BAD TEMPER by Mark Anthony Given

Copyright 2013 All Rights Reserved

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

             SIX MORE DAYS will be exactly one year the love of my adult life walked out my door and turned back and looked at me like I would never see her again for hollering at her about something. Un like most people who have a filter or pause before hollering, or blurting out the first thing that comes to their mind, I threw out the filter a long time ago, and more than once because of my anger, I have cussed someone out and they never talked to me again. When I was ten years old my old Briggs & Stratton lawn mower broke down one time too many, and I picked it up and smashed it to pieces. It never worked again. I can't tell you how many poor bicycles I beat up as a kid... and sent to the hopper. I got a bad temper...

             YOU PROBABY AIN'T going to believe this, but when I was in the Mobile County Jail in Mobile, Alabama waiting for the fed's to come rescue me from purgatory again for a parole violation for smoking pot, and after about forty days and forty nights, I f*****g snapped. I was three days behind on reading my Wall Street Journal and New York Times subscription I BILL ME LATER’d, and never paid them, and I was eager to Fast and refuse food until the US Marshal came and got me. I went on a hunger strike and gave a valiant effort or final act of civil disobedience of a desperate prisoner, it didn’t matter me. But to do that I had to get to the Hole.

             THE F*****G NOISE WAS KILLING ME! I cannot stand noise, and stuck in this concrete and steel stale air with 15 filthy criminals I SNAPPED! Every f*****g morning and all f*****g day slamming cards or Dominoes ringing off this enclosure, I asked these idiots to please stop it at least in the morning. "F**k you don't come to jail if want to sleep." "This is jail, M**********r!" Most of them knew me, and would be cool, from me helping them with my little rinky dink paralegal degree, and would never charge anyone anything; that was my Charge: Don't f**k with Mark. Some people mistake kindness for weakness.

              THIS LITTLE HILLBILLY JAIL was designed in some neoprison POD design, were one fat overweight prison guard who nearly everyone I seen out my cell window, coming and going from the Parking Lot was carry huge grocery bags of snack food and Tupperware Containers and sit on their a*s all day and could monitor four PODS of 16 Cells in full view. Most of them sat up there and played with their lips while Men Jacked Off looking at them at night. This is the unbelievable part; I snapped one morning when I was sure there was more than one female officer in the Booth, and ran out there and just started swinging like a mad man. I was screaming at them to shut up so I think they knew I was coming. Four of them, all dressed in bright Orange Jump Suits and Brown shower shoes, had their feet under the small Stainless Steel table bolted to the concrete floor so I aimed for them. After I was done pummeling them awhile, one standing up at the end of the table ran straight away. A couple that were on the other side had time to get their legs from under the table and get away, but one big b*****d tried to square off with me, but I charged him and pushed him straight into oncoming jail officers who did this several times a day, and I am sure they rescued my a*s, because I couldn't beat up the whole POD, but I was goanna try!... you got to have BAD TEMPER to physically attack six grown Black Men, and a couple of them going back to prison for the second and third time, but in my mean world, you live on your knees or die on your feet.

           IT KINDA SERVES ME WELL now that after reading the entire Old Testament several times, that all my life I thought most people were good, and only some people are bad. Turns out I had it all wrong and a*s backwards; only some people are good. And now I just try to filter public contact and the ones who seep through might be alright…. I look at everything out my door as Temptation, and as it say’s in the Talmud, Avoid Temptation, even David couldn’t avoid it

           WHEN I GOT TO THE HOLE, or SEG, which was just 40-50 feet down the hall into an area of the jail with five or six cells along a wall with no day room, that just smelled even worse. There were just four or five people in there who were being punished usually for fighting. My plan was to bribe these animals with my food tray too be quite so I could Fast in Peace. Just like in my story Dope Sick City where I mention at the end my ulterior motive was to provoke a religious experience via spiritual fasting, but after a few days the beast started fighting over who got the tray next…. I was reading the Book of Revelations during the day and and before I got too hallucinating on the third night, I smelled Steaks and big fat Cheeseburgers and fresh Stawberry Milk Shakes and Mom’s Apple Pie. Food never or since, smelled that good. On the sixth day like an awakening I was never more ready to get out of someplace when the US Marshal’s heaven sent transport van arrived about four in the morning and I was told to “Roll Up, your leaving,” every inmate longs to hear.  They loaded up probably 10-12 of us and as soon as we settled into the big brand new smelling van everyone was asking where they were going. US Marshal could not be more professional and when he got to me the young man told me I was going to Seagoville, Washington. I knew that couldn’t be right and I wound up in FCI Seagoville, Texas where they placed in charge of the Inmate Law Library right off the bus. I wrote about it in Real Life Heist. 

           I TOLD THAT BEAUTIFUL YOUNG LADY that stormed out of my house that everything I wrote was to impress her and this is no exception. I can think of two or three times my mouth screwed things up for me and, oddly enough, in my religious studies, I understand Anger is a personal affront to God because when you become angry at one another, you usurp God’s authority. Anger is the prelude to courage. -Eric Hoffer. Hoffer believed that self-esteem was of central importance to psychological well-being. The last thing I hollered at that beautiful young girl before I slammed my front door was “I love you, ______,” but it didn’t sound all that courageous and by the look in her eyes, all the self-esteem in the world wasn’t bringing her back…

1229 Words: 2/4/2013 12:50:49 AM

Author's Note

First time unkown author. Go easy on me.