Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison

by T. J. Parsell

  But Miss Greenport insisted. "You have to," she said, "at least until you cross Telegraph Road." It was a large intersection with four lanes of traffic.

  "I hate girls," I said.

  "I'm sorry, Timmy, but there aren't any other boys thatgo that way."

  "No," I said, defiantly, "And you can't make me."

  "Oh yes I can," she said.

  "Well, if you try and make me, I'll break your glasses."

  Well she did, and so did I. Before she could say another word, I jumped up in the air and snatched them off her face. When we heard them crunch underfoot, we both froze in place with our mouths wide open.

  I was notgoing to be called a sissy.

  Inmate movies were shown every Wednesday and Saturday night. The gymnasium was converted into a theater with rows of folding chairs that were stored on stage, behind a red velvet curtain that looked as old as the Riverside complex.

  The Inmate Benefit Council, the majority of which was black, selected the films. Slide Step chaired the committee of six black and two white inmates. The movies included Shaft, Superfly, Foxy Brown, and The Black Lolita. I'd never heard of these titles and was amazed at how many had the word black in it, like Blacula, Blackenstein, Black Belt Jones, and Black the Ripper. Occasionally, the warden would make them order something that appealed to whites, so they'd invariably pick some low budget flick that was either about CB radios or some outlaw trucker with a sidekick chimpanzee.

  Every now and then, they chose a movie that pleased everyone, like The Sting or The Godfather or some other film about gangsters and con artistsmen getting over in some form or another. And everyone liked a good comedy like Cotton Comes to Harlem or a disaster film like The Towering Inferno.

  During the movies you could usually see someone giving his man head, especially if they had been separated into different housing units. They would have to find some other places to hook up, and the movies were dark and convenient.

  Occasionally, some boy would end up blowing several guys in a row. It was done as punishment if someone was caught cheating; or it could be his man was just sharing him; or perhaps he was being made to hustle by turning tricks at $5 a pop. It was hard to focus on the movie when you could hear the heavy breathing and slurping behind you.

  I looked up at Slide Step and curled my face. "I'd never do that."

  "You better not." He grinned.

  I hit his arm.

  Slide Step looked over his shoulder at Bottoms, who was bobbing his way down the line. "That boy's been banged more times than an old screen door," he said.

  "In a wind storm," someone next to us added.

  Slide Step said it was the usually the bucket heads that did that sort of thing, meaning the punks and ugly boys or the nasty queens.

  I felt sorry for Bottoms.

  "In Jackson," Slide Step said. "They hooked up in church."

  "In church?" I couldn't imagine anything more sacrilegious.

  "Square business. They'd meet up in the balcony." Slide Step smiled and turned to watch the movie.

  The film that night was The Mack, starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor. It was about an ex-con named Goldie, who, in an early scene, told his mother he had to go out and fight The Man the only way he knew how. So he became a Mack, a big city pimp, complete with a hat and velvet cape. He drove a Cadillac and carried a gold-tipped cane.

  You could always tell what the inmates thought of a movie because they talked throughout it. They would yell up at the screen, as if they were home in their own living rooms. "Kill that peckerwood," someone screamed, or if they didn't like a character-"Aw, motherfucker! You ain't shit."

  Entertainment was important to convicts. It broke up the monotony of being confined, but if it wasn't happening, they were quick to make it up on their own. Like when a character came on the screen with an obvious flaw that was similar to one of the inmates. Someone would yell, "Look at Dexter up there, y'all, with his big old nasty fangs."

  In The Mack, when Goldie and his brother killed two white cops who earlier had killed their mother, the auditorium went crazy. Mothers were sacred to inmates so it was like lighting had hit one of the gun towers. "Man, don't nobody want to fuck with a motherfucker's momma," someone in the front of the auditorium said.

  For the most part, the guards left us alone. I think they understood that movies not only killed time, but they helped us burn off some of our hostilities.

