Transition to Freedom – part 1

Nov 1st, 2005, I woke up to my first morning of freedom, after being deported from the United Stated the day before, 3 short plane rides and a 2.5 hour trip from the airport later, as a free man, in western Canada, in a spare bedroom, which doubled as an office/computer room, in my aunt and uncle’s house.

That first night, I did not get all that much sleep, but I wasn’t extremely tired either. I saw my aunt briefly, for about 30-seconds, before she went to work, with the promise that she’d be home at lunch time, and eventually proceeded to go upstairs to make myself something to eat.

There is a certain amount of excitement to doing things you have not been able to do for a very long time, and not by choice, however mundane these things may normally seem. As I sauntered into the kitchen the possibilities for what I could have for breakfast seemed endless. I was no longer at the mercy of a state dietician planned menu, full of items that sounded good in the printed word format, but whose execution when made was like a fully different food item that may or not be intended for human consumption.

Nor was I at the mercy of whatever commissary I had purchased in my weekly order of Ramen noodles, dehydrated refried beans (“a bag of beans”, to add to said noodles), summer sausage (to also add to said noodles), corn tortillas (to eat the aforementioned mix of noodles, sausage and beans on, prison tacos… Ideally with some hot sauce and/or canned pickled jalapenos), instant oatmeal (a 10 packet variety pack for $1.80 per box), a jar of instant coffee (which if you bought the cheap stuff made your breath smell like you’d been subsisting on a steady diet of rotten meat and dog s@%t), and if I really splurged, then also a bottle of jalapeno flavoured squeeze cheese (to put on the aforementioned prison tacos), and a jar of crunchy peanut butter (for my oatmeal).

Not this morning… This morning was a day of freedom, a day of endless possibilities, a day that if I wanted to I could have cold cereal, with as much milk as I wanted, and a glass of milk with it, and I could mix cocoa into my milk if I wanted to… I could have cookies and eggs for breakfast if I wanted to. I could have 3 bowls of ice cream for breakfast, wait 2 hours and have another bowl, straight out of the freezer. I could brew coffee in a real coffee maker, and have a cup with real sugar in it (At the facility where I had done most of my time they would not sell real sugar on commissary, instead keeping us to what was commonly referred to as “pink sugar” due to the colour of the packets that the artificial sweetener that they sold us on commissary came in. The reason being that sugar was one of the common ingredients for making “squawky”, “hooch” or “pruno” however you prefer to call it… Jailhouse wine… You needed bread, fruit (lots of fruit), sugar, a container to make it in, and a cell that you knew wasn’t going to be shook-down (searched by a guard) for a little while. I never drank any of that stuff while locked up, as it was not very common in our facility, due to the fact that they made it very hard to make. They outlawed real sugar packets and boxes of sugar cubes on commissary, and didn’t allow inmates to take the fruit from their meals back to their units, as they do in some facilities. Also, due to the guards compulsive desire to rifle through our belongings on a consistent basis, this made getting caught brewing it a very real possibility, and the risk vs reward was just not worth it. Plus it just never seemed appealing to me to be drunk in prison.

Photo: Before (Nov 2001, after just over a year already locked-up) and After ( Nov 2005, 2-weeks after getting out): Eating whatever you want, when you want it, IS a big deal when you get out. Old habits die hard… Still tucked-in and buttoned-up to the top.

With all of these newfound possibilities, I opted to make some eggs, in a pan, on a real stove, and eat them with a real metal fork, on a real ceramic plate. Something else that I had not used in several years… A metal eating utensil. Instead being relegated to the land of plastic sporks (spoon/fork combo), standard chow hall fare. For in-cell and on-tier eating I had purchased a separate plastic fork and plastic spoon when I first got to prison, on my first commissary order at the main state yard, before being moved to the private/corporate run prison where I spent the majority of my sentence. I had that separate plastic fork and spoon from that first commissary order all of those years, until the day I was taken from the penitentiary by immigration at the end of my sentence.

That first full day out, day my aunt came home just after noon, and brought a celebratory lunch of take-out Vietnamese food. I absolutely love Vietnamese food nowadays, however that day I was a bit overwhelmed by all of the options and don’t recall all that much about that lunch, except that there seemed to be a lot of food, and how odd peanut sauce on fresh salad rolls seemed. It was exciting though, and every year, to this day, right around the anniversary of my release from prison, my aunt and I go have lunch at the same Vietnamese restaurant that that food came from.

