The Story of the Six-Man cell- White Knight, Plastic Parrots( Finale)

By the time the Plastic Parrots joke wrapped up and the Stuttering Cowboy came on the scene, even Elkins couldn't resist to "join'em" in the laughter- a frustrated, almost tearful capitulation around 2:30 in the morning. He had already gone through the violent turning and exaggerated flopping phase that screamed everything he was unwilling to actually voice. It was evident that these endless jokes were indeed meant to try him and let him know that if he wanted to flex even an inch, he would be visiting the infirmary long before he made it to the SHU for lock up. It became and hours-long fever for Elkins, and when he was nearest to succumbing to the heat-to snapping and going right over the edge- the fever broke and he laughed. The effort of that laugh cost his ego something and he tried to regain it with a lame , " stupid motherfu**ers," but there was no heart in it. By consensus, we all saw that he was broken, and in my mind i felt the night was a success. In the end we all laughed-as much at Chunk's aggressive, "in your face Elkins" giggling at the stupid, never ending joke.

The remaining worry in my mind was that Elkins would find a way to climb out of bed early in the morning, after so little sleep, and still apply the passive-aggressive armbar of ritual oblations while we tried to sleep an extra 30 minutes. And when his alarm went off at 5:00, i believe that he was earnestly, admirably surprised to find Beau sprawled in the middle of the floor doing yoga. He stared at Beau for a quiet minute before sighing a long, " Jesus Christ....."

Shane-O turned over and peeled the wool cap up from his eyes. His soft laughter was a mixture of such glee and surprise and....understanding that I knew I would never meet guys like this again.

In the end Elkins moved into another cell and i found that his bottom bunk fit me very well, very comfortably, and I slept like a baby every night there after.

Beau Hansen

The Story of the Six-Man cell-Elkins....(Part 7)

Later that afternoon, walking back from the chow hall with Chunks, I decided to try my hand at diplomacy and remedy Elkins frustration before they had the chance to get fired over the edge. When I told Chunks that Elkins was having a hard time dealing with everyone shooting barbs at him and purposely chatting loud into the night , he just laughed. When I told him that his homeboy, Jamie, and the other two that had just come from the USP's wouldn't get two chances if Elkins actually snapped and they beat him up, he just laughed. When I said that Elkins had told me that morning that he was on the edge of calling some people out and getting it over with, he didn't laugh. He only said that everyone would be really happy to hear about that. He said " Thank you". Then he laughed and veered into the unit's common area to sit down beside Shane-O and began the animated retelling of everything I had just said. I wondered if maybe I should have talked to one of the others. I wondered why the hell I imagined I might be a diplomat in any situation. A last glance at the two of them assured me that I should not have told Chunk's anything. Shane-O's face was perfectly angelic and he nodded while looking straight at me. I knew that his amusement was not in the words he heard. His light, generous smile and twinkling eyes forecast a long night of laughter and joking at Elkins expense. I shook my head sadly an went into the cell.

How the White Knight on the Black Horse was born no one ever told me. And how on earth a guy went from buying a few little yellow plastic parrots for his son, to buying a warehouse full of little yellow plastic parrots I never found out, but these things indeed did happen- at least that night they did. An hour after lockdown, and fifteen minutes after we turned out the lights( hours earlier than on any previous night) the cell was eerily silent and I knew immediately that these guys had something terrible and violent planned for Elkins. I pictured the four of them tying him up and torturing him with razor blades and burning wicks. At the very least one of them would taunt hum until he lipped off-then the beating would commence. Instead, just as Elkins made his comfortable turn toward the wall and his breathing settled into a heavy rhythm that leads into the blessed chambers of sleep, Beau's voice filled the silence.

"Whose wants to hear about the White Knight on a Black Horse?"

Shane-O: "OOOhhh...I do, I do, I do!"
Jamie: " Me too! Sounds kinda freaky."
Chunks: "Let's Hear it!"
Me: You know damn good and well that there wasn't a peep coming from me-not yet anyway.