  Slide Step said The Mack showed what it was really like on the street. I was fascinated by the whole concept. Why did a girl need a pimp anyway, and how did they get her to have sex and turn over all her money? Slide Step pointed out Silk Daddy to me, a convict who was serving time for pandering (the legal name for pimping).

  Silk Daddy, at forty, was older than most of the others there. His welltrimmed mustache was sprinkled with a few gray hairs. He had dark brown skin that glistened and a short-length afro that was perfectly shaped by the pick he kept in his front shirt pocket. I was standing maybe three feet away, but I could still smell the scent of cocoa butter.

  "How do you get them to do it?" I asked.

  "Well now," he said, "let's kick it around and see." He took a Kool cigarette from his pack by neatly unfolding the silver tabs and then replacing the foil so that it looked like it wasn't opened. "But before I answer that for you, let me ask you a few things first." He took out a lighter and lit the cigarette. "You like to have sex, don't you?"

  At that point, no, I didn't, but he didn't give me a chance to answer.

  "Of course you do, Baby, everybody do." He blew smoke in my direction. "It's one of the most enjoyable things we Homo sapiens like to do."

  I smiled, because I knew what the word meant, but wondered if he had a double meaning in mind.

  "And," he said, pausing to take another drag from his cigarette. "It's one of the few things The Man can't stop us from doing. Even in here. So what's the one commodity you can give up, but you still gets to keep?"

  He stared at me with a dazzle in his eyes, as if he were getting high on the sound of his own words. "Sex," he said. "Now ain't that a wonderful thing? It's the only thing in the world you can sell and still maintain ownership of. Can you dig what I'm sayin'? You're doing it any way. So it's like getting paid for what you like to do. So you get to give it up, you get to keep it, you enjoy doing it-no, make that love doing it-and you get paid for it all at the sane time. Now what could be more beautiful than that?"

  Wow, I thought, it did make a lot of sense.

  "Thanks, Silk Daddy."

  "All right now," he chuckled. "Be sure to tell Slide Step I said hello."

  As I ran down the stairs to catch up with Slide Step, Silk Daddy's "girls" were standing at the bottom of the landing. They were two black queens, Pootie and Miss Pepper, and they were made up as usual with red-colored lips and shirts tied at the mid-drift. Pootie had long braded hair and Miss Pepper's, which was shorter, looked nappy and tussled. It was probably from all the fun they were having getting paid during the film. Pootie's pockets were packed full of tokens, and the others teased as they walked past.

  "Who would like to pay my price," Miss Pepper sang. "For a trip to paradise?"

  I smiled as I went by and Miss Pepper nodded at me. Pootic blew me a kiss.

  I was starting to feel less threatened by then, especially since Slide Step reassured me that I didn't have to act or dress like them. I guess on some level, I was still feeling a little ashamed of who it was I was becoming in there, but it was also confusing, because it also felt liberating somehow. I was enjoying the attention, and I was free to become whoever it was I wanted to be, and Slide Step would make sure that nothing else bad ever happened to me. So as long as no one back hone found out about it-Why not?

  Behind me, I heard Peterson the rookie guard come down the stairs. "Let's go ladies," he said to the queens. "The show's over."

  Peterson was in his twenties and he easily blushed, so the queens loved to fuck with him. "Hey Petey," Pootie said. "You
know what they say-a little time in the hole ain't such a bad thing, if you know what I'm sayin'."

  "That's right," Miss Pepper added. "You just might get off with a little good behavior." Pootie stuck her butt out and rolled her hips.

  When Peterson turned red, the two queens screamed.

  My world was looking a lot different than the one I grew up in. So much was being thrown at me, that it seemed hard to believe I had only been in here a couple of months. I was getting quite an education-meeting pimps and pushers, real-life con men, and racketeers. I wanted to learn from them, as much as I could, so that my time inside would be productive. That way, when I got out, I could make up for the time I had wasted inside.

