After months in a holding cell and enduring the embarrassment of a public trail, I was sentenced with voluntary manslaughter. I was told by my public defendant lawyer that this sentence is sometimes called a “Heat of Passion” murder. For some reason I laughed when he told me this. Well, I had fifteen years to find a reason why I laughed because that was how long I was locked up. I'll get to my conclusion on that in a bit, but first let me tell you how prison was.
Being faced with the fact that my freedom in the world was lost took me months to get used to. At first I didn't talk to anyone and suffered from visual hallucinations. When I tried to sleep, Yolanda's eyes appeared underneath my own eyelids. For the first year, it never was important or upsetting to me that I killed a man. That fact was just an inconvenience that put a barrier between me and my love.
My inaugural year was fairly uneventful because I was in a secluded cell. I threatened suicide often because that ensured my single cell occupancy. During this time, I started getting used to the feeling of being imprisoned and began to adapt. I read for more than half of the time that I was awake. Reading so much started to open my mind to subjects I've never considered. Philosophy, history, and romance novels were my favorite types of books. The mixture of these subjects showed me for the first time that I can relate to people and gave me a feeling of confidence around others. I stopped acting suicidal and slowly started being a more reasonable human being. On a good day, I tried to joke with some of the guards. My sense of humor never went over well. They usually told me “Shut up Bandy” and banged on the bars of my cell with a baton.
In my second year I fared much better. I was moved into a larger cell with another man. When I was escorted to the new cell, the man was sleeping face down on the top mattress of a bunk bed. He had a bush of dark hair shooting in all directions. He wore the standard prison attire, but his seemed especially fitted to accentuate the large muscles of his body. He slept without a sound while I moved into the new cell. I hung up a picture I drew on the wall and put my books on a stack in the corner. I laid in the bottom bunk while cracking open a paperback book. When I'm nervous, it's hard for me to retain what I'm reading. I got to page sixty of the book when I heard a rustling above me. This made me realize that I had no idea what I just read. I didn't even know what book I was holding.
The bed started shaking and a pair of legs swung over the top bunk and swayed near my face. My new roommate coughed a few times. He then yelled “Yippee” and jumped out of bed and landed on his feet facing me.
Hey, guess we're roomies he said.
Yeah, I said and started nervously laughing. He looked me hard in the eyes for an uncomfortably long time and then finally broke my gaze by looking at the book I had sitting on my chest. He stared at the book deciphering the title and then looked back into my eyes. He started laughing obnoxiously loud and began snorting. He started to lose control of himself and even passed gas. I had no idea what was wrong. I looked down at the book and read the title, The Complete Idiots Guide to Amazing Sex.
My heart started pounding, I knew this was my only chance to make a good impression. I thought fast and looked at him directly. “Hi, my name is Bandy. I'm in here for murder.”
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
I guess by now you are wondering why I chose the name BandysBeard for this website. Ever since I was 18, I could grow a thick, full, and dark beard. I often admired pictures civil war generals and adventurous mountain men for their facial follicle prowess. Being homeless and on the move leaves me with little choice. Carrying around razors and shaving cream, and finding a private place to clean up has always been more hassle than it's worth. Due to my natural ability to produce an unusually bushy face covering, I decided early in life to let my beard sprout to the fullest.
When I went in to ask Yolanda for the job, my beard and mustache was trimmed neatly to about half an inch in length. The first months at my new job went surprisingly quick. Yolanda taught me how to run all aspects of the bakery including the working the cash register, washing dishes, and making baked goods. I had an instant knack for mixing and cooking flour laden treats from my years of cooking for my parents at home. When I was a kid, I had to invent foods with a sparse pantry sometimes filled only with a 50lb bag of flour, sugar, vegetable and salt (fried dough was a favorite of mine!). I always dreamed of the day when I'd have infinite ingredients at my disposal. With Yolanda at the Vanilla Tea Bakery, the possibilities were endless.
I was working steadily for around a year and was becoming really comfortable and confident about myself. With the money I earned, I moved into a one room apartment on the top floor of a building in the industrial district. The place was the first that ever truly felt like home. The noise of trains rolling along the tracks outside was very calming to me and reminded me of my train-riding days. I felt almost complete, but something was still missing in my life.
In my last post I mentioned that Yolanda and I fell in love. Unfortunately this is more a delusion of mine than actual reality. I began to have such strong feelings for her. I tried to flirt and playfully tease her, but my games were rarely reciprocated. After some of the worst days at work, I went back to my apartment and sketched pictures of Yolanda while crying. It was as if she couldn't fathom that her and I could even be together. She often talked about crushes and the dates she went on. I usually humored her, but it was torture for me. Sometimes I was so frustrated at her lack of interest in me that I locked myself in the work bathroom for hours.
