“Just catching some rays.”
Tracks
“I tried to make some money the honest way as a kid. I tried shoveling snow. I tried a newspaper route. I stuck with it for awhile, but one day I was collecting money on my route and these older kids robbed me. There were three of them. They were 16 or 17. I fought hard. I told them: ‘I worked hard for this money.’ But they held me down and took it anyway. It was $27. And that made me feel so powerless. And I remembered that I knew someone with a knife. And I thought: ‘I’m going to steal that knife and deal with this firmly.’ I found those boys at an arcade. Nobody got killed. But I hurt them. I wouldn’t say that I felt proud after stabbing them, but I felt like they got what they deserved. I felt vindicated. Even today, I have trouble sympathizing with them. It’s funny how that works. When someone wrongs us, we want the maximum amount of punishment. But when we do wrong, we want the maximum amount of understanding and forgiveness.”
(Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York)
“I got caught up in a little something. I’ve got twenty days left. Nobody knows I’m here. I’ve got somebody updating my Facebook page for me. All my friends think I’m in Hawaii right now.”
(Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York)
“I was a good student. I did football, karate, basketball, all sorts of activities. I never skipped school. I first sold drugs when I was twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t a full time thing. Just whenever I needed money. My mom was raising four of us in a one-bedroom apartment, so we didn’t have money for clothes. I just needed enough to keep people from focusing on me. Just enough to keep moving. But as I got older, it cost more and more to stay up. Girls came into the picture. I wanted to impress them. I started dealing more and more, and all the other activities faded out of my life. I tried to study nursing after high school. I paid my tuition with drug money. But I lost focus after two years and fell back on drug dealing. I thought I could be double-minded. But it’s not possible. You can’t do good and bad at the same time. The bad always wins. There’s no such thing as Robin Hood. Nobody wants to hear that you’re dealing drugs to feed your family. Prosecutor doesn’t want to hear that. Society doesn’t want to hear that. The system doesn’t want to hear that. There’s a verse in the Book of Ezekiel, I forget which one, but it talks about this. It says something like: ‘If you do all good, and one bad, the good will not be mentioned.’”
(Federal Correctional Institution: Cumberland, Maryland)
“I was convicted of distributing a large amount of crack cocaine. I was offered sixty months to cooperate, but I turned it down. My family is still mad about that. They say I chose the streets over them. But I couldn’t bring someone else down with me, so they gave me five life sentences. I’ve been here twenty years. I’ve seen a lot of these younger kids come back two or three times already. I try to guide them but it’s no use. They only seem interested in finding a better way to do bad. The library is always empty. None of these young guys take advantage of the programs. I encourage them to get their GED’s while they’re here, but they laugh at me. They don’t respect their elders. Crack changed everything. So many of these young men saw their mothers and fathers doing drugs in the street. So many of their parents went to prison. These kids were forced to raise themselves. So they aren’t about to listen to anyone. I did the same thing to my kids. My son got murdered. My daughter had to raise herself because her mom is doing thirteen life sentences. But she’s the exception. She’s got every excuse to be bitter, but she doesn’t even talk about it. She’s got a 4.0 at the University of Virginia right now.”
(Federal Correctional Complex: Allenwood, Pennsylvania)
“It’s our first date. We met on Fire Island. I wasn’t even planning on going out that night. I’d already drank half a bottle of Johnny Black so I was just going to stay in and read my Chelsea Handler book, but my friends promised to bake me cookies if I went to the club with them. So I went to buy three bags of cookie dough, and when I finally got to the club all my friends were making out with somebody, so I was like ‘this sucks,’ and I just started dancing by myself and eating the cookie dough. Then I saw him by the DJ booth and we made eye contact so I went over and started sharing my cookie dough. We never actually spoke. Then a few months later I ran into him on the subway.”
(2/3) “Even in special education, our curriculum is based on Common Core standards. I’ll have to teach about seasons to a child who doesn’t know his own name. I’m expected to teach To Kill A Mockingbird to a classroom full of nonverbal students, some of whom may be wearing diapers and haven’t learned their ABCs. I think it’s insulting to tell students what they’re going to learn, regardless of their abilities and needs. But I try to work some magic and design a lesson plan where everyone in the class can take something away from the story. For the least advanced students, we just use To Kill A Mockingbird to practice the alphabet. Then I’m also expected to teach Algebra. I try my best using lots of velcro and lamination, but I can’t say that many of my students have ever learned how to solve for x. We spend so much energy on learning how to sit still. I think special populations should be focused more on vocational training like filling out forms and budgeting money—things that will give them confidence and prepare them for independence. But I keep my mouth shut and do my best to work within the system. When I first began teaching, my mentor told me: ‘If there’s anything about the system that you want to fight, just make sure it’s the hill you want to die on.’”
“I’m a union ironworker. I built New York City.”
“And I built him. He had chicken legs when I met him. Look at him now.”
“We’re living in sin.”
“Two weeks ago I ran away to Maryland to marry someone I met on Instagram. Yesterday I ran back home.”