You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  Having passed fairly quickly through the grief and mourning stages, Kansas is now admirably reaching out for a new relationship, preferably one that can be consummated by a balloon ceremony.

  I look over his shoulder. So far he has managed to write his name. I understand the writer's block. What is he going to say? Wanted, one young female with big lips and a fondness for giant skinheaded Nazis who reside in prison? This will have to be a very special girl.

  I decide to help out. "How about a concise, simple ad, say, 'Have swastika— can't travel'?"

  "Come on, O.G. This is serious business here— I need your help." Kansas always sounds sad and sincere when he has to write anything. Or when he wants something.

  "O.G., you know I can't write worth a shit. You gotta help me before you roll it up. I already put it on the wire that you're hitting the yard so my dawgs can watch your back. You know what I'm saying here?"

  I'm counting my candy bars and stamps. It's all there. I stuff the sheets and towel into the yellow plastic tub and sit down next to Kansas.

  "I appreciate your putting out the word for me, dawg. Look, why don't you put down some of your hobbies— try to appear multidimensional."

  "Hobbies? What the fuck I gotta put them down for?"

  "You don't have to, but trust me on this— I was married for fifteen years. Women tend to be more interested in men who are interested in something other than themselves." Kansas sighs and I already know that I will end up writing his personal ad.

  "Don't have no hobbies."

  "Sure you do. Everybody has hobbies— just think of the things you enjoy, the things you like to do."

  Kansas is meditating quietly. He suddenly brightens.

  "Aiight! I enjoy going into drugstores at night with my best friends, Smith and Wesson, and taking all the drugs."

  I try to be supportive. At our Goal-Setting and Calibration training they stressed "aligning with your subordinate's objectives." Say what you want about me as a manager, I was always aligned and frequently calibrated.

  "All right, Kansas. It's great you're clear on your objectives, but you might want to hold off on sharing that with your prospective pen pals. At least until your relationship has evolved a little bit."

  Kansas flings his Bic pen against the cinder-block wall and starts manipulating in earnest. "See, that's what I'm talking about. Your way with the words, dawg. Me, I'm more of a people person, know what I'm saying? O.G., you gotta write this for me— cellies are supposed to be down for each other."

  "I'll do it, but give me a few days to think of something. Look, I better roll it up before Strunk goes nuts."

  "Don't sweat that fat-ass punk! I think I got it— how about tattooing? I like getting tattoos. Is that a hobby?"

  "I think you're onto something. We'll put down that you appreciate art."

  "Art?" Then Kansas is pounding my back, positively aglow with a childish delight. "That's what I'm talking about! What else?"

  "Well, I notice you love reading about the Nazis and the Third Reich. Let's put down you love reading. In fact, let's say that you love European history!" I'm into it now, on a roll.

  "Nah, O.G., I don't know nothin' about European history. I just like reading about how the Germans crushed all them punk-ass countries like little grapes, y'unnerstan' what I'm saying?"

  "That's close enough."

  "So it's all good then?"

  "Hey— it's all good in the hood, wood."

  Strunk is smashing his fist against the cell door. "Roll it the fuck up now, O.G.! You're going to cellblock 1— the kitchen workers' unit. You can finish sucking your cellie's two-inch dick when he hits the yard."

  I hit the yard carrying my yellow tub, unescorted for the first time since I've been down. The fall sunshine is golden on my face and I feel free and easy, practically skipping down the yellow brick road.

  I'm not in Kansas anymore.

  The main yard is about the size of two football fields, a huge rectangle of dirt with a crumbling asphalt walkway. After the claustrophobic Fish Tank and the Shoe, I feel like I've finally reached the Promised Land. I'm as excited as a virgin at her first sacrificial altar.

  Six guntowers are strategically spaced just outside the dual razor-wire-topped fences so that virtually every section of the yard can be sprayed with bullets.

  Even if a dawg could somehow make it over or through one fence, he would then be stuck in a six-foot no-man's-land, confronted by a second fifty-foot fence— a fish in a razor-wire-wrapped barrel. Make it past the second fence (by flying, maybe) and there is nothing but miles of desert, no vegetation of any kind to conceal oneself. An easy target for the guntowers.

  To complete this Big Brother experience, surveillance cameras are mounted on top of the inner fence at twenty-five-foot intervals.

  It comforts me somewhat to know that subsequent to my being shanked forty or fifty times, the perpetrator might eventually be identified on video. Unless Stanger and the Dirt investigate, in which case my aerated corpse would be charged with possessing and concealing multiple chest wounds. And conspiring.

  Later I will learn of the "blind spots" in the yard— the narrow alleys between cellblock structures that are out of the sight lines of the guntowers and cameras. The blind spots are the preferred real estate for drug deals, slockings, shankings, or just good old general gang war mayhem.

  Despite what you see in the movies— convicts getting gang-raped in the showers and everywhere else in prison— in this particular, convicts are much like the rest of us, favoring a modicum of privacy for their more intimate encounters. The dawgs here regard rape as an indoor, enclosed recreation and thus pursue this interest in the safety and security of the cells.

