What We Lose

I just read something on a friend's blog, and it was about faith. Not faith in religion, or even faith in yourself, but rather, faith in other people.

Pondering my own faith in others or humanity as a whole never crossed my mind before. Why? I guess I thought becoming cynical and losing that faith was part of growing up. As a kid and teenager I was very idealistic, very trusting, and I believed in the intrinsic good in people, honestly believing that they would, ultimately, do what's right.

As I "matured," or more accurately, "aged," I lost it. Cynical and blase, I'm now under the impression that the majority of people will do what it takes to advance their own position in life, with little regard to others around them. Humanity has always been its own worst enemy, doomed to commit suicide.

After a couple betrayals it's hard to trust people. I guess I'm fortunate that I was naturally more trusting than others, and as such my experiences have tapered that down to a healthier level, and I'm still able to trust.

But of the millions of people out there who cannot, who are or feel alone and isolated, what are they to do? Everyone's so caught up in their own little worlds, rushing about to make ends meet, to feed their stomach, to sleep under a roof, we all lost the appreciation of the little things in life, and we've lost sight of the bigger picture. What is that bigger picture? I have no idea, I'm just as caught up in my own self-created world.

When I think of having faith in others/humanity again, it makes me tingly inside, like it's a childish idealistic dream, like utopias, chased but never caught. But what if that's not necessarily the case? What if what's warped is not the dream, but reality? What if we really do lose a little more of ourselves with each passing year, but yet, we call it becoming wiser, being more realistic?

Whichever the case, we die and are reborn every day of our lives. If this is what my life shaped me to be, then so be it, I can only truly learn from my past experiences. We all want to stay true to ourselves, yet we never fail to compromise our beliefs, our stance, our being. If you can't beat em, join em, right? =/

How many of us grow up actually living our dreams? How much do we give up? What did you have to lose, to not be shunned by this god-forsaken society?

But I will NOT lose in the end. Sacrifices are sometimes necessary in order to attain your goals, just don't let them be in vain. The day I stop wondering, the day I stop pondering, the day I stop questioning, is the day I truly die. Until then, hopefully we can all find a way.

"Perhaps, if we stop to listen, and wonder, and accept, that faith can one day be restored." -Eva

Eminem - Beautiful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgT1AidzRWM

I liked the song the first time I heard it but I started really feeling this when I actually paid attention to the lyrics lol, just sharing... one of the beauties of music is allowing people to see that no matter how different our lives may be, there are experiences that can be shared and related to, no matter who you are, where you came from, or where you're going

Lately I've been hard to reach
I've been too long on my own
Everybody has a private world
Where they can be alone
Are you calling me, are you trying to get through
Are you reaching out for me, I'm reaching out for you

I'm just so fuckin' depressed
I just can't seem to get out this slump
If I could just get over this hump
But I need something to pull me out this dump
I took my bruises, took my lumps
Fell down and I got right back up
But I need that spark to get psyched back up
In order for me to pick the mic back up
I don't know how or, why or when,
I ended up in this position I'm in
I'm starting to feel distant again
So I decided just to pick this pen
Up and try to make an attempt to vent
But I just can't admit
Or come to grips, with the fact that
I may be done with rap
I need a new outlet
And I know some shits so hard to swallow
But I just can't sit back and wallow
In my own sorrow
But I know one fact
I'll be one tough act to follow
One tough act to follow
I'll be one tough act to follow
Here today, gone tomorrow
But you'd have to walk a thousand miles

[Chorus]
In my shoes, just to see
What it's like, to be me
I'll be you, let's trade shoes
Just to see what It'd be like to
Feel your pain, you feel mine
Go inside each others mind
Just to see what we find
Look at shit through each others eyes

But don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked, just stay true to you
Don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked, just stay true to you

I think I'm starting to lose my sense of humor
Everything's so tense and gloom
I almost feel like I gotta check the temperature in the room
Just as soon as I walk in
It's like all eyes on me
So I try to avoid any eye contact
Cause if I do that then it opens a door for conversation
Like I want that...
I'm not looking for extra attention
I just want to be just like you
Blend in with the rest of the room
Maybe just point me to the closest restroom
I don't need no fucking man servant
Tryna follow me around, and wipe my ass
Laugh at every single joke I crack
And half of em ain't even funny like
Haa! Marshall, you're so funny man, you should be a comedian, god damn
Unfortunately I am, I just hide behind the tears of a clown
So why don't you all sit down
Listen to the tale I'm about to tell
Hell, we don't gotta trade our shoes
And you don't gotta walk no thousand miles

[Chorus]
In my shoes, just to see
What it's like, to be me
I'll be you, let's trade shoes
Just to see what it'll be like to
Feel your pain, you feel mine
Go inside each others mind
Just to see what we find
Look at shit through each others eyes

But don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked, just stay true to you so
Don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked, just stay true to you