The day when I lost my job still makes me nauseous when I think about it. It started off like any normal day for me. I rolled out of bed excited to go to my job and be with Yolanda. The bakery had ordered a few dozen too many eggs that were nearing expiration, so I had took a bunch home throughout the week. I made myself a giant garlic and onion omelet with six of the questionable eggs.
I left my apartment and walked the twenty blocks to the bakery. It was a brisk fall day which made me reminisce about the time my mother raked all the leaves in our yard and formed a giant pile for me to jump into. As I walked along whistling a flat blues tune my stomach started slightly rumbling like the agitated ocean before a hurricane.
When I got to work the door was unlocked, but Yolanda was nowhere in sight. I looked around the main room and didn't see her. I started to hear this strange noise like animals fighting coming from the back storage room. We occasionally had issues with raccoons breaking in and eating the bags of sugar. I figured this would be a repetition of that previous event, so I grabbed a broom and headed to the back. As I got closer, the noise sounded less like beasts and more like humans. I opened the door and saw Yolanda laying naked on a cardboard box with a man's head between her legs. I was at first shocked and excited to see my love naked. That feeling lasted for about five seconds until I erupted in a nuclear explosion of jealous rage. I took the broom in my hands and started whacking the unknown man in his head. The first blow was enough to knock him on the ground. He laid there unconsciously with a pool of blood forming around his head. I looked around in a moment of clarity and saw Yolanda's angelic body convulsing in horror. She looked at me as if I was a murderer. Her look shocked me so much that all of a sudden I felt a soft warm mass appear in the back of my pants. At this point I must have passed out. I woke up in a 10 by 10 foot jail cell smelling like sulfur...
When I went in to ask Yolanda for the job, my beard and mustache was trimmed neatly to about half an inch in length. The first months at my new job went surprisingly quick. Yolanda taught me how to run all aspects of the bakery including the working the cash register, washing dishes, and making baked goods. I had an instant knack for mixing and cooking flour laden treats from my years of cooking for my parents at home. When I was a kid, I had to invent foods with a sparse pantry sometimes filled only with a 50lb bag of flour, sugar, vegetable and salt (fried dough was a favorite of mine!). I always dreamed of the day when I'd have infinite ingredients at my disposal. With Yolanda at the Vanilla Tea Bakery, the possibilities were endless.
I was working steadily for around a year and was becoming really comfortable and confident about myself. With the money I earned, I moved into a one room apartment on the top floor of a building in the industrial district. The place was the first that ever truly felt like home. The noise of trains rolling along the tracks outside was very calming to me and reminded me of my train-riding days. I felt almost complete, but something was still missing in my life.
In my last post I mentioned that Yolanda and I fell in love. Unfortunately this is more a delusion of mine than actual reality. I began to have such strong feelings for her. I tried to flirt and playfully tease her, but my games were rarely reciprocated. After some of the worst days at work, I went back to my apartment and sketched pictures of Yolanda while crying. It was as if she couldn't fathom that her and I could even be together. She often talked about crushes and the dates she went on. I usually humored her, but it was torture for me. Sometimes I was so frustrated at her lack of interest in me that I locked myself in the work bathroom for hours.
The day when I lost my job still makes me nauseous when I think about it. It started off like any normal day for me. I rolled out of bed excited to go to my job and be with Yolanda. The bakery had ordered a few dozen too many eggs that were nearing expiration, so I had took a bunch home throughout the week. I made myself a giant garlic and onion omelet with six of the questionable eggs.
I left my apartment and walked the twenty blocks to the bakery. It was a brisk fall day which made me reminisce about the time my mother raked all the leaves in our yard and formed a giant pile for me to jump into. As I walked along whistling a flat blues tune my stomach started slightly rumbling like the agitated ocean before a hurricane.
When I got to work the door was unlocked, but Yolanda was nowhere in sight. I looked around the main room and didn't see her. I started to hear this strange noise like animals fighting coming from the back storage room. We occasionally had issues with raccoons breaking in and eating the bags of sugar. I figured this would be a repetition of that previous event, so I grabbed a broom and headed to the back. As I got closer, the noise sounded less like beasts and more like humans. I opened the door and saw Yolanda laying naked on a cardboard box with a man's head between her legs. I was at first shocked and excited to see my love naked. That feeling lasted for about five seconds until I erupted in a nuclear explosion of jealous rage. I took the broom in my hands and started whacking the unknown man in his head. The first blow was enough to knock him on the ground. He laid there unconsciously with a pool of blood forming around his head. I looked around in a moment of clarity and saw Yolanda's angelic body convulsing in horror. She looked at me as if I was a murderer. Her look shocked me so much that all of a sudden I felt a soft warm mass appear in the back of my pants. At this point I must have passed out. I woke up in a 10 by 10 foot jail cell smelling like sulfur...
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