What you gonna do?

August 22, 2003 1:35 PM

Bloggin from/about Jail. There is Alon the Felon (armed robbery): Hes called Vomit coz soon as he gets nervous or any of the downers go near him . . . he starts vomiting profusely . . . It works. Or there is now-released Michael Peterson (murder [scroll down]): There is a group of three young men who spend most of their time together outside their cells – perhaps 6 hours a day – doing each other’s hair. They braid and unbraid one another, fix elaborate “dos,” then start all over again. Also, amazing writing for the the female perspective: i don't want to take out my navel ring for fear it will close up, so i lie and tell the warden it won't come out. "that's okay," she says, "one of the girls in your cell will just rip it out for you." (Some language may be NSFW.)
posted by onlyconnect (31 comments total)

whoa. That's all. Thanks.
posted by xmutex at 1:38 PM on August 22, 2003

i should add it's sort of embarrassing that i'm anxious about leaving a comment.
posted by xmutex at 1:39 PM on August 22, 2003

I've been following the storyline at bluishorange, and it's been some of the best writing I've seen on a blog, period.
posted by me3dia at 1:51 PM on August 22, 2003

Females in jail are so hot. My friend Marny (not her real name) just spent 4 days in the slammer for tearing up this house while drunk with her friends. It was abandoned, but they caught her. I thought to myself when I heard the news "How could they put such a beautiful girl in prison? Wouldn't she be ripped to shreds?" Turns out she was hit on twice, got touched in the shower, had to use a sign in-sign out sheet for tampons (!!!), and her friend threatened to commit suicide so they put her on suicide watch. Crazy!
posted by Keyser Soze at 1:53 PM on August 22, 2003

So Alison, (bluishorange), is this fiction? Whether fiction or fact it's certainly beautifully written.
posted by pomegranate at 1:56 PM on August 22, 2003

Post of the day. Nice one.
posted by Quartermass at 2:07 PM on August 22, 2003

me3dia: Your kidding, right?

Its pretentious crap,

"That quiet, fuck that quiet, it makes me sick it makes my mind rattle. I wish i was that maggot, and instead of becoming that blow fly, i wish a bird or other such creature stumbled across my now stuffed..."

If this came from anywhere but prison would you feel the same way? There seems to be a perception that any criminal who can string a sentence together (and this guy barely meets that criteria) is some sort of undiscovered savant struggling to redeem himself through the crafting of finely honed prose.

Jack Abbot did it better and without this newfangled interneck dealie-- unfortunately his redemption was hindered by by his commission of a murder six weeks after being paroled. Paroled in no small part due his literary accomplishments and his catching the fancy of Norman Mailer.

Maybe it's me, but is anyone else wondering why convicted felons have Internet access. Maybe, just maybe a case can be made for read-only access in some circumstances, but this guy is able to upload. I felt less than sympathetic when he complained about having his laptop confiscated.
posted by cedar at 2:08 PM on August 22, 2003

it's certainly beautifully written. -- pomegranate

Er, yes. Beautiful:

"she was ugly as sin, but she could really wax that ass, you know what i'm sayin'?" one of the girls says. she makes a spanking motion with her hand. everyone laughs. i cringe. how can they all sit around talking and laughing as if we weren't in jail? how many times have they been here before? is someone going to try to make me wax that ass?"
posted by dhoyt at 2:13 PM on August 22, 2003

whoa. seriously.
posted by Sijeka at 2:25 PM on August 22, 2003

this is fantastic stuff, thank you for the link
posted by Peter H at 2:26 PM on August 22, 2003

cedar, as me3dia noted, he was talking about the bluishorange site, which is the last of the links (woman's site). That site is actually run by a talented writer (I think she may have won a blogging award in the past) who is releasing bits of the jail story/experience in a Memento-esque fashion. I'm not positive everything on the site is true, but the writer actually did spend some time in jail.
posted by onlyconnect at 2:33 PM on August 22, 2003

And can you believe they give prisoners meals, too?
posted by xmutex at 2:34 PM on August 22, 2003

When your stuck in a wall of no pain you would just bout give anything to make pain happen.

*makes pain happen*
posted by quonsar at 2:34 PM on August 22, 2003

"cedar, as me3dia noted, he was talking about the bluishorange site"

Ooops. Sorry... ADD must have kicked in.
posted by cedar at 2:35 PM on August 22, 2003

I wonder if you can look at porn on prison computers or is it all filtered?
posted by Akuinnen at 2:48 PM on August 22, 2003

She's a MeFite
posted by papalotl at 2:48 PM on August 22, 2003

pomegranate, to answer your question, my writing is not fiction--i was indeed in jail for a bit back in april. it's been quite interesting to write about, particularly in the backwards fashion i've chosen. i'm glad you like it.

keyser soze: females in jail are not all "so hot," i assure you. ask me about the one with the greasy hair and dirty white denim shorts. good times.

onlyconnect: i did win a bloggie but, oddly enough, it was for design.
posted by bluishorange at 2:48 PM on August 22, 2003

i once saw a movie with Anne Heche about hot girl action in jail.

it was pretty cool.
posted by xmutex at 3:05 PM on August 22, 2003

bluishorange: Agreed. My friend had some nasty stories about the inmates. Great post by the way!
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:06 PM on August 22, 2003

"keyser soze: females in jail are not all "so hot," i assure you."

