A Universe Inside A Mind
There are days where work feels like another grind. It's been that way lately. The one thing I hate about the particular places they put me is I'm restless in those dorms. They're set up like what you might see in the movie Full Metal Jacket but the bathrooms are open rather than secluded and they're about half the size if not maybe a quarter. Not a whole lot of room to move in there.
Not much to do for that matter. The whole night consists of just walking around the dorm making sure it's clean, orderly, quiet and none of the usual bunch of 56 or more are acting up. Of course, there are the searches which no one likes, least of all myself. If you find nothing, the upper echelons begin viewing you through the perception of you're not doing it right. The guy's entire bed area could look like a category 7 shitstorm happened to it and they'll still look at you sideways, stupid and crazy if you didn't find anything. If you happen to find something, then the paper flies. You're almost literally buried in mounds of it and it's another addition to the endless tedium that is your life in there. In my six years of working there, I've never found any drugs or anything that could really be construed as weaponry. Most of what I've found has consisted of tapes that were homemade, rubberbands, breadties, stuff to fix radios, things to alter them, porn...hell, name it. Yeah, most of it, I wouldn't even need to do paperwork on it but there's always a catch. I know you're probably wondering about the tapes. Ok, here goes nothing.
Where I work, the rule is that all tapes have to be ordered through the mail and they must be clean versions...no explicit lyrics. Now, I know damned good and well that Acid Bath's two albums are chock-full of some rather explicit stuff but, since they bear no parental advisory, I can't take them. Some supervisors will let me but most won't. I just don't bother with it these days. What's the point, really? There's nothing in it that poses a threat to security and nothing to outright be disrespectful to authority and since most supervisors really could give a rat's ass, I just leave them alone. The homemade tapes are different. That's a sneak tactic to circumvent what's put into place. Believe me when I say that those fuckers get damn sneaky with them too.
I'll never forget one particular bust I'd made. Granted, the guy had 12 tapes (the max allowance) but he also had lots of religious tapes. There's really no rule regarding those types of tapes and, believe me when I say this, they looked legit as can be. A cadet had taught me something months before and I used the lesson I'd learned from him. I was looking at the tapes when, just on a hunch, I popped one into his walkman and put the headphone to my ear. Now, I'm not big on evangelical ministries via cassette or CD but I have to wonder how many preachers out there claim they're "gonna smoke dat nigga around da muh-fuggin' conah." No lie. I popped in one right after the other and they thumped and banged and sounded off some pretty foul stuff and I think I heard some gunshots here and there. He knew he was busted and now, his move...
"You can't do that!" he ranted.
"I just did," I said, "You know damn good and well you are not supposed to have this. Where did you get it?"
I'm only in the middle of this one when suddenly, he finds himself unable to maintain his composure.
"Fuck you!" He blurted out, "I ain't tellin you jack shit! Get the fuckin' captain and get the hell away from my shit!"
Now, originally, I was actually going to let him keep them in exchange for a name as to who had made them for him or where he'd gotten them. Simple enough and fair, I figured but he had to piss me off. If it's one thing I had learned a long time ago it's that when you have the right to remain silent it has to be reinforced with the ability to do so. If he had remained quiet and simply waited, he probably wouldn't have seen the cellblock that night with a contraband AND a defiance charge as well as an aggravated disobedience staining his record for stating, "I ain't got to do a goddamn thing. You're a kid and I'm a grown fuckin man! Respect your fuckin elders, kid! I'm tellin' you to get the hell away from my shit."
And all I told him to do was, verbatim, "Calm down and have a seat while I finish this up."
Sad thing is, he was at least twice my age. I wonder about these kind of things. What causes a person to literally end up so bitter and so arrogant all at once? And worse yet, at that age when most of your life has been spent in and out, back and forth. I look at that sort of thing in stark awe. It's nights spent in the dorms that keeps me wondering and reflecting back on these particular times. Sometimes, I thank God that I'm not working a women's prison. Had the same situation happened in there, I probably would have gotten my ass kicked.
No no no no no, don't start laughing yet, don't get ahead of me here. Stay with me.
Picture it: Same scenario but with a female. She's PMSing hardcore and blowing up like she's going to get an Oscar, an Emmy and an Academy Award all in the same night. Me? I burst into tears laughing and then she flies. I'll probably wake up in stitches and not from laughing.
Let's face it, I'm not trying to be sexist here, I'm just saying that I've seen it happen. A mass of women all get together and, somehow, someway, you sync up. It's like you have some weird atomic chick in Boulder, Colorado who sets you all on the same wave and then BOOM...you're all biologically in unison. Knowing my luck, I'll be getting all the areas who are on their time of the month on a weekly basis, thinking OK already! Who did I piss off this damn time?
