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Category: My Story

Posted
May 15, 2016
Category
My Story, On My Block, prison reform, writing
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The universe has a sense of humor

Besides my books, the crowning achievement of my middle-age years is the fact that I haven’t received a disciplinary report (DR) since 2009. A major feat, considering that my prison history is littered with rule infractions — contraband, fighting, multiple positive drug urinalyses, disrespect. I’ve probably been to the hole 50 times (my last stay was for more than eight months). I’ve lost all my gain time, been sprayed with gas, roughed up, cased up, stripped, shipped, and — most painfully — had my visitation privileges yanked. It’s been a long journey.

And even when I started focusing on changing my thought patterns and behaviors, even when I committed to reinventing myself, there was still no guarantee that I could remain DR-free. The wrong guard in the wrong mood on the wrong day could result in a 30-day trip to the hole. There’s no such thing as innocence here. Every inmate is guilty “based on an officer’s statement.” This is not some injustice I’m lamenting. This is just part of the prison experience. This is life.

So it was a minor miracle that I made it seven years without incident. Unfortunately, that streak came to an end last month.

There’s this new rule designating the showers “off limits” from 7:45 to 8 p.m. for everyone except transgender inmates. Whether enacted from genuine kindness or some future lawsuit paranoia, I’m not sure. But even if it is a heavy-handed reaction to what’s going on out there in the real world, it’s probably a good rule. I mean, if it stops even one person from being assaulted or gives them a few minutes of peace and security in this hostile and violent place, it’s a good rule, right?

The reason I violated it is simple: I forgot. As I said, the rule is brand new and anyway, there were no transgender inmates living in the dorm. So at 7:55, fully soaped and mentally entrenched in the epilogue of my latest novel, I was confronted by a guard and informed that I was being written a DR for entering the shower during the transgender-specified time frame. How did he know I didn’t identify as transgender? Training? Expert analysis? He had a lip full of tobacco and a Confederate flag tat. I’m pretty sure he’s no expert on the subject.

But that’s not the story. Neither is the story my historic run of years coming to an end. The interesting thing about all of this is that the DR raised my custody level, which changed my housing level, which means I am now in a new dorm. My neighbors went from those with release dates within the next 15 to 20 years to mostly lifers. There’s an amputee to my left doing a mandatory 40, a blind man to my right who’s been in since 1986, and the dude across the aisle is fresh off death row. Ironic because the book I just finished writing includes an amputee, a blind man, and a death row subplot. Either the universe has a sense of humor, or its satellites are delayed. Where were these guys while I was researching On the Shoulders of Giants?

Over the next few months, I want to tell you about some of the faces and the stories on my block.

Posted
May 9, 2015
Category
My Story
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‘Maximum Maternal Velocity’

When I was a little kid, it was a big deal to tie a rope to the seat of a friend’s bike and get pulled around on a skateboard through the potholed back streets of South Miami. Wipeouts were inevitable. I remember coming home with bloody knees and my mom crying as she picked the gravel from my wounds and cleaned them with peroxide. She would beg me not to do it again. Of course, I didn’t listen. I was back at it before the scabs even formed.

When I started skipping school in the seventh grade, she tried everything to get me to stop — threats, punishments, even bribery. I blew her off. She had to work 12-hour days to support our family and I knew she couldn’t be in two places at once. She wept when I landed in juvie for the first time. She told me I wasn’t a bad kid, I was a good kid who sometimes did bad things. Her position never changed, even though I would return again and again.

When I graduated to the adult system at 18, she pleaded with the judge to give me another chance. She told him I was worth saving. Despite her pleas, I was sentenced to nine years in the department of corrections. Over the next decade, she spent most of her weekends on the interstate, headed to one prison or another to visit me. She’d sometimes drive hundreds of miles, only to be informed at the gate that I was in disciplinary confinement and she couldn’t see me. I repeatedly let her down, took her for granted, and manipulated her for money to pay my dope debts (yes, there is dope in prison).

When I was finally released, guess who was waiting in the parking lot, hopping up and down like the next contestant on The Price is Right? She gave me a place to live, bought me job interview clothes, even gave me her old car. And all I did was continue to unravel. The skinned knees of my reckless youth that once made her cry were now ICU visits: punctured lungs, broken ribs, head trauma, brain surgery. As my appetite for chemicals grew voracious, so too did my desperation to get more. Until my brief experiment with freedom came to a screeching halt and I was arrested for armed robbery.

