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

by T. J. Parsell

  I asked Slide Step why respect was such a big deal and how it related to teasing. It seemed a blurry line. It was, he said, and depended on who was doing it, because everyone is always watching what others are doing. "As they see one do," he said, "another will do. And then someone else will come along and want to try something larger. I try and avoid it," he said, "because I don't want to have to kill one of these knuckleheads over some silly bullshit."

  I also liked the attention I got from convicts other than Slide Step. Everywhere I went it seemed, inmates smiled or said hello to me. Or they'd nod their heads slightly, and I could feel their gaze on me long after I looked away. Their voices would soften and their edgy shells would melt awayespecially if no one else was around. I felt almost seduced by it, but I knew pretty quickly that most of them wanted to do something more than just kick it with me-especially if it was out of earshot of Slide Step.

  Manley said I needed to be careful, but it was more complicated than that. He said he couldn't really explain it.

  "They knocked off all of his bitches," Red said one afternoon. We were lying on the grass while he and Slide Step were talking about some pimp they knew on the street.

  "Why would they kill his bitches?" I asked.

  "Stay out of grown people's business," Red said to me.

  Slide Step looked over at me and explained that knocked-off meant when one pimp took another pimp's woman. "It comes from the expression, when somebody comes knocking," he said. "If she chooses another man, the pimp has to either accept it or he throws down over it," meaning he'd have to fight it out.

  "Pimps usually let it go," Slide Step said, "accepting it as a weakness in his game."

  "Why would she do that to her man?" I asked.

  "Hos are weak-minded," Red said. "And always suspectable to another player's mind fuck."

  "Susceptible," I corrected him, without thinking.

  "Whatever," Red said. He gave me a dirty look.

  "So how you handle that," Red said, "is you don't allow your bitches to talk to another man."

  Red knew a lot about prostitutes because of his mother, Slide Step would tell me later, when we were back under his bed after having sex. "She was murdered when Red was ten. Probably by a pimp she tried to rip off."

  That was when Slide Step's mom took Red in.

  Slide Step and Red's mothers had grown up together in Detroit's Brewster Projects. They even worked together until Red's mom got strung out on heroin and turned to prostitution. That was how Red was born.

  "A trick baby," I said. I remembered the term from the Donald Goines book about black gangsters I read while in Quarantine. Slide Step told me I could never let Red hear me say that.

  "He's got a crazy temper," he said.

  It was Red's temper that got Slide Step his first prison term, lie told me. They worked for Slide Step's nlom and were supposed to pick up a package from a guy that owed her some money. "Red went crazy," Slide Step said, ,,when the man called Iced a trick baby."

  They had served ten years for aggravated assault, while the other guy lost his teeth, his right eye, and suffered severe nerve damage. Looking at Slide Step, I got a glimpse of how lie felt about Red. He was like a brother to him.

  Slide Step's mom never came to visit him, and I could see how much this hurt him. "We have an understanding," lie said. "She won't come to a penitentiary because she thinks it'll jinx her business. So she does what she can, from where's she at." She meant everything to Slide Step, and I could see in his eyes how much he missed her.

  Later that day, as I came in from the yard, Slide Step stopped me in the hall. "I want you to take your shower now."

  "OK," I shrugged, but he seemed a little odd.

  When I entered the shower room, Slide Step had Manley posted at the door. There was a shower room on both the north and south sides. As you entered, there was a row of sinks beneath a large mirror and a changing area with a long wooded bench on the opposite end. The showers, which were out of sight from the door, were in an open area with a half dozen spigots or so that came out from the wall.

  When I stepped into the showers, there was a white man waiting for me. He was tall, in his early twenties with jet-black hair. He was heavier than nee, but not very muscular, and his chest was hairy. His dick was standing straight up, and if it wasn't quite obvious what I was there to do, he came over and placed his hand on my shoulder.

  18

  Careful What You Ask For

  "You kids can have either a hamburger or a cheeseburger," Dad said.

  "I want a Big Mac," I said.

  He shook his head. "I don't have the money. Hamburger or cheese burger. "

  "But I want a Big Mac."

  "Gimme a cheeseburger, " Bobby said.

  "Me too, " Billy seconded.

  "Can I have a Filet-O-Fish?" Connie asked. "It's the same price."

  "I want a Big Mac," I repeated.

  "God damn it, Timmy!" Dad said. It didn't take much toget him mad, but even at eight years old, I knew how to wear him down.

  "I want a Big Mac or nothin'," I said.

  "Well, you little bastard," Sharon said. "You're gonna get nothing."

  "I'llget him a hamburger," Dad said.

  "I said I want a Big Mac," I raised my voice, "or NOTHIN'!"

  And that's exactly what Igot. Iglared at Sharon from the backseat of the car, as her son ate my hamburger and his kid brother munched my fries.

  My sister, Connie, watching them gloat, whispered, "You can't be so stubborn. You'll neverget what you want that way."

  As Peterson made his rounds for the 4:30 count, he stopped in front of my cell. "I thought I'd seen something," he mumbled, shuffling through the stack of mail in his hand. He looked at my name on the door. "Nope. Sorry." He moved on.