I was released from prison with a pair of “state” blue jeans and a white t-shirt. I was also supposed to get a blue button-up shirt, but they did not have any available in property at the time of my release. At some point during my stay they transitioned from “blues” which were jeans, and a blue button up shirt, to green “scrubs”. You can see in some of my prison photos that I am wearing blues in some, and green scrubs in others. I actually hung onto a pair of blues long after they were replaced by the green scrubs, solely for pictures and potential visits, but at some point my blues got taken by a C.O. (corrections officer/guard) during a cell search. I also had with me as I left the facility, a pair of sneakers that I had purchased from commissary, a pair of reading glasses, my medical record summary, 1 pair of socks, 1 pair of underwear, a broken taped-together state prison ID card (my only official photo ID at the time), some other general release papers, and a cheque for under $170 American, the balance of what was on my inmate account. The rest of my prison property I either gave away, including my coveted 13” TV that was in a clear/see-through plastic shell, or sent out, like the nylon string acoustic guitar I had purchased from commissary that I sent out before leaving the facility. (That guitar actually never did end up making it to me after I got out, as the woman that received it and was supposed to send it to me, elected to destroy it instead, and feign that it was an accident. Though that is another story all it’s own, and not something we are going to get into right now.)

That evening, my first full day out, as my wardrobe was not in any way plentiful nor stylish, when my aunt got home from work we went clothes shopping. We went to a few local chain stores as well as the local shopping mall.

Two things really stood out to me when we were out and about:

1) After being locked-up and in a regimented environment, where if you left your unit, you were dressed the best you could, and you took pride in your appearance. When we had “prison blues” to wear still, you had to be tucked in and buttoned up to leave your unit. Many guys went so far as to even iron their clothes (you could check-out an iron during the day in exchange for your prison ID). With several convicts, especially those of Mexican descent, going so far as to “crease” their clothes, to look sharper. Once the system took our “blues” from us, when you had to leave your unit, you still tucked in your  t-shirt under your green scrub shirt, and several guys still ironed their scrubs even. (If you had a “hook-up” in laundry they would take care of your stuff there too, and it would come back all pressed and sharp. This was normally done in exchange for some commissary items or vending machine tokens that were available for purchase off of commissary). So one of the first things I noticed when out with my aunt getting clothes, and that I voiced with some agitation, was how scrubby people dressed when they went out in public… Paint on their pants, dirty construction gear on, shirt buttons not done up, their stuff all untucked, cruising around like town like slobs. I actually find the humour how my perception was now. As what I didn’t understand then, was that I was seeing people that had just gotten off of work. They were out running errands and such, not concerned about what other people were thinking, just trying to live their lives, get what they needed and get home. Yet, here I was, fresh out of prison, with barely a full-day out, a not yet contributing member of society, judging their appearance.

The second thing that really stood out to me that day was when were at the mall, there were several groups of what appeared to be teenaged Native kids, all dressed like what they think thugs and gangsters are supposed to dress like, in what appeared to me to be their best music video imitation fashion. They were hanging-out, loitering in different groups scattered throughout the shopping mall, like they still do today.

Now, after being locked-up for years with REAL thugs, killers and gangsters, and prior to that associating with very similar people on the street, seeing these kids in the mall, not knowing what their deal was, I immediately mentally went to approximately “Defcon 4”. Eyes scanning my surroundings, becoming instantly hyper-vigilant of everything around me, taking note of exits, items that could be used as potential weapons, and who was in the general vicinity. It appeared to me like “Shit was gonna’ pop off” at any second… Watching their body language and facial expressions, who was talking to who, and what in general appeared to be going on. It definitely looked like drama was brewing, and I was gonna’ be damned if after all I had done, lived through and been exposed to, if I was gonna’ become the victim of some collateral damage from a shooting or a mass fight in a Canadian shopping mall the day after I got out of prison.

Well, as it turned out, it was a fully false alarm, absolutely nothing “popped off”… and I came to realize over the next little while that this was their norm, and for the most part in public places they were harmless. The worst that was gonna’ happen was that someone very intoxicated was gonna’ try to possibly shake your hand, and through slurred speech ask you for money. Their biggest concern appeared to be who was gonna’ obtain the next substance to get high or drunk on.

It was painfully obvious that I had a whole lot of things to get used to, and to learn about, in a hurry, in order to be able to even function in society. It was like I basically had to re-learn how to live entirely. I had not even encountered anything serious yet, but the obvious truths were: I did not have a bank account, a job, nor a place of my own to live. I did not have a phone, let alone a cell phone (before I went away we did use cell-phones as well as numerical pagers still). I had never used high speed internet (but had used dial-up a bit pre-prison, though had never had an internet connection in my own home before). I was 25 and needed to see about getting a driver’s license again, but before that I had to obtain a copy of my birth certificate, and I learned that I had never been issued a Canadian Social Insurance Number… I had an American Social Security Number, but that was of no use to me now. I also had to obtain a provincial health care number and card, and at some point in the very near future a job, but I had to get my Social Insurance Number and some picture ID in order to be able to do that.

At this point I couldn’t even go to the store by myself, was in a country I had not lived in since I was a child, and I had very little idea of how to navigate the city I was in, in fact I had absolutely no idea… As well, being around large groups of people in an uncontrolled environment, where I didn’t know “Who was who” made me very uncomfortable, and this was just the proverbial “tip of the iceberg”.