Hard Time (34 page)

Dear Claudia,

Now I’ve been moved upstairs, it didn’t take long to be recognised. Just like at Towers when I met Billy the Hippy who I’d taken really good care of one night, well, Mack in cell 12 here was at some apartment in Tempe when I brought my party friends over. I was v. nice to Mack, and he’s offering to help me however he can. He already sent me a tub of peanut butter, which is good because I’m now five days without the veggie diet. They’ve been trying to give me a white sliced cheese with grey speckles in it, and it is yuck. We’ve been getting stale pitta bread lately and genetically modified plums that went to the size of grapefruits and suddenly stopped. Now we’re getting two slightly rotten oranges in the mornings.

Last night, Chicken Wing was walking around on his hour out, and someone asked him to go to cell 7. Chicken Wing stumbled over there and then went hysterical and started running around the pod shouting in a spastic voice, ‘They’re fucking sucking! They’re fucking sucking! He’s eating sperm! He’s eating sperm! He’s eating sperm! Fucking sucking! Fucking sucking!’for about ten minutes and cackling like a possessed Rain Man. It was pretty funny. Maybe #7 is a gay cell! I’ve saved my dessert, a donut, for Chicken Wing. I’ll stick it under his door on my hour out. Good‘giving’. I feel so sorry for him because he is in here and handicapped.

The maniac above me is losing his voice from shouting: ‘Shut the fuck up, punk!’

‘Punk ass, bitch!’

‘Get away from my door, punk ass!’

He also makes noises that sound like he’s digging through the ceiling, which is of concern as he’s supposed to have murdered a bunch of people.

In the next pod is David, a nice all-American lad with a good job, no drugs and a beautiful young Spanish wife. He got sentenced to a flat 21 years. He came home from work one day and his wife was having sex with another man in his bed. David told the man to quickly leave, and then he went to the bedroom closet, pulled out a fully loaded shotgun and blasted his wife in the head. The shot removed most of her head, killing her. Yikes!

I drew a picture of the view from our cell’s skinny window located above the top bunk near the ceiling. Looking east, I can see the stadium directly in front of me. Looking down, I see the parking lot roof and street. I think it’s Jackson, because I can see a grey building which looks like the Jackson Hole bar where I threw the rave Mechanism. I can view it at any time, so it’s easy for me to see you on the street. I just need a time.

That’s my update. I’ll write more later on.

Love you,

Shaun XXX

P.S. I discovered that I had brought the roaches upstairs with me. They had nested in one of my brown envelopes. I wondered where they were coming from. Hopefully that was the last of my run-ins with them.

Love,

Today’s gone pretty fast. I read all day. Chicken Wing ran around making fake orgasm noises and shouting ‘runny poop’ over and over again. Someone left ‘duky’ stained pink boxers in the shower. I suspect my celly. He sneezes and itches all day, and his long hair is falling out and decorating the room. He’s ill from the heroin come down. At least he’s quiet, though. He naps with his eyes open. Quite odd, eh?

I’ve started talking to two Arab fellows downstairs, and they are both a good laugh. They sneak upstairs on their hour out to talk to me.

I did get to meet some interesting people at the weekend. On Saturday, a downstairs neighbour, Leprechaun, went to Visitation, and I finally got to meet him at close range. He is short but stocky. He looks like he is in his mid-40s and he has long straggly hair and a beard. He has Irish features and long nails on his hands and feet. His toenails curl down over his toes. So upon closer examination, he fits all of the leprechaun criteria, but I guessed that his leprechaunness probably ended there, he was probably a nice guy to talk to and probably didn’t act like a leprechaun. The DO escorting us to the elevator was 6 ft 4 in., ginger-haired with Elvis-style sideburns. We got to the elevator and Leprechaun talked:

‘I was on TV. I pulled me pants down. I was all right. She thought I was attractive. She called me mother.’ He grunted.

The DO shook his head and looked at Leprechaun like he was crazy.

Then Leprechaun yelled at the DO, ‘You’ve never smoked!’

At this point I concluded that he was a genuine leprechaun. The DO couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The angry Leprechaun continued:

‘She saw me on TV and called me mother. She said I was very handsome. I said I didn’t want anything to do with her. I was trying to light a cigarette and my pants dropped. Then there was a big light. It was all on the TV.’

I’ve finally met a leprechaun!

Then on Sunday I went out for a hair trim and the tall skinny Chicano/Italian inmate barber starts cutting my hair and telling me that he had been peeping at me in the shower from the pod opposite. He said he saw me with an erection, and he was wondering if I needed a new cellmate. Yikes! He’d done eight years in a prison which was ‘nuthin’ nice’ and he was now bisexual. I told him that I threw raves and that most of my friends were bisexual but I was a max inmate (he was medium) so that he couldn’t move to my room. It doesn’t matter where I am, I always seem to attract the freaks somehow!

I love you more than garlic naan,

X Shaun X

Dearest Claudia,

It’s chilly in here now. Last night I slept in my full clothing with a skinny sheet over me. The chow was yellow rice last night, and my celly didn’t want his so I purchased it for a bag of Gardettos.

