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

by T. J. Parsell

"I'm not going back there," I screamed. "I don't care. You can fuckin' shoot me."

  "Yes you are," the first deputy said, and I bolted from them again.

  I felt a sting on my chest, from where someone had scratched me. The deputies put me in a headlock and pulled me into an empty tank, where they knocked me to floor and started to pounce on me. They were trying to force handcuffs on me when the sergeant appeared in the doorway and ordered them to let go of me.

  "OK," he said to others, "I'll take it from here."

  My back felt bruised, and my side was numb. I struggled to stand up, but the best I could do was sit up. It was dark in the cell, and all I could see was his outline.

  "What's your name, son?"

  "I'm not going back there," I said.

  "I said, what's your name?"

  "Those fuckin' niggers were trying to rape nee."

  "Oh, now we're niggers," a inmate shouted from across the hall.

  It was the quietest I'd ever heard it get in there.

  "Just calm down," the sergeant said.

  "Bring him over here, Sarge," an inmate yelled. "We'll take care of it."

  "Yeah, Baby," another shouted. "You snitch ass bitch."

  I didn't care what they called me. Or what the deputies would do. They could bring in the goon squad and kill me for all I cared. I wasn't going back inside that cell. What those motherfuckers had already taken from me was all they were going to get.

  The deputies who had grappled with me were standing outside the bullpen, laughing, just like the inmates.

  "Relax," the sergeant said. He helped me off the floor and handed me his handkerchief, lifting my hand to hold it to my nose. "No one's going to do anything to you."

  He stepped back from the dark holding cell, and out into the light, where I noticed for the first time that he was black.

  The electric gate jolted closed with a loud bang.

  "Those fucking niggers tried to rape me," a con mocked from across the hall.

  The inmates laughed.

  26

  Black Panther ...

  His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

  -Rilke

  It was a regular cellblock, like all of the others, except I wasn't allowed out into the common area in front of the cells. They said it was for my own protection, but it felt more like punitive segregation.

  After the incident in the bullpens, the sergeant had me moved upstairs to the Lavender Wing. I hadn't told them I was gay, but it didn't matter. "You'll be safe here," a deputy said. Making my way down the row, I sensed eyes staring at me as I hurried past each cell. When the deputy pulled the release brake and closed the sliding bars, I felt relieved. No one could get at me, in here.

  I overhead the sergeant say he wasn't going to move me in the same transport vans that carried the inmates I had called niggers, so he postponed my transfer to Jackson. I knew, as soon as I had made that remark, that it would inflame the situation further, but I had hoped it would force the deputies into taking the action they did. Being a crazy racist, or even a snitch, was preferable to being gang raped and turned into the group bitch.

  I'd also heard later, that when Nate and Loud Mouth appeared for their sentencing before Detroit Recorder's Court Judge, The Honorable Geraldine Bledsoe Ford, they both nearly fainted when she told them to look out the window and count the almost one hundred pigeons that were clustered outside. But even the ninety-nine years to life she'd given them, for the armed robbery and murder they'd committed while on parole, wasn't long enough to erase the pain of what they'd done to me. Not even a death sentence could've lessened my rage. They should have been charged with raping me, because that might have served as a deterrent to others who were doing the same. But that would've required my coming forward, which I was still too afraid to do.

  "You've gotta let that kind of thinking go," Black Diamond said from the cell next to mine. "Cause that shit will just fuck with your mind."

  I hadn't noticed her when I first came in, because I'd mostly kept my head down until I reached my cell. I was both upset about what happened in the bullpen, but also a tinge embarrassed for being placed on the wing with all the queens.

  "Birds of a feather, honey," Black Diamond said to me.

  I first heard about her in Quarantine and then again down in the bullpens. Some queens achieved almost celebrity status, and Black Diamond was among them. She wanted to be called Cat Woman, because she was dark like a panther and because of how she slinked down a prison catwalk. But the name had already been taken. Black Diamond came about because she was exceptionally ugly. "A diamond in the rough," as she'd tell it. Others said, "That bitch is so ugly that she has to sneak up on her food tray."

