What I learned in Solitary Confinement

The Hole is a prison concept that has become a matter of common knowledge even in normal society. Everyone knows what the Hole is yet no one knows what it is at all. Given that I'm a 'suffering can be a good thing' kind of guy, I feel that it may do well to share one of my experiences there. Let me tell you about one time in particular and how I found my rock bottom there. In my many years incarcerated, I have cumulatively spent years in solitary confinement, but there was one time that was easily the worst and simultaneously the most important of them. One time that was special in how it changed me. 

It was near the beginning of my Bit, my time in prison. During those years when I was still earning my name and not yet established.  One of the blocks 'loud boys' thought he could take something of mine by barking alone. Coming at me aggressively believing he could bully me into getting what he wants. The problem was I didn't bark back. Instead, I left him with a funny-looking cauliflower ear when it was over. 

That was something he and his little half-assed club, a smaller gang within the institution, just couldn't accept. Nobody was going to put their hands on one of theirs. Especially not some 'squirrely ass white boy'. I received word through the grapevine, or  PNN, "Prison News Network" as we called it, that they were coming. I was even offered help by the men who warned me. Help that I declined.

While I knew their offer was coming from a good and genuine place I also knew nothing was free and perception in prison is everything. I'd be indebted even if it was never spoken into existence. Additionally, there was no way I could allow these fellas to back me up here and not be perceived as a new member of their organization by the general population. I had many reasons to never affiliate with or join any of the gangs and that day didn't change any of them. Beyond that, this wouldn't be my first or even the tenth time I fought a gang alone. I had practice. 

There isn't much to share about the fight itself. Five of them came for me and I focused all of my attention on the same man as before. They would ultimately win however he'll remember me every time he looks at his reflection for the rest of his life. I had a reputation for making a point to permanently disfigure faces for that exact reason. So they'd never be able to forget me. Overall, it was a proper beating they gave me. I'm not angry nor do I hold any grudges toward them. That's just how things go. I got mine and they got theirs. We did what we do which resulted in me being in the prison infirmary.

This is actually where things went downhill. The administration, as I came to learn, already knew who'd beaten me and had been after a few of them for some time. However, the prison just couldn't pin anything on them directly or prove any of their suspicions. According to the staff speaking to me, all I had to do was say who attacked me and I'd be given lots of comforts and privileges. I told them I walked into a door. 

Needless to say, my smug defiance did not go over well at all. Especially given I looked like I'd been hit by a Mack Truck. What had begun as bribing immediately became threatening. You could say it escalated quickly. It was no longer what I could gain but rather what I would lose. I told them I understood completely so they asked me again what happened. I took a deep breath, look the lieutenant in the eye, and told him, "I walked into a fucking door".

I was then unceremoniously taken to the Hole. I could recover in there instead. I had already laid it down more than a few times in these cells all alone. A few days here, a week or so there. However, this time was different from the start. I wasn't simply being separated, I was being punished. They were about to take me to school because I was "gon' learn". 

I didn't realize what was happening right away but I quickly figured it out. The first meal tray thrown into my cell through the food slot told me everything. It was dirty and absent of food. So was the next and the next and the next. One tray after another, day in and day out, which someone had already eaten what food had been on it. No one spoke or responded to me for days. I became so hungry I began licking the grease and crumbs off of these trays.

Then one day I heard a voice ask through the steel door, "do you remember what happened yet?" I don't actually recall how many days it had been so far yet I still growled at the guard "Knuckle-up you bitch-made ass cop, you think this is the first time I've starved? Fuck you" In anger and spite I had already determined I'd show them just how self-destructive I could be. After all, I wasn't in prison by accident. A couple of days later I learned what 'meal-loaf' was. It's where the kitchen takes all of the items of that particular meal, puts literally all of it into a blender, and bakes the paste into a patty. They began feeding me again and that's all I had for the rest of the time I spent in there.

I ran out of songs to sing pretty fast. There was an unofficial gag order that prevented anyone from speaking to me in any way and I wasn't allowed to have books. It was just me, the walls, and the 252 blocks that made them. Days turned to weeks which then became months. There's not a lot to do in an 8×6 cell with just a rack and toilet. Yet I found ways to entertain myself. I'd pull individual squares of toilet paper and ball them up to shoot them like tiny basketballs into the toilet. Once the roll was gone, I'd pick up all the ones that missed and start over. 

I also twisted a roll of toilet paper into a sort of 3ft stick, wrapped it tight with thin strips of the sheet I had ripped, and put a bed hook from my rack on the end to make what I called a trap key. Putting it under the door I could stand it up to hook the downward-pulling spring lock that secured the food slot trap in the center of the steel door to open it. This allowed me to look through the open slot and see what was going on in the block beyond my door on the upper range to pass the time. The guards at night would watch wrestling and even though it was far away and I couldn't hear anything, it was nice to just see something. I liked the wrestler Cain because I could always tell it was him even at that distance.

Months passed and I was still in there for Y2K. Apparently, I had missed out on all of the world-ending buzzes that had being going around in the lead-up to January 1st, 2000. That said, I was genuinely caught off guard that night when the inmates in the prison began burning everything that could possibly burn. Including other men in segregation with me. The world was ending apparently. At first, it was a welcome bit of entertainment as I watched the guards panicking and trying to figure out what to do through the open slot in my door. That quickly changed when I watched them abandon the block entirely. Inmates were burning their plastic mattresses and thick black smoke was filling the air. With the fire alarm blaring and useless sprinkler systems soaking the lock beyond my door I realized that no one was going to open the doors as the smoke made its way into my cell. Men died in there that night. I survived by jamming my head into the toilet and sucking air from the pipes each time I continuously flushed it. I remained there for what felt like hours. 

Later I found myself laying on the floor after the smoke had dissipated looking up at the ceiling. My body ached and refused to do much. I was talking to myself again which had become a habit over the passing previous seasons. "No one came to save you, dude." I said laughing to myself in reference to the fact that they had left us in there to die. Then my mind kept running with it. "Dude…. No one is coming to save you." 

For the first time, I understood my situation and my life in general. Not only was I on my own but everything I had ever done made my current circumstances inevitable. I went all the way back to the kid I beat up in the 6th grade which began my beef with the gang in my neighborhood and was able to follow a perfectly unbroken line to me laying on that concrete floor. It all made sense, it was so obvious. The world didn't do this to me, it was just reacting and responding to me. A chain of events where each horror I had been through was nothing more than a consequence of my own actions. Consequences that prompted my next action and subsequently led to another consequence. On and on and on, it was so simple in its by design. After four odd months in that room alone, I realized it was all me, everything was and is my fault. No one was coming to save me because I was the villain. I always was. 

After that, I didn't care about being in there any longer. It went from feeling like torture to feeling natural. Being in prison in general no longer caused me conflict either. I wasn't straddling the fence living in there while thinking about the outside world. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. It all belonged to me now. 

The administration eventually gave up on me. I was napping when my door unlocked for the first time in nearly 6 months. They just acted like it never happened and honestly I didn't care anymore. Back on the compound, I moved my few belongings from the vault to my new cell and life went on for the next dozen years or so. The only thing that was different was me. The Hole became an example of how the best things that have ever happened to me are the worst things that ever happened to me.