Rubinstein’s got a tinsel Magen David hanging over the entrance to his cubby, and a “Happy Hanukah” (Well, “Happ_ Hanu_ah”… key letters missing) decoration across his front wall.
He’s recruiting others. He asked me earlier, “Do you want Hanukkah decorations?”
I thought he was trolling me.
Where do you get Chanukah decorations in prison? I immediately know without asking. You smuggle them back to the dorm after last year’s Chanukah at the Chapel.
Guys with a long “bid” save everything. Rubinstein has 7 toothbrushes, a 3-sided ruler that’s bumpy and dented on all sides (literally useless as a straight edge or ruler), dozens of used pens, some which kinda work, and all sorts of odds-and-ends hanging in his locker door organizer (which you can pay a guy at Unicor to sew for you)…
So it’s no surprise he saved Chanukah decorations just in case we needed them later… enough to decorate every surface of Glass House, apparently.
Jay, the Woody Allen character who’s more a fit for a nursing home than a prison (but for kids’ sakes it’s good he’s here 🙂 went to put it up, but got a protest from Glen, the bible-reading women-impregnator from previous stories, on account of Jay claims to be a Messianic Jew for Jesus, though I don’t know their stance on Chanukah (and don’t care). Jay was easily swayed and stomped back to Rubinstein’s cell with a bunched-up banner glitering in many colors.
Rubinstein ranted about Glen being an antisemite who sucks dick for drugs. “Yeah, for drugs. He’s your boyfriend,” Rubinstein recounted his argument for me.
Ah, the Holiday Spirit!
The Glass House is a place where just when you think you’ve turned the absurdity dial all the way up, it shows you a few more levels.
My funamentalist Christian, 85-year-old cellie, “Doc” might not dig Chanukah decorations, but he’d probably be quiet about it. Today he told me he read “all about the Jews” while reading the Bible. “It was in Acts, if I recall”…his memory is going, but it’s still pretty sharp for 85, and yes, it was Acts… I saw because he’s reading the biggest bible I’ve ever seen…
And then Doc added, after the kind of pause that seems eternal but is normal punctuation in an Augusta, Georgia drawl… “All good things.”
“Well, that’s good.”
Turns out Doc is from Augusta, he says, “They play golf there,” and he once played in a golf tournament on a team with Michael Jordan (who, he claims, offered him $25 thousand to stay an extra 5 days and teach him golf, but Doc had just gotten married to a woman 29-years his younger and couldn’t stick around). He also said he wrote a book on golf.
“What was the innovation that drove you to write the book?”
He had to go look it up… 85 years old… but sure enough, in the bio to one of his other books is a list of publications…one, a book on golf and the “second gear”. I asked him what the second gear was, and as happens with 85-year-olds he missed the question, and I was too tired to ask again.
In prison, you have to take everything with a grain of salt, and Doc is a notorious fabricator, but I kinda believe he played with Jordan, just because at some point the crazy dial must turn full circle back to strange-but-true. He said he played without a handicap, scratch. Tole me Michael wanted to get his PGA card but never quite hit the mark. Doc Carel “Chad” Prater and Jordan … not the craziest story you’ll hear at FCI Miami Low, and not the least believable, though the guys at chow laughed it off… Inside here there’s no Google, just gosip, and waiting for your friend or family to let you know from the outside. (Have at it!)
Doc reminds me a lot of what’s important — in the sense I don’t want to end up 85 and alone in a prison, though I’m sure not many people do. It’s a harsh reality, sometimes, to see the face of an elderly man laying in the bed under me, mouth open, lines across his face showing his age, a bony old man shuffling to rec or chow, smooth talking some staffer for this or that in his televangelist style, his silver ring of hair around the back of his head yellowing somehow with age… life is long but then it’s short… and few things make me want to get out of here fast and start a family and stop fucking around than looking at Doc.
He’s a pain in the ass and an OK dude, a fundamentalist nut and at times a gentleman, and if I were 85 and stuck in a place like this for the rest of my life, I’d probably have some rough days and ornery times, too — and sometimes Doc is delightful, but you just take it with a touch of caution. And a grain of salt.
There was another man at sick call today, they handed him a pack of adult diapers… fuck. If this is where you are at that age, you fucked up, or you got really fucked — not everyone in here is guilty. I know I droped the f-bomb a lot there, but … fuhhck. There’s nothing more heartbreaking and shocking and sad — and nothing that will drive you harder to get your shit (new swear word!) together than seeing who you don’t want to be where and when you don’t want to be it, an elderly man in prison, shitting himself, having to line up for the diapers to do it in.
Please God, not me or anyone I love.
There’s got to be a better place for guys like Doc and Jay and the elderly man with the daipers, a more dignified way to treat the elderly in prison. They’re still humans, complicated, complex, thinking, emotional, humans. Many did something wrong, maybe a lot wrong, but there’s got to be a better way, that shows our compassion even when they weren’t able to show theirs. Being unable to travel, hug your family, take a stroll in any direction you want… these are prison enough. Let them shit themselves with dignity.
Doc’s halfway through a 26 year sentence… I think the guy’s driven enough to walk out of here at 98.
He’s not always easy to like, most guys struggle with it, but today I decided to get to know the notorious old man in my cell, and, yes, he’s a fibber, and a racist fundamentalist (he’s an 85 year old man from the South) and yes, sometimes he needs a reminder or two to clean himself up, but he’s still a man. And what does it say about us that he’s laying on a steel shelf next to a communal bathroom with no door, in a room of 59 other men, spending the last years of his life in a place difficult for someone in their 30s or 40s.
We can do better.
Chanukah is a strange holiday, because we ultimately lose, yet we celebrate the battles we won, the temporary reclaimation of the Temple and our ability to light the Menorah. Sometimes you can’t win the war, you can only add a bit more light each day.
From the Glass House, wishing you all an early “Happ Hanu ah”. Throw up some decorations, and, in the spirit of Rubinstein (and the Macabees, kinda), tell anyone who doesn’t like it they can suck a dick.
Ari ==========
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