  She was friendly from the moment I arrived, so we talked from the front of our cells. She gave me a book to read and even leant me a few cigarettes, even though she knew I couldn't repay her. The book was Meridian a novel by Alice Walker.

  "I'd lend you this other one," she said, "but I'm still reading it."

  "What it is?"

  "Black Widow Mama."

  "That's OK," I said. "I probably wouldn't want to read it, anyhow."

  "It's my life story," she said. "It's about a Chicago Drag Queen."

  "Oh. Are you from Chicago?"

  "No, but I'm a Black Widow, don't you know."

  The queen in the cell next to her yelled, "She done killed nine of her husbands. The bitch is like a praying mantic."

  "Do you mean praying mantis?" I asked.

  "Whatever," the queen shouted. "The bitch is a cold-hearted killer. Got arsenic and shit runnin' through them veins."

  "All right Miss Ginger. Don't get me started on your nasty self." I could picture Black Diamond's eyes pivoting back and forth. "Just put Miss Ginger on your pay-no-mind list," she said. "She got a birthday comin' up and is about to turn twenty-five, which for a prison bitch, is like turning eighty." Black Diamond stuck her arm out of her cell and snapped. "Better take your Geritol, Girl!"

  "We used to have a Mary Ann in here too," she said. "But her man posted bail this morning. The lucky ho. She's probably back out on the track, clickin' those ruby heels on Woodward Avenue. Anyway, Ginger here has offered me a pack of cigarettes if I read to her, so if you want, you can listen for free. But we have to wait till shift change 'cause the book is contraband and that's when Smitty's on." The jail prohibited books or magazines about queers. "Smitty's one of us," she whispered, "but we still have to do it on the Q.T."

  "On the Q.T.?"

  "On the Quiet Tip, girl! How long have you been down?"

  I didn't respond.

  "I'm just sayin', cause you need to toughen up if you want to make it in here, girl."

  "I'm not a girl," I said.

  "Well, you're a girl in here, honey."

  "You tell her, Miss Thing," another queen shouted.

  "You might as well have a vagina honey, 'cause once you're up here with all these scandalous queens, your ho' card is thoroughly punched."

  "Speak for yourself," Ginger yelled. "Some of us ladies know how to be discreet."

  "Uh-huh," Black Diamond said. "You forget, bitch, I knew your ass in juvenile hall. Back when you were doin' boys for Hostess Ding-Dongs."

  "Hello!" someone chirped from the end of the hall, as if keeping score.

  Thanks to the meal cart express, they all knew what happened down in the bullpen, as well as what had happened upstairs with Nate. "And even if they didn't," she said. "They know about you now, 'cause you're up here on Queens Row with us."

  "That's right," Ginger added. "Ain't no secrets in here. Everyone knows what happened to you."

  "Even at Riverside," Black Diamond said.

  It took a moment for that to sink in, and I felt my heart sink with it. I sat back on my bunk without saying anything. So everyone knew. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

  "Girrlll. You
had it going on. If Miss Thing here could've passed herself off as straight and got up on one of those regular floors! I'd a been right up there on it."

  I didn't respond.

  "But I know what you mean, though. That shit is fucked up when you don't want it, and they decide they're going to just up and take it from you."

  "That's right," Ginger said. "But there ain't a whole lot you can do about it."

  "Yes there is," Black Diamond said. "You can hurry up and get yourself a man. These motherfuckers think that just 'cause we like dick, it means they can fuck us whenever they want, even if we don't want it."

  "And the guards ain't gonna help you none, either," Ginger said.

  "I thought you liked dick? is what one of them guards told me," Black Diamond said. "That was after a bunch of motherfuckcrs had Miss Thing spread out over a card table. Shit, I was in the infirmary for almost a month after that. But I don't like to think about that. Shit gets too damn depressing."

