May 22, 2002

• Clouds moved in last night, barometer went down so suddenly that
  my brain tried to ooze out through my ears.  Now the sky out
  one window is gray, blue the other way–who knows how hot it will get
  today.

  I know you guys who are used to temps in the hundreds don’t think
  our mid-eighties temps are all that hot.  Well, besides the issue
  of acclimatization (bodies adapted to extreme cold), consider
  this:  virtually no homes, businesses, or public buildings around
  here have air conditioners.  I think the hospital might have one,
  but it’s 75 miles away… and the heat’s not that bad.

  I had games and rules and stuff like that on my mind last night:

  Rules of the Game

  Much of social life is a game. For some people, all of life is a
  game with a prescribed set of rules. A significant portion of the
  population of any given region or class or tribe or subculture plays by
  a common set of rules. While they are going by the same book, though
  they might not be all on the same page, others mingling among them are
  playing an entirely different game or no discernable game at all,
  ignoring all rules.

  One of the most enlightening experiences available is that of moving
  between games, learning new rules, game strategies, and tactics. We can
  do it by traveling and learning different languages, and we can do it
  by exploring the various classes and subcultures at home. One polite
  term for this is slumming.

  One can play the anthropologist game just around the corner and
  across the tracks from home. That sort of disinterested exploration was
  what I had in mind when I infiltrated the Hells Angels, but it wasn’t
  long before I went native. I can get into some of those details
  later…this is about the game. *must… focus*

  Another excellent way to see how the other half lives is by going to
  jail. You could be squeamish about it and go in as a guard, counselor,
  volunteer teacher or the like, but it would not be the whole
  experience. For that, you have to go through the court system.

  Guilt or innocence is not necessarily an issue, although conviction
  is an important feature. Spending no more than a few days, weeks or
  months in the county jail awaiting trial can cost you a job, lease,
  mortgage, university degree or marriage. But nothing else really gets
  to you down deep where you live like a felony conviction and the
  prospect of a few years in the big house.

  And the really educational, enlightening part of it only begins when
  the door slams behind you. It’s a whole new game. If you’re lucky
  enough to have relatives or associates who have warned and prepared
  you, it can be easier. I hadn’t a clue beyond a few universal rules and
  the mistaken assumption that the common mainstream rulebook applied
  there. Some rules are generally standard from one game to the next. For
  example, usually, fight=hurt and play=fun. Before long, I would be
  questioning even such basic assumptions.

  First, in I & O (isolation and orientation, a sort of
  combination quarantine and debriefing), I was given the written rule
  book. I was to read and learn all its regulations and restrictions in
  between the interviews and tests and forms. I filled in little body
  outlines on one form with all my distinguishing marks (cheated on the
  freckles); and on a different, multi-page form, I was expected to
  account for my physical whereabouts throughout my entire life.

  I really did it all to the best of my ability, but there was a lot I
  didn’t recall. I pretty much knew where I’d been, but putting it in
  chronological order and attaching the right dates to the proper places
  was another matter. Weeks after I’d been allowed out into the general
  population, I was called in for an interview with someone in admin
  because the FBI background check had come back and a lot of it didn’t
  tally with my recollection. That was my first lesson in the unwritten
  rules: your best is not good enough–it has to match up with the
  paperwork. I was even compelled to misspell my name every time a
  signature was required in there, because some clerk had misspelled it
  in my commitment papers.

  My most costly infraction against the unwritten rules involved doing
  basically the same thing I’m doing here: relating a story about what
  happened.

  I wrote a letter to a friend on the streets, and gave him a quick
  character sketch of an unnamed guard on the night shift. She liked to
  flaunt her power. If a woman balked or talked back, her response was to
  smirk as she pointedly raised and rattled her keys.

  She was a lesbian, and quite butchy. Her favorite inmate was the
  sweetie of the butch whose cell was just across from mine. The whole
  wing knew about the guard’s late night visits to the other girl’s room
  farther down the hall from ours. I’d hear her stop, just pause in the
  hall outside my neighbor’s door long enough for eye contact, a gesture
  or sound, just the acknowledgement of the situation, the knife in the
  wound.

  When I told the story to my friend, that letter never made it out of the institution.

  I had an interview with the censor, whose official job title was
  “counselor”. She explained another of those unwritten rules: never tell
  people outside about things that go on inside. Of course I asked her
  what I could write about if I couldn’t relate my observations and
  experiences. She said tell people I miss them and talk about what we’ll
  do when I get out.

  Up to this moment, the first half-year or more of my incarceration,
  ever since those tests and stuff during orientation, I’d been the
  prison librarian. I’d cleaned up the library, arranged it so I could
  find what people wanted, though it wasn’t fully catalogued according to
  Dewey. I’d been given a budget to spend on new books and magazine
  subscriptions. I’d made some friends and bought some favors with books.
  I’d also become acquainted with Interlibrary Loan. But my love affair
  with ILL deserves a chapter all of its own. I was talking about the
  rules of the games, had an ADD moment there.

  After I wrote my stupid, ignorant, innocent letter, I spent a month
  in isolation. Not the hole, where your bed is a mattress that is taken
  away in the morning when one meal goes in, and comes back in at night
  when they pick up the dishes from the other meal. I had my bed, books,
  puzzles, drawing materials, etc., but no notes or letters were allowed
  in or out.

  When I got out of isolation, the librarian was one of the lifers,
  who along with her lesbian lover (also in that institution at the time)
  had murdered her three children by throwing them off a cliff. She was
  kind of a pet among staff and inmates alike, sweet, generally
  well-liked, not quite all there.

  I heard about that for the rest of my stay there. They’d gotten
  spoiled, used to being able to find the books they wanted. That girl
  didn’t even seem to be able to alphabetize, much less fill out an ILL
  request slip. If I didn’t kick my own butt often enough (and I think I
  did) as I mopped hallways and wrestled with floor buffers, someone
  would always remind me of it at a meal or in the yard when we all got
  together.

  Virtually the only lesson I can extract from that, regarding the unwritten rules, is: even when you’re right, you’re wrong.

  Now, I’ve only mentioned thus far the unwritten set of rules
  belonging to admin. The inmates had their own set of rules, and their
  own language. What makes their language a challenge to learn is that it
  consists of common words, newly defined. Words like pin and kite take
  on a whole new meaning.

  Many delight in hazing the uninitiated; the esoteric secrets held by
  the elite are just about the only vestiges of power available to them,
  other than the physical fear a few really mad women can inspire. A
  newbie, or fish, or fresh meat, either finds a mentor fast and eases
  into the culture, or she picks up the argot and the ins and outs one
  mistake at a time. Being a lifelong loner, I, of course, followed the
  latter course.

  • 1:56 pm
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