The Prison Diary – by David Matthew Strunk

David M. Strunk #102504
Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility
12750 Highway 96 @ Lane 13
Ordway CO 81034

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DATE: Tuesday, 02-14-2023

1. Woke up at 10:30 am, sick as hell, took zinc tablets and drank a vitamin-C mix. Checked balance “$” on phone, went back to bed.
2. Woke up again at 11:15 ‘cause cops are counting.
3. Can’t sleep. Cellie’s negative comments about my farts, my nose-blows, my blanket falling down, etc. I decide to ignore. I’m on top bunk!
4. Checked shower temp. It’s good, but’s 12:30 and I’m sure they’ll call chow while I’m in it. Tup towel up for after.
5. Putting on boots and coat. Having first coffee of the day and reading self-help book. It’s 1:20 pm.
6. Ran to lunch without Lee so I could eat fast and make it back to unit early to shower. Got in shower, was only in shower 15 minutes when Robert starts bitching I’m in “too long”. But I know the water will go from hot to ice cold, to lukewarm. That means I have to endure the ice-cold part, for it to get to lukewarm for the next guy. Robert notices it and thanks me.
7. Endured Bobby bitch, bitch, bitching about all of nonsense about me from 2 to 2:30. 0590 – Glue Stick. Order One! 2-14-23 The above was written by Lee. Lee has an Elmer’s Glue Stick, and I went to his cell to use t to glue a stamp that lost it’s sticky on an envelope. Lee is mad at mee because I snuck up behind him and yelled, “BOO!” I did this because he told me yesterday I can’t sneak up on him. Well he got startled, then mad, then SUPER-mad. Said he would punch me next time. I got the point but he did not seem to think so and stayed mad about it.
8. There followed a 10-minute-long “Lee Lecture”. The difference between Bitching Bobby and Lecturing Lee is Lecturing Lee has the goal of giving actual advice with an aim towards self-improvement for me, so I listen. Bitching Bobby is like, just, every little thing I do is “wrong” somehow, and “thank God he likes me” or I’d be “beat up by now.” So the only way to get Bobby to stop bitching is to get up on my bunk and be absolutely silent with the lights off, and sometimes even that doesn’t work because if I’m up there too long for his liking, it’s: “GET A JOB!” Anyways, I didn’t really need the Glue Stick, it was just an excuse to go up to Lee’s to get away from Bobby. Stayed up there until 3 pm, then went to clean my cell and fold my clothes. Then tried to use the phone, then back to Lee’s, then it’s count-time. It’s 4:30, waiting for count to clear. Spent count-time reading 10 pages of a “self-help book” that I forgot to do earlier, as per instructions from Chad. Goal for the day: read the rest of this stack of old newspapers I acquired.
9. The rest of the day went relatively well. I went to dinner, ate their garbage, came back and hung out with Lee until 7 pm when I left to go to programs. Chaplain’s Office doing a showing of the “Chosen” video. Best depiction of Jesus I ever saw in a movie. Played by an actual Jew this time, this “Jesus” character gets it right and is able to convey the way He most likely acted during His time here. This video makes you fell like you were there with Him during His time with the Twelve, without sinking into the cheeziness of preaching down at you.

When it was over, I switched to the Catholic side of Visitation (we have no chapel, we do church in Visitation Room) and watched their movie about post-Nazi Poland, it was good. I know the guy, and he let me have the coffee grounds after the service. He triple-over-fills the machine to make syrup-thick batches, so there’s plenty of oil left in the grounds for a second run in our cell coffeemaker. So I bring it in, and cellie Bobby accuses of “stealing from the church.” Man! This guy is just wholesale asshole, unable to be thankful for anything I do. I think it is best to just to ignore him. But I didn’t let it ruin my night, I just got up on my bunk and read the paper and then wrote this. Will do tomorrow’s entry tomorrow.

DATE: Wednesday, 02-15-2023

1. Work up at 8 am, to use bathroom, happy to know we finally get canteen today since we didn’t last week. I’m out of literally everything. Went back to sleep and dreamed I was in a normal residential neighborhood but got snowed in. Woke up again just now for 11 am count and found out we are NOT getting canteen today because of the snow. I’m not happy. Going back to bed.
2. 10:30 pm. This day was a waste. The high point was scoring a PB&J sandwich and splitting it with Lee.

DATE: Thursday, 02-16-2023

1. It’s 3 pm and I haven’t had time to write anything yet. But the day has been a total success so far.

Got out of bed 10 am to Bobby bitching as usual. Went down to check if the Lt. was here, and he wasn’t. Prayed. Did my morning poop and did my “self-help book” reading at the same time. Canteen had not yet arrived and people were getting antsy. Milled around the dayhall until 11 am lock-down.

