God’s Gunner’s, Booty Bandits, & Bad Boys
By R25288 ( c ) 2006
Chapter Six
Yi’l Be OK
“Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shall deal bountifully with me.”
Mas’chil of David; A prayer when he was in the cave. Psalm 142:7
“A nation should not be judged by how it treats it highest citizens, but its lowest ones-and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom.
I was awakened from my nap by ring…ring…ring…the phone’s ringing. Quick, get up, and get the phone. I started to roll out of bed to get the phone, but my eyes opened, and I saw the prison cell door. The horror! I’m still here. It’s not my phone. My body was here, but my mind wasn’t, yet. No need to get up. Ring…ring. Is someone going to answer the phone, since I can’t, I thought to myself. Ring…ring. Oh well, maybe not. Ring…ring. What’s up? Isn’t this prison? Aren’t I under some type of protective management? Who’s minding the store?
Ring…ring. Are you kidding me? What time is it? I look out the door to see the wall clock. It is 12:45 pm. Where is everyone? Ring…ring…ring. Well, the caller is persistent, anyway. Probably the governor calling to give me a pardon. Yea, right. The phone stops ringing. I hear inmates yelling to each other through their cell doors. Those are the bad boys, because that’s definitely against the rules. I go back to lay down. Nothing much else to do.
His name was Howdy. He would come to my cell door five days out of the week, and meet my needs. It was his job, from serving food trays, and handing out laundry, to sweeping the floors. He was a trustee. He was white, sixtyish, and I never knew his crime. He said he had done four years, and had another four to go. He said he use to deliver pizza, when he was on the “outs”.
“Hey, whar ya in fer?” Howdy said to me, when I first met him. “They didn’t tell me,” I lied. I wasn’t about to say that I was former law enforcement, afraid for my safety. “Guess they just don’t know what to do with me.” “Yi’l be OK,” he replied. “Wan’ somethin’ to read?” “No, thanks,” I said. “Ya got anythin’ to eat?” Howdy asked. ”No,” I replied. “Dam’ I’m hungry,” Howdy said. Howdy was skinny, and always hungry.
Howdy was what’s referred to in prison, as a “runaround.” Someone whose job it is to run around and get those locked up in cells twenty-three-plus hours a day, forms, sheets, clothes, towels, hygiene items, underwear (every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday-when you’re allowed out of your cell for five minute showers), toilet paper, clean uniforms, socks, meal trays, and about anything and everything legal to have. Staff delivered the mail.
Sometimes, you could hear another inmate going off on a runaround, because they didn’t get salt and pepper with their meal, or didn’t like the shape of the socks they were given. Sometimes, the inmate with more than criminal behavior as their problem, as in, psychiatric problems, would accuse the runaround of stealing from them. This, of course, was impossible, because the doors were locked.
I remember one of those types, when I first got into administrative confinement. He was in the cell next to me. Day and night, he would strain his voice, by projecting a Linda Blair devil type voice from “The Exorcist,” and yell out, “God will punish you!” Stretching out the word God. The walls were thin. He managed to jolt me out of my sleep, more than once, with his admonishment.
“Will,” to me meant the future, as in, “You will be sorry.” And as far as I was concerned, God was doing a pretty good job, right now, in the present, with punishing me. I believed it couldn’t get any worse. But, what did I know?
“He restoreth my soul.” Well, I don’t know if it was restored, but I slept most of the next two days. The trauma of prison, can be very tiring. I wonder if Martha thought so, too? Of course, she hadn’t arrived yet.
I was awakened by an officer knocking on my door. “Hey, you want a roommate? He’s just like you.” The black officer asked. “He’s just like you. So you want a roommate?” The officer repeated. So, I said, “OK.”
He then slid a blank form through the edge of the door, and said, “Sign that.” The form said I was willing to have a roommate under the following conditions, with no reason stated. So, I just wrote in, “Under similar circumstances.” I slid it back to the officer, and he left.
So, I’m getting a roommate. Well, I wonder what, “Just like you means?” Does that mean he’s short, white, bald, old? I came to find out it meant he also had a law enforcement background. OK, how much can I do to clean up this small area. Where is my maid when I need her?
After a while, a tall, slender, white, with hair, young looking man, entered the cell. I stood up, extended my hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Chris.” “Hi, I’m Tom.” (I do not use real names throughout this book, except my own, and other authors, the Bible, and real entities).
Tom was nothing like me. This wasn’t the first time that the DOC (Department of Corrections) and I would have a difference of opinion, nor the last. However, it is just a microcosm of society, and I met many good, honest, humane officers, and staff there.