Another reason I'd be no good in there...I know me and I don't trust me. Look, if a hostage situation goes down in a place like that, I'm volunteering myself. Know why? Because, chances are, I'm going to have a lot of fun in there. Oh yeah, I'm taking one for the team on a regular basis, believe that.
"Oh, no! Leave her alone! Look at her furrows of worry! Take me instead." *faking a sigh of defeat and broken will*
All you'll hear as I'm being hauled off into a blind somewhere is, "Pleeeeeeeeease don't tell my parents!"
Yeah, not a good idea.
These are the things I think about as I'm pacing back and forth after the lights go out and there's nothing to do. Tonight did prove to be a little more smooth and faster-paced than Friday and Saturday nights. Bear with me, I haven't been to sleep yet. Truth is, I actually calmed down long enough to sit down, focus and concentrate to write all this down. Be damned if I'm not getting a chuckle out of what's simply freely flowing from my conciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Scary in a way, though, that I have no more level of trepidation about that kinda thing.
I've seen the inside of the women's prison here in Louisiana. I have to say this for the place, it looks like a college campus with dual fences and razorwire...that's it. On my way there, I thought, Oh yeah, baby, I'm all good because it's NOTHING like the movies.
That's when I found out God has a really fucked-up sense of humor. Here I was stuck in the middle of hordes of them and they were enough to make me think, And I'm not getting laid outside? Once, my captain commented to one of my coworkers as we discussed the entire fiasco (we both share common ground on this subject) that, "They'll undress you with thier eyes. No shit."
Ok, if all their eyes did was undress him, I got passed around like a joint at a Pink Floyd concert.
About two and a half into the three hours which we were there, I thought, Ok, you know what, if they don't get me out of here within the next hour, I'm as good as fired. I can't count how many of them I'd given the phone number 318-867-5309. I wonder if any of them have caught that little sleight of mind yet. Probably so...it's been well over two years.
I've never forgotten that experience for one reason and one reason only. I later found out that it's a felony to get involved with them. Ok you know what? Not knowing whether any of them had any diseases was just barely enough to keep me thinking about my Star Wars game and how the hell I was going to defeat Lord Desann at that last level when he kept using some really wicked Dark Side shit on me to toss me around like a damn rag doll and none of my Force abilities seemed to have any effect on his purple ass but making it a felony just gave me more than enough reason.
Ending up in jail at this point with some dude asking me, "Was it worth it?" would not result in me responding, "Totally!"
I thought there was a point to this but I can see there's not. If you read this much you must REALLY be fuckin bored.
Hope you at least got a chuckle.
Not much to do for that matter. The whole night consists of just walking around the dorm making sure it's clean, orderly, quiet and none of the usual bunch of 56 or more are acting up. Of course, there are the searches which no one likes, least of all myself. If you find nothing, the upper echelons begin viewing you through the perception of you're not doing it right. The guy's entire bed area could look like a category 7 shitstorm happened to it and they'll still look at you sideways, stupid and crazy if you didn't find anything. If you happen to find something, then the paper flies. You're almost literally buried in mounds of it and it's another addition to the endless tedium that is your life in there. In my six years of working there, I've never found any drugs or anything that could really be construed as weaponry. Most of what I've found has consisted of tapes that were homemade, rubberbands, breadties, stuff to fix radios, things to alter them, porn...hell, name it. Yeah, most of it, I wouldn't even need to do paperwork on it but there's always a catch. I know you're probably wondering about the tapes. Ok, here goes nothing.
Where I work, the rule is that all tapes have to be ordered through the mail and they must be clean versions...no explicit lyrics. Now, I know damned good and well that Acid Bath's two albums are chock-full of some rather explicit stuff but, since they bear no parental advisory, I can't take them. Some supervisors will let me but most won't. I just don't bother with it these days. What's the point, really? There's nothing in it that poses a threat to security and nothing to outright be disrespectful to authority and since most supervisors really could give a rat's ass, I just leave them alone. The homemade tapes are different. That's a sneak tactic to circumvent what's put into place. Believe me when I say that those fuckers get damn sneaky with them too.
I'll never forget one particular bust I'd made. Granted, the guy had 12 tapes (the max allowance) but he also had lots of religious tapes. There's really no rule regarding those types of tapes and, believe me when I say this, they looked legit as can be. A cadet had taught me something months before and I used the lesson I'd learned from him. I was looking at the tapes when, just on a hunch, I popped one into his walkman and put the headphone to my ear. Now, I'm not big on evangelical ministries via cassette or CD but I have to wonder how many preachers out there claim they're "gonna smoke dat nigga around da muh-fuggin' conah." No lie. I popped in one right after the other and they thumped and banged and sounded off some pretty foul stuff and I think I heard some gunshots here and there. He knew he was busted and now, his move...
"You can't do that!" he ranted.
