Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Bails and Boxes

The sky was spitting this morning, a steady, static spitting, interrupted only by the occasional spew. Perfect walking weather, if you're walking a gangplank. Or if you're going to a place you don't belong. Perfect weather anyway, especially after forty-four months of no weather at all.

So to the job. I figured I'd enjoy the wet while it lasted. Skip Frank's and stroll the scenic route. Save the Times a wetting. I could get the paper once I topped a few hills, at the inaccurately, unoriginally, obscenely named Price Chopper. I needed some things anyway.

Over no river and through no woods, past houses well past their glory, down streets well past their prime. A hospital here, a diagnostic center there. Something ugly being built. Something beautiful being torn down. A man in a Today's Man suit. A woman walking her beagle. An unstraight line of footwear before the door to the Cambodian-owned market. Walking in Scranton, with a skip in my step and a song by my side.

That the song was All the Things I've Done by The Killers should make perfect sense. Not just for all I've done, but for all I haven't done. All I've killed. In me. In the world. I am so much older than I can take. Indeed.

It's a great song for strolling 'cause it promises everything and nothing all at once. Just how it should be. We gotta make do with our own promise. It's got a great video too -- a kinda kooky Good, Bad and then some as would be done by Russ Meyers. The song, and the scenery, substituted nicely for what wasn't in my heart, what wasn't in my path.

Before I knew it I had crested the last crest before the plateau parking lot. Two miles is really not very far; two miles is forever. Like I said, I needed some things. And I usually know exactly what I need. It may not always be right. It may not always be proper. It may not always be good. But it's known. I suppose. And I suppose I needed cereal, that new three berry deal, some salad, like the bagged organics, and some cheese, preferrably semi-fresh mozzerella. On impulse I bought a bag of mini Krispy Kreme cruellers to share with my, er, co-workers (none dare ever call 'em colleagues). Might be nice to be nice for a change.

Then I remembered the Times, the main reason for the visit in the first place. The Times though was not there. Was not anywhere. Seems they had sold their single copy just before I arrived.

Guess I'd just have to talk to my fellow UGLers; after all, I'd already bought 'em donuts.

Ha. Ha. Ha. The donuts they did not want and the talk we did not have. Oh, I offered. And I tried. But the sweets were a harmful superfluous to a well-balanced meal (or so I surmised), and the talk was of less consequence than the cold shoulders that carried its weight. Its weightlessness. One man explained in detail the wattage system of his home's lightbulbs, then copped to needing a nightlight. Go figure. Another exchange involved some mutterings regarding a bar, a brawl, and a "broad." I've heard enough of those to forget them all. Most talk though stayed right where it was seated, and right where it would stay: on the job.

Pails and bails and boxes and skids and mixes and of Glazol and Whatall and End-it-all-now. We were on Glazol (Better Than Putty!), and Glazol was on us. All over us. It is unclean. And boresome. Boxing Glazol is the industrial equivalent of bagging groceries except it takes ten times as long and half as much smarts. Nothing can break. Nothing can crumble. Nothing can get smashed. Therefore nothing need be considered. I boxed Glazol, all day yesterday and half the day today. Then I bailed one-gallon cans. Bails, in case you don't know (I didn't), are those thin metal handles that come affixed to things like paint cans. Someone puts them on, one by one, before the cans get shipped and sold. That someone was me. Try stretching a yawn to it breaks, then quintuple it. I was half fine with it all till the machine stopped expending and I had to expend it by hand. Now that was unpleasant. Ever milk a machine? A monstrous, massive machine that squirts out 200 degree milk? Don't.

And don't try to be what you're not. A gentleman e'd that to me this aft, and it's an excuse that I'll endeavor to live by. I am not them; I shouldn't try to be them. So there.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Some Small Rudeness

I should've listened to my gut. A few weeks ago I stopped for cigarettes at this so-called Smoke Shop up on Washington and New York. It was of course a simple transaction: I request, you provide, I pay. But even in the simplest of transactions there's a modicum of civility. A Please. A Thank You. Perhaps a Have a Nice Day. At this place, from this proprietor, there was no such thing. Not a whisper. Not a smile. Not even a grunt.

So I vowed to cross off him and his stupid store. I'm not given my hard-earned change to some mannerless lank of a man.

Then last week, when I was made late for the job, the ever-clinging Kenny and I found ourselves with no other option. So we went in. For coffee. They had Green Mountain and I like Green Mountain enough. They didn't have any of the fancy flavors available, but they had Our Brew. So I bought it. The coffee was good. The lank behind the counter was halfway civil. So I decided to give him and his store the benefit of my doubt.

I added to my habit. Instead of just a quick stop for the Times and some smokes every morning at Frank's (a real old-fashioned corner stand, where all the men are polite), I now swung also by this Smoke Shop for coffee. It was my reward for walking two miles in under fifteen minutes. And as I became more of a regular, Mr. Lanky seemed to warm up a bit. He did though always cast an aspersive glance at the Times under my arm.

Since it was spitting this morning, I decided I'd feed my mind all in the same place. I don't smoke or drink while I walk, and it'd be a shame to ruin the paper before I had a chance to really read it. So the Smoke Shop it was.

When I arrived though something was awry. I could smell it. Lanky was his usual lazy self, propped up against the counter talking about nothing; his pal though -- a true blue regular -- was big on the once-over. I didn't care. I've been around too many blocks to fret a blockhead. And anyway, I'm in stained chinos, scuffed combat boots and a wounded black tee; so what's he gonna once-over? Back at the dispensery I find I'm at the bottom of the urn.

Do you know these guys are out?

Oh.

I took what was left and prepared to wait. A sigh from Mr. Lanky and a look from Mr. Once Over prepared me to leave. I capped my cup and approached the counter. Then I looked down for the paper.

No New York Times?

He looked at me like I was shot outta Mars, then swivelled a No.

Damn.

How 'bout Camel Filters soft, please? He wordlessly produced the pack. Enter, add, enter, add. $6.15. I couldn't believe it. He'd not only charged me for a full cup o' coffee, he added $.60 on to the price of my cigarettes. It may not sound like much, but that's my lunch. Who the fuck is this lank to take my lunch? And why'd he have to be so rude about it? Of course, I didn't say anything. I couldn't. One foul report to the authorities and I'm back up the river with no nothing.

I did though consider a reveric past. See, in another time, another place, under a different circumstance, I might've called the Baseball Boys to come in and teach the man some manners. They'd have made him say Please, made him say Thank You, made him say Have a Nice Day, then they would've bopped him in the nose and Polaroided the proceedings for a reminder. They'd've told him it's not nice to be rude, and if he continued to be so then not nice things were going to happen to him. Repeatedly. Instant manners, at then blunt end of a baseball bat. It was a fond stroll down a distant path, where correct used to be determined through reasoned fists. And it was about as violent as I'll ever get to be again.

I hope the rude man felt it.

Monday, August 29, 2005

High Hopes

I fed an ant today. Sat on a concrete slab out by myself where the toxic used to run off and broke bread with an insect. I was having what these days constitutes lunch -- a Soho Rootbeer (23 oz's for $.50!) and an insulting-sized bag of Famous Amos (.99) -- and I suppose the ant was looking for hers. I say her because I can't determine ant gender. Never could. I will say that it's a magnificent creature -- graceful, inquisitive, wily and incredibly adroit.

She was doing that particular ant dance, you know, one part jitter, two part jerk, and all parts crazy-cool. It's done either for rain or from hunger. Probably both. I figured the rain would take care of itself; I'd would help with the hunger.

So I broke off a crispy crumb of cookie and placed it in her path. Of course she was skittish at first -- in fact, if I'm not mistaken she actually turned up her antennae at the offering -- but she quickly came around. And around. Sniff. Feel. Bite. Bounce. Circle. Bite. Sniff. Mount. Bite. In that order. Then, like every other girl I ever thought I knew, she bolted, with every gift I gave her.

