God’s Gunner’s, Booty Bandits, & Bad Boys
POSTED: August 20, 2006
By R25288 ( c ) 2006
Chapter Fourteen
Thoughts, & Bye Ma
1967 - Mike Wallace - 60 Minutes segment - “The Homosexuals”
“The dilemma of the homosexual:
told by the medical profession he is sick;
by the law that he’s a criminal;
shunned by employers, rejected by heterosexual society.
Incapable of a fulfilling relationship with a woman,
or for that matter with a man.
At the center of his life,
he remains anonymous.
A displaced person.
An outsider.”
Dear Gentle Reader,
Some comments about my current first prison writings, by authors, literary agents, publishers, attorneys, professors, community personalities, leaders, and others (available free at www.r25288.com, best read in order, but posted in reverse):
“I read the first 2 chapters of your book. Very readable, and engaging. I look forward to reading the rest;”
“I just read 3 chapters of the book…I had no idea that was there. I am totally in AWE! I LOVED IT!…I want to help you in anyway I can. This is TOO good. We must get this published. You are just TOO MUCH!;”
“I applaud your efforts, and have much solidarity with what you’ve done;”
“Applause from abroad;”
“I read a few pages. I’m utterly fascinated by what I’ve read. It’s not only interesting, but well written;”
“Chapter 4 was good. I enjoyed it, and the other 3 chapters. Keep up the good work. My wife say it must be good to get me to read it. That’s as good as it gets…;”
“Good luck! Be watchful though. In this country, there are very few people not out to rip you off;”
“I am really looking forward to reading your ms. I want to give it the time it deserves, so I’m not going to even look at it until I have several hours of uninterrupted time. I know that you have led a very full and varied life: I would think that the right publisher might be willing to take you on. I have only published with academic presses, so I’m afraid I don’t have any good suggestions for your project except to refer you to…;”
“You are an inspiration;”
“Wish you best success. A teasing title. Please keep me informed;”
“Our review team believes your work has commercial potential and we would like to proceed by offering to represent you. We feel…we can sell it;”
“Interesting. So, I knew you when…I can tell stories about you to the National Enquirer, right? I’ll make a bundle. Good luck;”
“Hi Chris,
“I wondered if you remembered me. We went to Franklin(Junior High School, Des Moines, Iowa) and Roosevelt(High School, Des Moines, Iowa) together.
“My daughter is graduating from high school(city, state) and I was reading her school newspaper and saw a reference to the Tinker standard. I did a google search and read some of the articles. I’m pretty sure we were both in Mr._s’ class at the time this happened. I don’t think I heard much more about it again until I was in law class in college(the University of _) as an undergraduate. I remember feeling a shiver go down my spine when I realized that the decision we were reading about was concerning someone I knew and the place I was at. In a way, your activities made me feel a little more connected to the world.
“I eventually received a couple of law degrees…I still get that same feeling when I see a reference to your case. I know I would not have had the courage to do what you did back then.” (I remembered him, and we’ve communicated since his email. Prior to that we had not seen or heard from each other since 1968. The Internet is wonderful.);
“Your writing style is quite good, and your story is interesting;”
“Upon reviewing your query letter for ‘God’s Gunner’s, Booty Bandits & Bad Boys, I would like to invite you to send your…manuscript to us;”
“Want a roommate?;”
“Happy to hear of your publishing kudos;”
“Good for you. Keep writing. Keep fighting!;”
”You have a powerful and important story to tell;”
“You’re a fantastic writer;”
“I want to write a book, too. How do you do it?;”
“Good luck and congratulations. You have already achieved what many writers are still striving for after years of struggling;”
”Hello there!!!! I’m a white male with a huge cock;): love to give and get a great fuck. I wanna meet some sexual friends; I don’t usually do this, but here is my email…;” (Is this what is referred to as fan mail, or a male fan? I’ll have to ask one of my attorney friends. For those of you with inquiring minds…I didn’t respond);
Several good attorneys are assisting me pro bono. Recently, I couldn’t remember a word, and said that I thought the word that I was looking for was “dedact”. So, I sent out a help notice. They all responded. While they were all correct, I liked this one the best: “Redact? Excise, amend, delete, omit, erase, expunge, and good old,’just forget it’…I believe you are probably thinking of redact. Let me know?” (I did, with thanks.);
“The way you describe your relationship with your buddy is outstanding…The reader keeps thinking the guy will succumb in the end. Wow;”
“Do you have a picture on your computer? How about sending it along. I’d like to know what such a sensuous man looks like;”
“I have to say, this tragic love affair you have going simply blows me away. The whole idea of it is classic. I wish the two of you were free to walk hand-in-hand toward the horizon;”
“You have a wonderful and interesting voice, the ability to nail down thoughts without being overly wordy;”
“The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.”
