Stamps

Stamps­­

The sight was disturbing, overwhelming. Matt froze in his tracks, shaken by the scene before him. His first thought was that he would somehow die in this awful place. He didn’t know how he would die, but he knew he couldn’t survive it. The moment foretold an inglorious end to what had once been a pretty good life.

Sixty-five grown men stuffed into one large room, two to a 7’ x 10’ cubicle, bordered on one side by bunkbeds, desks and lockers on the other, and open at the end. Sketchy looking neighbors in full view just 4’ across the aisle. Traffic 24 hours a day. You won’t find “privacy” in the BOP dictionary. Drug dealers mostly, with an occasional guy convicted of killing someone on their troubled journey to this place, and an odd assortment of child abusers and pedophiles. It was depressing for Matt to think he belonged in this place with these guys.

And the noise. Chatter all day long. The guys across the aisle and one cubicle over were into rapping…at 2:00 AM. A continuous line at the microwave with its constant beeping, guys heating up water for coffee, or cooking an unending array of creative spicey concoctions made with rice or the prison mainstay, Ramen Noodles. Matt wouldn’t have been surprised if someone would try to bake a turkey in there someday. Loud voices and banging on the table during animated games of dominoes or cards. The noise never went away.

 Oh my God, Matt, how did you end up in such a place? Greed, desperation, money crimes, the white color stuff that seems like it doesn’t hurt anyone, but it does. Knowing that he deserved it didn’t make it any easier.

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Matt noticed a couple inmates on the maintenance crew putting hooks on his neighbor’s wall.

“Yo, I see you’re putting hooks in their cubicle. What would I need to do to get a couple on my wall.”

The universal sign language, thumb and index rubbed together. Money, but there is no money.

“Don’t you already get paid to do stuff like that?”

Matt, being a newbie, had no idea what an idiotic thing that was to say.

“I get paid 9 cents an hour. It’s a book if you want hooks.”

“A book? What book?”

“A book of stamps.”

Adam Smith would have been proud. Inmates, largely uneducated, created their own monetary system eons ago. No one knew when or how it started. It just was. A new postage stamp at Commissary was 50 cents. The “Compound Stamp” had an assigned, enduring value of 35 cents. No one knew or understood the difference in value. No one questioned it. No one cared. It just was. Tradition, custom…and utility. Money was not permitted, so the stamp became the universally accepted means of exchange.

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People don’t disappear when they go to prison. They don’t leave the planet. Incarcerated doesn’t mean you cease to exist. It’s a change of address. It’s not a fun place to live, but that’s where they do live. It becomes their world, especially for the long timers. They care about their appearance, their hair, their mustaches and beards, just like normal people do. They root for their home football teams and watch the news. They call home. They worry about their kids. They are still alive, sort of. The word is “institutionalized”. At times, many inmates, so detached from the real world, may think they are half-dead. Matt would fight the good fight to hold onto the thought that he was half-alive.

Lots of people live in uncomfortable conditions, and they survive. Prisons may take the spirit out of the inmates, but the life form remains. Those in the real world tend to forget the incarcerated, but they are still there. They see the same moon, feel the cold and raise their faces to the rain to try to catch a touch of the world they left behind. Some people live in row houses in Boston, some in palatial estates on the ocean. Prisoners live in a prison, not the most ideal of lodgings, but that’s where they live.

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Barter systems in history were ineffective. “I’ll make you a chair for a bushel of corn” proved to be clumsy and inefficient. Societies needed a means of exchange. So do prisons.

The basics are provided, T-shirts, boxer shorts the feel of paper, socks too big or too small, stiff hard boots that Matt could barely walk in the first few days, followed by a week of painful steps because of the blisters. Khaki shirts and pants, a worn, torn jacket, likely not your size, suitable for the fall but not enough for winter. Clothes make the man. The prison issue makes one feel less than a man, more like a piece to be moved around the yard at the command of a disinterested voice blaring over loudspeakers everywhere- “10 minute move, 10 minute move.” And they do move, like columns of ants scurrying from place to place because that’s what they do.

For the inmate fortunate enough to have outside support, or a job that pays more than 9 cents an hour, Commissary provides a touch of the real world- Hanes T-shirts, sweatshirts and sweatpants, a couple brands of tennis shoes. Snacks- always the spicey-hot chips or Cheetos, Ramen Noodles, rice, Honeybuns, a rotating choice of candy bars.