If it was humiliating for Mom, as a county government employee, to have her crackhead son’s face plastered all over the news, she never showed it. She came to every court date, kept telling me that God had a plan for me, kept telling me I wasn’t a bad kid. I was a good kid who sometimes did bad things (even though I was 30 by then). She kept believing in me when everyone else — understandably — washed their hands. I think when my mom looked at me, she didn’t see my rap sheet or my numerous failures and weaknesses, or the 31-year Federal prison sentence I’d just received. She saw her baby.

In Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild, she writes that her mother loved her with “maximum maternal velocity.” I know that feeling. My mom is the Rocky Balboa of mothers. She’s Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree. Most addicts wear down their families and push them away. My mom wore ME down with her unconditional love. Every word in every book I’ve written is typed by her. I get all the credit, but there is no Malcolm Ivey without her. The coolest thing about this writing journey isn’t the new friends (whom I love), or the good reviews (which I appreciate). It’s the thought of my amazing mom handing one of my books to a neighbor, or an old friend, or a former co-worker and saying, “My son wrote this.”

I love you, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

Posted
October 30, 2014
Category
kindness, life philosophy, My Story, On My Block
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The radical choice of militant kindness

The first lesson every young man learns upon entering the prison system is that aggression is king and violence is law. The traits that are valued in the real world — honesty, generosity, friendliness — are viewed as weaknesses in prison. Weaknesses that are pounced upon and exploited. Survival in this world depends on at least the perception of brutality and if you’re not particularly brutal, you had better be a damn good actor.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 22 years. Acting. Acting tough, acting hard, acting cold. Acting as if I don’t see the loneliness and sadness and brokenness that surrounds me. Why? Simple: Fear.

In 1992, a scrawny teenage version of myself looked around at the savage world of prison and said to my mind, “Help! I don’t wanna be jumped or stabbed or raped or beaten to death by abusive guards. I wanna make it back home in one piece!” And my mind, amazing babbling problem-solver that it is, said, “I got this,” and went to work on building a wall and posting the ultra-sensitive ego as a sentry to ward off any potential threats. My job was to act. And act I did. I spent so much time acting that I almost lost myself inside the faรงade that was supposed to be protecting me. Almost.

But looking at prison through the eyes of a 40-year-old man is a much different experience than seeing it through the eyes of a scared little 18-year-old kid. And recently, after decades of fortifying this hardened exterior and living with a conditioned mindset that places toughness over all other attributes, a series of books, films, and extraordinary people have wandered into my life with an unmistakable message: there is nothing more honorable, more radical, more standup than the path of kindness. Especially in such a hopeless world.

Suddenly — no, not suddenly — gradually, I wanted this more than anything else. Militant kindness. Love without fear. A wide open heart. For someone who has spent years coveting the appearance of fearlessness and physical strength, the concept of kindness, regardless of consequence, was a revelation. A last shot at a life of meaning and authenticity. I wanted to get back to the me I was before all of this acting BS began, back to the kid I built these walls to protect.

Kindness. It seems like such an easy choice. But a crazy thing happens when you drop your guard and step from behind that icy standoffish barrier: people become comfortable around you. Comfortable enough to open up, to confide in you, and occasionally, comfortable enough to hurt you. Or at least say things that are damaging to your ego. But that is what we want, isn’t it? It’s what I want. This lonely half-life of keeping the world at arm’s length for a false sense of safety and to defend the ego is a fool’s game and the exhaustive struggle to continue propping up an illusion is not only cowardice, it’s treasonous.

Only kindness matters.

[This post also appeared on Huffington Post on 11/29/14.]

Posted
September 1, 2014
Category
My Story
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E = mc2

My fatherโ€™s father was a writer and the son of a philanthropist. His name was E. Malcolm Collins II. I never met him, but his novel, Angel Blood, was a permanent fixture on the bookshelf in our apartment when I was growing up.

