“Let's roll dog”, I said as I walked past a group of men playing spades in my prison block. Without a word, two of them got up and paced to catch up to me. They knew from my tone and heavy walk that I was heading towards drama. We were going somewhere violent.
No questions asked, no information needed or expected. They knew from me speaking those words alone that it was serious and that was enough for them. That's what made them Roll Dogs. That mindset is what made me a Roll Dog.
I miss knowing men like that.
I miss the monsters.
One of the things I miss about doing time is the people I had around me. The men who were in those walls. The worst people society could create all bunched up in one place.
Strange thing to be nostalgic about, I know. At least, strange to people who haven't been in it. An unforeseeable consequence of that life is that it gave me such an unreasonably high standard of who I'll call a “friend” that I have none out here. There's not a single human being I'd give that title to.
That's not meant to inspire pity or sympathy or anything like that. I have my family, I'm by no means lonely. I've written about this feeling before but it was more of a generalized way. I'm feeling it again this morning. Why on earth would good people make worse companions than bad ones?
I've met countless interesting people since getting out of prison while playing things straight, but not a single one I'd trust. Not one. This isn't meant to tear you down but rather to highlight the incredibly high bar I developed regarding the term friendship. The word really means something to me. It's not simply “someone I like to spend time with”. If I call you a friend it means I'm willing to get a shovel and tarp for you. It means I literally value your well being over another person's life.
It's dysfunctional, but I am what I am. I actually have no interest in trying to change that about myself. I like that this word means something to me. I'd rather mourn it than diminish it's value. I like that it's not watered down and meaningless as it is when I hear other people use it.
Where I did time, association was one of the most fundamental and important life skills you learned. Who you were willing to attach your name to spoke as much about your character as your own actions.
One, it made you very selective on who those people could be based on the standards of the life we lived. Two, it made you work harder to be someone who another man would consider worthy and three, it made everyone involved take it very seriously.
You'll say “my friend” so-n'-so while referring to a profile on social media. I won't even break bread with people I wouldn't be willing to ride n’ die with. I share food with friends and family only. Even when they order-in lunch at work, though I get along very well with many of my coworkers, I'll stand in a corner of the conference room to eat. I've never once eaten at the long 20 seat table with them and I likely never will.
I'm not just careful with who I'll call a friend, I'm equally cautious about giving a false impression of friendship. I know they'd toss that word around loosely the way people are reckless when they say “love” and I'm not going to allow that misconception even the thinnest sliver of daylight.
I miss the men who shared this mindset with me. We shared meals. That mattered, it was a very big deal. Chow hall aside, we'd cook together. It was an event. We'd pool our resources to gather the things we'd need. Everyone was contributing what they could. While what each man could bring was almost never equal, we all ate the same portions. No one got less because he had less. I used to pay big money to have fresh vegetables smuggled in each week, about the equivalent to you making a car payment out here, yet the man who could only afford a couple of Raman soups ate just as much as I did.
We'd laugh and play music on someone's contraband radio and be just as mean and cruel to each other as you've ever heard human beings be. Someone is cutting up veggies with a can lid while I'm cooking chicken stolen from the Officers Dining Hall on a hot plate we made from an old coffee pot we'd scavenged while another man is boiling water in a mop bucket with a stinger.
I don't know if I'll ever know better times than those moments. We were so grateful for each individual detail I listed in the previous paragraph that our smiles and laughter seemed limitless. And it wasn't just the food, you took pride in the people you were sharing it with and felt proud that they shared it with you.
You didn't think I was going to write about how they were my friends just because they'd fight alongside me, did you?
I built a grill once. I had gotten some wire shelving and painstakingly sanded it down to bare metal. Laid it across a couple of old coffee cans and made four firebomb burners using toilet paper rolls beneath it. We even built an elaborate cardboard chimney to funnel the smoke out my cell window. Even the shift guards stopped by the cell wanting some. We made a whole day of it and it's the single reason why I'm obsessed with my grill now as a free man. That was one of the happiest days of my life.
We did and shared everything together and it all meant something. Being in that place, with all of the horrors you'd imagine, it became important to find and maintain something that made the rest manageable. Friendship, comradery, brotherhood, call it whatever you want, it became the one light that made the rest of that world less dire.
The term friend even rose above morality and self preservation. Only the Convict's Code came before the man who did his time with you. There were few limits on the shady and outright unforgivable things I'd do on behalf of one of those men. Proportionate meant nothing to me. I was willing to put someone through incredible hardships if it meant it improved things for a friend in even a tiny way. The same applied for them in regards to me.
