You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

Kansas is always happy to provide me with illustrative examples of his convict cleverness. Especially during his arduous labors on the toilet. "Hold on, O.G.— I think it's coming!"

  Turns out to be false contractions, so Kansas tells of his triumph over the visiting-room guards. The visiting area is set up like a small cafeteria enclosed in a small concrete building in the main yard. Some tables and chairs, a couple of microwave ovens and vending machines dispensing delicacies ranging from microwavable burritos to Hostess Twinkies.

  Experienced visitors bring little clear plastic wrappers of quarters (thirty dollars maximum) to feed the machines. Inmates may not touch the quarters or the machines. No reason has ever been given for this rule. They don't have to give us any reasons. 'Cause we got nothin' coming.

  Visitors pass through a metal detector but are not body-searched. Three cops watch the convicts and visitors through the one-way glass wall of an enclosed office. They watch out for the most common crime in the visiting area: Excessive Physical Contact. Signs are posted everywhere warning that PROLONGED KISSING will result in IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OF THE VISIT! Unless you have already been terminated for touching a quarter. Inmates are permitted one brief kiss and hug (unprolonged) upon both the arrival and the departure of their visitors.

  Kansas's "bitch," an aspiring exotic dancer named Star, had driven down from Las Vegas. She greeted Kansas with the prescribed brief kiss. Her tongue danced exotically into his mouth just long enough to transfer the balloon.

  Kansas swallowed as if overwhelmed with emotion. At the end of the visit the guard ushered Kansas into a tiny holding cell where he was strip-searched and given a cavity check. Spread those cheeks… now cough. Good.

  Within a few days after a visit the convict will be directed to pee into a little cup with a cop watching. If the urinalysis comes up dirty, it's bye-bye dawg. To the Shoe, to the Hole for ninety days. Where you got nothin' coming! New criminal charges can be filed against the inmate. No more "contact visits"— ever.

  The UA test is no problem for Kansas.

  "I never do drugs while I'm in the joint, O.G. I just sell them. Hold on— I think the motherfucker's poking its little rubber head out the gate." More grunts, a dainty little splash, then a moan of relief.

  "The bitch done good, O.G. Gotta be at least an ounce in here."

  Kansas already has his customers lined up. In my marketing class they referred to this as pre-selling. It was regarded as a good thing to do. Through the porter network Kansas has pre-sold the entire stash to his fellow woods and NLR comrades on the main yard. Kansas washes his hands with our sliver of state soap, wipes them on his huge skinned head, then finishes drying them on his dark goatee.

  Visions of convict opulence dance inside his dome. When he hits the yard, he will have a Righteous House— a cell complete with a color TV, a Walkman, a fan, rugs, pounds of coffee, candy, and acres of tailors. The tailor-mades will all be Camels— unfiltered, of course. A man's smoke. A man who knows how to keep a bitch in line.

  "…y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin', O.G.? You let your wife get outta line and then she divorced your ass. No bitch would ever divorce me, dawg. If a bitch even—"

  "What the fuck are you talking about, Kansas? You've never been married! No bitch will ever divorce you because no bitch will ever marry you. Besides, my wife didn't divorce me— it was a mutual decision and a very friendly separation."

  Kansas shakes his head in mock sadness. He's busy repackaging the powdery contents of the balloon into postage-stamp-size packets using my New York Times Week in Review section.

  "Now, that's outta line, O.G. I've had three fucking common-law wives." To my horror, Kansas shoves the entire drug stash into an Arts & Leisure page before securing it beneath the toilet with a piece of Skell-bought tape.

  This is too much. This could add years to my sentence.

  "I don't want that shit in my house, Kansas. I'm not planning to spend the rest of my life in this shit hole so you can watch Jerry Springer in color."

  "Don't trip, dawg. Skell's making the pickup right before count. Fuck, O.G.— even if they shake us down and find it, you know I'll cop to it. I ain't lookin' to get you crossed out."

  "I'm so relieved to know you're looking out for me, Kansas. And such a cunning criminal mind! The cops would never think of looking under the toilet of a prison cell. Hey, aren't you the one who likes to lecture me about not fronting people off? How righteous cons don't put their cellies out on Front Street? Who knows what else you—"

  "Who the fuck knows who else would put up with your sideways bullshit without sticking a shank in your grill? You got to relax, O.G. I been down more than a few days— I know how shit works around here."

  "Just get rid of it before count."

  "Aiight, O.G. Don't sweat me, dawg. It's gone before count."

  And it was.

  * * *

  Kansas is state-raised.

  He's not proud of it.

  "My folks kicked me to the curb when I was twelve, O.G. I went straight from juvie detention to the joint, and let me tell you, dawg, the fucking joint in Kansas ain't nothin' nice, know what I'm sayin'?"

  A self-professed "straight-up, stone-cold dope fiend" (denial is not one of his issues), Kansas has a keen passion for pharmaceutical-quality drugs. Which is why he loves to rob pharmacies. After "doing a bit" in this very prison, Kansas likes to say he "caught a P.V." or "caught a new case" while on parole in Las Vegas.

