SKILL 02: BEING ALONE TO BE WITH OTHERS

The Bowl of Soup

Many years ago, far away from here, I lost my job at a carnival. I asked a guy for a joint in front of his wife and the next day they went off on me, started chasing me. I was like, OH HELL NO, MAN! Back in the day, somebody once told me, if you’re working in a carnival and you say, “HEY RUBE!” (Like ruby red slippers) people will come running.  If somebody’s getting beat up or raped or something bad is happening, a carny just needs to yell “RUBE,” and anybody who hears is going to come and stop it from happening. So I yelled “RUBY,” and people came to help. Lucky for me, I didn’t get hurt. 

Afterwards, one of the carnies dropped me off near the mall. He throws all my stuff out near a dumpster. He is stressed and old, so he leaves me there. I walked back into town, past a Chrysler dealership, or a Pontiac, no it was a Chrysler. I see a PT Cruiser pickup truck in the parking lot. I wish somebody would’ve said something about it because I knew I was being dishonest. I was spun out of my gord. I got into the car, I turned it on and I drove off the lot. I drove around for 3-4 hours, even went to an AA meeting. I wasn’t trying to steal the car. I actually tried to return the car to another of their car lots but they were waiting for me. I was arrested and I accepted the felony charge. Possession of a stolen motor vehicle. I got sentenced to 6 months.

Fast forward, I’m serving my time and they moved me into a new cell with a man already inside. His name was Lane, and this guy’s big (he makes you think like, what would Al Capone be like at 25?). I walked in the cell and he was in a yellow jumpsuit, and I’m like, why is he in the yellow suit? What happens with violence in yellow? If there’s any blood, it shows up right away. Self-blood, somebody else’s blood, regardless, a yellow suit shows everything. It was clear, violence was in his nature. I thought, what the heck, I’m here for a nonviolent offense. 

His first reaction was like, “OH NO, YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS TO ME! I’m in here all by myself, staying out of trouble and you’re messing with me, putting somebody else in the cell with me, NOOOO!!” I don’t fault him for that. And I was just like I’m tired. God damn. Leave me alone. I just wanna sleep and get this over. 

We were stressed; we could hardly go to the bathroom. We didn’t know one another. We didn’t want to know one another. We did nothing but argue and fight. He would not let me sleep. He would go on his knees and pray. Going off. “I’M GOD, I’M SATAN, I’M GOD, I’M SATAN!!”….blah blah blah blah blah….going on and on at the wall. I was stuck in a 9’ by 7’ cell and it freaked me out. 

The cell was in a hallway full of rooms all the same. There’s one bed. He slept on the bed and I slept on a mattress on the floor. A stainless steel mirror, a stainless steel toilet and sink. The only time you got a bowl or cup to use for water was during lunch. There’s almost no sound. You can hear yourself think. It’s frustrating hearing someone else breathing or eating. They are listening to how you’re breathing; they are patterning your breath. The cell has multiple coats of paints on cement on top of cinder blocks. Concrete floor, the vibration of the air; with cold rain outside, it was never warmer than 50 degrees. Low ceiling light all the time. It would get dimmed at night, but never off. You can’t get rid of the smell. Human body order, feet and feces flows through the paint. My friend (Mike, God bless your soul, they say you died) said to me one time, “sometimes somebody hands you a shit sandwich and you just gotta smile and eat it and say thanks.” I was trying to smile everyday!

The second day we spent together, we were at lunch. You get a sandwich and soup. Lane asks, “You going to eat that?” Yeah, I’m gonna eat that sandwich. “Can I have it?” NO, you can’t have it! He starts up and I’m like, Oh, hell no! So I grabbed my soup bowl. I had already finished the soup. I stick my fingers down my throat and I throw up in my bowl. He’s like, OH! I was like, You want to eat this? He says, “NO!,” and I drink the soup back up. It came out of my stomach anyway, right? So, I drink it down, and then I eat my sandwich to get the puke out of my mouth. I’m a shock factor kind of kid who tried to impress the chicks in third grade: lunch came around, ketchup on my chocolate cake! OH YEAH! LOL. Watching ’em shake their head; their hair wobbles a little bit. The smell of disgust.

If you’re trying to be involved with other people, you’re probably gonna give Lane that sandwich. Which opens the doorway for you to suffer for somebody else’s greed, gluttony, lust, hate, guile, malice; whatever it is, you’ll suffer to try to please another. Say I told him, “I’ll give you half this sandwich, cause I know you are really hungry.” The next day he says, “I get your dinner, you don’t have a problem with that right?” No. “That’s what I thought.”  After I give him the sandwich, he may stand above me while I’m sleeping with his fist in my face, telling me, “Anything I say goes.” He may or not say it, he might only breathe it! We are not genies in a bottle or snakes in baskets to be bought and sold and tossed around. And when we no longer perform thrown in a fire or barbecue.

Jails are sometimes the safest place for somebody. Especially, when you’ve been trying to please other people and getting used and abused, without themselves knowing it. If it hadn’t been for jail, I’d have overdosed underneath a tree somewhere. Some people might say, You dont know what you are talking about. Some people will say, Oh, Stockholm Syndrome. But jail saved my life.