I was sharing a cell once with one of these men. He was a petty, bitter and spiteful old Convict but I understood him. One summer, he just quit talking to me all together. As I eventually figured out, he'd somehow gotten it in his buggered old brain that I had been hiding Little Debbie's from him like a greedy little troll. (I hadn't, I was holding them for someone else). Even though I had figured out why he was mad, I decided to not tell him. I wanted to see how far he'd go. For literally months we shared that cell and he never spoke a single word to me. Not one.
Around that time, I had an issue come up with the Latin Kings. Stupid prison politics stuff. One of the members asked to speak with me to settle the matter and I agreed to meet him on the yard. While I was suspicious enough to come armed with a set of prison made brass knuckles, I wasn't so cautious as to take any greater precautions than that. The moment I saw 6 additional Kings approaching me and this man I knew I had guessed wrong.
I braced myself for the fight I knew I'd die in. Mexicans don't just beat people up and move on with their day. The same time they started to surround me, that bitter old celly of mine, along with a couple of other guys, showed up with shanks and ready to do work.
And work we did.
When it was over, I went to my celly and thanked him for recognizing what I was walking into and being there to save my ass. “Fuck you” he responded without looking at me and walked away. I yelled at his back, “that still counts as talking to me your mummified mother fucker!” He continued to give me the silent treatment for months even after that.
Because he was my friend and I was his. As angry as he was he showed up to fight and maybe die with me that day. That's a Roll Dog. They don't breed them out here. I miss those men.
The worst part is I don't even get to get them back when they get out. That degree of ride n’ die has no place out here in this world. Not in this society. The man in that story, his phone number is in my contacts right now, he only lives about an hour and a half away. Yet we ain't that anymore. We can't be. I have a family now. So does he. He has a grandson he promised he'd teach to drive and a daughter who he has many broken promises, and many years absent, to atone for.
In fact, I can rattle off a dozen men who were in those trenches with me and who could write this very same story. Those of us making a go at life out here had to give that up. We had to make that choice to prioritize a new group of people. Even when we see each other in passing, it's to make sure we're alright, that we're still on that grind out here, that we're not going to slip.
I've been the best man in several of their weddings. (I give phenomenal speeches). During whatever brief get togethers we happen into, we speak as if we were checking each other for injuries.
“You good fam?”, we ask
“Yeah, jus’ on that grind, ya know?”
“Yeah, but are you still on that good?”, making sure we're not slipping backwards. We all know that life is no different than being an addict. Even when you get clean, that pull never goes away.
Which is why we get caught up and get the Hell away from each other as fast as possible. We're not dumb. An addict being around drugs risks using again. Being around another player makes you want to play the Game again. I've literally told one of my guys, ‘I love you man but if you show up at my door I'll kill you”. A line I stole from another Convict who spoke those words verbatim to me.
What made us indispensable to one another in there makes us a liability to each other out here. A group of us got together once for the 4th of July on some land one of the fellas owned. We were up into the late hours in the woods around a bonfire, drinking , getting high and just being ourselves for once. It felt so good, so natural, to be with these men. Then one of the fellas spoke up, maybe the wisest amongst us.
“Anyone else suddenly thinking prison wasn't that big of a deal?” We fell dead quiet because, as it turned out, we were all thinking exactly that as we shared old stories together.
We haven't gathered since.
“You can't do time while straddling the fence” I used to tell the new guys. You had to be all-in or that place was going to end you one way or another. Turns out, the same is true for living as a citizen. You can't live with one foot in two different worlds. Especially because the hindsight world will eventually win. Only present struggles feel real which always makes looking backwards seem like it was better. Even when it obviously wasn't.
Even now I typed out those old stories about my Roll Dogs with a grin on my face the entire time.
I can't have friends out here because the bar is simply set too high and I'll be Goddamned if I ever give that up. I can't keep the ones I had because it's more than just who they were. It's who they were where we were. It only works inside walls. I'm not sad about those facts however that doesn't mean I don't miss those times with those people.
While this likey doesn't make sense to you, I miss the monsters.
"Only present struggles feel real which always makes looking backwards seem like it was better. Even when it obviously wasn't."
The most succinctly I've ever seen this said, and something I try to remind myself of during tough times.
A lot of similarities between the sentiments expressed in this piece and the feelings some soldiers have after their combat tours are over. It's a different level of friendship that develops under the most dire circumstances where you collectively don't know if you've got minutes, hours, days or a lifetime left together. And it really can't exist in the civilian world the same way. I think we can get close, given a much longer time together to develop a close relationship, but I can totally see why it can never be the same thing.
“It's dysfunctional.”
Wrong.
No, it’s how humanity made it.
We allowed money and property to make us a monetized commodity and we are the property. We ceased to be men.
If we make it it’s because “let’s go” means that again.
BTW half the State of NJ’s actual men, not criminals, function exactly on “let’s go” and you do, as well as any military unit that wants to make it.
Cheer up! Not dysfunctional at all, but healthy.