Mama's Boy Behind Bars

by David Goudreault

  FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

  Published originally under the title La bête et sa cage © 2016, Les Éditions Internationales

  Alain Stanké, Montreal, Canada

  English translation copyright © 2019 by J.C. Sutcliffe

  The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013-2018: Education, Immigration, Communities, for our translation activities.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

  or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Book*hug Press acknowledges the land on which it operates. For thousands of years it has

  been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Mama's boy behind bars / David Goudreault ; translated by JC Sutcliffe.

  Other titles: Bête et sa cage. English

  Names: Goudreault, David, author. | Sutcliffe, J. C., translator.

  Series: Literature in translation series.

  Description: First English edition. | Series statement: Literature in translation series |

  Translation of: La bête et sa cage.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190118059 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190118091

  ISBN 9781771664851 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771664868 (HTML)

  ISBN 9781771664875 (PDF) | ISBN 9781771664882 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8613.O825 B4813 2019 | DDC C843/.6—dc23

  For perpetuity

  Prologue

  I’ve killed two people now. I’m a serial killer. So maybe a body count of two isn’t exactly serial, but it’s a start. I’m still young. Who knows where opportunity might lead me? Opportunity makes the thief, or the murderer, or even the pastry chef. It’s well documented.

  For the last four days, my world has been shrunk down to the size of an isolation cell. My lawyer’s just been by to bring me paper and pencils. He claims it’ll help me kill time and might come in useful to us at the trial. Apparently my writing’s of great interest to the legal guys and all manner of specialists. I seriously don’t know what they get out of it, but my lawyer, all dressed up in his Sunday best, swears it’ll be psychiatrist catnip.

  Last time I murdered someone, I wrote down the whole story. The experts took inspiration from it when they wrote up their psychological reports. Which means that reports using my own sentences played their part in decisions about my sentence.

  They said my story was disarmingly transparent and frank. It should have worked in my favour. Seems the verdict was that I have minimal capacity for introspection even though I express myself richly. That’s because of all my studies in nothing

  whatsoever. I’m self-taught from head to toe. At the trial I swaggered about, feeling pretty proud of myself.

  But then they started listing off a whole string of diagnoses: dysphasia, flexibility, and adaptation issues that might point to autism, and anti-social and narcissistic personality disorders. The specialists teamed up to make me out to be a complex psychopath, even though I was so young. That was less flattering.

  I got sixteen years in the slammer. Clang! They told me it could have been worse. It’ll be worse this time, for sure, now I’ve reoffended. I might never know freedom again. But freedom’s all in your head. And I have a huge skull.

  As I wait for them to finish their inquiry and decide what degree of murder I’m going down for, I’m stewing in isolation, so I might as well write.

  I’ll tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but my truth. This manuscript may be submitted to the judge, the jury, the psychiatric experts, and a publisher. Odds are it’ll be a long trial and a good book.

  1

  Justice

  When it comes to sodomy, I’m a passive kind of guy; I mostly just wait for it to be over. When I ended up in prison, I soon realized this would be the best attitude to adopt. Trying to argue only turned my attacker on. And if I wasn’t getting a kick out of it, I certainly wasn’t going to give him one.

  Society is so prejudiced about people who take it up the ass. But we’re not doing anything wrong. The ones doing the ass-fucking are the ones getting their hands dirty. Or other parts of their anatomy. Especially in the kind of sexual assaults I’ve been subjected to since my first few hours in prison. But the social prejudice weighs heavily on the back of the person being taken up the ass. I never wanted to be that person, and I’ve never done anything to make it happen. Being fucked up the ass is bad for a person’s self-esteem. But nobody ever criticizes the person doing the fucking. It’s a deep injustice. I don’t think we’ll be seeing groups standing up for buggered people any time soon. Sad.

  The giant sodomizing me went by the pseudonym of Butterfly. Don’t let his delicate nickname fool you. He got it from his first conviction: he blinded his girlfriend with a butterfly knife. He caught her looking at photos of an ex. Butterfly didn’t appreciate that kind of nostalgia. The broad survived, minus an eye.

  So for the last six months, this brute Butterfly has been working hard to increase my sphincter flexibility. It’s been tough, but you can get used to anything, especially if it goes on for long enough. The butterfly in question needed to make out with me every day. Over time, it became irritating but tolerable. For the body, anyway. The head never gets used to being raped.

  Optimists like to say that things could always be worse. If Butterfly hadn’t chosen me for his boo, I wouldn’t have benefited from his protection. Every other prisoner in the joint would have had a claim on my ass. And Butterfly was a high-up dude in Big Dick’s gang. So even if his libido was suffering from morbid obesity, and even if he used to make me wax my crack and balls, just by being under his command, I too, by extension, was a little bit part of the gang. I aspired, in some nearish future, to establish professional rather than sexual relations.

