Dark Days: A Memoir

by D. Randall Blythe

  The yard was a long concrete rectangular courtyard, slightly larger than a standard sized tennis court. Three of its high walls were walls of the prison buildings themselves, the fourth being a twenty-foot high concrete barrier separating our yard from another, and I could hear prisoners from another cellblock talking and laughing on the other side of the dissecting wall. Inside our courtyard was a cage within a cage; another four walls of heavy-duty chain link fence, the tops bent inward and topped with several rows of razor wire. There were three concrete Ping-Pong tables bare of nets, but no one seemed to have paddles or balls anyway. The middle of the yard had a rope strung across it from two poles, and twenty or so of the men split into teams and began playing volleyball with a frayed ball that lay by the make shift net. Other men produced chess sets and began setting them up on benches, or just sat down to chat. The rest of the men began leisurely walking in a circle around the perimeter of the courtyard, stretching their legs after twenty-three hours in their cramped cells. I noticed that several men had on their own clothes; clean t-shirts without holes and non-prison issue sweats or track pants, but most wore the same uniform as me. I began to see men I knew; Rene, Scarface, Raymond Herrera, Martin, and the scrawny junky who had bled all over the place in the holding cell while we were waiting to be drug tested were all on my new tier. The junky looked remarkably healthier; his strange haircut had been tightened up, and there was a bit of pink in his previously sallow complexion. I got up from the bench and said hello to the men I knew with high-fives and fist bumps all around, joking about our new and improved surroundings. I saw many of the inmates continue to glance at me from time to time—it was good for them to see that I already had friends in the place. After a bit, Ganbold and I began to walk around the yard. As we slowly circled the volleyball court, the inmates began to lose interest in my passing and I started to relax a bit. I was a passing curiosity they seemed to have noted and forgotten—except for the bald man, who by this time I was convinced was definitely giving me the stink eye. Although bigger than me, his bulk was of the flabby sort, and I was certain I could take him as long as I moved quickly and he didn’t have a knife. The search we had undergone outside our cell before walk had been perfunctory at best, and anyone wanting to could have easily smuggled out a small shiv. As we circled the yard, I kept my distance from the man, as well as my eye on him. He never made a move towards me for the rest of my time in Pankrác, but he would throw me strange looks everyday at walk, and I was always ready for him.

  As I walked with Ganbold, I saw two odd-looking men, seated apart from everyone else, their appearance so out of place that it gave me sudden pause. They were large, muscular, and as we passed them by I heard them quietly speaking English in an accent I couldn’t quite place. They were so foreign looking that it took me a second to realize the reason their appearance startled me—these were the only two black guys I had seen in well over a month. As I passed them by several times, I strained to hear what they said, but I couldn’t make out enough to put my finger on their accent. They were definitely speaking English, but so softly I couldn’t tell if they were Jamaican or from some other island in the Caribbean, some African nation, or even from somewhere in America. Aside from my two Mongols, they were the smallest ethnic minority I had seen in Pankrác, and I made up my mind to speak to them the next day and find out where they were from. I hoped they were American, or at least Jamaican, so that I could talk to them about familiar places on my side of the world.

  A few rounds into our walk a Czech man about my age came up, introduced himself in English as Jacob (not his real name), and began to walk with us. Jacob had heard all about my case, and although not a fan of heavy metal, he did listen to underground music of the industrial variety. We walked a bit, discussing various groups like Skinny Puppy, Front 242, and Einstürzende Neubauten, and it was extraordinarily pleasant for me to discuss music with someone knowledgeable about bands the general populace is not usually aware of. All of us who reside in the broader music underground, no matter what specific genre, carry a passion for our bands and their efforts; groups consciously attempting to do something divergent from the mindless, plastic, cookie-cutter tripe that pollutes the airwaves. And we like to discuss the finer points of these bands, to intensely debate the merits of their various records in a way the average pop fan never bothers to. To us, music isn’t something you listen to for a few months then throw away, it’s something you live. I can still remember very well the first time I heard the Sex Pistols—the music was real, it had substance, and it changed my life. Jacob was the first inmate I had met who understood the power of this kind of music, and it was a relief to discuss something other than court cases and cell block rumors for a change. But as we walked, I did wind up asking him why he was in prison. He told me he was there because of drugs, heroin specifically.