Unlike the dead-of-night cab rides or the early-morning-while-I'm-away sneak-outs that I'm used to, this chick carried her burden in full view. She wasn't embarrassed. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't uncomfortable. She was proud. Proud to carry a crumb thrice her weight. And leave this crumb behind.

It was Sisyphus with a happy ending. Some great good myth gone well. nd it brought to mind Camelot, The Rat Pack, and the high hopes we place upon the myths of our creation. If I'm not mistaken, Sammy Cahn wrote High Hopes for JFK. Or maybe he just wrote it for Sinatra who sang it for JFK. Either way, it was written by Sammy, sung by Frank, and used as the theme for Jack's run for the presidency.

We don't have myths like that these days. We don't even have the mythics. There's no one with the guile to believe that a simple song could help alter the course of history. There's no one to believe in simple songs, let alone history. The truly gifted songslingers are marginalized outta the marketplace; the truly gifted history-makers have no voice. Yet. I'd like to believe that there will one day once again be a song in the hearts of all women and men so simple and so beautiful that history itself will bow, to the pressure, to the pleasure of our myths.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

A Reprieve

I don't know what it is. I don't know where it came from. I don't know who sent it. And I don't know how it got here. But whatever it is, wherever it came from, whoever sent it, and however it got here, I'm glad I landed on me. Now I wanna bottle it, wear it around my neck. Forever. Keep all the ugly away.

Yesterday, when I returned to the House for what I believed to be the last time, a gaggle of Parole Agents swooped in and snatched-up another Resident. Apparently the man had told someone he'd rather go back to prison than go to MinSec (I told you it was that bad), and just as apparently said someone told someone who told someone else and that someone told the staff. The staff was all too happy to oblige. A crack like that makes a cat high risk. And the CCC doesn't dig high risk. I don't blame 'em. Regular risk is risk enough. To make bad matters that much worse, the man had a hot urine. Two strikes when even one means you're out. So he left, shackled, handcuffed and led away by a belly-belt.

That left me. All the drama had created a bit of a logjam at the desk and I was told to sit down and wait. I do what I'm told. Or else. The wait stretched, yawned, stretched some more, then was stilled by my counselor. Come in the office, John.

I was prepared to petition for Philly. To ask for what little money was on my books and a trip to the bus station. I'd be outta here and outta their hair. For good. Most importantly, I'd be in a whole new elsewhere.

Yes?

We did some figuring, and the director made a phone call. If parole comes through for someone tomorrow, you can stay.

So I won’t have to go to MinSec?

You won't have to go to MinSec.

Could you repeat that please?

You won't have to go to MinSec.

If I was shook before -- and I was -- this took the shake right outta me. My little so-called life was for the moment still half mine. My tomorrows would still be half-lived. The light, however dim, was still lighted. Might not sound like much to you, but to me it was the closest thing I have to being free.

I pinched myself; bombarded her with Thank Yous; took a half-deep breath and went upstairs to lie down.

It had been a crazy day. I woke at 6, as I always woke. Though this time I didn't slurp down the thawed coffee on my bedside table and cram my face with a cereal bar. Nor did I follow up the ritual with a pilfered hot second and a cigarette. I couldn't. I was scheduled for a battery of blood tests at Moses Taylor Hospital, tests that required me to fast.

So, no caffeine and no nicotine. Not an easy wake for one so brutally accustomed. But today was the day of my Electric City debut, and I'll take a byline high any day. Thus charged, I made my way up and over a few of Scranton's infamous hills to my appointment.

I hate to be poked, and I hate to be bled, and I hate hospitals even more. Add what's subtracted by the fasting, and I'm down to below zilch. I mean, even a byline high only lasts so long.

Thank Zeus for the good folk at Moses. A receptionist directed me to a series of rather welcoming sofas where incoming are told to hold for processing. Ever the Boy Scout, I'd come prepared, with a freshly-inked copy of the day's Times. But before I could even crack the Metro a woman poked her head out of a windowed cube and summoned me in.

Is this your first time here, John?

Yes, ma'am.

Do you have insurance?

No, ma'am.

Don’t you worry. We'll get this paid.

Thank you, ma'am.

A few perfunctory questions and answers later I was off and up to the third floor lab. Even there the wait wasn't much of a wait. I'd just started checking the ho-hum latest on the boresome Democratic candidates for NYC mayor when I was called.

Then it hit me. Or rather, she did. Hit me for six diabolically-sized test-tubes of my once precious blood. My head evaporated. My heart reared into reverse. And all that tough guy stuff I'd been pretending with went the way of the Hula Hoop. A bygone spin. I thought I was gonna lose it. And if it wasn't for the plump young woman loudly complaining in the next desk chair, I might've.

But my falling-on-the-floor-in-public days are over. So I steeled myself. Then I steeled myself some more. Turned blue and tried to hide the wane in my face, the gulp in my gut. All done. The sing-song voice came from another dimension. Done? Yes, except for this. She held up an all too familiar plastic jar. Right. You got my blood, now you want my bladder. Heap it on, baby.

It was all downhill from there. Literally. I choked down a few smokes, grabbed an over-priced cup o' iced latte and made my way to the blind for some glasses. Really. Scranton's SafetyNet, once proud providers of replacement specs for the broke and needy had told me they no longer provided. Now that particular task was in the hands of the blind, the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind. Go figure.

If I had my hat in hand at Moses Taylor, I now needed my eyes on a platter. Seems getting reading glasses from the Blind is like listening to Mozart with the deaf. It takes some doing. Like 3 pages of application worth of doing. And a prescription. And a two-week wait. And $30. If I had all that I wouldn't be here. Yep, no matter what you've heard, the Blind do not help you to see.

I was too a twirl to care about the cruel logic of the irony. The fasting and walking and the poking and the letting and the bylining and the caffiening and the nicotining had left me giddy. I was just glad I could see my way out.

An hour later I was at the library boasting about my completely unboastable feat of Meating; two hours after that I was back in the same place sobbing through my fingertips. Shook. Shaken. Stirred. To such an extent I let the wallow wail along to Coldplay's "Fix You."

Coldplay, as everyone knows, are master of the grand, sweeping gesture. Since I'm occasionally a fan of grand and sweeping, I'm occasionally a fan of Coldplay. This was one of those occasions. At first I thought "Fix You" was an unpardonable conceit. Who the hell was this cat to fix someone else? Then I listened a little closer, and between the grand and sweeping gestures lies a nice little hurt. This cat had made a girl cry and now he'd do anything to make her stop. That was the fix.

What really struck me was what was left unsung. "Tears stream, down your face, I promise to learn from my mistakes" is a gentle act of contrition, especially in Coldplay's patented sonic context. But when the "And I" trails off into the ether the hit is all heart. This is the netherworld of our imaginings. The all that's unsaid, unspoken, unspeakable.

It made a nice set-piece to my pain. I looked out the library window at the crests surrounding Scranton, the sun slipping on, the sky slating into slumber, and I thought about the women I've made cry. Not because I was so special, but because I wasn't. I thought about what I could've done to fix them then, to fix them now, to fix me. And I came to a very simple conclusion: Get the fuck up off my moan and face it.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

The Plot Worsens

I just found out they're moving me this aft to a filthy, rundown hole-in-the-soul across the street called MinSec. I don't know what the acronym stands for, but if the rep's to be believed, it stands for sheer unadulterated Hell. Really. Fights. Thefts. Rattings. And, if rumor holds, no time out during the week. None. There goes the bloggery. There goes E. City. There goes what little I've rebuilt of my so-called Life. I'm shaking I'm so upset. Literally shaking. And I'm not by nature a shaker. I thought this House would be my last stop before some kinda home; once again I thought wrong. Way wrong.

