You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  The inside of the Hole is arranged just like the Fish Tank, with two welcome exceptions: no foul toilet water spills out from under the cell doors, and the fluorescent ceiling lights actually work. There's the usual generic Bubblecop in his glass-enclosed office above the second tier. The same C.O. staff office in the center of the rotunda downstairs.

  Stanger uncuffs my hands and ankles and jerks off the belly chain. He flashes me the sugar-sweet smile of a crew-cutted ferret with painful flatulence problems.

  "Have a nice day, O.G. See you at the disciplinary hearing when they burn your sideways ass. Oh, excuuuuse me, O.G., did I say burn? I know how sensitive you people get about that. I think I even read it in the JEW York Times— ha!"

  Stanger hands me over to the custody of the Hole C.O. before executing a crisp and bizarre about-face and marching back through the double steel doors, his black-clad body stiff from the broomstick up his ass.

  * * *

  C.O. Leach, overseer of the Hole, is a scrawny twenty-something with a five-day growth of beard whose mouthwash reeks strongly of Johnnie Walker Scotch. He directs me behind the red line while he consults the electronic console on his desk for a cell vacancy.

  "Motherfucking piece a shit!" Leach pounds his fist on the console, screams some more, then beats at the console with a heavy leather boot.

  "Is there a problem, C.O.?" I strive for a courteous and helpful tone, a legacy of my years as a corporate cubicle slave and not infrequent ass-kisser extraordinaire.

  "Fuckin' Dirt! They roll you fish up without checking to see if I got cells. Dick-licking dirtbag Dirtboys! Fucking Stanger thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants— coming here into my house like he's about something!" Leach collapses into the Salvation Army cast-off chair behind his desk.

  "We got a real problem here, Lerner."

  This is the first time (not the last) I have heard one C.O. "bad-rap" another to an inmate, and I am instantly favorably disposed toward Leach. I almost volunteer some advice bequeathed to me by a soon-to-be-downsized marketing V.P.: "Problems are merely opportunities in disguise."

  I squelch my helpful impulse.

  "The fucking Shoe is full! I don't got a cell for you— you gotta go back to the Fish Tank." Leach resumes beating the console with his fist while I wonder if I'm supposed to call a cab or what.

  Leach is now drinking deeply from a coffee thermos, which seems to be the source of the Johnnie Walker aroma. "They act like this is a fucking hotel or something! That I just check fucked-up convicts in and out of here like some faggot-ass desk clerk!"

  Leach motions me across the forbidden red zone and into his small air-conditioned office. Another taboo broken. Cops here never invite inmates into their houses. I take the one chair in front of the desk. My first chair-sitting session since I went to court. The electronic panel displays two rows of lights corresponding to the upper-and lower-tier cell numbers. I assume the lighted bulbs indicate "occupancies."

  On the floor is an opened box of Domino's pizza. The one remaining half-chewed piece (with decaying mushrooms) exudes a putrid stench that mingles unpleasantly with Leach's whiskey breath.

  We are both leaning over the console.

  "What's up with cells 1 to 5, C.O.?" Those lights are unlit.

  "No good— they're reserved for the J-Cats. The infirmary C.O. wants 'em all together so the nurse bitch doesn't have to walk around the entire fucking Shoe shoving Thorazine suppositories up psycho assholes— you know what I'm sayin'?"

  All the cells in the Hole are single occupancy— one steel tray per house. I find this very appealing.

  "Put me in a J-Cat cell," I tell Leach, who now studies me with intense interest. He opens the top drawer of his desk, roots around through a pile of soggy french fries, and extracts a tiny airline bottle of Old Smuggler. Sucks it down with one quick swallow and tosses the empty into the Domino's box.

  "You a fucking J-Cat? Your jacket don't say nothing about that. This having to deal with all these J-Cats in a fucking prison is some scandalous shit, I'll tell you that— y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  I find myself reflecting on just how much the C.O.'s sound like the convicts. Must be some kind of reverse Stockholm syndrome.

  The private cell is calling to me. "I could be a J-Cat. I even have some county jail experience at it. Wouldn't that solve the problem?"

  "You was a J-Cat in county? Straight-up business?"

  I almost say, "On my skin, bro." Instead I say, "I shit you not, C.O."

  Leach leans over the desk and hawks a lunger smack into the center of the pizza box. I silently vow to never again order a mushroom pizza.

  Rejuvenated with that Old Smuggler spirit, Leach makes a painful executive decision. He finally hands me two sheets, a towel, and a blanket.

  "Aiight, Lerner— you're a J-Cat now. Take cell 1." He punches the button on the console and the door of cell 1 opens a few inches. Leach assures me that all my property, all my store, will be safely kept in the Property Office until after a Disciplinary Committee hearing.

  "I'm supposed to do a cavity search, but fuck me if I get paid enough to put my nose up anybody's asshole— know what I'm sayin'?"

  "I thought the same thing when I was your age."

  "Aiight then. Go lock it down."

  "I'm down wid dat, C.O."