Elkins turned over and heaved a laboring, angry breath at being awakened. His frustration and anger were almost palpable in the moments of silence that stretched out to embrace the beginning of Beau's jokes.

"Okay," Beau started, and I swear that I could hear the big smile on his face in these opening words: "This joke kind of stretches out in parts but hang on for the punch line- Shakespeare wrote this shit back in the day and you know how sleepy that motherfu**er was- everything good in time... Back in the days of knights-errant and sweet Dulcineas and rotten hookers with no teeth, there was a knight that went by the name of "The White Knight on a Black Horse". Obviously he rode a horse that happened to be black.

Regardless of the trouble I caused, no one was hurt . Apparently I was worried for nothing because Elkins didn't blow a gasket like he said he would, and everyone but me seemed to know this long before I did. When the guards came by for midnight count and Beau was just wrapping up the White Knight on the Black Horse, I had given up holding my laughter in. My stomach hurt even though I was so tired that my eyeballs felt like sand dunes, the sheer length and inanity of this joke kept me interested in what the hell this poor knight might be up to next. We were all in and out of sleep, hypnotized by the sing song voice and repeating rhythm in the adventure when the punch line came. I found myself laughing with everyone- and not so much at the punch line as at the heaving sigh given by Elkins.

After we had stopped the laughter (Elkins even threw in a side comment about how stupid the joke was) and there was silence, once again, I felt sleep crush in on me and my final conscious thoughts were that this night hadn't turned out too badly-no fights and it seemed like everyone was going to find a way to compromise their egos....

The Story of the Six-Man cell- Chunks (Part 5)

In the third set of bunks, Jamie's homeboy, Chunks, slept on the top-an arm's reach from me and Beau. Jamie was the definite alpa dog in their relationship-because he was more aggressive and had done a little more ugly living than Chunks-but there was a level of explosiveness under the surface that Jamie appreciated in his friend. Chunks is the consummate prankster and class clown- with the genetics of a pit bull. Beau said Chunk's retard strength comes from his mother's boobs " which were filled with nitroglycerin". Shane-O is crazy strong and Beau is that big guy with crazy cardio, but both of them can only talk about Chunk's and his strength like kids marvel at the circus freak. "He giggles like a maniac with 405 pounds on his chest," Shane-O said after they came in from watching Chunks bench press. Chunk's entire federal sentence has been spent in FCI Florence, so he'd only heard tales about the action on USP yards, but the wildness of it appealed to him- regardless how much he really wanted to live free and experience life apart from the criminal element. Between Shane-O's stories of the pen across the street, Jamie's reference to Victorville, CA and Beau's tales of Beaumont, Chunks got everything he wanted.

If I am a member of the herd, it's because I have found a way to live non-confrontationally, play D&D, and go unnoticed for the most part. The fellas crack jokes on me from time to time- Beau says I look like an ugly sock puppet version of an Uzbekistani goat herder.- but I know that they'd stick up for me and never let anyone take advantage of me unfairly. However, in the bunk below Chunks was a member of the herd who believed he was a real tough guy; he chose to be herdier because he said that the hardier were simple-minded morons. That's all good and fine, but unless one is willing to smash people's faces and back up those thoughts, it's always the wisest policy to keep them to oneself.

Elkins didn't think that was necessary and, so, found himself in a perpetually defensive state backing down. Even the herd found it impossible not to laugh at him behind our hands and snigger at his know it all dilemmas.