The story passed down through the family was that he was an alcoholic and drug abuser, and in December 1971, he ran a bath of scalding hot water, stepped in, slipped and banged his head. He died in the tub. He left behind one daughter, my Aunt Carole, who also struggled with alcoholism and depression, and one son, my father โ€œMac,โ€ E. M. Collins III, who had his own issues with drug abuse and compulsive behavior.

In 1990, Aunt Carole checked into a hotel room and shot herself in the heart. Three and a half years later, my father died of congestive heart failure. A lifetime of Camel non-filters and horrible eating habits finally caught up with him. Aunt Carole had two daughters: Kelly and Ginger. Mac had four sons: Scott, Keith, Jeff and me.

Not to air any dirty family laundry, but I think deep down my brothers and cousins would agree that thereโ€™s a little crazy swimming in our DNA; a compulsive gene, a predisposition to addiction, maybe even a touch of psychosis. But thereโ€™s also an overwhelming amount of love and music and laughter.

September 5, 2014 is the 21st anniversary of my fatherโ€™s death. Itโ€™s hard to believe that over two decades have passed since the prison chaplain gave me the news. At age 40, I can see the evidence of his genetic fingerprints all over my life; and not just in my evaporating hairline or the blue eyes staring back at me in the mirror. I recognize him in my passion for sports, my own struggles with drug abuse, my love for the Blackjack tables in Biloxi, my affinity for cheesecake. There are signs of E. M. Collins II in me too, and his father, and the echoes of countless generations before them.

When I began writing novels, I took the pseudonym Malcolm Ivey as a nod to those men: Malcolm I, II, and III, the philanthropist, the writer, and the banker. The Ivey represents the Roman numeral IV, Malcolm the fourth, my fatherโ€™s son to the bone and the youngest of four brothers. Ivey.

Today, September the 5th, I will raise a bottle of water to my reflection and salute the Malcolms in me, blemishes and all. As the brilliant Albert Einstein put it, โ€œEnergy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.โ€ I drink to that.

Posted
July 31, 2014
Category
life philosophy, My Story, writing
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Think of yourself as a nation

There is a villain in my second novel, With Arms Unbound, with the unfortunate name of Festus Mulgrew. Heโ€™s a meth cook from central Florida with a pet spider named Junior and a problem making eye contact. Like any decent villain on the page or the screen, Festus wasnโ€™t born bad. There are reasons why he is the way he is. But that doesnโ€™t make him any less dangerous. If anything, his humanity makes him even scarier, or at least more believable.

I canโ€™t do the mustache twirling bad guy any more than I can do the square jawed puppy saving hero. Iโ€™ve never met anyone like that. My heroes are flawed and my villains have at least a couple of redeeming qualities. Just like in real life.

When sketching the character of Festus โ€œMethlabโ€ Mulgrew, in addition to giving him a backstory rife with abuse and abandonment, I gave him a personal philosophy for survival under harsh conditions. That philosophy is also my own. The difference is that while Festus used it in a negative way, it has helped me to quit drugs, adhere to a strict workout regimen, manage money, develop discipline, be assertive, and focus long enough to write a few books.

If anyone within the sound of this pen is struggling with self-mastery, this may help: Think of yourself as a nation. I am the United Federation of Malcolm Ivey and like any other sovereign country, I am composed of the following:

~ Borders โ€“ these are my boundaries, thou shalt not cross
~ Allies โ€“ my homeboys, every nation has alliances
~ Enemies โ€“ other hostile nations, in my world there are many
~ Military โ€“ my defense system: keep strong and confident through regular exercise and stand ready to protect my borders and allies against any threat
~ National Debt โ€“ the money I owe
~ GDP โ€“ the money I earn

You can even give yourself a national bird and your own anthem if you want. The point is to take a hard look at all the various agencies that make up your nation and ask yourself if theyโ€™re being run efficiently. We ultimately have the power to mold ourselves into nations with robust economies, plentiful natural resources, and solid foreign relations. We can eliminate our deficits, strengthen our alliances and win our wars. Whether we choose to be super powers or third world countries is entirely up to us.

