by Wayne T. Dowdy
[Updated August 5, 2021, almost three years after walking out of the prison gates (08/28/2018). I was still attempting to recover from damage caused by thirty years and ten days inside the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons.]
Prison damages people. Those who spend decades in prison are damaged in many ways, all of which I will not go into. For instance, exposure to violence or physical abuse that people deal with. Or repressing natural tendencies to fight when having to comply with irrational demands. I wrote about demands like these in “The Truth About Incarceration, Part I” and “Authority and a Prisoner’s Story.”
Don’t Get Personal
A less than obvious example of damage occurs for someone like me. I am a southern gentleman by nature who likes to assist people I see carrying a heavy load or who look to need help — especially women. I repress the natural desire to help. To engage in a personal conversation may also create difficulties.
At times, I resist the desire to offer help due to fear of causing a conflict for the damsel in distress. I still offer to help in certain situations. Because of prison regulations and the warped, unwritten code of prison ethics, I may avoid speaking openly about an issue. Normally I would speak about it to a person I feel I can help by offering a suggestion.
The person may or may not accept a helping hand. In such a situation, an inmate may decline assistance from another inmate. This is especially likely when there is animosity of some sort, like a ‘race problem.’ Personal conversations and any type of transaction between staff and inmates are viewed as inappropriate. Many prisoners and staff alike view them that way.
Instincts Denied
My instinct is to help others. Sometimes I don’t because of the risk I may put the other person in by doing what comes natural. Knowing that my act of kindness may harm the other person makes me reluctant to offer assistance. My ethics and natural instincts tell me to help, as a decent human being.
Upon release, I will have to undo decades of damage done by the prison experience: suppressing healthy emotions and needs. I must learn to be normal, whatever that may be in an imperfect world filled with broken toys, damaged from life experiences.
[I continue to work on behaving as I normally would do as a free citizen, if not for the damage caused by the extensive incarceration. I still struggle when it comes to relationships. I am a decent, loving, kind, and gentle human being, who doesn’t have to pretend to be bullet proof.]
I sent out the following message to a friend who posted it on social media for me. A lot of people liked it so I will share:
“03/05/17: To all my Faithful Friends: I hope March brings each of you lots of love and success or whatever you need. I want you to know that I love you all. God and Jesus are all I have to hold onto in this cell. I am blessed to have a loving wife, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends, family, and two dogs waiting for me. I hope to have a big family reunion when I come home! Many of you I have met through my writings, and I want all of you to know that I love you all. Please don’t forget me. I will write all of you soon. Prayers work! May we all reach a new level of spirituality in our lives. Some of you have sent pictures of your pets. I even have one of Smokey the Cat!”
[Georgia Aquarium: I walked by the Georgia Aquarium en route to a job fair at the City of Refuge, but have not been to watch the fish swim. I will go soon now that I’m working and can afford to buy the tickets. Everything is expensive! Update 08/02/2020: I did visit the Georgia Aquarium with loved ones and enjoyed the experience but was shocked by the entry-cost and food prices.]
The above indicates the desensitization of prisoners. For over 28-1/2 years, my physical contact with other humans and mammals has been severely restricted. That is definitely true on an intimate level about lovers and sexual intercourse! During this sentence, I have resisted romantic-relationships. I’ve only been involved in three since 1988, and only one of those included physical contact (hugs and kisses on a visit).
At U.S.P. Atlanta, I had one female visitor I got to hug and kiss, and some mice to pet. 🙂
In Lompoc, California, I got to take care of a friend’s pet house sparrow, and to go outside to feed the seagulls, crows, other birds, and ground squirrels. I fed the ground squirrels until the administration poisoned them. 🙁
In a relationship, I love to hug and touch, to put my arm around my mate’s waist or shoulder, to sleep with my arm around her to maintain contact. I guess I am by nature, a “touchy-feely” kind of guy. In prison, I sleep alone and touch myself.
Sexual Repression
In 1980-81, when I took psychology in college, I seem to recall that a prominent psychologist or psychiatrist wrote about the damaging effect of suppressing sexual feelings and desires. If that is true, I must be more damaged than I realize. Perhaps I need a therapist, now!
In my opinion, sexual repression is a leading causes of mental illness in America.
Around 1997, a Nevada, Holier-than-Thou politician, pushed a bill through Congress that prohibited federal prisoners from receiving magazines or books containing nudity. [Ensign later resigned due to negative publicity about his extramarital affairs.]
