Chapter 28

In prison, cigarettes were like money. I’m not a smoker, but I needed packs so I could trade them for stuff I wanted. I wrote all my relatives and asked them to send me as many packs of cigarettes as they could. For my birthday and Christmas, I wanted cigarettes. Money was no good. Any cash that came in went on your books, and it’s best not to have much on your books. If you have too much money, someone will try to get to it. If there’s too much of anything, you become a target. The inmates run the prisons. They know how much money you have. They know what you’re reading. They know who’s taking prescription medication. They’re like Big Brother.

I could get a loaf of raisin bread for two packs of cigarettes. When they had chicken on special holidays, you could get a half-chicken for two packs. I quickly went vegetarian, though. The meat they regularly served was turkey and it was tinted green. I wasn’t gonna eat that shit. I wasn’t vegan; I still ate dairy and there were people in the kitchen that would make you cheesecake for eight packs of cigarettes. I did that a couple times and each time I savored it for two days. At first I was eating a lot of fish cakes, so I got three pieces of fish for a pack.

Mostly I used cigarettes to buy food and clothes. Other people used them to buy drugs. I never went there. Doing drugs to kill the time is a losing battle because they’re in short supply and if you’re addicted you need more. And you’ll do anything to get them. That’s a surefire way to get in trouble. Prisoners hate junkies but thrive on making money off their addictions.

I tried to keep myself clean and occupied in a positive way as the time passed. But since I was busted for possession, my sentence required me to take Narcotics Anonymous classes, which were boring.

The only trouble I got into at Cayuga was for fighting. Some things never change. The thing about hanging out with people from your group—whether you’re black, white or Latino—is that when there are riots, you have to be with your people and be ready to back them up. The interracial shit got really tense, really fast.

I was sharing a cube with a black guy named Jay for about eight months and we became buddies. We worked out together and talked about all sorts of shit. We were always cool with each other, except during one riot when it was the Hispanics against the blacks. He had to take his people’s side. If we had to square off against each other we would have done it. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. We had one shank hidden well in our shared locker.

Those two or three nights were pretty intense. I don’t know if he ever slept, but I sure didn’t. I didn’t know if someone was going to make this guy cut my throat, and I’m pretty sure he felt the same. Two or three days later, after the storm had passed, everyone said there was no more beef and everything went back to normal. We played spades again and worked out together like nothing had happened. We never spoke about the incident again.

There were two barbed wire fences at Cayuga, a 15-footer and a 20-footer. Guards walked around between the two fences during the day, and at night the guard dogs kept watch. There were several big riots when I was there, and they were pretty brutal. You always knew when something was going to go down. When one group was getting ready to go up against another, everybody got ready for war. People buried shanks the day before to dig up and use in the fight. The day of the riot, inmates had their hoods up so no one could see their faces. Everyone wore more clothing than usual—two pairs of pants, long sleeves and gloves—even if it was hot outside. The more covered up you were, the more protected you’d be.

The prison guards didn’t break up riots, but they blew whistles and drew their guns to stop the commotion and clear the battlefield. Prisoners went out, picked up the injured guys of their color or ethnicity and put them on a stretcher.

Guys from both sides carried the wounded to ambulances lined up at the main gate. State troopers around the facility kept watch to prevent anyone from trying to jump the second fence and running away. Anyone who did that would be shot, probably more than once. Between the warring sides, there was a mutual respect. You didn’t attack your enemy when they were picking up their injured. But after the wounded got taken away, it started up again.

One riot involved a Spanish guy who had converted to Islam and joined the Five Percenters, an extremist radical group of Muslims that basically hated white America. The group was founded in 1964 in Harlem by a former student of Malcolm X, who went by the name Clarence 13X. These guys thought they were the original inhabitants of the planet and the mothers and fathers of civilization. I thought they were unstable and unpredictable. When the riot started, a Hispanic guy stuck with the Five Percenters since he had just converted. At the time, the prison was again more controlled by the Spanish people. That decision didn’t go well for him. As soon as the riot was over, the Spanish guys went up the leader of the Five Percenters and said all they wanted was that guy. They gave him up. The dude got wrecked by a bunch of guys with a mop-wringer and shanks. There was blood everywhere. Someone had to use a heavy-duty mop to clean up that shit.

During that riot, I got in some shit with some of the Five Percenters. I roughed up three guys. None of us had shanks and we went at it on the pavement, like kids in a street fight. I flashed back to when I was younger and Rudy and I were beating the crap out of those dudes in the neighborhood. But these weren’t unskilled fighters. They were guys who knew how to put their weight into a punch and block an attack.

The Five Percenters yelled “Five Percenters unite,” and they went back to back in a circle. You couldn’t jump them from behind because they were back to back. One thing the Five Percenters always practiced was strategy. We attacked them from the front and we outnumbered them, so our attack crushed their circle. Once that circle was broken it was more like man-to-man combat.

