"You think that I'm not scheduled for the Parole Board?" My voice is calm, my mind seeking out the mantra I paid thirty-five dollars for at a T.M. class in 1972.
"No— you are going to the board," Wally reassures me. "You'll just have to go sans Anger Management Certification. However, the board will take note, so to speak, of the fact that I have put you on the program track for the class."
Oh, this little pedantic, punk-ass twit! Must not let him see I'm just a tad irritated, so to speak. Oh no.
"Tell me, Jimmy— may I call you Jimmy?— does this unfortunate hiatus in programming perturb you? Perhaps it even angers you a bit, so to speak. Mayhap just a bit?"
"Mayhap not a bit, Wally. In fact, I'm quite appreciative of your efforts to guide me along the appropriate program path." When in doubt, never underestimate the power of Brown's Ass-Kissing Axioms. Mayhap toss in a bit of the old Mirroring and Echoing Sales Training techniques in my mangled ninth-grade French.
Wally is smiling now. "Tell me about sex," he says.
"Sex? What about sex? You have programs for it or something?"
"Most assuredly— more like sexual deprogramming, so to speak." Wally is sniffing now in my I-file for the scent of sex. "Hmm… that's regrettable— no programming opportunities in here. And we have a very comprehensive Sexual Offender Program."
"Well, maybe my next trip."
Wally scratches out "Managing Sexual Compulsions" from his list of abeyed programs. Returns to my life history file in search of other programming opportunities.
"Hmm… I see that this is your first arrest— most unusual. Absolutely no criminal history to work with, so to speak."
"And isn't that good? Doesn't the Parole Board look favorably upon first offenders?" (My lawyer, Freddy Shapiro, assures me that my limited résumé of depravity will guarantee early parole.)
Wally is annoyed by my continual references to nonprogramming events. "I think the Parole Board is more impressed by appropriately scheduled programming." Wally has finally reached my PSI and police report.
"What was the deadly weapon?"
"Isn't that right there in the police report in front of you?"
"Indeed… indeed… but programming works best when the inmate participates in the process. Never mind— mayhap we can mine out some programming material from the reports."
Wally pushes his state-issue glasses against the bridge of his nose and reads aloud.
"When the defendant, Jimmy A. Lerner, was attacked by one Dwayne Hassleman— the deceased— in the living room area of the Diamond Executive suite of the Excelsior Hotel in Las Vegas where Mr. Lerner…" Wally's little lizard of a tongue leaps out at the mention of Excelsior. "Hmmm… isn't that the hotel that hosts the Dot-Comdex conventions? Is that what you were doing in Vegas? A little jaunt from the San Francisco Bay area, a bit of fun? Hmmm… Comdex sounds like some kind of naughtiness for the techie set. Were you—"
"No, Wally, I wasn't there for any naughty conventions."
Unconvinced, Wally resumes his mining expedition. "…whereupon the defendant, Jimmy Lerner, called 911…"
Wally has apparently found a programming nugget. "Calling 911 was good, Jimmy. Very good."
I'm down now with the programming program. "Thank you, Wally, but is it programmable?"
"I'm afraid not. There are no elements of denial present. You made a full statement— a confession, actually— even waived your rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present."
"So denial is good— from a programming perspective?"
"Well, let's just say it's better than the truth— from a purely programming perspective, of course."
"Of course."
Wally is now digging down through the medical examiner's report. "Hmmm… we may have something here… oh indeed… Hassleman's autopsy shows 'extraordinarily high levels' of methamphetamine, cocaine, morphine, codeine, barbiturates, not to mention an alcohol level of…" Wally trades this report for a copy of the preliminary hearing.
"Let's see… this Hassleman was described as a 'veritable fruit salad of narcotics'… interesting turn of phrase… and you, Mr. Lerner, admitted to having been drinking and playing blackjack all day. The witnesses say you threatened to kill the defendant, threatened to kill him just shortly before you took a taxi back to the hotel, and Mr. Hassleman burst into the room with the knife, and…" Wally's hand flutters above us, searching for the correct words. "And you shortly found it somehow necessary to prematurely dispatch Mr. Hassleman's soul, to cleave it, so to speak, from the flesh." Wally looks at me for agreement. "N'est-ce pas?"
"C'est vrai, Wal-lee, except for the cleaving business. So where's the programming jackpot?"
"It's right there in the report— drinking all day at the tables! This is programmable. Alcoholism is the best! Drugs are good too. We have a BADA class here— Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Abuse— a wonderful program, especially when overlaid with Anger Management!"
I don't know why I ask, but I have to. "Can you enroll me in BADA then?"
"I think not. Funding cuts. Most regrettable. But I'm putting you at the top of the waiting list. In the meantime, you can go to an A.A. meeting. They cost the state nothing— even the books are donated. The Twelve Steps are most cost-effective."
"But I understand they've been suspended as well."