Tom was Jewish, and married with children. He had been sentenced to five years in prison as a sex offender. He said he only kissed her breasts, and she was almost sixteen. It was all more than I wanted to know, or hear.
But as far as a roommate went, he was OK. He was clean and he showered. He had two years of college, so he was someone with whom I could carry on an intelligent conversation. He had a supportive family, with money. That, and not being a gay Conscientious Objector, or Vietnam War protester, probably contributed to him being released in 2003. Three years before me, and I didn’t kiss anyones’ breasts. He is today listed as a sexual predator.
My father, Dr. William Eckhardt was a Peace Researcher. After twenty-five years of research, he wrote in his last book (Civilizations, Empires, and Wars), in 1992 (the year of his death from prostate cancer) that eighty percent of all war deaths are civilians, and the country that starts the war loses more often.
Dad had been trained as a Clinical Psychologist, and had been a consultant to the courts. He had told me that sex offenders had a low rate of success, as far as a total cure went. The fact that Tom has been out three years, may mean we may be making some progress in that area.
I accepted Tom, not his behavior, and we got along fine our sixty-eight days together, in that small cell. I know nothing I’ve done in this life warranted me going to prison, so I chalked it up to some past life crime, that I was now doing karma for, or God giving me a new opportunity. You see, I view the cup as half full, not half empty.
I wrote this between December 12th, 2001, to December 23rd, 2001:
May God Bless You, Too
Prison is but a stumble, Ye not let me fall
The window in my cell will not completely close
Early in the morning, I feel your cool draft, I hear your call
I see surrounded by flood lights, the fences of twelve foot, topped by barbed wire
In your daylight from my prison window, I see your light blue sky, and your light green grass, your white clouds, like cotton balls
Your words I read, of forgiveness, and in faith, you abolish my tire
Salvation has come through the crack in the window, through the sunrays on the wall, through the tears on my cheek
In hope, and in faith, Ye not let me fall
The screen mesh on the window is covered in lint and soot, the hole is filled with tissue
The slate of window is stained with remnants of grass, and a cloudy film of age, unclean
But I still see your blue sky, and the barbed wire to my right
Another warehouse of your human souls, fifty feet straight ahead
With a treetop above it, I see your light
Your word is the seed that is now taking firmer root
Deliverance is coming, but not yet today
Much still to learn to follow your Way
I say the miracle of life resides in this temple body
It can produce life, like the earth produces plants
Plentiful and never ending unto eternity, which is mine
The lights of three, of four cell windows, I see from my window, shine tonight
Some cells have no windows, housing your human souls, without your natual light
And the hum of the air conditioning in the medical trailer between us, hums off and on
The Amtrak train sounds its’ horn at dawn
Prison is now my sanctuary, as I read and learn more of thy Words
A 6′ or 7′x9′ cell, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Hello, my name is of He, and I am an inmate
I am a sinner, I am strong, and I am meek
Yesterday at dawn, the frog called your name
The trouble and worries of my mind left
And your calm of thoughts came
My next door neighbor cursing and yelling awakens me
Finally on day sixty-five, the heat works briefly, another miracle to see
Prison is my seminary
To let events happen, to let it just be
Today, I saw my fathers’ hand in me
I sang your praise last night
Cells away, a song replied, without the light
An unknown inmate knocked on my cell wall, and said in the night
“May God Bless You”
December 23rd, with weekend warriors
I replied, “And May God Bless You, Too”
“A freedom fighter must take every opportunity to make his case to the people.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Road To Freedom
To do that, we both broke the rules, because communication within confinement is verboten. I heard beautiful spirituals sung by beautiful black voices to the appreciation of all who heard, except the authoritarian officer who silenced them. Sometimes they were racist, sometimes they were sadistic, always, they had the power, so they were right, even when they were wrong.
You could buck it, and you also could get maced, placed naked in an isolation cell, with a thermostat they controlled, or they could kill you, which has happened, and it is all documented. Just entered the name into any search engine of Frank Valdez. His wife has a website up under geocities.
I was often placed into isolation without my law work or my religious materials. I filed Inmate Request forms for the same. You see that is required first, before you can file a grievance. You are also not allowed to keep a copy of your inmate request form. The staff then have ten days to respond to your request. Then they can say they never received it, and you start all over again. The system is in need of change, and an Ombudsman/woman/men/ or women, that inmates may have faith in, so that their voices may be heard.
