# 8 Room & Bored

So toss the dirty diaper out of the car and go in and see your "man" via video visitation and fuck it.

Inside it smells like a tanker of semen overturned in the dorms. Must be a new Maxim issue being passed around.
 "The Bleacher" is absent I notice because I haven't heard any ranting about the smell.
Maybe he's protesting.
The "Bleacher" is a fairly restrained moniker for this particular convict.
The bathroom, the odor in particular, is his focus of rage more oft than not.
The last time he had at it with bleach, my eyes burned for three hours.
 He's a maniac.
In the mornings he strolls through with a bottle of Gold Bond medicated powder and locks himself in the stall. I really don't want to think about it, the issue, the GB ritual. It's everyday. Chaffing, no, forget it...

He's bent at the waist 90 degrees when he brushes his teeth. He seems to force his teeth against the brush back and forth instead of using the sane, rational approach most people employ.

He's also a habitual/borderline-obsessive snorter and hocker  upper of  loogies.

If a cup of bleach will do, he's fine with a half gallon.
I think he's working with a 1:1 ratio.

 Rule of thumb is a 1/4 cup to a gallon but you know, not for bad asses who pierce their nasal septum and put a shiny horseshoe shaped whatever fucking thing through it. Like a bull nose-ring but on a really skinny anorexic 5' 7" 'bull'.

"I know it smells strong but it needed it."

Of course. 
You've done all the appropriate clinical/safety trials.
It's a clean that leaves your membranes bleeding, really thorough.
He even wears gloves.

He's also, as it only recently occurred to me, right now, been trying to manipulate the guards into getting rid of the fan. Here's how -

Not too long ago I come in from work and he's hanging around the guard's pod and saying that the fat man and the Mexican (his terms)are fighting over the direction and/or placement of the fan that sits on the floor(I enjoy it for the steady humming noise of the blades) he says he can't take it, doesn't know what he's gonna do, it's driving him crazy.

The guards are amused.
Next day, Adidas says to me, "Hey Lipski, you know what happened to the fan?"

"No, what happened?"

"It's broke"

"Huh."

The plug had been sabotaged by breaking off one of the prongs. This was no accident, I looked at it, it wasn't a wear and tear thing. It didn't occur to me earlier because why should it - usually distracted with anything else.
I'm fairly sure there never was an argument between the fat man and the Mexican over the fan. I think the Bleacher doesn't like the fan because he gets hit with it after it sheers over Adidas and the fan is pulling from the bathroom that Bleacher has been chemically trying to take down since I got here.
So he figures if he breaks it, that's it. There's no budget for new fans, the tiles falling off the walls.

Fat man was persistent and maintenance replaced the plug. 
Fat man 2 - Bleacher 0

There's more but you know...

Also, Bleacher is deeply suspicious of my writing. I'd say he's paranoid that I'm writing about him.

"So, what are you - writing about all the happenings in Peoria County Jail."
 I give him a dismissive laugh and say, "It's not that interesting."

And it's not, (interesting I mean) my whole life is a not very interesting story (heroic struggles? Everest? World Record? TV credit?) but I've always been compelled to narrate or document or compile or whatever-extrapolate meaning from the damn thing.

Call it free-lance. (Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who have 'issues' do neither and call it free-lance.)

I've found that certain behaviors in here can be curtailed simply by picking up a pen and notepad and writing with, what I assume, is a very stern expression on my face (or very amused depending on certain behavior observed).

The pen is sometimes mightier than the bored.

# 7

Sling Blade checked in Friday with a one-off impression of the character that made BBT famous. This one's sporting a mohawk that's mostly grown out. Mid 50's? fuck I don't know, could be a severely weathered 40's.

I'm on my bunk finishing up last weeks NYT
 Sling Blade lurches over and asks me , "Cans you have plastic hangers, here?"
 I tilt the paper forward-down and look up at him "I don't know."
He retreats but is still looking for answers(it's all in the handbook).

 This guy was not going to stop at one question. I'm not much for questions.

SB is already complaining - "...in a place like this you'd expect them guards to wake you up for work, mm hmm."

"You gotta pay to do the laundries?"

"How much?"

