A few months ago I found myself in a shabby bus depot in Saranac Lake, New York. I had just visited a friend, and was pondering my 10-hour bus ride back to Brooklyn. The depot doubles as the anteroom of the Saranac Hotel, and its dilapidated decor from the early 1970s enhanced my dread. As I waited, eight men arrived to catch the bus dressed in the same ensemble: khaki pants and a white t-shirt. They all clutched small red mesh bags. Men’s croquet league? I wondered. Missionaries? My speculation was cut short by an exchange between two of the men: "You just get out of correctional?" "Yeah, you?"
"Yeah."
"How long you been in?"
"Nine years. You?"
"Five. Ray Brook."
I wondered what someone might do to be imprisoned for nine years. Two elderly women showed up to catch the bus. After hearing some of the conversation that was unfolding, they scuttled away, averting their eyes. I considered that option, but I was also curious. I figured that no one wants to go back to prison having just exited.
"Wow!" I interjected, too enthusiastically. "Nine years! That's huge. Congratulations! This is cause for celebration, no?" They all laughed and seemed to enjoy my approach. Or at least they didn't mind. "Thanks! Yeah, nine years. Got out today."
"My name is Amy. It's nice to meet you."
"I'm Didd. Thanks, you too."
Horse (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
When the bus arrived the few non-uniformed passengers hid in the back. Five of the parolees, Didd, Drew, Donnie, Elvi and Horse, had all piled in the middle, and Drew immediately asked me to join them. I was flattered, and now unexpectedly enthusiastic about the lengthy drive ahead.
I discovered that Didd, 33, was in federal lockup for carrying 7.6 grams of crack cocaine and a gun in Washington, D.C. He'd originally received a 30-year sentence, and was thrilled when his lawyer was able to get 21 of them thrown out.
Drew, 34, was once caught in the Bronx with 27 grams of crack, and received a 10 month sentence at a State facility. This time he was given two years for selling methadone to an undercover cop. "For the record, I gave a bottle to a female I know, and I didn’t throw her under the bus," Drew explained. "I didn’t rat on her.”
Donnie, a 25 year-old from New Hampshire, was caught with various drugs, along with a stolen .9mm Smith & Wesson (not "jacked" by him, he assured me), and he got four years in federal.
The others were caught in New York with heroin (one had "90 bundles"), and received sentences of 18 months and three years, respectively. All of the men were jailed for non-violent offenses, though one had served time at San Quentin years ago for murder. He said the killing was self-defense. Each of them had been incarcerated before, at least twice. Two said they'd been in various county jails 20 to 30 times. On the bus, all of the men vowed never to go back.
Didd (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
As we got more comfortable with one another, I spoke with each man about how he ended up in his situation and what it meant for his future. They allowed me to record their words and take their pictures. We talked about what it’s like to be in jail, and the injustices and inconsistencies of the legal system. How does someone with one prior misdemeanor charge for smoking pot end up with a 30-year prison sentence for possessing a few grams of crack?
Drew explained that his dad had been a drug dealer. One day when he was five, two men came to his home and fatally shot his father as he looked on.
"He was bleeding out his eyes and his nose and his ears," Drew recalled. "He ended up going to the bathroom—he was so hot he was pouring water on himself and he ended up passing out into the tub. I was standing right behind him and he died in the tub."
Before he was killed, Drew said his father had made a lot of money dealing drugs. "There's nothing I couldn't get. Money and abundance made me real fucked up as an adult, made me lazy," Drew says. "I'm working myself into being more responsible and productive, starting my life now."
When I asked him what he wanted to be when he was a little kid, he replied, "I didn't see this. I always wanted to be a scientist or a doctor or an engineer specializing in, like, satellites...just somebody who was needed in society for something important. My mother was sitting me and my brother down and giving us books and making us read and telling us not to fuck up in life, but my dad, he just had a bunch of drugs and money and guns around. I had a lot of anger and I grew with it."
