Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-10502460-20180424044018

Kids, don't ever get sent to supermax. Whatever you stand to gain in the end, or what grudge you have to settle, it will never be worth it.

I killed someone when I was 15, with premeditation. Due to my age I was not eligible for the death penalty, and instead was given 25 to life. My original conviction wasn't what landed me in supermax though. At age 23 I (non-fatally) stabbed two other inmates and punched a guard in a short-lived escape attempt. With that, I lost any chance of parole, and was sent to supermax.

My cell is like living in a bank vault or a bomb shelter. Everything is concrete or metal. I have a metal table to eat and read, a metal bed with one mattress, a small book shelf, a metal toilet and sink, and I am allowed one upholstered reclining chair. All told, the cell is about the size of a college dorm room. There is one window, but it is set into the wall so that I can't see the sky, and the only view is the exercise yard, where we can exercise for an hour a day, silently, in steel cages. I am allowed one visitor and two phone calls a month. There is a small shower closet, in which I may shower for up to 20 cumulative minutes a day (this is actually pretty generous for a prison facility. It used to be 10 minutes, but over the past few years they've really been pushing hygiene seeing as we're cooped up in these small rooms for 23 hours a day).

For the first few weeks, I'm not sure which was worse, going to sleep in the cell, or waking up and remembering I was in supermax and would be for the rest of my life. Sometimes I would become irrationally optimistic only to have my soul crushed again when reality sank back in.

However, there is one luxury I have that most supermax prisoners around the country do not: a color television. A color television that receives local stations instead of just closed-circuit educational recordings, no less. It only receives about ten channels and is ten inches wide, but many inmates would literally kill for it.

The television is my main way of keeping up with the outside world, and my main assurance that there is still a world out there beyond this place of isolation and death. The prison walls often block reception, but our TVs get the same programming as the sets the guards watch while on break. Sometimes I suspect that the guards also feel like prisoners of this place and turn to the TV for escape.

A couple years after they gave us the TVs, I found a 90s sitcom called Derek's World. The show was centered around the titular character, a bachelor living in an apartment who worked for a law firm.

One of the things I do to keep busy is keep a daily journal of my life in supermax, which I hope to turn into a memoir some day. Below, I've included some excerpts from this journal related to Derek's World.

August 21

I started watching TV for the first time in a couple months. I stopped watching it for a while because the news from the outside world was somehow more depressing than the world in this place, but today I found a TV show called Derek's World. It seems to be a 90s sitcom, not that I'm familiar with later sitcoms since I've been in prison. The show is about a guy named Derek, of course, who lives alone in his apartment and works at a law firm as a paralegal. The show probably isn't very good, but I've been isolated from mainstream entertainment for so long that I instantly fell in love with it.

August 23

It's been raining all day. Due to sporadic lightning we exercised in the guards' gym, lest our exercise cages get lit up.

I saw another episode of Derek's World today. The characters in the show are some of the only people I've been able to connect to over the past few years, though I would probably want nothing to do with them in real life. Derek has a girlfriend, and her schtick is that she's a hot and ditzy blonde. His boss is a fat Jewish guy who yells a lot, and his relatives are all obnoxious in some way, as well as most of his friends. But hey, at least his neighbors don't include a workplace shooter, a serial arsonist, a human trafficker, a drug kingpin, a serial killer, two domestic terrorists, and a mafia hitman.

August 27

Supposedly there was an earthquake in the area today. We didn't feel it because our campus is just a bunch of reinforced concrete over what is probably one of the strongest foundations in the state.

During our monthly group discussion (they introduced this a few months ago. Once a month those of us who are well-behaved can gather in metal cages to talk), I mentioned Derek's World, but no one else has seen it on their TVs, not even the guards.

There was a mass shooting near where I grew up today. I saw it on the news. An employee of a warehouse shot up the place, killed four people, then killed himself.

September 21

Joseph, the human trafficker, killed himself last night. As usual they blocked our door windows so we wouldn't see his body being carried out. His death was announced, but they won't tell us how he did it. They never do, in case we decide to imitate the method.

Lately, that "Derek's World" show has been changing. The lighting has gotten darker, like in a soap opera, and some details have changed. Derek now works in a foundry for a reason that was never given as far as I can tell, and little details of his apartment have changed, like the bright orange paint being changed to a drab yellow, and his kitchen being remodeled to being all stainless steel. I guess this isn't all that unusual for a show, but the thing is they never had an episode where these changes were mentioned.

Novemeber 14

Our unit was put on lockdown today. They won't tell us why.

I haven't seen Derek's World in a few weeks. Maybe they cancelled it. I was starting not to like it very much anyway.

February 17

One of the death row inmates got executed today. I don't know his name and I don't really care. We never interact with the death row inmates anyway.

Derek's World came back, but it is way different. The show is now set in a post-apocalyptic world and Derek is a gun-slinging antihero. I still haven't found anyone else who has seen this show. I've also just now realized that the show has never had any credits or commercial breaks.

March 20

The show is back to being a sitcom, and Derek's apartment is back to the way it was before, but now he works as a police detective. All the other characters in the show are different. I think I'm going to stop watching TV for a while.

June 11

I've started watching the show again. I don't know what it is that keeps drawing me back to it. Derek is still a detective, but now the show is a serious crime drama. Derek's apartment is now dingy and grey, and he seems to be a "lone wolf cop" type character with no real friends. The fat Jewish guy is back, but now he's the police commissioner.

I can't watch the episodes centered around child murderers because it hits too close to home, but I find the current version of the show to be strangely enlightening in its own way. It's hard to explain. I think it's somehow refreshing to watch the show and be just another part of the American audience, looking at the world of violent crime from the outside-in, rather than being on the inside and part of it.

June 21

Derek tried to kill himself in today's episode. The episode was hard to watch. He had been suicidal for the past several episodes, but refused to take leave from his job. The episode did end on a somewhat high note though, with his coworkers saying they were there for him and stuff.

July 1

The show has randomly gone back to being a sitcom again. Derek is once again a paralegal, and everything seems to be back to the way it was during the first version, with the exception that the fat Jewish guy is gone and Derek's boss is now female.

July 5

We met our new warden today. The interim warden has been sent to another facility.

They lined us up in our metal cages in front of our cell doors. He spoke to us briefly, being neither friendly nor threatening.

I couldn't believe it, but there he was. The portly Jewish man from the show.

July 6

What could this mean? The man has a different name than in the show, and I don't know if he's actually Jewish, but it's definitely the same man.

I asked Steve, the prisoner whom they let act as an orderly, to ask around to see if anyone else knew about the show, but he came back with a negative answer.

I don't want to tell anyone about the man on the show, because the last thing I want is to be sent to a supermax psychological facility.

December 4

I haven't seen Derek's World several years. The new warden was cycled out within a few weeks, and the interim warden is back and is now the permanent warden.

The last episode I saw was set in the post-apocalyptic world again. Not much of anything happened. Derek, carrying his gun, just wandered around the wasteland. At the end of the episode he just sat on a hill and looked around. I think he's the only one left.

I recently got some good news. The governor has agreed to commute my sentence. I am due to be released in five years, and in the mean time they are going to transfer me to a to general population at a medium security prison.

I keep wondering about Derek's World though. I still have not found any information about it. Maybe it's for the best. If I manage to survive general pop until my release date, I'll have more to worry about on the outside than that weird show. 