Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Last Time I Ever Fell In Love
I turned 21 years old in prison protective custody where I sat for six months in a ten-by-six cell while the classification people decided what to do with me. It was a two-man cell, so I could play cards, and even have sex with my cellmate (if you can call being forced against my will to lick his smelly-ass balls while he sucked my dick and masterbated himself, having sex. Some people call it rape, but by then I could hardly tell the difference.)
I also managed to study a highschool US History book and then write several essays that were counted as class credits; the last few credits I needed to get my highschool diploma. So I finished highschool in protective custody too.
Besides having forced sex and finishing highschool I also fell in love... uh, with a real girl, not my cellmate. Her name was Anne Campbell, and she was my younger brother's 19-year-old x-girlfriend, and mother of his son. She wrote to me and sent me a picture of herself holding her baby boy, C.J., my nephew. My brother left her after getting her pregnant. I don't know why, but I suspect he accused her of getting pregnant in order to snare him. Whatever the reason, he abandoned her with the baby and shortly there after she started writing to me.
Maybe she thought if she couldn't have one brother she would settle for the other; I don't know. But, she hinted that I would make a good father for C.J., and she made me feel not just wanted, but needed. I desperately wanted to make up for my brother's abandonment and my own criminal past. I imagined – fantasized really – that the parole board would realize how much she needed me and release me so I could take care of her and her child. In effect, I fell desperately in love with her.
My desire to take care of her burned genuinely in my heart. I so desperately felt that my desire to help Anne was so strong that all my “deviant” desires would just go away, IF I could just be her husband. Indeed, I didn't fantasize at all about rape or sex with children while I was in love with Anne. She was my cure, my purpose, my love! I needed her, and I felt she needed me. I thought we would “save” each other, if only they just let me go, so we cold get married.
Of course that never happened. I proposed to her in a letter, but she respectfully declined, and then gradually stopped answering my letters. I, of course, was heart broken, again (the first time my heart broke was when my first real girlfriend, Sharon Winget, was forbidden to me to contact by the sexual psychopath treatment program. They said I couldn't write her or call her because she was one of my “victims” because I had sex with her while she was under-age. Never mind that it was consensual, and that she was less than two years younger than me, and that we were both in the same grade together in highschool, and that we wanted to get married after highschool... the SP program rules were clear and inflexible...she was a juvenile, and I was declared an adult by the court at the age of 17, so that made her my “victim”... this was necessary for my “treatment”).
The hardest part about being in prison is so tough that nobody even talks about it; it is the pain of being seperated from the people you love, especially when they need your help and you can do nothing.
About a year and a half after my proposal to Anne, my nephew, C.J., was repeatedly abused by an army GI that Anne moved in with to help take care of the baby. C.J. Was permanently brain damaged from the abuse. He would never be able to develop mentally beyond the age of two as a result. The man who caused this brain damage by hitting the small boy only served a few months in jail for the abuse, and was then released on probation. If the same man had simply ejaculated in the boy's mouth he would have been sent to prison for 20 years and forced to register as a "sex offender" for life.
But instead, to this day, C.J. Must still wear diapers, crawls on hands and knees to get around and can only speak a few simple words. His favorite words are, “I love you”. He is 28 years old.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
What Happened In Prison - Part II: The Convict
McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) was a “real prison”, compared to the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) that I had been transferred from in 1984. The main cellblocks were five tiers high, with the traditional bars on the front of all the cells. Most of the cells were 15' deep and 20' wide and housed eight men on four sets of bunks, two bunks against opposite walls, and a single toilet and sink against the wet wall at the back of the cell.
By this time my hatred for the System had finally begun to take root, and this gave me a little bit of status with the other inmates who called themselves “convicts”. I'd learned to hide my fear behind cold expressions and not let myself be bullied by the more aggressive inmates.
Luckily, nobody at MICC knew about how I got raped and “punked out” at WCC in Shelton. I was also finally able to grow a little bit of hair on my face and it seems that went a long way to help deter all but the most hard-core predators. So after a few half-hearted attempts to pressure me by a few of the seasoned predators, I was pretty much left alone.
And then something interesting happened. I started to attract the attention of a different kind of inmate. These were older mosre experienced convicts who I guess saw something in my youth and determination to stand up for myself that must have reminded them of themselves when they were younger. Several of these older convicts took me under their wings, which they wouldn't have done if they had not seen me standing up against the pressure. (They were “older” to me but still young themselves, not more than 30 years or so). None of them ever made any sexual advanced toward me, and having their friendship pretty much squelched all the remaining interest I got from would-be attackers.
But, more importantly, they taught me how to not just survive, but to thrive in prison. Instead of just waiting for the “System” to assign me a job (like I did at Shelton), they encouraged me to go after a job I wanted.
So, after I was assigned to the dish-tank in the kitchen, I went straight to the head-cook and told him I worked as a “cook-five” at Madigan Army Medical Center. And that I wanted to cook instead of wash dishes. (The “cook-five” job was part of the “Youth Summer Employment Program” that I was part of for four months while at the Dyslin's Boy's Ranch, so I did actually know something about institutional cooking). The cook asked me a few questions about safe food handling and how to operate and clean he steam kettles and grills. After I answered his questions he hired me on the spot.
That was another “lucky break” for me, because the inmate cooks were all part of the older more experienced convicts in the kitchen who formed a priviledged clique that even the guards gave some respect to (mostly since these older convicts kept things running smoothly, which made the guard's job easier).
And the cooks ate well, very well! At MICC there was a butcher's shop attached to the kitchen. And the inmate butchers were part of the cook's clique. So we had steak and eggs for breakfast (not all the time, but often enough), and fed on juicy pork chops while everyone else ate “mexican surprize”. And, of course, we were also “in” with the bakers, so doughnuts and cake were status quo. Actually, I'm exaggerating here a little, but only just a little. We weren't supposed to eat anything except what was on the menu, so we had to be discrete. But I'm not exaggerating at all to tell you that when we walked out of the kitchen with a half dozen “Dagwoods” (delux sandwiches) wrapped in plastic and tied around our waist for our buddies back in the cell blocks, the kitchen guards never shook us down. They knew not to.
In the mean time, I had also signed up on the school floor for the Vocational Electronics Program. I had always been fascinated by TV's since I was a kid. Not just the TV programs, but I wanted to know how TV's actually worked. The waiting list for the electronics program was over a year long, but one of my older convict friends suggested that I go out to the electronics shop and talk to the instructor. So I did.
Fred Schuneman had built the electronics program himself, almost from scratch. And inmates who signed up for the program usually only did so with little real interest. So when I showed up in his office begging to be moved up the list because I had “always wanted to learn electronics”, he didn't hesitate. I got into the program right away, and did well. I especially liked the hand's on labs, and the self-paced format, which allowed me to zip through the material quickly. Before long, other students started to come to me for help, and I became a sort of unofficial teacher's aide.
So, I was now working in the kitchen and going to school at the same time, which kept me pretty busy. In my spare time, on the weekends, I liked to play volleyball on the yard, and spend time in the library reading books about computers and psychology that I could barely understand. I read about computers for the same reason I was taking electronics lessons. I had seen an Apple IIe computer once, and even though I wasn't even allowed to touch it at the time, I just knew I had to find out how it worked. So I began reading books in the library on computers, and even computer programming, long before the first time I actually touched a computer. I read books on psychology and self-help, because I always wanted to understand my “sexual deviancy” problem. I thought that if I understood how my brain worked then I should be able to “fix it” myself. I definitely wasn't getting any help from the “Correctional System”, and I had decided that “God” wasn't going to do anything for me either. So, my only hope for getting well was to educate myself as much as I could. I took what few psychology and self-help classes were offered by the school, but mostly I familiarized myself with the “psychology and self-help” bookshelf in the library at MICC, as I had once familiarized myself with the “religion and philosophy” bookshelf while I was at WCC. Education was my only hope of ever returning to a “normal” life on the streets, so I took it seriously and read everything I could get my hands on that I thought might help me understand what was “wrong” with me.