Donnie (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
Drew (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
Didd's parents were also drug dealers and addicts. "I didn't have no role model," Didd said. "My parents were on drugs. I actually wanted to be a pro football player but that didn't work out. I started selling drugs when I was 11. When I was 14 or 15 I was doing things that a normal 14 or 15 year old would never do. I was robbing, selling drugs, cocaine, base, powder, weed, PCP, all different drugs. I never knew I was going to be in this situation then."
The men had little trouble frankly assessing the trajectories of their lives.
"All my adult life has been in the prison system. It's crazy. I'm 25," Donnie said. "I'm planning on walking a straight line, but I don't wanna be homeless. I got a high school diploma and three felonies on my record, I'm not gonna get a good job. I mean, it's fair to say I'm looking at a 10 dollar an hour job, that's no way to live. I plan on going to school for a trade, be a mechanic, that's my plan and I hope it works. I just want to go home with my head straight. It's been four years. That's a reality check. I definitely learned my lessons, but I just don't wanna be broke."
It was the most disheartening thing I'd heard all day. These men wanted to stay out of prison, but they also understood that everything would be working against them. A few talked about various classes they'd taken, but never anything that would help them get a steady, well-paying job. Most of them couldn't even use the Internet because the per-minute rate was too expensive. Rehabilitation programs are the first to get cut in a budget crisis. I asked if counseling kids was a possibility, but not one seemed comfortable enough with his own position to be able to lead others on a positive path.
"There's a lot of easy money to be made," Donnie said knowingly. "But I'm planning on walking a straight line."
Elvi (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
Horse (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
After three hours we stopped at a roadside deli. They'd each been given a $40 stipend along with their discharge outfits, and they were thrilled to be able to freely buy whatever they wanted. Perspective roars when you watch a man relish sunflower seeds, his favorite food, for the first time in nine years. The same can be said for watching a parolee play with an iPhone, a device that simply didn't exist when he was imprisoned.
The first thing my new friends searched for on my phone was Miley Cyrus' VMA performance with Robin Thicke. They, too, were unimpressed; it was much tamer than they expected. They also used my phone to call some friends. Hours later I would receive a message from someone who identified himself as Fat Man, and another from a mother inquiring about her son's safety, and if he'd caught the correct connecting bus.
We spoke in detail about freedom, and what it's like to walk out of jail, untethered, for the first time in years. Donnie was focused on the fact that he'd not seen fences and barbed wire for miles.
"Open fields with nothing but trees, just blue sky and clouds, it's beautiful," he said. "This is what I looked forward to. I'm used to seeing a lot of bullshit and fighting. This is absolutely beautiful."
Donnie (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
All of the men talked about the fighting in prison; the anxiety that comes with the constant need to protect oneself from potential threats. Didd elaborated: "When I first came in I was carrying weapons, like a knife. Any type of object that I could get to protect myself. I don't gotta worry about nobody doing nothing to me now. Nobody stabbing me. It was horrible. You gotta protect yourself every day; you're around a lot of different psychopaths. I was there for three years and in that time I saw seven people die. I know I can live my life now. I'm a free man."
The lucky ones daydreamed about seeing their families again—only two were going home to reconnect with them. Most of the others were en route to ¾ houses, which are similar to halfway houses, but serve parolees rather than those with drug or alcohol addictions. Residents live rent-free for a period of time while performing public works.
Drew was heading to a ¾ house in the Bronx, and he was anxious that he'd feel crowded and caged like he did in prison.
"You're locked in a room with 5 other guys [as many as 19 in a room at Rikers Island] and sometimes in the wintertime it's cold as fuck, especially if the heat goes off. Then you gotta hear 4 or 5 peoples' different conversations with each other and you gotta listen to 'em be loud and try to out-talk one another. And then you don't want to be fucked with, but somebody wanna come over there and kick your chair and nudge you and crack jokes and laugh at you. Then someone's breath stinks and another person's breath stinks, so now you got two big stinks that's going on, because they didn't brush their teeth, and then you got somebody who farted over here and you're trying to run away from it, but you run into another fart over there that you didn't know had happened. So it's just madness, you know what I mean?"
I didn't.
Didd (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
Horse explained how other prisoners could sabotage those who were about to be released. "If a person don't like you and you close, they can take a razor, or, they can set you up, and then you gonna go to the box," he explained.
