'An egotistical black plague of an addiction'

I caught up with 25-year-old Rob Vaughn Guess on Friday, a few days after he was released from prison, having finished up six weeks at Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center for painting graffiti in downtown New London.

I tracked him down because I was curious to hear what he had to say about the graffiti accusations, but I also wanted to find out what he made of his experience behind bars, graffiti writer among violent criminals.

The second night at Corrigan, he said, they put someone in his cell who proceeded to pull a bag of heroin out of a body cavity and snort it. Guess was terrified his cellmate would get caught and he'd get in trouble, too.

From then on he kept his head down and tried not to tell anyone what he was in for.

But the time in prison, Guess told me, has been the least of his punishment.

He lost his job, working with preschoolers as a teaching assistant at the Child & Family Agency of Southeastern Connecticut, a job that meant the world to him.

He lost his car. He went into default on his student loans from Suffolk University in Boston, where he dropped out a few courses shy of his degree. He figures it will be almost impossible now to get the loans he would need to finish.

He had to pay a lawyer to represent him and he's had to move back home with his mother in Groton, who has her own financial troubles, including a foreclosure on her house.

Most worrisome of all, though, Guess said, is the three-year prison sentence hanging over his head if he is arrested again.

He says he won't be writing any more graffiti around here, but he fears he will be accused of whatever appears next downtown, being the most likely suspect.

He said he knows others who are continuing to write graffiti and expects they won't stop.

"I'm afraid to be out of jail," he said. "New London's minuscule problem with graffiti is not going to stop. It scares me."

Guess admits to being addicted to writing graffiti, what he calls "an egotistical black plague of an addiction."

If there were rehab for it, he says, he would go.

In fact, the warrant for his arrest this fall was signed, he says, just three days before his probation for a 2007 graffiti arrest was to be up. He was also arrested before that in Boston on graffiti writing charges.

He claims, though, that he was not responsible for much of the graffiti included in the 25-page affidavit for the warrant for his most recent arrest.

I found him to be quite credible when he told me this, maybe because he seemed so willing to own up to some of the graffiti, dating back to early 2008, that he was arrested for. Also, since he's now served his time for it, he had no reason to lie.

Guess said he was doing well with a recovery from his graffiti-writing addiction in the last year or so.

"There is a point in time, when you start feeling better, when it's not worth it anymore," he said.

In addition to his work with the children, which he found transforming, he began, with some encouragement from friends, to do legitimate work and had successful shows at downtown art galleries.

He is careful to point out, though, that he doesn't consider graffiti-writing to be art.

It was one of those gallery shows that helped lead to his arrest because police connected his "tag" on display in the gallery to some recent downtown graffiti. Guess said it was done by someone else who used his mark as a kind of tribute.

"It's known as a shout out," he said.

Guess said he's not looking for any sympathy and says that he knows that "if you make mistakes you are going to have to pay for them."

He did want to clear up one point, though, about something from the arrest-warrant affidavit that made it into news stories.

Police said they found evidence against Guess while investigating an untimely death from a drug overdose.

The deceased was a friend of a friend of his roommate, Guess said, someone they let crash in their apartment.

He doesn't mind admitting to his graffiti-writing addiction, but he bristles at the suggestion that he is a drug abuser.

Guess describes himself as what you might call a responsible graffiti-writer. He said he would never write on someone's car or doorway or somewhere that would damage personal property. He said he used to paint the inside of Amtrak tunnels, in part because he enjoyed the long stretch of time he could spend at it and the notion that so many people would see it.

By way of advice to a city that wants to curb graffiti, he suggests that urban fairs in which young kids are encouraged to write graffiti on temporary walls are a very bad idea.

"It just makes young people curious," he said. "It is just so easy then to go and grab a can of spray paint."

When I asked Guess what's next for him, he said he's going to look for work and is planning some new shows here and in Boston. To work with kids again he's making some arrangements to volunteer at the Waterford Country School.

He also plans to stay clean.

This is the opinion of David Collins.