  He was arrested for armed robbery and attempted murder. These charges were deemed serious enough by the Department of Parole and Probation (P&P, the dawgs here call it) to warrant a parole violation. The D.A. also viewed it as an additional criminal case, worthy of some more years of Kansas's life.

  Kansas had a very straightforward robbery technique. One summer night in Vegas, he simply marched up to the pharmacy counter of Drug World. To ensure he received prompt customer attention, he waved a pistol and screamed, "Give up the Dilaudid, motherfuckers!"

  Dilaudid is a narcotic painkiller, highly addictive and hailed in the dope-fiend world as superior to morphine. Kansas would shoot it up and forget about all his aches and pains.

  Probably because this was Kansas's seventh trip to a Vegas Drug World in seven days, the cops were waiting for him as he fled the store clutching his goodie bag of Dilaudid. He was so excited to get the drugs that he forgot to demand the cash.

  Kansas is very proud that what happened next made the six o'clock news.

  He fired three shots at one of the police officers, missing by inches, then his automatic jammed. It took five very pissed-off cops to put him on the ground and cuff him.

  Based on these types of interactions with the criminal justice system coupled with his years of prison experience, Kansas considers himself an expert in many fields. Although he can barely read, he regularly receives in the mail such august publications as the Aryan Sentinel, Supreme White Brotherhood, and Secrets from the Bunker.

  I always end up reading them to him. His story is that his glasses were ripped off by the cops in county jail.

  He feels that these journals have mentally equipped him to make dogmatic pronouncements in the areas of philosophy, law, theology, genetic engineering, and even finance and banking. "Jews control the fucking banks, O.G. It's like this international conspiracy."

  For light reading pleasure he studies the humor page of Reader's Digest, lips moving, inching toward the jokes. Then he insists on my reading them aloud to him and gets insulted when I don't join his laughter. He can "read" (from years of rote memorization) arrest warrants, conviction notices, and PSIs.

  "Yogee! I ain't lookin' to get up in your business or nothin', but what kind of name is Lerner?" This query drifts up like poison gas from the bottom tray, where Kansas is perusing one of his rags.

  Of course, I tell him it's a fine old German name, probably German-Irish.

  "Scandalous, O.G.! You're all right. So… Lerner— kind of like Wernher, right?"

  "Exactly! We
were practically cousins with Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist."

  "Straight-up business? On your skin, bro?"

  "On my skin." This temporarily puts the Jewish Question to rest in cell 47 of the Fish Tank. Swearing on one's white skin is sacred to Kansas. Carries more credibility than swearing on a truckload of Bibles. Or on one's mother's eyes.

  "Right on, O.G. You know you gotta get yourself some stand-ups when you hit the yard. Walking the yard by yourself could be bad for your health. Especially with a big nigger like the Hunger wandering around. Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  "I'm not worried about Big Hungry," I lie.

  "I hear you, dawg. All I'm sayin' to you is that when some motherfucking two-ton toad gets up in your face, starts pressurin' you, sweatin' you, playing you, you're gonna want some righteous woods to stand up for you. Some good old dawgs to fuck that toad's shit up. Know what I'm sayin'? You get a punk jacket in here and you are just meat— y'unnerstan'?"

  Kansas also clears up the concept of "punk" for me. He hates punks almost as much as he hates snitches— but not as much as he hates toads. Or Jews, for that matter.

  "A punk, O.G., is someone you make suck your dick and lick it clean. Over time you got yourself what we call a punk-ass bitch. He wants to suck dick, know what I'm sayin'?"

  I indicate my preference for sexual abstinence while incarcerated.

  "That only because you ain't never been down a long time… Fuck, in a nickel you'll be wanting to fuck the crack a dawn. In a fucking dime you'll wake up with a hard-on for some guy's hairy ass just because he's wearing lipstick."

  I pray I never get that lonely.

  * * *

  Wednesday evening. The heat in the cell is torture.

  Until we receive store in two days we depend upon the kindness of our strange neighbor, Big Bear. Big Bear is not a fish— he's being held indefinitely here "pending investigation" for assault, rape, and extortion. Not the kind of neighbor one would wish for.

  But Big Bear has store.

  And Kansas wants a cigarette— specifically a 4 Aces rollie.

  He reaches up to pound on the bottom of my tray, the Kansas method of saying "Excuse me."

  "What now, Kansas?" I am studying the obituary pages of the New York Times, comforting myself with the thought that things could be even worse for me.

  "Yogee— you got a Cadillac?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "A Cadillac, bro? Ya got a fuckin' Cadillac?"

  "Actually I have— had— a Honda Accord."

  Kansas, eternally vigilant to the slightest signs of disrespect, stands up to study my face and neck for symptoms of sidewaysness. Sweat drips down and over his neck swastika, about four inches from my nose. Apparently he detects nothing but sweat leaking out of the side of my neck.

  As always he's wearing only his state-issue 4XL boxer shorts. Temperatures in the cell won't drop till about one in the morning. Kansas backs off a foot.

  "O.G., I keep forgetting you're just a fucking fish. I'm gonna make us a righteous Cadillac so we can score a couple of rollies from my dawg Big Bear. You play lookout."

