The Change Agent

by Damon West

  At no time, however, did I cease smoking meth in the living room while she resided in my room, and within a week of her arrival, Gato and his crew were back in the apartment. All the illegal activity resumed, with my grandmother tucked away in my room.

  I’d convinced Gato and his crew to keep their guns hidden from view because no matter how out of it she was, she would be able to register seeing a gun. This was a sound suggestion because she occasionally ventured out of her bedroom. Gato and his crew were respectful of my request, fooling her into thinking they were “nice boys.” These guys were anything but nice boys. I suspected Gato and a few of his boys were killers, but that didn’t bother me because they controlled my meth.

  Bogey was a different issue. Nothing could be left out around a curious boxer like him. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I could not keep him at the apartment because we didn’t have a pet deposit. Why the apartment people saw fit to call us out for having a boxer around but said nothing about the meth-dealing Mexican gangsters, was beyond me. A solution was presented in the form of a woman I was seeing, another meth-head named Jessica.

  Taking care of my grandmother was becoming increasingly difficult. Within a few weeks, it was obvious by the awful smell in the room that she wasn’t bathing. This seemed so incongruent to the grandma I knew all my life, since I could, even in my intoxicated state, conjure up memories of a woman who took such good care of herself. I remembered from my youth how she left the bathroom smelling of her Dove soap every night after her bath. Seeking advice in such unchartered waters, I called my mother. Her response was simple, clinical. “Either you get her to bathe or you will have to bathe her.” My mother was a nurse; this did not register as a crisis on her radar. But it did on mine.

  Still, the worst was yet to come.

  Gato realized I had my grandmother’s credit card and the authority to use it. It was time to pay back so much of what I owed for all the dope he had provided. Long story short, we ran up hundreds of dollars in charges. I was taking him shopping to buy groceries and clothes for his entire family. Meanwhile, I never once bought my grandmother a new outfit, never took her out to eat, never bought her flowers, nothing. My poor grandmother was wearing a dirty gown when my mother drove up to Dallas and picked her up to take her to her new home in Port Arthur, an assisted living facility. After enduring what had to be the loneliest and most isolated existence in her more than eight decades on Earth incarcerated in my bedroom, she was going to a different kind of prison.

  Of all the failures in my life, this one cuts the deepest. A normal person would have asked for help, changed course, something. I was not a normal person, though. No, I was an addict, deep into my disease. My misery, and the misery of so many other innocent people, was just beginning.

  The electricity went first, shut off because I hadn’t paid in months. One of the other meth addicts around my place showed me how to take the lock off the meter box, remove the meter, take the plastic current blockers off, and restore power. This worked until the power company completely removed the meter. After that, we ran an extension cord from the communal hallway outlet of my Uptown apartment. Not exactly Uptown living standards. The eviction came weeks later. I knew it was coming, so I threw everything I could into a storage unit I rented with some of my grandmother’s money.

  Officially homeless, I went from working on Wall Street to living on the streets of Dallas. Thankfully, Jessica had Bogey. I saw him from time to time during my month without a place to live. Jessica still needed her dope, and I was her man for that. I even got arrested one night when I borrowed her vehicle to score. The cops didn’t find the meth, but they did find a Viagra in my pocket. Knowing they were missing something bigger, they arrested me for possession of a dangerous drug. It could have been much worse.

  That first trip to Dallas County jail in November of 2005 didn’t even last twenty-four hours. I was able to bond out and still get back in the morning to bring a sleeping Jessica some meth. I was high within thirty minutes of leaving the jail.

  Eventually, I moved into a rat-hole apartment in East Dallas with a bunch of other meth addicts. It did not matter that the place stunk of days-old body odor because of the unwashed junkies residing there. All the comfort I needed in life came from the shared misery of every single person around me, and our days-long meth binges.

  While high, we planned our next scores. I was committing crimes daily at this point. Storage units and cars were the easy prey of the addicted because burglaries of buildings and automobiles meant there was little chance we would ever encounter anybody. When that was not enough, we escalated our thefts to home burglaries.

  With misery piling on and time slipping away, my life was a nightmare, the darkest days still yet to come.

  There was little left to identify me as the charismatic, gifted athlete from a great family, with ambitions, hopes, and dreams and the potential to do anything he wanted.

  That guy was dead.

  I only lived for meth.

  I was living like an animal.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Coffee Bean

  Prison Diary

  Saturday, November 3, 2012

  A prison visitation room is like a buffet of human emotion. Joy, pain, shock, and relief emanate from the inmates and their visitors. In every prison visitation room around the country, inmates receive both good news and bad news. Some are learning of their family’s good fortune, while others are being told they are being divorced and this will be the last time they see their family. Being privileged to have visits almost weekly, I have seen more than my fair share of laughter and tears at visitation. Today, I experienced both from my special visitor.

  My older brother Brandon brought his six-month old son Hudson to see me. Even with the advance notice they were coming, nothing could prepare me for the emotional rollercoaster holding that child would send me on. From the first moment I met Hudson, I felt a special bond to him. So much so that I did not let him go for the duration of the two-hour visit. I was even allowed to feed him with his bottle.

