86. Excerpt from Earl Bishop’s Prison Journal
1-12-09 (continued):
It’s even worse with the guards, because they actually are in “the shit” everyday, they’re just too clouded with fake-superiority to see what’s really what.
They swagger around like they’re the ones in control, but they’re blind. They, more than anybody, see the prison groups as “prison gangs,” like a bunch of high school kids running together to boost each other’s self esteem.
I don’t blame them either, I’d think the same thing if I were in their position.
The groups, they do look pretty rough. Gangster. Prison tats, shanks, the whole nine. But you gotta be educated about this shit.
I’m telling you, American History X will school you.
I’ve been here now for long enough to see what the fuck’s really going on: these gangs, their member initiations have got nothing to do with being part of the group as a whole.
The act of joining a gang serves one purpose: to ease the new member’s own state of mind.
People aren’t so unselfish that they’d stab somebody in the back just so that other person’ll be safer. They do it because they hope that, if the situation comes up where things are reversed, that person’ll do the same for them. Because they couldn’t live afterwards (literally) if they hadn’t at least tried.
Its security, the same reason kids cry during sleepovers at their friend’s house or on their first day of school.
Watch a little boy whose mom just drove off and left him standing in the playground of his new elementary school, around a bunch of other kids and way-too-happy teachers that he’s never seen before. Look at that kid’s face. You know what you’re going to see?
Fear, that’s what. That kid’s scared out of his fucking mind.
That kid, alone on the playground for the first time, he’s scared to death because he’s having that moment of realization that everybody has at some point in their lives, that most people spend the rest of their life trying to cope with.
He’s realizing that same mom who’ll stab somebody in the back for him, she’s not always going to be there.
And when she isn’t, it never really mattered that she was ever there to begin with.
That kid’s mother, she’s not there right then while he’s standing on that playground with his Transformers lunch box and oversized book bag; she’s not there to protect him when one of the other kids decides it’d be fun to pick up a rock and beam the boy in the back of the head.
And figuring that out, that he’s completely fucking alone, that little boy’s so lost he just sits down, pisses his pants, and cries until he can’t see nothing anymore, until he falls asleep with a crying-headache so he can at least dream that somebody’s shelling out beat-downs in his name.
Because that’s all he can do. Dream.
That’s the scale. You’re born alone and you die alone, and all that time in between’s spent pretending that both ends don’t exist.
And how much better can you deal with that depressing shit than by banding together, fighting the inevitable?
We’re all self-centered animals. That kid on the playground, he’d stab somebody for his mom just as quick as she’d do it for him, but only as long as he knew the unwritten contract would never be broken.
That agreement, its safety in numbers.
It’s Boyz n the Hood. It’s Goodfellas. It’s Scarface. Casino. The Godfather, all three of them. Worker’s unions. Corporations. Sports teams. Native tribes in Africa. Al-Qaeda. The U.S. government. Any government. Fuck, the Catholic Church. It’s all the same.
What I’m saying, I guess, is that prison gangs seem childish, but they’re just human. Like an adult security blanket.
And I’m not saying they’re immature; these men got the right idea if you ask me.
Sleeping good at night’s all about sanctuary, all about peace of mind.
Plus, with these gangs, you don’t have to worry about being lonely either. Everybody’s got a deep need for companionship, whether they admit it or not, and these men figured out a way to satisfy that need in an oppressive establishment without having to cry or lie down on some shrink’s couch. That’s not an easy achievement.
By joining together, they’re making sure they’ve got somebody to turn around and say something—anything—to without being scared that person’s not going to say something back.
Which, sometimes, can be worse than death.
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