10weeks2liveordie - Day 1

DAY 1.

SCMP wire

A man collapsed while running down Nathan Road with horrific wounds to his back and shoulder during a busy lunchtime today. An 85 year old woman was arrested at the scene. She had given the boy money to go and buy groceries but he had not returned and spent the money on gambling and drugs. Before being led away the old lady said ‘ I married bad man, gave birth to bad son, I chop you bad son.’

The morning will come,

Brightly will it shine on the brave and true,

Kindly on all those who suffer for the cause,

Glorious upon the tomb s of heroes.

WSC 21/10/40

I tear my heart open,

I’ve sold myself short,

‘coz my weakness is,

That I care too much,

And the scars remind us

That the past is real.

I tear my heart open just to feel

Papa Roach 2005-Scars

6.00 am.

My eyes snap open. I’m instantly awake. The sun streams in through the bedroom window, I can see a cloudless blue sky, a beautiful day but I’m not interested, my only thoughts are for my love, my soulmate. I want her, I need her, its an ache so bad my stomach hurts, everyday it’s the same, first thing in the morning is without doubt the best time, the best hit of the day. I lean over to the bedside table for the CD case, the blade and the precious plastic wrap. After 3 fat lines I lay back eyes closed and wait for that blissful post orgasmic, semiconscious euphoria to wash over me. Then I lay in bed and enjoy it, after about ten minutes it starts to creep up on me, I scratch my nose and light a cigarette, pick up my book and read a few pages not really taking them in.

Todays different though that was the last of it and I tell myself no more. I try to reassure myself that I have the resolve to carry it through that its not just another false dawn. Jesus when you’ve just done a fat line its so easy to be committed, and you really mean it, you have conviction, strength, will. Twelve hours later at the first tweak of stomach cramp, the first sneeze all three evaporate like boiling water in a spoon. I’ve been through the physical torment of withdrawal many times and I’m terrified of it, I’m a coward I make no bones about it. I have a low threshold for pain, I’ll walk into war zones happily if I can score at the other end, I’ve been into Harlem and Alphabet city in New York at 3.00am, estates in Peckham and Millwall in London, favellas in Rio, they’re nothing compared to the perdition of a bad jones. But its not just the physical pain, you cant underestimate the mental anguish, it’s the most bizarre thing its almost tangible the way it grabs hold of you and I have about as much chance of resisting as a mouse in a vipers coils.

Lets talk about insanity, two days ago I went to score in Shepherds Bush, you make the phone call then meet on a prearranged street corner, unfortunately all these pricks are the same and they keep you waiting for an hour, two factors are at work here one is the power dealers like to exert over their customers the other is that most of them are so fucked up themselves they are too untogether to organize a piss up in a brewery. Once they’ve had their own hit the whole concept of taking care of business goes straight out the fucking window. So I wait like a schmuck on the street, as ordered, with my bicycle, a dead give away to any passing cop. After an hour and three phone calls the girl rides by but does not make eye contact, 15 minutes later she hasn’t returned and I see her in the distance pedalling off in the opposite direction. So I give chase and catch up to her by the entrance to Ravenscourt Park, -

‘ hey babe I’m Quinn’

‘follow me’

we ride into the park, as we do my lighter falls out of my pocket – this is a sign from the angel who protects me though I’m unaware of it at the time.- I jump off the bike to retrieve my lighter and immediately I’m engulfed by 3 plain cloth cops who have jumped out of their car and chased us into the park.

‘ what are you doing what did you throw away’

two of them start scoping the ground for the drugs.

‘nothing I dropped my lighter there it is right there’

‘what are you doing’

‘it’s a nice day I’m riding my bike’

‘what did you say to that girl, you’re buying drugs?’

‘no. I said excuse me as we rode into the park’

‘you know her?’

‘ no’

‘ we’re going to search you Ok’

‘do I have a choice?’

‘ you can come to the station’

‘search away’.

I was a tad lucky to say the least the bastards had obviously been watching me at the bus stop, if the dick heads had waited two or three minutes more and just followed I would have been fucked. I’m on probation for 12 more months, if I had got busted I would go straight back to jail without passing go for 15 months. When I got out I spent four months getting my shit together, getting myself a nice little flat in a nice part of town, giving myself a chance to sort out the utter chaos that is my life, I was three years clean in jail and swore when I got out never again. Here I am six months later with another raging fucking habit and a lucky break away from putting myself back behind bars. This is the definition of insanity.