  I should explain that in prison it’s not homosexuality. It’s simply managing the surplus testosterone in a closed circuit—a very complicated intermittent circuit. Unless you have a history of it before you get here. And even among back-door connoisseurs, there’s a whole spectrum of differences. There are gays, queers, fairies, and homosexuals. You shouldn’t lump them all together, even though they sometimes overlap. But I’m none of those things. I’m just a virile hetero in an unfortunate position. Even though he’s bald, Butterfly is also a very virile hetero, but after four years in the slammer he’s gay for the stay.

  * * *

  Under Butterfly’s protection I had nothing to fear—except him. Which was plenty. People who say that those who bark don’t bite are wrong. Butterfly barked and bit constantly. His six-foot frame was like the body of a Rottweiler crossed with the personality of a vicious chihuahua. He yelled and screamed and yelled, and if he got a chance to bite a foot, he’d take off with the calf too. I don’t think he ever had a mother: he was the offspri
ng of a Viking chief and an Ostrogoth blacksmith. Basically he was a caricature of a monster, the kind that’s a dime a dollar in every prison. He’d blown a fuse once, and now he had a screw loose. One time I saw him smash an inmate’s head into a mirror for brushing his teeth too slowly. He wasn’t even in his way; Butterfly never brushes his teeth.

  I got a taste of his medicine the first time I dared reject him. In vain did I scream, argue, and remind him that I’d just killed a defenceless old lady: he was unimpressed. And he showed me just how unimpressed with a quick head-butt to the jaw. I’m still waiting for dentures; the state should be buying me some new teeth soon. That’s one of the advantages of being a social pariah: free dental.

  You can’t tell from the writing on the page, but since it happened, I now whistle more than I speak. I try to articulate and stop the air getting through. It’s hard to establish a gangster reputation with a voice full of air. Threats don’t have the same edge when they’re whistled. I’m going to flaughter you, you piefe of fffit! See what I mean?

  * * *

  The most spectacular thing about Butterfly’s body is his tattoos. His skin is covered with them. Dragons, whores, tribal symbols, skulls. Even on his face. Barbed wire climbs his neck up to his eyebrows and around his eyes. And, like a trinity of cherries on a sundae, three tears mark the corner of his right eye, one for each murder.

  I don’t have any confidence or any tattoos. When I’ve covered my body with enough messages, I’ll be less afraid of asserting myself. But I won’t need to, then; my skin will speak for me. I’ll be able to expand my self-esteem and my ambitions. I know I’m a criminal genius, and maybe even a genius full stop. You can feel these things. I feel strongly. And I’m not just being pretentious—I’m not pretending anything, I’m asserting!

  One day I’ll flaunt both my successes and my tattoos in people’s faces. I’ll be covered in barbed wire, but I’ll throw some eagles and knights in the mix too. On my back, there’ll be bullet holes around a big samurai armed with a Japanese katana. That’s to scare off any bastards who want to attack me from behind.

  And between my thumb and my index finger, the prisoner’s star will twinkle. This symbol is only for the true, the unrepentant. People who’ve done hard time in a real max-security institution, not a nice little vacation in some local jail. Sentences of less than two years are for limp dicks. If you’re going to do time, you might as well do it properly.

  You can’t judge by the ceremonial jewels; bling is pretty enough, but with a tattoo you’re inked for life. You can take the ring off the guy, but you can’t take the guy off his dragon. A tattooed guy is always more dangerous. It’s like a constant reminder: be worthy of your balls, be a man.

  Anyway, I’d planned to get several tattoos before my next murder. I was lucky, blocks with a needle artist on hand are rare. Especially in the “Wing for Protecting Inmates with Mental Health Problems.” Man, civil servants really know how to choose a good name.

  And that wasn’t fair either, locking me up with the crazies instead of letting me network in the normal sections. My lawyer screwed up: they wouldn’t recognize me as crazy in court, but then they shoved me in the ding wing! Our justice system is more contradictory than the emotions of a histrionic teenager menstruating at full moon. Why was I in prison instead of seeing a psychiatrist? Why was so-and-so in psychiatry while his accomplice was in prison? Why was Pedo in jail instead of in therapy? And if they’re so eager to separate out the mentally ill from the criminals, why is there a special loony section in every prison in the country? They’re trying to mess with our heads: those fuckers are more dangerous than we are.

  Justice is an exact science that gets it wrong every time.

  And who gets to define mentally ill, anyway? Who exactly is this normal person who can claim to be sound of mind? Our entire society’s infected. On a small scale, I’m mentally ill, but if you take a wider perspective, I become a social symptom. I’m the forbidden fruit of your tree that’s rotten to its roots.

