Cobo

My friend and I had a conversation this morning while waiting for breakfast to be called. Cobo enjoys telling me stories about his family back in St. Croix, and all the stories are filled with the textures and flavors of a youth he truly enjoyed and misses in many ways.

The love and admiration for his friends and family -lessons they imparted to him-speak of a lifestyle that honored family and work, discipline and commitment above all else. Where his adult life deviated from the Olympic boxing career of his youth is irrelevant to this- although even through the deviation of his life into moving drugs, his commitment to friends and discipline adhering to personal values went unchanged. What interested me so much through our conversation were the starkly contrasting views we shared towards those we loved as children, yet we find ourselves in the same place today- and in important ways changed, because we are friends.

I was very self-centered. I lacked self confidence. I was terribly afraid of what others thought about me. And so I became violent-in terms of thoughts and the physical defensiveness through which I dealt with the world.

Beau Hansen

Schooled in Prison

Here in FCI Florence-as with many Federal institutes-we have a pretty wide selection of A.C.E. classes ( Adult Continuing Education Classes) that are taught by inmates in whatever discipline or skill or expertise they might be approved by the education department to teach. There's much to be said about the teachers of these courses- for the most part they are genuine and eager to lead. And many of the inmates who enroll in these 8 week courses go into it with the best intentions toward self improvement. However, either due to the instructor's lack of energy/ expertise or tot he student's lack of commitment, the majority of A.C.E. course certificates are given to students who learned little, participated less, and ended up believing that the certificate itself is the only reason for enrolling. (These certificates amount to evidence of programming and each course brings a certain amount of money to the institution's budget, so inmates are "rewarded" for accumulating certificates.)

I've personally taught and attended many of these courses over the years. Most of the certificates I gained from them were purchased for a book of stamps. And I was less the man for it, no doubt. The few courses I taught were with excitement and I was proud of the students that participated and made the experience better for us both- so it never fails to shame me hen I think of the opportunities I wasted by taking the easy route to programming.

 The latest class I teach-or lead, rather- is based on the program at the end of my most recent book, " It's Never Just One Thing" . I'm growing from it. And the ten guys in the course are all growing from it as well. We all have the chance to speak on issues of race, sex, violence, drugs, addiction, and communication/ relationship issues as they revolve around the presence and absence of various principles. These are men who have grown weary of the masks and ego of prison culture, and now embrace the opportunity to explore some reality with men of the same mind. As I pointed out last week, we are part of a very small minority of people who want to- and have the power to-effect change in lives of people on the verge and in the depths of prison. approximately 40 million American's are directly affected by the 2.5 million behind bars. Another unknowable percentage of Americans will put their toes into the hot water of criminal behaviour- how many millions do they represent? 

By turning the corner in our characters and making the decision to become worthy citizens, we also corner the market on empirical wisdom that can strengthen our communities through examples and mentoring. If we have any moments of doubt to where we might " belong" in a community sense, this is a very obvious and empowering answer. And I doubt that anyone would deny us the opportunity to lead struggling men and women up from the depths into the light of their own potential.

Beau Hansen

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-Elkins (Part 6)

Jamie and I were the first ones into the Six-Man cell with Chunks and Elkins. There seemed to be a relatively peaceful air about the cell until Jamie and Chunks were introduced and realized they were from the same part of North Las Vegas. Thereafter, Elkins was the target of every conversation he attempted to join. That very first night, Jamie must have told him to "Shut the F**k" a dozen times. I swear that Elkins bald head glowed with frustration and anger all night long in that dark cell. Before sun came up though, Elkins, was moving around the cell and running water for his morning obligations. His passive-aggressive nature assumed that this early wake-up avenged the late night laughter and conversations that kept him awake late into night. But we are generally unaffected by this. It's part of the thick skin thing. No one reacted, no one moved.

And so went the morning conversations as we all rose to get ready for breakfast and work. I rarely said anything, waiting for space at the sink to open up and some bodies to clear out. This way I never became a target of someone's morning grumpiness. On that first morning, I saw that Beau wasn't a laughing, joking type in the morning either. But instead of staying in bed to catch a few extra minutes of sleep or hanging back until Elkins had finished at the sink, he jumped down and easily made the bed, dressed, fixed a cup of coffee, and took a piss before Elkins had put his boots on. He was the first one out of the cell when the door was unlocked.

Thirty minutes later, with everyone mingling out in the common areas and waiting for breakfast, I rose and puttered about the cell. Biscuits and gravy this morning. No big deal, but I like to get up to the chow hall and drink some milk. Sometime in the near future I think I will start to work out and I think milk is a pretty good start to the day for healthy eaters. I'm pretty out of shape and feel like shit most of the time- especially when I think about all the energy and stamina I had as a younger man.

Getting old sucks, getting old in prison REALLY sucks. What a dumbass I was to get into that drug game again and start in on my old addictions. I swear it's going to go down a lot different the next time. I have a boy that needs me in his life and it would be an unbearable agony to know that my example led him into a life of crime he was unable to get out of before coming to prison. Imagine that, doing prison time with my son. Ughh... That boy's got a bright future if things and people just.....

