I am writing this in pencil for a few reasons: One is that I write small, a skill I acquired from spending so much time in ad seg (administrative segregation). You only get two sheets of paper a week, so when I wrote home, I wrote small – I could fit three lines of writing between the rules of the paper! I wrote so small they said they had to use a magnifying glass to read it. I’m also an artist, and very detailed in my work. And I choose pencil because all they give us here are those stupid-ass Flex pens that constantly bend and don’t write for shit. Plus, I can erase any mistakes I make and I make a lot because I tend to let my hands go faster than my brain.
The lost glasses
My journey into the federal prison system began in 2012 when I left county jail and traveled in a bus about two and a half hours to Buffalo, NY, to pick up another inmate and then from there to CCA [CoreCivic, a private prison] in Youngstown, Ohio. I was placed in a pod with a white guy who was about 30 (he was ok but a bit lazy) and an African American dude who was about 35 and a fashion designer. Once I told him I’d taught myself to draw over the past three years, he used me as his assistant.
I had been there for about two weeks and I was loving the open space of the rec yard, which was so much bigger than the one at county jail. There was even a basketball court and track. Then came one particular day that changed everything. Rec time was called and I left my glasses in my cell because I wanted to play basketball and I was afraid they would get broken. We were out there when staff started calling us back to our cells by our numbers. When they got to my cell number, a CO said, “Who’s in 32?” I said, “Right here,” and raised my hand. They were like, “Wait..come here.” I immediately knew something bad had happened.
My cell door was wide open and there was blood, vomit and OC [pepper] spray all over the walls and floor. And on the outside of the door was a big X made from something like police tape. While everyone else was locked in, they told me to sit at the far right table in my pod along with my white cell mate.
I asked him what happened. He told me that he was in the cell sleeping when our other cellie came in and told him he was gonna kill this other dude and he should get out and shut the door. The dude that our black cellie was arguing with then came to the cell, so he did as he was told and walked laps around the dorm. Meanwhile, they got to fighting. The two Black dudes cut each other up with razors, smashing each other with the foot lockers. They were in there over an hour, fighting, until one of them finally hit the button for the intercom to the “CO bubble” and told them he was dying and thought the other guy was dead. The COs came in and sprayed both of them (as they arrived, the two were still fighting; I guess the “dead” guy regained strength).
Moral of the story: Don’t leave your glasses in your cell or anywhere else! I never got them back because the staff said it was a crime scene. Even if I had gotten back in there, though, my glasses were probably destroyed.
Me and my white cellie both were taken to the SHU because there apparently weren’t any other cells open. I could have been stuck in there for weeks. I lucked out, though, and left the next morning on the bus – without glasses. [I didn’t get new ones until about 15 months later! I’m near-sighted and I’m kinda thankful I was locked in a 6×10 cell and didn’t have to see too far lol.]
The body in the closet
We made a few stops in Pennsylvania and then I ended up at USP Canaan, where the second nightmare happened. Ten days after we arrived, all hell broke loose. A Spanish dude with a life sentence killed a CO and stuffed him into a storage closet. I was in a different part of the prison, since I was in transit, but we were all immediately put on lockdown. No one in my pod knew what the fuck was happening. After a few hours, people were getting pissed off. They wanted to call home, watch TV, shower, work out, etc. Rumors – “inmate.com” – went wild. The word was that some Mexicans escaped through an AC vent. It took a few days before we learned the truth. The CO was stabbed 17 times in his face and neck.
After that, all the COs were dickheads to everyone. We didn’t get showers for over two weeks, and when we finally did, we only got eight minutes from the time the cell door was popped. It was so cold in our cells I probably had a chunk of ice on my window sill from water dripping down and freezing solid. I understand they lost one of their own but they didn’t need to treat us all so badly. We literally got PB&J for breakfast, lunch and dinner for about six weeks. The first few days, the COs denied anything and everything they could to get us worked up so they could come into our cells and beat the shit out of us. Most carried fire extinguisher-sized cans of OC “pepper spray.” There were two Black guys right across from me and one of them had half an arm, with his hand attached to his elbow. His bunky said some slick shit to one of the sargeants when they were walking by, and they both ended up getting sprayed and beaten up. They had to use two pairs of cuffs on the guy with the short arm when they took them to the SHU. When they tossed their cell, they broke a bunch of their property and dumped everything they could in bags. They opened shampoo bottles and coffee and dumped it on everything.
Finally, they put me on the bus to Harrisburg, PA, which is where all the fed buses go to. That’s where the movie ConAir was filmed. It’s an airport and transit station, and the planes leaving from there actually had duct tape on their wings! But It was snowing that day, and about an hour out we had to turn around – back to Canaan! The COs had lightened up a little since the murder of the CO, but everyone was still locked down. We got one hot meal a day and 15 minutes for a phone call.
No papers
I was there for another two weeks, then finally left again. This time when we got to Harrisburg, I was transferred to another bus. We sat there for hours, finally drove for hours and hours and hours more – it seemed like forever! I remember dozing off. The driver slammed his brakes a few times because a deer ran out in front of the bus. We ended up on this windy-ass road. It was just two lanes, very dark, tall trees on both sides. We had arrived at FCI Ray Brook (New York). It was 3 a.m. I don’t remember much, but we sat in R&D for a long time to get our bag breakfast and then go to our housing units. Mine was furthest away: Niagra South. It was a six-man cell with five Spanish guys . Only one spoke a little English. Fortunately, during my first three years in county jail, there were mainly Spanish-speaking people in my block so I had learned some things. Plus, I learn pretty quickly.