The Story of the Six-Man cell-Shane-O (Part 2)

Shane is a barrel-chested, big armed Seattle Seahawks fanatic that carries himself with a quiet assurance and careful confidence. He's the kind of person who understands weakness in character because he' failed in life enough times to admit his own, yet he is very unforgiving of the weakness so prevalent in here: that of acting tough and then backing down when someone calls the bluff. Shane laughs quietly and there is always the atmosphere of analysis with his humor. He won't laugh if something isn't funny, and he won't react if he finds himself the butt of a joke. His thick skin is almost disconcerting. It empowers him with time to put his patient response together and, in the event that no response is forthcoming, he appears to humbly state that the victor needn't be a last word freak. Nobody disrespects Shane , and for perfect reasoning: his reputation promises that a response could be violent, if necessary. Of course, humility never broadcast's that fact. Shane had just arrived to FCI Florence, a medium facility, from across the street at the United States Penitentiary High (USP) and was slowly adjusting to the difference in behaviors and habits between FCI inmates and those living in USP's across the country. The difference were stark and, already painfully, proudly withstood. Men in USP's have less to lose, being at the highest security level of general population that Federal prisons provide and, therefor, behave like men who are at the end of the line. MSNBC never shows the Federal USP's and their insanity because, to do so, the American taxpayer would ask "Where the F**k is my money being spent?!" In USP's we drink wine, make moonshine, shoot heroin, and kill one another. We have thicker skin because thin skin mean petty altercations between individuals and groups on a daily basis; however, they cannot tolerate disrespects that expose any weakness related to fear.

FCI medium inmates, on the other hand, are closer to the privileges of visits, education, "tranquility", weight rooms and good time. We want to keep these things, which is natural for anyone who enjoys them for any length of time. The biggest contrast in the USP and FCI personalities is that higher security prisons breed and reinforce an understanding that words and actions carry consequences. When someone crosses a line they get stabbed or beat down, and that instills a sense of careful respect. It creates the Hardier inmate. The FCI inmate has a less awareness of the minimal standards for which he can be held accountable because at all times there dangles a carrot of privilege's before everyone's nose. Almost anything can be over looked, Child molesters walk the yard unmolested; an almost unconscious level of disrespect prevails through individuals and entire races until hardier USP inmate's are overcome with lethargy of defeated men. This FCI mentality isn't always a bad thing, no. Somehow the tolerance and frustration that comes with bearing so much indiscretion and disrespect prepares people for the obstacles they'll face on the street, but that's less a testament to the rehabilitative efforts of prison than to the fading principles of society. This isn't the story about that, though. This is the story about the herdier and the hardier in a six-man cell, and how easy it is for some to get along while so difficult for others in the same space....

The Relativity of Happiness

So many people wonder how an inmate can experience happiness and joy and excitiment in a place like prison. It's all a matter of relativity. If you lock yourself in your closet for long enough, the mere thought of shadows rather than absolute darkness becomes something to look forward to, right?

After so many years in prison and experiencing the ups and downs resulting from my own behavior and the different characters sentenced or working in here, I have had varied opinions on why I was happy when I was- or why I could be so miserable. But the truth has little to do with prison or place. We're just adaptable, you know? All of us- you included. I have seen some real pieces of shit, tortured souls that committed fucked up crimes, put on a genuine smile and experience their personal moment of freedom through happiness- even though they were in the most heinous and threatening atmosphere available to them. I've seen angry, mean, hard-ass dudes with multiple murders and gigantic chips on their shoulders burst out in heartfelt laughter at something that I couldn't quite connect with- and they seemed to me almost lovable creatures in that moment. And I've also seen (and been) that guy who smiles and laughs at everything- regardless how deeply it affected us. Who's sincere? Is that happiness enough to make this time bearable??

I think it eventually comes down to the chance or process that creates within us an understanding that we really are the captain of our own souls; that we do make for ourselves the limitless well of happiness or the superficial sheen of satisfication. And even in here we can feel a deep happiness and contentment that promises we are not what we once were- we are not necessarily condemned to always carry the stigma of pain and confusion and addiction and self-centeredness. That it's all a matter of doing the right thing- even when no one is looking....

But,then again, that's the recipe for true happiness out there, too, right?

Beau Hansen