Nobody asked for life to deal us
With these bullshit hands we're dealt
We gotta take these cards ourselves
And flip em, don't expect no help
Now I could have either just
Sat on my ass and pissed and moaned
Or take this situation in which I'm placed in
And get up and get my own
I was never the type of kid
To wait by the door and pack his bags
Or sat on the porch and hoped and prayed
For a dad to show up who never did
I just wanted to fit in
In every single place
Every school I went
I dreamed of being that cool kid
Even if it meant acting stupid
Aunt Edna always told me
Keep making that face it'll get stuck like that
Meanwhile I'm just standing there
Holding my tongue trying to talk like this
Till I stuck my tongue on that frozen stop sign poll at 8 years old
I learned my lesson then cause I wasn't tryin to impress my friends no more
But I already told you my whole life story
Not just based on my description
Cause where you see it from where you're sitting
It's probably 110% different
I guess we would have to walk a mile
In each others shoes, at least
What size you wear?
I wear tens
Let's see if you can fit your feet

[Chorus]
In my shoes, just to see
What it's like, to be me
All be you, let's trade shoes
Just to see what It'd be like to
Feel your pain, you feel mine
Go inside each others mind
Just to see what we find
Look at shit through each others eyes

But don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked. Just stay true to you so
Don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked. Just stay true to you

Lately I've been hard to reach
I've been too long on my own
Everybody has a private world
Where they can be alone...
Are you calling me, are you trying to get through
Are you reaching out for me, I'm reaching out for you

Yea... To my babies. Stay strong. Dad will be home soon
And to the rest of the world, god gave you the shoes
That fit you, so put em on and wear em
And be yourself man, be proud of who you are
Even if it sounds corny,
Don't ever let no one tell you, you ain't beautiful

Most Frequently Asked Question

One question almost everyone asks me is, "What's jail like?"

Well, it's nothing like what you see on TV. Not where I was at anyway. Sure there's gay guys or guys that turned gay in there, but in low security and camps (camps have the lowest security, there's not even a fence surrounding the complex), rape isn't a common thing.

So what is jail like? Fucking boring. Day in and day out, you have nothing to look forward to. Only thing that keeps inmates going are letters, and our fifteen minute phone calls.

When I first got sent to the low security prison in Allenwood, PA, the first thing that came to mind was that it looked like a college campus. Except for the multiple fences, guard towers, and razorwire lol. But besides that, the grass was nicely manicured, there were four units with a few hundred inmates in each.

Despite the appearances though, there were some major differences with life on the outside.

The way phone calls work there is, you get fifteen minutes at a time, every hour. Each call, if it's long distance (which all of mine were), costs a little over $3. Do the math, goddamn I missed my cell phone.

Commissary is our own little private store. How lucky. You can spend a total of $220 a month max. Every inmate has an account that people in the real world deposit money into.

What's interesting is that mackerels (in plastic packages) cost $1.05, and these macks were used as currency amongst the inmates. Or anything of value. Bartering was the norm. For the less fortunate inmates who didn't have money in their commissary account, they found money in other ways, by doing chores for people, gambling, drawing, etc. And they got paid generally with macks.

You can also buy a glorified ink cartridge at commissary for use as a pen. It was literally an ink cartridge with some rubber around it, which made it flexible. Do you know how fucking hard it is to write with that shit?? So what a lot of inmates did was take a shaver, break off the razor part, then the remainding handle has some space on the back where you can lodge the "pen" in and use that. A huge improvement, but after hours of writing, the calluses I ended up with were huge as well.

The TV room was an area I avoided. It's a room with about 7-8 TV sets, and you use your Walkman to tune in to the proper one to listen. Chairs were available to place wherever you wanted to sit. Now, the catch is, I was told that some people, having been there for many years, have their designated "seats." And they would come up to you and tell you to move. It's a lose-lose situation. You fight (whether you win the fight or not), you get sent to the hole (solitary) and your security level goes up and off to the medium you go. You change seats and you're a bitch. So I just didn't watch a lot of TV.

The entire prison complex is on lockdown all day long. It opens up for ten minutes every hour for inmates to move between buildings. But you can only be in certain areas if you have a pass, or you'll be considered out of bounds. This took a little bit to get used to, because if you missed it, you were stuck wherever you were for another hour.

We slept in 9x9 cubes, shared by three people. All of my belongings fit in a 4ft tall dresser, the most fashionable clothing we had was what we could buy from commissary. Sweat pants, sweatshirt, and surprisingly, Nike Air Force Ones (or New Balance sneakers) lol. I bought a pair to wear out, that I still have lol.

Microwaves were used to cook. And man, people can get creative. Spaghetti with macks, cheese and some seasoning thrown into the microwave, that shit was actually pretty damn good. Okay I admit, relatively good.

Speaking of food, I've been told from various sources who worked kitchen detail, that the meat they served us was usually expired. By years. Whenever I changed facilities, my stomach had to readjust and I couldn't hold my food for a couple weeks until it did. The same happened when I came back to NYC, eating good, clean food lol.