Back in the kitchen the institution was starting to cut back on the food budget by reducing how much food inmates could have. One morning as I was frying eggs on the serving line (inmates could have their eggs cooked to order in those days), a guard came and told me to only serve two eggs per inmate. I ignored him and just kept giving the inmates who came through the line as many eggs as they wanted (usually four, sometimes six). After awhile the guard came up and told me again to serve only two eggs per inmate. I said, “Okay”. But when the next inmate asked for four eggs, I gave him four eggs, even while the guard was still standing there. The guard left in a huff. Then, another inmate cook who saw the guard leave in a hurry and heading back toward the cook-supervisor's office, came up to me and asked, “What was that all about?” I told him that the guard had told me to serve only two eggs and I refused to do it. The other inmate cook left, also toward the supervisor's office. A little while later I saw the guard and other inmate cook return to their usual positions on the serving line, which surprized me since I had expected to get pulled from the line and given an infraction for “refusing to obey an order”, or worse. But I finished serving that morning with no further incidents. As it turned out, the other inmate cook also realized that I would probably be infracted and pulled off the line, if not fired. So he went to the supervisor and while the guard was still complaining about my refusal to obey, the other inmate said that if I were pulled from the line none of the other convicts would take my place, and if I were infracted the entire morning crew would quit. So that explained why I didn't get in trouble. Nowadays inmates could never pull a stunt like that. They'd lock down the whole prison first. But back then, the convicts had a lot more power than today. Because I was programming so well, with a full time job and school, and staying out of trouble, I ended up getting moved to “preferred housing”. At first I went to “Two-house”, which was an older cellblock that was only three tiers high and all single man cells. While in Two-house, I began very discretely giving sex pleasure to one two other convicts (I only remember one specifically, but there may have been two). I would come to the TV room during late-night wearing only a long bathrobe, which was commonly done, but I'd only have on a pair of sport-jocky underpants beneath the robe (or sometimes nothing at all), and a pair of thick wool socks that acted like slippers, and made it appear as though I had on more clothes beneath the robe. Then, after I was alone in the TV room, I'd take off my robe and masterbate to fantasies of letting other inmates have sex with me. I usually did this all by myself, but after a while, at least one other inmate noticed that I spent a lot of time in the TV room at night alone, so he started hanging out later than usual to see what would happen, and sure enough, I started letting him watch me masterbate and I even let him touch me while I was naked. But we never had intercourse, not even oral, and I never let him do more than just touch me with his hands while I masterbated. I got off on the power and control I seemed to have over him. We ended up becoming good friends (since we would converse a lot while all this was going on), and he never tried to go any further than I was willing to let him. He respected me, and that was a new experience for me when it came to sex. I should also note that while masterbating by myself in the TV room at nights seems bizarre, it made sense to me because by doing so I could cut off my fantasies of child rape. Masterbating in the TV room was a way for me to get excited without fantasizing about children. The risk of getting caught provided a kind of adrenaline kick, while the environment itself, a place where inmates normally congregated, provided tactile support for my fantasies while at the same time interfering with any kind of fantasies about children. It was like therapy for me, in more ways than one, not to mention, great exercise, since I often got very physical as I acted out my fantasies (e.g. dancing erotically in front of the room while I fantasized a room full of cheering inmates eager to have sex with me). I should also point out that in all my years in prison I never once got into trouble for my sexual behavior. Unlike other queens and homosexuals, who typically had more infractions for having sex than they could count, I never got caught or infracted once. There were a couple of times I came close to getting caught, but I never actually got caught. Nor did I ever contract a single sexually transmitted disease, not even crabs or herpes. I like to think this was because I was always very careful. But, I would not be being completely honest if I did not admit that I had at least some help from lady luck. Though I never needed a lot of luck, mostly because I was never as sexually active with other inmates as I was with myself. I often fantasized about having sex with ten inmates at a time, but I rarely ever had sex with even one (not counting the times I was raped at WCC). Even after I came out on my own as a queen (openly gay) I was almost completely monogamous, almost, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.
When a position came open in the electronics shop for a toolroom clerk, I quit my job in the kitchen and went to work for Fred Schuneman. The pay was the same (19.5 cents per hour, or about 23 dollars per month), and there were far fewer fringe benefits, and somewhat less prestige. The other workers in the electronics shop were mostly regular “inmates”, as opposed to “convicts”, but I didn't mind. The important thing to me was that I could be closer to computers. There were two Apple IIe computers in the shop, and every once and a while I would actually get to use one (usually by volunteering to do some tedious typing or other work). Then one magical day Fred came into the toolroom where I was working and asked me if I wanted a computer to work with. The shop had ended up with a spare Apple IIe from the school that was in the shop for repairs, but it had already been replaced at the school by the time it was fixed. So now the computer was just taking up room in the shop. Fred decided it may as well take up room in the tool room where I could use it. This was the first computer that I had essentially unrestricted access to, and I was more than ready for it. I had been studying not just programming languages, but also computer architecture, digital electronics, and just about anything else I could that had to do with computers. And now I could for the first time start applying what I had been learning. In the first month with the Apple computer I wrote a machine-code program that could beat anyone at a game called Mastermind (a colored peg sequence guessing game). I had assembled the program by hand, without the aid of another program called an assembler. I used the technical specs for the 6502e processor chip, and punched in hexidecimal numbers as the instructions instead of higher level command words. In other words, I did it the old fashioned (and very hard) way and I learned. Then I built a light-pen from spare electronic parts around the shop, including the machine-code “driver” for the pen, which plugged into an empty chip socket on the mother board of the Apple IIe. And soon after that (I had saved my pennies from work and bought a real compiler program called “Merlin”, so now I could start writing more advanced programs). I wrote a graphical compession algorythm that allowed my programs to create animated graphics with the very limited memory of computers in those days (my Apple had only 128 Kilobytes of RAM!). This was years before I ever heard of “gifs” (the popular little animated graphics all over the Internet today), which pretty much do the same thing my program did back then. When the vocational welding instructor saw me demonstrating my animation program he asked if I could use it to create a quiz program for his welding class that would have animated graphics along with each question. I said I could, and I did. I called the program “Quiz Wiz” (and years later I wrote a much more sophisticated Web-based version of Quiz Wiz for another vocational program at Monroe, Washington, that, last I heard, is still in use today.) I even once wrote a firmware hack (a program that takes over for the software that comes built into the computer hardware) that I called “Err-go!” and submitted it for publication to a popular magazine for Apple II computers called “Nibble”. My article was rejected, but I still think it was a great hack (it let Applesolf BASIC programmers write programs that could jump to labelled subroutines instead of just numbered routines, a feature that is standard today). In other words, yes, I had proven myself to be a genuine wiz kid. And, I took on all of the haughty airs that go along with such status. Well, I wasn't that haughty, but haughty enough to demand people to “leave me alone!” while I was working on the computer. I eventually got moved out of the tool room and took over the shops main computer, which was a suped-up Apple II e (with 512 k memory and 40 Mb external hard drive! Woo-hoo!). I became, officially, one of the shop techs (doing actual electronic repair work), but I spent most of my time on the computer.
An important aspect of my obsession with computers is that it provided me with a strong distraction from my sexual exploits. By the time I was turning myself into a computer wiz I had been moved to a housing unit called Summit House. It was the ultimate in “preferred” housing units. I could, and would, sit up in the laundry room at Summit House half the night, writing programs and studying, using the large tables, that were meant for folding clothes on, as my study desk, with books and papers spread out all over. I did not have time for fantasies, or dancing naked in the TV room. Computers seemed to be my salvation. Well, maybe not my “salvation”, but they had a definite impact on my fantasies. I recall that while I was studying computers, I still masterbated frequently.But my fantasies had become almost exclusively adult oriented. I never did “like” fantasizing about children. It was “pleasurable” to do so, but it always made me feel bad. So being able to fantasize about sex with other men was much preferable, and with my new social status as a “wiz kid” I found that I had a place in the adult world after all. For the first time I started feeling like I was an adult, not just a kid anymore. I was 24 years old.
I graduated with honors and special recognition with an AS degree in Electronics Service. At the graduation ceremony I was approached by a woman from Institutional Industries who congratulated me on my honors then offered me a job programming IBM computers in the industries offices. The job would pay five times what I was earning in the Electronics Shop, (over a dollar an hour) and was by far one of the best paying jobs in prison. But, I politely declined her offer, citing loyalty to the Electronics program. I felt I should “give back” what the program had given me.