They don't make it easy. They don't make it smooth. They don't make it nice. I've done every trick my keepers have asked. And then some. Back flips. Somersaults. Ass-kissing. Genuflecting. Politesse. You name it. And what the fuck did it get me? Shipped across the street to a cesspool. Had I been bad they'd've kept me. Had I been real bad they'd never let me go. But I was good. One Good Hood. And I get baddened as a result.

That's what I get for having my tail between my legs. Coward. And the cowardice won't stop here. Not if I'm to stay even halfway at large. It's sickening what a man's gotta do to breathe even a little. To walk even a step. To think even a thought. Take your soul and swallow. You will not thrive here.

Bastards.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Of Locks & Mandates

At the House, they lock us out. Not in, mind you. Out. There's a lock on the door to the upstairs residents' quarters. A lock on the door to the dayroom and the sign-in/sign-out desk. If we wanna come in. If we wanna go out. If we wanna go upstairs to eat or sleep or loo. If we wanna make our way to the lot-cum-lounge and smoke. We knock. Or, if we're bold and stupid, we ring. And we wait for the monito to unlock the lock. Some say it's 'cause a man came into a House in Harrisburg and gunned down another man. Others say it has something to do with infidelity and threats. I believe both, neither, refuse to conject. It is what it is.

This morning I stood in the vestibule corridor for twenty-five minutes and waited to go drudge and droll. It's not the first time I waited. It's not even the first time I waited that day. It is however the first time I waited so long. And it the first time I was made late to go to a place of mandate.

Not that I missed anything. If there's one certainty in this rigid world it's that I won't miss anything where I drudge and droll. Anything wouldn't miss me either. Seriously. A monkey could do what I do better, a machine could do it better still. Better yet would be to have no one do it at all and rid this town of much much sadness.

Yes, I guess the hill people are beginning to get to me. Oh, we're not close. Not even close. But I mind them less. Even find a comaraderie of sorts. There's a bond that only common toil can forge. Though our talk is limited to shop and trash, it is talk. An elemental exchange between beings stripped of their sentience. I'd like to hit the bar with a few of 'em, see what happens when their hair's been washed, how they breathe outta the fumes and the dust and the stupor. That of course is outta the question. My mandate is to be there, to be here, and not to drink about it.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

23 Skedaddle

I couldn't let the date go by. After all, it was once upon a time my surname. 23. Yep. 23. Those who know me longest know I was known as Johnny 23. After Burroughs of course. The Godfather of all.

The name, and the story, comes from The Exterminator. This cat Johnny can't cotton the kinda idiosyncrasies in people that don't add up. It's not the quirks he so dislikes -- we are talking Bad Bill here -- it's humdrum oddities that aren't at all odd. The bothersome. The things that make people stupid, or dull, or clumsy, or rude. This irks him, so he does something about it.

He creates a virus -- B23 -- that when administered makes everyone well-mannered, well-disciplined, of a higher intellect. Just like him.

It's a wonderful story, mostly 'cause it does what many of us would like to do: fix what ails us in others. That the fix comes from the penultimate fixer, means the fix is in. Our heads. Our hearts. Our very beings.

I quick Googled my favorite number and found that it's a natural. It is the sacred number of Eris, goddess of dischord, and according to Principia Discordia, the number of the Illuminati. Like 13, my birthdate, it is sometimes considered lucky or otherwise significant. I say it's most times. Much times. All the time. If you look, 23's are everywhere. In events personal and public, in the very order of things. If you don't look, you won't see.

If you don't believe me, go to http://en.wikepsida.org, the site where I copped all this dirt. Then dig.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Crush and Crash

I could sit and watch Rachel McAdams for the rest of my life. I could sit and watch her walk, sit and watch her talk, sit and watch her watch. I could sit and watch her sitting and still never get bored. She's exquisite. The smile in her eyes; the sway in her strut, the sparkle in her laugh. She knocks the wind from me.

This weekend was the first weekend that I've had more than three hours to myself since forever. Instead I had five. Five hours to do with almost as I pleased. Since I'm in Scranton, and since I'm in a halfway house, there really wasn't much pleasing to do. I did what I could. The library. A movie. A movie. The library. It was at that first flick where I first saw Rachel.

Talk about firsts. It was like a first crush. A first kiss. The first time. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. Or my hopes or my dreams or my fears. She was that much. Not too much, but much. Just enough much to slay me.

Yeah it's corny, yeah it's cliché, and yeah I'm cracked. That's the beauty of it all. When a fella cracks with corny clichés he's on to something primitive, something primal, something organic. Essential. She's got the kinda got that gets you. Gets to you. Gets.

I better shut up before I start to walk the stalk. She's far too very for something so mundane; and if anyone dared -- and I do mean anyone -- well, I'd just have to knock the mundane right outta them.

Ahem.

Oh yeah, the movie. The Wedding Crashers delivered as reported -- a hefty dose of dumb adult fun. Vaughn & Wilson were ridiculously adroit, the script emphatically ridic, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. Mostly I enjoyed Rachel, but I think I've already well covered that.

Maybe it was the fact that I hadn't been in a cinema for four years. Four years since I'd sat alone in the dark with my eyes on elsewhere. The cool, the color, the volume. Just the coming attractions were a delight to rebehold. I even dug Kanye West's semi-sacred soundings over the quick-cut clips to the coming Jarhead and I do not dig Kanye West. But there, then, he was appropriate. I bet it's the only time he's ever been accused of that.

Sunday's Four Brothers returned to me the city grit that I've so long been missing. The dirty, ugly, dangerous side of a dirty, ugly, dangerous place. In this case the place was Detroit, and I dug deep all the dirt and the ugly and the danger. It's not that I wanna go out and play with guns; but it might be nice to once again be gliding through places where there’s a little gunplay. There's a sense you get in such places, a knowing, a mortal feel that's about as close to the gods as we get. A sense that can't be felt or known elsewhere. Something singular.

On third thought, I'll opt outta that action. Been there. Done that. Paid for it. Dearly. From here on out I'll leave my slinging to words. Maybe find a way to spell the feel that can't be known. Or something. I will though be tracking down The Notebook. And this weekend I'll be taking Wes Craven's Red Eye. There's no way I'm gonna opt outta Rachel.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Choosing Choice

It started as a monologue. Some hairy-faced bald guy in an uncharacteristic moment of insight. He was going on about warriors. How at 18 they can fight and kill and die, but they're still too young to drink. About how the law's gotta change. How unfair it all is.

Then the bald man went on to include kids who kill. How most of 'em get prosecuted as adults. Get the same treatment. The same sentence. How the prosecutors say they're old enough to know what they're doing. Still they're not old enough to know alcohol.

Or to have an abortion without a parent's consent. They know what they're doing when they fight or kill or die, but they don't know what they're doing when it comes to abortion. Can't decide for themselves. Utter hypocrisy.

Then a wiry scumbag child offender chimed in.

I think abortion should be illegal anyway, for everyone.

Baldy shot back.

That's you're opinion and you're entitled to it.

No, it's not an opinion. It's a fact. It's a life and that's that.

Till then I'd been silent, keeping my cigarette and my thoughts to myself. I could be silent no longer.

What about the kids you molested? Weren't those lives too?

The table went still. The scumbag turned red. Blue. Purple. Couldn't look me in the eye. Couldn't face me. Damn sure couldn't come up with a response. Rose and stormed off, ridiculously.

Who the fuck is this piece of shit to tell anyone what they can or cannot do?

And who the fuck is he to tell me. I know all too intimately about choice. See I've made the decision. Twice. Rather We made the decision. Twice. And if I know the women as well as I think I know me, the decision will remain one of the most difficult decisions of their lives.

