That grip

When I was in there we got 7.50 a month from the state.  In Booneville the highest paying job was thirty five bucks a month.  The minimum pay will barely keep a fella in soap and toothpaste.  It's not cool.  The lye soap the state hands out will jack your skin in about two days.  It kills crab eggs.  No joke.  They don't give out toothpaste.  The only other thing they give out for free is toilet paper.  In Booneville you get one roll a week.  I am still amazingly efficient with the TP.

Money in prison is different than it is on the outside.  You could literally get beat up over a dollar.  It's that serious.  In there being in debt is one of the worst situations to be in.  Debt doubles every commissary.  The economy is dangerous and lucrative if you realize being rich is having a hundred bucks.  I was lucky because I had a few people who would send me grip pretty regularly.  I didn’t have to worry about cosmetics.  My grandmother on JoAnn's side would send me money.  She was always worried about me.  I never let Rachel.  JoAnn probably wouldn't have sent me any even if she had it. 

I didn't have to get a job because I had no money on the books.  I had to get a job because if you don't they give you one.  That would mean working with gangsters all day doing menial crap.  There was literally a group of cats who swept the streets every day as their job.  Each house had a group that kept the house clean.  There were all kinds of different jobs.  Those basic jobs paid 15.00 a month. 

Roger and I were painting apartments for cash prior to our escapade.  This landed us a job in the maintenance department.  There was a crew whose job it was to go around redoing the paint in the housing units.  The maintenance crews were all almost entirely white guys.  Paid twenty five a month.  Sometimes a gangster would get hired, but they never lasted long.  They just never work hard and are always running their mouths.  They would always try to blame it on the color of their skin that they couldn't keep a job in maintenance, instead of owning up to the fact that they talked shit all the time.  Those older white guys think that is rude.  That may seem stereotypical, but it really was that way.  I never felt like they were being racist, they didn’t take that crap off of white people either.  There were some gangsters who were exceptions of course, but mostly, they were lazy and always running their mouths.  They were bitter about being in prison.  Bitter about their culture and how it is treated.  

How does one communicate that internal calling?  How does one express a feeling inside which has no voice of its own?  All my life, menial tasks fail me.  If I am not in a situation where I am growing and improving a tension builds.  It's like my soul forcing me to realize I was made for greater things.  It's like the thing in R&O, without me really doing anything; cats put me at the top.  How do I describe my desire to be at the top?  It's in me.  It cannot be suppressed.  Painting window frames and door jams, doing the same old thing every day, brings out my wild side.  As soon as tasks become mundane my soul starts screaming at me. 

I'm not judging.  Some people can do the same thing day after day, and are perfectly content.  I honestly wish I could sometimes.  I envy some people for their ability to do that.  That soul screaming at you stuff is not easy.  The spiritual life is not easy.  Perhaps if I had been raised to be peaceful and happy the spiritual life would be peaceful and easy, but that just isn't how it went for me.  It's been a never ending road of unlearning lies, which happens to be painful and stressful most of the time.  At least that is how it has been for me.

My soul was screaming at me.  Something was going to have to give or I was going to force the situation with my inherent wild side.  It's that woman in me.  If I don't get my way I become a crazy bitch.  I've always related this energy to the spiritual life.  It’s how I get stuff done.  It causes me to radiate energy, which as you will find out later in the story is exactly how you make stuff happen.  It's like that story of the man who asked Socrates how to obtain wisdom.  Socrates shoved the young man's head under water and held it there while the man struggled to save his own life.  Socrates finally let him get air, and after gaining his breath he asked Socrates why he did that.  Socrates replied that when you want wisdom as badly as you wanted air, you will have wisdom.  Doing the mundane is like holding my own soul underwater.  As time goes by, the energy grows and grows, until something gives.

What most people don't realize is that the energy one holds affects the physical world.  All kinds of words could be used to describe this phenomenon.  I like the word prayer.  Where I come from most people know this word.  Radiating energy is praying without the words.  It can be thought of as an energy field as well.  Whatever works.  Humans radiate energy that science is yet to detect. 

Nothing needs to be said because the unconscious is all knowing in terms of awareness.  It does its thing by radiating its energy out into the universe, and is in connection with everything.  Literally.  Obviously I had no clue about this at the time.  One doesn't learn these kinds of things reading fantasy fiction, although that does teach one to dream big.  I'm confident my mind knew this even if it wasn't conscious of it personally.  Everyone's does.

It was getting to be about that time.  My soul was screaming.  Something was either going to go my way or I was going to be acting out.  The thing I was praying for more than anything was to become a better person.  Without having to do anything other than generate this energy, what I needed most appeared directly in my lap.  Up until that point in my life I can honestly say it was the single greatest event to have taken place.  For the first time in my life an older male reached out to me, and in his own way saved my life.

The prison system was adapting to the drug war.  That is where the whole 120 day shock program came from.  They were going a step further in the prison system and hired a person to orchestrate basically what would be self-help programs within the prison.  Substance abuse counseling.  That kind of thing.  I can't remember exactly, but I think his title was substance abuse coordinator or some such.  He was hired to do various tasks regarding helping inmates with substance abuse issues.  His name was Stan.