The first thing that happens in a male prison is that your car [affiliation group] comes by. In my case, the white guys. They ask you for your paperwork to see what you’re in for and if you snitched*, etc. I hadn’t been to federal prison before. I was just 22. This was new to me. So, I didn’t have my papers with me and said I’d get it from my lawyer ASAP. They were cool with that and I called home to tell my mom to call my attorney. And for about a week all was fine. It was crowded, but I respected the routine. We had two toilets in our cell: One for No. 1 and one for No. 2.
I asked the Spanish dudes about tattoos; I wanted a new one bad. I got my first one when I was 15: a cross with a tribal symbol behind it. It was purple on the inside, but I have this birthmark on my arm and the purple wouldn’t take, so I got it covered with red. They pointed me in the right direction and I drew my own. It said “Family”, with a rose on each end. I paid $10 for it.
Then this Black dude known as Philly came to me. He asked if I wanted to move into a two-man room. I was like, “Absolutely.” He said he was leaving in a few weeks and his cellie had gone to the SHU. It was a New York cell; only people from New York could live there unless a NY member said it was ok. He even said I could have the bottom bunk. I’m like, “Hell yeah.” So we got it approved by the counselors.
I was there for about two weeks when the NY dudes ran up on me. I had just bought commissary and they said, “You can go one of two ways until you get your paperwork: the hard way or the easy way.” They all had big-ass knives and ice picks. The easy way was to check in; the hard way was to get beaten up, or worse. Of course I went the easy way. It would have been me against eight or nine men, many with sharp, pointy objects. So at my next meeting with my counselor, I told her what was going on. She couldn’t help me by giving me anything that said I wasn’t a snitch. My family contacted my lawyer multiple times, and he never got back to them. They didn’t hear from him until I had been in the SHU for about a month. We later found out that he had sent the paperwork, but it had gone all over, from CCA Youngstown to USP Canaan before it got to me. By that time though, I was on ad seg and couldn’t get out of it! They wanted me to rat on the people who told me I had to go. But I didn’t know anyone’s name anyway – just one known as Red. So I sat there and sat there. Staff tried to get me to write statements, pick people out in photos, etc. They had the camera footage, but I think they wanted to see how well I’d hold up.
Crazy times in ad seg
I spent six months in ad seg, switching cells every three weeks because I think they were afraid we’d dig through a concrete wall eight inches thick with our fingernails or something. I had a few bunkies. One was Nate, who was bipolar as hell. One second we got along great. The next we were throwing fists. I can’t count how many blows we got into over the dumbest shit, like a chess game. I made a chess board out of paper cutouts from a milk carton. One time, he thought I moved his shit under his bunk when he went to the shower. He said he had a pen propped up under his mattress and it was down when he got back. I told him it could have fallen by itself very easily, just from me moving around. We got into a fist fight over this. He hit me with a sucker punch, but I saw it coming and rolled onto his bunk with my back against the wall. He threw shots at my body and legs but couldn’t reach my face without taking a kick to the face from me. I was able to kick him back and get out from under the bunk. Then I hit him a few times and we grabbed each other and kind of swung around until he finally said he was done. He’d always apologize 30 minutes or maybe a day later and we’d go back to being cool. We were cellies for about four months.
I wanted so badly to lay him out, but I knew his bipolar took over and that happened damn near every three or four days. He would just snap over the littlest things. I had hiccups one day and he flipped. I tried getting moved to another cell but they wouldn’t move either one of us. I think they enjoyed the entertainment. And meanwhile, my cellie didn’t get any kind of treatment.
Another day, one of the guys near my cell hung himself, using his sheet and affixing it to the light. When a bunch of medical people arrived, I could see that his face and neck were so swollen he didn’t look human anymore.
A modicum of comfort
Finally, I got shipped out of Ray Brook. The night I left it snowed like hell, about 20 inches. Us guys who had been in the SHU had to walk through it because they hadn’t plowed the walkways yet. It was about 4 a.m. and all we had on our feet were Crocs. My feet were soaked and freezing. Then we had to get stripped out and they gave us these foam slippers. They were like sponges. We had to walk forever to get to the bus while we were shackled so it was a very slow process. Once we finally got on the bus, everyone put their feet on “heaters” to dry them out and warm them up. Then we left to go to Philly, on the way to my final spot, FCI Petersburg. It took about two or three weeks to get there. At Philly, I spent the whole time in the SHU because I had been in ad seg at Ray Brook. I had to stay in ad seg until I got to my final destination.
At Petersburg, they were going to put me in a cell with two big Black guys. That didn’t fly well with me or them. I’m not racist but I know prison politics. So they moved me in with two white dudes. One was Chuck. He was funny but left shortly after I got there. The other was Donny and we became close. But he also left about six months later. So now I had my own cell and could move in whoever I wanted. About eight months later, another bus came in and a dude I knew from county jail was on it. We had gotten along great, so I moved him in. But he came out as gay/bi and started running up debts so he had to go. Had a few others after that. Then, I was moved to a two-man cell with a Native dude from South Dakota. We became best friends. He was my road dog. He was big as shit and had worked security for live entertainment. He was about 6 foot 5, 300 pounds. All three years I was there, I played softball and was on the All Star team. We even got to play some outside teams, like from churches and a college. The college killed us the first game but we got them on the second. I also played ultimate frisbee about five days a week. That was so much running, I was in great shape. That was also when I got serious about drawing, including tattoos. My job was to clean the microwaves, computer rooms, ice machines and phones, on holidays and weekends. I think I made about $20 every two weeks.
In 2015, I finally went home.
I know I didn’t better myself completely; I was back in prison – this time in the state – seven months later. I made poor choices, and was going through a rough breakup. Then my brother killed himself in 2020. I pretty much said “fuck life.” But this time I’ve learned, and now I’m on the right track.