“This would be a hazardous life, and I would be apart from my family, but when a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Road To Freedom
My first sixty days in prison when I was allowed to call no one, not even my attorney or family, and my grievances were never responded to, and have probably been destroyed, they finally told my family that I had written down the wrong numbers, and that was why I couldn’t get through. I’m sure you have problems remembering your own phone number, too. Yeah, right. Of course, when I requested a copy of my phone log listing the numbers I had written down, they were never forthcoming with them, because they knew I had written them correctly the first time. They too, no doubt have been destroyed, from all my request in October, November, and December of 2001. I was finally allowed to call my family in January, 2002.
And if you were to ask the DOC did they lock me up for refusing to sign my name, they will tell you that it never happened, They will just tell you that they did lock me up for refusing to follow an order. And the order that I refused to follow, well it was to sign my name. I refuse to sign false confessions, or forms that say it is OK to take away my rights. Yes, Virginia, The DOC and I have truly honest differences of opinion, sometimes.
On November 1st, 2001, I was granted a Motion For Bail Pending Appeal. However, I was already in prison, and the DOC didn’t know how to deal with it, as so few of us get bail pending appeal, and never once you’re in prison. So, whenever I left my cell shackled and handcuffed behind my back, I took my Order with me. For simplicity, it was a Get Out Jail Free card. I begged everyone to please take it out of my pocket, read it, and let me call my attorney or family to arrange bail. No one did. All of my grievances were never responded to. So, on December 6th, 2001, with no legal representation present representing me, my bail was revoked. Once in the belly of the beast, it will not let you go, and will do everything in its power to bring you back, which it does with every two out of three of us, within three years of our release from prison.
“Little can be said in favor of prison, but enforced isolation is condusive to study.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Road To Freedom
In any psychosexual-sociological study presentation, it is important to understand the language, the semantics, the meanings given to words and terms, and their conotations and denotations.
Webster’s 1st through 10th edition Dictionaries have no definition for gunnin or booty bandits. If it did it might read like this:
Gunnin-verb, one who guns; a gunner, not in the military sense, rather in the prison sense; a person who masturbates himself, usually in public, to the back of a female staff’s body or head; as only done by male inmates, it is heterosexual in nature; it is maturbation, normally to climax, unless observed and stopped by staff; a form of rape; not to be interpreted as a homosexual act, although homosexuals may also be gunners, however the object of their affection/interest/desire would be a male. However I never witnessed homosexual gunnin in prison. Gunnin usually falls into the ethnic background of the African-American, but not always. Done normally or abnormally, depending on your point of view, by men who view women as sexual objects to be used for the gunners pleasure. I was not a gunner, and I would interrupt them whenever I became aware of it. More on this later.
Booty Bandit may be described as a noun: one who likes booty, sometimes spelled boody-a vulgar slang.
What is defined from the dictionary, regarding booty:
“1. Plunder taken from an enemy in time of war.
“2. Goods or property seized by force or piracy.
“3. A valuable prize, award, or gain.
“Slang-the buttock.
“Vulgar slang:
“a. The vulva or vagina.
“b. Sexual intercourse,
“African American Vernacular English, from obsolete Black English booty,
“body, perhaps alteration of body”
It should not be confused with “a bootee which is usually a knitted shoe for a baby, or bootie which is an ankle length disposable foot covering, used by medical personnel and others in sterile environments.”
So, a Booty Bandit, as used here and in prison, is used as a noun; one who likes booty, as in ass; one who takes ass, as in a bandit, a thief; however, while used in the prison environment, the conotation usually infers to anyone interested or engaged in homosexual sex; as used in the situational setting of prison, it does not necessarily denote that a Booty Bandit is a homosexual, although the act itself is a homosexual act. The denotation cannot be accomplished without two people involved, and aside from the act of rape, usually involves two consenting male adults.
When the system places normal men in cages with other men and no women, like animals, and denies them conjugal visits with their wives, or girlfriends, the system perpetuates homosexuality.
A Booty Bandit is one who enjoys and engages in normally consensual homosexual acts. The enjoyment may be brief, and may involve pychosexual/psychoreligious emotions of guilt, denial, and self-loathing for engaging in the homosexual experience/act.
The prison Booty Bandit usually sees himself as the active male role model versus the passive one. He is the inserter, not the inserted. He is into the top position, not the bottom. He usually cares little for his partner’s needs being met, or reciprocity. On the streets he may be on the down low, as in not letting his female partner/s know of his bisexuality, or he may on the outs, only engage in heterosexual activity.