Some inmates went on dates with Fifi. Who's Fifi you ask? No, not another inmate, but it's some MacGuyver type of shit. They would take a towel, roll it up in a cylinder shape, take a surgical glove and shove it into one of the sides, and secure the glove on the outside by flipping it over. Some baby oil, and voila, you have a night with Fifi. Or however many minutes they took lol.

It's very race oriented. My first day there, every asian person I saw told me that if I needed anything to let them know. Extra clothes, newer stuff, anything that they would have spares of since they're already settled in.

Gambling is illegal, so most card games are played for pushups. There is a gambling ring in there anyway, employing other inmates who could fight as its collectors.

Every inmate had to work. Most of the work there is bullshit, except for one job which pays $70 a month, and that was community work that I'm pretty sure the prison got paid for. My job (which consisted of cleaning the recreation area at the end of each shift) paid a little over $5 a month. Yeah. A month.

For the most part, shit is just boring though. Wake up, go work, eat lunch, workout, work, eat dinner, write letters, hopefully read letters, make some calls, talk to a couple people, cook something in a microwave, talk or draw or write some more, read, play cards... that's about it. If we get bored enough we sometimes make up games too lol.

That's it in a nutshell. Oh yeah some guy went by the name of Precious. He walked, talked, and had all the mannerisms of a ghetto hoodrat lol.

Much better than MDC Brooklyn, boot camp, or solitary, but it still sucked. Oh well, nothing beats being free lol =)

Nothing To Be Proud Of

I went to happy hour with my boss at the time, Neil, a British guy who could drink Guiness like nobody's business. So on an empty stomach, I had about six or seven pints of beer under an hour.

Why was I drinking so fast? Well, for one, I was pacing with Neil. And for two, I had to go meet up with my girlfriend at the time, Kim, to watch Ratatouille. We were fighting the night before, I don't remember what it was about, but she was still pissed and insisted that I don't be late.

So, I hopped into a cab in the West Village, and headed up to Kip's Bay for the movie. Besides the constant jerking of the cab, everything was fine until we got to my destination. We got to the corner where I told the cabbie to drop me off, I took out a $20 bill (I have no idea how much the fare was, but it couldn't have been anywhere near 20 bucks), and then it happened.

I threw up all over the cab. And on the right leg of my jeans. Ugh.

I didn't even ask for change, got out, sat on a porch and held my head in my hands, trying to sober up.

The cab driver got out to follow me and kept on bitching, saying he wouldn't be able to get another fare. I think I mentioned something along the lines that I just gave him a twenty, but he just ignored that.

His blabbering just made my head hurt more, so I took out another $20 bill.

"Here. Take this, get the fuck away from me and shut the fuck up."

He quickly pocketed it, but the asshole didn't stop. He threatened to call the cops.

That did it. I was still on probation at the time, but I hated when people threatened to call the cops on me, especially if I didn't do anything illegal. I mean, c'mon, since when is throwing up in public illegal?

"Call the cops?" I asked. "What the fuck are you gonna call the cops for? Huh? Okay fine, call the fucking cops, give me back my money."

I approached him but he backed away, of course not giving up the money.

"Look, look! Cops right there!" he shouted, pointing to a traffic police car.

I don't think he expected me to actually hail the cops down, but unluckily (or maybe luckily) they didn't notice and kept on driving.

But that convinced the cabbie that I really didn't care if he got the cops involved, and he ran to his cab and drove off.

What a prick.

Anyhow, I called Kim, and she already sounded pissed.

"Well, I'm not late, I'm here but I can't watch the movie with you."

"WHAT? Why not?"

Uh oh.

She was with her friend Lin and her boyfriend at the time, Vic.

"Well..."

And I proceeded to explain the story that I just told you up until now.

"... so I really need to go home and change, my jeans just reek. It's fucking nasty," I finished.

Kim wasn't having it. I guess she really wanted to watch Ratatouille lol. We continued arguing in person, Vic and Lin were just waiting around, we told them to watch the movie without us, but they missed it. Then they found another movie they could watch. They missed that one too.

So apparently we were arguing outside of the theater for awhile. I'm not exactly sure how the fight was resolved, but Vic said he'd drive us home to Rego Park, Queeens.

He had some wet naps in his car, I cleaned up, got in, and no more than a few blocks later, the stench was unbearable.

"Oh my god I can't take this shit anymore," I said and took everything out of my pockets.

"What the hell are you doing?" Kim asked, looking at me like I completely lost my mind.

I ended up throwing my jeans out the car window. What the fuck was I thinking? Well... I wasn't really, to be honest, but hey, it got rid of the smell of vomit, right?

I didn't really plan this too far ahead though. Vic couldn't find parking any closer than two blocks away (technically I guess he could have just dropped me off in front of my building first), but I ended up walking those two blocks in boxers and boots lol.

Thankfully I didn't know anyone in that neighborhood.