  He will never know the peace he brought to me. Not that I needed any proof God existed, as I am a firm believer, but holding that sweet, innocent little baby in this dark, evil institution was like a shining ray of light from Heaven. Holding him closely to me brought more peace to me than I have ever felt inside this place. It was better than any high I had ever experienced on any drug. It was, in a word, life.

  MY SMILES AND LAUGHTER from the visit turned to tears of sadness when I had to return Hudson to my brother when our time was up. There was no way two hours had elapsed. My primal instinct was to ask someone to double-check that the guard had kept the proper time.

  Alas, no mistake was made by the guards. Time, as I have learned, does not bend to my will. It is the Great Equalizer. I said goodbye to Brandon and Hudson through tears and regrets. These are the times when the consequences that are the results of my criminal behavior are the most difficult burden to carry. I remind myself during these times of extreme loneliness and intense emotional pain that my victims are also feeling pain. Pain that I caused them.

  Such emotional extremes as I experienced today also remind me of the greatest lesson Mr. Jackson taught me in county jail, about energy. How people either affect or infect others around them. It was one of the last of many nuggets of wisdom he imparted to me before I “caught chain” from Dallas County Jail on the prison bus.

  * * *

  In July of 2009, I was about as down and depressed as I had ever been. I had to be cautious due to the guards waiting for any excuse to lock me up in administrative segregation because of my massive sentence. Masking my emotions was a game I started early each morning during those final days in county jail. Remaining positive was my only defense from total surrender. I knew my time there was drawing to a close, which both thrilled me because I was ready to move on to the prison, where I could go outside and
feel the sun on my skin, and scared me, because I knew my biggest and deadliest trials in life awaited me there.

  Mr. Jackson checked on me daily, offering me positive words and good energy. He talked a lot about energy, espousing how we put out energy wherever we went, and the laws of attraction that accompany energy. He said simple gestures, like saying “hello” and smiling at someone when you greet them, can change the entire atmosphere in a room. Or a prison pod. He practiced it daily. I practiced it, too.

  “Good morning, West,” Mr. Jackson said, smiling as he pumped my hand. The guy had a great grip and always maintained eye contact.

  Laughing, I replied, “Mr. Jackson, you keep telling me the morning is good, so I believe it. I have this gut feeling our good mornings together are coming to an end. Surely, they will be calling my name out soon for that chain bus.”

  Noting the seriousness in my tone, he shrugged and told me there was a 100 percent chance I would soon be on that prison bus, but that didn’t mean the mornings would cease to be good. It did mean I’d have to be positive without Coach Jackson around. He assured me that I had what it took to not only survive in that place, but to actually thrive in there. Mr. Jackson then launched into an analogy that has guided me through life.

  “Imagine we have a pot of boiling water,” he said, holding his hands cupped to appear like a pot. “This pot of boiling water represents the atmosphere in prison. Boiling water, like prison, is hot, and the heat and pressure in both will forever change anything you put into it. I want you to put three things into this boiling water. A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. If I put a carrot into a pot of boiling water, what happens to the carrot?”

  I answered quickly, “It turns soft, mushy.”

  He smiled and said I was correct. A carrot, he said, goes into prison and gets beaten constantly, gets robbed, gets extorted, and he may even be raped or killed. “You don’t want to be the carrot in prison.”

  I was holding my breath at his description of the carrot. I breathed out, and nodded. “No, being the carrot is not an option.”

  “What about the egg?” he asked. “What happens to an egg when you throw it into boiling water?”

  Again, I answered quickly. “The egg turns hard, like a hard-boiled egg.”

  He nodded, saying the egg went into prison, but didn’t suffer the fate of the carrot. The egg’s hard, outer shell would protect it physically from the heat and the pressure of prison. But on the inside, the egg was just as hard. The egg became so hard that it was incapable of giving or receiving love. “The egg gets a bunch of swastikas and other hate-filled graffiti tattooed all over it. Prison is the only place the egg truly feels at home because it is institutionalized.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the egg is someone my parents will recognize.”

  “The egg is what your parents made you promise you wouldn’t become. Your debt to pay to them is to avoid becoming the carrot or the egg.”

  I was following him perfectly. I asked, “What about the coffee bean?”

  “You tell me. What happens to a coffee bean when you put it into boiling water?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  He said the coffee bean, the smallest of the three things, small like me, went into the boiling water and turned the water into coffee. “The coffee bean has the power to change the atmosphere inside the pot. The water in the pot becomes coffee.”

  He said that if I was going to not only survive prison, but thrive in there, I’d have to be like the coffee bean. I was going to have to change the atmosphere inside that dark, evil place by being positive in the face of complete and total negativity.

  Every person puts out energy in a little environment around them, and energy attracts similar energy. He used the example of a negative person who walked around with a scowl on their face. That person was guaranteed to attract the same type of person. Conversely, the positive person would attract other positive people.

  Moreover, opposite energy repels, and a person could ward off potential negative encounters just by remaining positive.

  “You’ll either infect others around you or you will affect them,” he said.

