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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

The Coleslaw is Sometimes Pretty Good

Every day I have to trudge through this freezing rain ( its nearly every actual day ) with only the crappy cloth coat they give us. The raincoat you can buy is basically a trash bag with a hole, even though they have yellow raincoats which are still crappy but functional to the people who work in the garden. In other words, they have raincoats they could give us, but they won't. So I march through this freezing ass rain , in this shitty cloth coat, all while trying to get ahead of the throng of dim witted apes in men's clothing they're yelling, suddenly stalling in front of me, pushing wheelchairs, using walkers , shambling three times daily into this human roach motel where they pass out the food trays . I get down there and its fucking tuna. This is not regular tuna, its like some kind of Orwellian " Great Leaders Choice Tuna" . I've heard horror stories of fins in the can. That wouldn't be enough to deterr me, except that it tastes and smells awful, and I am not a person who is very picky about fish. It also has a gross amount of mayo added. To compliment this abomination are coleslaw and two prepackaged cookies. The cookies taste like what I imagine the zinc oxide in them would taste like if it was mixed with sugar and flour and then cooked into an artificially colored biscuit. Like somehow, even though its a cookie, after the first time you've eaten one, you're forcing them down just to get some free calories from the department of corrections. The coleslaw is sometimes pretty good, so I collect it. Even if you make it taste bad, cabbage is more nutritious than a lot of the food we get. This time, it was oddly salty and tasted too much of that nasty tuna in the adjacent compartment in the little plastic bento box we get.
So, cursing and spitting like a sailor aboard some Ill conceived, floundering schooner, I march back through the freezing rain, to the loud Adult Nazi Day Care filled with real adult babies, squealing like pigs running around playing grabass and pretending to be tough so they don't have to think about how woefully inadequate human beings they are their wives have left them, their familiea have given up on them. They know this is probably both their fault and a result of circumstances outside their control. They know they're on average slower or less able to focus than the average human. For some they were born this way, their mother was an alcoholic ... For others, their brains were smashed in some violent or reckless encounter, and for some, they've managed to somehow use enough drugs to make them permanently stupid. And some simply refuse to learn or grow up in a response to childhood trauma.
But do I have pity for these people ? Perhaps and perhaps not. Every day they respond to this adversity by refusing to look it in the face, by insisting they know better than other people even though they, least of all, should make such a claim. By making so much noise that they can't hear themselves think about their dismembered hopes for their life. They betray each others trust, they go back on a deal and they think themselves clever rather than just reprehensible for having done so.

So I get back to this man made fuck hole, this fifi carved into the skull and brain of an invalid, to find some part of this meal I can make edible .
And in the doorway, there's one of our staff, a social worker.
Shes about to go outside and what is she wearing ? A quilted , water resistant coat that is probably perfect for this weather and probably costs 150x as much as the production cost for the horrible trash bag rain coat they sell us for 10$, and a scarf.
She's a nice woman. And my time here is meant to be a punishment. But its impossible not to think , You piece of shit. You fattened jackal. Get out of my way , you spawn of a curdled, festering hypocrisy.
But I don't say that.

Elisa Carlson