Thirty Things to do Before You're Thirty

“The coast-to-coaster. Yes, it takes time. It takes money. But here’s why it’s essential: You will meet one unforgettable girl and never see her again. You will almost land in jail. And best of all, you will collect more immortal memories than you will bugs on your windshield.”

This tenet was number four on a Men’ Health “Thirty Things to do Before You’re Thirty” list, and I clipped it out and put it in my wallet. When I show it to people, I jokingly tell them that it’s my credo. Well, somewhat jokingly. I’m a sentimental guy about certain things, and though almost going to jail isn’t on that list, unforgettable girls and immortal memories are.

My church’s youth group used to drive out to Colorado every spring break for a ski trip. Coming back from the first one, in 1996, we drove through Oklahoma. There, we stopped for dinner at a Boston Market on a lonely and dusty stretch of highway that, in its absolute stillness, practically screamed Middle America.

As the meatloaf sandwich was a given for me at Boston Market, I didn’t need the assistance of the menu. Looking instead everywhere else, my heart slowed at the sight of the cashier. A blue-eyed, little angel with flowing golden ringlets and a flawless smile rendered me a clumsy stoic.

Unlike all the girls on all the trips that I did talk to, and have since forgotten, I said nary a syllable to this little princess, yet she’s as fixated to my concept of road trips, and my notion of 1996, as love is to a heartbeat. She’s unforgettable, not for all the things that we did, but because of what her coy blush and my juvenile pout, amidst downward cast glances, seemed to attest to what could have been.

That’s why my second favorite name for a girl is Desiree.

Men of Honor

Continuing with my rebuttals to what I perceived as illogical propositions in the novel Shantaram, I must take issue with the author’s distinguishing of honor and virtue. The former, he alleges, involves how exactly something is done, whereas the latter involves what exactly is done.

He goes on to use this logic to explain how “criminals, killers and Mafiosi” can be “men of honor,” and how a war can be fought honorably or not. That’s the bait, and for the switch, he writes, “honor is the art of being humble.”

What? Talk about a non sequitur! What does that even mean?

First of all, if a killer can be honorable solely by the means he takes to kill, can a rapist do the same? I hold that such is not the case, as these are simply varying degrees along he same principle. To hold that a killer can, but a rapist cannot, is to split a principle. To entwine honor with means alone is simply a method of attempting to use the means to justify an end. The next step is to propose the Mafiosi as justified due to their honor.

It is true that virtue is entwined wit the end (the what), and honor is in fact related to virtue. The author’s error was to assume that honor is entwined with only how the ends are actualized.

I hold that honor is entwined with how and WHY. How a man kills another man—whether it’s via an arrangement at high noon or by slithering up behind him at a pub—cannot dictate whether the killing was honorable, just as how a rapist rapes cannot dictate whether the rape was honorable.

Rather, why the man was killed, in addition to how, dictates whether the act was honorable. Self-defense: Honorable. A drive-by: Dishonorable. And a rape simply cannot by honorable, for a why can never be justifiably answered.

A war, then, is honorable not only in how it is conducted, but also in why it was initiated.

Celebrities in Prison

It’s common here in prison for those of us with magazines to trade them out with each other when we’re finished reading them, and pass them on to those who may not have access to magazines.

I get eight magazines, and they all have to do with investing, business or technology. What I don’t have a subscription to, but still procure off “the street” to the best of my political ability, are celebrity magazines. And that genre is, I might add, a very—and incongruously—popular one here in prison.

Moreover, the consumption of that particular content in here isn’t apparent, yet is common to all prisoners that I know of. Essentially, nary an article in the rag is read, just the captions underneath the pictures of the beautiful people. The pictures are the entirety of the magazine. First, the girls in the gowns. Then the young, famous mothers with their little ones. Followed by the beach shots, and finally the pics of starlets draped in fashion nightmares.

But it’s while one eagerly ogles these pictures that the amazing occurs. Namely, a coherent, reasonable man, if questioned during this time will be reduced to grunts. Even an intellectual, when queried, will slowly utter, eyes still fixed downward, “huh?” Repeat the question, and you guessed it…”huh?”

Respectable Gangsters

I’m currently reading the novel Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, and it’s a great read. But the writing, which is compelling and beautiful, belies some seriously bankrupt aspects of his philosophy (his, as the author, is the main character’s).

For instance, he writes, “The generals who were like a mafia clan without the courage, style or solidarity of genuine, self-respecting gangsters…” But such a proposition is ridiculously riddled with logical fallacies.

First of all, “self-respecting gangster” is an oxymoron in two ways. One, a gangster is a criminal that either steals or destroys (or both) the material or spiritual value (or both) of others. To do such, he must not respect others. To not respect others, he must not respect others’ selves. And if he fails to see the validity and worth of the concept of self in others, then he must not respect his own self. Secondly, a gangster is an individual who has devoted himself to a collectivist, criminal body. At any time, he can be called upon by his peers to sacrifice himself (e.g. his values). Any individual who will do that cannot truly respect his self.