"You gonna do 90 days or more. And it's because a man hate you, because he's jealous. And that's sad. Sad that he hate you so much that he gonna set you up for a new charge. I seen that happen."
The parolees also talked about what it's like to be deprived of "females" for so long. They mentioned how nervous they were to be talking to me, but spoke in graphic detail about what it's like to have sexual urges and no women to help actualize them; to do what you needed to do in a small cell when you can't be alone. Their primary concern was about men not being as "strong" as they wanted them to be. It was the only time their machismo took over and I was unnerved by their blatant homophobia. I felt pulled away from the naiveté with which I had been consuming their narratives. It certainly wasn't pretty, but it was honest.
"It's really tough to get through. Some people in there, they don't be gay, but they turn to the gays because of the pleasure they used to giving out there," one parolee said. "But I was fortunate to be strong and just please myself with my hands."
Another added, "I don't condone a dude going in straight, fucking with men, then acting like he wasn't fucking dudes in the prison system. Some people need it but some people are strong willed."
Another: "I met a lot of faggots. Homos, they're called homos. I respect them. You know why? I'm gonna live with a homo before I live with a snitch. Because the homo's gonna look out for you and take care of himself. A snitcher? He's gonna snitch on you and everybody else. But the people who been down for 20, 25 years, they do have urges. Especially if they been abused. Booty Bangers. That's what they're called. You cover your eyes because it's not your business."
Drew (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
They wanted to know about my life too, but I resisted the urge to give away much personal information. I deflected a few questions about my living situation in Brooklyn, and then my phone rang. It was my doctor.
I knew that taking this call would reveal more than I wanted to. But my doctor had been nearly impossible to reach, so I answered in the quietest whisper I could muster: "I'd be grateful if someone would just help me with U.S. Script, especially after confusing my AMH results with someone else's. What? Yes, I got that test three times. Ok, thank you. Ovidrel?"
The conversation with my doctor got increasingly less cordial, more detailed, and ended with an abrupt, "Well, this has truly been a miserable experience!" I did everything in my power to hold back tears and swiftly recover so that we could resume our discussion. Horse jumped up and peered over my seat. "It sounds like you're having trouble making babies." Ugh. This was my nightmare; sitting on a bus talking about my ovaries. But I wanted to match their fearlessness and brutal honesty. Plus, I felt too guilty not to reciprocate after they’d opened up so much to me.
I explained that for 15 years a doctor had misdiagnosed me regarding the condition of my ovaries, and that my fertility was now compromised. This was information I have yet to tell some members of my own family. Horse grilled me for details and gave me a great deal of unsolicited legal advice. Then Drew, sitting nearby, chimed in: "Did you try I.V.F.?!"
Wow. My preconceptions were rattled. I explained that I had, with disappointing results.
Drew seemed troubled. He said with utter sincerity, "Man, it sounds like your last 15 years were way worse than mine."
I didn't want to embarrass him, though I couldn't help but laugh; it was touching and humbling, the perfect punchline to a weighted voyage.
It felt as though we all needed that bus ride. We were absolved from judgement (and we'd all been judged wrongly). We had a 10-hour respite from reality; a fortunate exhale before the subsequent complications would set in.
I asked if prison had saved anyone. It felt like an odd question after hearing countless stories of how horrible the system is.
"I think sometimes jail saves people, sometimes it don't. I think it saved me," Didd replied. "I learned how to do most of the things that I didn't know how to do when I was young, get along with people and stuff like that. Now I have patience. I'm blessed to be in the position I'm in right now because I know a lot of guys, they still there and ain't never gonna come home. I'm not young no more, I'm not 24, I'm 33, and I gotta just take my time, take it one day at a time. I know if I can make it in there, I can make it out here...I have butterflies, I'm excited, anxious, I'm ready to leave that place."
Drew (Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
(Amy Finkel / Gothamist)
Amy Finkel is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, designer, photographer, and writer. She is an instructor at both NYU and Parsons The New School for Design, where she teaches classes in photography, documentary filmmaking, and web design. A native of Seattle, Amy lives in Brooklyn and is currently working on funding a feature length documentary about rehabilitation in prisons.