  I just listened as Black Diamond went on. Perhaps it should have felt validating to hear someone else share an experience that was somewhat similar to my own. I knew I wasn't alone-but Black Diamond was right-it gets too damn depressing to even think about it. So I don't-I changed the subject in my mind.

  "`Well a dick's a dick,' is what one of these men told me-and he was serious, too. Uh-uh, I told him-it don't work like that. Is a pussy a pussy? And he said, `Hell no'-so what makes you think it's the same for me? So that's why you need to be real careful with yourself, white boy. 'Cause these motherfuckers all know you're on Queens Row, and they all know your business, so when you go back down to them bullpens-you need to be extra careful with yourself."

  "Thanks," I said. It was good advice about being careful, but I rejected the notion of being branded by being placed on Queens Row. And I started being careful right then, by placing the book and cigarettes she had given me back on the cross section of her bars. "Thanks anyway," I said.

  When Black Diamond first gave me the book and cigarettes-I told her that I couldn't repay her. She said, "That's OK, you can hook me up later. I'm sure there's something we can swap." I was pretty distrustful of everyone by then, but I thought I was safe, being locked up in a single-man cell, but then I learned they showered us two at a time, and that her cell and mine were numbers 9 and 10.

  "Well, you know, I've got quite the reputation ..."

  I knew about her reputation. "She sucks a mean dick," was the other thing I'd heard about her, which I suspect was her primary (if not only) attraction.

  I had never received a blowjob before, so I wouldn't know what I was missing, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get it up for her. "Thanks, but no thanks," I said.

  "Well, suit yourself, but you can't blame a girl for trying."

  It may have seemed like a trivial thing, a simple book and a few cigarettes, but as I was quickly realizing, nothing came for free in prison.

  Black Diamond placed them back on my bars. "Don't worry about it," she said. "My man puts plenty of coin in my commissary."

  "Thanks," I said, but I felt uncomfortable taking it.

  "You know, Tim. If you don't want what's been happening, to keep happening, you gonna have to learn how to work it."

  "That's right," Ginger shouted. "Your pretty white ass is too fine to be up in here suffering. But don't just survive girl, you gots to learn how to thrive!"

  "Never mind her," Black Diamond said. "She's just a nasty old cell hop."

  "Don't be getting' shady with me, Miss Diamond. I'm just trying to help the boy. He's sitting on a gold mine, and he don't even know it."

  "Ain't nobody gettin' shady with you, but you need to stay out my business. If that boy listened to you, Miss Gingivitis, he'd be turning tricks till he needed dentures."

  "Oh yes you are, you ugly bitch, you're over there livin' on Shady Lane with all that smack you're jackin'."

  "Say what?" Black Diamond said. "Do you talk to your momma with those lips, or do you just use 'em to suck the Milk Duds out your daddy's ass?" "Hello!" the scorekeeper yelled.

  "Look," Black Diamond said, "If you don't shut your twat, I ain't gonna read to you no more."

  Ginger didn't say anything.

  "OK then. Now stay out my affairs." She turned her attention back to me. "I'm just sayin', as long as you keep hanging to the outside world, and walking around here like your some kind of lost sheep, then these motherfuckers are just gonna keep doggin' you. So you need to put that shit right out your head and start playing this game for real."

  "Oh, shut up, you ghastly ho'," Ginger said. "I ain'tgonna read to you no more!"

  "Look, bitch! I'm not kidding," Black Diamond said. "You better shut up."

  "She's right," Ginger said. "You gotta stay strong, girl. Throw some shade and make these motherfucker pay! You've gotta go from What can I do? to What can I do You out of, baby? You know what I'm saying to you, girl?"

  I wasn't sure I knew exactly, but Black Diamond was right about one thing-it was time I let go of the outside world. I was spending too much time thinking about it. Retreating from whatever was happening inside prison-to my memories of childhood and home-like my brother Rick had told me to do. "It would be my memories that helped keep me together," he said. But Rick had been wrong about a lot of things, and so maybe he was wrong about that too. So I was now ready to let go of the past, and to concentrate on being present, so I could learn what I needed to learn to survive in here. I don't know that I was ready to learn how "to work it," like Ginger was saying, but I was definitely tired of being a sheep that kept getting "dawgcd" by other inmates.

