Chaos and Noise: One Man's Harrowing Stint in Solitary Confinement

Locked in the hole without explanation, Christopher Blackwell tries desperately to hold onto the pride and positivity he’s worked so hard to preserve.

Illustrations by Molly Magnell

Without further ado, we’re beyond thrilled to share with you the Grand Prize-winning essay of our 2023 Memoir Prize, Christopher Blackwell’s piece about the routine horrors he witnessed during a spell in solitary. Christopher is his own words: “This story was written before I had even published a single piece of writing. It was a story based on frustration, anger and pain. Throughout the years, I’ve written it over and over as I continue to learn and grow as a writer. It was a story I simply couldn’t let go of — a story I knew one day would live in the world. I use my writing to highlight inequalities and harm, and I use that to humanize those of us who reside behind these towering walls and endless rows of razor-wire fences. Winning the Narratively 2023 Memoir Grand Prize lets me know just how important these stories are — and that everything we do to highlight them matters. It’s an honor to be in community with other writers who’ve been recognized for their work on such an incredible level.”

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“Let’s go, you know the drill!” a guard yells.

I’m sitting in a tiny concrete cell as two guards begin the intake process of placing me in the hole, in solitary confinement. I know they will take everything in my possession, but I’m desperate to keep my phone book and photos of loved ones.

I remove my socks and shoes. My naked feet come into contact with the cold and filthy concrete floor, bits of dirt and grime and other prisoners’ bodily fluids sticking to my skin.

Though I have no choice but to comply, I hate myself for it. I strip all the way down. Once I’m fully naked, the guards look me up and down, and it takes all the strength I have to hold my head high, but I do. All I have left is my pride.

One of the guards looks at me and says, “Run your hands through your hair and shake it out. Now bend your ears so I can look behind them. Open your mouth. Run your finger through your gum lines. Now lift your arms, now your nuts. Turn around and bend over, spread ’em and cough. OK, let me see the bottoms of your feet. Get dressed.” The guard barking at me is emotionless in his commands.

Through the slot, the guard throws a worn-out orange jumpsuit and a roll of pink underclothes into my cell. I get dressed as quickly as I can, brimming with frustration and loathing, all the work I’ve done to transform myself into someone positive feels as if it might be erased. No one will tell me why I’ve been brought into solitary. I was simply cuffed and taken without explanation.

Next comes the so-called mental health exam.

“Am I OK? Do I feel like committing suicide?”

The staff member questioning me is flat, lacking any sense of compassion. This process is simply a formality. No one who works here would lose any sleep if I were to take my own life.

I have to be very careful as I answer these questions. If they believe I’m so much as thinking of hurting myself, they’Il send me somewhere even worse, a cell isolated from all other prisoners where I’d be stripped of absolutely everything. Even the orange jumpsuit and pink underwear would be taken away, replaced with a thick green cloth draped over me like a dress with a slit down the back. A suicide cell is not where I want to be.

I answer the questions as fast and honestly as I can. It’s not as if I want to hurt myself anyway. Unlike on the prison main line, in the hole, prisoners aren’t allowed to move anywhere without being handcuffed and escorted by two guards, attached to one of the guards by a dog leash. After the exam, I’m told to back up to the cell door so they can cuff me yet again.

The cell where they take me is empty. Two very thin pink blankets, two pink sheets, a pink pillowcase and a two-inch thick gray mattress. The shock has started to wear off, and reality has begun to set in. I have a long road ahead of me.

I sit on the thin mattress in disbelief. I struggle to find any logic in what’s happened. I work with other prisoners to make sure they don’t make choices that will lead them to this very place, helping build their confidence through education and self-improvement programs. Yet, here I sit. I examine the dull, concrete walls and floor, the metal toilet. All the same body fluids that I noticed in the holding cell are present here, too, streaks of spit running down the walls.

I tell myself to make the best of the situation, but it’s hard when I don’t even have a cup for water, no paper or pen, not even a book to read. Finally, a guard brings me some basic supplies: a paper cup, a few sheets of paper, a small pen, but no book.

Writing always calms me down, and so I write until my hand hurts. I write until I can write no more. I remind myself to be thankful that I have loved ones to write.

Hours go by, and the sun sets. I can’t actually see the sunset, but I see a sliver of reddish blue sky through my small slit window at the top of one of the walls.

Hours later, when the graveyard staff come on shift, I rush to the door to ask for a book. I also ask for some cleaning supplies, which have started to feel more important than air.

The guard on shift looks at me as if I’m dumb and says, “We don’t do cleaning supplies till Friday.” It’s Monday. “I might be able to find you a book, but no promises.”

I tell him that I just got here, hoping this will help my case. It doesn’t seem to move him.

“I’ll try, but again, no promises.”

I retreat from the door like a kid who didn’t get the new PlayStation he asked for on Christmas morning. On my flimsy gray mattress, I finally drift off.

I awake in the middle of the night to the slot on my door opening. I hear something fall to the ground. The slot slams shut with a bang. On the ground, I find a book.

I wake up to silence the following morning, something rare in the hole. Based on the color of the sky through the window slit, I suspect it’s still early. I grab the book that was dropped on my floor in the night, interested to see what I’ll be reading today. I can tell from the summary on the back that it’s a murder mystery, the kind of book that’s always so predictable. I’ve read hundreds of books like this over my decades of incarceration. I now prefer books that expand my mind toward growth and development, as opposed to books that glorify crime and retribution.

My life of confinement started at age 12. I remember sitting in the police car that first time, handcuffed and afraid, knowing I was in a lot of trouble. I had just been caught in a stolen car after taking the police on a high-speed chase that ended in a very bad accident. The car was completely totaled but somehow, thankfully, no one got hurt. I was sentenced to 52 weeks in the juvenile system, which seemed like a lifetime. 

They warehoused me until my sentence came to an end, then released me right back into the environment from whence I came: an overpoliced community consumed by poverty. I started smoking weed and drinking whenever I could afford it, which mostly led to my friends and me stealing to keep up with our new habits.

By 15, I started to give up on my education. I’d get frustrated and act out whenever I fell behind in school, going into class clown mode, making fun of the teacher and anyone else in my vicinity. I was eventually expelled from every school in Tacoma, Washington, and the surrounding areas. I was then placed in special education classes taught by overworked teachers who were only there to focus on our behavior, not our education. When these classes didn’t work out, my only option was alternative schools, which were even worse. Students were actually given smoke breaks at these schools, even though we weren’t old enough to buy cigarettes. A third of the girls in my class were pregnant, and it was clear that the teachers didn’t care about what we did.

This was when I decided I was done with school. I committed myself to a life of crime, drug dealing mostly. The money came fast, and for the first time, I felt like I was in control. What I didn’t realize is that this type of life never lasts long, and once you get caught up in the system, you lose everything and remain part of the system forever. By 18, I’d been locked up at least 20 times and had nine felonies.