You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  * * *

  A veteran of innumerable lockdowns, Kansas decides to "fix up the cell till we're styling!" The first thing he does is install a Dookie Repellent System. He saves the peels from our breakfast oranges and stuffs them into the air vent. The air vent now exhales an odor of hot citrus.

  Next he painstakingly unravels the nylon threads from his blanket and ties them together for a clothesline, which he runs from the metal grate of the air vent to the metal flush button above the toilet.

  The excess blanket threads also make great dental floss. We can now wash our socks and shorts in the sink and hang them up to dry while we breathe in steamy citrus smells and clean our teeth. Skell fake-mops the catwalk sewage twice a day and kick-drops some tobacco wrapped in toilet paper into our cell. He apologizes to Kansas for not being able to bring any rolling papers.

  We don't need no stinkin' rolling papers! We still have the Bible. Kansas extracts it— or at least the portion of it that hasn't been consigned to the crapper— tosses it to me so I'll get the spiritual demerit for tearing it up.

  The Bible's thin rice paper is perfect for rolling up tobacco. We have already crapped and smoked our way through Genesis, Exodus, Proverbs, and parts of Ecclesiastes.

  My favorite smoke so far came from Exodus, although Ecclesiastes is a strong contender by virtue of having been popularized in my youth by a Byrds song— or was that Pete Seeger? I swear I'm going senile in here, or maybe just a tad J-Cat.

  When two new rolls of toilet paper are finally delivered (three weeks late), Kansas makes us a chess set. An old prison origami hand, he shapes wet toilet paper into pawns, bishops, and even the difficult knights, using state toothpaste ("SpringFresh— A Product of China") as mortar.

  We save our lunchtime Kool-Aid to dye half the pieces purple. We let the toothpaste and dye dry overnight. With the pencil stub and the edge of the Aryan Sentinel I map out sixty-four squares on the concrete cell floor.

  We play chess all day long. More accurately, I give Kansas free chess lessons all day long. To my surprise, he is an eager and adept pupil. He says Hitler played lots of chess in the bunker.

  Kansas quotes Nietzsche, who has to be the patron saint of peckerwood prisoners. "O.G.— whatever does not kill me only makes me stronger, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  "I'm down wid dat, dawg." This once-alien tongue now rolls fluently from me. I fear I may be going native.

  Our next project is a deck of cards. The lunch and dinner trays often include those little restaurant-style pats of butter with the square cardboard backing. We save fifty-two of these and Kansas teaches me spades. I teach Kansas Hollywood rummy.

  Before we can construct a backgammon set the lockdown ends.

  We not only endured— we were styling!

  * * *

  With the lockdown over, C.O. Strunk assures us that we will shortly be "processed and classified" as workers in the main yard kitchen. Despite earlier promises, Strunk tells us we won't be permitted to buy "appliances"— TVs and radios— until we are assigned to general population in the yard.

  We can expect to be transferred "at a moment's notice." We are to be ready to "roll it up!" The Fish Tank ordeal is almost over. It will be over the "very instant" that space is found in general population. Once there, Strunk says we can then buy our TVs, radios, cassette players, electric fans— whatever we want!

  Yeah. And there will be pie in the sky when we die. By and by.

  Kansas just says, "That fat punk is on my list, straight-up lying motherfucker!" And what list might that be? Kansas says never mind, if he tells me he will have to kill me. I tell him never mind. I'm used to living in ignorance.

  I replenish my store with a few goodies and stamps and resume my solitary strolls in the fish yard. Big Hungry is the proud new owner of a "punk-ass bitch white boy." The Hunger, a three-time alumnus of the Nevada Prison for the Criminally Insane (J-Wing, naturally), has just been happily reunited with an old "squeeze" and fellow J-Cat alumnus called Cassandra.

  Cassandra tells us that it's perfectly all right to call him Cassie. But please refer to him as her— or she. We're all down with that. No problem. Kansas refers to him as that "straight-up J-Cat faggot." Or that "toad-sucking piece a homo shit."