"I just did," I said, "You know damn good and well you are not supposed to have this. Where did you get it?"
I'm only in the middle of this one when suddenly, he finds himself unable to maintain his composure.
"Fuck you!" He blurted out, "I ain't tellin you jack shit! Get the fuckin' captain and get the hell away from my shit!"
Now, originally, I was actually going to let him keep them in exchange for a name as to who had made them for him or where he'd gotten them. Simple enough and fair, I figured but he had to piss me off. If it's one thing I had learned a long time ago it's that when you have the right to remain silent it has to be reinforced with the ability to do so. If he had remained quiet and simply waited, he probably wouldn't have seen the cellblock that night with a contraband AND a defiance charge as well as an aggravated disobedience staining his record for stating, "I ain't got to do a goddamn thing. You're a kid and I'm a grown fuckin man! Respect your fuckin elders, kid! I'm tellin' you to get the hell away from my shit."
And all I told him to do was, verbatim, "Calm down and have a seat while I finish this up."
Sad thing is, he was at least twice my age. I wonder about these kind of things. What causes a person to literally end up so bitter and so arrogant all at once? And worse yet, at that age when most of your life has been spent in and out, back and forth. I look at that sort of thing in stark awe. It's nights spent in the dorms that keeps me wondering and reflecting back on these particular times. Sometimes, I thank God that I'm not working a women's prison. Had the same situation happened in there, I probably would have gotten my ass kicked.
No no no no no, don't start laughing yet, don't get ahead of me here. Stay with me.
Picture it: Same scenario but with a female. She's PMSing hardcore and blowing up like she's going to get an Oscar, an Emmy and an Academy Award all in the same night. Me? I burst into tears laughing and then she flies. I'll probably wake up in stitches and not from laughing.
Let's face it, I'm not trying to be sexist here, I'm just saying that I've seen it happen. A mass of women all get together and, somehow, someway, you sync up. It's like you have some weird atomic chick in Boulder, Colorado who sets you all on the same wave and then BOOM...you're all biologically in unison. Knowing my luck, I'll be getting all the areas who are on their time of the month on a weekly basis, thinking OK already! Who did I piss off this damn time?
Another reason I'd be no good in there...I know me and I don't trust me. Look, if a hostage situation goes down in a place like that, I'm volunteering myself. Know why? Because, chances are, I'm going to have a lot of fun in there. Oh yeah, I'm taking one for the team on a regular basis, believe that.
"Oh, no! Leave her alone! Look at her furrows of worry! Take me instead." *faking a sigh of defeat and broken will*
All you'll hear as I'm being hauled off into a blind somewhere is, "Pleeeeeeeeease don't tell my parents!"
Yeah, not a good idea.
These are the things I think about as I'm pacing back and forth after the lights go out and there's nothing to do. Tonight did prove to be a little more smooth and faster-paced than Friday and Saturday nights. Bear with me, I haven't been to sleep yet. Truth is, I actually calmed down long enough to sit down, focus and concentrate to write all this down. Be damned if I'm not getting a chuckle out of what's simply freely flowing from my conciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Scary in a way, though, that I have no more level of trepidation about that kinda thing.
I've seen the inside of the women's prison here in Louisiana. I have to say this for the place, it looks like a college campus with dual fences and razorwire...that's it. On my way there, I thought, Oh yeah, baby, I'm all good because it's NOTHING like the movies.
That's when I found out God has a really fucked-up sense of humor. Here I was stuck in the middle of hordes of them and they were enough to make me think, And I'm not getting laid outside? Once, my captain commented to one of my coworkers as we discussed the entire fiasco (we both share common ground on this subject) that, "They'll undress you with thier eyes. No shit."
Ok, if all their eyes did was undress him, I got passed around like a joint at a Pink Floyd concert.
About two and a half into the three hours which we were there, I thought, Ok, you know what, if they don't get me out of here within the next hour, I'm as good as fired. I can't count how many of them I'd given the phone number 318-867-5309. I wonder if any of them have caught that little sleight of mind yet. Probably so...it's been well over two years.
I've never forgotten that experience for one reason and one reason only. I later found out that it's a felony to get involved with them. Ok you know what? Not knowing whether any of them had any diseases was just barely enough to keep me thinking about my Star Wars game and how the hell I was going to defeat Lord Desann at that last level when he kept using some really wicked Dark Side shit on me to toss me around like a damn rag doll and none of my Force abilities seemed to have any effect on his purple ass but making it a felony just gave me more than enough reason.
Ending up in jail at this point with some dude asking me, "Was it worth it?" would not result in me responding, "Totally!"
I thought there was a point to this but I can see there's not. If you read this much you must REALLY be fuckin bored.
Hope you at least got a chuckle.
posted by Lord Genocyde at 6:39 AM
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