Shortcuts

If it wasn't for the all the electrified fencing and spools of razor wire you might mistake this place for some abandoned industrial compound on the outskirts of town. A shuddered tire factory, or steel mill. It's all the old brick buildings scattered about.

The center piece is the 9 & 10-block housing unit; a monstrous stretch of red bricks stacked five stories high and a quarter mile long. There's a road running right down the middle of the compound. Over the years various buildings have sprung along the its banks. There's a chapel, a chow-hall, a medical unit, and a gymnasium. Eventually something resembling an industrial compound was formed. There's even a quaint decommissioned guard tower made to look like an old brick lighthouse in the center of it all.

But it's not an old tire factory.

Or an old steel mill.

It's an old prison.

And it's been my home for the last two years.

Last night I went to sleep under a thin bed sheet. This morning I woke under the itchy wool blanket I keep tucked under my bed until winter. The cloudy window behind my cell is dark. I reach over and turn the TV on —  channel 12, cable news. The little display in the bottom corner of the screen reads 7:34 am. The sun should be up. Which means storm clouds must be on the other side of the window. Which means precipitation is in some state of past, present, or future. I fall back onto my crunchy plastic pillow and consider spending the rest of my sentence under my itchy wool blanket.

It's the need of hot water and instant coffee that finally forces me from bed. The path to the hot water tap takes me past twenty-four cells, down three flights of stairs, and past the entrance to our housing unit. The outside door is propped open. Unless it's the dead of winter, the door is always propped open.

The normally grey asphalt out front is slick black. Rain in the past tense—maybe present, I'm not sure. I'm not interested in actually leaving the unit to find out—not before a cup of coffee anyway. I aim my cup under the nozzle of the hot water dispenser and pull the red tab. The steaming clear liquid turns brown as it mixes with the freeze-dried granules of at the bottom of the cup. Instant coffee doesn't smell like real brewed coffee. A wisp of steam edges my cheek. A few pores relax for just an instant.

I pause on my way past the door for another look.

This building used to face the other way. It was originally constructed to be the fourth side in a square of housing units, with a massive court yard in the middle. Over the years the buildings that made up the other three sides of the square were condemned. Rather than closing this place, the administration simply bricked over the original entrance—the one leading into the courtyard—and created a new one by knocking a hole in the rear wall. And with that they were able to flip a building the size of a football field around with a sledgehammer and a few new hinges. They built an exterior walkway around the new entrance and called it a day. This architectural slight-of-hand provides the perfect shelter to check the weather without actually being in it. The walls are decorated in bold red letters NO LOITERING. A subtle suggestion.

I walk right up to the threshold. Neither inside or out. The air is wet and heavy. Several puddles have gathered on the blacktop—the largest of which has encircled the basketball hoop. My hair is drooping. Directly across the road is the Healthcare building. I see no daggers of rain in the space between us. It's a good sign the rain has been relegated to the past tense. It WAS raining is better than IS raining. However, a closer look at the standing water is a little concerning. Some of the puddles are shimmering. All of them actually—their surfaces—pinpricked with tiny concentric circles spontaneously appearing and disappearing. Miniature waves tolling into other miniature waves cancelling each other out and joining forces until they fizzle out on the shores of asphalt. It's not rain. Not quite. Something lighter. Not quite fog either. A bit heavier. Tiny droplets of mist are drifting into the surface of the puddles causing them to shimmer. 

I was planning on washing my socks and underwear in the sink this morning. Of all the things to pilfer from a dirty laundry bag, the thieves over in the washroom seem to prefer the most intimate of items. If you want to hold onto your delicates in prison you have to wash them yourself. But not today. The cloudy skies and looming rain are just enough of an excuse to do nothing for the next twenty-four hours.

I make my way up to the 12th cell, of the 3rd gallery. I lay the biggest book I own—Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations—across the toilet. I prop my pillows up where my bunk meets the bars at the back of the cell. I move my TV from the desk to the toilet stand—where I can reach it from bed. I set my coffee on the edge of the sink—also where I can reach it from the bed—and lay back in preparation to do as little as possible for the foreseeable future.

My channel buttons don't generally work without vigorous coxing. I mash my way through a good twenty channels in search of the perfect rain-delay programing. My favorite morning viewing, as of late, are reruns of Parks & Recreation. 

Channel 51.