  Cassie struts, simpers, and sashays around the yard wearing the convict counterpart to a streetwalker's hot pants— state blue jeans razored off about two inches below the crotch. The blue shirt has been shorn and tailored to display her hairy midriff.

  Never out of her daddy's sight, Cassie flits around the rotunda showing off her mascara (blue pool-cue chalk from the gym), red lipstick (cherry Kool-Aid powder), and a virtual cleavage that she achieves by tightly cinching a laundry string beneath her "breasts."

  The Hunger hasn't sweated me once since Cassandra disembarked from the J-Cat bus. I am happy that the Hunger now seems happy.

  In fact, I wish him joy.

  * * *

  Every other Tuesday is laundry exchange day. It's a very big deal because this is how most of the contraband (including Cassie's mascara) gets into the Fish Tank. Strunk keeps us locked down while Skell and the other porter trustees make an unescorted road trip to retrieve the laundry carts from the main yard. They also procure anything else that they have been paid to obtain.

  Rickety card tables are set up in the rotunda. The porters sort out and array a disturbingly off-white, mottled assortment of socks, underwear, sheets, and towels. This is a very slow process, as Skell and the gang first must segregate the premium garments from the rest. The superior boxer shorts are those with minimal (or no) shit stains or pecker tracks. Socks without holes command a four-stamp premium, as do unripped, mostly white sheets.

  New fish without a porter hookup or a stand-up receive the foulest-looking, shredded, gray-brown sheets and underwear. If they have no money and no connections, then what they have is nothin' coming.

  One card table is heaped with the superpremium goods. These are Private Reserve, absolutely pristine sheets and garments for a few preferred customers such as Kansas. Kansas, of course, doesn't have to pay anything. His friendship is considered payment enough.

  Everything at the Private Reserve table has been freshly bleached and ironed. Skell swears this on his skin. Kansas will only participate in a laundry exchange if Skell swears this on his skin. Kansas believes that only Clorox can adequately annihilate the AIDS and hepatitis "germs." He knows this for a fact because he has shared hundreds of hypodermic needles with colleagues in less-than-perfect health and he has yet to contract any diseases. His prophylactic precaution is to dip his needle into a cup of Clorox before injecting.

  When I ask him what his method is for safe sex, he tells me to shut my sideways mouth before he puts out my domelights. Skell informs me that "your hand don't call for no freebies yet," but seeing as how Kansas is my stand-up he can see his way clear to letting me shop from the Private Reserve stock for 50 percent less than plain premium. Am I down wid dat deal?

  I tell him I'm down with that and pick up the beautifully bleached and ironed shorts, socks, sheets, and towel.

  Bubblecop, to avert a possible riot, cracks open only five cell doors at a time during the laundry exchange period. As soon as the doors open, ten fish go racing toward the tables. They almost trample each other in their eagerness to snatch up the highest-grade items. At the Got Nothing Coming table it's chaos. Worse than a White Flower Day sale at Macy's the day after Thanksgiving. Pushing, shoving, selling wolf tickets. The only comparable spectacle that comes to my mind is when my friend Barry threw a bar mitzvah party for his son, Jason, and the buffet table started running low on free food.

  Bubblecop is standing up cradling the shotgun, vastly entertained by the battle for minimally stained boxer shorts. Lester the Molester is the last convict at the tables. When he rolls up to the Premium Pay table, he withdraws a small sack from a hidden recess in his wheelchair. Skell examines it carefully before handing the Molester a bottle of narcotic pain pills and a maga
zine.

  The magazine is entitled Where the Boys Are!

  I don't think it is inspired by the Connie Francis song or the movie about college kids cavorting in Fort Lauderdale on spring break.

  Kansas says it's scandalous but reluctantly concedes that "even Chomos got something coming if they got money." Do I understand what he's saying?

  I tell him I'm down wid dat.