Senator Robert Francis Kennedy
From 2001 to 2006, I was imprisoned in Florida prisons for being a former Vietnam War protester, Conscientious Objector(on moral and ethical grounds), a lifetime pacifist, and a current gay Democrat. My beginning short chapters 1-14 are now posted free at www.r25288.com I am not James Frey, and it is all true and documented. I had been on the Executive Committee of the Pinellas County, Florida, Democratic Party, at the time of my sentencing.
It is a story of my time , and of the abuse I suffered as an openly gay man in prison. I was not a punk. I was a gay man. I was the new school, that refused to bend down to the old school. It is the story of my gay sexual experiences, and the love of my life, that I discovered in prison. We had eighty-eight intimate moments, without ever getting caught.
He is a twenty-six year old African-Amercan, who never in his life physically hurt anyone, but due to one of our draconian laws, must now spend the rest of his life in prison. He has no chance for parole or probation. His crime: robbing at age sixteen and again at age twenty-one. No one was ever physically injured, and the total taken and returned was less than $5,000.00. It is a story full of sex, violence, anger, pain, despair, hopelessness, hope, humor, spirituality, joy, love, and redemption.
Once for buying me something to eat, they locked my partner and me up, and being unaware of our relationship, placed us in a two person confinement cell, together, 24/7, for three weeks, as punishment. God is good! It was the best three weeks I ever spent. Prison turned out to be the biggest adventure of my life. This will also make a great movie. As a former reporter, I kept journals and copious notes of it all. The first book is written.
“As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing: as poor, yet making many rich: as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
The Second Epistle of Paul The Apostle To The Corinthians
6:10
I also have ten years of law enforcement experience, including Corrections, and I was trained by the United States Department of Justice as a Mediator.
I was sentenced by a straight, Vietnam Veteran, white Republican Judge, who was aware of my history and politics, and said so on the record. He did not approve of my history or politics. I was sentenced less than one month after 9/11/01, and I believe I was the closest thing to a terrorist that he could see. I have never been charged with treason, terrorism, or anything similar, I am a gay American patriot.
I helped win a United States Supreme Court case, that set a precedent in this country for Student Rights, as a plaintiff in Tinker v Des Moines, 393 US 503, 7-2, (1969). That will make a good book later.
For having no criminal intent, on an alleged charge that did not involve drugs, sex, violence, nor did I profit one dime; on my first lifetime felony charge, at age fifty-one; being a graduate of the University of South Florida-St Petersburg, (05/94); as a minimum custody inmate, I received the maximum sentence, and I was placed in a medium/maximum prison, with murderers, bank robbers, child molesters, rapists, kidnappers, drug dealers, and gangbangers.
For my first approximately eighty days, I was not allowed to call my attorney or family. This was not the 18th century, nor was this Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, China, or Russia. This was the beginning of the 21st century, in the United States of America, and I was born and raised in the United States, and always have been a United States citizen.
I have received the same award as Rosa Parks, Joan Baez, United States Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall, and William O. Douglas; the Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award, from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, of Northern California, in San Francisco.
I also received the Champion of the Student Press Award, from the Student Press Law Center, in Washington, D.C.
Click on page R25288, at the bottom of the website for my bio.
The American Bar Association has a website up about my US SC case on their site, with my pictures and thoughts, under Law Day, under Tinker v Des Moines.