I can't be more than three clicks away when the voice of Insecure Corrections God erupts from the sky. Eight years in prison and I'm able to decipher about half of every intercom announcement. By the second run through I'm confident I've figured it out. Flu shots. They're doing flu shots today. Of course they are. The 9-block inmates who want flu shots are instructed to report to the gym immediately. I briefly considered what would be worse: digging out my boots and wading across the compound in this shitty weather, or suffering a severe flu in the weeks to come.

The mist is fine but ubiquitous. I plot my path as I go, doing my best to zigzag around puddles without spilling my coffee. Wearing mesh tennis shoes instead of my boots feels like a mistake. Underneath the thin mesh are my last pair of cleanish socks.

At about the midpoint of the road, just passed a well-manicured shrub, a sidewalk juts off to the left at a 90 degree angle. This marks the second leg of the journey. It leads to the back-forty. From there you follow the track, behind the old softball field, past the pull-up bars, and around the guard shack until you see a building a looks like an old warehouse. That's the gym. Today it's a vaccine center. 

But we're not there yet.

The mist has just given way to actual rain.

Four other inmates, all doing their own version of aquatic avoidance, are just ahead of me on the main road. Another group is further along, on their way to the back-forty. Because the sidewalk meets the road at a right angle there's the natural urge to save a few strides by cutting a diagonal path through the grass behind the shrub. I'm not the only one to have this idea. A permanent footpath of disturbed dirt and matted grass has been worn in an otherwise vibrant swath of green grass.

The administration has made efforts to prevent the unapproved foot traffic. Flowers and other biological obstacles were planted—and trampled; insistent signs were erected—and ignored; infractions were threatened—and issued. And yet the shortest route between two points is still a straight line. And that line is barren as ever.

I know it doesn't seem like a big deal—to cut through the grass—but over the years I've become a bit of a stickler for shit like this. Of course I'd like to take the short cut—who wouldn’t—but prison is tough enough as it is without us making it worse on ourselves.

Of all the institutional mind fucks nothing is more detrimental to one's sanity than the never ending list of nonsensical prison policies. At first you assume it's the administration; just another part of their diabolical plan to break our wills. But after nearly a decade of incarceration, I'm not so sure.

The Heat Advisory policy states that all physical activity is restricted once the heat index reaches some arbitrary number on an even more arbitrary scale. A cursory glance suggests this policy is little more than an administration's excuse to allow yard cops to wait out the summer heat in air conditioned guard shacks. But in actuality, the policy was mandated after a severely dehydrated inmate collapsed in the middle of running a marathon; on the hottest day of the year; wearing six layers of winter clothes; the last two of which were trash bags. All in an attempt to shed water weight for a visit three months in the future. No one bothered to tell him that even if he had shed the water weight, he'd have put it all back on with his first few sips of water. Instead they simply outlawed all physical activity when it's hot out. Of course they did. If they didn't we'd kill ourselves. 

This policy did nothing, however, to actually reduce dehydration and heatstroke. They're actually much more common, only now they take place inside of stifling cells because the more motivated inmates are forced to workout in the only place they can: inside of their stifling cells. And this isn't the only example. Turns out that for every ridiculous rule there is an equally ridiculous story involving a dangerously dumb or incredible selfish inmate. And I know that the institution is ultimately responsible for its inhumane and altogether ironic policies. But the fact remains that certain things we do as inmates—whether it's stealing, fighting, cheating, or running a triathlon in a body condom—end up becoming the all-too convenient justifications for the institution to treat us like shit.

And so, right or wrong, I've grown to resent inmates who make their attempts to dehumanize us that much easier.

Over the years I've become fixated on identifying the bad apples. Of course not all incarcerated apples are bad. In fact prison yards are populated by mostly acceptable looking apples. In part because the truly damaged fruit are masters at hiding their flaws. So in the name of expediency I've been forced to look to the smaller, more mundane, aspects of incarcerated life for signs of rotten cores.

One of my favorite tests is to watch when someone drops something but doesn't notice. Now, like I said, the majority of inmates are decent people. Most will immediately alert the person to the dropped item. A good amount will even pick it up and hand it back. These inmates are not the the problem. Of course you will always have your garden-variety asshole who says nothing. These inmates certainly disappoint, but they rarely surprise. They are mostly benign. But then there are a select few—the apples with black mushy rotten insides—who will not only say nothing, but if the dropped item has any value—will actually steal it, or even kick it further away for no other reason than spite.