The voice in your head that's talking like Sling Blade is pretty much dead on. He doesn't do the "mm hmm" but I added it for our enjoyment.
I've got SB for 120 days -

Also last night Adidas , who is a nosy walrus, is scarfing food and says to me , "Lipski, did you have any of this?"

"No"

"What did you eat today?"

"Do you seriously want a list of what I had to eat today?"

"You never eat"


"The question is, why do you eat this shit? You're out for twelve hours a day and then you come in here and shovel this shit down your throat."

"It's free food"


"It's shit. I don't eat shit."

"You better get used to it."

(this makes no sense I don't have to get used to it I'm in work-release)

"Why would I have to get used to it?"

Now he's out of things to say.

 He also takes interest in my writing at least enough to ask me the same questions - "So, Lipski, what are you writing like a book or a journal or something? Have you ever written a script? Me and my brother have always wanted to write a script but neither one of us can write for shit or you know, have any ideas."

Then why in the fuck would you 'always' feel compelled to write a script? And I don't think there's any question as to what type of script he'd want to write the only question is if Stallone  is up for another Rambo (probably).
He and his assumed moronic brother probably always wanted to got to Mars after watching Total Recall  or wanted to fly jets after watching ....

This I promise:
 The next time I am asked about 'my writin', I will say, "I write about people who bother the shit out of me and I post it on the internet and a few people read about you."



Young guy wants to know what I'm drawing. I say I'm sketching out a plan for a small trailer I'm converting into a camper, he says, "Oh, so your drawing something real, then?"

Yes, it's really real, really, like you, terribly real.

Cedric The Oxygen Tank Inhaler pulls out a chair right behind me with the box of dominoes in his other hand. He's entirely too loud and also supplementary-annoying for a guy that needs oxygen assistance.

This, however, can not stand. Not right fucking behind me.

"You're not going to sit behind me, right? You're fucking kidding me."

"What habee tah fooh payta (? - also really hard to understand despite volume/forced oxygen [which, I should mention is used 'as needed', not like it's a permanent appliance, yet])

"You're loud"

"Wha?"

"YOU'RE TOO FUCKING LOUD I CAN'T STAND YOU WHEN YOU'RE IN THE OTHER ROOM YOU CAN NOT POSSIBLY BE CONSIDERING SITTING RIGHT BEHIND ME."


(What? He's hard of hearing)

Anyway, he sits at the far side of the table behind me and I think, I just think, he tried to work on his inside voice.
Then he offered me a Jolly Rancher. I passed.

# 12

                                                      18:00hrs

Reporting home. The usual frisk/pat down. A good one lets me know they miss me.
Then, Officer ________ says, "Hey, Lipski, did aah, you go to medical to get your DNA redone? [Oh fuck, what string of unsolved crimes is the only question now]"
No. Redone?
"Did aah, yeah. Did anbody aah -"
No.
"Okay, when aah you aah get back aah, we gotta get you back to medical. Seattle wants another DNA swab with their own kit or aah, I don't know, aah, whatever."
Oh. (Oh, holy fuck. This is how it all starts, 'Just need another sample, very routine...")
I'll spare you the full page of caffeine induced paranoia. I'm the only one who would slam coffee before reporting to jail. Everyone else here is in a Tylenol PM coma.

18:45hrs

Officer Cheney (no relation) escorts me to medical for my DNA redo, I try to remain calm. 
The air is thick with internal fidgeting and bleach.Nurse comes in, jaunty full size girl. Classic sassy plus-size with a pretty smile and seemingly implausable good spirit.
"Where do I know you from?"
I don't -
"Comedy club! You were down there talkin' about, what the fuck was it? I don't know, it was fuckin' funny."
Oh, yeah.
 "Walmart or somethin', shit."
Cheney is unmoved. Solid ice. I try to crack it.
Did you get a lot of Cheney jokes?
(a full 3-5seconds pass - )
"No."
(another 3-5) 
(Really)
"Most of it was just, 'any relation?'."
lack of eye contact/barely a pulse/jaw tension
My unspoken follow up question "are you?" (Related to D Cheney/D Vader)

Turns out he's an okay guy, has a sense of humor, just not good with people. I get that.

# 1

Names and identifying characteristics/particulars have been changed/omitted for obvious reasons

Slightly expanded notes & conclusions N&C -a are included at the bottom of the page.