  I was understanding everything he was saying.

  He told me I was one of the most positive people he’d ever seen in that environment, which I took as a compliment coming from him. “You’re about to be thrown into that pot of boiling water that is prison. You’re gonna have to go in there with a smile on your face and a great attitude no matter how painful it gets. No matter what, you can never let them know they’re getting to you.”

  He emphasized that my survival was contingent upon me bringing my positive personal energy in there and changing the atmosphere. It was a task that would not be easy because resistance to my positivity was going to cause me more pain and suffering. “You’re gonna be a light that many will want to snuff out. Don’t let that happen. Eventually, you’ll be left alone, and the other coffee beans in prison will find you because they’ll know you by your like-energy.”

  I thought deeply about everything he said. It made perfect sense to me. In theory, this sounded simple enough. In practice, it was much more difficult.

  “What do you see more of in there?”

  He answered quickly. “Eggs. Prison is mostly eggs.”

  Mr. Jackson said being an egg was the natural evolution of most incarcerated people because the energy in there was so thoroughly negative that it demanded the sacrifice of many eggs.

  He promised I would see plenty of carrots, too. They were the saddest, most miserable and lost people in there.

  “If you want to find the coffee beans,” he said, “try looking in the chapel. They’ll have their strongest representation in there, mixed in with the charlatans and fanatics.”

  Then, he looked around the pod, cutting his eyes to every corner, and whispered, “The coffee beans will find you, West. They’ll be your gang.”

  He shook my hand and walked away. Mr. Jackson had a way of delivering meaningful points, which often made me do some serious thinking. This coffee bean thing, however, floored me. I was trying to digest it as I looked around the day room. Who would I consider to be a coffee bean in here? I could find four people, of which Mr. Jackson and I were each one, and the other two hung out with us.

  Then it hit me. I didn’t meet Mr. Jackson. He came and met me one day. He found me in all this evil and negativity. He brought me into their small circle of positive energy. Their Coffee Bean Gang. They needed my energy as much as I needed theirs. I’ll be damned.

  The thought made me instantly feel better, as if I knew a secret that was going to make everything all right. I felt more prepared for that prison bus than at any other time. Good thing, because it came soon after. I had finally caught chain.

  * * *

  Those first weeks at the Stiles Unit were brutal. After suffering that very quick defeat in my first fight, I was soon fighting whenever the white guys felt like testing me. If these tests were measured by wins, I would have gotten a D, at best, only passing because I showed up and fought. Fortunately, the fights were not graded. All that mattered was that I fought and defended myself. Prison fights, I would find out, were known as “free shows.” Prisoners enjoyed the free shows. Better, sometimes, than pay-for-view.

  The first time I won a fight it was really nothing spectacular because the guy I fought was drunk. So many drank the hooch or homemade wine, made from fermented potatoes, rice, fruit, you name it, with sugar used to accelerate the process. This skinhead type got so twisted that he fell down the steps, right into me, where I was standing. He was clearly dazed from the fall, and probably a bit embarrassed. So, he did what so many men do when their egos and pride get bruised. He lashed out at the first thing he saw that he perceived to be weaker than him. Me. It was a mistake on his part.

  The punch he threw was wildly telegraphed because of his intoxicated stat
e. He never had a chance at landing it. Not one to miss an opportunity, I jumped on him and took out a few weeks’ worth of my own humiliations and assaults to my male pride and ego. The poor son of a bitch lost badly and had to suffer the ridicule of his buddies.

  I came out of it not only unscathed, but more confident. Now I knew I was capable of winning. Yet there was something else that I felt, and it greatly disturbed me. It was as if I got a taste for blood, and I liked it. It felt oddly good, even powerful to hurt someone else like that. This must be the feeling of the egg, from Mr. Jackson’s analogy.

  Was I in danger of hardening on the inside after only a few brutal weeks?

  Mr. Jackson had warned me I would fight the white gangs first. If I survived their advances without giving in and becoming family, joining a gang, or worse, giving up and becoming a punk, I would face a brutal wave of violence from the black gangs, who would be given the go-ahead by the white gangs. Kind of like jumping off the Hindenburg and landing on the Titanic.

  Within a month of entering Stiles, I had survived the Woods, the White Knights, the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Aryan Circle. True to Mr. Jackson’s warnings, once the white gangs were checked off the list, I was now fighting against the Crips, Bloods, Mandingo Warriors, Gangster Disciples, and any black guy who wanted to tee off on an independent, “privileged” white guy who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  I discovered that people who themselves have been oppressed in life often make the best oppressors when given the opportunity. The pleasure some of the blacks took in pounding on me was sick and perverse. It was a labor of love for some.

  A stroke of luck came one day when another inmate taught me how to make a mouth-guard to protect my teeth. When you take a handful of wet toilet paper, mold it to your top teeth, then take it out and set it on your desk overnight, it will harden into a mouthpiece. Not exactly like boiling a mouthpiece in water like I did when I was a kid. Being made of paper, they never lasted more than one fight. But they were easy to replace, and I could carry it around in my pocket, always at the ready for a fight.