Suddenly my world got turned upside down, again. Only this time in a good way! The Parole Board had been ordered by the courts to bring the minimum terms of all inmates in their charge, “within range of the SRA” (Sentencing Reform Act – a new set of laws that was supposed to provide predetermined sentences for all crimes and get rid of the Parole Board). Well, as I've mentioned before, my sentence was more than three times over the SRA range, so the Parole Board had to reduce my time. When they did so, they set a new sentence that was still over the SRA range for my crime, but it was under what I had already served! So what I expected to be a routine review hearing turned into a parole hearing! They asked me if I had any parole plans. I said, no. They asked what I would do if I were parole. I said, I didn't know. I simply wasn't prepared. They asked if I was willing to get sex offender treatment on the streets, and I said, of course. And then, right then and there, completely out of the blue, they found me parolable! It was over! I was going home! I'm emotional even now as I write this and remember how happy I was. My mother was still living in Tacoma at the same house I had been arrested at as a 16-year-old boy. I could go live with her, get a job, help her pay the mortage (she was close to loosing the house because of not being able to keep the payments up). And everything would be okay again! I was going home, at long long last! But, that's not what happened, not even close. It was another seven years before I actually got out on parole, and by then my mother had long lost the house, and I had long lost any hope of ever returning to a “normal” life. By the time I finally did get paroled I had only one purpose in life, revenge! It was the only thing I felt that I had to live for after what “they” did to me over the course of the next seven years. They destroyed every last hope I had and threw all my efforts to heal myself right back in my face. But, that's another chapter, that I call “The Transition”.
So, I was now working in the kitchen and going to school at the same time, which kept me pretty busy. In my spare time, on the weekends, I liked to play volleyball on the yard, and spend time in the library reading books about computers and psychology that I could barely understand. I read about computers for the same reason I was taking electronics lessons. I had seen an Apple IIe computer once, and even though I wasn't even allowed to touch it at the time, I just knew I had to find out how it worked. So I began reading books in the library on computers, and even computer programming, long before the first time I actually touched a computer. I read books on psychology and self-help, because I always wanted to understand my “sexual deviancy” problem. I thought that if I understood how my brain worked then I should be able to “fix it” myself. I definitely wasn't getting any help from the “Correctional System”, and I had decided that “God” wasn't going to do anything for me either. So, my only hope for getting well was to educate myself as much as I could. I took what few psychology and self-help classes were offered by the school, but mostly I familiarized myself with the “psychology and self-help” bookshelf in the library at MICC, as I had once familiarized myself with the “religion and philosophy” bookshelf while I was at WCC. Education was my only hope of ever returning to a “normal” life on the streets, so I took it seriously and read everything I could get my hands on that I thought might help me understand what was “wrong” with me.
Back in the kitchen the institution was starting to cut back on the food budget by reducing how much food inmates could have. One morning as I was frying eggs on the serving line (inmates could have their eggs cooked to order in those days), a guard came and told me to only serve two eggs per inmate. I ignored him and just kept giving the inmates who came through the line as many eggs as they wanted (usually four, sometimes six). After awhile the guard came up and told me again to serve only two eggs per inmate. I said, “Okay”. But when the next inmate asked for four eggs, I gave him four eggs, even while the guard was still standing there. The guard left in a huff. Then, another inmate cook who saw the guard leave in a hurry and heading back toward the cook-supervisor's office, came up to me and asked, “What was that all about?” I told him that the guard had told me to serve only two eggs and I refused to do it. The other inmate cook left, also toward the supervisor's office. A little while later I saw the guard and other inmate cook return to their usual positions on the serving line, which surprized me since I had expected to get pulled from the line and given an infraction for “refusing to obey an order”, or worse. But I finished serving that morning with no further incidents. As it turned out, the other inmate cook also realized that I would probably be infracted and pulled off the line, if not fired. So he went to the supervisor and while the guard was still complaining about my refusal to obey, the other inmate said that if I were pulled from the line none of the other convicts would take my place, and if I were infracted the entire morning crew would quit. So that explained why I didn't get in trouble. Nowadays inmates could never pull a stunt like that. They'd lock down the whole prison first. But back then, the convicts had a lot more power than today. Because I was programming so well, with a full time job and school, and staying out of trouble, I ended up getting moved to “preferred housing”. At first I went to “Two-house”, which was an older cellblock that was only three tiers high and all single man cells. While in Two-house, I began very discretely giving sex pleasure to one two other convicts (I only remember one specifically, but there may have been two). I would come to the TV room during late-night wearing only a long bathrobe, which was commonly done, but I'd only have on a pair of sport-jocky underpants beneath the robe (or sometimes nothing at all), and a pair of thick wool socks that acted like slippers, and made it appear as though I had on more clothes beneath the robe. Then, after I was alone in the TV room, I'd take off my robe and masterbate to fantasies of letting other inmates have sex with me. I usually did this all by myself, but after a while, at least one other inmate noticed that I spent a lot of time in the TV room at night alone, so he started hanging out later than usual to see what would happen, and sure enough, I started letting him watch me masterbate and I even let him touch me while I was naked. But we never had intercourse, not even oral, and I never let him do more than just touch me with his hands while I masterbated. I got off on the power and control I seemed to have over him. We ended up becoming good friends (since we would converse a lot while all this was going on), and he never tried to go any further than I was willing to let him. He respected me, and that was a new experience for me when it came to sex. I should also note that while masterbating by myself in the TV room at nights seems bizarre, it made sense to me because by doing so I could cut off my fantasies of child rape. Masterbating in the TV room was a way for me to get excited without fantasizing about children. The risk of getting caught provided a kind of adrenaline kick, while the environment itself, a place where inmates normally congregated, provided tactile support for my fantasies while at the same time interfering with any kind of fantasies about children. It was like therapy for me, in more ways than one, not to mention, great exercise, since I often got very physical as I acted out my fantasies (e.g. dancing erotically in front of the room while I fantasized a room full of cheering inmates eager to have sex with me). I should also point out that in all my years in prison I never once got into trouble for my sexual behavior. Unlike other queens and homosexuals, who typically had more infractions for having sex than they could count, I never got caught or infracted once. There were a couple of times I came close to getting caught, but I never actually got caught. Nor did I ever contract a single sexually transmitted disease, not even crabs or herpes. I like to think this was because I was always very careful. But, I would not be being completely honest if I did not admit that I had at least some help from lady luck. Though I never needed a lot of luck, mostly because I was never as sexually active with other inmates as I was with myself. I often fantasized about having sex with ten inmates at a time, but I rarely ever had sex with even one (not counting the times I was raped at WCC). Even after I came out on my own as a queen (openly gay) I was almost completely monogamous, almost, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.
When a position came open in the electronics shop for a toolroom clerk, I quit my job in the kitchen and went to work for Fred Schuneman. The pay was the same (19.5 cents per hour, or about 23 dollars per month), and there were far fewer fringe benefits, and somewhat less prestige. The other workers in the electronics shop were mostly regular “inmates”, as opposed to “convicts”, but I didn't mind. The important thing to me was that I could be closer to computers. There were two Apple IIe computers in the shop, and every once and a while I would actually get to use one (usually by volunteering to do some tedious typing or other work). Then one magical day Fred came into the toolroom where I was working and asked me if I wanted a computer to work with. The shop had ended up with a spare Apple IIe from the school that was in the shop for repairs, but it had already been replaced at the school by the time it was fixed. So now the computer was just taking up room in the shop. Fred decided it may as well take up room in the tool room where I could use it. This was the first computer that I had essentially unrestricted access to, and I was more than ready for it. I had been studying not just programming languages, but also computer architecture, digital electronics, and just about anything else I could that had to do with computers. And now I could for the first time start applying what I had been learning. In the first month with the Apple computer I wrote a machine-code program that could beat anyone at a game called Mastermind (a colored peg sequence guessing game). I had assembled the program by hand, without the aid of another program called an assembler. I used the technical specs for the 6502e processor chip, and punched in hexidecimal numbers as the instructions instead of higher level command words. In other words, I did it the old fashioned (and very hard) way and I learned. Then I built a light-pen from spare electronic parts around the shop, including the machine-code “driver” for the pen, which plugged into an empty chip socket on the mother board of the Apple IIe. And soon after that (I had saved my pennies from work and bought a real compiler program called “Merlin”, so now I could start writing more advanced programs). I wrote a graphical compession algorythm that allowed my programs to create animated graphics with the very limited memory of computers in those days (my Apple had only 128 Kilobytes of RAM!). This was years before I ever heard of “gifs” (the popular little animated graphics all over the Internet today), which pretty much do the same thing my program did back then. When the vocational welding instructor saw me demonstrating my animation program he asked if I could use it to create a quiz program for his welding class that would have animated graphics along with each question. I said I could, and I did. I called the program “Quiz Wiz” (and years later I wrote a much more sophisticated Web-based version of Quiz Wiz for another vocational program at Monroe, Washington, that, last I heard, is still in use today.) I even once wrote a firmware hack (a program that takes over for the software that comes built into the computer hardware) that I called “Err-go!” and submitted it for publication to a popular magazine for Apple II computers called “Nibble”. My article was rejected, but I still think it was a great hack (it let Applesolf BASIC programmers write programs that could jump to labelled subroutines instead of just numbered routines, a feature that is standard today). In other words, yes, I had proven myself to be a genuine wiz kid. And, I took on all of the haughty airs that go along with such status. Well, I wasn't that haughty, but haughty enough to demand people to “leave me alone!” while I was working on the computer. I eventually got moved out of the tool room and took over the shops main computer, which was a suped-up Apple II e (with 512 k memory and 40 Mb external hard drive! Woo-hoo!). I became, officially, one of the shop techs (doing actual electronic repair work), but I spent most of my time on the computer.