He was late forties maybe, with graying hair and steel framed square reading glasses.  He had a bit of a belly.  He always walked upright and would be whistling as he went.  More often than not he was listening to Enya or Enigma on a small radio in his office.  His office was in the main admin building on upper hill.  It was kind of intimidating going there for the interview.  All the highest ranking white shirts, the warden, all the other personal had offices in there.  They could fuck your life up without a second thought.  I always showed complete deference. 

Stan was allowed to hire an inmate secretary and I applied for the job.  I was all about getting out as quickly as I could so I was willing to do anything at all that would look good to the parole board.  I had to do thirty six months before I could see the board, so I had to get to work. I ended up taking every class they offered.  In its own way it was crazy.  There were a lot of characters in there.  Always had to be alert.  Always had to know what everyone else's motives were.  Most everyone else was just like me in a certain way.  They were taking those classes to help themselves get out early.  The difference between me and almost all of them was that I was actually trying to figure the shit out so I wouldn't be like my parents. 

Stan and I hit it off in a weird kind of way.  I think he could tell that I really wanted to change, so that I wouldn't live that life.  When I explained to him why I wanted the job I told him how I was raised, well kind of anyways, it struck a chord with him.  Prison had already made it very clear how ignorant I had been kept as a child.  Here was an obvious way for me to get out of that fate.  Getting behind in emotional maturity can be really devastating.  I think that my being aware of that fact impressed him maybe.  It really doesn’t matter that I really didn't know him at all.  I idealized him so much whoever he was is gone to me.  The bias is blinding.  What does it matter what he really was in life?

He saved my life.  First dude to ever reach down into the hole I was in and pull me up some.  One of the only males to have ever done so in my life.  He wasn't strong enough to do it alone, but he was strong enough to keep me from falling all the way in.  He straight up saved my life.  I never felt judged by him.  He was always for the most part straight up to me.  Apart from working at the prison he was a sheriff for a local small town.  He worked two full time jobs basically.  He was the kind of guy that would answer your questions with a question.  I love that game.  It let me figure things out on my own.  That very simple idea saved me completely.  He taught me to ask myself why I was doing what I did.  Why?  When this is applied to my personality it ends up being a never ending question. 

That is not a fun question to ask one's self if life has been rough.  The thing that saved me also caused me great pain.  That's how letting go of attachment goes sometimes.  One has to go through the thing.  I could tell you how hot the burner on the stove is all day long, but you will not know yourself until you touch it.  Looking back on that was a source of great bitterness, all the time.  It lasted a long time.  Becoming aware of the machinations of my mind meant becoming aware of the reality of my situation.  I had to come to terms with the totality of it.  I was bitter about how ignorantly I was raised.  I chanted to myself most of my life that I had to overcome the gap.  That I had to make up for what was done to me.  No one else was going to do it for me. 

That was a huge source of motivation.  Stan came with a small personal library.  It was like winning the lottery getting that job.  I read my first technical psychological book.  It was on cognitive behavioral therapy.  It was like an explosion in my mind.  Cause and effect.  If I changed how I thought, it changed how I felt.  Power in effect.  Next came Healing the Inner Child Within by Charles L. Whitfield M.D., which perfectly explains exactly what feelings are.  This is a book I give to almost any beginner that I come across who has stifled their emotions most of their life.  It is a mind blowing book for a beginner.  It would take weeks of conversations to convey the knowledge of that book to someone who has never faced their own emotions head on. 

Even if I had never had even a weeks’ worth of conversations with Stan, his giving me those two books to read affected me profoundly.  Those conversations though; they were the best.  Real talk. I got to talk to a real dude who wasn't out to get me or compete with me, or anything.  He had no reason to lie to me whatsoever.  He never tried to change me.  He was always patient, yet always stood up to me.  A real mentor in life for a kid who needed it more than anything.  A prayer answered. 

As our relationship grew he became another reason for a long time that I put great efforts into changing.  I did not want to let him down.  I had to repay him for his help in my life, which meant I had to do right.  He taught me that in order to become a good person I had to act like one.  I took it a step further and delved into what exactly that meant; being a good person?  What exactly is a good person?  It took me a long time to settle on a solid definition of a man.  I determined a man to be one who does the right thing at all times, despite personal consequence.  I am altruistic after all.  That's my vision though.   I don't expect others to follow suit, but I expect them to do their own thing in the same fashion. 

Stan was a man in his own right.  He did the right thing by me despite his personal differences with my personality.  I didn't accept his definition of a man and he didn’t expect me to.  He had his own. That's respect.  He just expected me to be good to other people.  That's what I wanted too.  To be honest, personality wise, I don't think he really liked me that much at all.  He was just being a good person in his own way.  That's respect.  He didn't like it that I don't have an off switch.  That I perpetually ask questions if you let me was probably unpleasant for him.  I'm sure to Stan I had a great number of annoying traits, but he never took it out on me.  He understood my plight in life.  To me that’s a man. 

The job paid thirty bucks a month.