ANOTHER DAY: PROGRESS IN MADNESS

A whistle rattled my snooze mode as I groggily awoke in my cell. This was followed by my celly shifting his weight in his bottom bunk. "Stand for count." Those words echoed in my cranium as I sat up, readying for institutional headcount.

That annoying announcement was permanently imprinted in my head for a startling 27 years. However many times I heard it, the one constant that always remained was "I gotta get the hell out of here."

My world continued to be in a cage...one where I've grown up, and became known as Tut. The Egyptian king who had a tomb of treasures undisturbed until man discovered him--which contributed to how I was named Tutankhamon.

When I exited my cell, the world of prison came into focus. You rarely hear "good morning". That continued to be an oddity inside Upper O East Side in Nottoway Correction Center. Now what you hear constantly--shoot, annoyingly were curse words. Four-letter bombs were greetings: "F**k up, ni**a!" "S**t, you ugly f**k, go back to sleep." My response: "I love you too."

I'm a sarcastic brother who always modifies an individual's day with humor. This came with growth and development. No, honestly, Eddie Murphy or was it Richard Pryor saying, "You make them laugh, and that'll keep them off your ass." As a youth, I chuckled at that, but decades inside of prison, I realized laughter helped.

Ramutu, Mike, Tim and I corralled around a stainless steel table in the dayroom by the front entrance most mornings. We're 40 and 50-year-olds, seasoned by decades of prison experience. We laughed, cried, and objectified each other's silliness as an expression of our friendship. In a nutshell, we talk s**t to each other constantly. Today, the target landed on Ramutu:

Tim, "You know you look like an overstuffed teddy bear."

"Yeah, he does," Mike laughed.

"What will he say when you press his belly?" Tim wondered.

I rose from my seat and pressed Ramutu's stomach, "As-Salaam Alaykum, Wa Alaykum As-Salaam."

An eruption of laughter followed, due to Ramutu being a Muslim (Shi'ite). We did this all the time because we were comfortable opening ourselves up to anything that would bring us a smile.

When we hadn't reached that point early on in our incarceration, we were miserable to be around. Like this weirdo who never showered and dwelled in his cell all day. The eyes that fell upon him weren't of hate, but the realization of how prison broke you. Seriously, when you let this hell consume you, what it regurgitated back were unrecognizable individuals who either became addicted to drugs, anger, or despair: "Just kill me--I'm sick of this crap." That was from one of the many who spent 20, 30, or even 40 years in a cage. These were the lost souls that haunted the living.

They also reminded me to FIGHT for my freedom. That had been hard for me early on, because I chose to quit. I desired my outlet to become respected in my confinement. How I acquired that idea was by becoming one of the many fools who sagged their jeans, peddled drugs and most of all cultivated, "I'm locked up, they won't let me out." That led me into situations that could've screwed me.

I sat with a tattooist and began drawing stencils for art I would put on my face and head. I wanted Marvel Comic characters like Spider-Man fighting Carnage on my head. The Diplomats Record logo on my throat (as a way of representing Manhattan, New York), the Transformers' insignias on my hands. These were my idea of being rebellious since life in the free world wasn't a viable option for me--so I became a negative idea of prison life. Fortunately, I didn't follow through on any of those tattoos...even the "W" I wanted over my left eye to represent my Waterman name.

Prison sucked the life out of us. It made you lose your mind, like deciding to ingest cups of nutmeg and hot water to get a dizzying high as if you spent hours on a rollercoaster ride. These were coherent thoughts from a mind not well nurtured. Just as men smoked laced paper with bug spray and floor wax--or what we coined Man Down, because it floored you after 3 puffs from a prison cigarette.

I constantly reflected upon those moments where I quit on life. I usually did this in my bunk, in the quiet of the night. I would see myself as a decaying corpse shuffling about his grave, awaiting the mounds of dirt to be poured atop of me. This freaked me out, because I needed to climb free of those thoughts. My one true saving grace was books.

When I read Solitary by Albert Woodfox, and Tookie Williams' Blue Rage, Black Redemption, I had an exclusive look into the mire of mass incarceration. These men endured hell, not heaven--HELL. They figured it out, and if they could, why not me, really?

So, when I get up in this madness, I fight for a smile. I developed an idea to get myself free. I surrounded myself with positivity--all damn day.

Yes, this was another day of confinement, but what changed for it: My thinking. As a man thinks, so shall it be. Again, I think of ways to get free. I think greatness, and most of all, I think I can do anything I put my mind to.

Just another day for me.