Chapter 37. Run for the Jungle

Since White Bear insisted that the cruel & unusual clause of the Constitution dictates three-hours of yard-time and I hadn’t any exercise beyond my perp walk, he threatened to sue and the jail administrators caved. It was a small jail with a minimum-security honor-yard having a double fence around it except for one side that was no more than a head or two higher than mine. It was a detention center for those awaiting an appearance in court… an old jail at that. Forced by law to let me use it, they made up for that lapse in security by doubling up on my escorts with five guards in its small, forty by sixty-foot, confines. I had it to myself and my five companions for a week. On the last day, it had rained the night before and the yard smelled good, the way asphalt does just after the sun dries it.

There was one basketball hoop, weights, and a set of rings on a high bar I worked-out on every day. While jogging, every ten-steps, an officer stood in my way so that one lap around the yard made for almost two. We didn’t talk much. My reputation for violence preceded my arrest and that could have been the motivation for the attitude of the guards. Frustrated that this tactic failed to rankle, one of them upped the ante and bumped me hard at times. A-hole numero uno muttered insults as I passed, “What’s the matter Kraszhinski, no one to rape here?”

It would make it too easy for him if I responded.

I stopped by the weights bench and high bar. Though it was December, I stripped down to boxers and tees, I chalked up my hands, and did a few gymnastic turns on the bar and rings. A little out of practice but not as much as I faked being weaker than I was. One of the less belligerent guards had been watching me, he complimented me saying, “Not bad, Kraszhinski.”

The isometrics I did at sea and in the cell, had worked well enough to keep my strength up. I got a little short-winded but still made a show of panting, “Yeah, not so hot now. My hands are gonna blister too. You guys have any tape?”

Things like tape in prison and jails is a security item kept locked up. The guard came back with a large three-inch wide roll, “Hold ‘em out. I’ll wrap ‘em.”

“Wrap ‘em thick. I have a girly-man’s hands now, ya know?”

Another guard saw what was going on and stepped up to us, “Yeah, tape ‘em up good, Mikey. The pervs got blisters from chokin’ the chicken.”

Like anyone, guards have limits to how much they can tolerate from each other in a confined work space. The officer clearly resented the disrespect of using a derivative version of his name, Mikey, in front of an inmate. To see how far I could stretch a favor, I tried asking just within earshot so A-hole would have to strain to hear, “Those guys kicked in my ribs pretty good too back there. Don’t want to put you on the spot in front of this cowboy, but can you use some of that tape to wrap my ribs so that I can work out some more on the bar.”

“Sure, I can do that,” he sneered at A-hole.
"Thanks, man. If you can, tight enough to keep 'em from popping out but I still gotta breathe, you know?"

A-hole stepped back and said, “While you’re at it, Mikey, don’t be wrappin’ your arms around him too long. You guys might have ta git a room.”

Mikey wasn’t taking any shit, “Fuck you.”

After he wrapped my ribs, thanking him, I said, “Gotta see if I can breathe,” then picked up my jump suit and started some more laps around the yard.

A-hole leered. I wasn’t so sure he was kidding or was just using amateur psy-ops tactics, “You look good in that corset, Kraszhinski. Don’t work up too much of a sweat. Maybe I’ll want to see you tonight.”

Harass… never let-up on verbal abuse… psychological bending works better than torture. They’d already used isolation and sensory deprivation on me. I’d done them all on prisoners myself and these characters could never know what I could endure when I fell back on what I did best. Not only was I trained to endure all these, but trained to do so as a volunteer lab rat for the CIA while tripping on Lysergic Acid Diethylene. The few of us, those of us who had the aptitude to pass that regime, laughed, and called it the Acid test.

Lap one: The trick was to know that; whatever the experience, whatever the hallucination, whatever the fear evoked… it was all in the space between the skull and what I call, the inner-sanctum. Unless they knew what they were doing, the guards’ tactics were unwittingly trying to get in there. My job was to not let anything inside uninvited… to rarely believe that which is outside the head except what is in my face. I go inside but go way-in there… way-in, all the way to … the Holy of Holies… where… no thought impure… where no pain, no threats of imminent death … the external is not allowed within… it is all to be dealt with from in there… the command center.

Lap two: What is exploding in the cavern of the skull is irrelevant to the mission. The mission is to survive. The mission, once captured, is to preserve and restore chi, resist, escape … or otherwise take command and meld, direct the energy and purposes of the enemy against themselves. Even death holds nothing on me because it too is an escape and escape is a tactical victory.

Lap three; I have no beef with law enforcement. Most are well intentioned and honorable but, when incarcerated, no matter my personal feelings about an individual corrections officer, those feelings are never to get in the way of the previously described mission.

Lap Four: Keep running ‘til Mother Earth opens her thighs to Father Sky. The prison of self is the same as concrete and steel. There is no going back from the brink of the ultimate death, the death to self, the death to ambition, the abandonment of hope, given over to the sea of consciousness where the heart of compassion beats. I neither love nor hate the enemy. The enemy is just another dancer to the drumbeat of the cosmos. The only thing left is to dive into it or else go back to the oblivion of drunkenness. Will I ever come back from the madness of it once I’ve tasted the nectar of its virtue? Naw, but not because I can’t but because I have no reason to. O, Sweet Buddha, you are so full of shit. Peggy Lee sings in my head as I jog one step at a time, if that’s all there is, if that’s all there is my friend, then let’s keep dancing.

The synchronicity of it all was cosmic… and there it was… the Bardo… the gap between guards. All unarmed but for a side-handle baton and pepper spray. No tasers at that time either. A-hole stopped at the side of the single chain-link fence … I see it… his shoelace had become loose… he turned his back to me… mistake one… and squatted down to tie the lace … mistake two… the right spot where the chain link fence is most stable at its post. A Shoelace! Holy Shiva! NOW! Dance! 
It’s the Bardo between here and now. Within the inner sanctum time is suspended… I toss the jail-house jump suit onto the crotch of the Y shaped supports for the razor wire above the guard … The guard was still crouched over… I leap-step and spring-board from his back. I fly upward in skivvies, tee shirt, and boxer shorts momentum lifted to the top of the fence… both hands wrapped in tape … pull up on both sides of the Y-bar where the jumpsuit was draped. The spiral of razor sharp blades cut through the material of the jump suit and the flesh of my chest and through the surface of the tape over my palms enough to draw blood. I had movement and momentum though and swung my legs over the wire with a kick. 

The spring-boarded A-hole looked frantic and yelled, “Fuck! Kraszhinski! Stop him! Halt, Motherfucker!”

The changing of the shift had eyes on clipboards and forms… bureaucrats with badges busy. Not long… but just long enough.

I was already out before he finished calling.