We stomped his ass.

I learned in jail not to keep track of the days. It only makes the passing of time worse not knowing how much time you’re going to get.  Not ever able to be outside in the sun makes for long weeks.  Cops, the justice system in general, loves to humiliate and hold power over people’s heads.  The public defender said they were contemplating giving me 35 years.  The beginning of my pacing career had begun. The feds didn’t pursue charges in federal court.  I was constantly contemplating how I ruined my life.

On this day though, my stomach was hurting pretty badly.   I just figured I had gas because of the area in which my stomach was hurting. It was not a serious pain, more like a cramp. As the day went on, nothing unusual occurred, typical jail day; cards, dominoes, Price is Right echoing off the cinder block walls from the TV fourteen feet up on the wall, smoking cigarettes, and the same old bull shitting all day. My stomach never quit hurting though, so I started to worry.

I pushed the buzzer by the door to the cell block to get the attention of the guards, to tell them my stomach had been hurting for hours now. They soon came through with some Rolaids or Tums or some such. I promptly chewed them. I was starting to really worry.  The worst pain is always the long pain and I wanted my stomach to quit hurting. After another four or five hours went by and I told the guards again when they come by with the daily matches, that my stomach was still hurting and that I thought something was really wrong.  We weren't allowed to have lighters so the guards brought books of matches around twice a day.  It is much easier to be persuasive in person than it is across a small walky talky sounding speaker on the wall. Gas cramps do not last ten plus hours and stay in the same spot of the abdomen, so something had to be wrong. Someone called the sheriff and he made the decision to have me taken to the hospital.

Having to transport an inmate for any sudden reason is extra work for jailers and they rarely appreciate this. They like everything to stay on a tight schedule with the least amount of disturbances to their valuable boredom; to them I found laziness to be a virtue. It was late in the evening by the time they got me to the hospital. They obviously were not concerned with my health, but were simply doing their job.  I had to be fully shackled, complete with a black box, which is a small black metal box that fits over the hand cuffs and fastens them to a chain that goes around your waist, in order to be transported. It is apparently common for people in jail to fake illness in an effort to escape.

I learned later that the humiliation of being transported only gets worse in prison; in county jail they don't strip search you every time you’re transported.

Off to the hospital I went.  By this point all I could think of was for my stomach to stop hurting. After being moved to a special room away from the main ER the doctor thoroughly humiliated me.  I mean, who doesn’t want a finger stuck in their ass with a bunch of people standing around watching?  He decides that I need my appendix removed, an appendectomy. How a finger in my ass helped him figure this out is still beyond me. Upon this news the nurse came in to prep me for surgery.

She decided to put an IV in my hand, instead of my elbow joint for some reason. I must have been making her extremely nervous, chained to the hospital bed as I was, cocky and arrogant as ever, with cops standing over me. She destroyed the top of my hand trying to get that thing in, and she could have only been getting more nervous because of the way I was death gripping the hospital bed.  Because of the pain I was giving her a murderous look.  One of the guards was just laughing, he thought it was funny she was hurting me; this guy was one of those ones that hated criminals and didn’t mind showing it publicly. Finally, somehow, she got the job done.I am not sure if she had ever done that before.  They probably gave the fucking new person the inmate for a guinea pig. 

Drugs! I had been patiently waiting for this moment as soon as the doctor said surgery.  I was anticipating it. I never make it to ten like they ask you to do; out like a light.  No more pain.  Glorious.

I spent the next two days in the hospital. I remember waking up and my stomach hurting even worse than before I went under. I was quick to discuss this with my nurse and she assured me that it was definitely my appendix that had been the problem, and the doctor came in to affirm this, which finally relieved me of worry. Having an incision in my stomach really let me know just how much I use my stomach muscles, which is only every single move one makes. Holy crap was I vulnerable; the worst feeling in the world.