Lock-down over at noon, then canteen gets passed out. I don’t like standing in long lines, so I got scissors and cut articles out of old newspapers. When the line got down to three or five people, I went and got canteen.

Was enjoying my first real cup of coffee (Folger’s) when they called lunch chow. Went and sold my chicken to this old Mexican I know for a token (worth $0.50). On my way out, I see Lt. Tyler is one of the cops checking our coats for smuggled chickens. I just happened to have my $70 money-order for “www.writeaprisoner.com” in my pocket, so I was able to give it to him there on the spot. I’d been chasing him down for two days to do my money-order, and finally I find him – not in his office but doing a rookie grunt-job checking for chickens outside chow hall! And mission accomplished: I knew if I didn’t get that money order turned in, I’d end up spending the money on canteen. Who needs canteen when you can get pretty girls in Europe to write you instead?

Then at 1:30 I went to Chaplain’s Office until 2:30. Now it’s 3:15, I’m back, and now I’m finally unbagging my canteen order.

2. I stayed busy all day. Paid off my debts, collected on others, squared away my stuff at the house (cell). Can’t complain.

But then, it’s Bobby bitching again: for the second time today, I can’t quietly be up on my top bunk write my out-going letters because he needs “cell time”. But the thing is, he’s in here all day every day. He’s either sleeping and I have to be super-quite, or else he’s drawing artwork (and I have to be super-quiet). He never leaves! He’s gone in the mornings and tells me that my “cell time”. Well, I sleep until 10:30 am so how does that work? No, it’s just his schedule, his way, all the time – and if I want to do my own thing, I’m “being selfish”. I’m sick of it! So I only got 2 of the 4 letters done that I wanted to mail out this evening.

It is now almost 11 pm and I’m going to bed.

I think it’s important to note something that happened yesterday: the snow cancelled our 7 pm Spanish Church in Visitation, so I went instead to Virgil’s Bible Study in the laundry room on the pod. At a certain point in the service, “Aquilla” did a laying-on-of-hands prayer for me. I’ve seen a laying-on-of-hands prayer work at County Jail in 2018, so I tried to go with it and not resist, and let it happen. I hope it works.

My cellie Bobby just now cranked out THE worst fart I’ve smelled since I can remember. It smells like death. I’m going to try to go to bed now.

DATE: Friday, 02-17-2023

1. Got up at 9 am. The cop came over the loudspeaker and called me to tech office. I swear, every time they do that I think I’m in trouble. So I go, and it’s just the Sgt who wants to let me know the Lt is here if I still need to talk to him. I did not.

But then I’m up, so I did morning routine of coffee and vitamins. And then: BOBBY. Bitch, bitch, bitch! First ting in the morning! So he tells me: “So, now you’re gonna hide your coffee again!?” And I say, “It’s right there on the desk where it always is, Bobby.” So he says, “I’m gonna go find a pot of coffee for the machine.” So he leaves. I already know he won’t find a pot of coffee because he’s broke and burning his bridges lately, but he gave me a little Debbie cake, so I decided to give him some coffee. So, I write on a napkin: “Don’t put my good Folger’s Instant in the machine, just put it in hot water. And: LEAVE ME ALONE!” Because, he’s already started bitching first thing in the morning, and I just don’t want to hear it today.

So he comes back, and – he can’t just be thankful for the coffee, he has to bitch. And bitch, and bitch! He claims he was “Just kidding” about accusing me of hiding the coffee – that’s something I’ve noticed lately, he will say something fucked up, and then later play it off like he was “just kidding” and “it’s not my fault you don’t get my sense of humor” – then he launches into this rant about how he’s “not stupid” and “I don’t need directions on how to use Folger’s.” I tell him I wrote that so he doesn’t think I gave him ground coffee and try to make a pot. But that’s not a good enough explanation – it’s just ten minutes of me “insinuating he’s stupid” and how “fucked up” I truly am. Followed by another ten minutes of how I never give him “cell time”. He’s ALWAYS HERE. So when does not have “cell time”? Then it’s his “get a job” lecture, followed by another ten minutes of: “I’m not going to ‘leave you alone’ as you say in your note – I’m going to keep aggravating you until you change!” Then he ends it with: “You’re lucky I like you or you’d be beat up by now,” his standard ending to his 20-minute bitch fests.