Now that we see that “self-respecting” must logically be removed from the sentence, we’re left with courage, style and solidarity supposedly being the defining elements of the “genuine” gangster. Are such virtues really what constitutes the genuineness of the concept gangster? No. Such virtues may define a man despite the fact that he’s a gangster, but what defines a gangster are the vices of criminality, and belonging to a criminal organization.

Loving Life

Almost immediately following my incarceration, I began explicitly exhorting a love of life in both word and deed. Moreover, I’ve since been quick to debate the validity of my stance with any individual who wishes to question its rationality.

One such person, for the fist few months that I knew him, condemned my efforts at eating properly, working out avidly, reading voraciously, etc. as wrongly loving this life more than the next one, in heaven. As a Christian, the only logical response that I could come up with was that, given the finite nature of this life, versus the infinite nature of the next, one may as well maximize the duration of the former based on the simple fact that it’s a scarce and depleting resource. And, there’s an infinite amount of good that still must be done here.

Over time, however, this individual has shed his cloak of pretense as regards to Christianity, and has of late even taken to the bottle. Today, he actually procured dye solvent from maintenance or somewhere, and drank a couple ounces of that!

After my initial shock at hearing of such lunacy wore off, I remembered our initial debate about life, and realized his true position at the time.

His qualm wasn’t with my loving life, and thus failing to regard it as a means to the next one, but in my loving life, period! His purported Christianity was merely a hypocritical feint, and he’s simply one who despises life. Drinking dye solvent to get drunk is his way of killing—no pun intended—two birds with one stone (his consciousness and his existence).

TDCs Aversion to Innovation

A common theme of the prison system seems to be its fierce aversion to innovation. A case in point is the fact that Texas just installed phones that prisoners can use to make collect calls to persons on their visitation lists. The favorability of the cost/benefit ratio seems obvious in that some portion of the substantial revenues will go to victims, prisoners will be able to stay in closer contact with their loved ones, illicit cell phone usage will decrease, and every other state has already instituted phone systems.

Yet the Texas Department of Corrections dragged its feet on the issue for what I’d imagine to be an inexcusable amount of time, and as TDC itself is nothing more than a mass of committees mired together in a textbook beauracracy, I’d bet no one can be held accountable for this issue that’s not even known to exist.

Take the parole system as another example. In here, one sees some really bad choices as to who stays in prison, and who is paroled. I’ve heretofore outlined a parole free market system wherein “shares” of potential parolees would trade and determine who gets parole; but that was a long time ago, when I was a touch idealistic, and I see now that that could be a bit outlandish.

But as is, when parole becomes a more popular option (probably due to the cyclical, fiscal crunch of overcrowding prisons), monsters are inevitably released early, and headline-grabbing mayhem ensues. Then, the theory of parole itself is questioned, and the blame for said mayhem is extrapolated on all near-future potential parolees. What essentially happens is that more victims are the result of underserved parolees getting out, and the blame for those crimes gets extrapolated onto most, if not all, potential parolees—a morass of injustice.

But what of the parole officer who let the inmate that committed more crimes out? Does anyone ever know? Are parole officer track records made public? Mistakes will occur, as no one is omniscient, but what if granting parole to the undeserving, or not granting parole to the deserving, becomes a commonality to one parole officer relative to his peers? Would that not be actionable intelligence as regards to his possessing such a job?

I think merit-based employment and pay should be instituted in this vocation immediately, along with complete transparence as regards to track records. This isn’t Mickey Ds, where hourly pay is admissible. Lives are at stake. Not to mention justice itself.

Attempted Escape

Two weeks ago, a brazen escape was attempted on this unit. An inmate on medium custody (i.e. the disciplinary side of the unit) went to recreation with a rope made out of sheets tied around his belly.

Once on the yard, he went to a portion of the fence that circles the rec yards where construction work had recently been done, and crawled underneath the fence in a track left by a tractor. Then, once outside the rec yard, but still inside the three razor wire topped perimeter fences, he ran around the rec yard’s maintenance building. From there, using his makeshift rope, he somehow used it and the building to get over the first of the three perimeter fences (and supposedly, in so doing, just barely scratched himself).

Once in “no man’s land,” however, without the assistance of any structures to get over the second and third fences, he, then shirtless, began wandering about. At no point up until then did any officer in any of the towers see this attempted escape.

The officer in the truck that drives around the unit (the “Rover”) finally did see him, and pulled up to the outer fence and asked the inmate who he was and why he was out there. The inmate said that he was a warden’s boy (the plushest—and most suspect—inmate job available), and had permission to run laps in “no man’s land.”

The incredulous officer radioed the warden and was adroitly instructed to draw a gun on the inmate.

So ended the inmate’s attempted escape. He’ll be sent to ad seg for the indefinite future, and perhaps the rest of his life, as he was a psychiatric patient with AIDS.