Moral of the story? Don't be a dumbass >.<

P.S - I just remembered, sometime during that car ride home I bit Lin's hand or arm pretty hard for some reason... I think she dared me to? Or told me I could? Yeah I kinda have a biting fetish lol

Is Blood Really Thicker than Water?

It was 1998, I was sixteen, in Strasbourg, France, and a year prior I had gotten in trouble for smoking weed. I moved to France when I was seven, and by 1998, my entire life was based there.

On the last day of school we all said our goodbyes and that we'd see each other in September like we did every year. I attended an international school, so most of us went back to visit our homeland during summer breaks.

And I visited my mom in NYC every year. The night before my flight, I was quite sober and searched my entire room for some extra weed or hash, but even before I started looking, I already knew I was out.

It had been a rough couple weeks financially to begin with. Either way, during my search I found a small plastic baggie in my wallet with some stems and seeds. Remembering that there were dogs occasionally at airports, I took it out and left it in my room.

My theory in hiding it was that maybe if it were fairly in the open, it might not be detected because it was so obvious. So I just threw it in a basket which had a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff in it.

Hopped on the plane, flew across the Atlantic, got to NYC, and (mind you, this is how I remember it, after talking to my mom, it seems it wasn't quite as abrupt as I describe) almost as soon as I walked into the door, my mom said:

"Alex we have to talk."

Sheesh, I miss you too, Mom, I thought.

(sidenote: it's weird how my interpretation of this memory is quite distorted, but this is what led me to believe that although there is an absolute truth, there's also a relative one, and although this scenario didn't play out the way I remember, since that's how I remember it, that is in essence, my truth)

Apparently my grandmother had called, claiming she found a bag of weed in my room and two joints all rolled up, ready to be smoked.

I balked.

"No, she's lying, I don't have that in my room!" Blah blah blah.

"Well, Alex," my mom replied with resignation. "I just can't take your word anymore because you've lied so many times."

Fair enough.

"Okay, so you want to know the truth? The whole truth?"

"Yes."

I'm still ashamed that despite my claim to tell the whole truth, I still lied. But it was a rather small one (then why lie at all, right?). So I told her I smoked every other day, instead of every day. I also told her that I cut classes on a regular basis. I didn't mention that I sold hash because I was cut off from an allowance. Omission lies don't count right? ;]

"But, I know for a fact that they didn't find that in my room because..."

"... you would have smoked it," my mom finished for me.

I nodded.

The next time my mom spoke to my grandmother, she asked if they were sure that it was weed.

"How am I supposed to know?" my grandmother replied indignant.

"Just burn it, it'll smell differently than cigarettes."

"Oh, we already threw it away."

So now it was my word against theirs. Obviously mine wasn't worth much.

Then at the next plot development, they finally found the small baggie with the stems and seeds. And how surprising, they tested that instead, and of course it came back positive.

Bottom line? I was to stay in NYC. Torn away from nine years of my life, all of my friends, all that I know, the town that I lived in, my home.

Their reasoning (paraphrasing)? Alex and his friends in France are a bad influence on each other. Alex has a drug problem and because of that, we think we should separate him from his friends. There are alternative schools we were looking into in France, but they all fell through, as such, we think it's best he move to NYC.

Wait. Hold on. What? I have a drug problem, so the solution is to send me to New York City, of all places? Ri-fucking-diculous.

They're not stupid, so I dismissed that as being the real reason why I was sent back to NYC. I think it's a combination of my getting in trouble and being too much to handle, my grandmother's desire to move back to Cali (impossible any time soon if I were to stay in France and go to college there), and the fact that I failed sophomore year and had to stay back.

But is framing me really the adult way to approach this? Yeah sure, telling me "Go back and live with your mom, we don't wanna deal with you anymore," is going to hurt, but I'll understand to a certain degree, and I'd be able to get over it.

But my own blood lies to my mother about what they found in my room is just low. Aren't adults supposed to set an example?

I never got to say bye to my friends. From that day till today, some of my friends from France I haven't seen again, others I've seen once or twice in eleven years.

And since my "move" back to the States was unplanned, finding a school last minute over the summer was damn near impossible. Every school required teacher recommendations and a bunch of documents. It was summer break already. All the teachers in France were long gone.

We finally found a school in Ithaca, NY, about five hours away from the City. On brochure it sounded amazing. It was right next to Cornell University, it had an accelerated program, it looked like a complete paradise for dorks and geeks.

Going up there I really thought I was going to reform my ways, even quit smoking cigarettes. Boy was I wrong. And boy, was that brochure misleading.

But that's for another post. So when people invariably say that blood is thicker than water, I politely disagree.

Days As a Pool Hall Junkie

When Lisa and I first met, we shot a lot of pool. We started by going to Soho Billiards on a regular basis, but it was kind of pricey, especially considering that she was still a high school student and I was working dead end jobs.