"Not at all. A bit of an A.A. programming hiatus, perhaps, while Sergeant Stanger sleuthed down the source of a certain Pert shampoo bottle— most regrettable. However, the Brotherhood of Bill will be reassembling— sober, let us hope— imminently."
"And the Parole Board looks favorably upon A.A. attendance?"
Wally, dismayed by my exclusive focus on getting out of prison, actually responds out of the side of his neck.
"Well, certainly more favorably than they do on people who decide to top off a day of blackjack and drinking by killing someone."
"Touché, Wally. When do they meet?"
Wally consults his desk calendar. "Sunday at noon— you are an alcoholic, right?"
"A card-carrying member, Wally. I even have the chips to prove it. You're sure that alcoholism is good— from a programming perspective?"
"Most assuredly."
"I'll be at the next meeting then."
"Good luck with the board, Jimmy."
"Thanks. I hope luck doesn't enter into the decision."
"I would think not. Remember to tell them you and I have met and decided upon a full programming schedule, so to speak."
I think not. But I bury this thought beneath the rubble of my newfound programming potential.
So to speak.
* * *
In the rotunda the Phone Posse is collecting toll charges from the new fish. C.O. Fallon looks on with quiet resignation from his sealed-in kiosk. I would characterize Fallon's managerial style as somewhere between "hands off" and "not present or accounted for."
He waves me over to his office. "Where's your glasses, Mr. Lerner?" Fallon is opening the steel door so I won't have to talk through the slot at the counter.
"They were a casualty of the last great Dirt wars."
"Sorry to hear that. Listen, do you know a lot about divorce in Nevada? I heard you filed the paperwork for C.O. Leach and it all went smoothly." He motions me into the tiny kiosk.
Inside his tiny domain I can detect the distinct odor of opportunity. "I might be able to help you with that," I tell him. "A couple of questions."
"Shoot."
"Is it going to be uncontested?"
Fallon tilts back in his chair, runs a hand through his gray hair. "Well, I'm not going to fight it, if that's what you mean. She's the one who filed, though, so I got to do something and the lawyers are all wanting four or five hundred dollars."
"I'm sorry about your troubles. Are there any custody issues?" Fallon looks far too old to have minor children, but hey, this is Nevada— you never know.
"No… she's never been in custody— well, maybe one time behind a drunk driving beef. But she
beat it in court. Why?"
"No, I mean do you have any dependent children, child custody issues?"
"No. We have three kids, but they're all grown up and gone from the house now." The scent of opportunity is crystallizing, and despite my myopia I can now make out the shape of glass.
"I need new glasses," I tell him.
A few minutes later Fallon has the name of my optometrist in Danville and I have most of the information I need to fill out the simple forms. I love community property laws.
I emerge from the office to the barking of the dawgs by the phones. "O.G. is on the leg!" "He way up on the Man!" But this is all good— just good-natured barking. Sometimes a convict can spend just a minute in the office and come out with a snitch jacket that will smother him later in his cell— literally.
But Kansas and the Car, the Bone, and the others yelling all know that the O.G. is a Stand-up Con.
So to speak.
* * *
A day before the Parole Board I'm styling in the yard with my new glasses on my way to get my A.A. program ticket punched. It's still early, so the temperature is only about 105 degrees, with occasional gusts of sand and dirt stinging my face.
I never see Two-Tears Tattoo coming.
He stabs me in the chest while I'm wiping grime off my glasses. The shank is a piece of paper from the Parole Board.
"Whatchu dodging me for, Lawdog?" Two-Tears asks, quite reasonably. "I ain't lookin' ta sweatchu. I want to appeal this punk-ass Parole Board bullshit."
I read the notice, pleased that there is not the slightest tremor in my hand— not so anyone would notice anyway. All this time, all this fear, and all Two-Tears wanted was legal advice. I'm trying to remember which phone company seminar trainer distributed a handout explaining that "FEAR" was an acronym for "false expectations appearing real."
"I'll be glad to help you out, dawg," I say, shaking the sand from the document. "Parole is denied…" An inauspicious beginning.
It turns out Two-Tears recently spun the parole Wheel of Misfortune and came up with the worst-case scenario— a "dump until expiration of sentence." His sentence structure is the same as mine— two one-to-sixes, bowlegged. The "denial" notice essentially says, "Come back and see us in three more years, convict, after you've done every day, every minute of your sentence. Don't call, don't write, 'cause you got nothing coming!" The board does not have to provide a reason and it doesn't.
And when Two-Tears is granted parole on the first one-to-six, he will probably be required to serve out his next sentence in full, about four more years, assuming he accrues good-time credits. The parole commissioners' vote, listed at the bottom of the notice, was unanimous. Two-Tears would have a better chance of appealing global warming.
"What is it you think I can do?" The Parole Board decision is an "administrative" one, not a court action.
Two-Tears, beneath his carefully cultivated badass goatee, actually has an open, not-unpleasant face, perpetually weeping two blue tears.