  But enough with the ethics. I’ve got to see out a sixteen-year sentence with people who aren’t right in the head. But I’m pretty sure I’ll only do two-thirds, maybe less. I’ve been doing all the therapeutic activities, and I’m always licking my correctional officer’s boots. I’ll get my sentence reduced. And anyway, I’ve got a plan for the future: when I get out, I’m going to give conferences and personal-growth workshops. My correctional officer doesn’t think there’ll be that much demand for someone like me. But she can’t dampen my enthusiasm. People eat up stories of resilience with all the twists and turns, and journalists adore them. People love role models, especially the beaten-up models who’ve been chewed up and spat out by the system. It makes the taxpayers feel safe. I can give them their money’s worth.

  * * *

  Prisons look depressing, both outside and inside. The architecture is almost as ugly and austere as a high school building. It’s all beige-painted cement, or even just raw concrete. And everywhere you look, there are armoured doors with tiny grilled windows to let a trickle of light in.

  Our section starts at the observation box next to the office where guards meet prisoners to discuss their cases. The box is a central control post from where the guard can see two sections at a time. He’s responsible for unlocking the cell-block doors and also monitors the guards on the ground. You never know who’s inside because the guard on duty is hidden behind a two-way mirror. Naturally we feel obliged to pick our teeth or noses in front of this mirror.

  Adjacent to this famous observation box is the prison guards’ office. Office is maybe not the right word. It’s the place where the guards meet inmates one-on-one, so they haven’t missed a trick, security-wise. It’s a cramped room, with a big table with only a phone, some files, and a panic button. Two plastic chairs. And the rehabilitation of the worst criminals in Quebec takes place in this minimalist decor. What a charming mausoleum.

  The office and the guard room are opposite the common area where the only furniture is four cement tables, each surrounded by four benches, just like at McDonalds. There’s the television too, of course, which is absolutely essential. This living space is surrounded by our cells, three on each side. Two inmates to a cell, in the vast majority of cases.

  The way we were paired up in cells wasn’t just chance. These things have a way of working out, as people who actually work out say. I was in a cell with Philippe the Filipino, although Butterfly also spent way too much time there. Officially, the bodyguard who was throwing himself at my body shared his cell with Big Dick, the top boss of the whole place. Denis lived with Giuseppe. Colossus with Louis-Honoré. Timoune with Gilbert. And Pedo lived alone, for his own safety.

  You shouldn’t get attached to these characters; several of them will disappear during the course of our journey. Murders happen so quickly.

  * * *

  I shared a cell with the tattooer, which would end up having major consequences. For an immigrant from a poor country, he was pretty talented. He hadn’t even studied art on his poverty-stricken island. He was Filipino, even though he’d lost all his exoticness and spoke with a Laval accent. He was Filipino so we called him Philippe. It wasn’t the name his mother gave him, but it was more practical that way. His real name was unpronounceable, and Philippe the Filipino has a nice ring.

  Our wing also houses an Italian. A real live Italian, with greasy black hair and everything, but he had nothing to do with the Mafia. How fucked up is that? An Italian without connections is worth even less than a Filipino. If I’d been lucky enough to be Italian, I’d have proved myself long ago: killed for the family, bled on a photo of the Virgin, taken the oath, and I’d be all in. I’d have Cossa Notra tattooed over my heart and a beautiful plump little mamma mia in the kitchen. Murder and spaghetti on tap. And to top it all off, this Italian with no contacts was called Giuseppe even though he was only twenty-seven. You’re only allowed to call yourself Giuse
ppe if you’re over seventy.

  Giuseppe and Philippe were in the same boat. Or the same raft, to be more accurate. They were vulnerable mercenaries caught between two gangs. A pair of innocents in survival mode, waiting to be recruited, transferred, or assassinated. The law of the streets is hard inside. The summer looked like it was shaping up to be a hot one, especially for we who have to sail in troubled waters.

  * * *

  On one side there was Big Dick the all-powerful, with Butterfly and Denis under him. He’d got the nickname Big Dick when he used to work with Mom. Not Mom Boucher, Mom Paquette. Criminals are usually creative types, but there’s a definite preference for certain pseudonyms: Kid, Baby, Fingers, Little, Scars, Tiny, Tony, and Mom, for example. Big Dick is less common. His full name was Great Big Dick. He was a major figure in the biker wars, in the pay of the Italians. His detractors liked to call him Big Fat Dick to diss him.

  Big Dick had a head where his heart should be. Using this awesome calculator, each one of his actions had a specific aim. He was a boss, it goes without saying. And, like me, he wasn't supposed to be in a section with brain-damaged people.

  The hierarchy goes like this: Big Dick at the top, Denis on his right, Butterfly on the executive committee, and then me, unofficially, underneath Butterfly. Rather too often for my liking. Our gang of Aryan Brotherhood wannabes was in charge of all trafficking in drugs and cellphones. Big Dick, our chief, derived some of his power from my lover’s physical strength, as well as from his amazing contacts both inside and outside the prison walls. While he was doing time, he’d left his business affairs in the east of the city in the hands of some real genuine Mafia Italians. He also had a corrupt correctional officer in his pocket, Tony, who kept him up-to-date with everything going on inside. Under his command, the white guys called the shots.