 One day, standing in the rain toward the back of a line of 150 fellow inmates, the troubling realization hit Matt- You know your life sucks when the cookie of the week matters. His life sucked even more an hour later when he was just 10’ from the Commissary door, and a C.O. stuck his head out the door and announced Commissary would be closing early and they would all need to come back next week on their scheduled day. This would be upsetting in the real world. In prison, the compliant accept it as part of what is, and they shuffle on back through the puddles to their Unit.

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The prison provides, and the Commissary offers, if there are funds on your books. Everything else is stamps, 20 to a book. Want a haircut at the prison Barber Shop? These guys are “’paid” to cut hair, but if you don’t cough up 5 stamps, you ain’t getting one. A haircut in the Unit by a guy who once was a real barber will cost you 10. How about dibs on a new jacket if and when they ever come in? Ten stamps and the guy working in laundry will set one aside for you. Would you like a zipper on the jacket instead of the clunky buttons? One of the guys who keeps the prison issue going for as long as possible will put one in for a book. Ten stamps will get you a cigarette rolled from the tobacco that is smuggled in. Everyone has a hustle.

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Time does things to people, that is, if there’s enough of it. Guys who never touched a needle or thread learn to sew. For 10 stamps, you can get pockets in the gym shorts you bought at Commissary. Tough, mean, bad guys learn to knit- hats, gloves, scarves, even blankets. If an inmate can’t have it or use it there, he will pay for it in stamps and send it home for a son, daughter, niece or nephew.

Maybe talents are hidden in all of us and appear only by necessity. Matt was surprised to see some of the artwork done by unsavory characters who had done some truly bad things. Guys who couldn’t even draw a circle before they got there were commissioned to draw beautiful, shockingly lifelike portraits from photographs. Give a guy 20 years, and he might get good at something.

Matt needed a hustle. An inmate soon to be leaving taught him how to make file folders out of soda cartons. Matt signed up for “Crafts” and was able to order glue and a little kid scissors. Colorful and functional, with a lifetime guaranty (Matt’s life- not the folder), Matt was selling them for 2 stamps, or 3 for 5. It came out to about 70 cents an hour, certainly a comedown for a guy who once billed $250.00 an hour, but not bad by prison standards.

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 It was a challenge, but Matt eventually came up with the 4 books he needed to have an 8x10 drawing done from a small picture of his daughter. The artist was a disgusting pedophile, but the work product was wonderful. Matt learned early in the game that if he didn’t associate with guys who had done bad things, he would spend all his time alone.

Prisoners have an empty, helpless feeling about most everything. Matt agonized over the fact that he could no longer do things, anything, to help his family. The protector, the provider, had become the needy. But for those 4 books he was able to feel like he had done something for his daughter. He knew those 4 books would buy a smile on his beautiful daughter’s face. It may not seem like much to those on the outside, but on the inside, that’s 40 file folders.

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A stamp is a stamp is a stamp. Only “Forever” stamps fly, but the condition varied wildly. Some of the stamps that ran through Matt’s fingers must have been on the Compound for years and had gone through hundreds of transactions. They were barely recognizable, but if they sort of reminded the seller of a stamp, and the word “Forever” could be discerned, they were accepted.

Stamps with “Cancelled” marks were not accepted. Matt figured a stamp, whatever its condition, could still theoretically be used to send something out beyond the prison walls. For much of the currency that ran past Matt, this would require glue and a generous review by the Post Office. But “Canceled” was a “No-No”.

This is where the creativity and ingenuity of the incarcerated mind comes into play. Matt learned that with a little toothpaste, a Q-Tip, and a lot of patience, the “Canceled” mark on some stamps can disappear, not so much on the stamps with a white or light background, but more readily on the ones with a dark background. The idea of a guy who once had a 6 figure income delicately scraping the “Cancelled” marks off of stamps was a bit unsettling for Matt, but he did it. He needed the stamps.

Some inmates asked their family and friends to use stamps with a dark background on mail they would send in order to facilitate the cleansing process. If it would be a large envelope, the sender was instructed to place the postage several inches from the top so that stamps might be spared the ruinous workings of some nefarious machine slapping “Cancellation” marks across the envelope. The pristine postage was often more valuable than whatever was inside. People in the real world need money. Inmates need stamps.

