You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

"She be nasty but that bitch got ass!"

  The woods are urging Jerry to "kick the bitch to the curb!" A couple of boom boxes are cranked up to drown out the TVs. In retaliation the TVs are turned up even higher.

  Our resident ese, a quiet young man with intense dark eyes, is trying in vain to read a book. He turns a page and shakes his head in dismay, aghast by the depraved, incestuous depths this gringo trash can sink to. The ese's name is tattooed on his neck— Loco.

  "Qué putas!" Loco murmurs before putting his own headphones on for protection. It is obvious to me that I will have to go to the store and buy a radio and headphones just to keep from going insane in here.

  I have an hour before I have to report to the kitchen, and the yard is open. Workers can come and go as they please. Like they're about something, if you know what I'm saying.

  The crash gate at the end of the corridor is open. So is the double front door of the unit. The adolescent-looking C.O. is studying his Hustler. I can just push the front door open. Amazing to me. I feel free.

  Then I'm on the yard, on my way to the store. Just like your average Joe Six-Pack on the streets who decides to pull into 7-Eleven for some chips and a brew or two. Or so I try to convince myself as I cross the yard, watching out for a certain Big Hungry Bastard layin' in the cut for me.

  I'm not completely clear on the concept of having one's onion peeled.

  But I suspect it ain't nothin' nice.

  * * *

  I do ninety days in the kitchen, mostly scooping clumps of green Jell-O or mashed potatoes onto plastic trays for patently ungrateful customers. It is the not-so-secret dream of almost every kitchen worker to find another job on the yard. Not because the kitchen work is particularly onerous— the Bone says "it ain't no thang"— but because escaping from the kitchen means also escaping from the Inferno of unit 1. Unit 1 is the only cellblock— excuse me, "housing unit"— without the cozy eight-by-six cells that most convicts prefer. Cell living, as opposed to "dormitory-style" life, is considered "preferred housing" by both the prison administrators and the cons.

  All fish are required to do a minimum of ninety days in the kitchen before being free to seek other prison employment. The phone company called it "pursuing outside opportunities" whenever someone was forced out or fired. The official company announcement was always the same, except for the names and the job title:

  "Marvin Finkelbinder, Vice President of Human Resources Quality Reengineering, has elected, effective January 1, to pursue outside opportunities." Marvin would be calling us in a week boasting about the plethora of profitable outside opportunities inundating his home fax before casually inquiring if we knew of any inside opportunities for an outside "consultant." Of course, he had nothing coming from us.

  The instant that news of Marvin's demise was announced, all the still cushily employed corporate dawgs would snicker at the water coolers. "Hear about old Marv? You mean the Finkster? What happened? He's history! Outside opportunities? You got it." And we'd all feel pretty good and smug about ourselves to have survived the latest downsizing, right-sizing, streamlining, restructuring, or the highly feared "market repositioning."

  Oh how we strutted about the corporate corridors like we were about something! I often obtain the same empowering sensation by reading the obituary columns. Particularly the death notices of my betters— who are seemingly legion. I am convinced it's only a matter of time and some unfocused scientific research until all situationally depressed people are taken off Prozac prescriptions and given subscriptions to the obituary sections of their local papers.

  * * *

  I like to get my exercise and entertainment by walking in endless circles around the yard, counting my steps. It's no longer oppressively hot and it beats kicking it in the Inferno with the Jerry Springer Fan Club.

  There is a bank of phones just outside the chow hall where the Yard Rats love to swarm around the young fish trying to call home. The Yard Rats here are either the weight-pile pumped-up skinheads or their first cousins, the woods. Most woods are just a haircut and a tattoo or two removed from a state of skinheadedness.

  This is how the Pressure works.

  A fish fresh from the Tank named Timmy finally gets his pale and trembling hand on a free phone. This is after he has paid a "toll" to the Yard Rats for the privilege of walking in their yard. He also has to pay the skinhead Phone Posse first if he wants to actually use the phone.

  It's the same economic principle we employed at the phone company by charging customers for both "access" (dial tone) and "usage" (toll). Except we called it "market bundling." A few of our detractors (mostly nutcase "consumer" groups) called it "predatory and monopolistic practices." Sometimes the phone lines of these public interest "guardians" would mysteriously stop working. Then they would frantically call 611 demanding instant restoral of service.

  You can bet they were high on our priority repair list! Ha! They had nothing coming! Go whine to the Public Utilities Commission. Punk-ass bitches!

  But I digress. The Phone Posse would pretend to wait on line behind Little Timmy so they could overhear each tremulous word to Mommy. As instructed, Little Timmy beseeches Mommy to send him some more money. He tells her it's for store items like stamps and envelopes so he can write her more often.

  He doesn't tell her the money is really for his daily yard toll. (A monthly fee can be negotiated at an attractive discount.) He also doesn't tell her it's for his cell or bunk rental or for his seat in the chow hall or his "life insurance policy."

  If Mommy questions why Little Timmy needs five hundred dollars a week for some stamped envelopes, if Mommy appears to be balking, one of Timmy's new friends might get on the line. He would politely explain to Mom that if she desires to have Timmy returned to her one day without an asshole the size of Texas, she should seriously consider contributing to his health and welfare.