I’ve also been writing some exposé-style stuff for my jail book, and yesterday I wrote a big chapter on the food. Squeegee used to work in the kitchen in ’99, so he told me about what goes on in there. Some of the food he helped cook (boil) was 15 years past its sell-by date. It was canned vegetables. Squeegee gets sentenced soon, and he is stressed out about whether the judge will give him 1 year or 1½ years. I wish I could trade places with him, but I wouldn’t like to swap teeth with him. He’s another bugger-the-fillings-until-the-teeth-hurt-type person. Now they are hurting and can’t be filled. He had two pulled today and gets two more pulled in two weeks’ time. All back ones.

The inmates say the madman in the cell above me is James, a mass murderer. He is growling and yelling at the people in his pod. His voice travels quite loudly through the vent:

‘Punk arrrggghhhhhh! Punk snitch hideout bitch arrrghhhhhhhh!’

I talked to him through the vent the other day. I pretended to be Mike, one of the 9/11 detainee Arabs downstairs who was in the shower, and James proceeded to tell me about stabbing someone 60 times, and then he gave me some names that he wanted killing. ‘Kill all of ’em and take care,’ were his parting words. He thinks he’s getting 75 years and claims to have murdered his own daughter.

Leprechaun is hassling people downstairs and telling the young gay lad in cell 7 that he knows that he ‘hangs out in the streets with his ass in the air,’ and ‘he should try fuckin’ his mom cos she hasn’t had any dick in 20 years’. He’s being a crude little leprechaun this weekend.

It’ll be almost two years of jaildom soon. Unbelievable! Even Alan Simpson said the case would take less than a year to resolve. It’s so unreal. I just woke up one day and, boom, I was taken away. I can handle doing this time, but it kills me to be putting the people I love most through it as well.

See you in court,

Shaun XXX

Hello precious,

It’s almost lights out time, and I’m pretty exhausted. The philosophy and thinking books that I’ve been reading have sapped my brainpower. I’m back to writing again, and I’m currently writing about my first month at Towers.

Thank you for taking three calls this evening. I imagine I sounded pretty mental on the phone. You made me feel a lot better. I was worried about a number of things. When Alan talked to me in court, I was doolally nervous and I did not fully understand what he said to me. I did hear him say ten years, and then my mind started worrying. I figured the Tempe cop who lied to the inmates that I was snitching and tried to get me smashed was part of a bigger picture of them just wanting me to die or to be locked up for ever. Plus, with Wild Woman cooperating against me, everything at once has just hit me again when I expected the madness to end. It just gets madder.

I dreamt that I got many years and that for you to wait would ruin your life, so I ate a gram of heroin and killed myself so you could go on with your life. As I did it, I knew how much it would hurt my mum and it made me hysterical but I knew that I had to do it and I did it anyway. It’s hard to get these negative thoughts under control recently. I hate being weak like this, and I don’t like to burden you.

Sometimes I feel like I am going mental in here, and I try to disguise it by being positive all the time, but it’s so hard. Getting deeper into yoga and meditation certainly helps. My usual worries are trial, sentencing and what is going to happen. I can be sat reading and then a silly little thought will just pop into my head and then my mind goes and I’ll have to reread what I just read. Not knowing what is going to happen to me for this long is utter torture. Squeegee says anyone else would be on meds or mental by now for being in jail for so long. My efforts to stay sane are exhausting me. I miss simple stuff like us buying smoothies and going grocery shopping at nights.

I am sorry for putting you through this, and I constantly feel guilty for letting my family down. I can’t believe they are trying to give you a felony for a few prescription pills. Squeegee is an expert on misdemeanours, he has 40+, and he thinks that they’ll end up offering you a misdemeanour to avoid trial. He said a felony will really hurt when it comes to job applications and stuff like that.

Tonight’s been a wacky night. Mack intercepted a love letter from a gay in another pod to Macho Sean in cell 8. It was news to everyone, and now the whole pod is singing YMCA. I joined in on my hour out and sang a little bit of ‘I’m too sexy for the jail . . . too sexy for the jail’ and some ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. All of the excitement gets me going, and then I feel sad because I wish I were enjoying life with you.

All my love,

Shaun XXX

Dear Love,

It’s all so terrible. Today the judge said that I would get life if I lose at trial. I would definitely kill myself if that happened. Nobody here has ever heard of a first-time drug offender getting such a high plea. I am getting so screwed if I sign this deal now.

I have often thought about slashing my wrists at night and dying slowly in a pool of my own blood whilst on my rack. I have thought about hanging myself also, BUT I think about all of the people that love me, especially you, and it stops such thoughts from becoming actions.

I’ve had to increase my meditation time. I’ve started meditating first thing in the morning to begin my day on a positive note. I visualise large triangles spinning around me and a beautiful sphere of light. I think about the people I love, including you and my family members.

Love you loads,

Shaun XXX