I was even more annoyed by the fact that they gave me a soda to drink, 7up or Sprite, and having had no soda for weeks, this only gave me gas. So now, not only do I have an incision, but also horrible gas to go with it, which I could do nothing about because of the muscle relaxers. Whew!  I needed more drugs.  By the way, if you have never experienced this, those muscle relaxers really work well when they use it through the IV; straight to the blood.  Straight to the head. 

I was still annoyed though.  It wasn't just the physical discomfort from the surgery and the gas; the thing that really had me annoyed was the guard’s constantly exerting their power over me. I am sensitive and can always tell when someone is asserting their power over me just so that they can feel better about themselves. Being in close quarters with some of them like that in a hospital room was horrible. People who work in jails as guards aren’t exactly the most intelligent caring people. As if they would not have acted like an animal too had they been raised like I had been. 

It is doubly worse because of how uncomfortable it is to have your feet chained to the bed 24/7, the cuffs dig into your ankles, plus it forces you to lay on your back with your legs straight all the time. I could not even walk, so I couldn’t have escaped even had I wanted to.  I had absolutely no intentions of trying to escape either, and they knew it, but I just had to be shackled to the bed. The guards all knew me by this point, so keeping me chained to the bed was only really a power struggle, and the guy in the orange jump suit has none of that. There were a couple of jailers who were kind to me though.

Well it just so happened that one of the guards didn’t like one of the inmates that was in the same cell block as me. I didn't like either one of them.  This particular guard or this inmate, no one did. The inmate’s name I think was Paul, but we called him Goldie Locks, and I don’t remember the guards name at all; I'll call him Barney. Barney really hated Goldie Locks, and he loved to tell me about his hatred.  

Goldie Locks had long blond hair with a natural wave to it and this guy had some serious issues. He was being held in the Callaway County Jail because it was, at the time, the most secure jail in the state, or so the county boys would brag anyways. His case was being heard in Columbia MO if I remember correctly. He had killed an elderly lady with a baseball bat and then he supposedly had sex with her. Goldie Locks would constantly sit around and talk about killing cops and escaping, stabbing people, and just being weird as hell in general.   The dude was seriously sketchy.

When I got out of the hospital, they did not put me back into my cell block immediately. The cell block they had me in was full of rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals.  I would not have been able to defend myself with my stomach as it was, so they kept me with the work release guys for a week to let my stomach recover. Those guys weren’t much of a threat to me because they had much more to lose if they messed with me. Once my stomach was right, they put me back into the cell block with the rapists and murderers.

A week or so later I got into a verbal spat with Goldie Locks because he was doing his typical annoying bullshit.  He was talking shit to me about how if he had been in the hospital and they had taken off his shackles, he would have escaped. He would have killed them if he needed to. After a while, a fella gets tired of hearing this bullshit all the time, so I told him to shut his mouth or some such.  He grabbed an ink pen off the table and threatened to stab me with it.

Time stopped, all senses were full go.  That blessed moment when one is fully alive with no thoughts clouding the sensation.  Didn’t he know I lived for these moments?  I just smiled at him and told him he better put the ink pen down before he gets himself hurt.  Did he not know I had been being beat by grown men all my life?  Did he not know he was going to need much more than an ink pen?   The guy that I robbed the bank with was already on his feet standing behind Goldie Locks.  He and I were linked.  We rarely had to speak in times of danger.  We operated on the same level. 

Being threatened in front of everyone like that, in such a way, was something I could not let go.  It is immediately sensed by everyone, and everyone judges accordingly.  I could not be the kid that gets punked by Goldie Locks.   I know the hair on my neck was at full attention and I was ready to go right there on the spot. It was too risky though.  It’s too easy to get caught by the guards for fighting, in jail or prison, if the fight is spontaneous.   Fighting when locked up is almost always a planned event. If you are in imminent danger, then fight you must, but since he put the pen down, I was no longer in immediate danger. A short stare off ensued and then we just went about our business.