  I would finish high school, as soon as I got back from court, and I might even take some college courses, which were offered at night. I would be the first person in my family who went to college (my dad never completed the sixth grade). I wanted to be smarter by the time I got out. I might even get me some ho's out there, so I could do some pimping. But then Red said that only "a man" could be a pimp.

  I was starting to piece things together, but figuring out my identity was more difficult than I first realized. I knew I belonged to Slide Step and that my place in the pecking order was tied to him. But how could I he myself, if I didn't know what that was? I wasn't like the punks, and I wasn't like the queens. The queens were easy, because they were so far out there, but I wasn't like the punks either, and it left me confused about who or what I was.

  Was I really gay? Did I actually feel the way I did the night before I came to prison, or was it just a trick I was playing on myself to make what was happening to me in there easier to take? In the past, if I lied to myself long enough sometimes I would start to believe it-pushing the truth so far from the surface that I began to doubt its existence. How much of what I had been thinking was just normal adolescent questioning? I didn't know anymore.

  Allegedly, punks were fucking because they were weak. "He's fucking because he's a punk," I'd heard inmates say. Bottoms was a punk, turnedout when he first got to jail, and it was clear by the way everyone treated him. So was he fucking because he was a punk, or was he a punk because he was fucking? It was like the chicken and the egg.

  When Taylor's boy, Paul, first arrived, they wanted to call him Miss Holly because of the combination of his red hair and green eyes. But Paul wasn't having it. He was gay and proud of it, but he wasn't a girl, and had no desire to be thought of as one.

  At the time, I couldn't imagine anyone being proud of being gay, though I admired him for it and wished I had his courage. "I don't play that," he was quick to say. "Like it or not, I've got a dick and I'm not about to trade it in for a pussy."

  Taylor, his man, was crazy about him. He would just chuckle. "Hey, I'll tell you what-my baby don't take shit from nobody, and that's just the way it is."

  At five foot six and weighing less than 140 pounds, there wasn't much Paul could do on his own, but Taylor had his back, and that meant a lot. Paul just had to be careful not to disrespect anyone, because then Taylor would have to defend him. Although he was only eighteen, Paul knew how to handle himself. He had come to prison when he was sixteen, and before that, he spent time in juvenile hall. I liked Paul, but he never let his guard down when he was around me. We would become close, later on, when we were both at another prison, but for the time being-for reasons I wouldn't know until much later on-he seemed indifferent to me.

  Since there was a distinction between being a man and being gay, I decided to tell myself I was gay before I got there. It was a way to feel better about the situation. I'm not sure this was clear to me then, but it was easier to tell myself I was gay than being completely powerless. I wasn't fucking because I was a punk-a sissy coward; I was fucking because I wanted to. At least this line of thinking allowed me to hold onto some degree of dignity. Yet even with Slide Step's gentle ways, I didn't like being penetrated by a man. It was painful, and I wanted to get it over with as fast I could.

  It's not like Slide Step was unattractive. He was rugged and muscular, and I loved the way he smiled at me. It was like a kid's grin, with a half-open gape, that held onto just a hint of wonder. But Slide Step was a man, a grown man, and I was still a boy.

  Now Scatter Brain-he was a different matter. He was eighteen and smooth, and he excited me whenever he came around. My hands would shake, and I would have to look away, because I was afraid he might guess what I was thinking. When I smiled at him, he would smile back, but in a reserved way. I saw him coming out of the shower once, and I turned and left the room quickly. I wished I had grabbed a peek, but the thought of getting caught was too much for me. I remembered Bottom's having to blow an entire row of guys, because Black had caught him cheating.

  I caught just a flash of Scatter's pubic hair against the backdrop of his chocolate skin. His muscles were well defined, and his stomach was ripped. For the first time, I was starting to notice the variations of black skin tones. There was milk chocolate and dark chocolate and myriad shades in between. Scatter's complexion was like coffee with cream-Mocha. It was tight and smooth with a silky sheen, especially where it curved at the muscles. He had a slight mustache, which looked like satin, the way it framed his upper lip. Outside of prison, he could have been a model or actor the way he seemed so perfect to me.