Shannon would be about twenty-one now. I don't know why I call her Shannon, me and her would've-been mother never discussed names. It just kinda came to me. Other names have come to me too -- Tallulah, Eudora -- but none of 'em came to me then. We never considered a name because there was never a name to consider. There was a decision to make and we made it. Our choice was no choice.

And thank Zeus we had it to make. The woman already had three kids of her own, was nearing thirty, and still somehow managed to juggle a career and an aspiration. I was young, dumb and selfish, and in no position to take care of myself, let alone another. There was no question of what our decision would be. Should be. Was.

So we chose. Chose not to bring another life into a place where it couldn't be properly cared for. Where it wouldn't get a fair shake. Was that responsible or irresponsible? I don't know. I still don't know. Surely a child would've been a burden to us; and just as surely we would've been a burden to the child.

Veronica would be about thirteen now. Maybe fourteen. I can't remember the year because I can't remember the year. It's a blur. A blotch. I was a mess. I couldn't wake without a wake-up, and I couldn't get a wake-up 'cause I couldn't get outta bed. I spent the mornings waiting for a pal o' mine who was too high-pro to cop for himself; evenings waiting for my girlfriend to return home with money enough for two. She was a waitress. Then a bartender. Then a waitress again. And she always came home with cash.

When she got pregnant we both cried. What the hell had we done? I was a wreck in a whirlwind; she'd been dragged along for the ride. And the crash. Seems those days we did a lot of crashing. And it was me at the wheel everytime.

Again our choice was no choice. No way in the world would a child benefit from coming into such an ugly world. That's just mean. And cruel. Much more selfish than not. Who's to say what our desperate proclivities would've wrought?

When the scumbag from the House made his righteous crack it was like pouring a pound of salt into a gaping hole in my life. I've got a past; I try to keep it buried. It doesn't always work. But I try. And when I let it rise I try to do so with reverence. With respect. With some kinda semblance of dignity. Zeus knows there's been too many time when I've been without any and all of the above. But don't be wrong and tell me what's right, and never get between me and my hurt. I won't stand for it.

Some say that a child would've changed my life. They're right. It would have. Without question. With a child in tow I might not have pissed off the world, set it aflame, then laughed while it burned. I might not have had to face the fact that the world I burned was my own. I might not have gone away. And I might not now be worming my way back. But what if my change was insufficient? What if I only half rose to the occasion? I'd like to think I wouldn't, but I can't be sure. I certainly have a spotty track record. What if I brought all that ill upon an innocent? That would be inexcusable.

This morning I helped a man try to regain partial custody of a daughter I'm sure he loves dearly. His face cracks when he says her name, his eyes cloud when he tries to picture her face. See this man has never met his daughter. Never. And he's not nearly alone. I just left a place where men had 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13 children, and all those kids were out there somewhere without thier fathers. Many didn't even know who their fathers were. Are. Some would never know. I'd like to believe I wouldn't, couldn't be those men; then I'd always believed I'd never be in prison with those men either. Neither is in any way manly. And until I am a man, and I do things manly, I will not subject a child to my world. I just hope I keep enough kid in me for the kid that's sure to be.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Water & Paper

(Note: This post was supposed to post last eve. I had it all verbed out. Then the 30-minute timer on the Northern Light computer cut me off. Guess it wasn't meant to be. Then. Call me adamant -- relentless? -- but I still hate taking No for any answer. So I go again. And, if I have to, again and again and again. No cotton-picking time frame's gonna keep this Good Hood quiet.)


It did not rain on me today. I wanted it to, but it didn't. It spit a bit. Shed a few tears. Drooled. Then spit some more. One big glop of tease to the forehead. A smattering of dribble on the day's Times. That's it. And I did so wanna get wet. I wanted sheets, buckets, torrents. A deluge. Something to remember. Something to recall. Something to to wash that gray right outta my mind.

The walk to the job is like any walk to a place where you don't belong. A gangplank, with no refreshing end. I'd take an ocean full o' sharks before a factory full of hill people. Here comes the flatlander they say as I trod up the last crest. Here comes the man who's been everywhere but here.

I read as I walk, keeping up with the events of the world. The pullout in Gaza. The magnetifications of the MRI. The rebirthing of William Weld. Keeps me kinda in touch. Even if it's only pretend touch. Keeps me occupied while I slog past projects and used car lots and houses older than the hills upon which they perch. Keeps me elsewhere. I mean, it's not as if I gotta watch for traffic.

Just once did I run into a cross. Some drab lady in a stupid bronze SUV honked and hollered: Why don't you watch where you going, asshole! I think it was a question. A little hypotheticity that came over her in a sudden rush to some dumb judgement. I can't be sure. And since I wasn't sure I said simply: Thank you very much.

Was that wrong?

At the job I revel in the cigarette. There are two scheduled ten-minute breaks -- at 10 and 2:30 -- plus a half-hour lunch at noon. On every hour in between though one of the line workers spells another in turn till everyone gets their nic fit fixed. Yes, despite the hazardous chemicals and the toxic dust and the dizzying exhaust from the battalion of forklifts, everybody smokes.

On my 9am smoke break a torn and yellowed slice of newspaper kept me company. A sliver of the classifieds. Left to do no good. I watched it smack around the alcove, buffeted about by both wind and noise, and I knew what it held. Job listings for short order cooks, warehouse workers, nurses for a few of the many assisted-living facilities that dot the region, a mechanic, a janitor, a CDL-licensed driver. I wondered who'd take these jobs, what their lives were like before, what they'd be like after. Would any of these bring them closer to fulfillment. And I wondered about those they'd be replacing. How long they stayed. Why they left. Where they went. Did they have some way of knowing when leaving or staying was the right thing to do.

I pictured a man, four payments behind on his ten year-old truck, a wife at Wal-Mart, two kids in cradles, another on child support, with rent overdue and cupboards sorely lacking. He once worked at the foundry, a union shop, his father once worked in the mines that made the union. He made a living wage. I picture this man, trucker cap in hand, applying for a job that couldn't feed one let alone four and a half. I picture him having little choice in the matter. Someone somewhere somehow decided that this is how too many, many people will live. How they will die. I don't have the courage to ask why.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Not Seeing Things

For a cad with a view, I can't see a thing. Out the window from where I sit lies a hill much like every other hill in hilldom. It's hazed and horizoned and peculiar to nowhere. Here in the swale it looms large, like a bump in the order of things.

In the country of the flat the one-hilled cat is king.

Or not. Here, and especially in the surrounding so-called hills, I'm what's called a flatlander. An outsider. An intruder. Unfamiliar with the hilly ways. Without a hill of my own. My beats are where streets have numbers and the avenues have names and that makes me wrong for this land. Where I come from you can walk from one end to another and feel as if you've gotten somewhere and still never reach a conclusion.

Here the streets slope, steep, sway, look at you sideways. Stop. They know you're gonna be on 'em but they really rather you weren't. Rather you didn't bother. Rather you left 'em alone. They've taken a position and it doesn't include you. Or me. Like the welcome caress of a fist.

Or a cold shoulder. Before this place, this time, I thought shoulders got cold 'cause they were above everybody else. That they were for those with shoulders to square. I never had to much suffer them -- then those that could wouldn't dare -- but I've seen the feeling. Now I think I know it. The nudge of a distinctly low blow.

To be fair to this fair town I haven't been fair. I haven't been out. I haven't been about. So I haven't seen whether or not there's anything on offer. When you're colleagues are limited to cons in a holding pattern you kinda lose perspective. I take that back: You never get perspective in the first place.

