Most days, I read and write in between eating, showering, teaching yoga and working out. This morning I spent two hours taking notes as Fat Boy dictated the rest of the short story ‘A Homey Who Finds Jesus’. Fat Boy was involved in the kidnapping and murder of another youngster. The victim was shot point-blank with a shotgun before being set on fire.
Being able to write uninterrupted in your garage is one of the things I’m most excited about – not to mention the roast potatoes and chocolate oranges you’ll feed me to boost my brainpower.
Prisoners are saying I’m the luckiest man here because the whole yard is going to be moved to dorms in two weeks’ time. I’m just getting out in time. Prisoners are mad at the prospect of being warehoused. The deputy warden has warned, ‘Any vandalism will not be tolerated.’ The heads of each race and their lackeys are spreading the word that anyone who makes noise in the dorms between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. will be smashed and rolled up. It’s uncanny that I’m getting released just before the coming disruption. There’s a rumour that the hardcore at Yard 4 are going to go off and refuse to move. Apparently some of the dorm cubicles have double bunks. Ouch! Iron Man said the last time he was dormed he would get up and see the spectacle of Slingblade giggling to himself and masturbating on his bunk at 5 a.m.
The fondest goodbye I received thus far today came from Zack (one of my yoga students): ‘Piss off back to Wales, you bloody Welsh prick.’
Saturday, 17 November 2007
… Adam, who has been in prison since the ’70s, stopped by. His 70-year-old mum came from Florida to visit him today. The staff denied her entry, citing her low-cut blouse. His quick-thinking mum shuffled to the bathroom, removed her blouse and threw it into a trashcan. She buttoned up her jacket, so nothing could be seen cleavage-wise that might have excited the prisoners, and she was allowed in.
In the tradition of prisoners stopping by, chatting a while and then requesting an item of my personal property that I’ll no longer need, as I’m being released, Adam asked me for my belt. How could I refuse when he couched the request in terms of him needing a better belt than the decrepit one he is currently wearing, for the special visit scheduled with his mum this Tuesday.
I read Tortilla Flat by Steinbeck today and laughed hard. I like how tuned in he was to the music of the ordinary. Almost as good as Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, which I urge you to read. I’m slacking on The Godfather Returns, as it doesn’t have the potency of The Godfather.
Only three more days …
Sunday, 18 November 2007
… Spent the morning re-reading the resettlement handbook issued by Prisoners Abroad. I’ve often wondered whether England will seem like a foreign country because I’ve been away for over 16 years. When I see things and people in my hometown that are familiar, what kinds of memories and associations will be triggered? In my mind, I sometimes try and age the faces of people I haven’t seen. These faces include those of friends, teachers, school bullies (how would an ex school bully come across after I’ve been living with and befriended assorted murderers?) and girls I had crushes on in my schooldays. I don’t imagine the faces of family members as aged so much, as I’ve seen most of them on photos – and you’ve both aged well, in spite of all the worries I’ve put on you.
I also wonder how my hometown has developed, whether the old shops and pubs still exist or have fallen foul to globalisation. We didn’t even have a McDonald’s when I left. I remember you driving us seven miles for strawberry milkshakes, but I think you told me you now have two Macs and a KFC.
In the Prisoners Abroad handbook, Chapter 8 is titled ‘Welcome Home?’ It touches on your pet worry, Mum: adjusting. ‘You may have been away for so long that you feel totally disorientated and out of touch with life in the UK.’ Yes, that is true, but at heart I am an adventurer. I see the unfamiliar acting as a stimulus. Look how excited I was coming to America virtually penniless. Challenges galvanise me. In terms of the game of snakes and ladders, I was near the end, complacency and over-celebratory wildness set in, and I succumbed to slipping down the massive snake that’s taken me back almost to square one. And now I get to play the game all over again, but with the new knowledge and maturity I’ve acquired …
Chapter 8 includes ‘Change of Roles’: ‘Parents of children who are now grown up may have found that they have resumed a responsibility for their son’s or daughter’s welfare that they have not had for many years.’ Remember how I mocked Cliff the mailman in the TV series Cheers for being so old and living with his mother? See the karma I created? I know a bonding time is in order and it’ll be fun living with you for a while, but I hope to find the means to not be a burden to you and to get my own place at some point, perhaps in the latter half of the first year or in the second, depending on how things turn out.