These are the inmates I'm looking for. It's not actually about the ID—who gives a shit about a dropped prison ID? It's about the the act as a predictor for future behavior. The guy who kicks the dropped item under a bush rather than pick it up is much more likely to be the reason we no longer have belts; because he used his to strangle his bunkie. Or the reason we can't buy dental floss; because instead of using it to clean shit from his teeth, he uses it to lasso his neighbor's store bag through the bars of his cell to pay off a dope debt. He gets inebriated, while the rest of us are wearing pants with elastic waistbands and shit stuck between our teeth.

If there is one thing that prison has taught me it's that the only thing more motivating than love is peer pressure. That's why these assholes should be identified and collectively shunned, before they fuck yet another thing up for the rest of us.

Most of my profiling techniques are designed to find character tells. Not only is no action too small; I believe the smaller acts reveal the most about a person's capacity for selfishness. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a taking a shortcut is a character tell. Which is why I refuse to sacrifice personal integrity, or my responsibility to my fellow inmates, by taking any path that cuts through an unauthorized area, even if it means getting my last pair of wearable socks soaking wet. 

I wasn't always like this. Forget TAKING a shortcut—I was the type to MAKE a shortcut when a shortcut wasn't even necessary. For most of my life the sheer spite and rebellion involved in subverting the rules were enough for me. But, it turns out, eight years in the Big House can do a real number on you. And with no where else to go—in a place where rebellion is the status quo—I decided to conform, not to the institution's rules, but to my own. And if some of them happen to coincide with prison policy—then so be it. 

One by one the four inmates ahead of me veer left for their trudge up the Path Of Ill Repute. The fact that the shortcut is so well worn speaks to the amount of shit-heads we have here at the Parnall correctional facility. The toes of my shoes are a shade darker than they were when I left my cell. I should hurry. Still I continue on my path, to do what none of these other primates are willing to do; the selfless thing. I pass the shrub and prepare to make my hard left towards self righteousness. My leg seizes up. My meshed shoe hovering over a massive puddle that has formed in the dip where the road and the sidewalk meet. I stand there balanced precariously on one foot considering my options. The body of water is too big to jump over, too wide to step around, and too shallow to swim across.

Pride is a mother fucker.

I stand there like an I'll-be-damned flamingo until the muscles in my leg start to burn. I return to two feet and stare out across the puddle to the strip of concrete stretching out of the other end. There's only one way across. FUCK! My socks are getting wet. 

I haven't quite connected the dots but I have the feeling this vaccine could end up costing me more than my last pair of cleanish socks. I briefly consider B-lining it back to my cell and crawling under the covers. Even if I did I'd still have to pass the shortcut and risk stirring up whatever is lingering on the tip of my mind. 

I turn back and walk until the puddle tappers off into wet asphalt. I'm still a few strides from the unofficial beginning of the Path of Ill Repute. The quickest thing would be to just cut along the grass—but I'll be damned if I bushwhack a shortcut to the shortcut I've spent the last year trying to avoid. I take a few more steps in the wrong direction until I'm at the proper beginning. An inmate with his shirt pulled up over his head steps around me. I exhale and shake my head at no one before taking my first step.

The path is not entirely free of hazards. The more well worn parts are slick with muddy footprints, dotted with pockets of dirty rain water. I side step around and long step over the aquatic hazards. A physical act of avoidance to distract from the mental one taking place somewhere in my subconscious. I'm eventually forced onto the live grass at the edges of the walkway for the sake of my socks. I am the worst of the worst. I jump over the last patch of slush onto the safety of the sidewalk. I pause to look at the path behind me. I can see the exact route I took. My footsteps right there stamped in the mud and trampled thorough the grass for all the world to see. A zigzag pattern of size-ten meshed destruction. Undeniable proof of my contribution to the Path...and the administration's justification.

Before I know it I'm in the gym. No recollection of the rest of the trip. I'm just following the person in front of me, who's following the person in front of them, until I make it to the first station. I only know I'm here because the person ahead of me is gone. Someone is talking. But I'm not really here. I'm off somewhere between my ears trying to make sense of what just happened. It's a woman's voice—I can tell that much. But I'm still absent. Recalculating. And she's still going. She's all vowels. Her instructions delivered from the bottom of a pool. I shake my head. An attempt to divert any available wattage to the part of my brain responsible for social interactions.

A fuzzy blue smudge comes into focus. A little round nurse in light-blue scrubs stands behind a foldout table with a clipboard cradled in her left arm. She looks annoyed. She's tugging at the corner of her mask with her free hand. Suddenly she's out of the pool. She asks if I have a mask. Shit! I pat my pockets for a mask I'm just now realizing doesn't exist. 

