One of the big things about prison is getting used to living in very close quarters with a lot of people, with many, many different personalities.

Then, on top of that, you have to learn to live and cohabitate in a 6×9 cell with a complete stranger packed with a sink, toilet, desk and chair, a bunk-bed (I’m currently on top) and a set of lockers that act as our closet space. All of this, plus us and all our junk have to be in this room together.

There are many names that one can call a cellmate. It could be roommate, cellie, cellmate, bunk-mate, or like here we say bunky. And there’s nothing that can affect or make your time harder than getting stuck with a funky bunky. After all the years I’ve spent in prison, I’ve had my share of the good and the bad ones.

Right now, I thank God, I have a good one, but having the right bunky can either make or break how difficult your time is going to be.

Sometimes you’ll get the creepy bunky who will watch the every move you make… whether you’re getting dressed or using the restroom, there’s always that one who will just downright stare at you and give zero fucks that you know they’re watching you.

Then you get the bunky who goes a step creepier and will pretend to be reading their book or watching their TV, but when you look, you catch them peeking out the corner of their eye watching you.

Then, you got the nasty bunkies. These for me are are the absolute worst bunkies for me because I’d rather live with the peep’in Tammy.

I’ve had the ones who never wash their hands after they use the restroom. Some will even go as far as to turn the water on and pretend to wash their hands or some just run their hands under the water alone, nix the soap.

I had this one bunky, we’ll call her Grey Matter, and not for her brains but for the color of her skin… She was probably the worst roommate I’ve had in all my years thus far…. knock on wood…where to start with this one… well, the first mistake was that I did something with this bunky I never did with another.

I went to the law library and I read her case… and, oh my God, it was the worst thing I’ve ever read in my life. Grey Matter’s case was what we call a CSC case, which stands for Criminal Sexual Conduct. And hers was on her own 13 year old daughter… Grey Matter and her husband were both sentenced to over 30 years. I can’t even begin to tell you the brutality I read about and what mindset that put me in.

I felt dirty just sharing the same space with her… she never washed her hands at all… shit, she never washed herself let alone her hands. She would start her cycle and not shower for up to seven days at a time. When she would go to use the restroom while I was in the room, she would sit down and it wouldn’t take 30 seconds and, all of a sudden the smell would assault my nose.

The whole room would smell like what I could only describe as bloody dead fish. There would be times when I would be out of the room, outside on the yard or someplace, and “chow, chow” would be called and I would go back to the room to grab my ID card or something and I’d open the door and immediately get slapped in the face with the putrid funk.

And there’s nothing that I hate worse than having to parent a grown adult. I shouldn’t have to tell a grown woman to take care of themselves. It is bullshit. For Christ sake, I came to prison only a few weeks passed 20 and no one ever had to mother me.

Tell me why I not only had the unfortunate luck of being her bunky once, but two years later. I was living in a six man cell when I ended up having her move into my room again, from the infirmary, after she apparently had a D and C, probably to clean out whatever that god-awful smell was dying inside her. At least in this room we didn’t have a toilet, and spared all of the bunkies that experience.

And, to answer the question as to her skin color being grey…

I surmised that it had something to do with that fact that her nose had the biggest blackheads you’ve ever seen, in every single pore… packed so full that her nose literally looks blue… combined with the fact, her carcass lays in bed all day and all night sleeping, at least 22 hours out of each day. Years of self neglect and lack of proper vitamin D exposure… equals grey skin.

If you ever have the unfortunate luck of having to be locked up, my only advice would be… make air freshener, go to segregation to get away, or flat out tell the person the ground rules of of the room… showers are rule number one.