So you see I see nothing. Not the forest. Not the trees. Not the bee's knees. I sure as all hell can't see myself. Can't see myself remaining without an outlook. Without a view. Perhaps it's time I looked into it.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Here is Not Elsewhere

It took a minute. Two. Then it took a minute more. And still I wasn't out of the House. Like anything you don't wanna do, it takes time. Sometimes less. Sometimes more. Mostly more. Like leaving. I gotta skirt the skels, sidestep the cigarettes, click through and back and through two locked doors, stand at attention, give my destination, sign my name. Same procedure every time, morning, noon and night.

I mean, eve. There are no nights. No nights I see anyway. Back in at 9, and that's something. It began at 7. Got bumped to 8. Now I'm a Niner. With a five hour weekend window to work with.

But even the evenings feel different. My first night out past 7, I saw a new sky, tasted a new air. My last past 7 was in a yard the size of a carport. No sky to see, no air to speak of. Tasted like purgatory and defeat, 'cause it was. Now is now. You'd think an hour here or there wouldn't mean much. That thought would be wrong. An hour is a whole new world.

Now that I've got till 9 to play with I'm almost giddy. Not that I've made it out that late yet. By the time I get back from slogging the day way I've such a yen to do something, say something, I split well before 6. Since I only have three hours of my so-called own, that puts me back before curfew. If I wasn't so itchy I'd wait a half hour longer. But itchy I am. And only some electronic conveyance can scratch it.

So I hit the library. A wonderful place. 19th century grandeur and 21st century technology. I use every permitted hour I can to be here. Every permittable day. It's the next best thing to swinging elsewhere. And I do so dream of elsewhere.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Ditchings and Diggings

Ditching Kenny was a cinch. In fact, I didn't even have to try. I'm going to the Linden Market for cigarettes and a paper, said I. He kept walking. The way I taught him to walk. The only way he knows. Expecting me to catch up. Linden was closed so I hit Frank's and took another route. So long, sucker.

Kenny slogs where I slog. Lives in the House that I live in. We're both mandated, it's just his mandate is a bit stronger. And a helluva lot more severe. I didn't want him to work where I work 'cause I knew he'd wanna walk with me each morning. Wreck my solace. A soundtrack for my crawl over and up hill upon hill to a place that I don't wish to be.No thank you. I don't wanna hear about the House, the people in there. I don't wanna hear about the job, those people either. And I sure as all fuck do not wanna hear about Kenny. Ever again.

Kenny just maxed a 1-2 for soliciting a runaway teen in an Allentown park. I don't know what he said or how he said it, but the boy wasn't having any. Now for the rest of his life Kenny'll have to register under Megan's Law. Make no move without the state's permission. He's not allowed in parks anymore either.

Kenny's currently on parole for burglary. Or so he says anyway. Everyone in the House lies so much about their lives, their crimes, you don't know what to believe. Kenny though is probably being relatively truthful. I mean, he's freely spilled everything else about himself, including the episode in the park, why would he lie about a burglary?

Or a compulsion to burgle. This isn't his first fall, this is like his 6th. Or 7th. Or 8th. I lost track in the too long telling. I did try to calculate his time away. Came up with 16 outta 20, with a long of 2. Yep. Kenny's been down 16 outta the last 20 years, and has never been out for more than 2 in a row. That's time.

You can see it all over his face. Kenny's not an unhandsome man. Strong jaw, square head, jailhouse-solid build. Mediterranean, I'd guess. His ears stick out too far but we can't have everything. When you get to the eyes though, there's trouble. They don't know where they wanna be. What they wanna do. What they're thinking. They're the eyes of the institutionalized. Looking to be told where to settle. Reminds me of Jack Henry Abbott and how he didn't know where to buy toothpaste. Locked up so long he lacked even the basics. That's Kenny. Kinda.

So like I said, I sprung for the paper and walked alone. Beautiful. Not the walk, the paper. Last time I had a NY Times in my hand was in the Bradford County Jail. I used to have Sunday's delivered if you can believe that. Make the thing last a week just so I was never without. Today though I pictured a more pleasant place. South Beach. Particularly The Crescent on Ocean Drive. I had a pad there for awhile. Got the Times on the doorknob every morning. And when I'd come home after a long night out I'd quick-change into some cabana wear, grab a smoothie from the downstairs cafe, and make my way across the street to the sand and the ocean. A club kid I knew ran the beach chair concession, always saved me a seat, and nearly every morning I took it.

The Atlantic wasn't lapping at my feet this day, and the sun was without any tropical fervor, but the Times didn't disappoint. I wanna get mad about exurban sprawl outside Tampa (and I did). I'm glad to know the Gerbers are teaming with Maxim (now I do). I'm inspired by the billionaire feats of Jack Ma's alibaba.com, hard-wired by the can-do cats at Judy's Book. Just having the paper at hand made me feel closer to the world. And trust me, I am nowhere near.

I swung to the same sensation last week with The New Yorker. Everyday I carried it to and through slogville, and every 10 minute break and every half hour lunch I devoured it. I even copped a peek during smoke breaks but got dirty looks for my effort. In fact I got dirty looks all around whenever I broke out a New York anything. Still do. You think you're better than us, they scowl. Uppity ex-con. I'm not mad though. They're right. I do think I'm better than them.

So there.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Some Nerve

I never used to get nervous. I could stroll into a room, a bar, a club, step up on a stage, strut into any city, its projects, and know my swagger would steel the day. Even among nerve-wrackingly strong women I remained resolute. I've had fists to my face, knives to my throat, guns to my head and still all I gave was a shrug. I had some nerve.

Before I surrendered, I threw a little going away party for myself at some then-trendy eatery on Avenue C and 9th Street. There were 9 of us and I was a wreck. I had two kinds of bundles in my pocket and a mad desire to completely eliminate both by night's end. I did. My friends were remarkably understandable, as they always had been. I couldn't understand a thing.

Early the next morning I woke in a Bartonsville truckstop. I'd been there before. Thought the dwarfs and the amputees and the three-fingered preacher man in the cross-bearing Truckers for Christ trailer would make a good story. Even submitted a bogus job ap so I could go undercover to write it. This time though things were different. I was the story. And it was about to end.

I spent my last thirteen dollars on a cab to the State Police barracks in Swiftwater. The fare was twelve and I apologized for the meagerness of the tip. That's all I have, said I. It's more than I expected, said she. You figure her figuring.

I told he uniform behind the bullet-proof glassed vestibule that I had come to surrender. He looked up. He was on the phone. Then he wasn't. Excuse me? I said I'd come to turn myself in. I slipped my identification through the slot. Hold on.

I stepped outside and lit a last smoke and took in the barren sixth-growth forest. So this is what I'd come to. Here is what I mean. I had no idea what I was doing there. Surrendering. Do real outlaws ever surrender? Before I could answer myself four state troopers burst outta the barracks, threw me to the ground and cuffed my hands behind my back. Easy gentlemen, I came in on my own accord.

Now you're going away on ours.

They dragged me back to a chair and chained me to a railing against the wall. I knew enough to know there'd be a lot of waiting and that cops didn't let you have books while you did it. They would let you have a Bible. I'd bought one the night before at the B. Dalton on 6th Avenue and 8th Street. It was gilded, like a hymnal, with those tissue-paper pages that make you feel kinda sacred. Can I have my Bible? Oh, baby wants his Bible, they laughed. Not that way, motherfuckers, I thought. Thank you very much, I said.

I forgot what I read. Some fire and brimstone hypocrisy and spite I'm sure. Whatever it was it kept me distracted while my now-heralded captors did the paperwork for my arrest. My mind wasn't on the Bible anyway. It was on attorneys and bail and how long it'd be before I'd get both.

