Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (17 page)

He yanked my pants off without much resistance, and I faded out again, but the pain and pressure of him entering me brought me back. He was humping me hard, and I couldn't breathe.

"I'm gonna pee," I wheezed. "Please, Eddie, I'm gonna pee!"

He stopped for a minute and asked if I could hold it. I couldn't so lie stopped. "OK, but we're coming back," he said. As soon as I got out of his room I told him I wasn't going back there. He ignored me. "Don't worry," is all he said.

I stood in the bathroom, but I couldn't pee. I didn't know what happened. A few minutes earlier I was about to go all over, and now that I was standing at the urinal, I couldn't pee. I stepped back and went into a stall. I pulled down my pants and sat on the toilet. Someone opened the door to the bathroom and held it ajar. After a few seconds, I heard it shut, but no one had cone in. I tried to shit but couldn't do that either. The door opened, and again, I couldn't hear anyone cone in.

"Are you all right in there?" It was Eddie.

"Yeah, I'll be out in a minute."

After a few seconds, I heard the door shut. No one had come in again. I dropped to my knees and threw up in the toilet. I heaved into the bowl until there was nothing left, resting my head on the rim. The cold porcelain felt soothing on the side of my face and forehead. I opened my eyes and watched the small bits of orange, prunes, and grapefruit floating in the water. I reached up and pulled the handle. Now I had to pee. I closed my eyes and felt the water swirling in the bowl and my breath bouncing off the surface of the water. The room was spinning again. When I opened my eyes, I was back under Eddie's bed. I don't remember walking there. He was fucking me, and it felt like I'd never left.

"I have to pee, Eddie, please I have to pee!" This time Ile just kept fucking me.

"Go ahead," he said, and his thrusts became more violent. I felt like I was going to, but I couldn't. And after a few minutes more, I tried, but nothing would come out. I wanted to piss all over his blanket, into his pillow, and onto the floor. I wanted to stink his room so badly that the smell would never leave, but nothing would come out. He let out a groan, and I felt him get larger inside of me, and then he collapsed. I felt his breathing in my ear, his breath on my face, and his heart beating against any back. My shirt was soaked, as was my hair, face, legs, and hands, but I still couldn't pee.

He offered to suck me off, but I said no. I just wanted out. I wanted to throw up, but there was nothing left. I didn't know how to stop this nightmare of a movie. How could I change the channels on a program I no longer wanted to see? The Eagles' "Hotel California" was playing quietly on the radio.

When I came out of Eddie's room, a tall white guy with black hair and thick black glasses was moving quickly toward me. He had something in his hand that glittered as the light bounced off of it. Chet and Slide Step were blocking his way, but he kept staring at me, trying to get around them. Chet and Slide Step were saying to him, "He's just a kid!"

Eddie pushed me back inside the room and closed the door. There was more screaming and arguing outside the door. Eddie turned and told me to hide under the bed.

"No!" I said. "I'm not going back there."

"Just go!" He screamed. There was a look of terror in his eyes. I didn't care. I wasn't going back under that bed. He kicked the chair from the desk and told me to sit down, opening his locker to hide me from view. The shouting in the hall intensified.

"Here comes the PO-lice," he said. "Just be cool. Just be cool."

My heart was racing. "What was in that guy's hand" I asked. He looked like he wanted to kill me.

"Don't worry about it," Eddie whispered, his back to me as lie looked out the window of his door. "Slide Step's taking care of it. You just be cool for a few minutes. You don't want to end up in the hole."

The arguing quieted down. There were still several voices, but the yelling stopped.

"Wait here!" he said. He stepped out, closing the door behind him.

I sat there shaking. What the fuck had just happened? Why would I go to the Hole? I didn't do anything. I couldn't even fucking pee. There was a wastebasket next to the desk. I bent over and dry heaved into it. There was nothing left.

I learned later on that the guy coming down the hall was Eddie's punk. He was angry that I was having sex with his man. He had taped razor blades beteen each of his fingers and was coming to slice me up.

"I'll fix that little pretty boy," he said, "She'll know not to mess with my man."

"Call it," Chet said, as he flipped the pink token in the air. Red and Slide Step were standing on each side of him. We were back in the north side card room. I didn't know how much time had passed, or how long I'd been sitting there, but it was later on that same day.

"Heads," Red bellowed.

Slide Step was silent.

Chet caught the coin and flipped in onto his arm.

"Tails!"

Chet nodded to both of them and came over to me. I was sitting in the same chair as before. I had vague recollections of being led there from Eddie's room. And these were the last people in the world I wanted to be with. The spins had stopped, but my head was pounding, and my face was still numb. It was like watching a Godzilla movie where the voices were out of synch. There seemed to be a delay from when Chet said something, and when I heard him say it.

"It's settled then," Chet announced. "From now on, you belong to Slide Step."

Red walked behind him and out of the room. Even with the dullness in my brain, I could tell he was angry. Slide Step took his seat against the wall and put his legs up on a chair. I looked over at him. He crossed his arms, gave me a gentle smile and looked out into the day room.

