PRISONER EXPRESS

This is a pretty crude brood we're discussing herein...I think perhaps that title-line itself is an oxymoron-type-of-phrase, with exceptions.

Is a friend in the joint someone you are pretty sure would not stab you? What category [sic] of acquaintance would be fall into if he'd only stab you in a face-to face confrontation, as opposed to simply slicing open your kidneys from behind with no warning? As far as friendship in relation to survival while locked up is concerned, I'd probably, upon consideration, have to classify it as a pretty friendly gesture, (by street society's standards), if a guy lets you know to your face that he hates your presence on "his" run, and that you should stay the hell away from him. Thus avoiding confrontation in the pecking order.

Now, normally you might call someone a friend, (the teller) if he knew that some asshole, (the tellee), had a grudge against you, and that he, the tellee asshole, planned to hurt you, and the first guy, the teller friend, told you beforehand about the intentions of the said asshole. Got that? Okay. Now, if the teller, the first guy, does not restrict his comments to you only, that is if goes out and runs his mouth to half the yard that so & so wants to stab you, I would not then consider either of them to be a friend. One wants to hurt you and the other is just stirring up shit, and ought to get his tail-feathers plucked.

Society's mores don't count in here (prison). The penitentiary throws a whole flock of roosters into one coop. Now, those young, stud, roosters all wanna be the cock-of-the-walk. You get fights, you know? Definitely not friendly.

But, maybe, just maybe a man can find one friend out of a thousand convicts. This friend would probably be a guy that's a lifer; he's doing his own time; he doesn't have to prove his machismo to himself or anyone else, and his game is self-sustaining. (That is, he doesn't have to work anybody else, use them, to get by.) Plus, he's gotta be that one guy that you'd normally get along with anyway. This one-in-a-thousand guy you call a friend, as long as both of you respect the limitations of a friendship under prison conditions.

Note: We, prisoners, all know that in reality if it came down to a decision as to which one of us might alone attain freedom (with no snitching even considered), of course, the friendship would go by the wayside. This does not factor in the freedom that comes from death, though. A real friend would kill you if you asked him to. But the transverse of this is, you couldn't ask a real friend to take your life to allow you to attain freedom, simply because it would screw up his "time". Even if your own murder was planned so that your friend would not be caught and subjected to a harsher security, lost privileges, or death penalty, your old buddy would still have to carry your own murder around with him.---I know--it doesn't matter who you are; if you aren't pumped on booze or dope, or are really insane, you can't kill another human being without mental suffering of your own. And a true friend damn sure would not lay a mercy-killing on his friend's conscience.

Is this pessimistic? Nah. It's just really looking at the truth. That is, the damned ol' penitentiary ain't no place to start a friendship club. Most of the men in stir would not only not care if you died, they'd probably actually prefer that someone else did kill you, so they could hustle something for themselves that might have fallen to you had you still been alive. And it doesn't matter if it's just something as trivial as breathing your air. Taking your "space".

So, friendship in the joint mirrors friendship on the street. It is rare indeed to have someone you can really relate to without having to worry about what his ulterior motives might be.

You gotta factor in the underlying violence in here. Some men have lost everything they had on the street, and are too stupid to comprehend that this reality is their new life; that they gotta' make the most of this existence. A large percentage will screw up this life, too. For instance, some convicts like to stab people. How about if two of them happen to be the one-in-a-thousand convict friend for each other? Would it be a friendship type of thing if they'd go out on the yard and enjoy a mutual stabbing of someone?

It's sick. One wrong word or un-cool act stays with a man for life in the joint. A man can't screw up here with one crowd and then start hanging out on "the other side of town", like on the street. Even if you get moved to a different yard, there will be a prisoner there from your old yard that will be more happy to tell about your past transgressions.

So, a wise man would practice the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." And, hope you don't run across a couple of friendly psycho-stab-freaks. Sleep well, children.