VINCE

Why don’t kleptomaniacs like puns?

Because they’re always taking things, literally.

I mentioned once that in my younger years I made a living as a thief, stealing expensive mountain bikes from stores and taking the occasional piece of equipment from unlocked garages subsidized my drug habit for a while, and of course made me a felon at 18.

Who would have known, years later, I would make a much better and more honest living protecting the assets of Spencer Gifts. Spencer Gifts—purveyor of fine lava lamps, Halloween costumes, and gag gifts. Although I was only ever the assistant manager, I made over 100 citizen arrests of shoplifters over a one and a half year period. I even made the news for catching somebody trying to pass a fake $20 bill. This was all shortly after I moved from St. Paul to Rochester. About six months (I think) after I came back from Florida.

When a job opening became available for a regional loss prevention director, I applied, and that’s when they found out I was a felon and was “not fired” but I decided to go work for the ice cream factory instead.

Two years later, after another brief drug delivery stint, I was in Lanesboro working at a busy corner café where I was fired for stealing. I really didn’t feel bad about it then because I was a huge piece of shit and I felt as if they owed me more than they paid me. Or however I was able to justify it to myself, friends, and family. Probably a variety of excuses and explanations.

When sober, I haven’t stolen anything since I was a kid. But I’ve resorted to theft in some form under the influence of every drug I’ve ever done. And there’s another great reason for me to stop this train-wreck of a life. (Oh, I don’t mean suicide. I mean I want to quit drugs.)

[ANNE: After Vince went off the rails I cleaned out a storage locker where a landlord had moved all his stuff. I pride myself on not having a storage locker. If you ever want to do something really depressing, clean out someone else’s storage that’s been left abandoned. I came across a couple dozen lapel pins Vince had received from Spencer Gifts in recognition of his shoplifter-catching abilities. Some were gold-tone, some were silver, and one was platinum with a diamond chip. I don’t know what ever happened to them.]

VINCE

My roommate is old. He has a TV, and we were watching FOX news. I should mention that I couldn’t hear anything and the subtitles weren’t on, so I was really just reading the ticker at the bottom. Anywho…the ticker said, “Judge allows gays to get marriage licenses immediately in Miami Dade…” The roommate says, “More queers getting married.”

I said, “Does that bother you?” And he replies, “I just think it’s gross and I don’t like to think about it.” I said, “Well don’t. I never think about it. And it doesn’t seem to bother me.” He didn’t like that.

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I ran a mile today in 10:10. That’s 3:50 better than the requirement for passing the fitness test. Still nowhere near the required 4.3 miles they run every other day at boot camp, but I hear they let you work up to it. Progress.

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Get back to where you once belonged….

In 2002, after a year of successful aftercare in a half-way house in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, I made the decision to return to Minnesota to take care of my court obligations, with the intent of returning to live a sober life with my network in Florida.

[Photos of VInce during his 5 sober years]

I had felony warrants in Hennepin and Ramsey counties that were about two years old. I ran from them to enter Hazelden in April 2001, because I wanted real change in my life and in my opinion, being forced into treatment doesn’t work. (I should say in my experience, not in my opinion.)

In the month before my return to Minnesota, I gathered evidence of my actions and whereabouts over the previous 15 months or so, along with some letters from my family, counselors, peers, etc. regarding my behavior and recovery program.

My hope was that the documentation would influence the judges’ opinions and sway their decision toward one that would keep me out of prison and let me get back to Florida.

Well, it went 50/50.

Because of my efforts in going to treatment, staying sober, and passing a urinalysis test when I got back to Minnesota, the Ramsey County judge basically kicked me out of jail and smiled at me right after she sent a pregnant woman to prison for four years. And I never even saw the judge in Hennepin. She let me out the day after I got there.

Now the hard part. The judges have no influence on the decision to let me move out of state. The State of Florida makes that call. And even with approval of both probation officers in Minnesota, and my Declaration of Domicile in Florida, they still didn’t want any more know felons in their state. Request Denied.