  From the comfort of my penthouse tray I look out the cell door window and watch Strunk while Kansas does God only knows what. A moan comes through the air vent. Kansas claims the real function of the central "ventilation" system is to dispense tear gas to every cell whenever the Shit Jumps Off.

  "I need your shoelaces, O.G. Don't trip! I ain't takin' 'em— just borrowing." Without waiting for an answer Kansas is yanking all the laces out of both our tennis sneakers. Ties the four laces into one long string, then grabs our little bar of hotel soap. With a few jabs of the inch-long nail of his index finger (nail clippers can be bought at the store) a small hole is gouged in the soap.

  "What's that punk Strunk up to, O.G.?"

  "Still in the office, just chillin'."

  "Chillin'?"

  "Picked that up from you young dawgs."

  "It don't sound right coming from you— but good looking out."

  In seconds Kansas has a soap-on-a-rope device. He's on his stomach on the floor yelling under the door.

  "Yo, Big Bear! Cadillac comin' into your house!"

  From the vent: "Whatchu need, dawg?"

  "Bear— hook me up with a couple of rollies."

  "Aiight. Got no light, though, bro."

  "It's all good. We got a working outlet."

  Kansas makes a slipknot in the string, then takes a few test swings on the floor before flinging the soap in a tight arc under the door.

  A second later Big Bear (whom I secretly think of as "Little Squirrel") has the soap/slipknot end of the Cadillac while Kansas still holds on to his end of the string.

  Big Bear bangs on the cell wall. "Pull, dawg, pull!"

  Kansas reels the string in slowly, landing the soap and two rollies secured in the knot. His face is lit up with the same triumphant glee that my younger daughter displayed after tying her shoes for the first time.

  "Now, that, O.G., is a fucking Cadillac!"

  I am impressed. "So why do you call it a Cadillac?"

  I might as well have asked Kansas why a certain hypothesized subatomic particle is called a quark. He has never given any thought to this. Things in the joint just— are. Things have names— you don't question why.

  " 'Cause, O.G."

  " 'Cause why?"

  " 'Cause… 'cause a Cadillac, you see, dawg… you can drive a Cadillac round a corner! Shit, dawg, why I gotta break everything down to you? Gotta paint a big fucking picture like we're in Hollywood."

  No matches, no lighter.

  No problem for Kansas.

  He's back on the floor rummaging through his yellow plastic tub, where he stores his precious Nazi newsletters. Finds a paper clip, which he breaks in half.

  "Gimme your pencil, O.G."

  "No way— it's the only thing I have to write with."

  "I ain't gonna hurt your little punk-ass pencil, dawg. Now, kick it down if you want to smoke."

  The paper clip prongs get inserted into the outlet, set parallel, about a half inch apart. Kansas chews furiously on my punk-ass pencil, a dog on a bone. He finally spits out the prize— a one-inch-long splinter of lead, the conductor.

  He lied. He hurt my pencil. I start to protest.

  "Just chill, O.G. Skell will get you a nice new Bic fine-point pen— makes a great shank, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  Kansas wraps a small piece of toilet paper around the middle of the lead and then drops the exposed ends on the paper clip prongs. A flash. Sparks! Then flaming toilet paper and two dawgs are back on their trays happily inhaling carcinogenic fumes.

  "Yo, O.G. Big Bear was my cellie for a minute in Folsom— me and him did a deuce together behind them bad walls. Now, that motherfucking joint wasn't nothin' nice. Not as scandalous as the Kansas pen, though…"

  A half hour later our lights are out. I roll against the damp cinder block wall. Close my eyes. In the joint, sleep, I am told, is a man's best friend.

  "Night, Kansas— thanks for the cigarette."

  "It's all good, O.G. What comes around goes around."

  Outside our cell the usual screaming, laughing, and occasional sobbing from the other cells. Kansas mutters to himself from the bottom tray. "Damn, dawg— you're getting too old for this shit. You're all tore up."

  Sometime in the middle of the night I wake to the sound of Kansas whispering.

  "…and forgive us our trespasses…"

  Kansas is reciting the Lord's Prayer.

  * * *

  I treasure the one-hour tier time if only because it's a sixty-minute mental holiday from Kansas's nonstop war stories. Every morning Bubblecop pushes buttons, and about fifty inmates come racing out of their houses.

  Whenever the small Fish Tank exercise yard is closed for sandstorms (the outside guntower cop needs a clear shot), most inmates simply procure a perch on one of the round metal stools that are attached by steel spokes to the tables.


  Although a few tables host a pinochle or spades game, the chief amusement consists of "just kickin' it." You hear a lot of "Whassup, dawg?" followed by the inevitable "Just kickin' it, bro." It's a highly democratic divertissement, open to all dawgs regardless of breeding or skill sets. In fact, kicking it in prison often rises to the level of a conversational art form whereby four or five convicts shout at each other at the same time, rehashing criminal triumphs, current grudges, and future felonious schemes.

  As in all discretionary activities in prison, convicts automatically self-segregate at tier time— blacks, whites, Mexicans, and Native Americans all at separate tables. Most of the convicts here are white, so they occupy most of the tables.