My apologies. It’s been eight months since I published Notes from inside the FDOC – Volume 1. Eight months is a long time, even when you’re on prison time, like Sonny. But it’s not just my laziness in writing that took me this long to get this done. It’s also the regular breaks in communication, among other things, as you’ll see.
Soon after our last telephone conversation, after I published Volume 1, I got an email from Sonny that read like this:
Sorry about not calling but this place has been nothing but chaos. We came off one lockdown and went right into another. Then they let us off this a.m. again but we failed inspection so no phones or TV until they check again. I feel like I am one of the only few rational adults in my dorm…Thanks for checking on Rosa. (Rosa is Sonny’s mom; keeping up with her is the least I can do for him).
I was able to speak to her for 5 minutes in the inbetween. I will call as soon as possible.
But he didn’t call, and a few days later I get this email:
We’re just coming off lockdown but no phones yet. I will try when they come on.
Days pass, and he calls, but by then we need to catch up – as things come up in my life, and in his life, with his mom, and trying to get transferred so he can see her before she dies. And we only have these 15-minute windows to talk. So, we write emails to try to finish where we left off on the phone. Sonny is allowed a tablet for communication with the outside world, however restricted it may be. It’s at least something, but every now and then they take the tablet away, for “security reasons,” or something, and I’ll have radio silence for weeks at a time.
I will never forget my 8-1/2 years in FDOC,
how much it sucked not having my own space or any freedoms and being surrounded mostly by animals. How at any minute, all your meager possessions (which must all fit into one standard-sized footlocker) can be torn apart in search of contraband. How there were lines for every single fucking thing: a line to the toilet, the shower, the canteen, the phones, the water fountain. There were even lines to get into other lines. Hurry up and wait, was the saying.
So yeah, you’re going to have to wait for us to get our shit together sometimes. Sometimes it’s not just communication breaks. Breaking men is a daily job for the Department of Corrections. In the midst of dealing with all this, and trying to write this piece for you (and For what? I sometimes question myself), we’re also dealing with Sonny simply trying to keep it together in one of the hardest places on Earth to live:
I have been in a funk lately. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. I feel drained in every fucking way. I am only 2/3 of the way through this trip and I feel it in my fucking bones…So, with that being said, I apologize for being somewhat distant lately. You have been a good friend and I appreciate you. I am striving to come up out of my shit…Thank you.
And so I give him time (no pun intended, as he has plenty of it), and, as usual, weeks later, he does strive and come up and out:
A man died in my dorm Sunday. His name was Gallagher. He was 73 years old but he got up every day and went to work in the library. Not anymore. After breakfast he went back to sleep and never woke up again…
(In prison, breakfast is served at around 4am; it’s common for people to go back to sleep after breakfast.)
Very sarcastic and funny. I liked him and there are not many people around here I can say that about. I think he tried to kill somebody~I mean the reason he was in prison~but they probably had it coming. He had 8 more years left to serve and did not think he would live to make it out due to his heart condition. I think that is significant in that one’s thinking definitely impacts their health to a degree.
This is the real gonzo reporting I had imagined, all those years back, from inside a prison. This kind of reporting is hard in that it sacrifices our reporter, our narrator, the unsuspecting protagonist, Sonny, to bring these snippets of life inside to you. But there he is, at it again.
I’m hoping the next volume will be the last, considering any more communication breaks. We’re shooting for a scathing report on the state of the Florida Department of Corrections. I say it starts with communication; Sonny says it starts with food. But both are basic necessities, are they not?
