PRISONER EXPRESS

As a kid I wanted nothing more than to be accepted. I wanted my parents to love me. I wanted everyone to like me, and I found that the best way to achieve these desires was to exhibit behavior I believed would make people like and love me. At home I would suck-up to my parents, and try to manipulate them into loving me more. As a teenager it was a little different.

High school was very educational for me, socially. I learned that trying to be liked by everyone is a waste of time and an unattainable goal. There will always be people who dislike me, no matter what I do. So I stopped conforming. I stopped trying to fit in. I was a jock who hung out with stoners and Goths and metal-heads. I dated cheerleaders and weird punk-rock girls, and never aligned myself with any particular social group. I joined FFA (Future Farmers of America) and the 4-H club; rode skateboards, BMX bikes, and surfed. And I was freakishly-geeky-smart. Everyone else would take notes in class and do homework. I never took notes and hardly ever did homework, yet I often aced my exams.

I was often accused of cheating, but I never once cheated. I was toying with my teachers. My favorite thing to do was to absorb all of the material I could, taking no notes and doing no homework, ace an exam; and then, when accused of cheating, demand a verbal quiz to prove that I knew the material. This would infuriate my teachers. They just couldn't seem to understand why I refused to "apply" myself. I was so smart, but in their opinion I was lazy. I was not lazy. I was selective and rebellious, rejecting conformity.

I think I took my rejection of conformity a little too far, because I wound up in prison. In prison conformity is a matter of survival, so I don't have the luxury of totally rejecting it. Unless, of course, I want to get murdered by someone. There are certain unwritten rules in prison, a sort of convict code of conduct. It has nothing to do with obeying the authority figures, the cops. It is strictly a socially Darwinian code of conduct in operation among the convict population. Any perceived weakness will be exploited, so you must be strong and be perceived as strong if you expect to survive for any length of time. So what if you are convicted of murder? So am I. Who have you killed or maimed lately? That is the general attitude among many convicts, at least in the prisons in which I have spent the last decade.

If you are a chump or a coward, word will get around and you will be robbed, maybe beaten or stabbed. Pathetic isn't it? That is just the predatory nature of prison life. So conformity is a matter of survival in prison. Every so often you must smash somebody to keep up appearances, until everybody knows you won't hesitate to break their face. Then you can do your own thing, for the most part, like I do now.

Despite the predatory nature of prison social structures, nobody is forced to join prison gangs. It has been my experience that those who join such gangs are weak and find their security in numbers, which is why they join a gang in the first place. No, I don't want to be in your prison gang, thank you very much. I ride solo.

Sometimes; however, you have no choice in the matter. Occasionally there will be a race riot. Then you are grouped together with your own race by circumstances beyond your control. For instance, I once found myself attacked by a group of convicts of another race simply because I happen to be white and a race riot started on the yard. I was certainly fitting in that day.

Were I to attempt to completely fit in with the majority of the Maximum Security prison population in California, I would need to submit to a level of conformity that would render me a mindless, pathological idiot. I cherish my individuality. I relish my independence, and I revel in the knowledge that I stand out. I don't want to be one of "them", either in prison or in society at large. I don't want to fit in. I want to be an individual.