  When the yard isn't on lockdown, it is open to pedestrian traffic from 7 A.M. till sunset. The walkways bustle like Times Square: convicts (and patrolling Dirt) on their way to work assignments, the handball court, the weight pile, the store, the chapel, the law library, or just to their houses for a nap. Most cons just cluster in little ethnic groups, watching, waiting, kicking it. These are the Yard Rats. And Kansas is King Rat. Or will be once he's out of the Fish Tank.

  A new fish schlepping his yellow tub through the yard is always an event of great interest, one invariably heralded by a "wire" from the intake clerks or porters to alert the Yard Rats just who is coming out, their gang affiliations, if any, their jacket details, and their stand-ups. It's like having your résumé posted on the Internet. Without the monthly fee.

  Thanks to Kansas's wire, every few steps I am greeted by some strange wood or even packs of these dawgs.

  "What's up, O.G.!" they shout. "When's Kansas gonna come out and kick rocks wid us?" they all want to know.

  "Aiight, O.G.," they call out, and give me a friendly nod. I am thinking of running for yard mayor, but I suspect Kansas already has that job. He's like Napoleon in exile right now.

  I answer all the dawgs with "What's up, dawg!" or with the other Convict Correct response: "Same ol' same ol'." I imagine I deliver these snappy retorts with such nonchalance, such panache, that they cannot help but regard me as a dawg who's down wid it— a Righteous Con!

  Of course I get into it. "Kansas will be kickin' it witchu soon, dawg!" I reassure the Peckerwood Tribe, the members easily distinguishable from the skinheads by their long, greasy hair and the puzzling absence of light when they open their mouths to smile at me. All the dawgs walk around bare-chested. The Peckerwoods prefer the nonpolitical tattoos: "Linda," "Sue," or "Amy" on their chests, their arms, their necks. A family-values bunch of guys with fresh tattoos that will only fade long after they have faded from the memories of girlfriends who have already faded into the arms of Jody or Sancho.

  Many of the woods are down with traditional decorations— tattooed dragons, serpents, crosses, swords, big-titted half-naked Amazons. They are walking billboards advertising everything but their native habitat— a trashed-out trailer park with the rusted shells of Camaros up on blocks surrounded by cr
ushed beer cans and broken syringes, their trailer treasures fiercely guarded by pet rottweilers.

  The skinheads like to sport their political and racial views on their literal sleeves. Lots of "SWP"— Supreme White Power— or "White" (back of left arm) "Pride" (back of right arm). The "NLR" tattoos are abundant, as are an astonishingly diverse variety of swastikas.

  Neither the peckerwoods nor the skinheads are the much-ridiculed rednecks with gun racks in their pickup trucks. The only guns or trucks these dawgs ever get to touch are the ones they steal, usually from their redneck acquaintances.

  These dawgs here are the people who are never invited to focus groups to share their views about the relative attributes of cellular versus PCS technologies. They are the castoffs, the undesirables of the Old Economy and the wretched dwellers in the crevice of the New Economy. They are the sunken-cheeked shadow people, the ungreat unwashed who silently seethe with a thousand ineffable resentments until, fueled by drink and drugs, they lash out blindly at their imagined oppressors, who often turn out to be their girlfriends or "common-laws."

  They end up in here, of course. And here, kicking it with their friends on the yard, is the only true and stable home they have ever known. A home they will return to again and again, as surely as the swallows fly south in flocks.

  And here I am. With them. Living among an alien and savage tribe that I once regarded as no more than a troublesome curiosity, safely distant.

  My lawyer, Shapiro, insists that I will serve no more than two years. That I am the perfect candidate for early parole. That I shouldn't worry.

  Shapiro was wrong.

  To my everlasting sorrow.

  * * *

  I report to a very young, generously pimpled C.O. in unit 1 who conducts a perfunctory search of my tub before assigning me to a bunk in B wing. Unit 1, home to cooks, bakers, dishwashers, floor sweepers, floor moppers, and food servers, is misleadingly referred to by the prison as having "dormitory-style" housing.

  I have a news flash for them: I have lived in college dormitories, and with the exception of the pervasive odor of infrequently washed bodies, there is no resemblance. Instead of two-man cells with upper and lower tiers, unit 1 (and don't call it a "cellblock" either) is a single-story concrete mausoleum containing several separate twelve-man barracks spread through three "wings."

  There is no Bubblecop. Just a C.O.'s small office in the center of a rotunda that boasts three phones, a small library, and an office for the unit caseworker. Instead of the double sliding steel doors of the Fish Tank, massive "crash gates" can be deployed by the console in the office to seal off each wing from the rotunda. In the event the Shit Jumps Off, we are free to maim, rape, and kill each other behind the locked gate. The C.O. locks the gate at nine each evening and keeps it open all day so the kitchen workers can get in and out.

  Each "dorm" area has its own communal shower and bathroom reached through a swinging door at the back of the dorm. The trays are not bolted to the wall. They are heavy metal slabs with four legs on the floor. Bedsprings are unheard-of here. Given what a creative convict can do with a pen or a toothbrush, just imagine the lethal potential of a bunch of bedsprings. This deprivation forces everyone to make his own shank out of metal supplied by the welding or auto shop.