I can’t stand it anymore. I absolutely can’t stand this guy. But unfortunately, he still isn’t as bad as the last four cellies I had, like that creepy “Jerry” guy who’s a psychotically paranoid 14-year-old-girl-molester, or anyone before him. So I just keep putting up with Bobby, because, if I move, the cops might give me yet another psycho nut-job again.

So that’s how my whole morning went. It’s 11:45 now, count clear and I’m gonna go do my day.

2. It’s 9:30 pm now. I’m going to bed. I got only one of my two goals met today: I told myself to (A) circle books I want in a catalog, and (B) write a letter to a Bible volunteer guy. I did only (A). I ate too much food today, it made me tired. I got Bobby to stop bitching at me by simply not being in the cell at all today, which is what he wants. He wants the cell all to himself, so his plan is to drive me out with constant bitching. His plan is working.

DATE: Saturday, 02-18-2023

1. Slept until noon today (except, I wake up once per hour, on the hour, to pee – I have instituted Lee’s idea of a “pee jar”, but when I told him I did his idea, he said he was “just kidding” and called me “disgusting”.) (I have a bad bladder – I have to climb up and down that top bunk, I mean literally 7 or 8 times per night, I never get to sleep all the way through the night.)

Bobby was behaving himself all morning. Not one negative word. Encouraged me to go to lunch (I didn’t want to – I don’t like bologna, I wanted a shower without people here to “sweat” me about how long I’m in there). He even gave me a giant cookie he got from lunch. So I reached for my coffee jar to get us both some coffee. I noticed the level was suspiciously low.

He was quiet all day until 2 pm – I was on top bunk getting paperwork together to go to Lee’s and write letters. The paperwork, you know, made a “crinkling” sound like paper does, like when you read a newspaper. And that’s “too loud” for him. So he yells: “ARE YOU GOING TO DO THAT ALL DAY OR WHAT!?” I said “no, I’m leaving.” Then he tells me I’m “selfish” and “it’s all about me.” I said, “Yeah, and you’re perfect, aren’t ya?” He said, “No”. I left. So I go to Lee’s and tell them, and Big Head (Lee’s cellie) said: “Next time say to him: ‘This is my house too, bitch!’” And I can’t tell if he’s being serious or trying to “put cables on it” or what. But I’m not “being selfish”. Bobby manipulates.

2. So the day went, and around 2:30 pm I told Bobby what I thought of him. I left Lee’s to go to my cell to get some papers, and I said, “You’re a manipulator”.

I won’t write what happened next, because that falls into the category of snitching if the wrong person finds this. In fact, I don’t even know how to write around the subject…needless to say, there’s “an elephant in the room” and we can go on pretending we don’t see the elephant, or we can do something about it. But I don’t know what to do. It’s now 11 pm and I’m going to bed, good riddance to this day.

DATE: Sunday, 02-19-2023

I waited too long to do any proper journaling today. I am furious about my cellie setaling a bunch of my coffee. Lee said I can keep my coffee in his cell, and I plan to tomorrow. I have decided I can’t live with Bobby anymore. He’s got problems. I’m going to move no matter what it takes. I’ve already set a plan in motion. I’ve decided not to write the plan here in case Bobby is nosing into my journal while I’m gone. I don’t trust him at all. But I talked to Chad about it and he said he’s not “telling me to” do the plan, but also not telling me not to do it. Well you know, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse, as they say. At least I have a plan.

DATE: Monday, 02-20-2023

1. It’s noon. Had dreams about water. Bobby hasn’t spoken a word to me. Good. Going to get out of bed now and go make coffee.

Couldn’t sleep last night. Woke up at 3:30 am with a burning hunger. Ate a brownie. Couldn’t sleep. Sort of fell asleep for a few minutes. Then breakfast. Skipped it because it’s too early for prison. Burning hunger again. Ate an orange. Fell asleep around 9 am and dreamed about water, water in bathtubs, water on a lake, being in a boat. I would be deprived of life’s simple pleasures: I’d bum a cigarette from someone (a Marlboro 100) and wake up as I try to light it. I’d drink a wine cooler on the boat and same thing – I’d notice the label says “Alcohol Free – 0.05%”. get pissed and wake up. Well fuck it, now I’m up.