When they took a look at my past and wouldn't let me go I wasn't worried. They always come down hard in the beginning. Put a little fear of God into a fella. When they still wouldn't let me out after a week, two, a month, I stayed steely. I can take whatever I'm dished. When months became months upon months and the sentence looked like double digits I began to worry.

But I wasn't nervous. Nervous makes you shake. Gets you jittered. Worry makes you stir. Damn good practice for one who's about to be put to the stir test.

No nerve wrack when they sentenced me. In fact, I was kinda relieved. Sure it was a huge hit, a low blow, but it was over. Now to stir. I wasn't nervous when they vanned me down to four-thousand strong Camp Hill, ground zero for incoming cons in the Pennsylvania system. I wasn't nervous when they trussed me up and shipped me to Mahanoy, where I got a too close-hand look at the baddest and ugliest and meanest among so-called men. Men who killed their families. Men who killed their wives or their girlfiends. Men who killed their kids. Men who hurt kids. Men who beat other men into comas so they could get another hit of crack. Sheer ugly hate. They creeped me out and pissed me off, but none of 'em unnerved me.

Chester didn't make me nervous either. It was ghetto, yeah. And it was dirty and stale and dark and overcrowded and there was no yard but So what? I could handle being warehoused in a modern dungeon and all the dinge that went with it.

Now I think I've lost my nerve. I leave the library and I see police walking by and I wonder if they're looking for me. A plain white caged van screeches to a stop at the light and I jump. Some moron swipes twenty dollars from UGL and I cringe. Lose the job you go back. I look over my shoulder. Especially in the House. There are men there, vindictive, petty, putrid little men, who'd drop a counterfeit dime on a cat just because they don't have a quarter. You don't have to have done anything at all. And the 8-10 evenings are an eternity. I can't sit still till the second shift monitor leaves and I know they won't be coming for someone that night. That they won't be coming for me. And just in case I forget where I am, there's a D.O.C. van out in the parking lot to remind me every time I step outside for a smoke.

Maybe I should quit smoking.

And get back some nerve.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Local Discolor

He's pint-sized. Bulging eyes and an I-don't-give-a-fuck stomach. His feet are the size of my hands. His mouth is bigger than my ego. He wears sandals. He bitches and moans and lies and cries. He's sneaky and sulky and stupid and crude. I think he "found" my "lost" money 'cause even though he says he's broke he never fails to have a box of Newports in his faded khaki pocket. I bought him bread. A Pepsi. Lent him bleach. He never paid me back.

His name is John and he is one of my rommates at the House and I don't like him a bit.

There's more. Or, I should say, others. Like the third John. He too is extremely vertically challanged. I should say short. He tries to compensate by horizontalizing. He overcompensates. He's got waist-sized biceps, Popeye forearms, and a head that resembles a shrew. No, I don't know what a shrew looks like. His clothes are tight, his wallet is tighter. And I can't understand a single word he says. I don't know if hillbillies are taught at birth to mumble vaguely, but he's an expert at it. Either that or he's got no teeth. I'd say both. 'Cause where he comes from mumbling through gums is a given.

Then there's Troy. Named for a fable he'll never be able to comprehend, Troy, in his own small town way, was once probably cool. Now he's just pathetic. With a scumbag junkie mentality, a Why-me? way of blame, a limp and a cane to go with it. He neeeds a crutch. He says he fell off his bunk upstate. I say he never should've been there in the second place. He's already had one shot. Now he's bitching 'cause they haven't tailor-made for him another. Like I said: Pathetic.

These are my roomies in the House and I am so damn glad I'm not them.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

From Dust to Then

It's dirty. It's dusty. It's toxic. It's Drylok Fast Plug and I just spent the day helping to make sure the stuff spreads around the world. Stack, fill, weigh, lid, box, stack. They put me smack in the middle, on lids, which was the perfect for someone who's flipped his own a time or three. Oh, the boredom. I tried to get the Hood's-eye version of the hippy-dippy Zen trance Jan Michael Vincent worked for himself in Tribes. Didn't work for me. Maybe it's cuz I didn't have some girlfriend-in-the-flower-fields to fall back on. Or a drilll sergeant screaming in my face. I had only the unseen Man.

And the blaring music of my youth. For some dumb reason the Rock-of-the-'70s is as ubiquitous now as it was then (more later). Foghat's "Fool for the City, Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way," Rick Derringer's "Rock 'n' Roll Hootchie Koo." C'mon. That shit was hip when I was a kid. Sure, they were great. In their day. I know, I saw 'em all at the Miami Jai Alai Fronton. Listening to 'em now though is little joy. Listening to 'em while I slog poisons is no joy at all. Kinda makes me feel like a teen paying a grown man's debt.

Speaking of teenstuff... Believe it or not, I used to be a bit of glam boy. And No, there are no surviving pictures. I saw to that myself. Anyway, as I say, as a kid I was all glam, as in Pretty Things, Mott the Hoople, T-Rex glam. Yeah I was a few years late; this was Miami in the late '70s and everybody but the cocaine cowboys was late. Late didn't impinge upon my thoroughness. Or my, er, flair. The scarfs, the platforms, the satin, I gladly, madly wore it all. In fact so good was I in my get-up that people used to say I looked like a rock star, specifically Paul Chapman of UFO, who were then the reigning kings of pretty boy metal. UFO was one band I hadn't seen except on record covers, and the live images there were just murky enough to lead me to agree.

So then UFO was coming to town. An old barn of an arena way out in the swamps called The Hollywood Sportatorium. I not only had tickets; I had backstage passes. Better yet, I had the gall to be them. The week before the concert, at the very same arena, appeared The Moody Blues. Now I was never a big fan; they were always a little too much pomp and not enough circumstance for me. But even in those days I went to everything and this was something to go to. So I went. And I approached the backstage entrance on the side of the building: "Elo," said I, in a transparently fake Cockney accent. "I'm Paul Chapman of UFO. We're playin' ere next week and I thought I might take a look around." It was preposterous. Then this massive lug of a man looked me up and down and up and down again, wiped what I thought for sure was disbelief outta his eyes and opened wide the gate. Sure, sure. Come in. Then he called over a few friends who were hanging around and introduced me as if we were old friends. This is Paul Chapman of UFO. He's playing here next week. Take care of him. The ooh's and the aah's were exceeded only by the amount of liquor and narcotics they proceeded to ply me with. When I say copious, I mean more. So happy were they to have a supposed star in their midst they never even stopped to question whether or not the star was real. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was Miami. Now every time I hear "Night in White Satin" I wonder if they're still talking about that night too.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

On Truth

This needs no elaboration:

I know they's a lot of things in a family history that just plain aint so. Any family. The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. But I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it anymore than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that's what it is. It's the thing you're talkin about. I've heard it compared to the rock -- maybe in the bible -- and I wouldn't disagree with that. But it'll be here even when the rock is gone. I'm sure they's people would disagree with that. Quite a few, in fact. But I never could find out what any of them did believe.

From Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

The Wrong Brochure

Another dull day of drudgery. I don't know how guys between 25 and 55 do it; it's a job for kids and old men. People on their way up or on their way out. This is no place for a lifetime. I suppose there's some small honor and dignity in labor, but the meniality has gotta cancel it out. Perhaps there was such a thing in the toil of their forebearers. I mean, I can see a certain nobility in mining coal -- those men were building a nation; what kinda honor and dignity though can come from manufacturing products that fill in the cracks and paint over the surface of the nation your forebearers built?

I wonder.

So I spent the first half of the day loading the constantly firing gatlin gun, the second half catching the bullets. What wrath did Ford wrought. Being on the receiving end of an assembly line has gotta be the closest thing to torture the industiral age ever devised. It is, simply, enough to make a man mad. Bend, lift, repeat. Over and over again and again. You can't daydream, 'cause if you wander you lose your place and the line drags. And you can't think, 'cause then the line stops.