  Sometimes— lots of times— this works. Unless this happens to be one of the calls randomly monitored by the prison. All calls are recorded but few are monitored. Or Mommy might take it into her head to call up the prison. She tells the whole shabby story to an assistant warden, who has only heard the music of these violins about five thousand times before. The A.W. assures Mommy he will immediately handle this outrageous incident and eventually refers it to the Dirt for investigation.

  The crack investigators of the Dirt review all of the phone tapes for the date and time in question. About two months later, decisive Dirt action is taken.

  Little Timmy is summoned to Dirt Headquarters, a wing in the administrative building. Timmy's visit is instant public knowledge in the yard. Sergeant Stanger sits a highly agitated Timmy down. He then delivers a friendly, fatherly lecture, a "tough love" kind of talk, which is overheard by the ubiquitous Skell mopping the office next door.

  "What are you?" Stanger says. "Some little punk-ass bitch? A snitch-ass punk whining and puling on his mommy's titty!"

  After a few minutes of tough love, Timmy breaks down, sobs like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and finally snitches out the Phone Posse and the Yard Rats.

  Stanger pats him on the back and offers a few final words of advice. "Be a fucking man! You did the crime, now do the time! Stand up for your little punk-ass self! Now get the fuck out of my office, you little snitch piece a shit!"

  Nobody likes snitches in prison.

  Timmy's "friends" visit him that evening at his bunk in C wing of the Inferno. Didja snitch? the dawgs want to know. Didja rat us out? Timmy swears up and down and sideways that he didn't snitch on anyone, would never try to get nobody crossed out and yada, yada, yada until the boys get completely nauseated and start slocking the crap out of him.

  A couple of the sickest dawgs then help Little Timmy into bed. They join him.

  Later they will brag about having administered a "snitch inoculation"— a series of penile injections up Little Timmy's already battered butt. No one in C wing saw nothing. Heard nothing. It wasn't their lookout, y'unnerstand?

  In the
morning the unit C.O. makes his rounds through the wings doing the six o'clock head count. He notices that Little Timmy can't get out of bed. He is less than responsive to simple sentences such as "What's your name and back number?" Timmy, his grill busted and dome dented, gets to visit the infirmary for a two-week vacation.

  Upon his release the Dirt make sure he P.C.'s up for the duration of his two-year sentence. The protective custody cellblock, adjacent to the Shoe, is nothing more than a twenty-four-seven solitary confinement lockdown unit. It is populated by Chomos, serial rapists, snitches, rape victims, and some of the more irritating J-Cats whose symptoms are not sufficiently smothered by Thorazine.

  Timmy's mom will receive an official-looking form letter assuring her of the "intensive and ongoing investigation," that "swift and certain measures" have already been taken to ensure Timmy's safety and rehabilitative progress.

  The yard swims with Timmys— fish food for the sharks. And more arrive every day even smaller and younger than Timmy, courtesy of the current fashion of trying and sentencing children as adults.

  In all fairness to the investigative prowess of the Dirt, there are cases where the phone-taping system has yielded some fruitful results. Just a year ago the Bone made his famous escape. Shortly after being sent from this prison to a minimum security conservation camp, the Bone just walked away from his duties as a firefighter. He figured he didn't start the muthafucka and, besides, it wasn't his lookout.

  An hour following T-Bone's abrupt departure, the Dirt reviewed hours of his recorded phone conversations with his girlfriend, Lucindreth, in Las Vegas. The Bone was indiscreet enough to confide his escape plan to her, including the address of his favorite crack house in Vegas "where I fittin' to lay up." The Bone says he only enjoyed a couple of hours of freedom, chillin' with Lucindreth and a pipe in the crack house before he was taken back into custody.

  He insists he did have time for sex with Lucindreth. He smiles shyly when he tells us he "got some stanky on the hang-low."

  The Bone is convinced the police violated his free speech rights. He spends all his free time in the law library, where he stares at the covers of big, intimidating books about the First Amendment and applicable case law.

  He tells anyone who will listen that it's all about "a muthafuckin' 'spiracy to silence the blap man."

  No one listens.

  'Cause the Bone got caught.

  And now he got nothin' comin'!

  * * *

  Sooner or later all new fish receive a "Heart Check" from the Yard Rats. It is a test of the inmate's willingness to physically fight back. It is considered a test of courage here.

  Timmy flunked his Heart Check. Stanger's tough-love speech to him was actually very much in alignment with the Code of the Stand-up Con. The fish who resist threats and extortion, who valiantly fight back and don't snitch when they are beaten down, are granted that all-important Respect on the yard. Having survived the Heart Check, they are frequently inducted into one of the many social clubs where they can proudly participate in the infliction of organized misery on fish with heart problems.

  Some fish that flunk the Heart Check and have no money are permitted to work off their rental and insurance overhead by serving as "Yard Tricks." They look out for the police or rival gangs. They keister balloons or even tattoo guns up their obliging assholes. They are employed to gather market intelligence on incoming vans of fish and J-Cats. Yard Tricks can be seen hustling across the yard carrying some righteous stand-up dawg's dirty clothes to the laundry or sweeping and scrubbing out the cells of the Shotcallers.