  * * *

  After having to share an eight-by-six cage with the state of Kansas, this eight-by-six cell seems palatial. Even better, it's quiet. I have the toilet and sink to myself, a generous chunk of state soap (by way of China), and not one, but two rolls of toilet paper. Nothing else.

  And nothing coming.

  There is a mutilated Bible stuffed under the mattress— a Biblia actually, it's in Spanish. No problema. Before being allowed to defend democracy in the Panamanian dictatorship, I was treated to a six-month Spanish lesson at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. I'm grateful now that I paid attention.

  My Biblia is more than a little "tore up." It is missing certain pages from the Gospels. All reference by the disciples to Jesus' last moments have been torn out. Perhaps the previous guest here objected to the story's unhappy ending and selected those passages for rollie or dookie duty.

  I'm kicking it now, just chilling. Basking in the cathedral silence of my private suite. They call it solitary confinement, but I consider it solitary freedom— from Kansas and his interminable rants and dookie sessions.

  I amuse myself by speculating on the possible confusion of the next ese con who picks up this strangely excised Biblia. Does Jesus die? Or merely sustain some non-life-threatening puncture wounds? Such is the nature of my spiritual musings as somewhere in the free world the sun must be setting.

  The overhead fluorescents flicker on. There is no light switch in the cell like in the Fish Tank. I figure it must be part of the punishment. Stanger stripped me of my watch back in the Fish Tank, so I can only guess at the time. Nevada prisons, like their casinos, never put wall clocks in public places.

  Nobody leaves till they've paid in full.

  Unlike the J-Cat cell in county, I do have a window in the cell door but no outside window. It's all good. The Shoe utilizes the same food-tray-flying-through-the-slot method as the county jail. We never leave our cells except for a ten-minute shower (absolutely no phones!) every other night.

  Hey, been there, done that.

  * * *

  After three days of isolation I am climbing the walls, desperate for some conversation, even if it's about the "Jewish sympathizers in purgatory." I'm still not clear on just who these people were— sensitive Jews or sympathetic Nazis?

  On the evening of the fourth day I am awakened by the telltale rumbling of the food cart. I watch through the little wire-reinforced window as Leach staggers around the food cart attempting to supervise the meal porter— Skell! Leach is accompanying Skell and the cart from cell to cell as trays are shoved through the slots.

  The slot cracks open and my tray comes careening throu
gh— baked ham. Of course it's not real ham. No pork products can be served here. The ham is really some species of processed turkey sprayed pink to simulate pork.

  Next to my virtual ham are two pieces of white bread with the little paper-backed butters, a slot containing lettuce, cucumber slices, and a slice of tomato all smothered in Italian dressing. Dessert is chocolate pudding and it's delicious.

  The only dawgs that gripe about the food in here have never been in the army. I have no complaints about the meals.

  After fifteen minutes Leach slurs out the order to push our empty trays back through the slots. Skell's face is at my window. He is hissing, "Whachu need, O.G.?"

  I tell him I need a small rock hammer and a large poster of Rita Hayworth but would settle for something to read. Skell goes hysterical with laughter, ripping wildly at a scab on his head, alternately hissing and shrieking while displaying the blackened stumps of his remaining teeth.

  "Fucking O.G.! Hold on, dawg— Kansas told me to hook you up, no charge." When Skell bends down to pick up the tray, the slot opens and a bag of Gummi Bears drops through, followed by two Almond Joy bars, a writing tablet, three pencils, and a bag of 4 Aces.

  "Got no lighter, O.G. You need a stinger?"

  "Please."

  Skell flips a paper clip through the slot and straightens up with the tray just as Leach totters up behind him.

  "Wanna join him, Skell?" Skell comes out as "Shell."

  "No, sir, boss, just picking up the trays, boss." Skell oozes out the words in his most obsequious, state-raised style— our very own Uriah Heep.

  "Then get moving, you skank-ass, scab-domed piece a shit!" Peeshashith.

  "Right away, boss, coming right now," and Skell is wheeling the cart down to cell 6, hissing "Whachu need?" through the food slots. When appropriate, he substitutes "Whachu need, ese?" or "Whachu need, homes?" for "Whachu need, dawg?" At the phone company we referred to this technique as Target Marketing or Customer-Driven Differentiation.

  I spend the evening reading the unripped Old Testament in Spanish, an endlessly depressing cycle of the Divine Shotcaller hooking up his Chosen Dawgs only to be continually dissed to the point where He finally finds it necessary to actually kill a few of these ungrateful, "stiff-necked" dawgs, sometimes entire cities of them at a time. Even after death they got nothing coming.

  Always seemed a bit overreactive to me.

  But go figure the ways of God.

  I fall asleep thinking of the riddle, probably Jewish:

  How do you make God laugh?

  Give up?

  Just tell him your plans.

  * * *

  I wake up in the Hole from my usual nightmare of the Monster rushing at me with the knife. I wake up blind. Not deaf, because I can clearly hear Leach screaming at someone near my front porch. I remember to take off the night shades— two giant wads of wet toilet paper I stick over my eyes as a shield against the fluorescents.

  I have a perfect window view.

  Leach is trying to drag the latest arrival into cell 2, next door.