I blame nothing but poor decision making on my part for my incarceration. There is a lot I could have done differently, but I always look back on that period of my life when I wanted to get back to where I once belonged, inevitably relapsed, and snowballed.

VINCE

Sunday brunch: “Egg bake.” Made with frozen hash browns (not made by a 25 cents per hour employee, shredding whole potatoes), grey ham, and overcooked eggs. Inedible. A packaged blueberry muffin, even though the facility has all equipment necessary for a fully functioning bakery.

Hell, they could even teach people how to bake. Then they could use that knowledge on the outside to be a productive member of society.

Canned “tropical” fruit. A bowl of water (aka oatmeal), a small container of apple juice that was still frozen, and milk. On the container of milk there is a slogan. We use it a lot around here. “You can taste the difference.” It’s true.

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Please do not buy a pillow from Pillow King (not its real name) based on the commercial you may have seen on TV. Just so you know, they are made here in our prison, by people making roughly $1 an hour. I suppose some could say that’s better than outsourcing…but is it? They pay for slave labor. We get no stock options. The prison gets the money. Money they don’t have to use to pay our cost of confinement. Nope, you are all still paying that. Ugh. I’m sure my information is wrong. I’m done on the subject.

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Every day getting closer to boot camp scares me. Every day I feel as if I do not want to go. True, it will save me 18 months of prison time. But I don’t think I can make it through all of the physical activity. I’ve not come close to running over a mile. I’ve only run a mile two times in a month and a half. I haven’t done one push up since I arrived. And I have absolutely no desire to do the tape. None.

I also think I’m afraid of what will happen when I’m released. I don’t have a home, a car, any money, no clothes. Nothing. It’s all provided for me here. I hate my brain. I sometimes doubt its decision making.

[ANNE: I checked into Pillow King, and they have a deal going where you pay only $115 for two.  A hundred and fifteen dollars for two pillows?  Are they stuffed with down from the golden goose or what?]

VINCE

Dear Blog:

I decided to take a “mental health” day away from work. Although I have weekends off, everybody else was off too, so I can’t accomplish much. Today is my chance to catch up on laundry, sleep, reading, and yes, writing.

I do not recall where I left off as I have sent everything I have written since my arrival in Moose Lake to my Mother for print.

Not much has changed. I haven’t been running because it’s been too cold for the outside track to be open, and there are only two working treadmills for over 1,000 prisoners. I have been doing the tape more often. And as impossible as I thought it was going to be, I am actually getting better at it.

I’m also active in wolleyball and pickle ball. A friend and I were in the pickle ball tournament this past weekend. We lost all four games and were eliminated on the first day. But we tried.

I also try to lift weights when I can. I don’t even bother most days, as the workout room is full, and I am not the type of person that fits in with that crowd. I will just leave it at that.

I submitted a list of ten puns into a contest for the prison newspaper to see if one of them could win me a little money. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

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Hot dogs. To quote myself, “All of our meals are hot dogs. It’s just a matter of what shape they’re in today.” Prison food is far worse than any institutional food. I see so much waste. I see huge wastes of your money, our time, and our “food.” Simple things like giving us single-serve packets like ketchup and dressings vs. making a large batch of dressing then paying somebody 25 cents per hour to put individual portions on a tray. Over 1,000 trays, three times a day. That saves a lot of money over time. And that’s just one idea.

ANNE

As I wrote in an earlier post, Moose Lake is the former State Hospital for the Insane, built in 1936. “Early treatments used there included insulin and electroshock, hydrotherapy, and physiotherapy. In the 1950s lobotomies were used on some patients.” As you can probably tell from the stilted writing here, this is taken off a historical document; I always assume things were at least twice as worse as described in historical documents.

“When the Sandstone State Hospital closed in 1959, its program for inebriates [Inebriates! I love it.] was transferred to Moose Lake. By 1961, treatment of alcoholism was a specialization of Moose Lake. In 1966 a program for adolescents was begun, in which some of the participants attended public school and gained high school credits. Also in 1966 all of the hospital’s medical/surgical wards were closed.

