First-person account (James Laughlin) describing arrival at Mount Eden Prison: being placed in Cell 10, encountering intimidating inmates at the cell door, hearing the phrase "I'm scared for you, bro," and recounting a restless first night and a decision to adopt a hardened, ‘animal’ survival mindset to get through the unit.
Went to Mount Eden Prison, was in a holding cell for a little while, and then you get called up. I went into cell number 10, was our first cell. That's my favorite number. And as I'm walking towards Cell number 10, cell number 9, the guy looks at me, I could see, like, there's someone at the door. Because there's like, that strip of the door that you can see, and there's two guys standing. One guy's a bit shorter and the other guy's a bit taller. And they both got tats on their face. I walk in and I'm like, trying to act cool, and he's like, psst, psst. And then I, still walking towards my son, he's like, I'm scared for you, bro. I was like, ah, no. And so I went in there, and that whole night I couldn't go to sleep. And I told my cellmate, I was like, look, if anybody comes inside, we're going to fight, no matter what. The thing is, if you come out into a unit like that, you have no choice but to become an animal. Like, you have to. You have to let go of this, you know, Like, I want to be better and I want to do better. You have to let go of that. You have to turn into an animal to survive.