"I know I got nothin' comin', Lawdog— I just want to know how they figure the good-time and work credits toward the expiration." I break the math down for him, we knuckle-dance, and once again, for O.G. it's all good in the prison hood.
Until I get slocked by the next set of false expectations.
* * *
I am no stranger to A.A. meetings.
Years before I would voluntarily show up in the church basements, I dated a girl in college who first introduced me to A.A. She was a strikingly beautiful girl with a penchant for Sylvia Plath's poetry and Wild Turkey. I shared her fondness for the Wild Turkey. Her name was Crystal, a name she gave to herself because she said it was a "good hippie name." I told her it was a good hooker name.
We had communications issues.
Whenever Crystal wasn't working on her Dylan Thomas term paper or recuperating in the university hospital from a suicide attempt (always halfhearted), she would insist I accompany her to her A.A. meetings. She was convinced that I was also an alcoholic. That, unlike her, I was in denial. I denied this but would accompany her to her meetings. From her perspective it was a "bonding" opportunity for our relationship. Long before it became fashionable, Crystal wanted me to "feel her pain."
The A.A. meetings in prison are just like the ones back in the world— except for the wolf tickets and the violence. The 12-Step Guide to Meeting Etiquette (still awaiting a publisher) contains strict admonitions against "cross-talk"— interrupting someone who is "sharing," or worse, directing one's own comments at someone else in the meeting, usually with a nonspiritual intent.
Cross-talk is the very lifeblood of prison A.A. meetings. Screaming, shouting, and death threats are perfectly acceptable. Share something considered outta line— say, how you got really shit-faced behind a quart of tequila one night and went to bed with a similarly shit-faced (but lovely) twenty-three-year-old woman, and then share that when you awoke to the harsh, sober nontequila sunrise, your drunken sex partner from the night before had inexplicably shed ten years in her sleep and woke up next to you as a thirteen-year-old with big tits: this sort of confessional sharing, while preferable to acknowledging she barely had any tits, that, in fact, she had sprouted a big dick while you slept, usually elicits some cross-talk.
"That's outta line, dawg!"
"You be one child-molesting muthafucka!"
"I got something for you on the yard, Chomo!"
In prison the discreetly recovering inmate quickly learns to subdue his tendency toward rigorous honesty. Instead, he eventually develops a politically correct narrative in which all past misdeeds and errors in judgment can be attributed to the evils of John Barleycorn. The devil made me do it!
Seven of us Wally-programmed convicts sit in a small circle on metal folding chairs in the GED classroom. Taped to the walls are the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. No cops, unless you count Bubblecop down the corridor. There is a sign-up sheet passed around by our group "secretary," Ace— a Life Without but with a major attitude. Ace looks like Charlie Manson on a bad hair day. Crankster thin, muddy dark eyes set in a stygian stare, hair and beard one continuous, furious tangle.
The strange thing about the sign-up sheet is the one hundred or so "signatures" with back numbers, despite the presence of only seven of us. One of Ace's secretarial perks is signing in phantom members of the fellowship who need "programming credit" (the lists are turned in to Wally) but have scheduling conflicts. Ace's sign-up services can be obtained for a full deck. I decline the service. Teacup and Tooshay also decline.
Somewhere Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob spin in their graves.
After welcoming the new "members" by explaining that he, Ace, has been "running these meetings" for the last six years, he opens the meeting. "Today's topic is acceptance," Ace directs. He tells us to confine our comments to one minute or less or "get the fuck out of my meeting."
I read the wall poster. A.A. Tradition Two states, in part: "Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern." Perhaps Ace's copy of the Big Book is missing that page.
Ace is reading from the book. "…and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today… Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake." Ace looks up and glares at us, flashing two fanglike crank survivors. Teacup and Tooshay give me horrified glances.
"Who's gonna share first!" Ace demands. He points to Teacup. "You— fish! What have you got to say about what I just read?"
Teacup, who just celebrated his fourteenth birthday, lets loose with a small moan and turns his redheaded mop and handles toward the posters on the wall. This enrages Ace, who starts pounding on his Big Book.
"The answer isn't on the fucking wall! The answer— all the fucking answers are contained in the first 164 pages of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous!" Ace emphasizes each word of "Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous" with a savage hand smash against the book's cover. The back of Ace's right hand bears a common prison tattoo: "H-A-T-E," one letter on each knuckle. I glance at the back of
his other hand expecting to see "L-O-V-E." Instead, his other hand also reads "H-A-T-E."
Guess Ace missed that movie with Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck. Or was that Robert De Niro?
"I haven't read the book yet," Teacup mumbles into his state sneakers.
"Then shut the fuck up!" our trusted servant rages.
Teacup's freckled face compresses with the promise of tears. Please don't let him make the kid cry, I pray to whatever Higher Power might be paying attention. Ace, smelling the fear, escalates the verbal assault.
You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish Page 25
