That night I walked onstage with a pounding head and did my job, trying really hard not to fall completely to pieces in front of over fifteen thousand people. I had to keep my head down at times during our set so that no one would see the tears streaming down my face. I was terrified, empty, and heartbroken; but I dug in and did my job.
That was my first day sober. I haven’t had a drink since.
I wrote this story out and gave it to Jacob because I had a feeling he was teetering right on that very same emotional razor’s edge, that point where a person takes a leap of faith to one side and gets sober, or slides down off the other and eventually dies of their problem. For people like us, a life spent dancing in the middle is impossible—the razor eventually slices us in half if we try. On a scale of one to ten, there are no numbers in-between. It’s one or ten. All or nothing. Do or die. I hoped that sharing my story with Jacob would help him see that he could start doing and stop dying. He thanked me for the letter, then it was my turn to enter the canteen.
Normally only one prisoner was allowed in the canteen at a time, but Jacob spoke in Czech to the guard and the clerk, who let him enter with me and act as a translator. The canteen looked like the inside of a tiny convenience store in a bad part of Detroit, just without the beer and wine selection—everything was behind what looked to be bullet proof glass. At first I was confused by this—I realized that I was locked up with a bunch of criminals, some of whom had presumably knocked over a liquor store or two in their day. But really, what could possibly happen inside the prison to warrant bullet-proof glass for the store? Were there inmates possessed by uncontrollable urges to rob store clerks, pathological stick-up men who would escape their cells only to make their way to the canteen to try and empty the non-existent cash register? What would they load up on? Cookies and cigarettes? Then what? There would be no get away car waiting as they left the canteen on foot, running wild-eyed into the prison hall, arms laden with toiletries, instant coffee, and rolling tobacco. Then I thought about it and realized that the clerk wasn’t an inmate—the glass was for her protection, in case a riot broke out. I have always thought that working in a convenience store would require a special kind of mental fortitude (an almost super-human, herculean ability to deal with the general public that I am fully aware I do not possess); and although there was no graveyard shift or drunken maniacs wandering the aisles of the prison canteen and shoplifting, the thought of being stuck in the only area of a rioting prison with large quantities of cigarettes sent a shudder down my spine. You have to have balls of steel to be a check out clerk in a prison canteen, and the lady behind the counter, although very patient with me as Jacob helped me suss out my order, looked tough as nails. I finished my shopping, went back to my cell, handed Ganbold and Dorj a few packs of smokes, then it was time for walk.
I passed the two black men seated in the same exact place they were yesterday. I still could not quite put my finger on their accent. After the third or fourth time around, my curiosity got the better of me. I stopped in front of them, stuck out my hand, and introduced myself. They seemed a little shocked at first that anyone was bothering to talk to them, but quickly recovered, and smiled at me as they shook my hand.
“Well, you two are the only brothers I have seen in this place. Where are y’all from?” I said, taking a seat beside them.
“Africa, man. Nigeria and Ghana. You’re the American rockstar, eh?” said one of them who had introduced himself as Tony.
“Yeah, that’s me. I heard you guys speaking yesterday but couldn’t place the accent. What in the hell are you doing in this shit hole? You’re a long way from home,” I said.
“Charlie, man,” Tony said, and gave out a big laugh. This delighted me, because I had never actually heard anyone use the slang “Charlie” for cocaine before. It seemed antiquated, almost square, as I had only ever read about it in high school health class, or one of those ridiculous “How to tell if your kid is on drugs” pamphlets. He went on to explain to me that a lot of the coke in Europe was arriving via West African countries now, as their rather porous ports were much easier for South American ships to slip into than the tightly regulated European ones. He also told me that cocaine use had exploded in Africa as well, and that crack had become a big problem. I asked him if the quality of cocaine in Europe was improving, as it didn’t have as far to travel, and he said it definitely was. I laughed, saying at least that was a good thing, as Euro coke was the worst stepped-on crap I’d ever put up my nose back in the day. We had quite a pleasant chat for a bit, mostly about the cocaine business, then I walked on. In retrospect, I realized that it’s definitely not normal for most people to sit around laughing and discussing new international drug smuggling routes like they would a recently opened highway bypass that shaves thirty minutes off their commute to the office. But the casual effortlessness with which I fell into the conversation reminded me that I was not a “normal person” when it came to drugs, I had not lived the life of the average everyday normal citizen, and I was definitely not in a normal place.