Posted
June 15, 2014
Category
life philosophy, My Story, writing
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10% Happier

I just finished reading an amazing book, 10% Happier by Dan Harris. Mr. Harris is the ABC news correspondent who had a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America in 2004. 10% Happier is the hilarious account of his journey as both skeptic and seeker. It centers largely on the benefits of meditation (I can almost see the five people reading this page rolling their eyes simultaneously). While there is a definite unearned stigma attached to meditation, Iโ€™ll leave that for the holy men and gurus to sort out. No sermon here. Promise. I just want to touch on the parallel between meditation and writing.

If thereโ€™s such a thing as Attention Deficit Disorder, Iโ€™ve got it. I have the attention span of a butterfly which makes the discipline of writing a daily battle. Iโ€™ll be one or two sentences into a scene when something hooks my attention โ€“ a bird on a window, a voice in the hall, the smell of food โ€“ and Iโ€™m off โ€œchasing the wishes from dandelionsโ€ as my friend Sheena says.

As one distraction leads to the next, itโ€™s sometimes hours before I remember the project only to find it right where I left it, suspended in mid-sentence โ€“ sometimes mid-word โ€“ so I grab my pen, search for the mental thread of the story and begin again. Itโ€™s the coming back thatโ€™s the thing.

Meditation is similar in that you focus on the breath flowing in and out of your nostrils, the expansion and contraction of your lungs. When thoughts arise and you notice yourself being swept away on that tidal wave of mental chatter, you return to your breath. Every time. Notice and return, over and over.

Iโ€™ve mentioned before that the discipline of writing saved me. Up until the year that I began Consider the Dragonfly, life was all about drugs, gambling, and adrenaline. The tendency to drift toward the extremes is scribbled in the helix of my DNA. But the written word is my anchor. It centers me. The words on the page are the meditative breath that I keep returning to. My om.

Iโ€™m not claiming enlightenment or even rehabilitation. The distractions still come like Craig Kimbrel fastballs. All it takes is a Sophia Vergara commercial, a Black Crowes song or Miami Dolphins breaking news and I hit the ground running. But once I regain awareness and realize that yet again Iโ€™ve been lured down the hallways of always, I shake my head and return to my work, to the open notebook that awaits me.

Itโ€™s the coming back thatโ€™s the thing.

Posted
June 1, 2014
Category
addiction, life philosophy, My Story, the middle way / moderation, writing
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Writing: A transformative craft

โ€œIf your life were a book, would you like your character?โ€

These words have been nibbling at my conscience for years, surfacing at the most inopportune timesโ€”while cheating on a girlfriend, stealing from a family member, cooking cocaine in a spoonโ€ฆ The answer was always the same: โ€œNo, I would not like my character. I would HATE my character.โ€

There are few things in this world as unsustainable and soul-sucking as drug abuse. This is far from breaking news. The hard math states that someone in your orbit is suffering right now, be it your child, sibling, significant other, friend, neighbor, co-worker or yourself.  For most, the needle and the crack pipe are a life sentence of enslavement; however, there are exceptionsโ€ฆ some find Jesus, others escape through a 12-step program, and I would never underestimate the healing properties in the love of a woman. But for me, the way out was through the written word.

When I first began Consider the Dragonfly I did so in desperation. It was a Hail Mary, a half-court buzzer beater, my last shot to escape the quicksand of my old patterns and do something honorable. The universe gave me the bonus plan. Barely a few pages into the first chapter, the characters shimmered to life. Protagonists and antagonists whispered backstory into my heart, explaining why they were the way they were, confiding secrets and fears and dreams, drawing me deeper into the world of storyโ€ฆ and while I was busy being a conduit, head down, scribbling furiously, a sort of alchemy was taking place in my own world. Impulsivity was converted to discipline. Recklessness was exchanged for structure. I was suddenly protective of my remaining brain cells and mournful of those I have squandered. The craft was changing me.

There is something empowering about writing a novel, something spiritual about plugging into the collective consciousness and transcribing the flow of words from the ether, something transformative. Iโ€™ve been clean for a few years now. My second book, With Arms Unbound, will be out this summer and Iโ€™m presently knee-deep in a new project. Some will say that Iโ€™ve merely swapped addictions. Maybe so. Iโ€™m cool with that. Because today, when that old question pops into my headโ€”โ€œIf your life were a book, would you like your character?โ€โ€”The answer is a resounding HELL, YEAH!

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