A Circumstantial Hustler

If you don't like the corner you're standing on, walk across the street. Just look both ways.

Who understands private conflicts? What leads to feelings? Where do epiphanies happen? When does logic split from emotion? Why do feelings supercede thought? How will humans cope?

Compass Star Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication piloted by a freed prisoner captaining a stolen pirate ship. Gold coins are worthy treasure, and your sharing them with us will bring you much good fortune in the future. Like receiving new posts, learning new things you’ve always wanted to know, and learning new things you’ve never wanted to know. Supporting my work, by becoming a free or paid subscriber, bestows upon you honorary employment here on the ship. Now start squabbing the decks, you landlubber.

Writing releases evolutionary forces that shape the structure of humanity. Think Bible or Koran. Humans are wired to gather and communicate, to group and criticize, to galvanize and cooperate. The original sin of knowledge was followed by the second sin: fratricide. If God created us in His image, the Devil created our death in his. This binary dichotomy still defines us even now, perhaps even more.

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Just a Circumstantial Hustler

I’ve always lived in mixed-race cultures. Even in prison, in the most race-segregated society, as my fellow convict Coleman points out, after race, prisoners live in a defined social strata: Color first. Crime second. Physicality third. Age fourth. Time fifth.

Krimənl

I’m in the second grouping of described criminals - Circumstantial Criminals. As such, I moved between the other two groups seamlessly. I’d grown up around career criminals: first as a dope-slinger in hi-school; then as a dope-slinger after hi-school. Funny thing is, I never got popped for drugs.

Coleman makes more points than can be highlighted, but the point below is perhaps the most salient. Prior to me living in prison, I was an”average citizen”. Now I’m not. My street corner changed for a while. And I was the one that changed it. That one afternoon changed my whole life.

I believe that most of y'all, the “average citizen”, have a perspective on crime, and criminals in general, that's coming from a logical place; that said, most of your conclusions are flawed because you're trying to understand a culture too drastically different from your own. You’re reasoning may be sound for your world but a lot of it is non applicable to us.

Y'all can't fix what you don't understand and trying to force a solution to fit into a white picket fence worldview ain't helping anyone either. You have to approach the problem, criminals, as we are. Not as you'd like us to be. We're not ever going to be you so quit thinking that the way you live is a goal for anyone beyond people like you.

Citizens saying “Behold the benefits of living on the straight and narrow!” While presenting a quite middle class life like a prize is proof most people don't understand. You're nice and all but a prison block is legitimately more appealing than that Leave It To Beaver bullshit.

I also grew up with addiction - mine and others. Winos, junkies, tweakers, and crack-heads - that’s just my friends and family. I’ve lived through situations that killed others. But the first time I watched a man slam heroin was when Skinhead Bobbie rolled in and then shit out 13 balloons. First time I seen that shit either! Then he cooked himself up a little treat.

Bobbie was a walking contradiction. Book-dumb as a box of rocks, but street-smart as a methed-up fox. Dude could not write a single check, but he could wash a hundred of them. He couldn’t fill out a credit card application, but he could hack an ATM in 30 seconds. Deadly lethal but had a kind heart. He made pillows!

I’ll never forget him stopping at the last second, needle poised to pop the skin. He looked up at me, minding his manners

“Did you want a tap?”

“Nah, man, I’m all good right now.”

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What’s your Hustle?

The essay below lays out the next layer of prison society. Within and between the above-identified incarcerated castes is added yet another classification index: What’s your existence in prison going to be? It’s still life, so it’s still living. How do convicts live a life in prison? Check out this website if you want to know.

Three guesses to which class I belonged. From the piece

If there a middle class in the prison system, it would most likely be the Hustler Class. People in this class know what skills they have, know what they want and, by golly, know how they’re going to get it.

There are a myriad of “hustles” – and even some state-paying jobs – that one may employ to bring in some sort of profit. A hustle can range from housekeeping activities like cleaning other people’s living areas or doing their laundry. They also can include creative things – such as arts and crafts, writing and personalized poetry, sewing and weaving purses. Hustles can swing from a positive side – such as culinary crafts, selling prison-made brownies, suckers, potpies, burritos and various other food products – to the borderline illegal and completely illegal, such as using one’s body to mule-in [smuggle in] contraband, taking classes and exams for other inmates, dealing drugs, gambling, and operating a prison store. People in the Hustler class may get occasional money from state pay or sent to them, but by no means is it enough to satisfy their determined needs. It’s often people in the Hustler class getting caught up in trouble and even acquiring new charges that may prolong their stay in the prison system.