So we eventually migrated to Broadway Billiards, on 21st Street and... well, Broadway. It was a basement location (I say was because I recently passed by to find it closed, but hopefully just for renovation), a little on the ghetto side, but the regulars were friendly, and the price couldn't be beat.

Four bucks an hour per person on weekdays, five on weekends. And the owners, a Korean family, were our little dwarves. We had Grumpy, Happy and Sleepy. Sleepy was Mr. Choi, he sometimes asked us to shoot with him so he could get some "exercise" lol but that was only at 5:00am. Happy was the lady, always smiling, and Grumpy was her exact opposite.

Lisa and I got to know the regulars there, some helped us with our pool like the cab driver Issac, a couple would play against us like a couple filipinos, some we barely spoke to but still knew each other like the 273ish year old skeleton Nick.

We spent hours upon hours there, taking occasional breaks from the pool table to play Megatouch, reclaiming our usual high scores and attempting to steal new ones. We had our routine going, two peas in a pod, enjoying the same little pleasures in life. Together.

And we also met a wide variety of people during our time spent in pool halls. The old black couple, Charlie and his wife (I don't remember her name) who played Monster Madness on the Megatouch machines together. They must have been at least 60, and Lisa used to wonder if we'd be like that, at their age.

But as much as we enjoyed shooting pool together, there were some moments when we got into fights because of it. We came to a point where we took pool more seriously than your casual player, and if we performed poorly, we would get upset, mainly at ourselves. But no one's perfect and it did happen when we took it out on each other.

But those moments were more rare than not and we usually enjoyed ourselves to the fullest. We eventually got our own cue sticks, watched billiards on TV, bought books... It was our thing.

As often as we could, we took advantage of the Amsterdam Power Play (back then Amsterdam was still on the Upper East and West Side), 11:00am to 6:00pm $22 all you can play.

We graduated from Eight Ball to Nine Ball together; we watched Pool Hall Junkies pre-screening, only to go straight to a pool hall and try to imitate certain shots we saw in the movie; we immersed ourselves into this hobby together at the same pace.

At the San Genero fair, there was a pool game, three balls are racked, and after you break, you have one cue to run the three balls. $2 a game for a small prize, $5 a game for the big prize.

Starting off at $2, we tried a couple times unsuccessfully. The cues were crooked, the table was slightly slanted, the cloth was bumpy, all to be expected from a game at a fair (obviously not fair!).

Then I got the feel for it. I won five stuffed animals for Lisa, was about to play again when they told me I couldn't play unless I paid $5 per game instead, for a big prize. Lisa looked around but couldn't find anything she liked, so we left.

Lol well I guess it's only fair to mention that I spent a ridiculous amount of money at another fair for a Fireman and Statue of Libery Tweeties (probably much more than I would have paid at the Warner Bros. store, for worse quality too lol). But I do have to admit, winning these made Lisa a lot happier than buying them.

Sorry, I'm just rambling. Due to recent happenings most of my thoughts regarding Lisa tend to be more negative than not, and hence my memories steer me towards the fights that we had. So I wanted to take a detour and think of all the good times I spent with her.

Funny how memory is selective, because in the past, I always mainly thought of the good times with her. Now I have to consciously do it.

But without a doubt, some of my fondest memories of Lisa, are when she had my back, regardless if I'm right or wrong. When shit is about to pop off the street, whether it's a flower delivery guy, bums, semi-famous street photographers, she backed me up without hesitation which had a reassuring quality to it.

Hm I can't think of a way to end this post so it'll be abrupt. Lol.

Temporary Split Personality

I don't exactly remember how this day started. To be honest, it probably doesn't matter in the slightest, it's not like anything important happened during those times anyway. Or anything different for that matter from a day-to-day basis.

Wake up, get high, hang out, get high, go out, sometimes eat (usually not), get higher, sleep (usually not), rinse and repeat.

And peppered throughout this stream of meaningless highs, this day managed to stand out from the rest. Why? Because I had the genius idea of taking four different drugs at the same time. Actually, I'm not even sure if this was a conscious idea that formed in my head, or if it kind of... just happened.

The latter sounds a lot more probable. Anyhow, between coke, K, ecstasy and weed, two were uppers and two were downers.

My body was never more confused. When the uppers kicked in, I was bouncing off the walls, wanting to go out, talking at the speed of light, jittery like a crackhead... and literally 30ish seconds later, the downers kicked in, I would crash to the ground or the nearest couch, an inch away from being comatose. I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me I drooled.

And another few seconds or a minute later, I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off. This kept up for awhile, I'm not sure how long in terms of actual time, but I know I had these spastic mood swings several times.

Needless to say, I was in no condition to step out the door, and luckily my friends were aware of that and didn't instigate.

By the time I was sober enough to stay in one high state, I was drained. Empty. In retrospect, I found it to be an interesting experience, but would I recommend it or do it again? Hell no lol.

But I guess that's the closest I'll ever come to having split personality or some light form of schizophrenia. I'm pretty sure I would have been considered legally insane by a medical professional that night.