22-June-2011

The booking process is mostly uneventful and only a little awkward when the high school tour group comes through - with just me, your captive reporter, sitting in the booking room facing the glass that separates the bookers from the bookees (the booking process could be volatile in certain situations - you can imagine).

The god damn piece of shit $2,500.00 finger print scanner wasn't fuckin' workin' - as the lady put it - so we had to "do it old school" (again 'lady').

There is an enormous amount of cussing among the jail staff, you might say a 'gratuitus amount'.

There is also, among the staff, a large percentage missing front teeth (noticed in booking room, to be fair)

The cursing/cussing/swearing etc what have you is all benign work place banter. It actually comes off as a kind of "Kiss my grits." road side diner but with

           XXXXX
                   and
                 XXXXXX
with badges pinned to
xxxxxxx xxxx xxxx
serving the food.

Those who do not get the diner analogy/reference it's not worth the sidebar to explain so, you know, disregard.

While staring at a plate of 'food' that's been offered (and politely, oddly sincerely - therefore, suspiciously offered) a conversation between officer

             xxxxxx
                     and                     xxxx concerns the assassination of JFK (which is, by the way, like talking about baseball, TV etc - boring)

Officer________

                 
says that he's always said that it was Johnson & Hoover behind the whole thing - "I'm dead certain." - he adds, thusly preempting any debate on the preamble.

"I'm dead certain" said in a way or a tone that suggests officer_______

is dead certain about a lot
xx xxxxxx
he has no xxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxbased on facts/reality. 

Like, as when, in May when gas was $4.19 and I said it would be $5 by summer - I had no idea - I was, as the staff might and do say, "Talkin' out my ass."

Enter into booking hive - mammoth bull head deputy_______

(some names I do not want to omit for obvious reasons -humor/self-sabotage but....) 

His head is shaved in such a way as to suggest it's been shorn to the second third or fourth dermal layer with a salve of car wax applied and buffed to an ultra-high sheen - a ritual, you might imagine, performed in the nude with a straight razor and ear damaging levels of death metal.

But still, a little more 'together' than Loughner.

Heard not seen: "Looks like third shift didn't do a damn bit of paperwork last night! I mean, what the fuck?"

Usual On The Job Complaints met with the usual OTJ indifference.

11:30am

DNA swab

N&C-b

Anything outside of Standard Operating Procedure - e.g., A DNA swab is, here @PCJ, usually sealed in a postage paid, preaddressed, plastic mailer sleeve but when faced with a Non-SOP or slight variation in the swab-seal-send SOP (say, the DNA is to be sent to a different jurisdiction - and out of state -OMFG) brain cells_____

                           neurons                          xxxxxxx xxxxxx             implode and xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxx xx xxxx

Anger, confusion, Perp-perplexion. 

N&C-c

Heard but not seen:

"Can I ask a rhetorical question?"

I do not how to properly illuminate here the level of

xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxx! xxx xxxx?

12ish

Scrub my bunk and locker with some kind of acrid green fluid in a spray bottle.

Delousing powder not available, another movie fantasy destroyed. 

I scrub so thoroughly that one of the other 'residents' asks me if I work there

N&Cd

12:45

Make my bed, lay in it.

3:12

Fall off bunk, land on edge of steel bunk below and bruise several ribs, crack one.

 Various other injuries incurred.

N&Ce

Jailer asks me, "You still doing comedy?"

Paris is beautiful this time of year, even to a corpse.

Seen but not hearing:

A lumbering disheveled (and grumpy looking too) jailer with a large hearing aid distinctly stuck in his ear - I assume it's a hearing aid, it's "massive" as the british like to say

(British affinity for words that begin mass-) it could be a control port. 

As he walks he rises to one side and drops to the other repeatedly- it's the worse case of uneaqualibrium I've ever witnessed.

Notes & Conclusions

a)Never mind

b) Does the thought of your DNA being compared to a data bank of DNA from unsolved crimes give you a slight, tiny, chilling pause?

c)It is also not advisable to, as an inmate, offer to pay for additional postage and suggest a Sharpie as solution to the "How do we change the address on the mailer sleave?" problem.

d) Do I work there? I'm a convict, not a

xxxx.

e)Beyond some magical miniature voo doo doll being held vengefully somewhere in Seattle, I have no idea how exactly this happened.I'm not what you'd call "uncoordinated" although I do have a very specific strain of "luck".