  "Get your nasty faggot ass in the fucking cell, Rosenbloom! Don't you dare slow-play me, you cocksucker!" Our new guest is prostrate and crying in front of the cell door.

  Her name is Cassandra and she's weeping like, well… like a punk-ass bitch. Cassie's shoulder-length hair is now two-toned, splotches of blond on black. She's not dressed for the Shoe. Same tight blue hot pants, Kool-Aid lipstick, and pool-cue mascara. To complete her casual day outfit, Cassie has strategically sliced out little sections of her hot pants in order to dazzle the world with horrifying flashes of hairy butt and thighs.

  Cassandra is clutching the steel handle of the cell door, refusing to enter her new house. Leach finally backs away, looking up to Bubblecop for armed assistance.

  "Shoot this piece a shit! She's refusing a direct order to lock it down!"

  Bubblecop removes his state-trooper-style sunglasses and peers through the rifle slot in the Plexiglas, his weapon on his desk.

  "Can't do it unless she attacks you or something. I ain't looking to get crossed out behind no J-Cat faggot. Why don't you just bitch-slap her into the house?" And Bubblecop sits back down, rejoining his coffee and National Enquirer.

  Leach yells up at the bubble, "Well, thank you very much, partner— good looking out!" He whirls back on the kneeling, whimpering Cassie.

  "Let go of the fucking door and get on your faggot feet, you cum-sucking maggot!"

  Cassie reluctantly releases the door handle. I can't see the handle but I suspect there are claw marks on it. Blue tears streak down her face.

  "But I didn't do anything," she wails. "Big Hungry's the one who should be here, not me!"

  Leach is disgusted beyond all reason.

  "No? I hear you did every toad in the Fish Tank!" This remark instantly produces violent protests from the Shoe's resident toads, who start kung-fuing the cell doors.

  "Yo, Leach! That's way outta line, you drunk-ass sorry peckawood muthafucka!"

  "Leach! Come on up to my crib and start talking that 'toad' shit! I'll peel your muthafuckin' drunk onion!"

  While Leach gets into a screaming match, Cassie seizes the opportunity to wander around the lower tier looking through windows.

  "O.G.? Is that you?" Cassie's face pressing against my window, tears and pool chalk streaking the glass.

  "What are you here for, Cassie?"

  "They say they're going to charge me with 'altering state property.' " Cassie attempts a brave smile, tears drying on her cheeks.

  "You mean ripping up the state shirt and pants?"

  "That, and for getting a tattoo." And she loses it again, blubbering against the glass. "That fat bastard Hunger said he'd do a nice butterfly on my back— he swore it was a butterfly, but instead he—"

  "GET IN YOUR FUCKING CELL!" Leach grabs Cassie by the hair and drags her off. Thwunk goes cell door number 2. Leach retreats wearily to the tranquillity of his office, where he starts throwing sodden french fries against the wall.

  I'm working my way through the Biblia, skimming Kings— too many names getting in the way of the plot. When is Skell coming back with some books?

  "O.G.? O.G.? You in there?" Cassie's disembodied voice whines through the air vent above the sink. I put my face to the grate.

  "No, Cassandra, I'm laying on the beach in San Juan sipping a piña colada."

  A girlish giggle comes through the vent. "That's a good one, O.G. Say, what's your real name?"

  I hesitate before answering. If the Hunger finds out I even talked to his "be-yatch," he'll bust a grape for sure. Word!

  Then again, I didn't get to where I am today by being cautious. "It's Jimmy. Jimmy Lerner. Now give me your real name and don't insist on that 'Cassandra' business."

  "Rosenbloom. Cary Rosenbloom. My mother was a huge Cary Grant fan. Personally he's not my type. I'm more of—"

  "This is more information than I need," I interrupt. "What did the Hunger do? I take it he was fresh out of butterfly patterns."

  "Oh God, it's just so vile, absolutely sick!" And Cassandra/Cassie/Cary Rosenbloom is sobbing into the vent.

  "All right, calm down. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

  "Thanks." Cassie's tone resumes its artificial brightness once more. "Are there any phones in this hole? I have to call my mother."

  "Sorry— no phones in the Shoe, Cary."

  "Please— it's Cassandra. Or Cassie."

  "That still won't change my answer."

  "Oh, now you're being cruel. I bet you could be very cruel to a girl. I bet you would—"

  "Will you shut up! I'm hanging up now—"

  "No! Wait… sorry. Listen: what about my meds? They have to give me my meds in here, don't they?"

  "Trust me— they come twice a day and I can't imagine them overlooking you."

  "You really can be very sweet, Jimmy. If you like, I could talk dirty into the vent while you touch yourself or—"

  "Good-by
e, Cassie."

  "Bye, Jimmy."

  Please, God, don't ever let me get that lonely.

  * * *

  Throughout the day Cassie chatters happily through the air vent. She's a twenty-two-year-old "street hustler" from L.A. who had the misfortune of getting arrested for peddling her hairy ass to a male undercover cop in Reno. When they took her down for booking, the cops found a condom stuffed with crank— speed— in her pocket.