My cellie Freddy left on Monday and I now have a young guy from Weatherford here with me. He ha only been in prison for a couple of months and this is his first cell. Everywhere else has been like a warehouse full of bunks. The cell offers much more privacy and quiet than Jeremy has had before, so he has been staying in the ell all day long since Monday.Some other guys in the dorm have noticed him absent from the dayroom and rec.
"Do you have a cellie?" they joke.
Yes, I have one. Right now it annoys me that he is in the cell all the time - I don't get any privacy - but I definitely understand why he stays in.
I've already told him to enjoy it for a little while. If it goes on too long, I'll have to give him the same speech I received when I stayed in a cell reading all day: We share the space, but we each need some alone time to unwind.
Side note: The Principal has been fired for her mistake.
I moved into a new dorm today, thank goodness. It took a little bit of work this time. I wanted to make sure I made it into a peaceful, quiet dorm and had to wait for a bunk to open up in the right place and the right time to talk to the guy who would move me. After a couple of weeks of vigilance, I was rewarded with a bottom bunk in a big cell in a quiet pod with a few friends.
My new cellie is a short, stocky black guy named Freddy. I know who he is from his frequent visits to the library and I know he's a decent guy. He was excited to see me, I guess because I'm an easy access to books and a different sort of guy than most in here.
This first night I was invited to a table where five other guys were playing a card game. If we game this much I'm sure I ended up in a good spot!
My cellmate, Chris, went home last week and has been replaced by a nut. The new guy, Rico, just got out of administrative segregation (locked in a single-man cell for 23 hours each day) for having a tattoo gun. Unfortunately, that seems to be the least of his vices. For the first few days Rico was incredibly chatty, which is understandable considering is previous solitude, but I discovered that h e talks even more when his is craving a cigarette.
I know it sounds crazy that someone removed from society for so long in a "tobacco-free" environment could have cigarette cravings. The truth is worse: so much tobacco flows into this unit that one side of my dorm always smells like a bar. And that's just one out of 22 dorms on this unit.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind Rico's cravings as long as he satisfied them somewhere other than my cell. Ever since he moved in I've had a sore throat form the smoke and bleach that he uses to cover up the smoke odor. I've asked him several times to either smoke elsewhere or not at all. He says he wants to change and stay out of trouble but goes on smoking anyway.
Now I'm resorting to desperate measures - I'm moving out. I've been in the same ell for almost a year and a half, but this too much to stay around for. I told my friends OJ and Omar about wanting to move. They had been the only thing keeping me put as the rest of the dorm got worse and worse. Although disappointed, they understand. I'm going to talk to the warden about getting moved pronto to a no-smoking cell.
Hooray! Lockdown is over! It could not have come soon enough.
My cellie was making enough noise to annoy not just me., but the surrounding five cells, too. I expected to get quite a lot of reading done, but only finished one book and got fifty pages into the next (Halting States by Charles Stross and Empire by Orson Scott Card, if you're curious.) The first hot meal on a full tray is always a welcome sight after disappointing johnnies thrice each day.
Yeah, my cellie was out of control all lockdown. One of his friends is in an adjacent cell, so he was constantly banging on the concrete walls, which gave a deep reverberation, and yelling through the vents. When the walls weren't shaking, he was singing to himself in his bunk with his new street-purchased radio, or just making weird noises. When asked to stop, he would take only a temporary break, maybe thirty minutes. When he moved in he said he was glad I as white. "Black guys are too loud," he said. Little did I know he was going to be louder than any cellie I've had yet.
My only respite was a visit from my parents on Sunday. I was surprised to see visitation run during lockdown, but sure wasn't complaining. I might have been a little loony after being in the cell for three days with a noisemaker, but if I was, they didn't say anything. I also got to eat some better fare than the johnnies. Just talking to someone would have been enough, but those two hours felt like a vacation. Today, it's back to normal, and considering the past few days, that's a good thing.
For much of the day I had a mystery cellmate. I was moved out of the new arrival dorm into a more permanent spot. When I dragged all my stuff into the cell, I saw all the signs of an inhabitant but nobody around. No one claimed to be my cellmate in the dayroom either. After I finished unpacking, I went to the library to ask about a job.
When I arrived on the unit the education coordinator told me she would look into the library job and let me know if it was available when she called me in later that week. I still haven't been called in, so I figured I would go straight to the source. The librarian told me she could use an extra person. Step one complete. I happened to see the education coordinator in the hall and asked her if she remembered my request. She said yes and wondered if the librarian needed anyone. I told her what the librarian had just told me. About twenty minutes later the librarian came to tell me "Looks like I'm going to be your new boss." Step two complete. Now I wait for the job slip.
Back at my cell with a new book to read and new hopes for a better job, I still didn't see my cellmate. Who could it be? What's he going to be like? From the artifacts I could see - a Bible and Christian books - I gathered some idea. There as the call for rec so I was off again. Maybe I'd find out who the mystery man was when I got back.
No such luck. Even after dinner I didn't know who I was going to be living with. It wasn't until after my Bible study this evening that I came home to another person in the cell. The mystery man was here. He is a young Christian guy, both physically and spiritually. He told me he has education in the morning and works the rest of the day in the kitchen. It looks like we'll click well.
This spot seems perfectly prepared for me. I have the cell to myself all day for reading, writing and study. My cellmate is a Christian who I can both nurture and learn from. We probably won't butt heads much, if at all. It's as if God looked at my personality and habits and found the perfect fit.
There I was, lying in my bed, listening to the radio and reading my book. My window was open with a nice, cool breeze coming through. The sun had gone down and I was relaxing before my shift started at midnight. this was what I had been looking forward to. It's still prison, but better than San Saba.Then it was all interrupted.
"Cellie, you're on the chain", called my Mexican cellmate.
"No, not me. You sure?" I responded.
"Yeah, they called your bunk for chain."
This is nuts. I just go here a month ago and only saw parole two weeks ago. The phrase "on chain" means that a person is being transferred and probably comes from the shackles that links inmates to each other on the bus. This is far too soon to be transferred, but sure enough, when I asked the guard on duty, she said it was me that was leaving so I should pack up.
After packing everything and taking it to the administration building to be inventoried, I found out that I was going to Huntsville to be transferred to a pre-release unit. Just because they say pre-release doesn't mean I'm getting out soon. It just means that I'm going to a nicer faciilty, one to ease the transition to the free world. Some people stay at one for more than two years. This was pretty good news, but I still don't my final destination, which I had assumed was my current unit.
I'm leaving all my food behind because I can't fit it into the one onion bag I keep with me on transfer and don't want it to show up in a month if I put it in property. My property from San Saba still has not caught up with me. Now I'm taking my last nap before breakfast here in Dayton. I'll probably leave around 7 AM.
Because I am housed in a two-man cell I can separate myself form everyone else when I want to read or study. But that means I have a lot of interaction with my cellmate. Luckily, I have a great cellie from what I can tell so far.Rivas is a Mexican national who doesn't speak much English. When I arrived he was on his hands and knees sweeping and mopping the cell with a towel. (We've made an agreement that we clean the cell every other day.) He greeted me right away and told me I could use his hotpot and radio whenever he wasn't using them.This was great because it will probably take me a while to get my own. That first night he gave me some food because I didn't come with any. I didn't even ask for anything.
I can tell I've been blessed with a good cellie. I hope I can be a blessing to him, too.