That last sentence was the precipice I hustled on. I had a life outside waiting, so dying inside wouldn’t get me there. As a minority prison population, Whites have a program. Adherence was mandatory. Thriving between rocks and hard places presents unknown stress for most. It was another X on a square for me.

My prison journey was 247 days of non-stop first-of-a-kind once-in-a-lifetime never-seen-it-before experiences. From cavity searches to public defecation to gang-showers to chow hall riots. Rubber bullets to pepper spray. Shot Callers called Snickers with swastikas tattooed on foreheads. I’m down. But not out.

My first job inside came about at Lancaster State Prison. I was barely done being a fish, still learning how to act. Being yelled at by a CO once caused freakouts, now I just shrug and say “what?” Sarge wants to see you. Now wtf I think.

What do they call you. I just went with the most common mispronunciation of my last name - Lexel. He retorted - “not your name dumbfuck - I’m not your friend!” True that. Then he labeled me Librarian. It stuck. I did wear glasses, so yeah, I guess.

It changed my prison life. Maybe my whole life. Working with an LWOP double-murderer and a carjacker pulling 25-to-life improved my quality of life. Sounds weird, right? It’s a matter of perspectives. But one must be open to living on the street corner one finds oneself. That’s called living on the inside. So many complaining on the outside are actually choosing to live on their inside. That might be a problem, jus sayin.

Not just a piece of cake. It was a slice of Humanity.

We need more people with more perspectives, not more people with more identities. A self-expressed self-identity is a prison of the mind. It’s an inner-image, not based in outward reality, but rather, focused on inward introspection. It’s isolating insofar as it’s independent of other perspectives. It’s purity is its touchstone. Absolutism its enabler. Superiority its superpower. Fallibility its hubris.

Perspectives, on the other hand, are based in experiences. Some subjective, others objective. But always observable. Noticeable. Believable. Changeable. Flexible. Perspectives evolve and grow and recede on the arc of time. A Black human being will always be a Black human being. But a Black man was not always a Black man.

A Black man once was a Black child. Perhaps poor. Perhaps alone. As a grown Black man, he may be the same - poor and alone. Or, that same Black man may be a wealthy man, surrounded by family and friends. He’s still Black - an identity.

But his perspective has changed. His experiences in real life have had more impact and affected more change than the simple fact that he is Black. His Blackness is always there, always a part of his life. But if characteristics of Black Identity are victimhood, racism, and poverty, what happens when reality disproves that opinion?

My identity as a White man is plainly obvious. I’ve been described as white-bread. That’s cool. Because it’s objectively true. I’m white as hell! Blue eyes too! So yeah, that’s an identity. And with that identity comes so much historical baggage, I’d be afraid to ask a black porter to carry it.

My belief system, my morality, my personality is not based in whiteness. It’s based in community. Had I been raised in an exclusively all-white community, I concede my perspective might be colored (intended). Same with any homogenous society. Those raised in these societies can best be described as tribal.

America is acting tribal, but by and large, we are not. On December 31, 2020 I wrote a post about multiracial America. Over 6 million adult Americans report being multiracial. Think of that, they express an identity of being two or more races. So, what does that do to the hierarchy of oppressed/oppressor? Fucks it all up, is what it does.

Working that prison job as a clerk in the Sargeant Office allowed me freedom in a locked-down environment. I could exit/enter my cell at will, shop at the commissary at will, would not get searched, and I got extra privileges. Once a phone call to the wife. Cell and bunk changes. Access to office supplies. But after freedom, food was the ultimate payoff.

The first time it happened, Sarge yelled at me to clean the fuck out of the back room. Yessir. Then he yelled at me something I never heard him yell at me before start with the fucking trash can. Yessir.

Then I saw it: A perfectly positioned to-go clamshell. And then I smelled it. A Carnitas Burrito. Heaven wrapped up in a king-fucking-sized flour-fucking-tortilla. It could not have lasted 3 minutes.