2. It’s 9:30 pm. I’m going to bed. I had a very long day. I’m getting up at breakfast tomorrow (allegedly) to go eat with Daniel. Then I’m going to talk to Lt. So tomorrow is going to be an even longer day and it hasn’t got here yet. Prison sucks. And by the way, I made a noose and tested it. I think it just isn’t long enough. But we all know I don’t have the balls to go through with it anyways. Plus I put in for Law Library: let’s see what Chad is talking about with this organization he says helps convicts with over-long sentences. Maybe there’s hope……

DATE: Tuesday, 02-21-2023

1. It’s 11:15 am. I have been up since 7:30 breakfast. Scrambled eggs and hashbrown burritos. I went with Daniel. Lt was standing yard where our Unit 6 sidewalk connects to the main one. We approached him together and both told him we want me to move into Daniel’s cell. Daniel needs it as much as me – I think Daniel gets too deep in his head and magnifies his troubles when he doesn’t have someone to talk to like me (by “like me” I mean someone who won’t “put cables on” his bad ideas and spin him around wilk a wingnut for their own entertainment and agenda, like these guys in here like to do).

To my astonishment, Lt said “yes” without a moment’s hesitation. I blinked. I said, “….Really!??” And he said, “Yeah, really.” I said, “See you back at the Unit,” and went to breakfast with Daniel. We were both happy.

Now I’m not so sure. After breakfast he was in his office, and I said, “I’ll start packing”. He said, “No, wait. I still have to get you your key and get you in the computer. And I have to get with the Move Sgt.” Meaning Sgt “S”. People like Chad and a few others here think he has no feelings one way or another, but I know “S” hates me. He’s good at acting professional and pretending not to care one way or another to other people, but the truth is he hates me. So if “S” has resistance to me moving, the Lt will agree and squash the move. My current cellie Bobby has told me – and I 100% agree with him – that they keep giving me cellmates they already know won’t work out well for me because they want me to get beat up or beat someone up or something bad happen, so they “Ad. Seg. (solitary confinement)” me. Literally all the other convicts who happen to know my pas cellies (Jerry, “Michelle”, etc.) agree with this assumption. “They want to set you up for failure, Strunk” they say. Bobby said that about himself!

So now it’s 11:45 am and I’m still not moved. The Lt isn’t here all day. Did I get lied to?

2. It is now 11 pm. It has been an extremely long day.

I did, in fact, get moved. With Daniel “B”, like I wanted. Then, the first hour I was here I already screwed things up.

I’m not even going to way what I did – but it’s once again me being stupid. So now I have to go fix it tomorrow. At Least he gave me a chance to fix it. It involves the fact that I said the wrong thing to the wrong person, and now “B” is mad and said he won’t e my friend unless I go “clean it up.” So tomorrow I have to go clean it up. At least I can. So tomorrow I have to go clean it up. At least I can go clean it up. I think it could be worse. But it could also be better, if I could just stop doing stupid things.

DATE: Saturday, 02-25-2023

1. It’s 3:30, I’m at Lee’s cell. He’s the only real friend I have in this unit.

Things have gotten so bad with me and Dan “B” that I can’t live here anymore. I don’t mean just in this cell, I mean I think I have to move out of the pod/Unit altogether. I’ve only been in this cell four days and already Daniel has told me he wants absolutely nothing to do with me at all and not to even speak to him anymore. He’s doing a bunch of passive-aggressive stuff to drive me out of the cell, like playing black music real loud because he knows I don’t like it. Throwing snot-blow tissues and dirty Q-tips in the floor, leaving the door open all day (because he knows it makes me paranoid), and the list goes on. On purpose.

It’s got to where I just simply cannot handle it anymore. My plan was, go to church tonight (only because Paul “P” told me to last night at the Messianic meeting, when this current trouble first start brewing), then tomorrow pack up my stuff and cut the fuck out of myself with a razor. I talked to Lee, and he said no cutting myself with a razor. So instead, I changed my plan: pack up my stuff and just go tell the cops I’m suicidal; without doing anything. They will take me to Ad. Seg. and put me in is called the “bam-bam suit”, naked, and it’s super uncomfortable and cold, but I don’t feel like I have a choice. “B” told me he’s been known to do things like stick his finger in his butthole then stick it in a guy’s food and coffee, plan shanks inside a guy’s stuff secretly before a shake-down, and even poison a guy, if he doesn’t like them. He obviously doesn’t like me. I don’t feel safe.

So I’ve been at Lee’s cell since about 2 pm. When it turned 4 pm, I went back to “my” cell and here I am. When I was at Lee’s, he told me a bunch of stuff to try to help me. Advice and so on. I won’t see him after Sunday night, so I’m going to try to hang out with him as much as possible.

2. The cops just knocked on our door for count – “B” woke up and turned up the music extra loud. He’s not going to stop. He’s just going to keep on doing worse and worse things to drive me out. It’s now 4:25 pm, I missed lunch and I’m going to miss dinner, too. Can’t write anymore.

