Thomas W Gately

Thomas W. Gately is a graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker, book binder, musician, list maker, mixtape curator, former educator, ne'er do well in his 30s, who can now include "writer" in his long list of attempts to connect with the surrounding world with which he is constantly finding himself at odds, all in the name of something that is as close to compassion and curiosity as is possible within the confines of this stupid human condition. He lives in New Jersey.

Next Day

Southern State Correctional Facility is a bizarre place. Although on one level I am technically considered to be in prison, I will often be told by my fellow inmates that I am not in prison, I am in a correctional facility. Despite their tone of superiority, they’re right. Regarding its categorical designation as an institution, Southern State sits somewhere on the spectrum of incarceration between a prison and a halfway house.

The facility itself is on a massive plot of land in Southern New Jersey amidst the infamous Pine Barrens. Southern State is divided into three compounds—A, B, and C—by twelve-foot-high fencing laced with spiraling barbed razor wire.

Each unit sits on a rectangular plot of land with the same twelve-foot-high fencing outlining the perimeter. In the yard surrounding the unit is a full basketball court, picnic tables, and a workout area containing benches, pull up bars, dip bars, and a designated area for cardio. There is a small walking path stomped out by repetition, littered with goose shit, and flanked by wooden signs that read, “OUT OF BOUNDS”. There are white cement benches against the wall of the unit outside where inmates are provided a blind eye and smoke K2—synthetic weed boofed inside the prison providing a high lasting ten to twenty minutes which inmates chase throughout the day daily. Formerly, there were sheds containing miscellaneous supplies, but they have since been removed after a female CO was arrested for performing fellatio on inmates in the shed of Unit 6.

Southern State is not without its wildlife. The most ubiquitous species is the Canada goose. Their leader, a lone gray goose, whom we have named Pancho, holds court amongst the Canada geese and is gentle in spirit. Due to the prevalence of goose shit on the compound, there is a job detail designated to clean it up. The construction detail has at some point created wood cut-outs of dogs five times their natural size designed to scare the geese off the compound with predictably unsuccessful results. As a last ditch effort, Southern State has resorted to having an inmate flailing around the compound with a basketball in a mesh bag chasing and scaring the shit out of the geese. Living beneath the units are families of groundhogs. The more weight conscious inmates feed the groundhogs the bread provided with each meal, three times daily, keeping the groundhogs fat and happy all year round; the more generous inmate will occasionally donate a honey bun from commissary.

Surveying the facility on the tops of light towers scattered throughout Southern State are the turkey buzzards. Whenever a groundhog dies of a diabetic coma, we all morbidly watch as the turkey buzzards surround and tear apart the saccharine carcass with their beaks protruding from a haunting black coat of feathers, devouring the gooey, squishy, stretchy parts first, ending with the pecking of left over fur pelt for any remnants of delicious decay. The toads come out at night and are apparently not interested in doing anything about the unrelenting surplus of horse flies that thrive in the hygiene and squalor of Sunny Southern State.

The units themselves are large complex trailers. Each wing is divided into four cubes open to one common three-windowed hallway that leads out past the wing’s bathroom to one shared wing-designated payphone, access to which is a source of constant drama. A cube is composed of two 2-(grown-ass)-man bunks, “safety blue” in color. Each bunk has a foot locker attached to the hallway-facing-end which an inmate can lock if they purchase a Combination Master Lock available on commissary for $6.11 + tax. Inmates on bottom bunks each have a tall locker, also “safety blue,” that looks like your classic high school locker except flimsier and with no vents. The two tall lockers are wedged between the two-man bunks within the cube establishing a shared space four by six feet large (small).

The one bathroom is shared between the sixteen inmates on the wing. It has one toilet, one shower, and one sink with a mirror that’s not really a mirror so much as a warped palimpsest of cuts and scratches imparted by various crude and/or illegal tools that provides a hazy reflection which probably more closely resembles your mental disposition than your visual appearance. There are shower curtains that separate both the shower and toilet from the sink area, except they don’t exactly make things private because the top third of the shower curtain is transparent in order for COs to ensure the safety of those incarcerated. While I can see the logic in that, on a day to day basis certain tenants of daily life take precedence, and in the spirit of privacy, state property (a white bed sheet) is periodically destroyed (torn in half with assistance from a toenail clipper and hung on screws behind the transparent portion of the shower curtain).

It should be stated here that when taking a shit it is imperative that you “put some water on that” and flush every time a movement—whether gas, liquid or solid—is dispersed/released/shot-out or otherwise excreted from your intestinal tract. Failure to do so will result in shame-based public scrutiny supported with a litany of rationales, posited as Facts, BIG Facts, Snapple Facts, et al., orienting around hygiene, odorousness, and all things Metro Boomin’. It is for the best that you acquiesce to this requested waste of water, unless you enjoy the attention brought to your precious bathroom time. When taking care of the business you once thought of as your own, you are encouraged to bring a pair of “Shit Pads” along with to avoid coming into first-contact-once-removed with fifteen+ other felons’ grown asses. Shit Pads are the foam foot pads from the thong sandals given to you at CRAF with the plastic thong part removed, providing your grown ass some cushion while emptying what is inside you in prayer position upon your (semi-)private porcelain throne. In lieu of the petit bourgeois comfort and cleanliness of moist wipes, it is recommended that you fill an empty, thoroughly rinsed, plastic container of honey—the classic clear honey bear bottle design—with one third State Shampoo, two thirds water. It is recommended that you bring in a frugal handful of toilet paper on your person in order to wipe any scatter-spray from the rim of the bowl after you shake somethin’/move somethin’. Failure to do so will result in more public scrutiny which can and will slowly chip away at your already fragile resolve you’ve been putting so much energy into doing your best at trying to so desperately maintain. This frugal conscientious amount of toilet paper correctly used isn’t necessarily guaranteed to prevent said scrutiny, but The Path of Least Resistance has been known to work countless times before, and, of course, you don’t want no problems, you don’t want no sauce, and now you have to wash your hands, but the problem is some asshole apparently thought it would be a good idea to wash his face with the communal soap after just finishing shaving so that now there are tiny flecks of hair in the soap resembling cookies and cream ice cream, and no matter how hard you try, those flecks of hair will not come off the communal bar of soap that was generously donated by a thoughtful inmate who will never receive his due thanks outside of quiet appreciation, unless he (the charitable inmate) of course asks for it by way of speaking indirect up and down the common hallway of the wing in an aggressive-passive-aggressive pique that has obliterated the thanks to which he was originally entitled, and now you’re left with yet another decision: do you walk your wet hands back to your bunk to get your own clean bar of soap, or do you simply say “Fuck it!”, wash your hands with the hairy communal soap and go about your goddamn day?

