A Real Screamer

I wish I could observe you, here in my direct line of sight this hour. I want to see what’s behind your eyes. Here in the big leather chair would be ideal, just to the left of my desk. It’s comfortable and reclines; Fur Butt, the cat, would most definately come up in your lap. I’d make you tea … maybe roll a joint. I want to get a good look at you.

As for me, a stranger-than-strange stranger, I am all those people in that halfway house — and more. Except I hung up those nasty, filthy cigarettes.

Quit long ago while a guest of the State. In the ’60s it was said in southern joints you had to have two things to survive: cigs and coffee. Basic survival tools. But prison coffee is battery acid and at two packs a day something frightening pulled me up off the nicotine. With a cig burning in my left hand and another burning in the desktop ashtray, I caught myself rummaging through the top drawer with my right hand looking for a cigarette!

I screamed! The hacks ran in assuming I’d been shanked but, no … I had simply melted my own mind. QUIT cold … chewed a small mountain of gum over the nx 90 days, jaw muscles went rigid, but I quit.

Prior to arrival in Angola (Louisiana State Pen), considered the bloodiest prison in the country in ’66, I’d never been arrested, never known anyone who had been arrest. Private schools, sports cars, frat rat — — totally square john, a middle class citizen-for-sure. All that changed for the better.

Initially I grieved hard and long for the fool I killed in a dispute over a blond bimbo from Waco, Texas. But by the time they finally got weak and cut me loose, my only remorse was I could not dig him up and kill him again … and take two or three days to do it.

Obviously I was totally rehabilitated and ready for successfully integration into the mainstream of society! Thank you, Jesus.

(I truly appreciate your writing, especially the indefinable force between the lines. Thanks! You be well. ned)