  * * *

  The prison gang war that triggered our lengthy lockdown finally spills over to the Fish Tank. Our penal institution boasts a robust and diverse variety of gangs— Mexican, black, white, and even Native American. Some of these organizations are so sensitive and savage that my Bic fine-point pen trembles (after all, I am still here) in recording some of the names: Sureños, Norteños, Border Brothers, Crips, Trey Street Deuces, Aryan Dawn, the Wood Brigade, and the Tribe. Together they make the Balkans look like the Elysian fields.

  At the phone company our CEO and Human Resources V.P.'s were forever trumpeting the "accrued human capital synergies driven by our ethnically diverse, cutting-edge, globally attuned workforce." In the joint such accrued synergies sometimes drive behavior that's— well, it ain't nothin' nice.

  It happens while Kansas and I are meekly waiting on the rotunda lunch line for the porters to hand us our trays and fill our Hard Time mugs with Kool-Aid. At the back of the queue my ese pal (with the "La Raza" neck tattoo) suddenly decides he'd rather stab someone than eat one more soybean hamburger. His target is an unreasonably tall black convict (and card-carrying Blood) who's standing peacefully in line.

  The ese, called Niño, is only a couple of inches over five feet, but what he lacks in stature he more than compensates for in bad attitude and overall brutishness. Without a word, Niño thrusts a Bic fine-point deep into the Blood's neck, which promptly spurts out a fountain of blood. Niño keeps gouging even as the Blood slowly sinks to the concrete floor. He's still digging in with the Bic when Bubblecop looks up from his magazine and starts firing the shotgun.

  Indiscriminately.

  We all drop to the ground, hands clasped behind our heads— this is the standard drill. The Dirt burst into the Fish Tank in under two minutes to sort out the culprits and haul off the wounded. Five innocent fish at the back of the line are carried off to the infirmary with buckshot wounds in the back and buttocks. Niño, of course, is unscathed. Sergeant Stanger gets on the radio for a Care-Flight chopper to evacuate the now-dying Blood. No one attempts to stop the bleeding.

  We are all locked down while the Dirt talk to Bubblecop and write up reports. A couple of ese fish are pulled out of the houses for questioning. They saw nada and heard less. Stanger grills a few of the homeboys. Say what? Someone got stuck? Didn't see jack shit.

  I figure that either the Bloods are admirably upholding the Stand-up Convict Code of "no snitching," or they are simply reluctant to host a Bic penmanship contest culminating with the entire "La Raza" writing on their balls.

  I expected the shakedown that followed. I did not expect to be dragged off to the Hole in hand and ankle shackles attached to a chain around my waist.

  The Dirt first perform what is known as a skin search. They line us up outside our cells— naked. Our hands are then scrutinized for scrapes, scratches, bruises, and dried blood. On command, we bend, twirl, twist, and turn until every inch of naked flesh has been examined. We are told to do everything but curtsy and pirouette.

  We are then ordered to dress and come out of the cells and face the wall— hands on our heads. The Dirt enter our houses to search, plunder, and destroy.

  My downfall is not a shank or a trazor or even a Bic medium-point. It is the Sunday New York Times.

  Stanger emerges from my cell with the "evidence."

  "Lerner! Oh, excuuuse fucking me! O.G.! That's your homie name, right? Well, O.G., what the fuck is this? You can come off the wall."

  Stanger's smile is fixed, giving the impression of a rictal grin on a rat. He is swinging my towel back and forth like a pendulum.

  Wrapped inside the towel is the New York Times. It represents my best effort at fashioning a pillow for myself.

  "Sergeant, that's what I use for my pillow."

  "A pillow?" Stanger affects an incredulous chuckle for the benefit of the other Dirtboys who are looking on in anticipation of some sport. Stanger swings the towel against the wall, where it makes a very impressive whack!

  "Looks like a weapon to me. Sounds like one too. Pillow, my fucking ass! Let's see, concealing ten pounds of paper inside a state-issued towel, tying off the ends— oh yeah, definitely a dangerous fucking slock device."

