I arrived at Caro in October of 2014. It was my fourth charge and I was tired. This place would be my greatest challenge. I would be subject to abuse that I had never experienced, and hear some of the most horrific stories I have heard. When I got there, I made quick friends and became part of a little clique. We sat together, watched television and played cards together. We were kind of coupled up, which was a bad thing, because my partner was having sex with two of the security personnel, Kim and Shannon. Kim was butch-like and Shannon was tall and slim and wore her tight pants rolled up at the ankles. She liked my partner more than Kim did. Kim walked around like she didn't care that we sat together, ate together and sat on the bus together. Shannon was different. She would stand and pout. Eventually, they told us that we had to stay six feet away from one another. I didn't mention that he was White, and Kim was White and so was Shannon. Most of the people at Caro were White and ran that place like an asylum, but we had all the freedom possible to do whatever we wanted.
Many people don't know this, but mental institutions in Michigan don't have to be segregated. Men and women can live in the same unit, but not in the same room. At Caro, there were four rooms in one unit. Two rooms for men and two for women. After you get permission to move to a segregated unit, you finally live peacefully. Most of the staff is involved with either the patients or one another. I began a writing crusade that caused me to get a cocktail of psychotropic medication. Whatever it was it knocked you out. When I woke up, my partner was always sitting there waiting for me to awaken. When I did, I wasn't allowed back in my room, because of Sam. Sam, was a great big dyke that wanted to have sex with me. She badgered me constantly, and wanted me to know she wanted me. My mother sent me a box of food. They opened it, smashed my chips and candy. Stole my stamps, so I couldn't report them and all of their madness.
We had a cook that prepared our food. She was also a White woman hated that my partner would sit with me when we ate. One time, we were having ham, baked potatoes and broccoli. She had over baked my potato, and poked all these holes in it so it was dry. Then they filled his plate with two slices of ham, a huge baked potato and two large trees of broccoli. They stood looking at him and and he never looked up from his plate. Sam, Shannon and the cook. Previously they had done something similar with my pot pie and he traded food with me. That night, fear was all I could feel from the man sitting next to me. I also ate in silence. The six feet sanction started soon after that. My cocktail of shots ended, too. Shannon's nurse friend, afraid, because she had begun giving me shots for sneezing. I had written the State several times, and she first went on sick leave and then went to another unit to work.
My partner, who I will now call my friend was a drug addict. He was "messing around" with another woman who was a patient there, too. She was also a prostitute. Sarah and this woman were friends. I don't know what the woman had done to get there, but she and Sarah were from Oakland County Jail. During lunch at the school, she and my friend would go back in a corner, and while the security personnel kept watch, they would have sex. Unlike sex with Kim and Shannon, she pleased him. Sex with Kim and Shannon got him perks, food, drugs and special meals. Shannon would stand in the community room and ask him, "Are you still not feeling well? Because I need to give a count for the bus ride". He would look up surprised and say, "I never said I wanted to stay back, because I was sick". He would stay behind and when we got back from evening activities, she would be standing in his door with disinfectant and a towel. I guess she had washed the evidence away. It was rumored that Sam was having sex with Shannon, too. Sam was more like a man and she looked like a monkey, with thick bushy hair in a mushroom. She was really weird looking.
We had a classic "nut case" named Brian. Brian didn't have sex with anyone, because he was crazy! I mean just a "stark raving lunatic". He went off on me twice, but my friend wouldn't let him really hurt me. One day, he got really angry and started yelling at Shannon and Sam. I just sat and pretended to watch television. He pointed at Sam and screamed, "You f*cking dyke. Stay the f*ck out of our room talking sh*t!" Then he pointed at Shannon and said, "And you, you stay out of our room trying to get him to f*ck you!" He turned and pointed at my friend and he just stared at him. Well, Sam had a conniption! She kept taking deep breaths and pacing the dining area, then she went and got the book that they wrote our reports in. Our daily "observations", eventhough she was crazier than us and power hungry. Brian could care less, he was crazy and fed up with all their bullsh*t. She slammed the book down and turned to his page and started writing. She wrote with a purpose, dotting her I's like she was stabbing Brian through the heart. Brian went in his room and slammed the door. We all had to act uninterested. I sat there with a smile on my face. My girl, the yen to Larry's yang smiled, too.
