Character Catch Up

For those of you following the embedded stories in this blog, let me catch you up.

Mr. Stewart was saved from riding out. (Read previous few blogs) I was able to do this by cashing in chips not yet in existence. The day he was let out of seg was beautiful out, and I called him in to read the riot act before group the next day. I didn’t think I could tolerate him in group if I didn’t have a moment to vent my frustration on him. It was his one free day on the yard before three weeks of Top Lock (where you can’t even leave your bunk to pee without permission) and Loss of Privilege (where you can work and pee at your discretion, but are otherwise contained to your bunk). The first night out of Seg he received a letter from a friend.

A mutual friend of theirs, somebody he had known for over 20 years had killed herself. She had a period of significant sobriety, gone back to school, graduated, found employment, and then been sucked back into the drugs and laid down on the railroad tracks. This is a favored way of death in this area, something the Amtrak people must dread with every fiber of their being. She lived for 20 minutes after she was crushed into some mass of tissue and shattered bone. I leave you to imagine his response. It was poorly timed, but as one of my coworkers mentioned, at least he could show me the letter and obituary. He was not in a foreign place with no support.

Mr. Rose is back as of night before last. Two stints in the hospital and one in an intermediate care center. He came back nominally stable, and refusing treatment. As fragile as he was, he is not allowed back into the yard until I clear him. As he came in late, he spent the night in Seg, and I saw him in the morning. Five days without meds. He comes back to a yard where he was threatening people and left a legacy of incipient violence, and now he needs to walk back out. If you’ve read me for a while, you can imagine how I snatched him up. He signed back up for service and took his meds.

He explained to me today that he was feeling so good on his meds – no need to try to hurt anybody, no mood swings that he had to stop. He had to make sure he was still there. Last night on the yard he tracked down a guy that owed him money. Apparently verbally terrified this kid enough he went to custody. Mr. Rose was pulled in and asked to explain himself, which he tells me he did. I was too tired tonight to check and see if his story held up to custody’s understanding. He expressed regret today, as he had suggested he ride out to a higher level, then realized he was better off where I knew him and could follow his case. Might just be bullshit. Hard to tell with this guy. He seemed rather embarrassed that I had the nooses he gave me in Seg tacked onto my corkboard.

I told him I would put a cot in the corner of my office and keep him where I could watch him. The meds had kicked in enough he could smile at the image. He has parole, and I will tell him tomorrow. Hopefully this will keep him focused on not acting like an idiot.

Mr. Stark (second blog) has been having one success after another. He has beat two tickets, one legitimate, one not. He has practiced “soft eye contact” with the officer that takes offence to his alpha male stance. This dodged another potential ticket. But he is also curbing his behavior to avoid more trouble. He explained to me today he had made me a promise. Regardless of all the insanity, he feels honor bound to follow through, so thus has been trying to make a change. Next week we will talk about how he changes his image on the yard. It should be interesting.

Mr. Sotheby continues to work under the radar. His knuckles were all bruised and scabbed last week.

What I Learned

This has been an eventful week, where I have learned quite a bit, actually, more than I might have wished.

I learned that there is heroin available on the unit, in addition to tobacco and marijuana.

I learned that most of my guys have participated in illegal activities as well as physical violence at some point in their bit.

I learned that you should never hit somebody with your hands (actually, John D. McDonald taught me that as a teen, but he advocated a weapon: a bad choice in prison.) You should use your elbows. It doesn’t leave marks indicating you’ve been fighting, and it is a much stronger bone, not prone to breaking.

I learned through a delicate exchange that I could smuggle in contraband. I guess, actually, I didn’t learn this, I assumed, when I bothered to consider, this was a possibility. As it was floated as a joke, I reacted as if it were a joke and declined. Of course there was nothing truly funny about it.

So Mr. Sotheby suggests to me that this level of trust is what I’ve been looking for from my guys. He is right, and now it just scares me. I just haven’t understood how many ways the guys can leave me….