  “Ha ha, I know a little something about that kind of thing,” I laughed. “But I had to quit all that crap. It was killing me. I haven’t had a drink or a drug in almost two years now.”

  “Really?” he asked, “I have tried to quit several times, but the drugs are too powerful. I always go back to them after a few days.”

  “Bro, it can be done. After twenty-two years of partying, I quit at the beginning of a heavy metal tour, on the road, where people actually want to give you free drugs and booze. I had been trying to quit for four years before I finally had enough. If I can do it, you can do it, man!” I said.

  “Then I must try again,” he said, “because I am going to die if I don’t stop. Heroin has already put me in this place. It will kill me if I go back to it.”

  “Yes, it will. But you don’t have to die, man,” I said, and began telling him about my life as an alcoholic. I told him about many things from my past over the next few days as we walked and talked in that yard together, things that were not wise for someone in my position to tell anyone in a prison, but I was not afraid. I made a judgment call and went with my gut, and I decided to help this man who came from a different branch of my tribe. I could see that Jacob was hurting badly inside; he had assaulted his own father in order to get money for heroin, and was full of shame and self-loathing over what he had become because of his drug addiction. His two cellmates were drug dealers who constantly discussed how they would restart their business the day they were let out. Jacob was frustrated, confused, and scared. I am not an expert on alcohol or drug addiction, nor am I a substance abuse counselor. I do not have a vast amount of scientific knowledge concerning the particulars of any sort of addiction, or the low down on the latest developments in addiction treatment. What I am is a common, run-of-the-mill drunk who did a lot of pretty messed up things while I was messed up. And as such, I can talk to someone who honestly wants to stop living in their problem from a place of experience, and I can relate my struggles in a language they can understand. I can stand before them as a sober man and let them know that if they truly want to, they can quit. People just like myself told me that very same thing, drunks and drug addicts who had put down the bottle or the bag of drugs (or both) before it had killed them. They told me I didn’t have to live that way anymore. I finally listened, and those people saved my life. The least I could do to repay them was try and help this poor man.

  As the walk came to an end, Jacob filled me in on a few helpful details about life in population. The next day was shopping, and we would actually go to the prison canteen to pick out what we wanted. (“It’s like going to heaven,” he said.) If you had someone in Prague willing to pick up and do your laundry once every two weeks, you could wear your own clothes. I didn’t have any clothes other than the ones I had been arrested in, so that was out, but Jacob told me he would loan me a real towel, a pair of track pants, and a few t-shirts. He told me the hours for our daily walk, and which days we showered. Finally, he said that once a week we were allowed to watch an hour of TV in the hallway, which was almost always a soccer game (we were in Europe, after all). This hour of TV also always turned into one big
nerve wracking screaming match between all the inmates gathered to watch. I asked him if there were any drug counseling sessions or trips to the library available that we could go to instead—nope. This astounded me. Even in population, there was absolutely no attempt made to provide inmates with any sort of manner to better themselves. Incarcerated people don’t need a fucking soccer match, they need something that will help them gain knowledge and change their ways, at least if there is to be any hope of rehabilitating them so that one day they can rejoin society as useful members. I looked in my stack of prison regulations later, and found a brief mention of drug counseling services being available to juvenile inmates, but that was it. I guess in Pankrác if you’re an adult drug addict they just give you a few tranquilizers to help you kick, like they did for Martin, then either you stay clean or wait until you’re in population to buy drugs from the inmates who sling them. (Synthetic morphine was the currently available flavor on our tier, and if it had been a mere two years earlier, I would have been as high as gas.)