An important aspect of my obsession with computers is that it provided me with a strong distraction from my sexual exploits. By the time I was turning myself into a computer wiz I had been moved to a housing unit called Summit House. It was the ultimate in “preferred” housing units. I could, and would, sit up in the laundry room at Summit House half the night, writing programs and studying, using the large tables, that were meant for folding clothes on, as my study desk, with books and papers spread out all over. I did not have time for fantasies, or dancing naked in the TV room. Computers seemed to be my salvation. Well, maybe not my “salvation”, but they had a definite impact on my fantasies. I recall that while I was studying computers, I still masterbated frequently.But my fantasies had become almost exclusively adult oriented. I never did “like” fantasizing about children. It was “pleasurable” to do so, but it always made me feel bad. So being able to fantasize about sex with other men was much preferable, and with my new social status as a “wiz kid” I found that I had a place in the adult world after all. For the first time I started feeling like I was an adult, not just a kid anymore. I was 24 years old.
I graduated with honors and special recognition with an AS degree in Electronics Service. At the graduation ceremony I was approached by a woman from Institutional Industries who congratulated me on my honors then offered me a job programming IBM computers in the industries offices. The job would pay five times what I was earning in the Electronics Shop, (over a dollar an hour) and was by far one of the best paying jobs in prison. But, I politely declined her offer, citing loyalty to the Electronics program. I felt I should “give back” what the program had given me.
Suddenly my world got turned upside down, again. Only this time in a good way! The Parole Board had been ordered by the courts to bring the minimum terms of all inmates in their charge, “within range of the SRA” (Sentencing Reform Act – a new set of laws that was supposed to provide predetermined sentences for all crimes and get rid of the Parole Board). Well, as I've mentioned before, my sentence was more than three times over the SRA range, so the Parole Board had to reduce my time. When they did so, they set a new sentence that was still over the SRA range for my crime, but it was under what I had already served! So what I expected to be a routine review hearing turned into a parole hearing! They asked me if I had any parole plans. I said, no. They asked what I would do if I were parole. I said, I didn't know. I simply wasn't prepared. They asked if I was willing to get sex offender treatment on the streets, and I said, of course. And then, right then and there, completely out of the blue, they found me parolable! It was over! I was going home! I'm emotional even now as I write this and remember how happy I was. My mother was still living in Tacoma at the same house I had been arrested at as a 16-year-old boy. I could go live with her, get a job, help her pay the mortage (she was close to loosing the house because of not being able to keep the payments up). And everything would be okay again! I was going home, at long long last! But, that's not what happened, not even close. It was another seven years before I actually got out on parole, and by then my mother had long lost the house, and I had long lost any hope of ever returning to a “normal” life. By the time I finally did get paroled I had only one purpose in life, revenge! It was the only thing I felt that I had to live for after what “they” did to me over the course of the next seven years. They destroyed every last hope I had and threw all my efforts to heal myself right back in my face. But, that's another chapter, that I call “The Transition”.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Mark Of A Convict
I used to boast, when I was in prison, that my first infraction was for assaulting a guard. I didn't even have to lie. I'd just say, “I hit a guard in the head with a garbage can lid.”
Technically that was the truth, and recently when the Federal prosecutor brought that infraction report into court as evidence of my “past violent behavior in prison”, I didn't challenge it. But, here's what really happened.
I was working in the kitchen “garbage room” with another inmate. Our job was to take the garbage from the room to the back loading dock, and empty it into the garbage truck when it arrived.
The cooks had changed the oil in the friers the day before. So there were about a half dozen boxes of empty Crisco cans. Each can was the same size as a regular can of Crisco oil and each one also came with its own plastic lid for resealing the can if it is only partially used. Each box held about 24 cans and consequently, about 24 plastic lids, which the cooks threw into the boxes loose with the cans after emptying them.
So my co-worker and I were throwing the lids at each other like frisbees. They were harder to catch than to throw, so the object was to try to catch the lids the other guy threw with one hand, while throwing lids back with the other, all as fast as we could; scoring short-lived bragging points for “good catches”.
The kitchen guard, c/o Tobin, was a layed back older man who I thought was “friendly”, as far as my very limited experience with guards went at the time. So when he walked into the garbage room and told us to get back to work, I jokingly threw one of the lids at him and shouted, “Tobin! Catch this!” (Those were the exact words that Tobin himself wrote in the infraction report).
I expected him to turn when I called his name, but he was saying something to my co-worker, and turned about a second too late, just in time for the five-inch plastic lid to hit him on the forehead above his left eye, by surprize.
I laughed and said, “Opps... you were supposed to catch it, sorry!”
The other inmate and Tobin suddenly weren't smiling. I didn't understand it at the time, but I had just violated a subtle, but serious prison taboo; inmates don't familiarize themselves with the guards, no matter how friendly they are. Of course, Tobin was not injured in the least. But, a line had been crossed and he had to make sure that I understood I was never to cross it again. He wrote me up for “Assault on a guard”, one of the most serious infractions possible.
I couldn't believe he wrote me up at all, much less for such a serious infraction. I thought he was such a nice guy. But, I had a lot to learn and this was to be only my first of many “lessons”, over the years, that came in the form of unexpected infractions.
I learned that there is an invisible but well defined social stratum line between guards and inmates; guards above, inmates below. I learned that while conventional etiquette crossed that line freely enough, familiar things such as trust, genuine concern, and any kind of intimacy, were strickly barred from crossing between the two strata. I learned that no matter how friendly a guard was, they could never be my friend. I eventually learned to hate the “System”, and that was an important part of my prison education that helped keep me alive. Other inmates can “feel” this hatred in each other, and it's not easy to fake. It is the mark of a convict, and the basis for a code that I learned and lived by in order to survive, and “stay out of trouble”.
Of course, it is also the basis for what prison officials call, “criminal mentality”, and what psychologists call, “anti-social personality disorder”. Inmates are trained to hate the System, by the System. And nobody seems to care; not even when that hate gets escalated by the same “Criminal Justice” System into a murderous rage.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Prison Rape
Before I ever arrived at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington (W.C.C. state prison) I had been told by just about everyone I spoke to that I would be “targetted for sex” by other inmates, and probably beat-up, or maybe even killed, just because of the way I looked. I was only 19 years old, six feet tall and 138 pounds soaking wet. I had no body hair to speak of, and no facial hair at all. According to my psych-evals, I was also very immature and effeminate (though I had no idea at the time what being “effeminate” meant).
They say the three things that will get you killed in prison are sex, drugs and gambling. But the one thing that will get you killed or hurt the fastest is fear. Fear draws predators like death draws flies. With my age, my looks, and my fear, I was a walking rape just waiting to happen.
The first men to rape me were two “sexual psychopaths” who were from the same sex offender program at Western State Hospital that I had been expelled from in order to be sent to prison. I don't remember their names (they were not in the same “treatment group” that I was in at the program), so I'll just call them Big John and Kevin.
Big John was a huge youngster (but still several years older than me). In fact, he was the “biggest white guy” in the whole prison. But he was also soft spoken and easy going. He was the one who first came to my cell and told me that because we were both “from the program”, we should be friends. He asked me if I wanted to get high, and invited me to come down to his cell with Kevin, at the very end of the tier, away from the guard station, to smoke a pinner (a small marijuana joint, common in prison). I knew enough at least to avoid a set up like this, but Big John and Kevin were x-program members, so I thought I could trust them. Yes, I was that naïve.
Big John was a pedophile. So, he resorted to trying to manipulate me with conversation in order to get me to do what he and Kevin wanted, after he got me into his cell with the door closed. He promised me that no one else would find out and that it would be “mutual”.