And thinking back, why would I have done that to myself? Did I really think it'd be a good idea? Did I think it wouldn't have too bad of an effect on me? I can't quite figure out if I was consciously being destructive, subconsciously thought I was invincible, or if I really just didn't give a fuck as long as I would get high.

I find it hard to reminisce. It almost feels like I lack the analytical skills required to do so, but that's not true because I do have that skillset when it comes to other areas of life. A self-defense mechanism to prevent myself from uncovering the truth about myself? Denial has served me well (and poorly I must add), but a in small doses, it can go a long way.

Afterall, hope is but denial with a facelift.

Introduction to the Intensive Confinement Center

The day had finally come. After 18 months of pretrial supervision (which consisted of weekly drug tests and telephone check-ins, and being restricted to the five boroughs of NYC), after 18 months being with Lisa, after 18 months of fear wondering how much time I would actually do (and more importantly, where), the day had come for me to report to the Intensive Confinement Center, aka boot camp.

The name Intensive Confinement Center (ICC) sounds a lot worse though, doesn't it? Sounds like some 24/7 isolation lol but it's basically boot camp.

Lisa and I were to take a train down to Harrisburg, PA and there would be a car service waiting to drive us to Lewisburg, PA, an hour away.

I would be gone for six months, longest stretch that Lisa and I would be separated for. Ever since we met, we saw each other every day, and we both knew this was going to be a difficult adjustment.

Our last night together, Lisa was in tears. I'm not one to cry much, and I tried to stay strong enough for the both of us, to be her rock that she could lean on.

From the moment I met Lisa, I told her I was going to jail. I also told her I didn't expect her to wait for me. At the time I was facing up to five years, and she adamantly refused to break up, even when facing five years. I understood that she didn't realize how long five years were, so I let it go.

So looking at six months, given her conviction that she would have even waited five years (she claimed she had no doubt in her mind lol), she reiterated she would wait these six months as well.

We kissed and cuddled, wiping away her tears, soothing her with comforting words, it was both the happiest and saddest moment possible. We didn't sleep much. I also didn't have anything to pack. Weirdly, even the last night of freedom, it didn't quite hit home that I was going to be locked up. Probably because I had no way of relating to what I was about to experience. It was probably plain ol' denial.

We agreed to write to each other every single day, and when mail doesn't go out on weekends or holidays, we would keep writing and just combine them into one. If I were to list all the mushy stuff we did and agreed to continue doing despite our separation, you'd probably gag on your monitor just to stop reading, so I'll spare you a few Bounty sheets.

Dawn came, but unlike most fictions, dawn doesn't always bring comfort. This was the dawn I never wanted to see. Given that this was our last day together for six months, I would have thought we'd be more talkative, to make the most of it, but in retrospect it's obviously unrealistic.

Both the train and car ride were fairly silent. We spoke here and there but our hearts just weren't into it. Too preoccupied, we just hugged some more and Lisa cuddled into my arms.

We got to Lewisburg, a prison complex consisting of three facilities: ICC, the camp, and the penitentiary. The penitentiary is obviously a supermax, the camp is the lowest possible security level you can have (except for the ICC), and they don't even have a fence keeping the inmates in.

But any walk-off is considered armed escape with a five year sentence. Not many dared to.

Our car parked in front of the ICC, and Lisa burst into tears.

"Excuse me," I asked the driver. "Do you mind waiting a few minutes?"

"No problem. Take your time, I'm in no rush."

I thought I heard sympathy in his voice. "Thanks."

We got out to smoke a last cigarette together and say bye.

Three pulls in, I hear:

"Hey! HEY! Where do you think you are? Put that out and get in here!"

It was a Correctional Officer.

"I'm not scheduled to report before another 45 minutes," I replied politely.

"I don't care, you're here, you're in, there's no standing around here."

Goddammit. I had a problem with authority, and this was already a bad start. If I had known, I wouldn't have told the driver to park here so I'd have some more time with Lisa.

"But..."

"Get in here now!"

Flicking away my cigarette, I took one long last look at Lisa's tear-strewn face, hugged her, and my heart dropped to my stomach. This was it. This was really it. What the fuck.

With a sigh, I reluctantly let her go and finally shed a couple tears.

"I love you bebe."

"I love you too bebe."

And we both "tingled." Don't ask.

I turned around and walked into the Intensive Confinement Center.

First things first. They shaved my head. Wait, no. First things first, they yelled at me. Then they shaved my head. Then they yelled at me some more. And then other inmates whispered to me:

"Don't step on the black tiles."

"Why not?"

"Just don't."

Ugh, this was going to be a long six months...

Twists of Fate?

So it was my boy Sean's 21st birthday, but times were rough so the "celebration" basically consisted of the two of us. We went to Walker's, near my mom's place, he ordered a few drinks for the both of us, surprisingly they didn't seem to really care that I was never carded.