After a few more laps around the yard, I sat down to have a smoke. I was chatting with Jacob and Ganbold when I heard a voice ask me in a thick Irish brogue if I had a lighter. John was the first and only inmate I met during my entire time in Pankrác whose native tongue was English, although as an Irishman from County Cork, referring to the language he spoke that I somewhat understood as “English” was playing a little loose with the term’s definition. I have always had a soft spot for the Irish, as half of my mother’s side of the family hail from the Emerald Isle, and I very much look forward to my band’s trips there when a tour is routed through Belfast and Dublin. A well-educated businessman, John was both exceedingly funny and very friendly, which came as no surprise to me as I have always found the Irish to be a witty and warm-hearted people.
John’s good nature shined through that day as, without prompting, he told me tons of things that would be useful to me in Pankrác. He had the whole place dialed in, and explained how I could order English publications, bargain a bit with the trusties for better food, and told me which guards on our floor were cool and which were jerks. When I asked why he was in prison, he told me he wasn’t sure, as he hadn’t been charged with anything yet.
“The bloody Czechs can’t decide whether they want to call it tax evasion or embezzling public funds. I wish they would just make up their minds and get on with it,” he shrugged.
“How long have you been in here?” I asked.
“Six months now, mate,” he said with an impish grin. “I’ve offered them a million Euros in bail, but they aren’t interested.”
Six months without even being charged? Good grief! This news didn’t give me hope for a speedy resolution of my bail issue, but it did put things in perspective for me. The right to an expedient trial obviously didn’t exist in the Czech Republic, or if it did it was being soundly ignored in John’s case. We talked a little more, and John told me he would bring me a few English newspapers and magazines to read the next day at walk, then we went inside.
The next day was shower day, and I was relieved to find that the shower on our new tier was brighter, cleaner, and had more shower heads than the dingy mildew factory we had been forced to use downstairs. Jacob brought me a real, full-sized towel to the shower, and a pair of shorts along with a few extra t-shirts. He told me not to wear the shorts or t-shirts outside of my cell yet, as he had to try to clear it with the guards before I was allowed to wear any clothes other than my prison uniform. We got done showering, ate lunch, and went to walk, where Jacob and I continued our daily talk about our addictions and the repercussions they had had on our lives. He had been excited by my letter, saying that he had experienced some of the very same feelings about his heroin use I had described in my drinking story, and was gaining hope from the fact that he was not alone in having gone through the brutal emotional and physical isolation that addiction and alcoholism produces.
In the end, alcoholism and
drug addiction are almost always horribly lonesome repeat journeys to drink at the wells of despair, and the alcoholic or drug addict often feels as if they are the only person on earth who has experienced and understands their particular pain. They become what I have heard brilliantly described as terminally unique (hence the title of a lamb of god song I wrote about a dear friend wallowing in the depths of opiate addiction). This is, of course, an illusion; a merciless trick that the substance-fueled and monstrously inflated ego plays on the drunk or junkie. No one is unique in their addiction, whatever the particulars of their situation may be. A drunk is a drunk, and a junkie is a junkie. Remaining terminally unique for too long leads to insanity or death, or both. It’s a tired old tune almost as old as humanity itself, yet as the centuries march on, drunks and addicts the world over endlessly sing its self-pitying refrain. I was happy to hear that Jacob was starting to realize that he was not special. Being special gets you nothing but pain. I know this from personal experience.