But, I said I wasn't interested and tried to leave. That prompted Kevin to grab me from behind. He was a little shorter than me, but heavier and much stronger. Kevin was a stone-cold rapist, and seemed to enjoy the prospect of violence. He forced me down onto the end of the bunk, then told Big John to grab my hands (since I was trying to fight him) so he could pull down my pants. But, Big John still prefered manipulation over psysical force, so he told me, “We're gonna do it one way or the other. You may as well just go along so we won't hurt you” (which, incidentally is the same logic that police proffer when subduing a “suspect”). I agreed, and stopped resisting. I let Kevin pull down my pants while I was still bent over the end of the bunk. He penitrated me from behind while Big John put his erect penis in my mouth as he layed on the bunk and told me how to pleasure him. This was the very first time I had ever had anal sex (top or bottom), and it was also the first time anyone ever told me how to “suck dick”. (All my previous experiences with oral sex had never consisted of more than placing the penis in the mouth while masterbating, including the oral “rape” that I was in prison for.)
After Kevin ejaculated inside of me, they switched places.
And, with more threats of violence, Kevin persuaded me to pleasure him orally too, even after he had just had anal sex with me. The entire experience was revolting, but I was too frightened to not do what I was told. Luckily there was only a little pain (other times that I was raped in prison were much more painful during the act of penitration, I learned the hard way why “bending over” is always a good idea when you are getting anally raped).
There was nothing “mutual” about any of it, at least not until a few days later (after other inmates had found out that I was “easy”, and started pressuring me with threats of violence to have “one-way” sex with them). Big John told me to come down to his cell again, so we could talk. I went, expecting to be raped again, but this time he was alone (not that he couldn't have raped me all by himself if he wanted to), and instead of demanding sex from me, he offered himself to me! He told me not to tell anyone, not even Kevin. He gave me oral sex until I was half erect, then he layed back on his bunk and put his legs in the air and told me to “put it in!”
Well, the sight of his giant hairy ass was more than my poor little fellow could bear. I lost what little stiffness I had, and told him I wasn't really interested in the “mutual” thing anyway. He was kind enough to let me go, with a few further, admonishments to not tell anyone, of course.
But I did tell, my friend and fellow “punk”, Junior. And Junior told a black man who was pressuring him for information about me. And the black man told his friends, who told their friends, until, of course someone finally told Big John, “what Duncan was saying”.
By this time I was living on a different tier, from a futile attempt to get away from being “pressured for sex”. But Big John came onto my tier and a huge crowd followed him to my cell to witness the confrontation that it seemed everyone but me knew was about to happen. He came into my cell and pretty much accused me of lying about him, then punched me in the face. There was no way I could even hurt this guy if he gave me ten free shots, so I fell to the ground, and confessed profusely that I had lied about him. He pretended to be satisfied, and left. The show was over.
I should actually credit him for not doing much worse. By all “rights” he should have put me in the hospital (and at the same time I thought he was going to). But his true nature was not violent, he only did the bare minimum of what he had to do to protect his “reputation”. He let me off easy, and I learned to keep my mouth even more “shut” than before. Now I knew that I couldn't tell the guards, or even other inmates, about what was happening to me. I never felt more scared and alone in all my life.
By not at least trying to fight back against Big John, I unwittingly “announced” to the whole tier that I was “fair game”. Anyone who wanted to have sex with me from then on didn't even have to threaten me themselves. All they had to do was threaten to tell Big John that I was “talking about him” again, and they could make me do anything they wanted. Especially since before Big John left my cell, after punching me in the face, he threatened to do “a lot worse” if he ever heard of me talking about him again. And all the “vultures”, “wolves” and “big cats”, were no doubt salivating at his words (these are the different kinds of prison sex predators, each with their own tactics and tastes). Once again, I was the last one to realize what was going to happen next. The wolves ganged up (six of them attacking me at once), the big cats pounded in turn, and the vultures moved in for the left overs. If I hadn't been transferred when I was, I probably would have been killed; if not by someone jealous “daddy's” shank, then for sure by the even more gruesome, Mr HIV (which was in it's heyday at the time).
I eventually began getting aroused while I was being used for sex. At first it confused me, I wasn't trying to be aroused at all. I remember the first time it happened, as I lay on my stomach on a black man's bunk with my pants down around my ankles, and the man himself laying on top of me kissing the back of my neck while he had anal sex with me. I felt myself getting an erection, and thought it was just more evidence that something was “wrong” with me.
I got transferred to another prison soon after that, and had learned how to “act tough” (i.e. not show fear) so I didn't draw so much unwanted attention, and the rapes stopped. But then the fantasies of getting used began. It gave me a way to take control back from the men who had taken so much control away from me. At least, in my mind, at first. But eventually I started “letting” men use me for sex, but only if they treated me with respect. And hense, I became a prison queen. But that's a different story.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Predator Awakens
As readers of my original Fifthnail blog (link, top-right) may know, while I was living in North Dakota I took up skiing for the first time. The slopes were no resort, more like just a few hills. But they did have lifts, and Thursdays were “student night”, so I could use my NDSU I.D. To get rentals and lifts until midnight for only $25. It was the perfect chance for me to learn something I had always wanted to learn.
Of course there are always a lot of kids around the ski slopes, especially little slopes like these. But I wasn't interested in the children, I was there to practice skiing, and even if I happened to get a lift with a cute kid, I would be courteous, but otherwise ignore them. Like I said, my mind was on skiing, and I was enjoying myself responsibly for once.
I spent hours at a time on the slopes without a break, even in below zero weather (I'd learned how to dress warm living in Fargo). But, at some point I had to stop to use the bathroom.
On one such occasion I found myself in the small “boys room” alone, relieving myself in a urinal with my mind on what run I would choose next, or some such thing, when I heard the door to the bathroom open behind me and someone come in. As I finished relieving myself I instinctively noted that whoever came in did not move into the bathroom to take care of business, so I glanced out of curiosity over my shoulder to see if anyone was actually even there.
I saw a young boy, about nine or ten years old standing by the door, dressed as though he'd just come off the slopes for a quick pee, like me. Several children had just exited the bathroom a moment beforem after I had politely waited for them to finish theis business before pulling out my own hose to take care of mine. So seeing the kid in the bathroom alone was no real shocker, or turn on. I figured immediately that he must be waiting for me to finish – since it was such a small bathroom with only two urinals side-by-side – the same way I had waited for the kids before me to finish, just being polite.
But then I saw him flinch with hesitation. It was the most subtle movement that I caught out of the corner of my eye just as I was looking away from him. The boy had made a move that an animal makes when it is suddenly afraid and uncertain of its predicament. Something inside of me became suddenly awake, and aroused at the same time.
Of course I did not move on the boy, he was very safe where he was. In fact – and I know many will scoff at this, but it is absolutely true – I would have risked my life to protect that boy from harm if any had been threatened. At least in that context I would have; the chalet was not a safe “hunting ground”, not by far.
But the predator had definitely been stirred and awakened, and I took due notice. It wasn't the boy's appearance, age, or circumstances that aroused me, it was his fear, and his fear alone. The boy's fear had awaken a very dangerous predatory instinct.
I turned again and shrugged, nodded, and smiled to the boy, to assure him that I was finished, and that he was safe. As I washed my hands, I metaphorically scratched the predator inside of me behind the ears and thought to it: not yet my friend; not yet... go back to sleep.
P.S. We all have “sleeping predators” inside of us. Predators are born of fear, and live by it. To teach our children to “be afraid of strangers” (e.g. “stranger danger”) is to prepare them to be a victim. Children who are not afraid of strangers are not nearly as appealing to child predators. That does not mean they are immune to attack, only that they are much less likely to be targeted. And, if they are attacked, they are much more likely to escape unharmed. As a “child predator” myself I speak from direct experience, not psychological theory. Several times children that I targeted as prey escaped using natural instincts that were unhampered by fear. (Once a 7-year-old boy who I had alone in the woods, a firm grip on his arm, and a sharp knife in his face, got away by screaming and fighting. He was lucky I did not use the knife, or was he? Perhaps he instinctively knew that I wouldn't. Who knows, but he got away unscathed.) I also know of other child predators who have said the same thing (Westley Allan Dodd, for one), though most child predators are oblivious to their own predatory nature, so they do not even realize that it is fear that drives their lust. The same can be said for most other predators as well.
Of course there are always a lot of kids around the ski slopes, especially little slopes like these. But I wasn't interested in the children, I was there to practice skiing, and even if I happened to get a lift with a cute kid, I would be courteous, but otherwise ignore them. Like I said, my mind was on skiing, and I was enjoying myself responsibly for once.
I spent hours at a time on the slopes without a break, even in below zero weather (I'd learned how to dress warm living in Fargo). But, at some point I had to stop to use the bathroom.
On one such occasion I found myself in the small “boys room” alone, relieving myself in a urinal with my mind on what run I would choose next, or some such thing, when I heard the door to the bathroom open behind me and someone come in. As I finished relieving myself I instinctively noted that whoever came in did not move into the bathroom to take care of business, so I glanced out of curiosity over my shoulder to see if anyone was actually even there.