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Matt soon learned there were two major industries that accounted for the bulk of the stamps flowing through the prison marketplace- the Store Man and the Ticket Man. Every Unit had a Store Man, sometime two or three. The Store Man had sufficient resources to buy substantial quantities of desirable items from Commissary and then sell them in the Unit at a profit for stamps, good old fashioned American capitalism at work.

It was an interesting, harmless, occasionally useful part of life until Matt’s cellie opened a store. The former drug dealer felt he had been ripped off by the present Store Man and vowed to run the SOB out of business, price cutting on an epic level, done not for market share but simply out of spite. The adverse impact on Matt was tending the store when his cellie was away, giving up half his locker for food storage, and the risk of having too much food and too many stamps on hand. Staff frowned on that. Matt also harbored concerns that the pre-existing Store Man, 6’3” tall and one the gym muscle heads, might take the price wars up a notch and suddenly appear one day to destroy the new store and its proprietors.

The biggest dealer in stamps by far was the Ticket Man. This was the serious, complex, well managed business of sports gambling. Sports magazines show every football and basketball game, college and pro, and inmates have access to the latest Vegas lines. The betting slips, “tickets” are copied at the library, and distributed throughout the prison by “Runners”. There’s a 5 stamp minimum bet, but the real players often wager a book or more. The whole thing is slanted heavily in favor of the Ticket Man, and he ends up with a lot of stamps, hundreds of them everyday. He has to pay the runner, the guy who copies the tickets at the library, the inmate working at the library desk who gives the copy guy the code to run copies free of charge, and of course payouts to winners, but he still ends up with a lot stamps.

What does the Ticket Man do with all those stamps? He couldn’t possibly get enough haircuts or eat so many candy bars to account for his profits. Matt wondered and the Ticket Man explained. Again, the creative mind. He exchanges the frayed, worn stamps for good ones, at a floating exchange rate, perhaps a book of the decrepit ones for 15 stamps recently purchased at Commissary. The Ticket Man then sends the new stamps to someone on the outside who sells them for real money and then puts the money on the Ticket Man’s books so he can buy new tennis shoes, a radio, brand name toothpaste and normal person clothes. Warren Buffet would be proud.

Sports gambling quickly became Matt’s biggest distraction from facing his current circumstance. He researched the teams, their records, recorded scores, and studied the spreads. He would always bet on games he could watch on TV or listen to on the radio. Five lousy stamps, or 3 file folders gave him hours of distraction.

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Everything costs stamps. Sell your Thursday chicken dinner? Five stamps. (Matt frequently sold his as he often wondered how long it took the BOP to breed a meatless chicken.) Buy a package of doughnut sticks from the guys who sneak (steal) them out of the warehouse or kitchen- 2 stamps. A cigarette rolled from tobacco smuggled in will cost 10. The number of stamps some desperate inmate will part with in order to get a little K-2 or some other drug imaginatively brought in will vary depending on supply and demand. A capitalist society built on stamps.

 Some guys have so much outside support that they will pay 5 stamps to have their cell cleaned. One enterprising, baby faced young man created his no overhead enterprise of offering sexual favors over in the Education Building for 5 stamps. (Appreciate writer restraint for omitting descriptive text.) When Matt was told of this new business endeavor, he jokingly quipped, “Hell, I can beat that price.” It helps to have a sense of humor in prison.

People like to have money, even if it’s just “walking around” money. Inmates like to have stamps, just in case. Books of 20 are bound together in crisscrossed tiny rubber bands. It was a good feeling for Matt, a feeling of security, to have a handful of those little bundles of stamps on hand should a need arise.

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Like all of his compatriots, Matt looked ahead to the future, dreamed of life outside the fences. How would he adjust to the real world? Maybe having the humanity sucked out of him would affect his interactions with real people. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to sleep through the quiet. Maybe the initial blare of a loudspeaker in Walmart would give him a frightening jolt. On the lesser end of lingering symptoms, Matt thought about stamps. Matt would not have see a coin or piece of paper money for the next 5 years. Stamps became such a part of Matt’s life that he would sometimes imagine, with a smile, a time in the future when he might ask the kid behind the counter, “How many stamps to supersize that?”