On your way back from washing your hands you dry them on the washcloth you have hung on the hallway-facing-end of your bunk—the one that you received in CRAF almost a year ago and still have because the washcloth you purchased from Commissary is too thin. Despite your best efforts to preserve your “nicer” washcloth from CRAF, it is fraying, yellow ochre in color, and has the faint odor of mildew… unless the mildew smell is not coming from your raggedy arm-pit-yellow washcloth, but from your bunkie’s wet laundry he received back from an entrepreneurial, stressed-out, may-tagging inmate behind on his schedule. Your bunkie has the sub-par laundry job illegally hanging on a clothesline which is either a shoelace (from commissary) or destroyed state property, not that you could hold it against your bunkie. He’s just trying to do a good job of keeping his white t-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshorts, socks, and boxers (thankfully no tighty-whities, unfortunately the same can’t be said for your 58 year old bottom cubie) crisp and white, and not that gray-yellow color with the faintest fragrance of brown and buried mildew your clothing devolves into when you go through the standard laundry channels. No, your bunkie has a semblance — even if it is small — of self-respect, and appreciates his clothing crisp and white, or at least mildly ecru, and just to double check, to finally really discern whether it’s your rag from CRAF or your bunkie’s rushed hanging laundry, you take two steps away from your bunk to smell the rag in your hand, holding it less than an inch away from your nose in your crudely procured quarantine, and take a big whiff. You think to yourself, “It could be worse. . .”, dry your hands and hang it up (the wash cloth, not your person) back on its designated spot on the hallway-facing-end of your bunk, thusly pushing off the cleaning of your cherished washcloth—which would take care of, let’s be honest, maybe 75% of the smell—another 24 hours.

After milling about all day, adhering to The Path of Least Resistance, doing your best to stay out the way, you’re tired. Luckily, it’s the end of the day, you’ve avoided confrontation, gotten off easy, it is as they say Next Day, and you lay your head down thinking how seemingly ridiculous this place is; how rude and dehumanizing the COs are; how depressing and boring and cynical the COs life choices are to you, a man in prison, who at least had the courage to have a dream and fail miserably; how your fellow inmates are all so preoccupied with the micromanaging of hygiene and bathroom etiquette that has you feeling so self conscious, you’re now constipated—is the micromanagement of shit and piss really all that necessary? With that question hanging in the air unanswered, you, bloated yet unfulfilled, drift to sleep.

The next day they’re doing inmate transfers and there just so happens to be an empty bunk on your wing. The new guy seems nice at first—a little outspoken out the gate, but you’re holding out hope. He lets everyone know that he don’t want no problems and he ain’t beat for no phone. His laugh might be a little grating at first, but you can’t blame a guy for his laugh, right? Even if it sounds like a small window unit air conditioner with a squeak struggling to cool an entire apartment on a hot July day singing in falsetto, it’s out of his control. But with each passing day you’re observing more and more behavior that is requesting more and more of your patience in order to remain silent, to stay in your lane; reminding yourself that it isn’t worth it, it’s none of your business, and it’s not going to make a difference. Even though he feels the need to express his inane perspective on the merits of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution in a way you’re sure he thinks of as profound and real talk. Or how he, on more than one occasion, has declared to his cube that he is the most humble person his cube has ever seen. Or when invited to look at photos of another inmate’s grown daughters, with obvious prurient intent he asks the man who took the risk to trust and share photos of his family with another stranger for his attractive grown daughters’ phone numbers. Or how when he approaches you quietly playing a game of Rummy 5000 at the end of the night with a fellow inmate on the wing with whom you’ve developed a friendship and from what you can only assume is due to the fact that you’re white, skinny, and nerdy looking with glasses, holding a Master’s degree, and have long hair that carries with it implications of effeminacy or at least not giving a shit about what the people who make those boring, antiquated judgements think, he interrupts your game that is helping you pass your time and says to you “You don’t belong here man. . .”

It doesn’t matter that you’ve already been down for seven months. It doesn’t matter that this is the new guy on the wing’s first prison (but not exactly prison) bid, and he’s not even a week into it. You’re white, he’s black, and in a single moment you realize you have just gone through an experience that affirms your already desensitized perspective on the crippling, complex miasma of the now self-perpetuating forces of institutionalized racism that have deluded this man to feel like he does belong here, in a place of such petty misery and squabble. All the judgements that you yourself have been holding onto in self-righteous indignation have now fallen to the wayside and you see that amidst all those conversational faux pas, he means you no harm, he’s merely trying to give you a compliment, however befuddled, and in kindness despite all of your frustration, you say “No one does. . .”