I had one of the nastiest drinks that night. A rusty nail, which was four different dark liquors, and a splash of coke. Disgusting.

Anyhow, that isn't the point of the story. We ended up getting kind of drunk, wandered about, almost got into a stupid fight (by now you should have figured that Sean tended to do that a lot when he drank), but the night ended without anything too crazy happening.

Actually, on a side note, while drunk, we also wanted some weed but since we were out, we started asking every single person on the street if they had any for sale. Stupid I know.

We parted ways, and I started walking home. It was about a fifteen block walk, headphones on, minding my own business, when some guy on the street seemed to be talking to me.

I took off an earphone.

"You got kicked out too?" he asked.

He had a fitted hat on, a leather jacket, kind of stocky, Hispanic in his late 20s.

"Kicked out? Nah. From where?"

"From Roxy, they just kicked me out for some bullshit."

Some more small talk, and I'm not exactly sure how the subject was brought up, but it came up.

"You smoke?" he asked.

"Trees? Yeah, you got?"

I couldn't believe my luck, after resorting to asking random people, I bump into someone who actually smokes, on my way home.

We ended up smoking on my rooftop, he sold me a dub, and then gave me two pills.

"Here, take these, it's on me."

"Nah I'm good, I don't drop," I said, and started handing them back.

"Then give them to your friends or something. It's yours."

Rarely one to argue against something free, I pocketed them. I didn't actually take pills during this time yet, and I did give them to a friend.

But this is how I met Will, my future dealer from Forest Hills, the one I got the two jars of K from the night before 9/11 (http://nycmemory.blogspot.com/2009/10/unexpected-end_15.html), who also started fronting me pills for me to start selling.

Completely random. Is this the working of fate? Oddly enough, I also met my co-defendant randomly on the street as well. It's very weird to think that something as simple as me having crossed the street when walking home, or not having been outside of that bar that one night I met Jules (my co-defendant), would have literally changed the entire course of my life.

Granted, most likely if it didn't happen through them, it would have happened in many other ways, but we still can't deny a slight change in situation in both of those nights would have had a long-lasting and serious impact on my life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not regretting. I find it hard to regret many things in my past, regardless if I was wrong or not, not because I'm remorseless, but rather, in the end I'm still happy with myself and who I've become. And obviously, changing anything in my past would inadvertently change the core of who I am today, my values, my experiences, my thoughts, my opinions, my morals.

And those, I will trade for nothing in the world. Because this is the life that I chose to live.

Metropolitan Detention Center - Supermax

MDC Brooklyn. Metropolitan Detention Center. The name brought fear and dread to all inmates' hearts. Corrections Officers hate it too actually. According to one of the doctors in Allenwood, PA, MDC Brooklyn always fucks shit up, loses shit, sends them wrong medical readings and information.

Imagine what it's like dealing with them on the other side of the law.

So, after having served six months in boot camp and nine more months out of thirteen in the halfway house, I violated and was sent back to jail. Great.

The story of how I ended up cuffed by the marshals and dragged to MDC Brooklyn is for another post. Surprisingly, the marshals were actually really nice. They tried to make small conversation, asked why I violated, but since I still had hope to fight the accusations, I wasn't very talkative.

The worst part of jail is the commuting. Being processed into new facilities, strip searched, locked in a cell all by yourself (or maybe with a couple other people), took HOURS.

It fucking sucked.

But I'll fast-forward all that boring shit.

MDC Brooklyn. A super-max. It's a holdover facility, usually meant for people on pretrial who didn't make bail, or people in transit who haven't been assigned to a real prison yet. What this means is, there's no differentiation in security here. What this means is, murderers, rapists, molesters, white-collar crimes, drug related offenses, armed robbers, all of these people are together.

MDC consists of multiple units, two per floor I believe, and each unit has two levels of cells, totaling maybe a couple hundred inmates. There's a "handball court" with an opening at the top for fresh air, a row of shower stalls, a few tables spread out, four TVs that you tune into with Walkmans.

I met my new cell mate, some 60+ year old Mafia guy. He used to be a bookie, but he was charged with three murders.

Wow. I had never met anyone face to face who had killed another person. It was weird. Scary to think that I was sharing thirtyish square feet with him.

But what he killed me with wasn't what I expected of a mob bookie with three bodies on his jacket. I mentioned he was over 60 right? And we all know that past a certain age controlling your bowels can be challenging.

So here's the approximate breakdown of a typical day at MDC. Doors open to your cell around 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM (I'm not sure, I sure as hell wasn't up at that time). Lunch is served at 11:00 AM, dinner's at 5:30ish PM, and in between those times, they count us every few hours, locking us in our cells, this can last from 30mns to 1.5 hours. What did this depend on? No clue.

And at 11:00 PM, they locked us in our cells until morning time. A tiny cell, one bunk bed, one metal "dresser," a small table attached to the wall with an also attached stool, a sink and a toilet.

So lights are out. Door is locked. Within five minutes, my cellie is apologizing.

