My friend Carl

 

I’d like to introduce you to someone. He’s currently incarcerated, and if the State has their way, he’s going to be incarcerated for the rest of his natural life, and for good reason. You see, this guy was not the kind of guy you’d like to have met in a dark alley. Hell, he’s not the kind of guy you would have wanted to meet in a room filled with cops all armed and there to protect you. The simple fact of the matter is, this guy was a prick, in every sense of the word, and no one would agree more than him. Back then, he had a pretty nasty drug habit, which is a nice way of saying that he would have sold his own mother down the river if that’s what it took to get his next fix. But as the title of a popular book once said, “that was then, this is now.”

So this guy, Carl, goes to prison, and not for the first time, either, where he’s told by the judge that he’ll never, under any circumstances, see the light of day again. As I may have already implied, there was a pretty good reason for this. The guy had pretty much destroyed not only his life, but the lives of anyone and everyone he ever came into contact with, but then, that’s what drugs do to you. They ruin lives. It doesn’t matter who we are, or who we think we are, there are just some drugs that, from the moment you take your first hit, your first injection, your first snort, they control you. Metallica has a pretty good song about it, called Master of Puppets, that sums this up pretty well because, once you’ve tasted that first high, you no longer have any control over your life. You’re just a puppet under the control over your need to get high. You’ll sell off everything you ever owned, betray anyone you ever cared about, there’s no level too low for you to sink, so long as it means you can get high, yet, for some reason, we all seem to think that we’re going to someone be able to control a need that no one else has been able to. Anyway, my friend, Carl, found himself in exactly that same predicament. He knew the dangers of drugs, knew what he was up against, and yet, he somehow thought he’d be able to control the drugs, instead of allowing the drugs to control him. He’ll be the first to tell you that, looking back, he had no freaking clue.

Anyway, my friend, Carl, goes on binge after binge, gets into trouble with the law time after time and runs around the kinds of people you’d see in some sort of movie portraying the evils of certain disreputable motorcycle clubs, if you catch my meaning. Finally, the judge has enough and throws the book at him, sending him to prison for the rest of his life. In doing so, the judge may have saved an untold number of lives, because my friend simply didn’t care about anyone or anything but himself and his next fix. This wasn’t because he was a bad person under the surface, just that the addiction has a tendency to override any and all common sense. Allow me to give you an example.

I grew up in Ohio, Akron and Cleveland, to be exact. Like many impoverished neighborhoods in the world, we had a crack-house on our block. The way it worked was that you’d go around to the back, known on the back door and wait for it to unlock. When it did, you’d step onto the back-porch and close the door and an electronic door lock would automatically lock you in until your business had concluded, for your safety as well as the safety of the occupants in the house. It was also a way of buying the dealers that extra couple of seconds to get rid of any evidence, in the event of a raid, something that had paid off, time and time again for them. Knowing they couldn’t ever get into the house in time to prevent them from disposing of the evidence, the cops decided to try a new tactic, which was to park their police cruisers on the street, right in front of the house during peak hours of operation, which was usually in the middle of the night. Now, what do you think happened? Do you think the addict seen the cop cap parked on the street and turned around to take his business somewhere else? Hell no. He’d walk back and forth on the street, all night long, if need be, trying to figure out if he should continue waiting, or risk it to get a fix, and  sure enough, it was only a matter of time until one of these idiots was dumb enough to walk right up to the back door, as if it was legal, and demand a fix for the wad of rumpled up dollar bills they’d managed to scrounge up. Needless to say, they were always sent away, empty-handed, which always led to the inevitable screaming and shouting from the addict as he scratched himself bloody into desperation.

My point here is simple: when that monkey climbs on your back, it’s a wrap. There’s nothing, and I do mean nothing you won’t do to get that fix. That’s the power of addiction, and that’s the power that had my friend Carl when he entered the prison system this last time. That is not, however, the Carl that I met, the Carl that’s there today. The Carl I met is one of the most responsible people I’ve ever met. He’s driven, goal oriented, conscientious, caring, compassionate, even religious, which is surprising because, as I may have mentioned already, he was a complete monster before his most recent imprisonment. In fact, I’d bet my life that, if some of his victims described him, they’d describe him as the devil himself. So, what happened to change him? The short story is that he reached rock bottom, and while down there, realized he needed to change his life. In other words, he realized that he needed to get off the drugs. Unfortunately, he arrived at this realization far too late to make any difference, as he’d pretty much been given so much time that he’d never see the light of day again, yet he still felt compelled to make a change, which is what makes Carl’s story so important. You see, anyone can pretend to change when they think others are watching, or better yet, when there’s something to be gained. Carl, on the other hand, changed when he believed, with every fiber of his being, that he’d never see the light of day again, that he’d never, ever even be considered for parole. He began attending 12-Step Programs while in prison, in both AA and NA, began participating in other rehabilitative groups, started working in one of the prison’s many, many slave shops and basically turned into the kind of man he always was under the illusion of the drugs. His progress is nothing short of miraculous, and made doubly meaningful because, unlike everyone else in prison, he underwent these changes under the belief that they’d never amount to a hill of beans, due to the way the laws were written at the time of his sentencing, but then something changed. For some reason, some people finally began to realize that human life is never beyond redemption, that people truly can change, and they began to push for the laws to change to reflect this. While we still have a long ways to go, there have been some rather significant changes for people like Carl, changes that will allow him to at least get an opportunity to be considered for parole. Will the changes he’s made in his life be enough? More than likely, not. The simple truth of the matter is that CDCR’s (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) BPH (Board of Parole Hearing), rarely grants parole, particularly to those who truly merit it. For them to actually grant him parole would be nothing short of miraculous, but then, so was the chances that he’d become a better person. Somehow, despite the overwhelming odds against him, he managed to overcome his addictions and change, so if that miracle is possible, then perhaps the miracle of being granted parole will be bestowed upon him. And if not, he’ll continue to be the positive influence he’s now become because that’s who he always was. We just couldn’t see it under the multiple layers of addiction.