I saw a young boy, about nine or ten years old standing by the door, dressed as though he'd just come off the slopes for a quick pee, like me. Several children had just exited the bathroom a moment beforem after I had politely waited for them to finish theis business before pulling out my own hose to take care of mine. So seeing the kid in the bathroom alone was no real shocker, or turn on. I figured immediately that he must be waiting for me to finish – since it was such a small bathroom with only two urinals side-by-side – the same way I had waited for the kids before me to finish, just being polite.
But then I saw him flinch with hesitation. It was the most subtle movement that I caught out of the corner of my eye just as I was looking away from him. The boy had made a move that an animal makes when it is suddenly afraid and uncertain of its predicament. Something inside of me became suddenly awake, and aroused at the same time.
Of course I did not move on the boy, he was very safe where he was. In fact – and I know many will scoff at this, but it is absolutely true – I would have risked my life to protect that boy from harm if any had been threatened. At least in that context I would have; the chalet was not a safe “hunting ground”, not by far.
But the predator had definitely been stirred and awakened, and I took due notice. It wasn't the boy's appearance, age, or circumstances that aroused me, it was his fear, and his fear alone. The boy's fear had awaken a very dangerous predatory instinct.
I turned again and shrugged, nodded, and smiled to the boy, to assure him that I was finished, and that he was safe. As I washed my hands, I metaphorically scratched the predator inside of me behind the ears and thought to it: not yet my friend; not yet... go back to sleep.
P.S. We all have “sleeping predators” inside of us. Predators are born of fear, and live by it. To teach our children to “be afraid of strangers” (e.g. “stranger danger”) is to prepare them to be a victim. Children who are not afraid of strangers are not nearly as appealing to child predators. That does not mean they are immune to attack, only that they are much less likely to be targeted. And, if they are attacked, they are much more likely to escape unharmed. As a “child predator” myself I speak from direct experience, not psychological theory. Several times children that I targeted as prey escaped using natural instincts that were unhampered by fear. (Once a 7-year-old boy who I had alone in the woods, a firm grip on his arm, and a sharp knife in his face, got away by screaming and fighting. He was lucky I did not use the knife, or was he? Perhaps he instinctively knew that I wouldn't. Who knows, but he got away unscathed.) I also know of other child predators who have said the same thing (Westley Allan Dodd, for one), though most child predators are oblivious to their own predatory nature, so they do not even realize that it is fear that drives their lust. The same can be said for most other predators as well.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
What Happened In Prison - Part I: "The Punk"
After I was “voted out” of the Western State Hospital Sexual Psychopath Treatment Program, my 20 year prison sentence suspension was revoked. At the very tender age of 19 I was sent to prison.
While I was still in the county jail I learned the hard way that I needed to invent a story for why I was sentenced to prison. Rape was not a very popular crime, especially if it involved a child. The weak minded inmates (typical bullies) of course needed to make themselves feel better than someone, and society already made the rapists and child molesters easy scapegoats. So I made up a story about a “burglary that went bad” and became a first degree assault. Because of my age, the length of my sentence (a rapist typically only served 3 to 5 years on a first offense in those days), and the convincing details of my story, no one ever questioned it, or asked to see paperwork.
I was classified for population at the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) in Shelton. When I arrived I still did not know how much time I would be spending in prison. The judge only set the maximum term (20 years). But the parole board set the minimum term, which would determine your length of stay until you were eligible for parole.
Because this was my first offense as an adult, I expected to get 5 years at the most. That would make me eligible for parole after about one year in prison since I would ger credit for time served in jail and at the state hospital. All I had to do was hold my breath; the nightmare would be over quickly.
Or so I thought.
It turned out that the political environment concerning “sex offenders” was heating up. A small boy had been sexually mutilated by an x-mental-patient. The boy's mother was determined to get “justice” by punishing all child molesters severely, especially “homosexual” child molesters. I guess that meant me.
The parole board also had a letter that the therapist from the treatment program had written to the judge. I had no idea at the time that they could do that, so I made no effort to defend myself or contradict the numerous lies that the therapist had written about me. The therapist was one, Gary “Mike” Shepherd, and he had attempted to use his position of control over my treatment to coerce my mother into having sex with him. He was the reason I quit the program and decided to take my chances in prison. The incident with my mother was fully reported to the treatment program officials. Shepherd denied everything, of course, and accused me (in cohorts with my mother) of being manipulative and rebellious against the treatment program.
When the parole board took Shepherd's letter and the political circumstances into consideration, they came up with a minimum term of fifteen and a half years! That was five times over the expected range (of 3 years) and it meant that I would have to serve at least eight more years before even being eligible for parole!
Needless to say, I was shocked, severely! I lost part of my vision (literally tunnelvision) for some time after receiving the news. How could I possibly survive that long in prison? The worst I had expected was one more year! I was barely keeping my head above water as it was! And now...
A man in the cell next to me in the county jail had told me that because of my looks and my “attitude” (naive and immature to say the least) that I would be raped, and probably even killed, in prison. He claimed to speak from experience, and he predicted that I would “not last a year”. After getting 186 months from the parole board his prophecy haunted me.
I did get raped, of course, many times. And once I was attacked by a whole gang of black men (six at one time) who scared me so bad that I screamed with a loud high pitched shrill voice, exactly like the “punk” I was, “No! Please no! Help! No! Please stop!” the entire time. They didn't actually rape me. They just beat me to the floor, and then, of course, one of them “came to my rescue”. All he wanted in exchange was a small favor; a sexual favor. And then another, and another... each time threatening to “unleash” his friends if he didn't get what he wanted.
I went to the guards and told them I wanted to be moved to “protective custody” because I was being “pressured for sex”. The guards told me that unless I gave them a name they would not move me. I was too scared of the men who were raping me to give up their names. They told me if I ever did that they would kill me, even in protective custody. The “prophecy” from jail seemed to be coming true, so I kept my mouth shut.
I started taking classes to get my highschool diploma. I was safe in the school building, where the inmates who were raping me never set foot. I learned to like school, a lot. I became an almost straight - “A” student. Before leaving Shelton I had finished two years of highschool and got my diploma.
(Incidentally: They don't teach highschool in Washington state prisons any more. The best you can get is a G.E.D., so I was lucky.)
I spent my time in the living unit playing “Dungeons and Dragons” with other “kids” who were being “punked out” (pressured for sex) too. There was a little protection by staying in a group, but not much. Once several men came into my cell while “Junior” was visiting with me. I watched helplessly as they wrestled him down, pulled down his pants and put several of my personal art pencils into his rectum. They were laughing and joking the whole time. After they left, Junior curled up in a corner next to the locker in my cell and wouldn't talk to anyone. I wanted to help him so badly, but I didn't know how. (I find myself holding back tears even now as I remember this) I felt so desperately and painfully powerless.
When they put double-bunks in all the cells at Shelton I ended up moving in with Junior. It was convenient for the men who were pressuring us to have us both in one cell.
I tried everything I could think of to get out of being raped. I even asked my “classification counselor” if I could be transferred to the new sex offender treatment program at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center (TRCC) in Monroe. He told me that I had too much time left on my sentence to be eligible for the program. It was only for people who were close to getting out of prison.
I also studied religion, and hung out with the Christian inmates for awhile, until one of them raped me. I took correspondence Bible study courses, and became very familiar with the “religion” bookshelf in the prison library. I was looking for answers, but wasn't finding any. I finally said a prayer to God that went something like this:
“God, I don't know if you are real or not. But I can't find any evidence at all that you exist. I have prayed and prayed for help, but so far the only help I have ever gotten has come from myself. So I'm going to go my own way for now. I pray that if this is a mistake that you will bring me back. Amen.”
That was the last time I prayed or even acknowledged God for many years. “My own way” was to educate myself, and to start sticking up for myself. Which I did. I can still remember the first real sense of power I got from seeing the look of surprize on inmate Guzman's face when I picked up a mop wringer to use as a weapon when he started picking a fight with me on the tier. Guzman had once beat me up just to steal my Timex watch that was a gift from my grandmother she gave one just like it to my brother too, one of the very few sentimental items I owned. I made him beat me up in order to take the watch but I didn't fight back. This time I was clearly going to fight back and Guzman backed down immediately. I learned a new lesson that day about bullies. They really are cowards.
My victory did not last long though, before those six black men put me “back in my place”. But I wasn't ready to give up so easy.