  Yet Scatter was straight, and though he did give me every indication that he wanted to have sex-I knew he was off limits to me, unless I cleared it with Slide Step first.

  "I think I'd like to try something with a younger guy," I told Slide Step.

  He seemed to take it pretty well, at first, though he didn't actually say much other than nod. I chickened out and didn't press the issue.

  Manley had already told me that it would be OK if I had sex with another boy-as long as Slide Step knew about it ahead of time, but that I could forget about doing anything with "a man" (i.e., a straight man). It took a while to understand this distinction, but doing it with another boy wasn't a threat to the man-like having sex with another man would be. They considered us almost lesbians-if two boys got together to do something.

  As long as I kept trying to please Slide Step, he kept showering me with attention, which made me want to work harder at pleasing him. And he always told me afterward, how good I was. "That's the whip there," he said once, placing his finger on my bottom lip. "Where'd you learn how to do that?"

  I was embarrassed and shrugged, not knowing what to say. I'm sure I wasn't all that good, but he always encouraged me. I preferred going down on him, because it didn't hurt like getting fucked and because he would allow me to stop, just beforehand, so I wouldn't throw up. When he fucked me, he took his time and went easy. He even tried to jerk me off once, to see if that would help relax me, but he said I could never say anything about that, because it might be taken the wrong way.

  I was always surprised by the different sides of himself he showed when we were alone. He'd share personal things with me, and he liked to cuddle on the floor underneath his bed, which was where we had to have sex without being seen by the guards. I was always eager to hurry out so I could shower or brush my teeth, but Slide Step liked to lie there and talk. Manley or Red were often somewhere up the hall keeping an eye out for us.

  Sexual Misconduct or Two-in-a-Room were major infractions that could land us as much as a week in the hole. Slide Step said the guards rarely enforced it, because they understood that a man has his needs, and it helped keep violence down. I suspected it had more to do with how understaffed Riverside was.

  Slide Step could make his voice rumble, getting low and raspy, and he would sometimes imitate Barry White in my ear so that it vibrated and tickled. He would overpower me and I'd lose my breath from laughing. He also made his voice squeak, like when he said Hey, Squeeze! in his highpitched wheeze.

  If Riverside housed protection cases, I wondered why Slide Step was there. "We pulled some strings," was all he would say. He didn't say who the "We" was, and I didn't think to
ask. "Everyone wants to come here," he said, "because it's so open."

  After a while, it didn't feel like a prison at all, at least for me it didn't. It was like a playground, where I could do what I wanted-and Slide Step made sure nothing would happen to me.

  Manley acted like a big kid and we spent a lot of time together when I wasn't with Slide Step. Sometimes, he chased me around, especially when he found out I was ticklish. He wouldn't stop chasing me, and when I ran into a dorm I wasn't suppose to be in, a guard almost wrote me up for being out of place.

  Slide Step got mad at Manley and told him to stop. "You knuckleheads are gonna get thrown in the hole," he said, but as soon as Slide Step left Manley did it again.

  When I asked Manley what he was in for, all he said was "I'm innocent." He wouldn't tell me anything else, but it was only rapists and child molesters (and sometimes murderers) who claimed they were innocent to other cons. To the rest of the world, everyone was innocent, but to each otherthey mostly bragged about what they had done. And about all the other things they never got caught for. Everyone in there, it seemed, had fancy cars and big homes, diamond rings, and plenty of ho's.

  "Pimpin' ho's and slammin' Cadillac doors," was a common expression, but you had to say it with a cat in your walk-swinging your arm with one hand and holding your crotch in the other. Manley tried to teach me how to do it, but he gave up after a couple of tries. "Forget it, white boy, you're just too damn white."

  I started to notice that you could tell who was streetwise, or conwise, by the way they carried themselves. I watched how they walked, the way they looked at you, and by how they pronounced certain words and phrases. Respect was determined, to some degree, by how long you had been doing time, so everything you did was telling.