Fight her lies, keyser. Women in prison movies wouldn't lie to us:

"two of the glove-footed girls, who appear to be in their late teens, sit down across from us. they've come in together and are, without a doubt, the prettiest girls in here. one of them may be the prettiest girl i've ever seen in person. her perfect skin, long dark hair, and model figure make her look out of place among the other rumpled, dirty inmates."
posted by dgaicun at 4:53 PM on August 22, 2003

fighting her lies!
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:01 PM on August 22, 2003

I spent a little time in county jail myself. About 3mos. actually. That was about 11 yrs ago and I've been clean and sober since then. Jail is a terrifying experience. I never went to prison so I'm sure it can get worse. The women were sad and frightening at the same time. The whole justice system is a racquet. If you end up with probation(as I did) they make it almost impossible to comply with the rules so almost everyone ends up back in. My probation office was about 30 miles away and I had no car. I tried to get it moved to a closer county and they refused, but if I had ever missed an appointment they would have come and got me and locked me up. I was mandated to live in a halfway house and the rules of the house were to attend a treatment center full time. I was also required to pay 100 dollars a month to probation. The halfway house wouldn't allow you to get a job for 3mos!

It sets you up to fail. I didn't (because I'm lucky enough to have people in the world who care about me) but most did. It's very sad.
posted by bas67 at 5:33 PM on August 22, 2003

Jailbird Journal I found this site a couple of years ago, it's an 'old fashioned' journal instead of a blog, but well worth the time to read it.
posted by SuzySmith at 6:50 PM on August 22, 2003

I love your blog, bluishorange.

Of course, you know we're all dying to know what you were in for.
posted by LittleMissCranky at 7:29 PM on August 22, 2003

I agree about Alison. She is a tremendous talent. I've been reading her for years. I suspect someday there will be retrospectives of her career. Just so good! Nice to see her linked here. I didn't know she was a mefi.
posted by filchyboy at 9:54 PM on August 22, 2003

Bluishorange -- I agree with LMC. We all want to know why you were in jail. We won't tell anyone.
posted by Espoo2 at 2:00 AM on August 23, 2003

hey, you have to wait until she gets to that. there are clues. she's going backwards. she hasn't gotten to the arrest yet.
posted by centrs at 7:45 AM on August 23, 2003

thank you, all, and thank you, denise. there are indeed plenty of clues; in fact, a few people have already figured it out. part of the reason i'm telling it backwards is that when i started writing it, it was only a month or so after my arrest and i wasn't really ready to talk about that just yet. i'll get there soon, i promise.

dgaicun: the "prettiest girl i've ever seen in person" was a hooker. a HOOKER. i'm sure you could spend some time with her, but you'd have to spend some money with her first.
posted by bluishorange at 8:35 AM on August 23, 2003

Yeah, xmutex, because internet access and meals are exactly the same on the hierarchy of needs.

I think someone has unreasonable expectations.
posted by Snyder at 9:01 AM on August 23, 2003

Respect to bluishorange -- that's some good writing.

I (fortunately) don't have the experience to know how true his stories are, but I can definitely recommend Edward Bunker's writing as well.

I've been fascinated by writing about the prison experience for a long time now, and since I've never come close to actually living anything like that, I sometimes wonder why I'm so interested. I think that maybe prison provides a concentrated, extreme view of some aspects of society that I feel are always there. Or maybe I'm just a voyeur.
posted by fuzz at 10:18 AM on August 23, 2003

Thank you, SuzySmith, for the jailhouse journal link, which was another really interesting pov site. And thank you also to bas67 for your own pov on this. One thing running through all the entries is the feeling that the system doesn't care about you at all. And sometimes authority figures will abuse that authority, just because they can. Fuzz, yeah, me too, but for me I think it's more of a "there but for the grace of whatever" thing. Come to think of it, have similar fascination with mental illness diaries . . .

The thing that I like about the first link (Alon the felon) besides the inside details isn't that it's beautifully written, but that the guy is pretty clear eyed about his life. His homelife was awful, but he sees that he ended up in jail because of his own choices: They say where ya from can cause ya to go bad o the inside we'll thats b-s too i left Dc before i was old enough to find my d*ck and know what to do with it, it wasn't my origins fault, it wasn't coz i was addicted to anything, sure i was poor, from a messed up childhood but wtf- it was simply part of my world n life! I had choices i juz never picked the right ones!

I think bluishorange should have a book deal by now. These blog entries are exactly the sort of thing people would love to read in the excerpts section of Harpers, for example. Thank you for posting comments here, that is so cool of you.
posted by onlyconnect at 11:26 AM on August 23, 2003