I am the problem. 

I'm turned away—told not to return without the proper PPE.

I make the same trip, back to my cell, only in reverse. I step in the same footprints only my feet are backwards. Heel, toe, heel, toe. I've made this trip maybe a hundred times—to the gym and back. I've never taken the shortcut. Along the way every one of those self-righteous trips became a thin little straw in my pet theory of character tells and inmate predictability for profiling purposes. Only—here’s the thing—I never had to do it while it was raining.

I have been identified.

I should be collectively shunned.

I grab my mask and make my way back to the gym by the same route. This time I get the shot without incident. I return to my cell. I peel off my wet clothes and stuff them into a mesh laundry bag—except the socks. I put on my cleanest dry clothes and slide my frigid bare feet into my cell sandals. I return the TV to the desk and, with minimal mashing, go to ESPN. A channel I can watch without having to listen. I grab my cup and take a sip of stale, cold, coffee.

I know there's a lot of shit to unpack concerning the events of this morning. Like my faltering theory of institutional bad guys. And looking for self worth in comparison to others. And a million other things that went to shit on that muddy path this morning. 

And honestly, if I had the time I would. 

If I actually had the time, I'd be the first to admit that I don't know EVERYTHING. That I might be wrong more than I'm right.

And if I had even a single pair of clean dry socks I could sit here and tell you all about the enlightening realizations I had this morning. The most glaring of which are the flaring flaws in my profiling methods...and the footprints on the Path of Ill Repute. 

With a few extra minutes I could tell you how it suddenly dawned on me that, of course, some of the footprints were made by the selfish lazy assholes I'd come to blame for the way this place treats us. And some footprints were made by inmates who shirk the rules. And others were just made by kids who don't really think too much about the shit they're doing—partially because their prefrontal cortex has yet to fully develop. But, most importantly, I could tell you that as I walked that barren strip of soggy earth this morning it suddenly dawned on me that a LOT of the footprints—maybe even a majority—were made by convicts who were just trying to stay dry.

And if my feet weren't freezing I might stop to tell you that, as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that the people who actually designed the sidewalk in the first place are at least partially responsible for the mangled scar running through the grass...and, come to think of it, they're almost certainly responsible for the lack dental floss...and the laundry bag thefts...and all the other stupid ineffective rules that were spawned in a futile attempt to correct an earlier rule that was just as stupid and ineffective, which itself was an attempt to fix...

Holy shit.

I think I'm on to something here.

If only my tiny cell came with an industrial dryer. Or a rack of clean socks. Then I would have the time to articulate what I'm just now realizing is the cause of ALL the heartless policies and irrational mandates that have been the bane of my existence for all these years. I'm right here on the precipice of learning the Original Sin of Incarceration; of working out the a-priori cause behind it all—of every failure of the Modern American Prison system since it's inception some two hundred years ago. That first poisoned seedling that sprouted and grew into the poisoned tree responsible for bearing all this wretched fruit. I swear to you I think I have it.

Then again, if I had the luxury to lay back and drink coffee and watch ESPN, or maybe even start meditating again, then maybe I would finally realize that I don't need a goddamn theory for everything. 

Maybe I would just accept that eight years in a place like this can really fuck someone's head up; and with your head all fucked up you might even create a whole universe of theories and rules in a misguided attempt to make some sense of an otherwise senseless world. And if my last pair of cleanish socks weren't on the floor currently growing a circle of darkened concrete around them then maybe I could not only forgive the people who broke my arbitrary rules, but maybe I'd forgive myself as well, for doing whatever I had to do to get back to my cell with relatively dry feet and a sense of self worth—even though I failed miserably.

Unfortunately I don't have that luxury.

Not today.

Right now I'm busy.

I pluck the pair of socks from the floor and ring them out in the sink. I hang them on the bars at the back of my cell. I move my coffee cup from the edge of the sink to make space for my little six-inch fan. I put an old soggy wash cloth under the base of the fan so it won't fall to the floor when I turn it on. One of the blades is chipped making it vibrate like hell. I turn the knob two clicks—the highest setting—and angle the wobbly fan towards the dangling socks. The toes start to sway in the wind.

By this time tomorrow they should be dry.

I can hear the rain hitting the window behind my cell. It's really coming down out there.

Either way, tomorrow I'm sleeping in.