The door opens behind me and Elkins voice follows it closing, "F**king incompetent bastards never call a meal at the same time two days in a row. Worthless morons- and they're telling me what to do all day."

"Biscuits and gravy is a very complicated meal", I point out. "especially when all the meat has to be bagged up and stolen before they pan it up." Elkins and I have been trading negative humor for a few weeks. We are both from Chicago and he really appreciates that connection, regardless the condescending tone he takes with me at least once everyday.

"And the fat, lazy cops up there are too busy trying to find ways around work to create an efficient and effective routine. Morons. And they say that we are a drain on the economy."

I pulled on my boots and watched as he prepped his coffee mug with creamer and sweetened for work. He was such a creature of habit that in a few days I had learned how many cups of coffee he drank at the factory-and I didn't work anywhere near the factory. (five, by the way. He planned it that way-the morning cup, the pre-lunch cup, the post-lunch cup, the afternoon break cup, and the end of day cup.)

"These idiots had me hot last night," he began, and I inwardly groaned because I hate listening to him talk trash about people behind their backs. I seem to be his only audience for this and, somewhere behind my conscience, I feel like I must be ashamed of this. " You think that shit's funny-staying up all night laughing and telling stupid stories about USP's and bit*ches on the street. If they keep it up, I'm going to say something. And I know when I say something they aren't going to like it and one of them is going to get slick at the mouth. I might be almost 50, but I've been places and done some shit they couldn't dream of. I'll surprise ' em"

"What did I do?" There was that uptalk that Beau accused me of before he even knew my name. "Don't look at me like I kept you up all night. I went straight to sleep".

"That's because you're thoughtless, there's nothing getting in the way of you falling asleep doing Ariel flips in a bi-plane. I heard you laughing up there last night, you thought that sh*t was funny. You and Chunks..nothing to say...just a bunch of aggravating laughter." "You sit there like a fly on the wall and avoid their attention. I won't put up with their childishness. If they keep me up all night tonight, I will say something in a way that one of them has to react- then we'll see whose the tough guy with the big mouth."

Did he really say that? I wondered. I remember thinking that, even though Elkins was a big guy and had been in the Marines, and he was probably as intelligent as he always boasted, he was also on the bottom bunk by medical approval for a bad back. He was almost 50 and the only exercise he ever did was run the track. These guys that had just moved into the cell were workout maniacs.

I didn't particularly like Elkins but his strength and decency were evident beneath the negativity and bluster. I didn't want to see him get into a situation with these guys that he wasn't able to walk away from with bruises and disciplinary reports.

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-Beau (Part 4)

Like me and Shane-O (that's what everyone calls Shane-everyone except Beau, that is) Beau came from a USP-"Bloody" Beaumont in Texas. And, like Shane-O, he was a little overwhelmed in the beginning at the difference in attitudes at this FCI. He was use to dealing with people who looked hard because they were hard, and now the people who looked hard in order to create that impression without having to work for it. He, Shane-O, and Jamie once got a great a laugh out of the fact that all the Penitentiary dudes who'd transferred here from violent yards kept a smile on their faces-they had come to a spot where they could relax and not think about drama, drama, drama; yet so many gentle and naïve guys around here carried sneers and scowls for protection against their own shadow.


Beau started out his sentence in a medium and after a couple administrative transfers for group activities like food strikes and work strikes, he ended up hooking a nurse in medical. That might have been all fine and good but he also brought in drugs and it led to another big prison sentence and 10 years in high security. I think Beau went through a lot of changes in all those years. He's become understanding and concerned with character while most people, after so many years of wild prison living become just jaded and cynical and full of wrathful entitlements. He's lucky like that, I guess.

Beau sleeps above Shane-O and a handshake away from me. I sleep above Jamie. Jamie is the most enigmatic creature among us. He has tattoos on his face and talks to people like they are the stupidest creatures he's ever known, yet he has a wonderful intellect covering subjects from religion to science to world history and talks about situations that made him cry and stick up for weaklings. He's from Las Vegas and listens to rappers like Bun-B and C-Murder and Yealwolf..he knows all the lyrics to these ghetto culture songs and has no problem reciting them despite his contrasting allegiances to the white prison gang, Aryan warriors. Jamie has what I spoke of as thick skin, only his thickness is so thick that he no longer possesses the social barometer to care if he is offensive. Anyone he becomes especially familiar with he begins to speak to with regular disrespect-and covers that disrespect with the challenge, -" let me find out you've got feelings..let me find out I'm able to touch on your soft little feelings.."

Shane-O was the only person I ever saw put up with Jamie's familiar speak without feeling the need to respond in kind. Where most people resorted to the offensive-defensive with Jamie-by speaking to him in the same joking and insulting manner-Shane-O just smiled confidently and shot a light, self deprecating barb that Jamie couldn't quite hook into. With Shane-O, Jamie just ran out of steam and found other targets to refuel on. I never heard Jamie speak disrespectfully with Beau, but I don't think it had anything to do with fear or extra care- Beau was just always so damn polite and sensible with Jamie, always so...accommodating to Jamie's intellectual side that Jamie was somehow flattered, maybe. They got along well and never had a cross word- not that I knew.

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....