No, definitely not a thinkin' man's job. Even a thoughtless thinker like me. But since I never let thought get in the way before, I most certainly wasn't gonna start now. Regardless. So I thought, and I thought, and I thought some more, about all the times I thought about my release. I thought about how I'd be released to fanfare, about the suit I'd be wearing when I got there, the hat I was gonna tip when I entered. I thought about the sorely missed, and the way I'd smile wide and hug each and every one of 'em, and about the way a smile and a hug would feel after all the hard time of neither. I thought about the swagger, I thought about the sway, I thought about the streets. And then I remembered the intersection of the factory where I stood thinking: New York and Jefferson. Manhattan and Miami Beach. Then I thought about how far away I was from both. Some great distance. This was not like I pictured it from the pen, not how I promised myself all those nights after count, nowhere near what I believed. Guess I got the wrong brochure.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Capping Caulk for The Man

For those of you who don't know -- and I hope it's every single one of you -- halfway house living is but a half life. Forget what you did or what you know or where you did it or who you knew, when a con gets halfway sprung, he's in for a world not his own.

The big thing is a job. Not work, mind you, and definitely not The Work. But a job. A con gets halfway out and it's off to the temps. No, these aren't the kinda temps that send a fella to desk duty; these are solid, soiled, blue collar temps. If you're like me, you hit a town and try to ply your trade. But even if you get a hit, as I did, if it's not a full-time hit, you're temping. Or else. If your freedom's dependent on a job, any job, you land a job.

So this morn I hit the hills for the half-hour walk to United Gilsonite Laboratories. They make paint, spackle, the odd solvent or three, and caulk. They've been making it since '32. And they make quite a lot of it.

I arrived with four other temps: a mullet-headed slouch who's just gaga over Disturbed, a small-town version of a Brooklyn bad boy with Cali cred and Gurnsey dreams (really), a mild-mannered old man about I don't know what, and me. I wasn't the only ex-con, but I was the only one with a curfew. Anyway we get assigned, and I get the caulk line. Specifically, running the caps. This entailed my standing atop an electric scaffold and feeding thousands upon thousands of white plastic caps into a Dickensian machine and watching it spit out fours of finished tubes. Imagine having to load a gatlin gun one bullet at a time for eight hours and you kinda get the idea. And I wasn't the only one ammo'd up: three different workers took their place beside me, and three different workers didn't last. Funny how much you can tell about a man when he works. The first took slow, stuttered footlong swipes to load each and every cap and nearly keeled from the effort; the second piled 'em in fives and pummeled 'em through like an impatient with other things to do; the third kept his swipes to a minimum, but they were erratic and off-target, as if his mind lived somewhere else. I call 'em stupid, shrewd, and sensitive. Me? I applied Burroughs' time-tested Disciple of Doing Easy. Economy of movement; economy of energy. And the job gets done. No sweat.

I take that back. Much sweat. The sweat of a man clocking time. I felt like Morton Spurlock would feel if he had to do it for real. Let's hope I too get an FX cushion to land on, and let's hope too it doesn't last more than thirty days.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Some Go Home, Others Go Back

They took another man away the night before last. The second this week. Seems he went out and got himself all liquored up. Then he had some bad words with the local folk at Sal's. Rule #1 for halfway housing parolees: Don't Drink or Drug. Rule #2: Don't piss-off the locals. Someone says something wrong to you, walk away. Otherwise you go away. Back. Guess the liquor kinda dampened the man's senses.

Now he's got at least six months of stir to do nothing but think about it.

The first con went to parole for his lie detector test and just never came back. See the cons who fall under Megan's Law gotta strap on the polygraph every once in awhile. This must've been one of those once-in-awhiles when truth got in the way. Or got away. Whatever it was he didn't get away with it. Bad for him. Not so bad for me. Or the community. I mean, even a con's gotta have a set of standards, right? And anyway, I didn't have to see him go. Didn't much care either.
Last night's case was different. Not because I cared all that much (truthfully, I didn't; we come alone, we leave alone), but because it happened right in front of me. When you hear the sound of shackles, cuffs and bellychains, then you see a man trussed up and taken away, you're heart misses about half of that long hard minute's beats. Maybe more. Breath stops too. Right where it started. Gets a cat to thinkin' about how tenuous this freedom really is.

And how stupid some people are for re-losing it. It's not like they don't know how bad it is to be locked-up; they do, and then some. Yet still some gotta go out and waste their precious personal time drinking with their buddies (who by the way remain at large), arguing with the locals (ditto), or, like one particularly filthy rotten apple, scouring the playgrounds and the parks and the internet for more victims. Good for them. Let 'em go back. And rot. World's too crowded anyway.

On a brighter note, one fella did go home. A Korean/Irish cat named Sam, who has the simple grace and good humor of those born cool. Talented too, with a penchant of the louder among louds. I tell ya, if not for drugs and geography, he coulda been a contender. Might still be. Now that he's been given his next last chance. Good luck, brother.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Long Gone Days

I hate wasted days. It makes my heart hurt, my head ache, my soul sag. Another 24 bites the dust. What have I done? Where have I gone? What have I learned?

Of my some 1344 days away every single solitary one of 'em was a waste. Every one. Despite the fact that I did my best to bide my hard time wisely. There were the daily correspondings, to the allegiant fifty (which made for 1344 hours wasted waiting for the mail bag), and they only left me longing for conversation. There were the scriptings and the stories and the notebook upon notebook of journalings and jottings. There was blessed Bully. To keep current with events I rose to NPR, then made believe that what happened in the world made a difference to me where I was. Or wasn't. To keep current with culture I read and reread The New Yorker (thanks Chris!), then imagined I was at whatever galleries' and museums' and cinemas' events were duly noted for the week. To keep current with soundings while down Philly way I tuned into Penn's excellent XPN; up in the mountains it was all Sir George Graham's big and brassy Mixed Big on VIA. To get operatic or symphonic or jazzed I mooded over to Temple's-own RTI. Each in turn made me close my eyes and see just what I was missing. Everything. No matter who I lettered, they still weren't there. No matter what I wrote, no one could read it. No matter what I learned or thought or felt, there was no one to tell. And no matter what happening, it happened without me.

Without Bully, and the kind, continuous correspondence, it would've been nothing but the sound of one man flapping, in the stale, windowless wind.

You get the picture. So when yesterday ended-up wasted it all came back to me -- the hurt heart, the aching head, the sagging soul. Worse was this was my first day of three-hour personal time. You read correctly: three hours. Till now I'd been allowed nothing but hour-long increments to myself. As always, I planned my time 'round that of the library; unfortunately I was misinformed about the library's time. One of my girthier colleagues told me this; the library did that, and I got stuck outta the blogosphere. I blame only myself. I've passed through the library's gates enough to know the times; I've been told wrong by cons enough to know what time does.

Off to Northern Lights (with permission of course), home of the only terminal available at that ghastly hour. There I waited. And I waited. Then I wrote. And I wrote. As fast as my feeble mind and crooked fingers would allow. By then my precious three hours were almost over. And when I was done I got hit with a surgeless surge of absolute ether. No post. No signal. No back. That left all that I'd spilled over Mike Albo's deliciously vicious The Underminer gone in the dustbin of memory and all that I did for the day done gone. Long done gone. Does doing get done when there's no done in the doing? I wonder.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

From There to Here

More digression.

So we were off, away from Chester and all the ugly it represented. Driving on some of Philadelphia's filthiest thruways. It was rush hour, but it seemed the rush hadn't caught on yet. Leaving ugly through more ugly. The roads were beaten and poor, the traffic foul and unpleasant, and the drivers looked mean and miserable in their dime-a-dozen sedans. I didn't care. The misery-soaked 'burbs of America's seventh city meant nothing to me. I was sprung.