So, “where’s Carl at now,” you ask? At the moment, he’s in quarantine. You see, like many of the people (notice I said “people,” and not “inmates”), who are currently incarcerated, Carl is literally a slave, which is completely legal in the United States, under the 13^th amendment (Contrary to popular opinion, the 13^th amendment legalized the terms and conditions under which slavery could exist in this country), and like the rest of the slaves throughout the prison system, Carl had to go to work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping through the prison system like a wildfire through a field of dry grass. And Carl’s job wasn’t something “essential,” like making the food he, and everyone else in there, had to eat. He worked in a factory, producing products sold to the State of California for a profit, and now my friend has been infected with COVID-19 because of the failure of the CDCR and the CCHCS (California Correctional Health Care Services), to reduce the prison’s population, so as to allow for proper social distancing. Like many in Soledad, Carl lived in a dormitory, making social distancing absolutely impossible, and like many, Carl is now faced with the very real possibility that he’s going to die, alone. Visits have been canceled, phone calls are outrageously expensive for those few who can actually afford them, and in prison, there’s no such thing as Facebook or Zoom to allow us to connect with our loved ones in the outside world. As I sit here writing this letter, I can’t help but wonder how my friend is managing. Is he going to be one of the lucky to survive? Or will he be one of those who, because of his age and health issues, dies? Only time will tell.

One thing I do know is that Carl, like all of us, deserve to know that, no matter what we’ve done in life, we’re not beyond redemption. He deserves to know that his efforts to change, to redeem himself, are being recognized, if not by the prison or the judicial system, then by the rest of us. More importantly, those around Carl deserve to know this, because it gives them hope and incentive to continue to change, or in some cases, to decide to change, because, while Carl might not ever see the light of day again, either because he’s never given that chance by the BPH of because he dies of COVID-19, others in there will see the light of day, and the last thing anyone wants is someone getting out of prison who hasn’t changed. So, I’m asking you, take a moment and drop Carl a line to let him know that you’ve read a part of his story on my blog, and that you’re proud of him for having taken the incentive to change, not because it was required for him to parole, but because it was the right thing to do. His efforts deserve no less, especially right now as he’s struggling to live another day.

For those of you who are actually interested in writing to Carl, his name and address is as follows:

Carl Taylor CDCR# J-01025

CTF-FD 1L

P.O. Box 705

Soledad, CA 93960-0705

A postcard is such a simple thing, but in prison, it can make all the difference. It does something rather unusual in a prison environment, which is to say: it puts a smile on someone’s face.

As I go about concluding today’s entry, I just want to take a moment to express my sincere thanks to you for taking the time to read my entry. You could have spent these last few minutes doing anything, literally, and yet you chose to spend them reading this entry. For what it’s worth, even though I’m not out there at the moment to see you reading this or to interact with you directly, it’s deeply appreciated. When I was transferred from the prison system to the county jail to face civil commitment proceedings, I thought all was lost, but since coming here, I’ve been contacted by a number of loyal followers to tell me that they not only missed me, but that I actually made a positive impact in their lives. Trust me when I tell you, you could have paid me no greater compliment. The idea that I, using a contraband cell phone in prison, was able to have any kind of impact in your lives, let alone such a positive one, gives me such a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. I felt like the Grinch whose heart had just grown 3 sizes bigger that day he brought the presents he’d stolen back to Whoville. Poor metaphors aside, I wish there was a way to get the people in authority to understand that not everyone with access to the outside world uses it for evil, that most of us, if given half a chance, would use it for more meaningful things, from staying in touch with our loved ones, to speaking out about the injustices of the prison system. Either way, thank you.

Shawn L. Perrot

826 4^th St.

Eureka, CA 95501

shawnLperrot@outlook.com