At one time, I and another experienced inmate counted fifty inmates in our institution of approximately thirteen hundred inmates that we basically knew were engaged in non-closeted homosexuality, or approximately four percent. As I was at this institution over four years, I found this figure fairly consistent, and I guesstimated another approximate two to four percent were closeted, and chose not to engage in homosexuality in prison, and had told me so. I believe homosexuality in prison mirrors that in our society at six to eight percent. The fascinating item in my study, next to the WCC(worst crime committed) statistic, was the twenty-one percent who called themselves straight, but had more than one adult gay experience. That to me, represents a much larger percentage of bisexuality, than we may be aware of.
I believe the difference could come from being a gay interviewer, and the subjects knew I would not condemn them for their bisexuality, if admitted, where a straight interviewer might.
Every interview began with asking for their ID card. The data there provided answers to questions one through eight:
1. Name;
2. ID number;
3. Date of birth;
4. Hair color;
5. Eye color;
6. Height;
7. Weight;
8. Race.
Th rest of the questions:
9. Nickname/s;
10. Number of times in prison;
11. First time in prison, subsequent times, charges, pleas, and sentence/s;
12. Where incarcerated, and years there;
13. Number of DR’s-Disciplinary Reports, dispositions, why, charges, guilty or not;
14. Which prison you liked best, and why;
15. Which prison you liked least, and why;
16. EOS-End of your sentence;
17. Your educational level;
18. Married, and number of marriages;
19. Number of children, sex and age;
20. Age of wife;
21. Mother alive, and supportive;
22. Father alive, and supportive;
23. Number of siblings, and supportive;
24. Age and sex of sibling/s;
25. Birthplace;
26. Raised where;
27. Vocation on the streets;
28. Number of hospital stays;
29. Most serious medical condition today;
30. Favorite sport;
31. Favorite TV show;
32. Most favorite movie;
33. Most favorite color;
34. Favorite song;
35. Current favorite day of the week-why;
36. Favorite day of the week on the streets-why;
37. Greatest lifetime achievement;
38. Worst crime committed;
39. Best time in prison;
40. Worst time in prison;
41. What one thing you’d improve in prison;
42. Tatoos, first, last, and meanings;
43. Have you ever had to deal with racism, or homophobia in prison;
44. How do you handle the lack of privacy in prison;
45. Sexual orientation;
46. Do you consider yourself a violent person-most you’ve done and received;
47. Most violent thing you have seen in prison;
48. Most violent thing you have seen on the streets;
49. Do you have gold teeth, and if so their meaning;
50. Do you condider yourself a leader;
51. HIV status;
52. First sexual experience;
53. Best sexual experience, and why;
54. Current job in prison;
55. Did you have a fear of prison the first time you got here;
56. Future plans;
57. What will you need to help you when you get out;
58. Were you ever in a JDC (Juvenile Detention Center);
59. What are your thoughts on gambling in prison;
60. What are your thoughts on drugs in prison;
61. What are your thoughts on gays in prison;
62. What are your thoughts on gunnin in prison;
63. What are your thoughts on gangs in prison;
64. What was your religious upbringing;
65. Do you believe in God;
66. If so, what is God to you;
67. What are your thoughts on prison;
68. Do you belong in prison;
69. Do we need prisons, and if so, for whom;
70. What are your thoughts on 9/11;
71. What is your political persuasion, and have you ever voted;
72. Have you made friends in prison that you think you’ll continue to communicate with once you get out, and if so, how many;
73. Do you belong in prison;
74. If your son was coming to prison, what would you tell him;
75. What to you was the greatest lesson of prison.
For whatever reason, once they gave me their ID cards, and they saw me write it all down on paper, honesty basically followed. Pedophiles even told me they were pedophiles, but on the pound, the general prison grounds, their crime was usually known as something else more acceptable.
I only had one person stop the interview, after I had obtained the answers to questions one through eight. He was not comfortable with continuing, so we didn’t. His incomplete data is not used in this study.
One person also started the interview three times, but continually got interrupted, and had to leave. I gave up doing an interview with him, and his incomplete data is also not used here. I finally decided just to number everyone one through one hundred. I never took the study, or answered the questions.
For a brief while, some inmates thought I was an FBI plant, which I have never been. The third person who requested to be anonymous won a four year football scholarship. He was in on first degree murder charges, which he didn’t share at the time of the interview, but I subsequently found on the DOC website. A few said of the interview, that it was the best experience they had ever had in prison.
Once they had told their stories, I somehow felt like an accomplice. I had taken on their secret, their burden. I still have not been trained in Christ enough, because while I maintained their confidentiality from other inmates during my whole stay there, I was sickened by their lack of compassion, their egotistical, narcisstic personalities and attitudes. I was saddened by their anger, hate, misfortune, lack of education, opportunities, lack of moral and ethical training, their lack of love, and God in their lives.
