On Kindness

My first two weeks in prison were a mess. People think there’s no rules in there, when in many ways there are more rules than in the real world - they’re just different ones, and they’re enforced by the inmates. The guards don’t really exist. If someone dies or urgently needs to be hospitalized, you go get a guard. Otherwise, you leave them alone and they leave you alone. It doesn’t take long to realize that the system actually functions better that way. But I learned pretty fast that I don’t do well with rules, which is something I should have already known…because not following rules is how I ended up in the joint in the first place.

There were a handful of guys who took pity on me and came to get me out of my cot. I had gotten tired of butting heads with people and decided, fuck this, I’m just going to stay here and not get in anyone’s way.

“Greg. Get up and come do some time with us.” It was three guys, Randy, Jack and Frank. They had ignored me when I came in because you never know what someone is in for. If you’re a sex offender, or even worse, a rat, you are persona non grata in the prison system and you will do your bid alone. As it should be. Somehow they had gotten my full name and had someone with a cell phone check my paperwork, which was deemed “clean.” I got up and followed them to a cell on the other side of the unit.

I owe everything to these three gentlemen. They hooked me up with clothes, food, toiletries, sneakers, introduced me to the inmates who ran the place, showed me how everything was done and how to act. I should probably mention there’s a difference between an inmate and a convict. I don’t know where the number is, three years, five years, but after you have done enough time, you’re no longer an inmate, you’re a convict. It’s a mindset. I think I made it out of there still an inmate, but I could have a blind spot. All three of these guys, though, they were full-blown convicts. Randy was halfway through a 15-year bid for gang-related violence, Jack was near the end of doing 20 years on a RICO, Frank had done eight years for selling dope, gotten home, spent two years in the free world, went back to shooting meth and violated his probation after pissing dirty, which meant he had to finish off the final nine months of his sentence back in prison.

The first two guys were high up in biker gangs, which I would describe in America as organized crime for white people. In every major city they work closely with the Italian gangs and black gangs to control drug trafficking, gambling, prostitution, political corruption, everything, all the underworld stuff you read about and see in the movies, it’s all real. It’s funny because, like, there are some men that are clearly just leaders, regardless of whether they make their bread legally or illegally. You could tell with both Randy and Jack that they commanded respect everywhere they went. Both were big boys, 6’6, 6’7, close to 300 pounds, hands like catcher’s mitts, tattoos, broken bones, knife scars, gunshot wounds, like, dudes that have clearly been living that life for their entire life and never leave the house without a gun on the waist and a smaller one tucked in the small of the back.

Frank was just a drug addict with a good heart. The majority of the American prison system is guys like that, either drug dealers or men who perpetually cannot get clean, they sell methamphetamines solely to support their habit and they spend their entire life in and out of jails and rehab clinics as a result. I laugh sometimes thinking about addiction in the sense of all the rich assholes I knew over the years who would say “that guy’s a crackhead” or “that guy’s a meth head,” when in reality, the guy making those statements was a rabid cokehead with a maxed-out Adderall script. Same drugs, homeboy. You just get the pure shit whereas theirs is watered down. Anyway, Frank must have weighed 130 pounds, skinny as a rail, missing teeth, like pretty close to what you’d imagine for a stereotypical central Florida meth addict. But that’s as close as you’ll get to me saying anything bad about him. The man consistently took time out of his days to check on me, make sure I had everything I needed, answer my questions and stop me from getting into conflict with people.

“I swear to God, Frank, you must have a fucking tapeworm or something.” For a skinny guy, he could eat. Everything that I didn’t want on my tray - which was a lot, because prison food - he’d gladly take. Bread, potatoes, all the sugary desserts, I was trying to do my best to eat healthy and didn’t mind dishing off the rest to Frank. I don’t know how he wasn’t putting on weight, because he consistently ate more than both the 300-pounders.