14

Slide Step's Squeeze

Sacred Heart Church. It was Ricky's Confirmation. I didn't understand the ceremony, but I was looking forward to having waffles for dinner. At seven years old, I hated church. It was long and boring, and I hated all the kneeling and standing and sitting and kneeling. The best part was afterward, when we went for a donut across the street. Eclairs were my favorite, with their dark chocolate frosting and vanilla creme custard on the inside.

Mom couldn't make Ricky's Confirmation. She was working afternoons, but would meet us at the Egg & I restaurant afterward, which is how I was having waffles for dinner. It was weirdgoing to church on a school night.

On the way from the service, Dad and Sharon talked about my mom. They were angry with her for missing the service and didn't think she should go to dinner since she hadn'tgone to mass. "Well I'm not paying for her dinner," Dad said, as he gazed out the window of our car, "even if'she is flat broke. " Sharon said, "I don't think you should."

When we arrived at the restaurant, she was waiting inside. I ran to her and gave her a big hug. She squeezed me tight, and there were tears in her eyes. I cried too. I always did whenever she did, I couldn't help it. Ricky and Connie gave her a hug as well, and then we all sat down to eat. Mom said her supervisor was doing her a favor by letting her sneak over on her break. She was sad she had to miss Rick's service, and she told him so several times. I didn't know what Dad saw in Sharon. Especially when my mom was the most beautiful woman in the world. My aunts and uncles were there too, but Mom seemed a little different. I was sitting next to her when the waitress came around to take our order. I asked fir an extra plate.

"Why the extra plate?" Mom asked.

`Because one's for you," I whispered.

The next morning I stepped out of 10 Building and into the sunshine. The weather was clear and sunny, and for the first time since I was attacked the day before, I felt my spirits lift. I loved the first warm days of the year and the air that's filled with the fragrance of spring. Riverside was in the country, so the outdoor air smelled fresh.

It took only a moment for the sounds of the yard and the pain in my rectum to smack my senses with the brutal reality of my surroundings. Basketballs were bouncing. Men were laughing. Radios blared from everywhere. I could hear steel hitting concrete in the weight pit off in the distance.

"That's Slide Step's kid," someone said, among a group of men standing at the foot of the stairs. He pointed at me. I smelled the pot from the joint they were passing. I lowered my eyes and hurried past, but one of them stepped from the crowd and blocked my way. "How you doing," he asked in a seductive voice.

"OK," I said, stepping around him.

They laughed as I raced off.

I decided to stroll the patchy green and filth-ridden yard. It had been exactly fifty days since I was last outside and free to walk on my own. I missed the isolation of being locked up alone in my cell in Quarantine. It seemed hard to believe that I had only been in general population for two days. So far, I'd gotten drunk, drugged, almost sliced to pieces by a jealous boyfriend, and sold-or rather won, in a coin toss. I wondered what day three would be like.

The thought of having been won in a coin toss was too much for me to take in. So whenever the memory of it would occur to me-I'd literally shake it out of my head. It was too devastating to comprehend-and since no one would ever know about it outside of here-I struggled to pretend like it had never happened.

I wanted to stay in bed all day, but I couldn't sleep. The guys in my dorm were rowdy, and then a guard came around and kicked us out. He said if we didn't have job assignments, we had to go into the day room or out in the yard until the afternoon count.

I thought about reporting the rapes, but my brother's voice rang inside my head: Punks are fucked, but Snitches get killed.

The twisted path that encircled the yard was made of blacktop. I wished I could walk out of there and somehow walk off what had happened to me the day before. I wanted to shake this dreadful, Oh my God, what has happened to me? feeling that haunted my every step. But it was too late. Everyone knew what had happened, and now everyone knew what I was-a fag. There was no going back.

"God damn!" said a black inmate, as he passed me. "That's a fine motherfucker right there."

"Mmm, Mmm," said another. "Slide Step's holdin' all the cards in this game!"

I couldn't stop replaying in my head what I could have done differently. Why did I drink? I know what happens to me when I get drunk. Hadn't Rick told me this was what happened to fish ? The intake psychologist had told me point blank that I'd get fucked. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened, even if I hadn't been drinking. Still, I hated myself for falling into their trap so stupidly.

They must have known I was gay from the moment I walked on the floor-even if I wasn't sure about it myself. What if I had just said yes, when Chet first asked? Would it have turned out differently? Red must have been in on it from the very beginning, and once it started, I couldn't do anything to stop it.

Thank God Slide Step stepped in when he did. He seemed different from the others. It would have been worse if he hadn't stopped it when he did. I asked if I would have to do something for him as well, but he told me not to worry about it for now. "When you're ready," he said. "I'm willing to wait."

I was relieved, because I was sore, and there was blood when I went to the bathroom. I was afraid to ask the guards to see a doctor, because I would have to explain what had happened.

I walked past 23 Building and looked up at the Segregation unit. I could go there for protection, but I'd have to tell them why, and then I'd be locked down twenty-four hours a day. Even with special good time, I had twentytwo and half months left to go. Six hundred and eighty-four days. I'd probably go mad and kill myself. It wasn't much of an option. Nor was getting my throat slit, like that asshole psychologist had said. You either fight or submit. At least I was still alive.