“The hospital closed as a psychiatric facility in 1995. It has since been owned and operated by the Minnesota Department of Corrections. The facility maintains a small treatment unit for drug/alcohol problems, as well as a sex offender treatment program.”

The name was nice-ified to Moose Lake Regional Treatment Center at that time.

A “total of 1,060 adult offenders are under the Case Responsibility of Minnesota Correctional Facility – Moose Lake with a total of 1,044 adult offenders currently on-site at this facility.”

I won’t throw all the numbers at you; you can look at them yourself if you have nothing better to do. Moose Lake has a slightly older population than St. Cloud, maybe because it’s where they house a lot of sex offenders who are locked up for life.

At St. Cloud, 126 inmates were in for Criminal Sexual Conduct (let’s just call it what it is: rape), average sentence: 106 months. It’s more than double that number at Moose Lake, 271 rapists with an average sentence of 137 months. In case your math isn’t any good, that’s over 11 years.

425 men are in Moose Lake for drug offenses, and the average sentence is 64 months. That’s Vince.

The next category is domestic assault (120 inmates, serving an average of 24 months). Then there’s just regular assault, with 73 inmates serving an average sentence of 54 months.

Other crimes with interesting nomenclature include Crimes against Government, Escape/Fugitive, Counterfeiting/Fraud, and Harassment/Stalking/Bias.

While there was only one murderer at St. Cloud, there are 70 at Moose Lake. So yeah, it’s a bit more of a serious place.

St. Cloud is somewhat more white and Latino, and with fewer Natives and African Americans. Whatever that means, if anything.

I scanned the religion column and saw that 58% were Christian, 3% Muslim, and a third had no preference.  There are 10 pagans, 7 who called themselves “Eastern,” 4 Atheists, and again, as in St. Cloud, one Jew. That must be scary, given what Vince has told me about the Skinheads and the Nation of Islam members talking about how they’d like to kill them some Jews.

Nothing about dwarfs.

VINCE

I saw the doctor today. They told me they have to switch my medication because insurance won’t cover it. I’ll be going on something called Cinnamon, or Sinamet, or some such shit. I was really happy with my Mirapex: no side effects and it did the job. But it would appear as if it is not my choice.

Orientation was boring, but not as boring as sitting in my cell doing nothing. We got to watch the PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) video again, which I still find hilarious. I’m sure if ever there was one thing that would completely eliminate prison rape, it would be a half hour video tape from the late 80s, in which men with mustaches talk about blowing their cellies for candy bars. Have some dignity, guys. Hold out for a bag of coffee or something.

In the 10 days that I’ve been in general population, I have learned everything that they spoke on in the orientation. And anything that wasn’t covered could be found in the handbook we received the night before. So for nine days, we had questions that needed answers. We found answers, in one way or another, to questions that all could have been avoided by giving us the God-damned…. Sorry, mounting frustrations.

It would appear that this prison, like St. Cloud, is run by 200 people in 300 different departments. And none of them seem to want to deal with prisoners.

Today I found out I got the one open industry job in the garments factory. Or, garments building, I don’t know. I’ll be making the clothing for inmates in all Minnesota prisons. I’m excited not only because I got the best and highest-paying job out there, but because I will no longer be on room restriction as of Monday. Until now, I’ve been stuck in my room after noon every day. I couldn’t go to the gym except for on weekends. Now I can really begin my training.

I haven’t been able to get on the treadmill since Sunday. So I’m sure when I get back on it Saturday it’ll be just like the first time.

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Am I just lazy? Mybae. Smotemies I relay dn’t want to erxecise. I have gnoe to the gym ticwe in the past two dyas, walkeld one mlie, then lfet. I couldn’t even stay for an hour. Ugh.

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Today, I said I would do it.

Today, I said I would not give up.

Today, I succeeded.

I ran a whole mile. In 10 min, 36 secs. Not bad.