DATE: Friday, 03-03-2023

My problems with “B” are over. In fact they were over the very next day after the above previous entry, On Sunday, February 26. We talk it out, and, come to find out, “” thought I was passive-aggressively doing irritating things on purpose to piss him off. Basically he thought I was, you know, “gaslighting” him. When I explained to him I’m just forgetful and don’t do anything to piss him off on purpose, things smoothed out. He is turning out to be the best cellie I ever had.

Then the next day on Monday, February 27, at I’d say 6:30 am, a guy committed suicide, ten feet away from my cell door. I should begin by saying I NEVER get up that early – I made a point to get up early that day because I needed to mail our a package. I was on my top bunk getting ready to hop down when I heard: “NO, NO, NO, NOOOO! STOP! STOOOP!” being yelled outside my door by a bunch of guys. Then I heard “THUD!” I thought it was a fight and one guy body-slammed another guy, so I jumped down to see it. That’s when I saw a body.

The guy was still breathing – I could see his chest going up and down. A Couple of CO’s were around him, yelling “CAN YOU HEAR ME!?” at his face. I tell you, if I’m injured and semi-conscious, the last thing I want is a bunch of cops screaming at me! Then I saw the guy shudder with a jerk and stop breathing. He died. Come to find out, he jumped from the third tier.

Something happened to me after that. I saw a lot of guys crying. I also met guys like my cellie, who had the opposite reaction: they had doe enough years in enough prisons that they had seen it many times before and had no sympathy or feelings for the guy. “Fuck ‘em” they said. But I had a very strange reaction: I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. In fact, I got quiet…I saw Chad and thought: “I don’t want to talk to him about it.” And it’s like I got QUIET inside. That is all.

DATE: Wednesday, 05-30-2023

I had planned to finish this yesterday – but yesterday was Memorial Day, and there was a lot going on. The prison has a “music room” in the gum with generic versions of well-known music equipment – for example, there’s a “Stratocaster” electric guitar but it’s not a Fender, plugged into a Marshall amp-stack except it’s not a Marshall or even a tube amp, it’s a Peavey solid-state. And so on. So they set it all up outside under a canopy on the big lawn, and there’s a prison band of musicians about my age. That means they are in their late 40’s/early 50’s, so they are solid “Gen – X”, and that’s a good thing because they grew up listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, the “grunge” stuff before all the music went to ship in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s with the ubiquitousness of computer-assisted music. So they play music that was on the radio in the 1990’s – they could play well but not sing, so they jammed out and made the generic equipment sound good but the singer would go flat on high otes. We all got sunburns while eating sno-cones. I spent an hour listening to an old man tell me his story about how he got the shit beat out of him (literally – he had to get in the shower and change his pants after the beating) by a younger, stronger man who was his cellmate. The man had already been bullying him for a week before the beating, and the story ended with the bully claiming to be a “Christian”, and when the older man went to church, sporting a black eye, the bully would approach him and “ask forgiveness for his sin.” The older man would refuse, and the younger man would get upset and find other occasions to meet him and ask for forgiveness again. He said it basically turned into a church-assisted stalking situation. He told me his refusal to forgive him was based on the fact that he knows a predator when he meets one, and the guy was “seeking forgiveness” not because he was actually sorry, but because it releases him spiritually and karmatically from the beating, he can walk away vindicated. He said it’s the same as a habitual wife-beater, who beats his wif and then wants to hear her say “I still love you” after so he can continue the cycle and beat her again next week. It’s a power thing, an ego-feeding thing.

When I say I “had planned to finish this yesterday, I mean this prison diary. I began it in mid-February on the advice of a friend, who told me journaling would help me be more centered. But then at the end of February when that man committed suicide – landing about ten feet away from my cell door after jumping from the third floor, as I was fixing my morning coffee – that sort of put a stop to my wanting to write in a diary. Something about watching that man die – and there wasn’t anything peaceful about it, he was moaning with pain and gasping for air for almost ten minutes, before a final spasm went through his body and I saw him stop breathing and his eyes zero out. The eyes are the worst part, when you see the light go out…the glassy, empty fisheyes of death…

It just made me go quiet inside and I stopped writing. William S. Burroughs once remarked, and I don’t know if this was in “Naked Lunch” or something else he wrote, about how in the Deep South in the old days before the Civil Rights upheavals of the 1960’s back when lynchings were commonplace, the next few days after a public lynching, these small towns would “take on a dreamy effect” and the people would…I know what he meant when he wrote about it, but I can’t re-describe it. It’s like “the elephant in the room” that every is painfully aware of but won’t talk about. Shortly after that I got a new cellmate, a narcissistic child-molester who journals, and I started to think less of journaling, so I quit. At least for now.