At walk I also talked to John a bit more. It was nice to have a conversation with someone who spoke English so effortlessly, although I had to quickly retrain my ear to decipher some of his dialect (this always happens to me in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and even parts of Northern England—by day two of a tour run through those places, I can usually understand most of what people are saying). As promised, John brought me an English newspaper, as well as a copy of Wired magazine, which I always enjoy skimming through. As he handed me the newspaper, he shook his head and said, “You’ve got some right nutters back in your country, don’t ya, mate?” Back in my cell, I decided to take a gander at the newspaper first in order to find out what looniness was happening back in my corner of the outside world. I almost wish I hadn’t.
Other than rumors from prisoners about my court case, I had been without any sort of news source for over a month. While the newspaper was a little over a week old, I was looking forward to looking through a fairly recent window to the outside world, perhaps even a bit of news from home. But the headlining story didn’t make me nostalgic for America—some freak had walked into a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, dressed in full tactical gear and body armor, and had opened fire with a shotgun, assault rifle, and handgun, killing twelve people and injuring seventy others before being arrested without any resistance behind the theater. Well, it’s good to know that civilization is still collapsing on schedule, I thought bitterly. I folded the paper and put it away, thinking about how screwed up the world continued to be.
That evening after lights out I heard a pair of male and female inmates calling to each other in Czech across the prison courtyard outside our cell. Ganbold told me that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, both locked up in the same prison, yelling out a recap of their respective days in Pankrác, along with a little sweet talk. As I lay in bed listening to the two lovers talk, I felt a great swell of longing for my wife. I couldn’t understand a word they said, but their tone was unmistakable and familiar to my ear, and reminded me of the silly and sweet way Cindy and I spoke to each other. It’s probably going to be a long while before I get to see her again, I thought, and went to sleep with a deep sadness in my heart.
The next day after breakfast as I was measuring our new cell with a ruler my wife had brought me (nine-and-a-half-feet tall arched ceilings, seven-feet wide by thirteen-feet long), a guard came by with an envelope for me. In it was a printed letter from a man named Jonathan Crane. The letter explained that he was a journalist for the Prague Post, an English publication in Prague, and was coming to Pankrác later that day for a story he had to cover. Jonathan asked me if it would be possible to sit down for an interview with me while he was in the prison, as the Post had been covering my ordeal and he thought I might like the chance to speak for myself to the English speaking press. The only problem was that I would have to give prison officials written notice that he was allowed to speak to me before they would allow an interview. I was excited by the possibility of finally having my voice heard in a forum other than Blesk, but I couldn’t read or write Czech. After lunch on the way to walk I told the trusty of my predicament, and he kindly agreed to write the note to the prison officials for me and give it to the guard in our tier office. Immediately after walk, a guard came to get me out of my cell, and the trusty told me I was wanted in the office. I grabbed the letter from Jonathan to show the guard in case he had any questions, and walked down the hall to the office.
The guard sitting at a desk smiled at me when I held up the letter and began to explain its contents.
“You won’t be needing that,” he said.
“Why? Did he already come? Did I miss him?” I asked, my heart sinking. The trusty wouldn’t have had time to write the note for me.
“No. You are leaving in thirty minutes. Pack your things—you are going home, Randy,” he said, looking pleased for me.
I stood there in disbelief for a second. A great rush of something indescribable washed over my entire being. It was almost like the way my focus had become so hyper-concentrated as time had slowed when I had been arrested, except now everything seemed to move in fast forward. Reality had taken on a surreal quality again, except that this time it was shiny and bright instead of the dingy gloam that had defined my first few days incarcerated. I stammered out a thank you to the man, and returned to my cell.
“I AM GOING HOME!” I hooted to Dorj and Ganbold as soon as I was in the cell.