FEB 06

They come for me at about 8.30pm Sunday night just before lights out.

‘don’t go facory tomorrow wait in cell.’

I knew it was coming the hancho had tipped me off at work on Friday, but I wasn’t expecting it ‘till Wednesday. I lay there in my bed not believing the end was really coming, I couldn’t sleep, a million thoughts racing around my head, the main one being that I didn’t trust the bastards, I couldn’t stop the excitement but I tried so hard to temper it they’d fucked me and so many other people so many times. Cruelty is their favourite past time, I’ve never known a race of people that get off on it with such glee. The next two days are torture, in the morning all the guys see me kept behind in my cell and a ripple goes up and down the line outside in the corridor, they start banging on the walls and cell doors, the guards get pissed off, I see smiling faces through the small glass window, genuine happiness for me as their friend but also because it is tangible evidence that time does pass, that people do really go home, that nightmares do come to an end. They are marched off to work its 7.30am, they all try and wave, say goodbye, give me thumbs up. I’m at the window smiling, fist on my heart, the guard is pissed tells me to sit down, I hear a couple of whoops and screams as they go down the stairs out of the guards eye line. My friends. The last time I will ever see them. Some will remain here for many years, my two Chinese friends Zhou and Zham, 17 and 15 years respectively and they’ve already been here six. I couldn’t have done that I would have saved up two months valium and checked out the game and I say that with total conviction. After three years I’m almost at breaking point, much longer and I would have started to go off the rails big time, its been building for 4 or 5 months, I’ve spat the dummy twice in the last 8 weeks so this is very timely. I tried so hard to be strong, to find something positive in this hell hole. I’m not whining or crying I fucked up and I’ve paid my debt to society, as far as I’m concerned when I walk out the door its with a clean slate, if people or governments try to make me suffer or discriminate against me I will fight them like a rabid dog.

I sit in the cell for nearly an hour, I could gather my things but I don’t want to pre-empt anything. Finally when the guard comes and makes it official the first thing he does is take my note books for inspection. Fuck it. It is a grave sin to take the phone numbers or addresses of fellow inmates and over the 3 years I’ve always done it in code but I got lax this weekend not thinking at this late stage they would be scrutinized, it was incredibly careless I should know better after 3 years. I don’t know what they will do if they find them, there is a very real possibility they will cancel my transfer. The vice consul had told me of another English guy who wrote his departure date in a letter to his mother, the flight was cancelled and he had to wait 6 months for a new one. It sounds so petty but these bastards are so far up their own arses about rules. There is no concept of rehabilitation the whole system is purely penal, punishment for punishments sake, some may agree with this but this form of prison system will only breed recidivists, perhaps the English system favours the inmate too much, but as I write I have now experienced that too for a few months and let me assure you this is not the case. The English system is similarly inhuman just for different reasons. Heed Nietzsche- Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Unless you have experienced it, it is impossible to convey the shear oppressive weight of incarceration, the constant 24 hour stress, fear and worry. There is pressure in every action of your day from the military a.m. roll call, how you sit, stand and walk, when you can talk, steel doors banging shut, strip searches twice a day, the threat of violence from inmates and guards. You’re tense and scared the whole time and so is everyone else, the most innocuous look or comment can lead to physical confrontation or two weeks in the punishment wing. For me the mental torture is the worst, I was relatively safe physically but not knowing anything is terrible and it’s a tool they have perfected here. One letter per month, no phones, no contact, no information, when you have no hope you have nothing, hope is all a prisoner has and they do their level best to deprive you of it.

I never liked zoo’s at the best of times, but I think I have a physical aversion now, the guards patrol the corridors looking in on the animals, us. Their brains are created in binary, they see only ones and zeros, black and white, it is beyond comprehension to consider a shade of grey. And they are zealous about their jobs, keen to impress their boss, showing that they too can ruthlessly enforce the petty rules and regulations. Initiative is an abhorrent word. Even on the weekends when we’re in our cells alone, they tell us when and how to sit, we’re not allowed on our bunks all day, sitting on a hard chair, we can read or write but there is no TV except for a B movie on Sunday morning. No heat in winter or fans in summer, frostbite is common. These rules are rigidly enforced the most minor infraction buys a week in punishment