  My hopes had been raised then dropped. I lay back on my bed, wishing he hadn't stopped. The split second of hope and the disappointment that followed was worse than not expecting anything. When I was back in Quarantine, I used to stand at the bars and watch as the guard made his way around the tier handing out mail, but nothing ever came for me.

  Recognizing the importance of maintaining family connections, the prison provided inmates with three stamped envelops a month. More could be purchased from the inmate store. I wrote home to Dad and Sharon, my brother and to my mom, though I knew she'd never answer. I even wrote to my ex-girlfriend once, but I hadn't heard from her either. We broke up right before I went in.

  When I first got to Riverside, I called home once, but Sharon was just leaving to do her grocery shopping. She accepted the charges, but told me, "Don't call here that much." She was worried about the phone bill. It was the first time I'd called from prison, but I knew she'd be that way. Dad, as usual, wasn't home. "Let us know when you go to court," she said. "We'll try to get up and see you when you're in the county."

  Money was always tight at home, and Sharon was good at managing it; but it couldn't cost that much for me to call.

  I tried to phone my brother, Rick, but his line had been disconnected. He probably forgot to pay the bill again. Or maybe he changed the number so I couldn't call collect. Rick was turning out to be a big disappointment.

  After count, I skipped dinner and sat on the back porch of the north side dayroom. It wasn't mandatory that everyone go to chow, and I wasn't hungry.

  "There you are!" Slide Step said. "I've been looking all over for you."

  I turned and peered out the block-shaped frames of the veranda's steel cage. The rolls of razor wire atop the thirty-foot fence were glistening in the sunset.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  I shrugged.

  "Why are you out here, by yourself?"

  He grabbed one of the heavy wood rockers from against the wall and slid it over to where I was sitting with my legs propped on the parapet wall. I was just starting to believe he cared about me, though I still had doubts I could have feelings for a man. Now, after what he had just pulled with the white guy in the shower
, I knew I couldn't trust him.

  He sat down, sideways in his chair, facing me. His right arm nestled between his side and the back of the chair. He squeezed my shoulder. "Talk to me."

  I nudged his hand away. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his face drop, but I didn't want to look at him directly. He sat there, quietly and stared at me.

  "Why did you make me do that?" I asked. "It's not like you needed the money." Between his drug dealing and gambling, and whatever else he had a hand in, I couldn't understand why he'd force me to turn a trick.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "That guy in the shower," I said.

  "I did that for you!"

  I wasn't expecting that out of him. I knew I was young, a new fish and all, but I wasn't that naive to believe him.

  "Square Business, Squeeze."

  I looked at him.

  "You said you wanted to try it with a younger guy."

  When Slide Step told me I was better than the others-it made me feel special. Even if the feeling lasted only a few moments, it filled an emptiness I felt inside. In the movie The Mack, the prize of Goldie's stable was a young white woman. Was this all I was to him? One of the ways pimps got their women to do what they wanted was to spend a lot of time with them, making them feel special and getting them to fall in love-and then BAM: "You have to trust me, Baby. We're gonna build a beautiful life together, but you have to do as I say-even if you don't understand it at first."

  "What?" Slide Step asked. "You didn't like him?"

  "Hell no," I said. I couldn't believe he'd think I'd enjoy a man like that. "He was chubby and hairy," I said. "He was like a big flabby fur ball."

  "A dick is a dick," I heard an inmate say once, which of course wasn't true, but to someone like Slide Step it probably seemed that way. He wasn't exactly the Crypt Keeper, but at twenty-five, he was closer to Slide Step's age than he was to mine.

  I studied Slide Step. He held my gaze silently, rubbing my shoulder occasionally with his right hand. He looked disappointed.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you would've been happy."

  I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. The razor wire had stopped glistening. The cornfields, beyond the fence, had been freshly plowed. It was early May, and they were ready for seeding. The blue water tower in the distance was fading in the sky.

  "Parsell," the Guard called out. "You've got mail." He handed me the letter. "News from home."

  I took the letter from him. It had already been opened. "Did you read it?" I asked, suspicious of the slight grin on his face. He shrugged and walked away.

  "It's from Claudia, my ex-girlfriend," I said to Slide Step.

  "Girlfriend?"

  I wanted to wait until I was alone to read it, but couldn't with Slide Step there.

  "Did she send a picture?" he asked.

  "No." I said, for which I was grateful. She was slightly overweight and not that attractive. We were better friends than we were boyfriend and girlfriend. The relationship was more on her insistence than it was on mine. She needed a date for the prom, and I didn't have one. After that, everyone just assumed we were a couple, and it developed from there.

  "Out there tryin' to be a man, huh?" Slide Step said.

  I swatted him on the arm.

  The letter was six weeks old and had been forwarded from Jackson to Riverside.

  Dear Tim:

  I debated writing you, especially after the ivay things turned out, and the way you treated me those last fewv days, but I thought you should know I'm pregnant.

  I stopped reading. "Oh my God!"

  "What?

  "She's pregnant!"