  Stanger takes another experimental swing at the wall as if to add validation to his weapon theory.

  Whack! It almost startles me into moving my hands.

  "Keep your fucking fish hands on your goddamned head! You got anything you want to tell me, O.G., before I throw your convict ass in the fucking Shoe?" It occurs to me that Stanger is just a larger, more twisted version of Gilbert, the fifth-grade school yard bully I vanquished long ago. Punching Stanger in the mouth, however, is not a prudent option. In here my passive aggression seems to take on a sideways shape, if you know what I'm saying.

  I opt for a bit of inappropriate levity.

  "Well, Sergeant, looks like I'll have to concede that the crossword puzzle is potentially dangerous to one's mental health, but the Sunday Styles section is fairly harmless." I have decided that I'm not taking any more crap from this asshole who ripped my daughters apart. Just for fun.

  Now Stanger's in my face. "You talking out of the side of your fucking neck to me? Nobody mocks me! You think a weapons-manufacturing charge is a fucking joke?"

  "In this case, yes." I know better than to even try placating a sadistic bully of this type. Mentally I have already checked into the Hole. So be it.

  "Who you planning to slock with this, O.G.?" Stanger shifts into his interrogation mode. Unfortunately for me, he is one of those sibilant-challenged sadists that spray spit when they get agitated.

  "I'm not planning on slocking anyone."

  "Someone pressurin' you then? Looking for a little getback? This a gang thing, O.G.? The Norteños sweatin' you?"

  "No one is sweating me, Sergeant."

  "The Sureños? The fucking Crips?"

  "No."

  "You're going down anyway, O.G. Why don't you give me something— the NLR?" Kansas smothers a snicker by pressing his face against the wall.

  I'm tired of the game. "Look, Sergeant, just how many guesses are you allowed?"

  That does it. Stanger orders me to kiss the ground, hands on the back of my dome. He's on the radio, relaying the report back to Dirt Headquarters that he has just smashed a major weapons-manufacturing facility— possibly "gang-related."

  Stanger is so pleased with having uncovered the concealed slocking device that he halts the search and destruction of our house. My Gummi Bears will go unmolested.

  So will Kansas's latest trazor, Hustler, and Bic fine-point that he diabolically conceals right under his mattress.

  * * *

  Once again I'm shuffling like a shackled coolie, this time across the Fish Tank yard to the gate. The guntower cop punches a button and Stanger pushes open the gate. Hands and ankles cuffed and shackled, belly chains jingling, I am led out through the main yard.

  The sun is a desert broiler, and gusts of sand and dirt sting my face. It feels great to finally be out of the Fish Tank— free at last! Well, except for the "free" part, it feels wonderful. I receive my first guided tour of the general population yard. It seems huge. We pass the P.I. (prison industry) buildings: furniture repair, auto shop, vinyl, and dry cleaning.

  Dozens of convicts in state blue are sauntering everywhere and anywhere— like they are freemen. Every now and then Stanger prods me forward by giving my little harness bells a shake. We pass the chow hall, the commissary, a small law library, and the chapel. Now I know where to buy more Gummi Bears and get more Bibles.

  We proceed past a ser
ies of identical one-story cellblock buildings and the main administrative offices. The cons pause to scope out this little drama, many of them having taken the journey to the Hole themselves. They shout encouragement at me and insults at Stanger.

  "Yo, wood! Don't sweat it, dawg. The Hole ain't shit!"

  "Hey, Stanger! Yo, Stanger! Wanna smell yo wife's pussy? Then suck my dick!" This witticism produces raucous howls of laughter from the yard dawgs. Stanger halts us to yell back.

  "You assholes want to join this fish in the Shoe?"

  "Join this, motherfucker!" The dust storm makes identification of his tormentors (not to mention accurate guntower support) impossible, so Stanger gives me another ungentle shove forward.

  At the end of the asphalt path is another gate leading to the two-story concrete and steel box formally known as the Security Housing Unit— the Shoe.