To Mr. Stewart

Mr. Stewart,

I’ve read your letter through now a couple of times. A copy is enclosed and I would like you to keep it with you.

It is a moment you’ve taken to speak truly – from the shiny bit that hides under the fear and rage. It speaks – you speak- from the part of you that is good and has value. You need to keep it for when you feel desperate and bad; when you need to find your way back to your essential humanity.

As I thought about what you said, your need to hit somebody and be hit; that this was the culmination of your self-hate from your flop, I suspect I know what happened. You let yourself get wrapped up in believing you were worthless. Believing you were trash and nothing you could do would change this reality. Perhaps you had begun to hope. And this would make it all the more scary and desperate. So you set out to prove to yourself what everybody thought of you. And you blew up your life again.

I’m sorry it took me too long to figure this out. I know intellectually how violent you can be. Emotionally I rejected that knowledge and refused to hear what you were telling me.

Next time you get to that point, and I daresay there will be a next time. Please feel free to say loudly and clearly that you could do with a couple of days in Seg. It’s called a Mental Health Emergency. It is done without the suicide precautions. Take that that time to read your letter to me again. I would also suggest you take that time to do some crying – it can be a great release for pain and grief and fear. It also heals instead of continuing to increase the burden of hurt you keep piling on yourself.

My greatest fear is that you will be ridden out and just give up. All the work you’ve done in the past months will get wadded up and thrown into the back of your mind. You got your flop in October (that was the time you began to actually work on issues). The date the flop began was totally arbitrary and unconnected to the changes you had begun.

The depressed, anxious, angry person of September was losing his grip… I’m not being very clear now, am I.

THE PERSON YOU WERE IN FEBRUARY WAS NOT THE PERSON WHO WAS FLOPPED. It was a trick of the calendar. It did not reflect some failure in therapy or your work with me.

You can sink into the morass of the choice you made, or figure out how to make a different one next time. I would prefer the later.

Mr. Stewart was released back onto the unit against the better judgment of custody, but because I asked.

From Mr. Stewart

Ms. Mclain,

I’ve been sitting in this box for 5 ½ days now, and it just dawned on me how crazy I am. I mean I’ve always known this, but I’ve just affirmed my beliefs. I found myself thinking about my reason for being in here and started laughing to myself about it. I literally “created my own prison.” I’m not a stupid man, but man, do I do stupid things.

Remember me telling you about how I’d been depressed and angry ever since my flop started? There was only one way for it to go unless I stopped it, and that’s right where I’m at. I wasn’t dealing with any of it in a healthy manner. I just pray that I can stay here and continue to work with you on these issues, because I really need some frickin’ help! I do appreciate all the help that you’ve given me so far, and I hope that it can continue. I’m not sure how much more I can say without being inappropriate, so I’ll move on.

You asked me why I never told you about my daughter being ill. I didn’t really think about it, I guess. But there’s more to it that that. When I tell people one of two things happens or both sometimes: I’m somehow defective because of it, or I think she is and that’s why I’m not there, because I’m an asshole who doesn’t care about her. It’s all bullshit! And to tell you the truth, I was told by Laurie a long time ago to stay away from her for her own good. Not because I was a bad father, because I wasn’t. Because of my heroin use and the crazy life I led. She was right. Dammit was she ever right and the thought that I had abandoned my child over a drug has fueled the fire that has continually sent be back to it. Crazy, huh? I miss her with all my heart and soul. I don’t even know what she looks like. Do you know how that feels? Of course not. So when I get a look on my face like you think I’m no good or bad, that’s just how I feel.

I really need your help to work through this and everyone else’s voices telling me I’m shit, because that’s how I feel, and no good can come from feeling like that.

Thank you for everything.

Owning Mr. Stewart, part II

Mr. Stewart has been in Seg now for four days without his tickets being heard. The odds are he will be ridden out. I’ve decided, on Monday, to talk to the committee that makes this decision and argue that he needs to stay with us for mental health reasons. He will likely score an Assault ticket, but it won’t be enough to send him to a higher level, so he could possible stay. The guy he assaulted is looking at Parole in the next six weeks, so he will be gone. The possibility of another incident is small, since both of them have told me they are willing to stand down.

