Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

In case I haven’t given a rundown of the basic admission supplies, when you get here they give you a tortuously uncomfortable mattress, a sheet, a blanket, a cup, a spoon, and a pair of very worn and usually stained boxers. If any of these things get destroyed, the jail can fine you or charge you with destruction of county property if they have a bone up their ass. If your cup gets destroyed then you don’t have anything to shove through the slot in the door for tea or juice at mealtime and you have to drink directly form the toilet/sink.

Another sad part is that the boxer shorts Dallas county issued used to all be white, but so many people were taking them home with them upon release, for souvenirs I suppose (?!?!), that the newest boxers they issue are (and I’m not fucking joking or exaggerating) FLOURESCENT PINK. You probably can fathom that it doesn’t go over very well to walk around all day in jail wearing nothing but bright pink underwear. Instead of exchanging mine on monthly laundry day, I now have to wash them in the sink with a bar of soap or rinse them out while I’m in the shower. Plus I’m thinking of taking them with me when I leave, out of protest and to stick some other unlucky sod with the new issues. Denton jail had microwaves and cable TV. Dallas has repeating closed circuit TV, stingers, and pink boxer shorts.

To a dog, the act of me wielding a crude instrument such as a knife must seem amazing. All I’m saying is that there are still some things that people view as amazing which could hypothetically be common place to some of us.

Here’s some great jail-yard terminology that I heard the other day when two ‘bruthas’ were about to throw down, including “bizzaatch,” “blow-holed she-goat,” and “stanky mackerel crotch”. Think of how many extreme reactions you can get when you announce to someone that you’re going to “watch them in the holding cell getting their buttery cornhole gangraped by a bunch of drunk bikers.” It’s so extreme that it cracks me up.

Today some people came by in white lab coats and said they were giving mandatory flu shots for the entire unit. I became pretty suspect but they did a roll call and there ended up not being any way to get around it. I asked them specifically what they were giving us and got a standard flu-shot answer that didn’t seem quite right to me. I asked them what company they were with (no response) and why a private laboratory would sponsor a jail-related act of good will (no response). I did notice they charted everyone’s skin color and racial makeup when they administered whatever it was. There is one guy that has been in here for over a year, Junior, and he said they gave him this right when he came to this tank about a year ago. When they realized they had the same person from last year the people in the coats got really excited and took him off somewhere. He said that later they asked him a whole bunch of questions about how he felt and if he had noticed any unusual symptoms and how often he’d gotten sick in the past year. He also said they held him down and drew blood out of his back! I’ve got to get out of here soon. I suspect a pharmaceutical company is sub-contracting without the states-knowledge or something. I’m tired of being a second class citizen in here.

I read somewhere that teenagers retain forty percent more when they get more sleep. The amount of quality REM sleep allows them to process information and think about new ways to approach situations and incorporate new skills. I am getting more sleep than I have ever had in my life. So much sleep that it doesn’t feel good to sleep anymore. 14-16 hours a day is not the way our behavioral cycle is naturally supposed to rotate.

A lot of what I learned is that I never want to forget this experience, ever. Whether I climb above it or sink down into more sorrow and eventually sweet death, I’ll never forget what I’ve seen and Jack, a friend of mine, finally got around to doing my “hook,” or first crappy tat. I traded one jar of peanut butter for my first tattoo and it was all done with a sharpened staple melted into the end of a pen. The ink was just charcoal from a burnt piece of paper mixed with some water and my arm bled like crazy. I got this crazy but talented black kid named Crispy to design it for a candy bar. I said I wanted a sun with an acrylic “S” in the middle and he created a really funky design for me to use. I can’t have the sun on my face so I want to at least have it somewhere on my body.

Why did I need to learn that laptops are the best thing on the market to steal right now? People don’t pay any attention to them and you can take them easily from airports. Why did I need to learn a few different ways to steal car? Why did I need to learn that Home Depot accepts returns for cash without receipts? Why did I have to meet new guys who can get me the same drugs I’m trying to stay away from?

There’s a bond when you spend even a little time with somebody in jail. They trust implicitly that you’re not a fucking cop. It’s like a confessional disguised with bragging in here. The people to avoid in county are the ones who won’t tell you what’s going on in any part of their lives. The troubled ones that are on the phone all the time and have that crazy haunted look in their eyes.

My sister has been up to visit. I watched as her belly swelled up with life and then one day she brought a little girl wrapped in soft blankets to see me. It was my first glimpse of my sister’s little girl, Kalinn, and she’s amazingly beautiful even behind bulletproof glass. Good for her. Everyone has given me and Alecia shit about our lives and our decisions, but she’s accomplished something beautiful. Thank you, Alecia. You might never know how much it meant to have you visit me then, but to see my amazing niece the other day was truly awesome! The best I’ve felt about anything in a long, long time.

The only means by which I have to see myself in here is the piece of corroded stainless steel above the combination stainless steel sink and toilet. It is old and covered with toothpaste flecks and other bodily fluids too numerous to get into. I bring this up only because of the reflection of the person I see looking back at me.

It’s been close to 5 months now and the eyes that stare back at me are still the pale eyes that have been there since I came in. My eyes that have won me friends with a glance, broadcasting their stern defiance. Eyes that look better to be allied with, but I’m not trying to convey that I am a badass in any sense of the word. Even though I have come along way in these months from the soft sickly man that shuffled through the doors and lay in his bunk for the first month, barely eating and shitting arduously one day a week. The food is repulsive as always but its minimal nutrition is feeding my wiry frame. No bulk, just aggressively strong sinew. The body is healing, but the mind… the mind is still not right, the decision to live isn’t always the easiest one. I look in the mirror and I still see the same eyes peering out from beneath the dirty film. The dark circles are shrinking but still gaunt. My skin is far paler than it has ever been since the Texas sun first laid its kiss upon me so many years ago. All that I have done and all that I am as a man, all that I have learned has come down to this reflection of a person I do not even know in the mirror.

The talk around the block is always the same. Typical clucking braggadocio about loose women or what they will be doing with their wives when the mythical period of punishment and atonement is finally over. The sex, the beer, the freedom to be nothing. No talk of the magic dew on the grass as you struggle into the shower before climbing into a truck for a day of working wherever. No talk of life, just the fantastical rewards of men that have survived a battle. The battle with their government. The battle that others have forced them to wage in their own minds. See the demons you are, or have in you, with no distractions from everyday life! Nothing will make you not feel what you are.