Worse than their crimes, and lack of humanistic values, was the disturbing realization that we, as a society, were offering them nothing to change their behavior, and as such, we have all become accomplices to their future murders, rapes, and child abuse. All we have done is keep them away from us for awhile, because ninety percent of them will get out, in worse shape, with more hate, than when they first got here. Ask yourself, at the next horror news, why did that former inmate rape, kill police officers, and other vs. going back to prison. What is going on in our prison, that people would rather take your loved ones lives, and their own, than to return to live in prison. When death is more attractive than prison, it is time to reevaluate our prisons, and how we treat our fellow human beings there. No other country in the world experiences this like we do. Why is that?
Thomas Szasz wrote in his book, The Manufacture of Madness, that psychiatry basically perpetuates more illnesses through more new names, and forms, and therefore guarantees their future employment.
So, too, in the criminal prison industrial complex, judges, court administrators, and legislators promote the manufacture of crime, by labeling more crimes, and extending punishments with mandatory-minimums type laws. We now incarcerate over two million Americans annually, with approximately one half of us being first time non violent offenders, that should never be in prison to begin with. Prison is too expensive for first time non violent offenders. We need to develop more alternatives and options like European and the Canadian governments have done. Your grandmother on Medicaid needs food, medication, and housing, but we are cutting her benefits to pay for unnecessary, and too long prison terms, while offering nothing but hate and no values education or rehabilitation, only a continuing cycle of imprisonment.
“The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Road To Freedom
Some thoughts on gunnin in prison taken from question number sixty-two in my survey, and not everyone answered the question:
1. “Personally, I think it’s sick, perverse.”
2. “I dislike it-it perpetuates sex offenses-gunnin someone down, against their will, is a sex offense, I think.”
3. “I’m against that.”
4. “That’s their thing.”
5. ”I’m a gunner-women should let us gun ‘em more-we’re not touching ‘em.”
6. “Against it-when public.”
7. ” Totally sick-she ain’t in here to be gunned at-here to do her job.”
11. “Something unstable there for person to do that-I try not to judge.”
13. “Hideous.”
14. “I love it. I do it every now and then.”
18. “I gun a bitch down quick, so it don’t make a difference.”
19. “Get your groove on-never gone to jail for-just be careful.”
20. “Infatuation-memories.”
23. “Should be charged with outside-lewd and lascivious-if gunnin staff-gunnin a book OK.”
24. “I ain’t never done that before in my life.”
29. “It’s a sickness.”
30. “I don’t too much like it, I guess.”
32. “I had someone do it to me yesterday-interesting.”
33. “Perverted as fuck-but that’s them.”
34. “Stupidest thing an inmate could do.”
38. “Disgusting, perverted, sick.”
41. “To each his own.”
44. “That’s a psychological problem.”
47. “I detest it.”
53. “Disgusting-should not be allowed-not where everyone can see.”
55. “Keep it up.”
56. “Disgusting.”
58. “I don’t think you should gun an officer, but inmates OK, if they let you.”
60. “Mental health problems.”
64. “Perverts.”
65. “Gotta do what ya gotta do in a sexually deprived environment, and nature calls.”
68. “Disrespectful-don’t like it at all.”
69. “I don’t understand it.”
70. “I use to do it-only in county jail-if woman looks at it while doing it-I’m all for it, if not, it’s perverted.”
72. “I think it’s foul-disgusting-actually raping that woman unless she initiated.”
74. “To each his own-long as not gunnin me.”
81. “Let him do his thing if person gets off that way.”
82. “Disgusting-repulsive-outrageous-uncalled for-demeaning.”
83. “Stupid-I don’t understand how you get off looking at the back of a persons’ head.”
85. “Alright-cool.”
88. “Oh my God-Yes, Man-I see nothing wrong with it-safest sex in prison-wish they wouldn’t gun me-desperate to gun me-locked up so long.”
89. “They have a problem with-got to stop it-wouldn’t know how to stop it.”
90. “They shouldn’t allow that-a waste.”
91. “Disgusting-utterly appalled-lowest a human can go.”
92. “Dumb-the way the cats be doing it-gunnin a tower that can’t see ya(some guys gun the towers on the Rec yard when staffed by a female).
95. “Shit, hell no.”
97. “It’s fun.”
100. “Long as it ain’t me, man, they can do what they want to do.”
“Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weekness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality-all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.
“Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity.”
Nelson Mandela, Long Road To Freedom
“And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you,”
John 16:22
