Gantos - Hole in my life

Table of Contents

The prisoner in the photograph is me. The ID number is mine. The photo was taken in 1972 at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. I was twenty-one years old and had been locked up for a year alreadythe bleakest year of my lifeand I had more time ahead of me.

At the time this picture was taken I weighed 125 pounds. When I look at my face in the photo I see nothing but the pocked mask I was hiding behind. I parted my hair down the middle and grew a mustache in order to look older and tougher, and with the greasy prison diet (salted chicken gizzards in a larded gravy, chicken wings with oily cheese sauce, deep-fried chicken necks), and the stress, and the troubled dreams of capture and release, there was no controlling the acne. I was overmatched.

I might have been slightbut I was smart and cagey. I managed to avoid a lot of trouble because I knew how to blend in and generally sift through the days unnoticed by men whospent the majority of their time looking to inflict pain on others. I called these men skulls and they were freaks for violence. Here we were, all of us living in constant, pissy misery, and instead of trying to feel more human, more free and unchained in their hearts by simply respecting one another and getting along, many of the men found cruel and menacing ways to make each day a walk through a tunnel of fear for others.

Fear of being a target of irrational violence haunted me day and night. The constant tempo of that violence pulsed throughout my body and made me feel small, and weak, and cowardly. But no matter how big you were, there was no preventing the brutality. I had seen the results of violence so oftenwith guys hauling off and smashing someones face with their fists or with a metal tool, a baseball bat, a rockand all for no other reason than some imagined offense or to establish a reputation for savagery. When I lived and worked in the prison hospitalespecially after I had become the X-ray technicianI was part of an emergency medical response team. I was called on day and night to X-ray all types of ugly wounds to see if the bones behind the bruised or bleeding flesh had been cracked, chipped, or broken. As we examined them, the patients would be telling the guards, I didnt even know the guy or (my greatest fear) I never heard em, never saw em.

It was this lottery of violence that haunted me. Your number could come up anywhere, anytimein the dark of nightwhile you slept in a dormitory with a hundred other men, or in full daylight on the exercise field while you strolled in the sun. Once, in the cafeteria line, standing directly next to a guard, I watched a skinny black kid stab some other blood with a dinner fork. He drove it into the guys collarbone so deep the doctor had to remove it with a pair of surgical pliers. AIDS wasnt a factor then. The blood that sprayed over the food trays was wiped off by the line workers and they kept spooning up our chow.

I wasnt raised around this level of violence. I wasnt prepared for it, and Ive never forgotten it. Even now, when walking some of Bostons meaner streets, I find myself moving like a knife, carving my way around people, cutting myself out of their picture and leaving nothing of myself behind but a hole.

Like most kids, I was aware that the world was filled with dangerous people, yet I wasnt certain I could always spot them coming. My dad, however, was a deadeye when it came to spotting the outlaw class. He had never been in prison, but he always seemed to know who had spent time in the big house or who was headed down that path.

In his own way he tried to warn me about going in their direction. When I was young, he would drive the family from Florida back to our hometown in western Pennsylvania to visit relatives. Once there, hed troll the streets with me in our big Buick and point to guys he knew and tell me somethingwicked, or weird, or secret about them. He killed a man with a pitchfork, Dad would say, nodding slyly toward some hulking farmer in bib overalls. Look at his hands. Hes a strong SOBcould strangle the life out of a cow.

Or Dad would point to a woman. She had a kid when she was in ninth grade and sold it to a neighbor. He knew it all. He burned down a barn. He shot a cop. He robbed a bank. Dad went on and on. I was always surprised at how many people from such a small town had been in prison. And I was really surprised that after committing such despicable acts they were back out on the street. They were a scary-looking lot, misshapen, studded with warts and moles, and I was glad we were in the car. But not for long. Hed take me to the Elks Club, or the Am-Vets hall, or Hecla Gun Club in order to get up close and personal with some of the criminal class. Hed order a beer and get me a Coke and some sort of food treat that came out of a gallon pickle jar of beet-red vinegara hardboiled egg, or a swatch of pigs skin, or a hunk of kielbasa. Everything smelled like a biology specimen, and with the first bite the red juice spurted out and ran down my chin. I must have looked like Id split my lip in a bar brawl. Then, once we were settled, Dad would continue to point out the criminals, all the while using his Irish whisper, which could be heard in the next town over. He pointed out bank robbers, church robbers, car thieves, and a shadowy second floor man, knownfor snatching jewelry from the bedrooms of sleeping homeowners. I began to imagine the entire town was some sort of bizarre experimental prison camp without wallsa punishment center where criminals were sentenced to living only with other criminals.

Dad snapped his fingers. These folks zigged when the rest of the world zagged. And once you cross that line, theres no coming back. Mark my words.

All this was my fathers way of letting me know he was in the knowhe had the dirt on everyone, and it was the dirt that made them interesting. At the same time he made it clear they were damaged goods and could never come clean again. Dads keen eye for spotting criminals of all stripes was impressive. But it wasnt perfect. He never had me pegged for being one of them.

Ironically, in spite of all the fear and remorse and self-loathing, being locked up in prison is where I fully realized I had to change my life for the better, and in one significant way I did. It is where I went from thinking about becoming a writer, to writing. I began to write storiessecret stories about myself and the restless men around me. While among them, I may have feigned disinterest, but like my father I watched them closely and listened whenever they spoke. Then back in my cell I would sit on the edge of my bunk with my journal spreadopen across my knees and try to capture their stories with my own words. For some paranoid reason the warden would not allow us to keep journals. He probably didnt want the level of violence and sex among both prisoners and guards to be documented. My secret journal was an old hardback copy of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, in which I spent hours writing in a tiny script between the tightly printed lines. I kept the book like a Gideons Bible on top of my locker and, as far as I know, its true purpose was never discovered.

Someone once said anyone can be great under rosy circumstances, but the true test of character is measured by how well a person makes decisions during difficult times. I certainly believe this to be true. I made a lot of mistakes, and went to jail, but I wasnt on the road to ruin like everybody said. While I was locked up, I pulled myself together and made some good decisions.