Till later that is. What Goldie Locks did not know was that Barney told me while in the hospital that he would make sure no one saw anything if something were to happen to him.  The guards hated this guy.  Goldie Locks was not aware that Barney was on shift.  Everyone hated this guy.  Goldie Locks had no clue what danger he had brought on himself by threatening me.  I've never in my life backed down from a fight.  It was later in the evening, supper was finished up.  After the guards came through and collected the plates they wouldn’t be back until lights out.  By peering through the tinted glass in the evening one could see if there were guards in the bubble watching the cell block or not.

One of us jumped up onto the steel table and kicked Goldie right in the face while he was watching TV; the other was immediately punching him to keep him pressed up on the table. He was trying to slump to the floor so one of us just pulled him out from the table and then we began kicking him, punt style, back and forth on the floor. It is nearly impossible to have a sense of time when the adrenaline is flowing. Testosterone plus adrenaline multiplied by a dangerous environment equals pure violence. We kicked him for some time; I don't remember now how many kicks I got in, but it was a lot. He had broken ribs and his face was destroyed.

We made him clean up his own blood and then sit at the table till lights out. We made him hide in the shower when a guard did a walk through.  No one else in the cell block said a word the rest of the evening. It was eerie.  Everyone in that cell block was scared.  At seventeen I put fear in the minds of murderers and rapists.  It was a powerful feeling.  The combination of fearlessness and ignorance is powerful.  My partner and I didn't talk either. Everyone knew Goldie had it coming.  Everyone was glad it was not them; everyone knew the cops were going to find out. All the other inmates were all in a bind now; what we would do to them for snitching on us? The cops are professional at getting people to snitch. 

Goldie was a moderately tough guy actually. He kept us all wide awake till after 2 a.m.  He finally hit the buzzer in his cell and asked for medical attention.  Tough as he was, he couldn't hang.  He was wheezing and groaning horribly from the pain.

I was laughing about it.  He was going to get his chance to escape while in the hospital.   He was all talk; he didn't make use of his chance to escape like he said he would. He was only truly capable of preying on children and old people. When it came to people who fight back, he had nothing.  I made sure he knew it. 

The cops immediately began their investigation after getting him to the hospital.  The other inmates immediately told them what happened. One would be a fool to think it would go down any other way. When they questioned me I just laughed and asked, “Why are you even bothering to ask me?” They already knew damn well what had happened. To my surprise though, Barney and Co. made good on their word, because none of them claimed to have seen a thing. In a court of law, one inmate’s word does not hold up against another, so if a cop does not witness the crime there is no viable proof.

I was charged with a misdemeanor assault charge. I was told that they had to charge me with something or Goldie Locks would be able to sue them for something or other. No way was I going to let that douche bag be benefited by suing someone because of something I did. So I took the misdemeanor.  I already knew I was going to prison for a long time, so what was another misdemeanor to me? It was not like I believed that a public defender would get me out of the charge. He did threaten my life after all.  He was in there for murder after all.  Anywhere else, at any other time, that incident would have easily been serious felony charges. That plea bargain was a real bargain as far as I was concerned because we stomped his ass.

I saw him passing in the hall a couple of weeks after the incident. Goldie Locks was coming back from the hospital after a checkup. I only got a brief glimpse of him passing by. I was in solitary confinement, the hole, for beating him like I did. The jailors took my shoes for the rest of my stay.  It was the beginning of many many months of solitary confinement. 

The hole was outside the main cell blocks, so through a 24" by 4" window in the door I could see people pass by as they went in and out of the jail. It was the only human contact I received except when I was fed.  His face was still morbid looking.  I could not recognize him still, other than by his hair. Whenever I tell this story in person, sometimes people seem sympathetic about the fate of Goldie Locks. I have never felt bad for what I did. My only hope is that after that stomping he ceased his babble bull shit about killing people and escaping.

He is, to this day, in the Potosi maximum security prison, serving life; he doesn't ever get out of his cell there. For what he did to an elderly lady, and who knows who else, his life is in constant jeopardy on the inside and outside.  Because of this he is kept locked up at all times: that was someone's grandma after all, someone's mother, aunt and sister. An ass stomping was the least I could do.