  We got back to our cell and put our belongings away, then to my astonishment Ganbold produced a plastic mirror he had borrowed from the guards downstairs earlier that day. Ganbold began shaving in the sink using the mirror, and I asked Dorj why he hadn’t gotten us one before.

  “Bah. No need mirror. For woman put make up on face,” he scoffed.

  Dorj’s Asian beard wasn’t what you would call full so he may not have needed a mirror, but my scruff comes in thick and heavy, so I was grateful to have one to shave with instead of blindly hacking away at my face. After Ganbold was done, I grabbed my shaving brush, paste, and razor, went to the sink, and got a good look at myself for the first time in a month. I had grown a goatee in order to save wear and tear on the cheap single blade disposable razors I used, and as I lathered my face, I saw the age that had come with my short time in prison.

  My skin was pale, much too pale for the time of the year, and I was thin from lack of decent food. I noticed the worry lines emanating from the corners of my eyes, which were ringed underneath by dark circles from constant tension and lack of sleep. And for the first time in my life, my beard was streaked with gray.

  I have never been a beauty queen, but I looked like shit.

  Oh well. You’re forty-one, not seventeen anymore. The way you’ve lived, it’s about damn time the old dog started getting a gray muzzle. And this is prison, not a beauty parlor, buddy, I thought, and shaved my face, thankful for the mirror despite the rough picture it presented.

  The next day after breakfast, those of us with money on our books lined up outside the prison canteen. Jacob was there, and as we sat waiting our turn in the store, we talked some more about drinking and drugs. I had spent the previous evening writing a five-page letter that described the last few days of my drinking, and I gave it to him, hoping he could find something of use in my story.

  I had been on the very last leg of a tour cycle that ended in one of my favorite places on earth, Australia. Lamb of god had a day off in Brisbane, and I have friends there, so that evening I met up with them at an Irish pub named Gilhooley’s on Albert Street, just a few blocks from my hotel. We were knocking back a few pints when a fan of my band walked over to our table, bringing his drink, and uninvited, without a word sat down and began staring at me. Great.

  “Um, hello? Can I help you?” I asked the young man.

  “You’re Randy. You’re the singer of lamb of god,” he said, as if somehow I had missed that fact.

  “Yes, that’s right. It’s me, in all my ridiculous glory. We’ll be playing tomorrow night. Tonight though, I’m just hanging out with my friends. I don’t get to see them very often, so we’ll see you at the show, dude,” I said, hoping that he would get the point and leave me alone. The fan just stared at me. It was uncomfortable, and weird.

  “Yes, but you’re here now. You’re Randy,” he said, reemphasizing his startlingly obvious point. He continued staring at me. Oh boy.

  “Look dude, I gotta take a piss. I’ll catch you later. Like tomorrow night, understand? Nice to meet you. Goodbye,” I said, and throwing a look at my friends that said Help me out here, I got up and went to take a leak. When I returned, the fan was still sitting at our table. I glared at my friends Leila and Jeffo. What the fuck, guys? You were supposed to get rid of this dude. They both just shrugged helplessly at me. Obviously, I would have to handle this matter myself. I was a few drinks deep by this point, so getting mean wasn’t a problem.

  “Well, dude, if you’re going to sit here like a bump on a log and just fucking stare at me like a monkey in a zoo, you had better make yourself useful. I’ll take a pint of Cooper’s pale and a shot of Bushmill’s. So will my friends,” I said.

  “What?” he said, confused by the drink order. This guy was thick.

  “Three pints of Cooper’s pale ale, and three shots of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey. You’re buying. Chop chop. My friends and I are getting thirsty here,” I said.

  “Uhm, okay . . .” he said, then slowly turned from me and went to the bar, glancing worriedly over his shoulder as if I might suddenly disappear, a figment of his imagination.

  “Jesus Christ, why didn’t you guys get that freak to fuck off?” I asked Leila and Jeffo.