  I schlepp my tub through the open crash gate of B wing, down a long dark corridor with twelve-man barracks on both sides. I use the tub to push open the door of my assigned dorm. The only doorknob in prison is rumored to belong to the warden's office. Status symbols are strange here (as they often are elsewhere: I recall once having counted the ceiling tiles in a new vice president's office to try to determine square footage and thereby quickly ascertain his importance in the executive officer hierarchy of the corporation).

  In my own cubicle I had a personalized stapler which I made sure was prominently displayed on my desk. It helped to let the new guys know who was who around there.

  Inside my new dorm, I am immediately assaulted by a bedlam of competing sounds— boom boxes blasting, TV talk show hosts inciting their guests to riot, radios blaring, and convicts yelling and jumping around. It was probably more peaceful in Dante's Inferno.

  Most of my new "roommates" have thirteen-inch color TVs on top of their tubs. Today everybody is tuned— at full volume— to The Jerry Springer Show. They are all yelling at the TVs, urging the guests on to even greater violence.

  I slide my tub under my bunk and arrange my sheets and blanket over the ridiculously thin vinyl "mattress." My new cellies are mostly woods and skinheads, with three blacks and a token ese sprinkled in to achieve some sort of diversity goal.

  They are all staring at me. I already long for the relative privacy and peace of my two-man Fish Tank home.

  On the bunk to my immediate right is a familiar lanky figure wearing an oversize plastic shower cap to cover his bush of a head. He is one of the few dawgs bothering to wear headphones as he gyrates and gestures to a rap song from his Walkman.

  T-Bone gives me a friendly welcoming smile and then shares the song with me by shouting out the lyrics, complete with the requisite gangsta hand gestures:

  "Busted a cap on yo bitch ass—

  You been down wid da white boyz

  Be tryin' ta pass—

  So now bitch

  Mutha-fuck yo dead nigger ass!"

  Content aside, I would say the Bone delivered this with a lot of feeling.

  "Whassup, O.G.!" The Bone and I exchange the cute little prison handshake that Kansas taught me. We clench our right fists, tap knuckles against each other, followed by three quick taps of one fist on top of the other. This ritual possibly has its origins in the playground game of "Rock, paper, scissor, match," where both guys are the Rock. Sometimes I feel like a social anthropologist on Mars.

  "Whassup, Bone— when did you get out of the Fish Tank?"

  "Ain't been here but two days. Ain't no black fish come on out with y'all?"

  "I don't think so, but I was strained up in the Shoe for a few days, so I'm not sure."

  "Heard 'bout dat, O.G." The Bone is glancing around, assuring himself that all the dawgs are still entranced by their TVs and boom boxes. He whispers something that sends a chill rocketing up my spine.

  "Best watch yo back, O.G. Big Hungry say you be up on his bitch in the muthafuckin' Shoe. The Hunger be layin' in the cut fo you— fo sho! Talkin' 'bout peelin' yo onion."

  "Who told you that?"

  The Bone hesitates, adjusting his shower cap. "Check it out, O.G. I ain't lookin' to catch nothin' but pa-role, know what I'm sayin'? We all just be knowin', dass all."

  A TV commercial break is the signal for some of the dawgs to come over and greet me. The Bone puts his headphones back on and retreats to his bunk.

  A skinhead who seems to be held together by sinew and spit is standing at the foot of my bed.

  "You gotta be the O.G.— Kansas says you're a Righteous Con. I'm Snake." Snake extends a clenched fist and we do the little knuckle dance thing.

  Snake has a spiderweb tattoo, which is not particularly unusual in here. What is unusual— and alarming— is that this spiderweb is tattooed on the Snake's face. The web begins at the top of his forehead and spins down over and around both eyes, giving a raccoon impression.

  It's a bit disconcerting until you get used to it.

  "When's Kansas hitting the yard? I hear that punk Stranger got him strained up in the Fish Tank pending some bullshit Dirt investigation."

  I tell Snake everything I know, which is nothing. Jerry Springer comes back and Snake turns to cheer on the berserking guests. The show's theme is "When Sons and Mothers Are Lovers." It is a big hit in the dorm, where everyone calls everyone else a motherfucker.

  I notice something on the back of Snake's shaved head that completely disorients me for a moment— two golf ball-size tattoos, inches apart. They are eyeballs. The Snake literally has eyes in the back of his head!

  And they are staring at me. This is almost as creepy as contemplating
the Hunger laying in the cut for me somewhere.

  And peeling my poor onion.

  The ice broken, a few of the other woods kick it with me, all of them asking about Kansas before racing back to Jerry, who is interviewing one of the mothers. Mom is wearing a tight black miniskirt, legs splayed in her chair, apparently striving for a Sharon Stone effect.

  "Fucking slut!" Snake screams.

  "Scandalous bitch!" yell the dawgs.

  T-Bone strolls down to the end of the dorm to join the two black youngsters who are also screaming at the TV.

  "Tore-up old ho!" they shout.

  "Nasty-ass be-yatch!" they scream at the TV.