  "By who?"

  I looked at him, but ignored his comment.

  I don't know what to do. My parents will kill me when they find out.

  Her father never liked me. He considered me from the wrong kind of family. And her mom didn't trust me-not since that time she watched inc wrestling with Claudia's younger brother in the back yard. I was sixteen, and John was fifteen, but he already had a slight mustache and when his shirt came up while I pinned him down, the muscles in his stomach were rippled. I looked up and saw Claudia's mom staring at me from the kitchen window. She ordered John to come into the house.

  If it were up to me, I never would have slept with her, but she was pretty insistent about that as well. I did it for her, as much to prove to my classmates that I wasn't a fag.

  "It could he a good thing that's she pregnant," Slide Step said.

  "How so?"

  "When you go back to court for sentencing," he said. "The judge might cut you some slack if you tell him you've got a kid on the way."

  "Does that make you a grandfather?" I asked.

  This time, Slide Step swatted me.

  I didn't know what to think. I couldn't imagine being a father. And now especially, what kind of example would I be-a prison punk for a dad. She didn't say what she was going to do. I'd thought for sure, her parents had thrown away my letter before she got a chance to read it.

  "You never told me you slept with girls," Slide Step said.

  "You never asked," I said. "I told you I'd never slept with a man."

  It occurred to me that other than Slide Step, I had no one to confide in. The next closest person was Manley, but he was more like a babysitter, and his loyalty was to Slide Step. So I didn't have anyone I could be open with. Cisco had just been released, and was probably already in search of his gay motorcycle gangbang. No wonder he was called a horny bitch.

  I was horny too. It seemed like all I ever thought about was sex. I was seventeen, so if the wind blew slightly, in any direction, my dick got hard. Though it was sex with someone my own age that I was thinking about.

  I was constantly ignoring or turning down offers from older convicts that wanted to sneak off somewhere and do something. I wondered how I would feel if I were in a prison with men my own age. Then maybe I wouldn't mind being pimped. It might even be fun, like Silk Daddy said, doing what I like to do and getting paid for it all at the same time. But that was just fantasy stuff that went on inside my head. The only sex I'd had in here was with those I was forced into having it with-and it wouldn't be until I was with someone I liked that I'd know for certain if I was really gay or not. Maybe these homosexual feelings were just a phase I was going through.

  When Manley told one about swapping up, having sex with other boys, he referred to it as "bumping pussies." "I don't have a pussy," I told him as I laughed and grabbed my crotch and shook it at him.

  "That's OK," he said. "Then you can just rub your big clits together."

  I chased him up the hallway, laughing the whole way.

  Swapping up with other boys didn't interest me. If I had a type other than someone my own age, it was not a boy or queen. I liked men, masculine men, but other than Scatter Brain, I hadn't seen anyone who aroused me.

  Manley said, "I think you'll like Chet's boy, Brett. He's away at court, now, but he's due back any day now. If you like him, ask Slide Step's permission."

  "I don't think so," I said.

  When Slide Step set me up with Josh, he was able to do so because Josh was white. But since Scatter was black, it was a lot more complicated. Doing something with Scatter would have raised the issue of disrespect to Slide Step, and it potentially could have created an opening for my being knocked off by Scatter.

  The men in prison seemed to live by the same rules that pimps did out on the street. If a boy or queen agreed to go along with another man, it was up to the two men to settle it.

  Scatter, I'm sure, wasn't interested in knocking off a boy. He didn't have the juice or the power to own one, but he flirted with me every chance he got, which made me blush like a schoolgirl with a crush. I hated that about myself but I couldn't help it. Whenever he tapped his foot, I turned as red as a taillight.

  I wrote to Claudia that night and asked her what she had decided to do. Did she tell her parents? Could she get an abortion? Her parents were s
trict, and I was glad I wasn't there when they found out-maybe the only time I was relieved to be in prison. I didn't know what to do, but felt like I needed to say something. "I'm sorry," I wrote. "I should've used a rubber."

  The first time we had sex was in the back of her dad's Ford Pinto. It was at the drive-in movies in Wayne where she worked in the concession stand. We backed the car into the last lane, dropped the seats and lifted the hatch back. Everyone else parked in the back row was doing the same thing, which had nothing to do with watching the movie.

  After we necked for a while, I tried to yawn and act like I was tired, but she said, "Uh, uh," and pulled me back down on top of her. I had to go through with it.

  I ended up watching jaws thirteen times that month. Each night I would slip under the fence, drive her car from the back of the concession stand and wait for her in the back row to get off work. To keep from getting bored, I memorized every line in the film. "Uh, oh. We're gonna need a bigger boat," I said, when Jaws leapt from the water.

  While my crush for Scatter continued, Miss Pepper seemed to develop a thing for me. She began to smile and stare, and for a queen, could get fairly aggressive. "Now don't start dropping your cookies, honey. I'm just admiring your beauty," she said one day in the bathroom.

  "Drop my cookies?" It was a weird expression, but Miss Pepper was good at spicing up her conversation with made up words and twisted phrases. "What are cookies?"