  “We tried. We told him to go hang out with his own friends over there at the bar. We asked him to leave you alone. We told him that you were trying to enjoy your night off in peace, but he just kept saying ‘Nope, I’m drinking with Randy. That’s all that matters,’ over and over. He’s an odd one,” Leila said.

  “Yeah, he’s a total punisher. Not too bright, either. But I bet he’ll leave after we order enough drinks on his tab,” I laughed.

  I was wrong. Leila and Jeffo and I went from bar to bar, and the fan followed us everywhere we went, buying drinks when I ordered him to as I tried my best to burn up every last Australian dollar in his wallet. But for some reason I couldn’t get drunk, despite the prodigious amount of shots and pints I poured down my gullet. The fan, however, was getting completely wasted. His eyes were crossing and he was having a difficult time staring at me anymore, although he did his best. The night ended on a beautiful rooftop bar, with Leila, Jeffo, and I making a sport of confusing and abusing the young man. We acted as if I was really in Australia to help produce Jeffo’s imaginary new reality TV show (named, cleverly enough, The Jeffo Show), taking imaginary phone calls, screaming at imaginary producers, talking about imaginary publishing rights we had to attain in order to use Led Zeppelin’s music as an imaginary soundtrack for the imaginary show, and asking the fan his opinion on all sorts of imaginary technical matters, then berating him when he confessed to not having any idea of what we were talking about. All of it was very quick, very witty and very off the cuff, and all of it was very, very cruel. While it had been indescribably rude of the young man to attach himself to me and my friends in the first place, in all fairness to him, he was a complete idiot, and currently a very drunken one at that. After last call had come and gone, we finished our drinks and walked out onto the street. I said goodbye to my friends, then telling the young man to leave me alone and go home, I walked back to my hotel, leaving him wobbling unsteadily on a street corner, more fucked up than a football bat. I drank a few more beers on my hotel balcony, then went to sleep.

  The next morning I woke up with a crippling hangover. Despite the hideous way I felt, the night before I hadn’t been able to reach that comfortable place alcohol had taken me to so many times before; a numb, murky, zone of white noise where all the things about my life and myself that bothered me were shut out for a few hours. I had drank my face off for free, but the booze had finally stopped working. I made a pot of coffee, walked out onto my balcony, sat down, and lit a cigarette. Against the wall in front of me were empty bottles of beer, standing in a neat row, the well-ordered evidence of what my life had become. It was a beautiful day, and as I sat there looking at the beer bottles, I realized I didn’t feel like doing anything.

  The Brisbane
Botanical Gardens were right down the street, a mere two blocks’ walk from my hotel, and I didn’t want to go and look at any of the beautifully foreign plants I find so fascinating Down Under. Directly across the street was one of my favorite bookstores in the world, Folio Books, but I had no desire to browse through their compact but magnificent selection. All around me were great restaurants, yet despite an empty stomach I didn’t feel like eating a bite. Most tellingly, in my refrigerator were several cold beers—the only thing I felt like doing was drinking them. But when I thought about it, I didn’t even feel like doing that. I was dead inside. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to do. I had become nothingness, trapped in a human body. What an awful, soul-crushing feeling that is.

  Staring at the row of empty beer bottles, I saw that they were a metaphor for my life. On the outside, if you didn’t look too closely, everything was in order. I had a dream job, and somehow still maintained a regimented enough life to function on tour. I had money in the bank, and I had a home. My wife had somehow not yet left me, and I still had friends and family who loved me. But like the row of beer bottles in front of me, I had become a mere receptacle for alcohol, a garbage can to throw booze and drugs into. Now I was empty, just like those bottles; and just like those bottles, all it would take to bring me crashing down was one slight nudge. I thought of the fan from the night before, about what he had told my friends.

  I’m drinking with Randy. That’s all that matters.

  I myself had been drinking with Randy for twenty-two years, and it had become all that mattered. I was desperately unhappy. It was time to try something else, or I would die.