Starting long sentence was very stressful and only being able to communicate with my family over the phone and only if they accepted the call only added to the mental tension i was going through. at the time the mother of my child, whose name was Robin, who i had a strained relationship with was getting more distant because she wanted me to help her by sending money to her. i had no way of making any kind of money and didn’t fully have a grasp on the whole prison hustle yet as i was basically living off of what my own mother was sending to me. my mom was helping Robin financially while being there for my one year old son as well. things were steady until the day i called home and my mom told me she had went to the hospital for a check up because there was a pain in her leg. this pain turned out to be a very aggressive cancer and she would be started chemotherapy within the year.
that news alone caused my stress to sky rocket along with the daily situations i was dealing with because of the guy who arrived at the prison who was from my reservation stirring things up trying to turn everyone against me. i found out that this is a common tactic of cowards who have something to hide from everyone, to make all the attention focus on one person so no one will look into their own background and see how messed up they were. this person unbeknownst to me at the time was the person who had killed a 8 year old boy by slitting his throat and letting him bleed out on the back trails of the neighbor hood. he did this because he was angry at his father for physically and mentally abusing him and this was his way of getting revenge at the world. he was ran off every yard he ever walked because he had a habit of starting rumors about others and getting into other peoples business and trying to get the ones he disliked for whatever reason beat up by getting others mad at them so he wouldn’t have to dirty his own hands by putting in work. straight coward.
then when i called my brother one day i found out that the brothers of the kid he killed actually had a hit out on his head and they wanted to know if i wanted to collect. this in itself was even more to deal with because the price they had on him was pretty decent and i had a few native friends i made that were actually interested in offing him so i could collect the money. not that i seriously contemplated doing this or would ever ask another person to commit such acts for my benefit but it goes to show that my character and who i was at the time was to such a degree that guys would feel i deserved to be given such options and they would do it for me because they liked who i was. many felt after meeting me and getting to know me that i could never do what the papers said i did. they pitied me and took it upon themselves to create a barrier of protection around me to insulate me from the negative elements at play in the prison setting. surprisingly this occurs at every prison i do time at. i don’t know what it is but i guess i have a likable personality. back then one guy told me i was just a baby being only 23 years old and looked at me as a little brother needing protection from bullies. which i guess at the time was true. there were times when older convicts and meaner guys would try to victimize me by stealing my things or intimidate me to do things i didn’t want to do. i always had someone to stand up for me back then and i could never understand why they would never let me fight my own battles. one said it was so i wouldn’t lose the precious good time on those who weren’t worth anything and to let those individuals know that such actions would not be allowed on a yard run by AIM’sters. i am forever grateful for those brothers who stood up for me and taught me that standing up for others too weak or vulnerable to protect themselves is the right thing to do especially in prison were its commonly thought to be a dog eat dog society where every action deserve payment. to selflessly be the better person and protect those everyone else looks down on for whatever reason is the most noble thing i learned from them.
the sense of comraderie i got from hanging out with the other natives during drum group was the most enjoyable part of my week as week sat around smoking the traditional tobacco we received from the chaplain. some i am sorry to say would keep their allotment and take it back to the unit and sell it for stamps. i never did even though i was frequently asked by other inmates of various races and demographic groups because they knew i went to those meetings. i felt that to sell something that was supposed to be held in a sacred light would not only disrespect the true believers of the native culture but also disrespect the ancestors and activists who fought long and hard to give us the right to have such things in prison. so even today at all these other prisons I’ve been at i look at how much respect the others participants who go to the sweat lodge treat the ceremonial tobacco, whether they use it a good way or treat it as a resource to sell to the other inmates to make a quick buck. gives me a perspective on how the yard is ran.