I was doing a good job smacking around one guy, then his friend jumped on my back. I was able to knock him off, but I lost my balance and fell on the ground. The rest of the fight was more like a wrestling match. I’d like to think I won, but by the time it was over I had a bloody broken nose and my clothes were torn and filthy. It was clear I had been involved in the riot, so the officers put me in solitary confinement.

Being in solitary is just what it sounds like. You’re in a bare, empty room without a mattress. There’s a slot in the door where they slide you food and water. It’s uncomfortable not to have a bed or a chair, but having to lie on the ground is hardly the worst thing. What gnaws at you is the lack of activity. It isn’t just the boredom; it’s the emptiness and solitude. Your start thinking about something, and then you overthink it and your mind starts to race. Before you can stop yourself, your brain is bouncing from one idea to another like a character in a video game.

After a while, I could feel my heart racing and I felt dizzy. Breathing deeply and counting to five between breaths helped, and so did sleeping. But there’s only so much you can sleep when you’re not tired. It’s the hours I was awake that were torture. To keep myself from freaking out, I tried to spend a half-hour or more thinking about a single subject. I tried to remember the names of all the bands I had played with, then I thought about all the concerts I had been to in my life and all the records I had listened to. Whatever I did, I could only go so long before I thought about Amy and Nadia. In my most vulnerable moments I’d switch off between that and remembering parts of my childhood that I’d tried so hard to forget.

While you’re lying down in solitary, you know there are prison guards going through your belongings. Just to be assholes, they throw some of your shit away and keep whatever they want to. A lot of times, they’ll ship you off to another facility when they pull you out of the hole. If you’ve been involved in a riot and they think you’re a troublemaker or a marked man, they’ll send you wherever they want to—either another dorm or a different prison.

One time I got sent to solitary after a riot I wasn’t involved in. After the riot, the correctional officers conducted random searches of all the cells and found a homemade tattoo machine that a friend of mine had built out of a Walkman motor I had. Owning a tattoo gun was against the rules. That and the fact that I had been in the yard during the riot earned me four days in solitary.

Nothing toughens a guy up and builds character like going to war or going to prison. There are definitely drawbacks to both. I’m not suggesting anyone join the military or get themselves arrested. But in prison and in war, you’re there with dudes who are in the same situation as you are. To survive, you have to learn to trust your comrades and work as a team. There are two big differences. When you go to war you’re with a group and you know who your enemy is. When you’re in prison you don’t know. He could be right next to you. He could be the same color but from a different set or from a different background. I worked hard not to make enemies in prison, and aside from the guys I squared off against in riots, I don’t think anyone wanted to kill me.

The other difference between war and prison is that in war, if you want to run or be a deserter you can. People might look at you as a coward and you might have to go into hiding, but it’s an option, if only as a last resort. There’s nowhere to run in prison. You have to face your problems and resolve any conflicts quickly unless you check into protective custody. That option is worse than deserting your fellow soldiers on the battlefield because you’re caught and still right there in the same facility. You’re just shoved in with rats, cho-mo’s, cowards and other guys with targets on their backs—just a sitting duck waiting to be attacked.

When I was at Cayuga the Latinos were running the place and doing a good job. There was friction between different street sets, but they kept the “Hispanic” community together. Every night they cooked together and hung out in the rec room. When there was beef they made sure the fights were one-on-one and didn’t turn into free-for-alls. Most conflicts went right to the shower area. The stuff within the family was usually settled with a quick fight to squash it, and then everyone cleaned up and went back to business.

Whatever ethnic or color group made up the majority of the prison block or dorm population had the upper hand. That meant they were in control of the TV room and the phone, which was a big deal since those were the only daily forms of entertainment for inmates. After a big riot between the whites and the blacks, a lot more black people were transferred to the dorm and the Latin people lost the majority. It’s like what happens when control changes in the House of Representatives, except there’s no vote. We went from watching whatever the Latin group leaders put on TV, which was sometimes in Spanish, to watching stuff that the black leaders chose. That meant we had to sit through The Cosby Show, Different Strokes, The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son, like it or not. Two weeks later, more new people came in and the balance shifted again.

Probably the worst thing about being locked up was the constant movement, which kept my friends and family from being able to find me. They moved me at different times of the night. I went from county prison in Rockland County to Fishkill to get processed. Then I went to Cayuga for a year. I finished up with five months at Wallkill in Shawangunk, New York. Every time I switched from one facility to another I had to go back to Fishkill, which was the main hub. Prisoners also got transferred any time there was a disturbance or if they were sick.

About six months into my sentence at Cayuga I got influenza, and it got worse. The doctor said he couldn’t give me antibiotics since the flu is a virus. He told me to drink a lot of water and rest when I could. That didn’t help. I had bad headaches, the chills and chronic diarrhea. At night I would lie under my blanket shivering, so I’d kick off the covers. I’d feel better for a few minutes and then I’d start sweating like a construction worker digging up roads in the summer. Aspirin and Tylenol didn’t help. When it was really bad, I got delirious. I don’t know if I was drifting in and out of dreams or if I hallucinated, but one time I saw my stepdad sitting in a chair in the corner of the cell holding a shovel covered with dirt. If that was my subconscious trying to tell me something, I didn’t know what the message was, but it scared the fuck out of me. Then I started throwing up every time I tried to eat or drink.