Oxford University Press, and Stephanie McPherson and her publisher, each have books coming out this fall, in September, and October, as children’s books about our (John, Mary Beth, and my) US SC case. Oxford will be $40.00 a copy. They both will be posting my picture and email address together.
The state dumped me unannounced or approved at a Homeless Shelter, where I still live, and I eat at a soup kitchen. They gave me a bus ticket from Liberty CI to Clearwater, no job propects, the clothes on my back= a t-shirt, in January, and $100.00 cash. Is it any wonder that the Department of Justice statistics state over 65% of released inmates are rearrested within three years of their release from prison, with nearly half of that number not making it past six months. We can and must do better. Toleration of systemic violence is intolerable.
Our ( Ed, Steve, and my) father, Dr. William Eckhardt, was a Peace Researcher. His last book, the year of his death, in 1992, was Civilizations, Empires, and Wars, by McFarland Publishing Co. He discovered after twenty-five years of research, of all wars. that 80% of war deaths are civilians, and the country that starts it, loses more often. Like war, prison hurts too many civilians (families), and the 50% of our current inmates who can be better served outside of prison; and the other 50% are systemically abused by our system due to a lack of educational opportunities, vocational training, expensive phone calls, and daily oppression.
I belong to over thirty Internet groups, that have published information about this website, representing over ten thousand compassionate people on yahoo!group.com sites, and other prison reform, peace, gay, anti-war, spiritual, legal, and Democratic groups.
Four weeks ago, I received the following email which read Yahoo!Answers:
“Your answer has been chosen as the best answer.
“Hey r25288,
“Congratulations, you got the best answer and 10 extra points!
“Your answer to the following question really hit the spot and has been chosen as the best answer:
“(On social issues) would Jesus vote democrat or republican? can you site examples?
“Go ahead do a victory dance. Celebrate a little.
“ Brag alittle. Then come back and answer a few more questions!
“Thanks for sharing what you know and making someone’s day.
“The Yahoo!Answers Team”
My answer:
“And the king shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethern, ye have done it to me.”
Matthew
25:40
“Which political party does the most for the poor, the children, the elderly, the physically challenged, the homeless, the incarcerated, the gays, lesbians, and transgendered, the African-Americans, and the least for the money changers? Therein my dear gentle reader, lies the answer. The answer does not begin with the elephant, as he was most often seen with donkeys. However, Jesus loves us all, it’s just that Republicans need a little more supervision.”
Christopher Eckhardt/R25288
Resources:
The Bible & www.r25288.com
“And David sware moreover, and said , Thy father certainly knoweth that I have found grace in thine eyes; and saith, Let not Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved: but truly as the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death.”
I Samuel
20:3
She was born in Bolton, England, on May 16, 1918. She was beautiful, young, and a soldier named Bill fell in love with her. He was a world citizen, which is more than an American citizen, He didn’t need any government to tell him evil existed. Citizens of the world see it more clearly before any governments ever do. He didn’t wait to be asked to help his fellow man, or to serve. He didn’t ask to stand by. No, he was an American educated patriot, so he left this country , and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, to fight the Nazis, before this country recognized there was a problem with killing millions of Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals, for the crime of being themselves. And he was none of those. He was more. He was a man’s man, who stood up and fought for those who sometimes could not fight for themselves.
His brother, my uncle, was the same kind of American patriot, who came home with a Purple Heart. My father also had several medals. Yet he was always proud that I was a Conscientious Objector, who opposed, and still opposes killing.
Dad met Miss Margaret Abbott while working in England as an airplane mechanic, and they fell in love, and stayed together in love, until his death, forty-nine years later.
I remember when we moved to Lexington, Kentucky, so dad could further his studies, before my little brother was born. Of course, we moved ourselves, as that was all we could afford to do back then. We pulled into the projects, after dark. We found our unit, and when dad turned on the kitchen ceiling light, cockroaches covered everything; the ceiling; the floor; the walls; the counters.