So, when they finally broke us up, me and my girl stayed friends. There was this woman there that used to sneak food to us. McDonald's and stuff like that. Sometimes, she would bring us candy. She made us sit away from everyone and enjoy our snacks and McDoubles. I think she wanted to be our pimp. My girl was from Oakland County and had gained so much weight that they had to get her new clothes when she left. Oakland County goes into bags and steals clothes for their prostitutes to wear home or to a transfer. The guys got food and stuff, too. Charles would sit between her legs and let her braid his hair. When I gasped, he said, "Why you mad I give that old lady a thrill?" I replied, "You giving her more than a thrill." Every nurse was responsible for giving the patients their fix, like that woman gave out the fast-food. One day I was offered something in a cup that resembles a container of creamer. I said, "No thank you." My friend, however, downed his cup and went off to bed.
At night, they have these weird one-on-ones. That's when a security person sits at a patients beside all night. It's very awkward for the other people that live in the room. At shift change, they have to tell each other what's going on. On my first night, the transition turned into a talk on a cabin in the woods and a rude brother-in-law. I turned over and asked them to be quiet that I was trying to sleep. This man that looked like "Wolf Man Jack", stood over me, and stated, "What are you going to do about it if I don't?" I looked up at him and was shocked. He was intimidating me! I turned over again and said, "Nothing." He went to his one-on-one and I tried to get some sleep, which was impossible, because he was talking to yet another co-worker telling her about his daughter's new house. You get no respect at all at Caro or any institution that I've ever been in. This was my fifth and worst.
They fight the patients, too. One woman jumped on this security lady, whose entire family worked at Caro. Her daughter-in-law came to get her dig in and tried intimidate the young woman. This woman could care less, and I think she would have fought her, too. The woman had rather large hips, after having gastric by-pass. She was kind of deformed looking, but that was her sore point. The young lady that she got into a fight with kept calling her Barbie. It irritated the security lady to no end. Every time she said something, she would start whining in a despicable sneer, "Okay, BARBIE!" One night it was just too much and she charged the girl and put her fist in her face. She never hit her, but she pushed her fist into her face. Another one of the people that worked there used to instigate fights with patients she didn't like. In jest one night, as we sat talking she said, "I tell her, grab her by the hair and beat her in the face with your fist!" She threw her hands up and stated, "She never gets it and always gets her ass kicked!" Playing devils advocate, I asked her, "Why don't you just beat her up?" She turned to me and laughed, "I have." This guy DeJaun that takes advantage of the women too naive to know he's using them, just shook his head.
DeJuan was from Flint and had made his rounds to all the Michigan mental facilities. He had killed a man and got a "Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity" plea. They knew that he wasn't insane, but he said that some how he fooled them. He said that they are never going to let him go. Like Sarah, they had been given a gift. He wore Michael Jordan sweat suits and shoes, kept his hair cut and had all the women he wanted! Even Sarah, but they broke them up, too. Sarah is White, and DeJuan is Black. The people at Caro can't stand inter-racial relationships. You can have a relationship, but not a Black/White relationship. The White women wanted me to feel bad about who I was. I didn't need their little "Boy Toy". He laid at my feet, and I never laid at his. DeJaun and my friend had it as good as it gets. Because they were an Alpha-Males, they ran the show. DeJaun would use drugs and play chess with the Caro police, mostly every night. He wasn't like Jimmy, but like Jimmy he wasn't going home. His murder was callous and the State of Michigan wasn't letting him go. Jimmy had killed his mother, while in a psychotic state, removed the skin from her face and ate her eye-balls. They always gave "dap", because they know what their life will be like; forever.
Man, those were tough times at Caro, but hilarious, too. I went out in the common area and saw one of my roomies having sex with this fat dumpy arse of a man. The activities director caught my old roomie, bent over "doing it" in the theater. The thing is, they fought every morning when we got off the bus. I guess it's true what they say. I know what you're thinking, but I never indulged. I was too busy taking notes and trying to get people to tell me stories. It's been a while, and I know they still running a whorehouse/sex den. I'm still reeling from my bunky sleeping naked and trying to crawl into my bed. Having night terrors and standing up and just peeing all over the floor. But hey, that's life in a mental institution...
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