during all this time i mostly kept to myself because i have trust issues. i have a friendly attitude and more so back then when i first started my bid and was unfortunately too trusting of people who i would find out later was only getting close to me so that they could borrow things they needed because they had used all their money on drugs or were just used of living their life living off of others handouts. once they showed their true face and i learned what their intentions were for getting to know me i quickly cut my ties with them. i had so much to think about already without having to fund someone else’s time behinds bars. not to say im not generous when i have the means to share its just that in prison a lot of guys are looking for a meal ticket and wil take full advantage of someone they see who has more money coming in than themselves. others are just snakes who will try to get all they can however they can any way they can and not think twice about it or feel bad about taking advantage of someone’s kindness.
but for the most part the first two years of my sentence were pretty tame with all the school work and exercise and learning about the sweat lodge practices. i have to admit though that during this time i had picked up the habit of smoking marijuana which is unfortunately a habit i brought from the streets. in Colorado there was a lot of weed in the system. and heroin which was the bane of many inmates as it not only was highly addictive but expensive and i saw a lot fall victim to the habit of getting too much in debt because they needed a fix to keep from getting sick and then being unable to pay which led them to checking in. checking in means going to the SHU and not coming out back to the yard as a way of avoiding paying their debt. we call it filing for bankruptcy. fort many who have bad habits that they cant kick this is a way to escape the cycle, albeit for a short time, and start fresh on a new compound. not the most honorable way to do things and sometimes the past catches up because the FBOP is a small world, as i found out years later when circumstance of my own doing and choices i made caused me to file for bankruptcy.
i ran into some Hawaiians who were doing boxing drills in the recreation bathroom one day and asked if i could join in for the exercise. they accepted me as long as i kept lookout first for them and began to learn techinical training in boxing forms that i would in later years teach others when i bacame a trainer for inmates in the USP. but here was and eye opening experience in the mental and physical endurance that those ahtletes of that profession must have in order to stick with what they do for a living. it has to be a passion for any individual to put yourself through the rigors of testing the limits of ones own ability to think as well as perform combinations under extreme fatigue after a few 5 minute rounds of training. i loved it and they were surprised that i kept soming back eager to do more even after days of constantly punishing my body. i never gave up and they respected that. in my mind i was not only pushing my self to physical extremes but i was testing my own ego and will power to see if i could do what they had been doing all their lives and even become on their level of physical perfection. i made it about three months in before the BOP decided to turn Englwood medium into a low security which at the timei did not qualify for. about 90 percent of the compound didnt qualify for being at a low and we all were redesignated to Texas USP even though it was out of our region and none of us wanted to go. this was the first of many injustices that were pressed upon me by the feds for no other reason than some guy in a suit saying they need the bed space at the prison i was at.
funny thing right before i left Colorado i had a run in with a big Samoan guy named Big T who was the guy who was going to rape me to punish me for my crime but decided not to. he made fun of me every chance he could and because i was smaller than him would bully me when nobody else was around. then he left to go back to court. when he came back he was a changed man. all of a sudden he was trying to be nice to me and maek up for what he said and did to me. it threw me off because i thought there was some ulterior motive for him trying to get close to me and i started to see that none of the guys he used to hang with before he went to court would associate with him any more. so i got brave and asked on of the Hawaiians what was up and they told me he went back to court and testified on his co-defendants for lesser time and in turn giving them much larger sentences in exchange for the downward reduction. he had become a snitch, the lowest form of creature in the feds desested by everyone. and he felt he had no one to hang with now and because i was sort of a none entity in the eyes of my fellow inmates he was trying to have a friend. i wouldnt have cared if he told and i still dont care if people tell to get less time. i dont care what any one does or did in this place because we are all flawed and needed improvement, but at the time i hated him not because he went back and told on his crew. i hated him because even after all the talk of him doing time before and being a “convict” he violated the very code he was trying to always press on others to follow. and now he saw himself as an equal to me on the totem pole. like i was some worm to crawl around next to in the mud. but i didnt see it that way. i saw myself as someone who made a mistake that cost me my freedom and had to work to redeem myself for the rest of my life. he chose to stab his homies in the back. to betray them. i would never be on his level. never.
