It’s been a crazy year, and with only 21 days left, I’m done chronicling it.  I’m fortunate to see the end. 

I was thirty-two years old when I came to prison.  I wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t ready for the predatory violence associated with being locked up.  I had to learn how to unlearn all the societal norms I grew up on. 

In prison – up is down, right is wrong, and vice-versa.  If you’re a male, you can’t show weakness of any type.  If you do, you are lunch.  You might as well don a neon green jumpsuit and carry a placard saying, ‘Take advantage of me.  I’m new.  I’m vulnerable.’

I navigated that.  Not easily, mind you, but I survived.

It makes me wonder about how females manage.  They aren’t just preyed upon by inmates, they also have to run the gamut of officers, more often male, who can be known to take advantage of their positions of power.  It brings to mind a few women I’ve known.  Three gems. I’ve changed their names to protect the innocent.

Tara.  I was assigned to a hospital facility during my COVID experience.  I was sent there because I couldn’t walk.  I was brought low by an amputated toe and the long-haul effects of COVID-19.  The facility was basically a female unit, but the hospital part was both male and female. 

Females were assigned there, so they worked in the kitchen, the laundry, for maintenance, and also as utility workers.  You never saw them or were permitted contact or to converse with them, and they were escorted through male areas to ensure this didn’t happen.

I first saw Tara while I was being escorted from my hospital room to a video appointment with a doctor about thirty miles away.  Tara was locked in a holding tank, and she couldn’t communicate with anyone because she was deaf.  I knew this because of the big yellow tag on her shirt, ‘HEARING IMPAIRED’. 

A lifetime ago, I had a friend who lost her hearing and had to learn sign language to communicate.  I’d had to learn how also.  I wasn’t very good, but I understood the basics, and she was always patient with my underachiever status.

I took a chance with Tara.  After all, the rules said I couldn’t talk to her, they didn’t say I couldn’t sign to her. 

“How are you?  Are you okay?”

She explained she was being punished for disobeying a direct order, not packing her property and refusing housing.  There were tears in her eyes.  She was young, had cropped hair and looked, in a word, vulnerable.

“Don’t give up.  Look up, you’re not alone.”

She rolled her eyes.  “I have two years left to do.  I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

Diane.  She was sentenced to forty-five years for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  I befriended her while she was incarcerated at a woman’s prison in the mid 90’s.  Back then, inmates could write to each other in other units.

I encouraged her to take programs to show she wanted to change her life.  She did, and she ended up getting her GED.  

Then the ‘system’ shut down letter communication between inmates, supposedly to eliminate communication between gangs. 

A dollar for the swear jar, please – bullshit.

I don’t know if Diane ever went home.  All of my efforts to find out have been hindered by the system.  You see, in Texas, the reality is, they don’t want inmates to be rehabilitated, and they don’t want inmates helping each other.

Melanie.  The third side of the coin?  Melanie was incarcerated in Kentucky and committed suicide after doing almost ten years.  I had her home address, and after not hearing from her for a month, I wrote her mom.  Melanie had given up.  Many have before her, and many more will after if things don’t change. 

Coins are meant to be protected, put in a bank, shown their worth.  Priceless…

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR.  John is currently doing another one-year set off, after almost thirty years of incarceration.  He is an insulin dependant diabetic, he’s lost a toe to his disease, he’s survived COVID-19, and he is still viewed as a threat to society apparently, since he just got turned down for parole once again. I visited him once in prison. When I left an officer stopped me. He wanted to tell me what a good and amazing guy John Green was.
John Green has been a frequent contributor to WITS, and he is also author of Life Between The Bars, a unique and heartwarming memoir described by Terry LeClerc, “This book is so good because each chapter is short, has a point, doesn’t whine. It’s an excellent book.”  John can be contacted at:
John Green #671771
Jester III Unit
3 Jester Road
Richmond, Texas 77466