  In the corporation we called these guys gofers, or worse. You could identify them on the organization chart by their own little boxes just below some Executive Shotcaller. They would have titles like "Executive Assistant."

  My latest home, the Inferno, and the rest of the prison are run by a loose coalition of woods and skinheads known collectively as the Car. They even have an organizational mission statement of sorts: "If you're not in the Car, then you're out of the Car." The statement could use a bit of wordsmithing (a skill for which I was legendary at the phone company), but it essentially conveys the underlying threat of being kicked to the curb. To pursue outside opportunities.

  If Kansas is the chairman and CEO of the Car, then Snake is his chief operating officer. The Snake allocates, monitors, and controls the revenue-producing market segments— the phones, the store thefts, laundry, prison industry scams, and the very lifeblood of the Car, the drug trade.

  In Kansas's absence the Snake forges strategic alliances with the Toads, Eses, and the Tribe. The overarching goal is market stability and equilibrium. And that's something I'm down with. What former monopolist wouldn't be? Kansas has even worked out a generous revenue-sharing plan to preempt any emerging or presumptive competitors.

  The laundry here is an Ese-run subsidiary of the Car. Want your nasty underwear and socks machine-washed? No problema. Just haul your shit down to Luis at the window counter. Kick down some stamps, a few full decks of tailors, or even a store can of jalapeño peppers. You can buy yourself a month's worth of laundry services, including sewing and repairs.

  For a negligible charge, the eses will even throw some bleach in with your whites. Need your blue state shirt pressed and ironed? Por supuesto you do! Luis will hook you up, dawg, Luis will handle everything 'cause he knows his customers, he knows that your girlfriend, your novia, your esposa, is coming to visit and you need to be stylin' in a starched and pressed state shirt.

  Say what? You got… nothing? No estampillas? No tailors? No tienes jalapeños? Then you're burnt— whatchu got, amigo, is exactamente nada! Nothin' coming! Whatchu got is lost laundry, shredded laundry, wet laundry returned to you because your hand don't call for no dry cycle. Whatchu got is some quality time with your state soap and sink— hand-scrubbing your shit.

  " 'Cause," proclaims Luis, "ju ga notheen comin'— motherfooka!"

  Luis and his ilk may even be responsible for all these middle-class white kids kickin' it in the malls with their pants fashionably falling down below their underwear. When new fish are marched down to exchange their orange coveralls for blue jeans and shirts, Luis likes to flash a serious clipboard and make an elaborate pretense of recording requested sizes.

  He'll let the fish wait fifteen minutes at the window while he disappears back into the supply room. He invariably returns with a stack of triple-X-wide waists and shirts that could dwarf a circus tent.

  Since the state doesn't provide belts, the convicts do the best they can with pieces of laundry string that Luis will sell to them. Unless, of course, you can kick something down or pledge something from a future store. Then Luis will see to it that you're stylin'.

  The end fashion statement is called "jailing it"— a five-to-eight-inch revelation of white boxer tops precariously embraced by the string-tightened pants below. So who says convicts don't contribute to popular culture?

  I'm inordinately proud of the fact that I have a belt. I purchased it for twenty-five bucks' worth of stamps from a lifer with a precious "hobby-craft card." The prison issues only a handful of these cards each year and only to lifers who are permitted to purchase leather supplies and use the tools in the cramped hobby-craft office in the gym.

  My belt is my personalized stapler. It's hand-tooled leather. Just try to find a fish with a belt like this!

  Sometimes it is good to feel like you're about something.

  * * *

  My immediate supervisor in the chow hall is a convict, and fellow Inferno resident, named Scud. His official title is "Food Server Leadman."

  There are leadman cooks, leadman bakers, and leadman moppers. It's a seniority thing. The leadmen in the kitchen report to the Freemen— civilian supervisors, most of them aging free woods. Correctional officers are also posted in the kitchen, where they are nominally in charge. They rarely leave the comfort of their cluttered little staff office, located— out of sight— behind the bakery.

  The cop
s also know better than to interfere with the lucrative trade between the leadmen and Freemen. The only reason Kansas would bother to have drugs smuggled in through visiting is that he loves the drama of it all. Most of the contraband on the yard floods in through the Freemen, facilitated by a few entrepreneurial guards. Outside gangs provide the cash and occasional motivation.

  Scud is another template wood in his late twenties— full sleeves, empty mouth, and a filthy ponytail secured by an even filthier black rubber band.

  "O.G.— all you gotta do is scoop the motherfucking Jell-O into the left slot on the tray." This completes my orientation and training from Scud.

  "Is that it?" I ask, eyeing the giant metal vat quivering with green Jell-O, an ice cream scooper buried deep in the undulating mass. Sort of erotic, I'm thinking.

  "No, that ain't it," Scud sighs, clearly overburdened by the prospect of having to "train" yet another fish in the art of Jell-O dispensing. All this responsibility thrust upon his bony, amphetamine-attrited shoulders for the princely prison sum of ten dollars a month.