Censorship and Complex Reasoning
Several years ago, the prison mail room staff rejected an issue of Smithsonian I subscribed to because it contained nudity. I appealed.
The program statement makes an exception for educational or anthropological content, as one may see in National Geographic. However, understanding an “exception clause” requires cognitive thinking. It requires the ability to comprehend the subject matter and its relation to the provision. Then one must analyze the situation and decide whether the matter before one’s eye does, in fact, contain what constitutes a permissible exception. That is a far too complicated process for someone who may not have a GED, I reckon.
The Smithsonian Board of Directors has Supreme Court justices and politicians. If I was wrong in my assertions, the justices and politicians on the Board of Directors support publishing and distributing pornography.
I appealed the decision to reject my Smithsonian. I took it to the highest level in Washington, DC. No one involved comprehended the “exception clause” and upheld the denial of my magazine. Censorship won because I didn’t want to spend $500.00 to litigate the matter in federal court, where someone with the required intelligence could understand the educational/anthropological, “exception clause.”
Perversion and the Politician
Since that policy took effect, I saw a dramatic increase of inmates put in the hole for “gunning down” female staff members — masturbating or exposing genitalia while watching the woman. The hole means confinement to a cell 23 hours per day, restricted from purchasing most commissary items and from using the phone and email system. That may qualify as abnormal behavior.
The politician who sponsored the censorship bill, later came under fire for getting caught cheating on his wife. Throughout the years, many of the politicians who come up with such bills did what prisoners in the Georgia prison system called “Shifting the Heat.” That means saying or doing things to put the focus on other people, to keep it away from themselves.
[U.S. Senator John Ensign, Author of Ensign Amendment, Falls From Grace, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2009/nov/15/us-senator-john-ensign-author-of-ensign-amendment-falls-from-grace/ ]
Celibate by Choice
In prison, I remain celibate because I choose not to participate in homosexual activities. That is my only other option, since I do not have or attempt to have sexual affairs with staff members. Even if involved in a heterosexual relationship with someone, I still couldn’t engage in sexual activities, even if someone visited me. While visiting, prison rules limit physical contact to hugs and kisses when greeting and leaving. Therefore, I remain celibate and will do so until I reenter that part of humanity upon release from prison.
Lompoc, California
In 1999, while I was at the United States Penitentiary in Lompoc, California, a tall and pretty, female staff member worked in M-Unit. A male staff member worked there too, known to create drama with staff and inmates alike.
M-Unit is where those of us with high profiles were kept. I lived in it because I was a maximum custody prisoner. The administration scored me as maximum custody due to violence and an escape in 1981. I was a 24-year-old knucklehead in the Georgia prison system at the time. Today I am a model prisoner.
Pretty Woman
That tall and pretty woman was a mother of three. The male guard wanted her to sit in a booth. The correctional officers who worked in the unit used the booth, which had a phone, small desk, drawers, and a cabinet to store their personal and work-related items.
She rebelled. Instead, she chose to speak with me, within his view. We stood talking on a tier, in an open area, where others could hear our conversation. She asked about my childhood and history. She wanted to learn how she might help raise her children, and to know what I thought led to me spending my life in prison. Our conversation was wholesome, no improprieties of any sort.
The next time I saw her, she asked if I’d be willing to give her an affidavit about our conversation, if she needed it.
“Sure,” I said.
The male guard wrote a complaint against her for fraternizing with an inmate.
Because of that experience, I sometimes avoided conversations with female staff members. They may have only wanted to engage in conversation to ease their tension from working in a male prison.
When sexually attracted, I must resist the impulse to flirt or to make an advance. A rejection might result in a trip to the hole and a damaged ego, the damaged ego being the worst casualty of rejection.
[Today, I resist the urge to flirt or ask for a date because of some of the BS generated through the ME TOO movement. Many people filed complaints and alleged sexual abuse by those in power positions (most of which were legitimate complaints, I suspect). The main reason is personal circumstance, and reasons I wrote about in previous blog posts. I also don’t think it’s what I need until I become more accustomized to living on the outside.]
As damaged as I may be from the prison experience, I will blend into society when I am released. With a little help from my friends, and maybe a therapist or two, I will be okay and become a success story.
[Returning Citizen: I am a success story, as are all of the men and women who returned to society and have not returned to prison life.]
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