It was 1958, and we had just moved from a beautiful three bedroom home on acres of land with a creek running through it, on the state hospital grounds of Morganton, North Carolina. Ma was about five foot and three inches, and weighed in around one hundred and twenty pounds. The roaches in that room probably outweighed her. It would have been a good scene for an Alfred Hitchcock or Stephen King movie. Ma didn’t like things, or movies, if they weren’t uplifting. She started to cry, and that night we got a motel. Dad and the brothers began roach extermination the next morning.
It was just one of those things you see, and it leaves an imprint on your mind. Something you see that you’ll never forget. Kind of like prison, where I had heard that some guys had horse dicks. Well , let me tell you, all I ever saw was an occassional pony dick, until one day I’m showering and in walked a horse dick. Scared me. His name was Splash. We became platonic friends. I know the vagina stretches , but all I knew was I would never want to be that woman.
We started out the typical prison friendship of lies. I told him I was straight, and he told me he didn’t think he could get hard with another man. We are still platonic friends, and he taught me alot about prison. Eventually we trusted each other enough , after about nine months, and I came out. Gays that are open about their gayness often get more respect than those on the down low (closet cases). I then found out that he was not only a booty bandit, but also a mad gunner. He was such a character, and a good card player, but when he wanted to jack his dick, he’d just make an announcement to the whole dorm that it was his shower time and time to get off. And he would.
Now, the way I got it figured, we could keep full employment, but we just need to think outside the box. Republicans probably understand this better than Democrats, but we just need to advertise prison as a gay resort. “Cum meet the man of your dreams, a full health spa (the Rec yard); fine quisine offered three times a day (the mess hall); the finest in fabulous fashion design (blue dress pants and shirt). Cum meet beautiful men of all races, religions, and nationalities. Shower daily with the man of your dreams, and drop the soap as often as you wish. Cum for a year, and you may choose to stay for five. It’s simply called marketing, cause what we’re doing ain’t working.
Why lock up the non violent offender, break up his family, and repeat the cycle? Then his son comes to prison, because he never had a male role model around, to learn from the mistakes his father may have made.
Why, my dear gentle reader, is there nearly at least one prison in every county in this state? Because it provides jobs. Well, maybe we can provide these people different jobs, with the same benefits and pay, or better. Pay for neighborhood watch programs; pay for mentoring troubled teens; open up the empty classrooms, and give guards some basic training in how to teach most inmates with less education than they have, to help people get their GED’s. We are a creative people.
Listen, in case you don’t know it, the emperor has no clothes on. It is all smoke and mirrors, and the man behind the curtain is not the Wizard of Oz. At Liberty, there were approximately 1,300 inmates, with 5 canteens. Each canteen was run by 1 inmate, making approximately $75.00 a month each. There was 1 inmate who shined the staff’s boots for pay. PRIDE employed, and paid maybe two-three hundred inmates doing data entry, from approximately $.20 to $.50 an hour. Aramark did not pay inmates, and the remaining approximately 1,000 inmates walked around, and/or picked up cigarette butts, or worked in the kitchen, and they wouldn’t even give you anything extra to eat, and it is one of the hardest and longest jobs in prison, and you would get locked up in confinement for taking anything extra to eat. I should know. They did just that to me, for going to work at 4am, and not getting to eat until 7am. As a diabetic, I felt the need for a piece of white bread and a little orange juice, and they locked me up for eating and drinking that. After doing confinement for that, they threw me back into the kitchen, and demanded that I sign legal documentation to protect Aramark, if I got hurt operating their machinery, plus admitting I had been trained in how to operate all of their machinery, when I had not; because my normal job was a busboy, which basically just required wiping off the tables. So, for refusing to give away my human rights to safety, they locked me up for refusing an order-the order, sign your name, so if we cripple, maim, or end up with some of your body parts, we have paperwork you signed, saying you knew what you were doing, and therefore you can’t sue us.
Basically, the back toilet stall was for jackin your dick, but even when I would go back there at 2am-3am, for a little privacy, I’d have female staff shine their flash lights on me, until I left. Prison could be very frustrating. A study should be done to see if conjugal visits reduces violence in prisons, and rearrests.