The notion of a job for life in Japan is slowly disintegrating but that’s how its always been and that’s how parents tutor their kids. Before I was sentenced we heard that the courts were handing down tougher sentences to drug mules despite a lengthy report presented by the FBI to the Japanese government and Department of Justice that was scathing in its findings:- in that the investigation of drug crime in Japan is virtually non-existent, the powers of detection virtually nil. They almost never arrest or convict those who send the couriers or the Yakuza bosses who are known to control the flow, yet there is a 99% conviction rate on cases brought to trial, their aversion to failure precludes them from doing the ‘difficult’ police work, social standing, family and money prevent ‘impolite’ investigation, this tells its own story about the mentality. Driving through Tokyo to the court house we saw rows and rows of blue plastic sheeting along the riverbanks and under the freeways set up as makeshift shelters. The homeless. A whole new and terribly embarrassing phenomenon for the Japanese, these were salary men that had been made redundant and defaulted on their mortgage payments, wives and family had disowned them and now they lived in shame bringing shame to the government, shame to society. When the Nikkei disintegrated under the incestuous weight of bad debt created by the Zaibatsus that were supposed to have been dismantled after the second world war, the Honda man was no longer guaranteed a job for life, he had lived in a Honda town, his kids went to Honda schools, he ate Honda food and worked in the Honda factory until the bubble burst. The Japanese mentality could not grasp this calamity, the kids rebelled seeing no future and took to hedonistic pleasures and inevitably drugs. Unable to catch the real crooks they come down like a ton of bricks on the messengers. Hey I’ll take my punishment but my incarceration has not done one iota towards alleviating the problem.

I use drugs, well only one, gear is my d of c, I don’t sell them, never have especially class A’s, mine is a variation of a common tale, I had a small company with a temporary, seasonal cash flow problem – compounded of course by my smack habit. I borrowed money from a dodgy geezer and found myself in an untenable situation. My own - perhaps skewed - morality take on the situation was that pot does not kill people, or turn them into psychotic lunatics, pot does not have bad karma so I took the easy route - bad decision. But lets not get confused here, my sentencing was based, not on the heinous influence I’d had on the breakdown of society, it was based solely on how many tax dollars I’d deprived the government of.

So even my last two days were spent in a state of mental turmoil wondering every time a guard walked past if they would open the door and tell me it was all over I had broken the rules and would not be going home. Keeping you in the dark is a constant goal of the system and after years of practice they are masters at the technique. You can’t dismiss the way this treatment affects people, madness and suicide are very real by products or alternatives to the inmate.

I hear nothing until 4.30am on Wednesday when they come to collect me, I’m led along dark corridors for the last time, every one is still sleeping. My notebooks are returned to me and my heart rate slows 20 beats. I put on jeans and a tee shirt and we go through the ritual returning of property and three years wages,- approx 200 quid. I feel almost human in real cloths but of course the handcuffs go back on for the journey, as if I’d run now, but of course it’s the rule. I’m the only passenger in the van with two guards and an official who will hand me over to the British cops at Narita. We leave at about 5.30 for the 120k drive through Tokyo. I take in everything, its still dark, we are heading north east, I realise this after about half an hour when I can vaguely discern a dark purple hue in front and to my left. My mind is in turmoil I want to shout and scream. We stop after about an hour just before we get on the freeway at a fast food diner, the official buys me a large coffee, two doughnuts with jam and a greasy sausage in a bun. It’s the best food I’ve had in three fucking years. Then they go inside and leave me to my thoughts.

I think of every morning being frogmarched to the factory, being strip searched twice a day. I think of the daily indignities, 40 guys crouched, crowded, squatting in a small room naked waiting to shower, trying desperately not to accidentally touch the guy in fronts naked back with your penis. I think of the disgusting fungal infections we would all get in summer from the communal baths. I think of being told when I can talk, when I can go to the bathroom, when I can wash my hands. I think of the first time I went to the punishment wing for two weeks for giving Mariusz an old economist magazine. Being frogmarched past the crazies I would share cells with for 2 weeks, I see old men dribbling, rocking back and forth on the floor sploshing around in their own piss, the stink of urine pervasive along the corridor, I can hear the plaintive, tortured moans and screams of those beyond insane. Was it this place that had driven them to madness, was it the mental torture and vindictiveness of the guards that had pushed them over the edge into the abyss of lunacy? I passed a Japanese guy that had finally been taken from the factory after he collapsed for the third time, he was so ravaged by hepatitis we called him Belsun.

