't there fights all the time?" "Didn't you have to fight and join a gang?" "Did anyone try to sexually assault you?" My experience was relatively mild. Below is an excerpt from my book Soul Cancer -- it's pretty much all I have to say about my time in prison.
Prison – Abilene, TX (August, 2009 – July 2010)
I fit into the category of “white boy who really screwed up.” There are more of us than you might think, but we’re certainly a tiny minority and we’re not all housed together. So I’m kind of a novelty to the 53 other guys I live with in an open dormitory located in an unairconditioned tin building at a prison unit on a flat piece of dry land in west Texas. We have a couple of TV’s – one is always on TNT or USA playing ‘Law & Order’ or ‘NCIS’ and the other is always on ESPN. I rarely watch TV. It’s pretty boring. Some of the guys play dominoes or draw or write letters to people. I exercise a lot, and so do many of the guys – pushups – tons of pushups – this particular prison unit is low on amenities, so we don’t have any exercise equipment. Sometimes, albeit infrequently and irregularly, the guards let us out onto the ‘rec yard’ – a large fenced-in rectangular concrete space with a couple of basketball hoops and a volleyball net.
I like to go out there and walk around and do pushups. I try to do something physical everyday for the endorphins – I feel better when I do – they say you should “do your time -- don’t let time do you”, and to me that means I need to do things that help me feel better and sane and also kill some time. So I do what I can and I guess I’m in pretty good shape physically – which means I feel pretty good mentally and emotionally – I don’t know – it’s all tied together. I’m trying to come out of this thing as a good person, that’s what I decided. This is an opportunity for me to really renew my life – renew through living.
In prison they give you a job. Everybody works. You can refuse to work but it’s not such a good idea, especially if you’re trying to make parole – if you refuse to work then the parole board will look unfavourably on you and you will not be granted a parole – it’s quite simple. So I work. I work in the officer’s dining hall – it’s like a 24-hour diner for all the prison guards and other staff members (“other staff” includes non-prison-guard staff, like medical staff – nurses, doctors, dentists – and education staff – teachers, secretaries, assistants – and clergy – chaplains, bible-study guys, volunteers – and drug counsellors and maintenance workers and a few other administrative workers). All these people can eat for free anytime they want in the officer’s dining hall (it’s officially called the ‘ODR’ which stands for Officer’s Dining Room). The ODR is staffed by inmates like me – we cook, wait tables, wash dishes – all under supervision of course by the ‘kitchen bosses.’ The kitchen bosses are prison guards who work exclusively in the food-services department – so we all get to know each other pretty well and they’re an interesting bunch to say the least.