The handbook continues with a list of things that can help: ‘taking it slowly, allowing time to get reacquainted, not expecting it to be the same as before, some privacy and peace, honesty and openness’. They all make sense. If, like Sartre claimed, ‘hell is other people’ (or at least other people you wouldn’t choose to live with), then going from being constantly surrounded by people, including some very loud people, to the peacefulness of your garage will have beneficial effects. Oh to wake up whenever I want to! But will Mum require I make my bed as tidily as ADOC regulations require during morning cell inspections? Cells must be ‘in compliance’ (including beds made) by 7.30 a.m.
‘Some returning prisoners have found being in a small room difficult; others find opening and shutting doors strange; many find it hard to get used to everyday life, with its bills and worries. Most experience feelings of vulnerability, isolation, and feeling like a stranger.’ Regarding the latter sentence: I’ve always felt alien and I’ve learned to live with such thoughts. I like isolation and that’s why, unlike most prisoners, I’m perfectly relaxed during lockdowns or periods of solitary confinement. The prisoners joke that I’m the only one on the yard rooting for lockdowns. Regarding the former sentence: I won’t know how I really feel about getting used to such things until I’m confronted by them. I imagine it will be strange but also exhilarating.
Only two more days …
73
On Monday, 20 November 2007, a corpse is found in a cell. The prison is locked-down. I wait in my room, frustrated at being unable to say goodbye to my friends on Yard 1: Shannon, Iron Man and Weird Al. The way of life I’ve adapted to during almost six years of incarceration is over. Unsure how long my deportation will last, I brace to take on the unknown. The process of transiting through various stages of immigration detention for weeks, or possibly months, will involve having to deal with unfamiliar guards, inmates, rules, regulations …
The door clicks open. My heart beats erratically. I take one long, hard last look at my cell, as if to say goodbye to it. I exit, yell a porter over and hand him a property box with instructions to give everything to Iron Man, who I trust to distribute the contents to various prisoners. A guard escorts me across the yard. Indoors, I sign release papers and exchange my nuclear-orange clothes for ‘prison blues’ – jeans and a T-shirt – in which I feel half human. For hours, I wait in a cell for federal transportation, lost in thought. Where will they take me? What will it be like?
Two redneck guards arrive, surprised to be handcuffing an Englishman, a rarity in a state making headlines for deporting so many Mexicans.
‘Do you know how long it’ll take for me to get back to England?’ I ask.
‘You can never be told the day of your deportation for security reasons,’ one replies.
In country twang, they question me. Conditioned not to talk to guards, I tell them my charges and shut up. They drive to a detention centre in Florence. I end up in a warehouse crammed with Mexicans, men and teenagers, recently rounded up, many having lived peacefully in Arizona for years without committing any crimes; the atmosphere is redolent of sweat, discomfort, broken dreams and uncertain futures. At night, I try to sleep on a hard floor
by resting my head on a sandal. For hours, in discomfort, I alternate positions. On my side, I drift into a nightmare, with Bud and Ken chasing me, trying to kill me. In the morning, unsure where I am, I’m startled awake by something slimy rubbing my cheek. My eyes jolt open to a giant grey spider. In shock, I freeze. As my senses catch up with reality, I realise it’s a mop head. A porter pulls it away and cleans the area around me. With my body aching, I grab a meagre breakfast sack and try to rest my back against a wall. For half a day, I wait, writhing from the agony of inertia until my name is called.
After a medical examination and a chest X-ray for TB, I’m moved to a cell. I have no books! Not knowing how to occupy the space usually filled by literature, my brain feels like it’s going to crash. I don’t know what to do with myself. Over several days, I write 100 pages about the ruckus surrounding a Mexican detainee who believes the government is tracking him through a microchip surgically implanted into his body, who the prisoners have nicknamed ‘la Computadora’ – the Computer. My withdrawal symptoms from reading last until Claudia’s father, Barry, kindly sends three books.