After two years of being beat-up and raped I figured a way out. I gave the guards the name of a black inmate who I knew would not try to kill me. But neither had he ever assaulted me. So after they took him to the “hole” and me to PC (protective custody), I sent a letter to the prison disciplinary officials (who were going to punish the black inmate for pressuring me based on my statement alone) and I told them that I had lied in order to get put in PC.
It worked. The black inmate got released from the “hole”, and after six months in PC (segregation), I got transferred to McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC). At McNeil nobody knew me. And, I was older and better able to defend myself against other inmates. The rapes stopped, and a new chapter in my nightmare began.
(To be continued...)
While I was still in the county jail I learned the hard way that I needed to invent a story for why I was sentenced to prison. Rape was not a very popular crime, especially if it involved a child. The weak minded inmates (typical bullies) of course needed to make themselves feel better than someone, and society already made the rapists and child molesters easy scapegoats. So I made up a story about a “burglary that went bad” and became a first degree assault. Because of my age, the length of my sentence (a rapist typically only served 3 to 5 years on a first offense in those days), and the convincing details of my story, no one ever questioned it, or asked to see paperwork.
I was classified for population at the Washington Corrections Center (WCC) in Shelton. When I arrived I still did not know how much time I would be spending in prison. The judge only set the maximum term (20 years). But the parole board set the minimum term, which would determine your length of stay until you were eligible for parole.
Because this was my first offense as an adult, I expected to get 5 years at the most. That would make me eligible for parole after about one year in prison since I would ger credit for time served in jail and at the state hospital. All I had to do was hold my breath; the nightmare would be over quickly.
Or so I thought.
It turned out that the political environment concerning “sex offenders” was heating up. A small boy had been sexually mutilated by an x-mental-patient. The boy's mother was determined to get “justice” by punishing all child molesters severely, especially “homosexual” child molesters. I guess that meant me.
The parole board also had a letter that the therapist from the treatment program had written to the judge. I had no idea at the time that they could do that, so I made no effort to defend myself or contradict the numerous lies that the therapist had written about me. The therapist was one, Gary “Mike” Shepherd, and he had attempted to use his position of control over my treatment to coerce my mother into having sex with him. He was the reason I quit the program and decided to take my chances in prison. The incident with my mother was fully reported to the treatment program officials. Shepherd denied everything, of course, and accused me (in cohorts with my mother) of being manipulative and rebellious against the treatment program.
When the parole board took Shepherd's letter and the political circumstances into consideration, they came up with a minimum term of fifteen and a half years! That was five times over the expected range (of 3 years) and it meant that I would have to serve at least eight more years before even being eligible for parole!
Needless to say, I was shocked, severely! I lost part of my vision (literally tunnelvision) for some time after receiving the news. How could I possibly survive that long in prison? The worst I had expected was one more year! I was barely keeping my head above water as it was! And now...
A man in the cell next to me in the county jail had told me that because of my looks and my “attitude” (naive and immature to say the least) that I would be raped, and probably even killed, in prison. He claimed to speak from experience, and he predicted that I would “not last a year”. After getting 186 months from the parole board his prophecy haunted me.
I did get raped, of course, many times. And once I was attacked by a whole gang of black men (six at one time) who scared me so bad that I screamed with a loud high pitched shrill voice, exactly like the “punk” I was, “No! Please no! Help! No! Please stop!” the entire time. They didn't actually rape me. They just beat me to the floor, and then, of course, one of them “came to my rescue”. All he wanted in exchange was a small favor; a sexual favor. And then another, and another... each time threatening to “unleash” his friends if he didn't get what he wanted.
I went to the guards and told them I wanted to be moved to “protective custody” because I was being “pressured for sex”. The guards told me that unless I gave them a name they would not move me. I was too scared of the men who were raping me to give up their names. They told me if I ever did that they would kill me, even in protective custody. The “prophecy” from jail seemed to be coming true, so I kept my mouth shut.
I started taking classes to get my highschool diploma. I was safe in the school building, where the inmates who were raping me never set foot. I learned to like school, a lot. I became an almost straight - “A” student. Before leaving Shelton I had finished two years of highschool and got my diploma.
(Incidentally: They don't teach highschool in Washington state prisons any more. The best you can get is a G.E.D., so I was lucky.)
I spent my time in the living unit playing “Dungeons and Dragons” with other “kids” who were being “punked out” (pressured for sex) too. There was a little protection by staying in a group, but not much. Once several men came into my cell while “Junior” was visiting with me. I watched helplessly as they wrestled him down, pulled down his pants and put several of my personal art pencils into his rectum. They were laughing and joking the whole time. After they left, Junior curled up in a corner next to the locker in my cell and wouldn't talk to anyone. I wanted to help him so badly, but I didn't know how. (I find myself holding back tears even now as I remember this) I felt so desperately and painfully powerless.
When they put double-bunks in all the cells at Shelton I ended up moving in with Junior. It was convenient for the men who were pressuring us to have us both in one cell.
I tried everything I could think of to get out of being raped. I even asked my “classification counselor” if I could be transferred to the new sex offender treatment program at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center (TRCC) in Monroe. He told me that I had too much time left on my sentence to be eligible for the program. It was only for people who were close to getting out of prison.
I also studied religion, and hung out with the Christian inmates for awhile, until one of them raped me. I took correspondence Bible study courses, and became very familiar with the “religion” bookshelf in the prison library. I was looking for answers, but wasn't finding any. I finally said a prayer to God that went something like this:
“God, I don't know if you are real or not. But I can't find any evidence at all that you exist. I have prayed and prayed for help, but so far the only help I have ever gotten has come from myself. So I'm going to go my own way for now. I pray that if this is a mistake that you will bring me back. Amen.”
That was the last time I prayed or even acknowledged God for many years. “My own way” was to educate myself, and to start sticking up for myself. Which I did. I can still remember the first real sense of power I got from seeing the look of surprize on inmate Guzman's face when I picked up a mop wringer to use as a weapon when he started picking a fight with me on the tier. Guzman had once beat me up just to steal my Timex watch that was a gift from my grandmother she gave one just like it to my brother too, one of the very few sentimental items I owned. I made him beat me up in order to take the watch but I didn't fight back. This time I was clearly going to fight back and Guzman backed down immediately. I learned a new lesson that day about bullies. They really are cowards.
My victory did not last long though, before those six black men put me “back in my place”. But I wasn't ready to give up so easy.
After two years of being beat-up and raped I figured a way out. I gave the guards the name of a black inmate who I knew would not try to kill me. But neither had he ever assaulted me. So after they took him to the “hole” and me to PC (protective custody), I sent a letter to the prison disciplinary officials (who were going to punish the black inmate for pressuring me based on my statement alone) and I told them that I had lied in order to get put in PC.
It worked. The black inmate got released from the “hole”, and after six months in PC (segregation), I got transferred to McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC). At McNeil nobody knew me. And, I was older and better able to defend myself against other inmates. The rapes stopped, and a new chapter in my nightmare began.
(To be continued...)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Murder Isn't A Solution
While I was still in prison for “raping” a 14 year old boy (when I was 16), two significant events occurred that caused me – or rather, allowed me – to decide that if I was ever to get any “justice” in this world I would have to take it for myself.
Both of these events were directly related to society's attack on sex offenders.
The first significant event, that I later used as a convenient and convincing excuse to dehumanize children so I could use them in my schemes, was the receipt of my minimum sentence (which determines the actual amount of time spent in prison until I was eligible for parole). It was set to five times over the normal range for my crime (I got 186 months, the range was 30 to 40 months, 40 being the theoretical “high end” for a first offense like mine).
My sentence was so exceptional that I nearly went into emotional shock, literally, when I was told. I lost all peripheral vision for about an hour and had memory blackouts while I tried to grasp this inconceivable reality. It took me several days to recover, and even then I thought it must be a terrible mistake. It had to be a mistake, since that was the only way I could survive the emotional impact.
Over time of course I got over the “denial stage” and began the process of developing more long term coping mechanisms. Of course, I got no counseling or professional advice, I was expected to “suck it up”. It was all a part of my “punishment” (oh ya, and “rehabilitation”). So the coping mechanisms I came up with were mostly supplied by the only source I had, other inmates, who had all learned numerous and apparently effective ways of dealing with their own “unfair sentences”.
I began fantasizing a lot about what I would do when I got out. Of course, since I was only 16 when I was arrested, and still living at home and going to highschool, I had no way of imagining how unrealistic and even crazy my fantasies were. But they helped me survive, and that was all that mattered.
There were two main reasons why I got such an exceptional sentence, and I was oblivious at the time to both of them.