To ask that he stay puts my reputation in questions. Am I “overly familiar?” Do I have a relationship with Mr. Stewart that is wrong? I have a relationship that is totally different from what Custody has. But he is my patient, not just an inmate. I have similar relationships with a number of guys, and I must admit, I care for a significant amount of the guys on my caseload. I also care for a significant number of the staff I work with. I care for a significant number of my husband’s friends. If I didn’t like him, I couldn’t do very useful therapy.

And of course, I now own him…

Fix It

The week continues. Mr. Stark comes in on Thursdays: Mr. Invisible.

He is working hard for me, mildly aware of Mr. Stewart in Segregation and my pain and fear. After last session, I want him to talk about the tangle of love, hate and pain engendered by his rape. I start by suggesting love is something that is supposed to be warm and safe. He leaps up from his seat and starts to pace around my office. The new office is big enough to hold ten guys for group, so there is room. As I have mentioned, custody walks by every ten minutes or so and looks in. My goal is to sit quietly, so nobody is alarmed by his angst. He tells me love has never involved anything vaguely safe.

He is a musician. One of his expressions is heavy metal. He tells me this week he has played with the prison bands. He has been asked to lead guitar with songs full of hate. For the first time he has looked at the faces around him, and as he plays, they are suffused with rage and anger. And he is repulsed. He feels that he is funneling his own hate into the crowd, and is responsible for eliciting this response from others. And now, he no longer wants this. Of course he is not doing this; he is just finding resonance from others fighting the same demons he fights.

He flings himself back into his chair, digs in his pocket and gives me the four picks that live there. In prison, these must have a huge value. I’m vaguely confused as to how he even has them, but there is no time to ask.

“I can’t play heavy metal anymore.”

His music is so important to him. It is the thing that keeps him afloat in this crazy world of prison. And he is up again, pacing. I think he just gave me his music. I think in retrospect he was asking me to judge this part of him. If I found it wanting or wrong, I was to take it away from him; I should take his picks. If I did so, he would do his best to acquiesce to my decision. I can’t even imagine what comes next.

He saves me by launching into another topic, starting again with the disclaimer that he is retarded.

I cringe. I have little energy left this week with Mr. Stewart in Seg. The last time Mr. Stark started a topic this way it was horrific. I don’t have the energy for this.

He doesn’t wish to tell me the story, but he knows he needs to. It haunts him and not telling me is a form of lying. He owes $24 to a guy that sold him drugs in the past couple of months; time before I lowered the boom about his behavior. His brother is supposed to feed money into other inmate’s accounts from Mr. Stark’s savings at home. But for some reason, his brother has dropped off of the face of the earth in the past months, and this debt has gone unpaid. He suspects his brother is using again.

Yesterday he was approached by a group, a pseudo-gang, of men demanding the money. The person he owed had sold the debt. He fliped immediately into prison mode and invites them to come one by one into the shower with their knives and he will slice their faces off. They back off and leave with verbal threats. Such violence, offered to me with the most sheepish face. I have no doubt he would be able to do such to at least half of them before winding up another causality in Seg or God forbid, the hospital. But if he chooses this recourse, he ends up leaving me. So he asks me what to do.

Excuse me, I am white naive country girl; I’ve no idea what to do with this crazy prison yard politics and power struggles. I can’t even believe he asks me. I express this and ask for a list of options.

He explains what I already know, what those of you reading this blog know. Now that he has made a stand, if he backs down, he loses face, and the consequences could lead to an escalated level of violence. All I know is I can’t lose him, too. Not two of them in the same week.

“Fix it. Fix it, Mr. Stark” I have nothing else to offer him.

Lunch sits in my stomach like a wad of clay. Two of them in one week will leave me, both for seemingly meaningless things. Maybe the husband is right, and I don’t have the strength for this work.