Right on time, are you fucking done yet? Yessir. Then get the fuck outta here. Yessir. This happened about four times in five months. Every time it was the same yelled instruction. The LWOPer was a black dude that killed his girlfriend “and the nig** she was banging”, as he told it. He got yelled at too. So did the brown carjacker, who didn’t see the baby in the car seat on the last car he jacked.

Sarge was brown too, but he spread the love around to the colors. This was accepted practice, attempting to quell race conflicts. I took the food to my Shot Callers, paying rent. The last clamshell I got was the best ever: a massive triangle of 7-layer chocolate cake! There were 40 white guys on my block, and every one of them got some. That wasn’t a piece of cake. That was a slice of humanity.

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The article above is God-centric, so I get it if some reader eyes roll. Whatever. The following paragraph connected with me, as did the whole piece. Well worth a few minutes. How the hell does this fit into the whole prison narrative?

Over time I’ve learned that wisdom is needed to channel this rush of ideas in some healthy way. A rush of ideas, a mind aflame, is essentially a rush of creativity. So, while it can be dangerous, it is good, a gift even. God is a creator, and we are made in his image as little re-creators. In the mysteries of human ability, we first “create” in our mind, before creating in the physical world around us. These acts of mini re-creation point to God as the one true creator, the only one able to make something out of nothing, and the one working everything toward a coming age of perfect new creation. Unlike God, we always make something out of something else. This is true in a mind aflame as well. Things we have learned, remembered, intuited, seen, heard, or spoken before suddenly start lighting up in a storm of brand new connections in our brain, due to some kind of stimuli. Again, these flames are good flames, but they need to be managed wisely so that other good things don’t get burnt.

In prison, in those 247 days, I wrote over 150,000 words, the equivalent to 75 of my weekly Sunday posts. I read 180 books, including the Bible eight times. I read every book on religion I could hustle. But then again, I read every book I hustled.

At Folsom State Prison, where I lived for 3+ months, one of my jobs was R & R clerk. Receiving and Release was a great job for hustlers. Everything coming in and everything going out we touched. And the Sarge was a strong Black female that, according to the Lieutenant during a dispute over my employment, took a shine on me. Is that why she gave me free radios?

That’s another story that’s in the book I’m writing. The hustle here was that anyone getting a package paid rent. My fee was reading any books passing through. It’s just like the little free libraries you see in peoples yards, right?

Speaking of hustles, I had several, all requiring creativity. The most profitable was writing letters. Let’s back up - what the hell is profit in prison? Soups. Specifically, Top Ramen soups. My going rate was 20 soups a dictated letter. Dictated? Yeah, most convicts are functionally illiterate. They talk - I write.

If I created the letter, because I talked good, it was 30. Stamps were 10. Greeting cards 50. Sometimes, it was a three-way: Tattoo artist wants a letter; I don’t want a prison tat; Supported youngster does. Viola! I get soups, youngster gets his cred, and a love letter keeps the artists home fires burning.

Look at that, I finally got around to love. That is what perspective brings. An appreciation of others and their existences. Of who they are in the moment one meets them. The men I met in prison were just that: men. Some had committed unspeakable acts of violence. I worked with them, ate with them, lived with them.

Others never hurt anyone physically, just crushing souls financially. Then, there were drunk-drivers. Some of those were lifers because they killed people. But by the Grace of God went the fortunate few, like me, whose victims were saved by that Holy Grace. I was accosted by three convicts with family killed by DUIs.

Those experiences transformed my life. In one day room of 100 triple-bunks, I had the top, a Paisa the bottom, and a Black serial rapist the middle. One Shot Caller was a quad-murderer and paid me to write his letters. It’s not like you can say no. Another required 88 burpees in a row. I was bet on in push-up face-offs.

What does all of this mean? We find ourselves pushed without understanding who’s pushing. And why the pushing at all. Are we pushing in the same direction? Or are some pushing us apart?

We ask questions knowing the answers, yet refuse to acknowledge that others come up with different answers to those same questions. My perspective has been a musical chairs game of life. I still find a chair.

I’ll leave with an ask: Check out the website below. They mentored me while I was incarcerated. I now mentor my sisters and brothers living behind the walls. If this is possible, for you to cross a bridge in your mind to another perspective, consider becoming a mentor.

Thanks friends. Be well,

Ric