  The next morning, I was transferred to Jackson Prison.

  When I arrived at Quarantine, the deputies who had transported me to the state prison must have told them what happened to me earlier at the county jail, because I was processed immediately and placed back on TwoSpecial-the set of cells next to the guards station on the second tier. Ironically, I was put in Grasshopper's old cell, which had been next to mine the first time through.

  I wondered how Grasshopper was doing, and if he had learned how to adapt by now. Perhaps he got a man to protect him. And if so, maybe he got as lucky as I had, by having someone who cared about him like Slide Step seemed to care for me. So much seemed to fall to chance, if you weren't proactive in some kind of way. "You can hurry up and get you a man," Black Diamond had said to me. "You choose one of them, before they choose you."

  Since I had already gone through medical and educational testing last March, I didn't have to wait the full six weeks to meet with the Classification Committee. It only took three. Yet it seemed much longer. By now, I was eager to get back to Riverside. It wasn't the prison I missed so much, as it was Slide Step. With him there, I didn't have to worry about what was going to happen to me. And even the sex wasn't so bad. At least he didn't try to hurt me. And anything else an inmate could have in thereSlide Step made sure I had it. Including Brett! Yet oddly enough, I'd hardly thought about Brett at all since I'd been gone. It was Slide Step who I kept thinking about.

  "Why do you want to go back to Riverside?" the head of the Classification Committee asked. He was a man in his fifties with short dark hair and glasses. He didn't look the type who would understand.

  "I like it there," I said. "Can I please go back?"

  "But it's a higher security and you now qualify for medium security placement."

  He looked at the other two members, who were looking back and shaking their heads. "We don't understand why you'd want to go there, when you can go to a lower security facility with inmates who are closer to your own age."

  "I feel safe there," I said.

  I couldn't think of what else to say, and for the first time, I realized how deeply I had cared for Slide Step-because the pain I was feeling, deep down in my gut, had nothing to do with concerns for my safety.

  "Please," I begged. "Can I please, just go back there?" But this sudden realization of how I felt for Slide Step, was too late.
>
  "No. I'm afraid not."

  My heart sank.

  "We're sending you to the Michigan Training Unit, where you can finish high school and acquire a trade, so you can be productive when you get back out."

  I didn't want to get back out. I wanted to go to Riverside. I didn't care anymore, about guys my own age. I just wanted to go home, to Riverside.

  27

  Greener Grass

  We had gone out to eat at a family restaurant. Everyone was there except for Ricky. He was down in Florida serving time for forgery. Dad ivas hungover and was making up to Sharon fora disappearance.

  I looked over at the family sitting at the table next to ours. The son, who was about my age of fourteen, was talking and everyone at his table was listening to him. His dad smiled as he placed his hand on the back of'his son's neck. Everyone laughed.

  The boy's clothes looked different than mine-they were cleaner and new-and he sat up taller in his chair, even though he seemed shorter than me.

  I wondered how different my life would have been, if' I had lived with them.

  According to the orange-covered rulebook, The Michigan Training Unit was a nmediunm-security prison for the more educable inmates under twenty-one years old. The focus was on rehabilitation, and everyone there was required to work and go to school.

  For all the structure that had been missing at Riverside, the Michigan Training Unit had made up for in programming. They offered high school and college, GED preparation, and training in vocational trades. The place was so strict that if you stepped on the grass between the walkways, you were issued a misconduct report.

  The warden, Mr. Richard A. Handlon, prided himself on running a model facility. He was a man in his fifties, who was fat and bald and wore his pants so high above his waist that he looked like Humpty Dumpty. But Warden Handlon was not the kind of man you could fuck with, because he didn't play. The rules were strict, and if an inmate received too many tickets or filed one too many grievances, he'd have them "rode out" or transferred to another prison.