A week later, I’m extracted for a visit. Wondering who’s tracked me down, I’m ecstatic to find Jade sitting waiting in a small room, gazing intensely. We exchange greetings and hug.
With only 30 minutes to talk, I get straight down to business: ‘You’ve got to come to England!’
‘Shaun, no, you’re going to get out there and you’re going to meet women and you’re not going to like me as much as you did in prison. You’ll fall in love and I’ll be easily forgotten.’
‘Oh, bollocks. You’re going to come to England and visit me, right? I’m saving my re-virginity for you.’
‘That’s not a maybe. I will. Eventually.’ She smiles, her eyes glistening with promise.
I feel the warmth of our hearts opening. ‘Yes!’ I yell so loud a guard scowls. ‘And then what?’
‘Who’s to say what the future holds. We’ll always be good friends.’
‘Say we become more than that?’ I ask, unable to stop grinning.
‘Why live in hypothetical worlds?’
‘I like the way you said that, but it doesn’t have to be hypothetical,’ I say.
‘I knew you’d say that, and that’s not quite what I had in mind.’
Watching her leave, I’m overwhelmed by appreciation for Jade. I return to my cell on a high and revel in an imaginary world, envisioning Jade in my hometown, meeting my parents.
After devouring the books mailed by Barry, I focus on yoga and meditation to stay calm. Two weeks of wondering when I’m getting out drag by. When my name is finally called for transportation, my spirit soars. I’m cuffed, leg-shackled, belly-chained and put on a bus full of deportees. Instead of allowing us to occupy the entire vehicle, a guard crams us into the front seats. In Spanish, I tell my story to fascinated Mexicans: the tale of an Englishman arrested in Arizona for dealing ‘las tachas’ – Ecstasy.
‘The Mexicans asked me to ask you where we’re going,’ I say to a guard.
‘None of your business!’
Every time my legs spasm, I stand and stretch within the limits the chains allow. The bus parks at a small airport near Phoenix.
‘The plane isn’t here yet,’ a guard says. ‘It must have been delayed.’
Ignoring our requests to use the toilet and be fed, the guards leave us in the bus for hours with no air conditioning, sweating, suffocating on each other’s odours and breath. Dizzy to the point of almost fainting, I tilt my head and raise my mouth, trying to suck in better-quality air, like a person drowning in a room filling with water.
Eventually, I board a ‘con-air’ plane. Still cuffed, we’re ordered to sit in the middle section. Federal marshals stand in rows in front and behind us, forming two walls, monitoring us with cold, alert eyes. The plane speeds up for take-off. An alarm sounds. The brakes screech us to a halt.
We spend an hour aboard, awaiting repairs. Vans arrive. They squeeze us into them tighter than on the bus earlier. Compressed into a row, I gag and try to ignore the irritation from my sweat-clogged pores. The more the heat rises, the harder it is to breathe.
‘If it’s not repaired soon, we’re gonna take you to Florence prison and we’ll have to reschedule everything all over.’
‘I have a flight! I’ve got to get to LA!’ I yell.
‘You’re not gonna make it. You’ll have to be rescheduled.’
Fretting for hours, I watch a guard ogling porn on his phone. He rants about having to work late to every passing colleague.
It’s almost 9 p.m. when we re-board. Some of the Mexicans have never been on a plane. They ask me why they’re being flown to California for deportation when they migrated from Mexico by walking over the Arizona border. It’s beyond my Spanish to explain that bureaucracies stay in business by creating work for themselves at the taxpayers’ expense.
The plane zigzags across California, picking up and dropping off Mexicans. The guards refuse us access to the toilet. Two of them praise Sheriff Joe Arpaio for doing such a wonderful job rounding up Mexicans who are stealing US jobs, breeding like animals and collecting welfare on behalf of anchor babies. I almost protest but think better of it.
In the small hours, the plane lands near LA. The guards escort me and an Asian-looking Australian to a van. With a lisp, and in a distressed tone, the Australian says he has no family or help in Australia, and no idea how he’s going to survive. I slide around the back of the van, trying to ignore the pain of the cuffs and chains.