We do it for our animals in zoos. We should treat each other as good as we treat our animals. It goes along with the Golden Rule. It is hard, but we need to do something different, if we ever hope to lower that 65% rearrest rate.
Once we all can agree that our prisons are just warehouses; zoos for human beings. OK, now we’re getting somewhere. Now I’ll give a proposal, and if we all get creative, maybe we can lower both recidivism and rearrests.
First, about 97% of the public never get to see the inside of prisons, or talk to criminals. Like going to the moon , many people will sign the necessary forms, that if an inmate rapes them, or, shankes them, they won’t sue the state, and we’ll just set up visiting hours, like the zoo; charge $100.00 to $1,000.00 depending on services provided and time; so like to walk through with a group for one hour will be $100.00, that, of course, includes a social tour director, and one inmate. We can pay him $.50 an hour, that way he’ll have money to buy his own deodorant, instead of using his neighbors, or stealing it. Now for $500.00, you get to spend four hours, and walk around with one inmate, and for $1,000.00, you get to walk by yourself whereever you want to go.
Then, along with our national promotions to see the beaches of Florida, when it’s time to get out of the snow, we can add, not only do we have the sun and Disney, but bring the whole family and tour the only state that has nothing to hide, and we let you visit our prisons alone, or in groups.
We can advertise in Mercenary magazines, Macho magazines, Real Men magazine types, with taunting ads, like only a pussy is afraid to walk through our prisons for a day. So what do you got, balls, or a pussy?
As any marketer, politician knows, it’s easier to get a second donation from someone who is already invested. I’m telling ya, we’ll get enough repeat business, to keep inmates in deodorant, stamps, and envelopes. We’ll become the model for the nation. Bored housewives will save their money during the week, just to come look at the bulges on the weekends. We can use the money to increase staff salaries, and give inmates jobs. We can throw some ads in PTA magazines, “Does your son have a bad attitude? Is he starting to hang out with the wrong crowd? Did he ever swear at you? Help your child now, give him a prison tour, and by tomorrow, he’ll be volunteering to help with chores around the house. Call now. Tours booked through November, already.”
We can put ads in gay magazines, with cute lifers pictures, with good builds, or just leave brochures in gay bars. Think outside the box. Now, lets help with overworked Prosecutors and Judges. “Do you have pending charges against you now. We can help.” We’ll get vanity phone numbers like 1-800-DO-ME-NOW. We can cut down trial and plea bargain time right now. “Look, Jack, this is a good deal,and only good for today, cause I’m taking it off the table tomorrow, but I know a nice inmate whose bunkie is going home tomorrow, and I hear he’s well hung, and likes being told what to do, if ya know what I mean. And if ya want more of an audience, I can put ya in a dorm. And if you will work in the kitchen, you have your choice of circumsized, or uncircumsized. And what a deal I got for ya if ya like nine inch black dicks.”
Wake up America, as long as you’re going to allow the system to continue to incarcerate one million citizens a year and destroy families, that don’t need prison, just to maintain employment in counties with no major employers, it’s past time to get creative. If the gay man or bi-curious man is willing to sign away his safety rights, and pay to see 1,000 swinging dicks for a week, month, 3-6-9 or 12 months. Let’s just be honest with the public, and just do it. You don’t have to call it a zoo, you can still call it a prison. Wall Street will love it, private prisons will love it, and no one will have to play the charade of justice in America.
Mom always wanted a daughter, so that visualization created the next best thing-me-a homosexual. Well, it might have been an interesting theory, except my two older, and one younger brother all turned out straight. And she had always wanted a daughter. In a desire to please my mother, I became a good housekeeper and cook. Dad just wanted me to be happy, and a good student. I pleased them both, and myself.
She taught me how to make dynamite trifle, an English dessert with pound cake, or similar, red jello, fruit cocktail, with Sherry wine, let it settle, then cover with vanilla pudding, let settle, then add real whipped cream, let settle, and top with specially placed pitted cherries. My older brother, Ed, loved it so much, he would ask for it, instead of birthday cake, on his birthdays, which was OK by me, because I loved it, too.