Since I couldn’t hold anything down, the docs at Cayuga sent me to Auburn, a maximum security prison with a better hospital and medical staff. They put me on an IV drip and gave me strong antibiotics. Antibiotics don’t do anything for influenza, but since I was coughing so much and had so much phlegm, I developed a bad bacterial infection and was running a fever of 104 degrees. Even after the virus went away, the bacterial infection was ravaging my system. It took three or four days for the infection to clear up and my temperature to return to normal. When the doc gave me a clean bill of health, they sent me back to Cayuga.

That was a short-term move. After a couple of the riots I was in, they sent me back to Auburn Maximum Security prison while they sorted out the prisoners and made sure guys wouldn’t be a problem when they got back. When you’re moving between prisons, you’re in limbo. You have no contact with people on the outside. Once you got moved it could take two or three weeks before you were allowed to send a letter or get a response. It was bizarre. I couldn’t get in touch with the people I wanted to contact the most and they had no idea where I was. I felt like the system was rigged against me.

Even after I had mail privileges, I couldn’t just send a letter. I had to request contact permission. They let me communicate with some strange characters as long as I got approval. At one point I exchanged letters with Lynette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme from the Manson family. She was at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. This chick was arrested in 1975 for pointing a loaded gun at President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. She was tackled by the Secret Service. There wasn’t a bullet in the chamber, but there was a clip in the gun so she went down. Like the rest of Manson’s followers, she was crazy. She said she brought the gun so she could talk to him, and she never thought she would get arrested. After they got her she said it was an act of fate. She supported Manson long after most of his followers abandoned him. Those were some interesting letters—some had normal shit and others rambled about crazy, political, hateful shit, but for the most part they were unstable. I have no idea why I was allowed to communicate with her.

I got a lot of mail from fans. People like Dave Brown kept me entertained with their letters. Brian Quin, a friend who worked at The Record Collection on Long Island, sent me a copy of the Live at CBGB record cover. I wasn’t allowed to have the vinyl in prison, probably because the plastic could be broken and shaped into a shank. But he sent me the Live at CBGB cassette, Metallica’s …And Justice for All and various hardcore cassettes. I asked him to include a fake invoice because I wasn’t allowed to receive music as a gift.

During one visit with a friend, I told him to cut open the bottom of a cereal box, put in a packet of Anadrol 50 steroids, glue the box back up and send it to me. It worked twice, and the third time the guards found the steroids. My friend was carefully briefed to make sure each package had a completely different name and return address. When they came to me to accuse me of receiving contraband, I told them I didn’t know the guy who sent them and had no idea what was going on. I told them it might have come from a crazy AF fan. They didn’t believe me and they kept the steroids, but I didn’t get in trouble.

Random fans visited me. It was a relief to have an hour to shoot the shit with someone who liked my band. Once Slapshot was on tour and stopped by. Unfortunately only one person was allowed in, so they sent in their roadie and my old friend Jon Wrecking Machine.

To kill time, I read a lot of books. My friend Brooke sent me Silence of the Lambs. Helter Skelter presented a thorough description of all the Manson murders, the motivations, the police investigation and the trial. I saw Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the prison library and thought, Let me see what this freaking maniac was thinking. It was mind-blowing to read the thoughts of this megalomaniac psychopath and learn just how evil he was. A population of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Germans looked up to him and applauded his crazy notions of the master race when he didn’t look anything like them. He was a short, angry, dark-haired guy with a fucked-up moustache.

The Bible was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever read. Every Christian prisoner is given a copy and a lot of them find religion. They feel lost and alone, and they’re told that if they put themselves in the hands of the Lord, they will be forgiven for their sins and freed of guilt. It doesn’t matter if they raped or killed someone. If they believe and repent they’ll go to Heaven. That’s such a fucked-up way of thinking.

Everyone wants to be forgiven for the terrible things they did. I did, and I didn’t do anything that terrible. So I thought, Well, fuck, I’ll give this a shot. I wanted to do things right, so I went to church and started reading the Bible. It was mythical and full of ridiculous metaphors. What would happen today if someone saw a man talking to a burning bush like Moses did? The guy would be committed to a mental institution.

There was walking on water and being swallowed by a whale and not dying. Reading the Bible made me more of a non-believer. I wanted to believe, but it seemed like something was twisted. It was a lie. I started questioning myself and realized that wasn’t my path. The only useful thing I found in the Bible was in the part where Jesus went to a church and saw people selling everything outside. People had to pay to get in, turning something that was meant to be charitable into a profitable venture. He was, like, “This is not it. You don’t get it. This is not what it’s about. Worshipping isn’t about making money.” And I thought, It shouldn’t fuckin’ be, but that’s what it has come to. Of course, you don’t have to go to church to find that out. Just watch or listen to the news.