In a huge holding tank at a detention centre in LA, there are no bunks to sleep on. Instead I sit on an uncomfortable ledge and chat with Bo Stefan Eriksson, a Swedish mafioso widely known for crashing a $2 million Ferrari Enzo into a pole in Malibu, splitting the car in half. He mocks the media reports at the time which said he was driving at 162 miles per hour. He claims a big deal was made because players in the justice system were trying to liquidate the millions he made through Gizmondo, a video-game company. He invites me to visit him at his London residence.
Whether we want to hear it or not, most of us end up listening to the life story of an Argentinian built like a wrestler. ‘I’m a personal trainer,’ he says, pacing, his voice filling the room. ‘My clients pay me hundreds of dollars an hour. They’re famous people: actors, supermodels, artists. My girlfriend’s a supermodel. She’s six foot and has perfect breasts. She paid one of Hollywood’s top surgeons for them. She’s not fake like most LA women. She’s so kind, she always stops to help homeless people, and she makes me stop for them too. She’s great in bed. She wakes me up every day with a blow job. She’s the only one who understands me. She’s giving up her career and family ties to move to Argentina to be with me, to come and marry me. What does that say about how much she loves me?’
His monologue lasts for hours. When I grow bored, I pace at the far end of the room, trying to tune his powerful voice out, but it bounces off the walls and homes in on my ears. When I tire of pacing, I rejoin his audience, my limp body sore from transportation, yearning to rest in a state of deep sleep. When his bloodshot eyes meet mine, I’m compelled to muster enthusiasm. My face animates for a few seconds before slumping miserably again.
Shortly before noon on the second day in the detention centre, when I’m on the verge of madness from insomnia, and my excitement about getting released has long since dissipated into the stale atmosphere, a guard extracts the Argentinian and me. He cuffs and escorts us to a bus, resurrecting my energy, hopes, dreams …
‘I’ve waited so long for this. I’m so excited. It’s such a long flight to Argentina, but I just don’t care. I’m free. I’m gonna see my family. I’m so happy.’ The Argentinian looks like he wants to give me a hug.
The guard parks at the airport, goes inside and returns shaking his head. ‘Your flights aren’t authorised. I’m taking you back to the holding tank. You’ll have to reschedule.’
I can’t believe it!
‘What do you mea
n?’ the Argentinian asks, face crinkled.
‘For security reasons, I can’t give you any more information,’ the guard responds coldly.
Enraged, the Argentinian says, ‘What do you mean you can’t give any more information? Are you saying I’m not going home? Answer me. Damn it!’ He bangs on the divide.
The guard ignores him. The dispute distracts me from my disappointment.
The Argentinian turns to me, his agonised face ageing before my eyes. ‘Do you know how long it takes to reschedule?’
‘No,’ I say, imagining we’ll leave tomorrow.
‘It takes three weeks to reschedule!’
‘No fucking way!’ My limp body is seized by a kind of death rattle. I lurch forward, vomit putrid vapour from my empty stomach and recoil from the stench.
‘Yes! Three weeks! Can you imagine having to spend three more weeks at these jails? This is one of the worst days of my fucking life! I thought I was out of the system! I thought I was going home! I’m fucked! I can’t believe this is happening!’
Three fucking weeks! Is he serious? I know it’s true but don’t want to believe it. The shock expands, shaking me to the core. A crosswind of thoughts – revolving around having to rearrange everything with my parents, who’ve travelled across England to pick me up in London – blows my expectations way off course. Consumed with bad energy, I rock like a patient in a madhouse. ‘Maybe the guards can tell us more when we get back to the detention centre. The paperwork probably just got messed up somehow and it’ll get fixed,’ I say, hoping to calm him but not believing a word of it.
‘But my flight is in one hour. It’ll be missed. I’m not going home. It’s all got to be rescheduled. My girlfriend has flown to Argentina to meet me. Oh God, how can this be happening to me?’ He prays in a fast voice, like a priest at an exorcism, occasionally making the sign of the cross. As we enter the jail, his tears flow. ‘I know I can’t smoke in this building, and you’re not allowed to give me a cigarette, but please, please, give me a cigarette. I really need a cigarette right now.’
Prison Time Page 33