Into my punishment cell, sitting for 15 hours each day in a stress position, cross legged on a stone floor doing nothing, not allowed to move or talk, no books, no pens, just sit there looking straight ahead, arms folded. In itself it doesn’t sound too bad but the Japanese know, they’ve been perfecting these techniques for thousands of years, let me assure you this is real torture - try it for five minutes. Worst case scenario’s dominate when you have nothing positive to think about, only bad things have happened, only bad things will happen, the bad things you’ve done to yourself, the bad things you’ve done to your family and loved ones, how I’ve hurt my dad so bad and let down my beautiful Xiao Yu, the most positive thoughts you can have, lead you down the road of vengeance and retribution for all those you perceive have hurt you, your mind works like a riptide dragging you unequivocally into the very darkest, insidious corners of your mind. And it goes on for 15 hours everyday.

I think of my friends, Zhou and Zham especially, I don’t know exactly what they did they were involved in a burglary but there was no violence. The Japanese hate the Chinese more than any other race so their sentences were way excessive – 25 years no parole for burglary, just a tad excessive?? - in my experience they were gentle, generous, kind and very funny, we had loads of cheap laughs playing pranks on each other and behind the back of our factory boss, it makes me cry sitting in the van alone thinking how long they will remain in here, I’m very emotional this morning, I cant help it, I berate myself I don’t want the guards to see. Mariusz my polish friend due to be transferred soon, he applied the same time as me but 18 months later discovered his initial documents had been lost and had to start the whole process over, its taken me 30 months waiting, it was supposed to take 6 but each time they found ways to delay. The foreigners were a brotherhood in the factory. Chinese, Iranians, Colombians, Brazilians, Americans, black, white, pink, blue you name it. We all looked out for each other, Jew, Muslim, Catholic, Hindu and all the nationalities in between, there was never any conflict, how come governments fuck it up so bad. We afforded each other space and tolerance, small kindnesses, humanity. Prison deprives you of humanity, the guards make it adversarial when it doesn’t need to be so.

I think about the spiders, sitting in the factory staring out the window as the breeze blows and the sun shines through the leaves, I can just see a single silk thread hanging from one of the branches on a cherry tree, I follow it and realise its the single stanchion holding a perfect web in place, suspended high in the tree spanning maybe four feet, in the middle a huge black and yellow spider the size of my fist waits patiently for his prey, I spent days and days enthralled by this guy and the life and death struggles that played out. We would avoid stepping on the columns of ants marching across the pathway on our way back to the cells after work, we had an empathy with any living creature that was free. I shared my cell with a spider for months, swept around him, fed him, watched for hours his apparent aimless meandering along the walls and ceiling. I think about the TV, when I first arrived and was still at Narita, I was waiting in a holding cell with Jack a Singapore Chinese when a large vociferous girl was thrown into the cage next to us. Jack ascertained that she had been stealing handbags in the concourse, she was a lot of girl, big boned and tall, about 6’2’’attractive in a strange way, too much make up though very pretty face, high cheekbones and almond brown eyes with long eyelashes. Two male officers hadn’t left the room when they wanted to search her, I think the women were intimidated by her size, she refused to disrobe and started screaming and hollering, it was most amusing to see the guards discomfort, finally they gave up and left her to the two female officers, the girl was loudly proclaiming her innocence and said she was now more than happy to disrobe, she removed her top and was braless underneath revealing an ample bosom, the two female officers were not satisfied and she was instructed to remove her skirt, she complied and much to the officers horror was also naked beneath the dress, instead of a cute little beaver the officers were greeted by a healthy meat and two veg, all hell broke loose next door.

Moments of levity are few and far between the days drift one into another, but every one is a battle to retain your spirit and sanity. The minutes and seconds turn into hours and days and weeks and months and years. It is impossible in writing to convey the passage of time. The inexorable ticking of your lifes clock. I’ve been clean three years now, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, I had to believe there was something positive in what I had been through. I realised early on that though I’ve always had an Angel who protects me, it was her that put me here. I knew that it was because of heroin. And I knew that if I used again I would die.

The guards came back and we set off, we had a clear run on the freeway and the purple hue to my left gradually changed to a dusty red and as we drove changed before my eyes into a brilliant rosy pink, finally the sun peeked over the horizon and the whole sky was a million different shades of purple, red and yellow, it was the most incredible sight, the most incredible experience, the most incredible feeling. I was in the home straight.