I have to walk across the yard this afternoon a couple of times to fix some medication problems. It is an early spring day, and most everybody is out and milling around. Mr. Stark should be at work in the music center. I’ve not yet begun to seriously worry; I’m saving that for the ride home. Again, all these guys are dressed the same, and picking them out of the crowd can be difficult. Suddenly somebody peals off of a conversation going the opposite direction and matches my stride. Mr. Stark.

“I’ve fixed it, it’s taken care of, Ms. McLain.”

In two hours? I want to stop and snatch him up and ask for more details. But I keep walking.

“I didn’t do it exactly how you might want.” He means he was threatening violence in some manner, he was being a prisoner.

“I don’t care. But you took care of it?” and I look at him sideways. It is normal for people to stop me to talk and sometimes to walk with me. I know that huge portions of the yard pay attention and balance to make sure I am not favoring one above another. We need to appear low key as he gives me this most important piece of information.

“Yup, I fixed it.”

And our paths diverge.

I come out moments later after dropping off the meds. He is standing down the walk from me yelling instructions and commands across the yard. He gesticulates with power and intent. He is the man that crouches outside my office waiting to be called in. I guess he has taken care of it. I have not found him in Seg in the following two days…

Owning Mr. Stewart

It has been a long week, and I hardly know where to begin. Mr. Stewart, one of my regular guys has gone off of the deep end. Somebody in a different unit owed him a tiny bit of money. But as custody has reminded me, this is a huge thing; something that might call your manhood into question.

Mr. Stewart tried to call this guy out into the common area. This did not work. So Mr. Stewart went into his old unit and pulled this guy out. A Major Out of Place ticket. Both are now sporting horrid black eyes and other wounds. Mr. Stewart owned up, stating he took the first blow, but only because he thought the other guy was coming at him. It’s all on tape, and a huge portion of the inmates witnessed this, including the blood that sprayed everywhere.

So I walk in on Wednesday morning and check the segregation board. Who is in the hole from last night? And I see Mr. Stewart’s name and number with “fighting,” penned in behind it. The other guy is on my caseload also. The other guy has always passed through my office as an afterthought. He is a long term con, and is uninterested in counseling or change, he just wants the meds. You know who I support.

I am so angry, and hurt and full of grief and loss, because one of them will be surely ridden out to another prison. I have spent so much time with Mr. Stewart, and we had begun to make some sort of progress, and he is now maybe leaving due to something so tiny in my eyes.

I speak to the other guy, and hear the story; pretty close to what is on the ticket. Then I pull up a chair to Mr. Stewart, and talk through the meal slot. I can’t rationalize pulling him out, in belly chains, needing an extra custody person to supervise my safety. I just need to lean over and shout through the slot. So angry, so disappointed, I cry in front of custody again before I go in. I would feel so much better if I could grab him by the collar and slam him against the wall and scream in his face. Of course, this would be so normal and recognized; this is how everybody he has cared about has always treated him. Maybe in some sick way it would comfort him.

And I start talking to him and he does this horrible dismissing shrugging thing he does when he is very disturbed. Even though I know why he does it, it enrages me further. I am tight and cold and angry. I suggest he come close enough I can grab him by the throat, and he smartly keeps his distance. He is just showered, and his newly long hair is tangled. Those of us with long hair know you comb out the bottom few inches and then work up. I suggest this to him and he continues to comb the tangles from the top. This just angers me more.

He gives me prison dead eye. I suggest he knock that off. I then ask him to apologize, as I see he is either refusing to acknowledge why I am angry or is unable to speak it to himself. Shrugging, dead eye. And he yawns.

And I begin to consider leaving; this is doing me no good. I have a whole day in front of me, and I don’t need to wind up so hard I can’t do my job. He must have sensed this, and suddenly he is before me and I can see him. He apologizes. He tells me he understands how much it hurts me to have him in the Hole. And he is again this lost boy trying to find a way out, as he has been in my office for so many weeks. If I save him am I hurting him? I hope not. I if I save him, I will hope to own him and be able to push him in the directions I think he needs. Let’s see what happens…