Dad passed in 1992, and due to ma never having driven a car, her partial blindness, and need for oxygen tanks, 24/7, and a wheel chair; I already lived in Pinellas County, so I moved in to care for her, Over the nearly next ten years, we lived together. My income exceeded hers. I took her to Frenchy’s Rockaway Grille, on Clearwater Beach, usually twice a week, for lunch. I cooked every meal, and usually cleaned up afterwards. We had a maid a few hours a week. It was a good life. We laughed alot, and I miss her so.
We went to Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the March on Washington for Children’s Rights. We attended many Democratic functions with President Clinton, Vice-President Gore, Governor Chiles, and McKay. One picture on my refrigerator is she and I hand-in-hand walking toward the Washington Monument, taken from our backs. Another one is Governor Chiles, and I in the middle, with a state representative on my other side. One is a picture of Buddy McKay, a Democrat, who ran for Governor of Florida, standing between ma and me. Another is Vice-President Gore, a few feet away, at a social function.
It is on the transcripts, but I brought only her and my brother, Ed, to my sentencing, to speak on my behalf. The judge would not let her speak. I was immediately handcuffed, after my sentencing, and never got to hug her again, or after the state stuck me in prison eight days later, while I had a legal bail hearing pending, I never did see her again, nor for approximately eighty days would the state allow me to talk on the phone with anyone, not even her, or my attorney.
She died in a nursing home in Iowa, on Friday, May 28th, 2004. She held on for as long as she could. God bless her! She was eighty-six years old. She was eighty-three years young, when the wisdom of the court thought it more important that I spend time in prison, than continue to be the sole support caregiver for my mother, and best friend for the previous ten years.
The final chapter will more thoroughly reveal that I went to prison for oppossing the killing of women and children, not for using illegal drugs, violence, nor for any sex crime, and I didn’t gain one dime for my alleged crime, nor did I ever have criminal intent. I am guilty of being a Vietnam War Protester, Conscientious Objector, lifetime pacifist, a gay Democrat, and all that potentially implies, and false statements said about me, and my character. I shouldn’t have spent one day in prison, but it’s all good. I met JD, and fell in love with a beautiful spirit.
What does it imply? It implies, just to begin with, it takes one voter off the roles, who has voted since 1971. The way I see it, if we can just get concerned citizens not to vote, we can definitely fill up our US Supreme Court with just rich white men, who like our founding fathers understood that blacks are not equal, but worth only 3/5 of a white man. That’s original interpretation. Next will be the women. They are not part of the original Constitution. Then we can get a national religion. Make homosexuality illegal again, and place more controls on the Internet.
My family tried to arrange a final phone call, so my mother and I could say goodbye, but it never happened. She was always in my corner, forty years ago, she helped me write this speech, and she taught me how to memorize it. I still have it memorized today. It was 1965, and I was in the ninth grade. I was running for President of the Student Council, against a popular jock. I was first to speak. It was at Franklin Junior High School. I got up to the podium, in the auditorium, and said:
“My name is Chris Eckhardt.
“And I’m doing fine.
“I study sometimes in room 149.
“My grades are OK,
“Though better could be.
“In Spanish, I keep coming up with a C.
“My three years at Franklin,
“Have been lot of fun.
“Which bring up the reason,
“Why I wish to run.
“Though I cannot promise
“Two cars to you all.
“My desire to serve
“Is known in this hall.
“My thanks go to those
“Who worked hard for me,
“And helped me get through the primary.
“My opponent, I know,
“Is a very fine guy,
“And might make a good president
“Of this junior high.
“But, nevertheless,
“Though modest I be,
“I’m hoping this Thursday,
“That you’ll vote for me.
“Thank you.”
He got 400 votes, and I got 800. Thanks, Ma!
I told a few people about my mother passing the day she passed. JD was the only one who gave me a hug. I needed a hug. You don’t lose your mother every day. The brothers and I cried over the phone, while a guard watched me.
“To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.”
Abraham Lincoln