"What's with the crazy font changes and stuff?"

- ask blogger. Backspacing in Google land may cause the axis to shift. All of them.

# 4

"You watchin' this? -?"

"Yeah"

I'm looking at it, 'it' is on, the television, I'm watching "Cops".

His question is of incredulousness.

I can tell by not only his tone but also his raised eyebrows, distended jaw, he just can't believe I'm watchin' "Cops"

"Why, you don't like it?"

"Not bein locked up, I don't. Sure don't"

-shrug-

" Not bein locked up, no sir."

"I don't get the difference, you're locked up out there too."

His eyebrows crunch down like he's trying to catch flies, then spring back up, then make a cartoonish arch with the one and a back-slash with the other.

He leaves the room.

Of course I could have engaged him a little instead of just shutting him down but that's usually not my style. Unless I'm in an engaging mood which, I'm usually not in here.

I would have pointed out, had I felt like it, that every night he checks out of "locked up" to go do his job and "no sir, and sure don't" to whoever usually has to listen to him at work.

Also, I don't have to talk to anyone. Sometimes I'll pretend I don't hear someone. Sometimes I look at them and then look away, this is my response.

The reason is, once you start, you can't stop it. Or you can't stop it without some weirdness or slighted feelings. So I don't start.

If you don't know what I'm getting at in so far as engaging talkative people in certain situations, it probably wouldn't be worth my while to two-finger type an explanation or yours to read it.

What I meant by "locked up out there" was on at least two but maybe three levels.

One being that he's border-line retarded - DD - just this side of slapping himself for a pudding pop. (Not being coarse here, insulting, just factual)

And tard-self-awareness can be debated but a prison you don't know you're in is still a prison.

See below;

The other, concerns all of us in here and out "there" and probably for a large portion of the mid-west whether cognitive of it or not the answer is a stark reality and begs a call to action of those affected and aware and the question is, how free are you in Peoria, Illinois? Just the prevailing "Wisdom" of this town, county, general geographic area, is a fucking prison.

Out-of-towners see following crash course: our sweet, plump children , The outdoor life

scenery

The county fair

The Family Farms

....depression, suicide, etc.

Illinois, the "Come here and die state" or the "you ain't got the right to die until it happens 'naturally' you know, death by corporate toxins and whatter-not state"

Back to-

The "other", other level:

Even when we're out working, we're still locked up - the psychological effects of knowing you're being watched, sometimes followed, sometimes snooked-up-upon, can wear on you.

Short while later "locked up guy" is back, haunching around the room, touchin' base with the fools who've opened the door to him. I want to ask him his "locked up" feeling or opinion concerning the viewing of "the family guy".

But I don't for reasons mentioned above and, also, honestly, I don't want to actually ask him, I only want to hypothetically pose the question in my head and write about it. This is, incidentally, what I prefer to do most of the time in most situations, I'm writing your part in my story.

This may explain my small social circle which, is safe to say, if we want to be blunt and break it down into real terms and why the fuck wouldn't we want to? - my social "circle" barley makes for a ",".

Earlier in the common room:

"Hey, I'm watching that."

Guy came in and sat right in front of the TV, blocking my view. I mean, as far as you are to your screen right now, he was to the TV - the TV sits on a table, it's like a 19" or something, the audio is horrible, no cable, &c. - he turns, looks at me, turns back.

"Hey, Hey I can't see through you."

He turns back after a pause and says, "I heard you the first time." then gets up and walks by me which is when I look up at him and say, "Okay, Alright." as in a tone of "Oh, I thought for a minute you didn't hear me because you didn't fucking move, so I was thinking still, that you were trying to posture, maybe some Big Dog shit or whatever but maybe you're just slow at comprehension, which, ya' know, from where I'm sitting, is totally believable."

What this all is is stupidity.

This is not "The Joint" it's not even jail, it's kinda' jail. But so, here's the thing - if you fuck up in here, and not even majorly so, you roll up your mattress and head to the other side.

The real deal.

 So, have some respect. Eat your cherry Pop-Tarts from the vending machine and shut up.