This went on for the next six months, with Frank consistently coming by my cell whenever we were locked down and had our meals delivered. “You going to eat that?” “You want your bread?” “You want those peanut butters?” The guy was really starting to annoy me and would always hang around too long to shoot the shit when I was trying to just get some peace and quiet and read a book. Like, take the food and scram, pal. I don’t need the comedy routine in exchange every time. You’re good. But I believe in gratitude and loyalty and I remembered all the generosity he’d displayed when I was lost as a new fish on the compound, and I’d put on a sociable face and smile and laugh at his jokes to repay the favor. Some guys are just lonely and bored, he had a good heart, and I could really, really use every scrap of karma that I could collect. Also, his time was getting short and I knew I didn’t have to deal with all of this much longer.

I go by Frank’s cell one day to drop off a brown paper bag of peanut butter and bread that they’d given us for lunch. He was gone. I walk over to Randy’s cell where him and Jack are playing cards.

“Frank go home?”

“Yup.”

“You guys want this shit?” I dropped the paper bag on the table.

“Fuck no.”

I laughed. “I don’t know what to do with all this extra food now. Frank was my garbage disposal. What the fuck was with that guy? How did he eat so much and never gain weight?”

Both Randy and Jack stopped playing cards and looked at me.

“You didn’t know?”

“Huh?”

“Greg, Frank has AIDS. He found out a few months ago. The guy’s got less than a year left to live.”

My whole body went cold. All the blood drained from my face.

“Oh my God.”

I sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall so I wouldn’t pass out.

There were a lot of emotions swirling. The predominant one was guilt. I know because I’ve become intimate with guilt over these last few years and I know that familiar physiological flush. It feels cold. Cold mind, cold body, cold arms and hands, cold legs and feet, cold heart.

Why wasn’t I nicer to the guy?

I mean, I was nice. I was never mean. I put up with him even when he was annoying, which was always. Even when I was in the middle of a really good book, I’d rest it on the table, force a fake smile, force a fake laugh and listen to him tell the same story he’d told me three months ago.

But could I have been nicer?

Absolutely. I could have been kinder. I would have been kinder, if I’d known what he was going through.

“Be kind, because you never know who is fighting the battle of their life.”

Like, I knew that saying. I’ve been that guy who was battling and no one around me knew. I’d lost friends over the years, and I’d taken the saying to heart. Or at least, up until that moment, I thought I had. I was wrong. I thought I had been living that saying, and at that moment, I had been exposed as someone who wasn’t. I wasn’t as kind as I could have been.

Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.

Why do I bring this story up? It clearly affected me, because it’s been two years and I’m up early as hell on a Sunday still thinking about that moment, slumped over against the wall with my blood running cold. But there’s more to it. I always try and ask people in their seventies and eighties for life lessons, or read what they have to say when they post it online, because age and experience bring wisdom.

What advice do you have for the younger generation?

I swear, it’s always the same two words:

BE KIND.

It is amazing that in a life full of regrets - which we all have in varying flavors - those two words are the ones that stand out above the rest to people nearing the end of this ride. And I get it, for real. One, there is no limit to kindness. You could always have done more. We are all so goddamn self-absorbed and forget how little it takes, like, mere seconds out of your day, to be kind to someone, to show them that you care and that there’s a warm slice of love baked fresh just for them in the midst of this cold world. Two, and you only learn this with years, you never know when it might be the last shot you’ll shoot. If you’ve ever lost someone to suicide, you know the feeling. Why weren’t you kinder to them? Could you have been kinder? Could it have made a difference? You will never know, but the hard truth is that you were too wrapped up in your own nonsense, your own silly and inane problems — because you always are. It doesn’t even have to be death. There is so much pain and suffering and loneliness, and self-destructive behavior that people engage in as a result, almost all of which can be prevented or cured by simple acts of kindness. If you’ve been on the receiving end, you know. It feels like someone throwing you a life preserver when you’re drowning. When you stop and reflect, you realize that the act took almost none of their time. And this is what I think people realize at the conclusion of their journey through life. How little it would’ve taken on their end and how much guilt they feel for all those times that they couldn’t be bothered to make even the most microscopic effort… because they were too busy worrying about their own completely meaningless bullshit.

Take a moment and stop and look around at how cruel people are to one another on a daily basis. You don’t have to look far. It’s everywhere. The choice is yours whether you want to be a part of it, and maybe, just maybe, by truly living those two golden words, you might go through the rest of your life in a way that leaves you with no regrets when you reach the finish line.

Be kind.

GB