Eight to Forever

                                  I been feeling sorry for myself, morose.
 Whenever I feel like that I remember just how fucking lucky I am. I listen to great music,Jesus and Mary Chain, BJM, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Lou Reed, Beatles,Stones,Airplane,Dead, Mazzy Starr, today, so far. Automatic.
 I got nothing in the world to bitch about. Well, the aristocracy and their governments, but not right now.
 I gotta get back up.
Once again, I found myself hesitant to say what I wanted to on here.
Goddammit
 I got sent up  when I was a little kid,8.
 San Jose Juvenile Hall.  Under guard. Always.
Arson. Uncontrollable Child.
San Jose Juvenile Hall
First two days in there in a cell alone, no getting out, shoes don't fit, weird pants, cloth belt, comb and toothbrush and paste.
Food through the window,plastic spoon.
Metal bunk bed, one funky mattress, a pillow,two sheets and a blanket
Metal crapper with a sink and faucet/fountain on top, bolted to the wall. Nothing to play with, nothing to read, just sit there.
I was impressed.
As soon as I got into population, Tommy came over and asked me how old I was. He sort of hung down some when I told him, he said stick with him and he'd show me around
 Tommy showed, instructed me solemnly, usefully, I would only have to do this once and then maybe not again here, But someone is going to try you, can't be helped so...
  my best move would be to " get back and think, think, breathe then get the motherfucker in the eye with your thumb and then take off get lost, but don't run. Punks run, you ain't one."
       Sharpen the stupid fuckin' comb so the back edge is sharp then push it hard down and across if someone has a hold on you and kick the motherfucker and really fuck him up if you're gettin' caught anyway. Lose it before you transfer or move because they shake you down, it's another charge...
           Never hit a guard if you can help it,do what they say,it ain't worth fighting, what they do if you do is as bad as it gets in here....
....the comb,
 you sharpen it on the floor in your cell under the bed or they can see you did it from the black shit on the floor so clean it up, use spit and shit paper."
"Never tell anyone anything. Never tell on anyone,ever."
 He was eleven.
 He was going up. Three time loser. He stole cars and everything else he wanted until he got caught. He really did not give a fuck about anything. No one ever came to visit him and he never got or sent a letter from or to anywhere that I ever saw.
I was just something to do, break the monotony, maybe train a killer
"Let the dudes next door know when you're workin' on it and they can kick the wall if the guards are window walkin'"    
               I found a speed bag swivel in the hall and gave it to Tommy , he put it in a sock and smacked a bigger guy he didn't like in the head, in line for lunch.
    We got locked down for a week for laughing and not ratting on him.
He and Charles took me and Bobby Alvarez ,also eight,and trained us on what was what.
After he smacked the kid ,I didn't see him again until I got up to YA, he was playing basketball when I got there,with Charles and Alvarez. Charles was eleven and a mad fucking black kid. He called everyone "Big Head".        
  .

    Back in San Jose the three of them were surprised when they wouldn't give me back, .. because I'm a white boy....
I cried in my cell after they brought me back from the first hearing.
 When we got out for rec time, Alvarez asked me was that me crying and I said yeah, they wont give me back.
He said
"Me neither but I ain't fucking crying about it"
I never did again.
 Then Charles went up, him and Tommy ,one after the other
Charles went to Preston, then after two weeks, to Fricot. No Room.
Tommy went straight to Fricot.
Bobby and me were back to back for three months in San Jose and everyone left us alone
We rode up to Perkins together, in Stockton, in the same car, in the cage in back, midgets going to prison. No chains.
        I got held up in Perkins because I had a shot reaction that no one in my family ever found out about. I was hallucinating in the clinic, thought my mother was there.
But she wasn't.
High fences, guards in towers with guns, dogs, barb wire, twenty hours a day lock up, hearings,nut doctors
That's who's there
 I got to Fricot and out of the wardens office,finally, out to the yard we had,
Alvarez ran up and told me what fucking really was, we had wondered about it since we met,me for even longer.
 " You need the girls to do it. We don't have any yet."
Charles and Tommy were there, grinning at me. Slugging me in the shoulder
"It's another bighead"  "Oh shit, you hit the big time, you're fucked now"
I asked them"I heard my intestines are eight or nine feet long?"
I asked if that could kill me.
 Charles said "Nah.It's alright."
I never asked a screw for anything. I kept my mouth shut and did what they said.
I was there for two and a half years.

                                     Charles was 11. He could kick everyone's ass. 5 days a week we went to school. All year long. We went on hikes and played a lot of ball, and fought, lots of fights.
Raise and lower the flag
   Bumper pool, ping pong.
 Cards
We marched like soldiers to chow three times a day, we marched like that wherever we went
I had a radio but we  were so far upcountry,  I could only get an Angels Camp Fire Station and a Stockton station once in a while.
If it was free time and Elvis came on, we'd all sing along and then insult each other, 20  of us in there.
But, a lot of freedom, no fence. And, I could read. There were shitloads of books sent by some library, Stockton I think...
               We had boxing, Warball, Roller Skating..They took us to the Calaveras County Fair, Big Trees State Park to go sledding, our own rooms, no one else ever,ever in there. Only one fucked up "counselor" and he was gone quick, we were just little kids really
Boxing
One of the "counselors" coached me and Alvarez every night after chow before lights.
That schooling came back to haunt me, never mind the kids I beat the fuck out of, for years.
Kids with ten broken teeth, broken jaws, blood. I would stand in awe and look at them, at what I had done, could do. Sometimes I got hit because I was a mesmerized, fucking psycho kid. I broke my hands.
It took my badass father a year to barely civilize me, but really it was me finally, I had to do it.
It was really hard to not just take anything I wanted for a while, I kept getting in trouble. I was on parole
I mean, fuck, I had been living in gladiator school for three years and forever
Then I'm in Albuquerque NM. , fourth grade, little league, family swimming pool, living with 7 people I never met before and I'm 11.
It took me a while
             Me and Bobby did three years together. San Jose, Perkins, then up to Fricot.
As young as we were, being committed for the shit we were in for is a life sentence,no one is taking you to a foster home, your relatives ain't into it, get used to the shit,
They could keep you until you're twenty five or less depending on what else you do ''coming up" You can transfer into the joint at eighteen.
We all knew, it was life. 9 years old doing life.
Tommy and Charles moved up to the next level when they turned twelve, I only saw them at chow after that.
We always gave each other the finger, we'd be back together soon

Everyone had to go to church Sunday. I only ever went with Bobby and Tommy to the Catholic one.
 And then, by some kind of ethereal magic karma,they let me go.
                  Someone, a priest for fucks sake, found my fathers address and told me to" write him a letter." He and my mom split up when I was just a baby and he let it go like that. I never heard from him until he came to get me out of there.
I never tried to find out what happened to anyone.
I don't want to know.
 That priestly letter,
That was the best thing I ever wrote.