So we drove. And we drove. And we drove. The a/c on full; the windows on wide open; the smokes hooked to a chain. I wanted to stop on the side of the road and pick a flower, feed a duck, roll down the embankment. Do a somersault. It'd had been so long since I'd been allowed to do what I wanted to do, I wanted to do anything.

We hit a Dunkin' Donuts. Four years of Coolatta ads and I was gonna have one. Seemed the whole damn world had the same idea. 13, 14, 15 fatso's in line for what they obviously didn't need. For some dumb reason they were all in shorts and very bright shirts. Had something happened to the world while I was away? Yeah, it got fat.

I had a five dollar bill in my hand. Just the feel of currency made me giddy. The last cash I saw was in the fist of a prison kitchen blue shirt (supervisor) who was trying to impress the convict help; the last cash I touched was what brought me jail. This was neither stolen nor someone else's; this was mine.

So I ordered. And it took a minute. Then it took a minute more. And I started to get impatient. These are my minutes now, baby, don't you dare waste one of 'em. When the cool, coagulated concoction came though it was as refreshing as I'd wished. One problem: it was served in plastic, and I had been forced to use nothing but throughout my exile.

We next hit a kinda suit warehouse I'd seen advertised on Philly TV. Amazing. Within mere minutes I had picked out a deliciously suitable black suit, a scrumptious white shirt, a Hood's eye power tie, and Hollywood-perfect shades. Killer. What struck me most was that I still knew what I wanted without looking.

That struck would be stricken anew when we hit the chain-store CVS. The array! I had not faced so many choices in forever. Six kinds of Mach 3's; nine styles of combs; fifteen baking powder toothpaste selections alone. Now I was dumbstruck. In the joint you have one, possibly two choices on the commissary list, and cons spend hours upon hours deciding on them. Here I'd made a trip to bountiful and couldn't decide on a toothbrush. Fortunately they had Clubman after shave; now that I'd never have to think thrice about. I figure it took me forty minutes to buy forty dollars' worth of toiletries and still I wasn't done.

Before my brother came undone though, I settled. Then I stewed some more when the cashier crawled through the transaction. Do these people not train? Or are they taught to keep a customer waiting in the hopes they'll buy more? Whatever the reason, there's no reason for it.

Now we hit Scranton. At first glance it's kinda like a trailerpark without wheels, set a little bucolicly perhaps, but set on blocks. It was that immobile. And immobilizing. Everything's stripped and ramshackle, and the people seem worse. Thankfully the first impression was wrong. Once you get into town the shackle gives way to an almost immaculately preserved collection of buildings all built by King Coal. In other words, aged. Like a big brick and mortar Mayberry done by Dickens, or Our Town with a past. I tell ya, it was a tremendous surprise. Snide and snotty me thought the only preservation was done in the big cities; now I know better.

Sweet.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Food of the Gods, the State, and the Army

I may not be the first person to eat Zabar's out of a dumpster, but I bet a bundle I'm the first person to do so in Scranton. Yep, G-Girl sent through the Big Bad Apple care package yesterday, and stupid me threw away the best part. See the box comes with a trayful of bagels and mustard, and at first glance it would appear that that's all there is. That first glance would be wrong, way wrong. After I trashed the box in the dumpster, I returned to eat and noticed something seemed to be missing. So I flew back outta the house and did a little shallow diving. Unlike George's famous eclair -- thankfully -- my food didn't have a bite out of it. Like his, though, it was sitting on top of the other garbage. And inside the trash-straddling box was a bulky white envelope that bigly boldly said: Open Immediately. Do Not Discard. Perishables.

And here I thought it was only dry ice.

Like I said: Stupid. But none the loss for stupidity. Even after pulling, packing, shipping, delivering, receiving and trashing, all was superswell and good. I gnoshed and I gnoshed like a gourmand, on smoked salmon, hot pastrami, kosher salami, bagels and rye. I did have to give up the poppy seed bagels, as well as the amoretti cookies; seems either could leave me testing positive for drugs or alcohol. But I dug the rest. And hen some.

In fact, yesterday was a feast all around, which was a welcome relief after such a long hard famine. Earlier in the morning I made the trek 'cross the tracks to the local food warehouse and stocked up on the state's dime. See they've got this emergency food program for ex-cons (and the otherwise bankrupt), and though I'd swore throughout my whole life that I'd never welfare (it wasn't till the third trip that I actually applied), this felt different. I mean, I gave the state nearly four years of my life, the least they could do is buy me a couple steaks.

Sure beats borrowing more money.

As if that humbling experience wasn't quite enough, I was sent over to the local Salvation Army for clothes and food. Now I've always dug the Army's gear and over the years I've spent loads and loads on diggables, so I had little problem selecting a few comp garments. A food handout was another thing. Take this backpack, said one of my more conniving colleagues, and they'll fill it up. So I took the it, and they filled it, and I stumbled back up a one of Scranton's longest hills with a a backbreaking load of food I'd never in a million years eat. Spam anyone? No wonder a poor felon can't think straight, he's been poisoned with sixteen tons of nitrate-laced canned goods.

So, I gave it all away. Better them than me.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Leaving Ugly

In order to catch-up to myself, I'm gonna have to digress:

8 days ago I walked away from a very ugly place. They didn't make it easy. I was allowed to shower, but the guard made me stay in my cell till I was called. When I wasn't called, and I wasn't called, I went down to the dayroom with my television and sat. And stared. Then paced. Then stared some more. There were no sighs (a sigh can get you smacked in prison), but the sighs were lurking. Finally my impatience got on her nerves and she called down to property for me.

"You can go now."

They were the four sweetest words I think I've ever heard.

In property the guards were wondering what happened. "Your family's here," said they. "What took you so long?" Nothing. "Was it the block guard? Which block guard?" No one. This was not the time for me to interject myself into some internecine rivalry. So I just smiled and said it was all okay.

I hated to keep my mouth shut though. After nearly four years of complete compliance (read: silence), I wanted to speak my mind. The bitch wanted to keep me under her thumb for a few more minutes. That's what she does. That's how she is. Ad infinitum.

Of course I said no such thing. An audible observation like that can get a cat's paperwork very lost.

So I dressed ("looks like he's going to a disco"), and I smiled some more ("he sure looks happy"), and I waved goodbye to all that. And when my brother William opened the door to his truck I knew I'd never be back. Tah tah you useless institution. Hope you had your fill of this Hoodlum, 'cause you ain't getting another bite.

Inside the truck was like taking a nicotine bath; my brother smokes and smokes heavy. So I smoked too. It was stupid. And it was delicious.

Key. Gas. Shift. We were off. This way and that. I didn't even mind the wrong turns. The last time I was in a moving vehicle I was shackled and handcuffed to a belly chain. When we wronged turn right back past ol' Chester though, my heart broke into a roar. This was where I'd been caged? What utter ugly.

I'd never seen it from the outside.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Thank Zeus Almighty

Free at last. Free at last. Thanks Zeus almighty, I'm free at last. Greetings, all you good good people of the wild wild world, this is your Hood here, coming to you from sunny, slumberful Scranton. That's right. No more hokey pokey for this Hoodlum.

Instead a house of halfway. Seems Control wants to keep this cad on a short leash. At least for the short time being. So what? I'll fetch their fucking morning paper if it means me staying outta jail.

The town, as I say, is a slumber. Thing is, it's in an almost immaculately-preserved state. Guess the powers-that-be this burg like things just the way they were. Good for them. Why go to the 21st century if the 21st century won't come to you?

I jest of course. There are some rather tasteful additions to the rather low-slung skyline. Where they come from I do not yet know. I plan on finding out though. And posting the results right here on theviewfromscranton.

Stay tuned. I know I will.