One reason was politics. Unbeknownst to me, a small boy was attacked by a mental hospital patient who severed the boy's penis. The mother of the boy became politically active, using her son's tragedy to promote her own agenda of tougher sex crime laws (e.g. longer sententes for sex offenders). Since my victim was also a young boy (never mind that so was I) my case was “politically sensitive”. If I had received anything less than an exceptionally exceptional sentence certain people in the community may have been aroused against the Parole Board which was under a lot of political preasure already from new sentencing guideline laws that were to go into effect soon.
The other reason I received such a long sentence was because of a scathing report from the “Sexual Psychopath” Treatment Program. I did not finish the program after the therapist tried to pressure my mother for sex by threatening my status in the program (this was all documented, but the Parole Board believed the therapist, not me or my mother).
The second event during my incarceration that further supported my decision to “get even” with society, was the public murder, by hanging, of one Westley Alan Dodd. Dodd had also victimized small boys sexually, so that made him akin to me. He murdered three boys and was caught trying to kidnap another boy at a movie theater.
It wasn't as though I sympathized with Dodd so much because of his sexual preferences, as much as it was his repentance after he was caught. Dodd expressed repeatedly that he could not control his fantasies and that he prefered to die rather than grow old in prison. He tried to tell people how things could have been different for him and especially for the boys he killed, “if only people would listen”, instead of being so quick to judge and condemn a man like him; which was a man like me.
I understood Dodd completely. Even while I was still in prison I tried to get help, but no one would listen. It was all about rules and regs. I was not just a number, but a “bad number” that was to be delt with systematically. Of the only two people who ever did listen to me, one was ignored by the Parole Board (Dr. Sally Sloat, a prison psychologist who told the Parole Board, in person, that I needed treatment and was an excellent candidate for treatment outside of prison – all the Board heard was “needs treatment” and they actually added more time to my sentence!).
The other was my “Man” (Lover), another inmate who also happened to have a B.A. Degree in psychology. He wasn't just ignored, he was harassed by the guards and ultimately serving more time in prison because of trying to help me (which he knew would happen when he made the choice to help).
So I understood Dodd perfectly, and when they hung him at the Washington State Penitentuary in Walla Walla, while I was there (1993), to “send a message” to other would-be child killers, like me! But the only message I heard was not the one that the people sending the message intended.
The message I heard was, “Murder is a good solution for a bad person”. Except to me the “bad person” was the society that condemned me, that condemned Dodd, my “brother”, and unwittingly condemned themselves to my wrath and vengence.
I literally swore to myself on the day Dodd was murdered that I would avenge him. Of course by that time I had already decided to avenge myself, so my oath for Dodd was really a commitment to “attack society” more than once, and I am presently sitting here in a California jail cell as a direct result of that commitment.
A prudent reader will note that I am not claiming that these “significant events” that occurred while I was in prison are “reasons” for why I ended up raping and murdering children when I got out. They are not reasons; they are a part of what I did, not excuse or reason for it. The two girls I murdered in Seattle were a part of the exceptionally long sentence I served in prison for “raping” a young man. And the boy that I murdered here in California was (is) a part of Dodd's “execution”.
There are no reasons and excuses for any of it. But there can be understanding, if we stop focussing on cause and effect, which only solicits blame and excuses, and instead embrace our own part in the madness. That's exactly what I did when I picked that little girl up in Montana and carried her home to Idaho. I realized that I was a part of the very insanity that I condemned! I was not the cause, but I was a part. I saw that murder was not a solution after all, it was only another part of the problem.
So I stopped murdering. I also stopped judging, condemning, and blaming (i.e. “reasoning”) and started understanding for the first time in my life.
Both of these events were directly related to society's attack on sex offenders.
The first significant event, that I later used as a convenient and convincing excuse to dehumanize children so I could use them in my schemes, was the receipt of my minimum sentence (which determines the actual amount of time spent in prison until I was eligible for parole). It was set to five times over the normal range for my crime (I got 186 months, the range was 30 to 40 months, 40 being the theoretical “high end” for a first offense like mine).
My sentence was so exceptional that I nearly went into emotional shock, literally, when I was told. I lost all peripheral vision for about an hour and had memory blackouts while I tried to grasp this inconceivable reality. It took me several days to recover, and even then I thought it must be a terrible mistake. It had to be a mistake, since that was the only way I could survive the emotional impact.
Over time of course I got over the “denial stage” and began the process of developing more long term coping mechanisms. Of course, I got no counseling or professional advice, I was expected to “suck it up”. It was all a part of my “punishment” (oh ya, and “rehabilitation”). So the coping mechanisms I came up with were mostly supplied by the only source I had, other inmates, who had all learned numerous and apparently effective ways of dealing with their own “unfair sentences”.
I began fantasizing a lot about what I would do when I got out. Of course, since I was only 16 when I was arrested, and still living at home and going to highschool, I had no way of imagining how unrealistic and even crazy my fantasies were. But they helped me survive, and that was all that mattered.
There were two main reasons why I got such an exceptional sentence, and I was oblivious at the time to both of them.
One reason was politics. Unbeknownst to me, a small boy was attacked by a mental hospital patient who severed the boy's penis. The mother of the boy became politically active, using her son's tragedy to promote her own agenda of tougher sex crime laws (e.g. longer sententes for sex offenders). Since my victim was also a young boy (never mind that so was I) my case was “politically sensitive”. If I had received anything less than an exceptionally exceptional sentence certain people in the community may have been aroused against the Parole Board which was under a lot of political preasure already from new sentencing guideline laws that were to go into effect soon.
The other reason I received such a long sentence was because of a scathing report from the “Sexual Psychopath” Treatment Program. I did not finish the program after the therapist tried to pressure my mother for sex by threatening my status in the program (this was all documented, but the Parole Board believed the therapist, not me or my mother).
The second event during my incarceration that further supported my decision to “get even” with society, was the public murder, by hanging, of one Westley Alan Dodd. Dodd had also victimized small boys sexually, so that made him akin to me. He murdered three boys and was caught trying to kidnap another boy at a movie theater.
It wasn't as though I sympathized with Dodd so much because of his sexual preferences, as much as it was his repentance after he was caught. Dodd expressed repeatedly that he could not control his fantasies and that he prefered to die rather than grow old in prison. He tried to tell people how things could have been different for him and especially for the boys he killed, “if only people would listen”, instead of being so quick to judge and condemn a man like him; which was a man like me.
I understood Dodd completely. Even while I was still in prison I tried to get help, but no one would listen. It was all about rules and regs. I was not just a number, but a “bad number” that was to be delt with systematically. Of the only two people who ever did listen to me, one was ignored by the Parole Board (Dr. Sally Sloat, a prison psychologist who told the Parole Board, in person, that I needed treatment and was an excellent candidate for treatment outside of prison – all the Board heard was “needs treatment” and they actually added more time to my sentence!).
The other was my “Man” (Lover), another inmate who also happened to have a B.A. Degree in psychology. He wasn't just ignored, he was harassed by the guards and ultimately serving more time in prison because of trying to help me (which he knew would happen when he made the choice to help).
So I understood Dodd perfectly, and when they hung him at the Washington State Penitentuary in Walla Walla, while I was there (1993), to “send a message” to other would-be child killers, like me! But the only message I heard was not the one that the people sending the message intended.
The message I heard was, “Murder is a good solution for a bad person”. Except to me the “bad person” was the society that condemned me, that condemned Dodd, my “brother”, and unwittingly condemned themselves to my wrath and vengence.
I literally swore to myself on the day Dodd was murdered that I would avenge him. Of course by that time I had already decided to avenge myself, so my oath for Dodd was really a commitment to “attack society” more than once, and I am presently sitting here in a California jail cell as a direct result of that commitment.
A prudent reader will note that I am not claiming that these “significant events” that occurred while I was in prison are “reasons” for why I ended up raping and murdering children when I got out. They are not reasons; they are a part of what I did, not excuse or reason for it. The two girls I murdered in Seattle were a part of the exceptionally long sentence I served in prison for “raping” a young man. And the boy that I murdered here in California was (is) a part of Dodd's “execution”.
There are no reasons and excuses for any of it. But there can be understanding, if we stop focussing on cause and effect, which only solicits blame and excuses, and instead embrace our own part in the madness. That's exactly what I did when I picked that little girl up in Montana and carried her home to Idaho. I realized that I was a part of the very insanity that I condemned! I was not the cause, but I was a part. I saw that murder was not a solution after all, it was only another part of the problem.
So I stopped murdering. I also stopped judging, condemning, and blaming (i.e. “reasoning”) and started understanding for the first time in my life.
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