"Sorry bunkie, but when you gotta go, you gotta go."

What is anyone to say? He's right, if you gotta go you gotta go. And boy did he gotta go. The stench, the wet sounds, the... ew nevermind I'll shit shut up now.

Have you ever tried to fall asleep with that stench? Can you imagine going to bed in a public bathroom? Don't try, it's obviously not pleasant.

Anyhow, during the rest of my time there, I read (a lot), played chess (a lot), played cards (even more). I met this asian guy Mike, part of the original Flying Dragons (FD, an asian gang), he was in for thirteen murders, and was wrapping up an eleven year bid. He was the only other asian person there, and if there's one thing you do in jail is stick with your own color. Doesn't really matter who they are or what they've done, because hey, who are we kidding, we're not going to find any saints in there.

People take care of their own, and when you're put into a situation where you have nothing and no one, you revert back to very primitive ways of distinguishing your own from others, namely race.

He seemed like a nice enough guy. After eleven years in jail though he was worried about rehabilitating himself to the real world. The internet, how to pick up girls, etc, he felt completely lost, like a newborn. I didn't quite know what to tell him, I didn't know how to bring him up to speed from such a situation. Talking to him reminded me of Red and Brooks from Shawshank Redemption, who both became institutionalized.

I also think I came very close to dying (or getting the living shit beat out of me at least). This giant of a Puerto Rican guy, mentally unstable, but built like a mountain, for some reason got mad at me. I don't even remember why.

We were playing cards, Casino to be exact, and I've played with him many times before. Him and this other younger Hispanic kid. The younger one was one of those very talkative, tries to be suave kinda guy, slightly cocky, but funny and good-natured enough to be tolerated. Seems like I found one of those in every facility I went to.

The giant however was much older. Graying hair, thick glasses, 45ish, with a neck thicker than a tree trunk. I really don't remember what happened, but something pissed him off. Something I said.

"What, you wanna go? You wanna throw down?"

I stared right back into his eyes, and my mind drew a blank. What do you do when confronted with this situation in jail?

On the streets there's no question really. But in jail, it's a completely different story. There are only so many possible outcomes to this:

1. I fuck him up, get sent to solitary, get my security raised, and good time is deducted
2. He fucks me up, and I still suffer all the consequences from possibility #1
3. I back down and I'm branded the unit bitch until... I don't want to think that far ahead
4. Death for one or the other

Either way it's a lose-lose situation. Except with this guy, there was no #1 possible. I doubted I could even tickle the guy if I punched him.

"Nah man, I'm tryna go home, but if it comes down to it, I'll go," I replied.

That was my bullshit way of trying to talk my way out of it. I backed down without really backing down, basically meaning I didn't do or say jack shit. Well, I didn't do jack shit but infuriate him even more.

The younger kid luckily squashed the whole thing. He pulled him away, saying it was just a misunderstanding, that everything was cool. We actually kept on playing Casino right afterwards lol.

The guy was obviously mentally unstable. I have no idea what he was in for, neither did I want to know. I still played cards with him from there on out, but I was very cautious.

This other guy in there, this lanky white guy who did time in state prisons as well, had chunks of metal embedded in his body in various places. Now I'm talking about huge chunks of shanks that he got stabbed with, and doctors were not able to extract from him. It looked unreal. He could just pull a chunk, stretching his skin as far as it could go, and boing it'd snap right back into his arm.

Cigarettes went for $10 each, $200 a pack. People who went to court didn't even wear socks so they could slip off their shoes and pick up cigarette butts on the street with their toes.

And that was that. Six weeks here literally felt like six months. It was the worst time of the entire seven year ordeal I went through since my arrest until the day I was done with probation. MDC was by far, the most horrid experience of the entire stretch.

Letters and phone calls help you get through the days, listening to that stupid smug female recording over and over:

"This call is from a federal prison. This is a prepaid call. You will not be charged for this call. This call is from: [insert my name here]. To accept, please press five. To decline all future calls from this person, please press seven, seven."

As much as I hated hearing this recording, I also loved it. It meant that whoever I called picked up. What sucked was that I only had fifteen minutes at a time to talk.

And I would also like to thank all the people who were there for me to write to, and call, even though a lot of those people I had just met, and had very little incentive to keep correspondence with an inmate. One person in particular, I had never even met lol.

Disappointingly but not surprisingly, Lisa was the hardest to get a hold of. We were broken up by this time, but I guess I still thought she'd be more available for me to call or write. She wrote one letter during this stretch. One letter in ten months. Oh well.

But I never thought I'd be happy to hear that I was going to be sent to a prison facility. But when I heard that I was being transferred to Allenwood, PA, I was ecstatic. That meant no more MDC. I'd miss the cheap phone calls (since it was local calls, it was about 1/3 of the price from PA), but a gym, facility, better food, cubes instead of cells, everything else would be better in Allenwood.

And it was. Especially when June 2005 came along.