The next thirty minutes were a blur of movement as I went through my things, distributing almost everything I had accumulated in prison evenly to the two of them, with instructions to give a few various specialty items to certain prisoners. Drawing pens and paper for art supplies to Rene. English books to John. Coffee for the Quiet Gypsy. Tobacco for Jacob. I believe Dorj and Ganbold were almost as happy for me as I was for myself, giving me hugs and laughing, helping me make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. The only damper on the whole excitement came when I thought about Jacob. I paused for a minute and began to worry about him—we had just started to get to know each other, he seemed to be setting off on the right path, and I had great hopes my relatively meager experience with sobriety would be of some small service in helping him to beat his addiction. I said a quick prayer for him, then returned to packing. I took a couple of packs of cigarettes for myself, all my paperwork, letters I had received, drawings Rene had made for me, and all the writing I had done in Pankrác. That was about it. I was almost done packing when I remembered the spoon of teaching.
I had decided long before the day of my release that when I left Pankrác, the spoon would be leaving with me. It had been my sole utensil, the only thing I had been allowed to keep the entire time since the day I had arrived there. I had used it daily to eat with, as a tool for various hammering and scraping and prying jobs, as a drawing aid, and as a teaching implement. I had earned that spoon with my time, and by God it was going with me. I buried it in my papers, hoping the guards wouldn’t search me too thoroughly—What is the penalty for stealing a spoon from prison, I wondered (the spoon now sits in my office). Soon a guard came to get me, and after another round of bear hugs from Dorj and Ganbold, I was on my way.
“Goodbye, Doctor Khun! Goodbye, Doctor Love! I will miss you! I hope you go home soon!” I yelled.
“Goodbye, Doctor Pankrác! Goodbye! You are a good doctor! Do not forget us! Go home, Doctor Pankrác! Go home!” they yelled. It was the last time I would ever see them, and as bad as it was being locked up with them in such a terrible place, sometimes I do miss them, and think fondly of them often.
Even Dorj.
The news of my release had spread through the tier, and men came to their doors, yelling goodbye to me through the open hatches and wishing me luck. I saw Jacob’s face peering out, and I ran over to his cell, clasping his hands as I told him to remember that he didn’t have to die if he didn’t want to. He thanked me, and we said goodbye. I hope he is well wherever he is. The guard took me by the prison laundr
y, where I dropped off my dirty sheets and clothes, and changed into the clothes I had been arrested in. In an office next to the laundry, an envelope was produced containing everything that had been in my pockets when I was arrested, which a clerk went through with painful slowness, checking off each item on a list as he returned it to me. Then I was taken downstairs, out of the main prison building, and into an office set inside the thick outer prison wall. I signed some papers written in Czech (I had no idea of what they said), was handed some release papers (also in Czech), and was told to hold onto them as they were very important. I turned and walked towards a waiting room at the front of the office and there was Tomas and a woman who worked for Martin’s law firm. I grabbed them both and gave them a huge bear hug, then we walked out of Pankrác into the sunny Prague afternoon.
I was free.
While there was no ex-KGB private detective waiting in a fast black car to spirit me over the border (sadly, Martin had deemed this unnecessary), Tomas did tell me that he was taking me to Martin’s apartment to hide out until my flight out of Prague had been arranged. The judgment of the appeal court had come down that morning, rejecting the prosecutor’s second complaint, and Tomas had waited outside the court all morning in order to get the necessary papers for my release to the prison as soon as possible. As far as we knew, Musik was not aware that I had been released, but if he found out, he could request a brand-new warrant for my arrest. Therefore, I was to lay low in Martin’s crib until the time came to leave. As I rode shotgun through Old Town Prague in Tomas’s car, my ebullience was tinged with paranoia. I slunk low in my seat every time I saw a policeman or anyone I thought looked like a cop. Musik could be anywhere—I had no idea of what he looked like, but I’m sure my face would be familiar to him. It would be just my luck to pass him coming out of some pub after his lunch break. It wasn’t until I was in Martin’s spacious apartment that I began to relax a bit. I took a long, gloriously hot shower in a clean bathroom and shaved my face with a fresh razor Martin loaned me, then sat on his rooftop balcony and drank a delicious cup of real coffee his wife made me.
Dark Days: A Memoir Page 39
