Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (21 page)

Slide Step was a powerful man, athletic and strong. He also ran the drug trade inside the prison, as his mother did on the outside. I heard that she was a large distributor who the other cons talked about. Slide Step had the juice, the power, and his hand in a lot of things. I just wished he wasn't so old. At thirty, he was nearly twice my age.

Scatter Brain came up behind me and tugged at my hair. It was long and curly, like Peter Frampton's (my favorite singer).

"Homeboy!" Scatter said, smiling.

"Hey," I smiled back.

If only Slide Step was seventeen like Scatter and me.

Manley and I returned up the stairs, each of us carrying a box full of goods. "You need to be careful, Tim, because Slide Step is responsible for whatever you get into."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, you're a pretty motherfucker, for one thing. And a lot of these guys are going to come at you."

I stopped and looked at him. "I thought Slide Step was going to protect me?"

"He is. I'm not talking about that." Manley put his hand on my shoulder. "They'll come at you from the side, on the down low, to see if you'll slip up and do something with them." Meaning, would I cheat on my man. Manley stopped to look at me. "It could be a problem because it would be a disrespect to Slide Step."

I must have looked hurt, because he backed off right away. He said that it would be easy for me-being a fish-for someone to trick me into a compromising situation. Then Slide Step would have to straighten them out. He didn't want to see Slide Step get fronted off like that. It would be better if I stayed close until I learned the ropes, so no one would do anything that would get them thrown in the hole.

Manley told me about a guy who knew his boy was fucking around on him, and he didn't do anything about it. "The nigger was from Saginaw," Manley said as an aside, meaning that if he wasn't from Detroit, he wasn't a real man no-how.

"So the next thing you know, he fucked around and lost his boy."

"How?"

"The guy just told the boy he couldn't talk to his old man anymore."

"So what'd the old man do?"

"Nothing," Manley said. "Which became a problem for him, because by doing nothing, he was showing himself as a punk. He ended up having to lock up, by going into protective custody."

"Why?

"It was either that or get a man. Because once someone shows himself as a punk, it's all over," Manley said. "Some guys are doing shit under the covers." In other words, getting fucked or sucking dick without anyone knowing about it, but as soon as someone finds out, they pull his "ho' card." A ho' being a whore, and ho' card meaning they were laying that way.

"Only a man can have a boy," Manley said. "And once a man finds out someone is a punk, she'll have to get a man, because she can't walk the yard alone."

I asked him why he called them she, and he said that a lot of men liked their boys to act and look like girls. Like Cisco, who wore pool chalk on her eyelids and grew long hair and nails. Prison was divided between the men on one side and the punks, drag queens, and boys on the other.

A lot of the boys were straight before they got there, but once they were turned out, they were no longer considered that way.

"Shit," Bottoms said one night in the dorm. "I'm going out of this motherfucker the same way I got here. I'm going right back to my woman."

"Oh, you think you're gonna be a man?" an inmate asked. "Bitch, you ain't no man! You weren't no man in here, and you damn sure ain't gonna be one out on the street. If I ever see your punk ass out in the world, I'm going right up to you and smacking you-pulling your ho' card right out in front of your woman. And then I'm taking her!"

"That's right bitch," another said. "You just ought to get off that bunk right now and do your man's laundry."

Black, who was his man, just laughed. He treated Bottoms like he was nothing, and the others felt free to do the same. If they crossed a line, Black would let them know about it, but he hardly ever showed Bottoms any mercy. "What the fuck would you do with a woman anyhow," Black said. "Bump pussies?"

Bottoms got quiet while the others laughed. He tried to hide what he was feeling, but the color in his cheeks gave him away. I thought about Beth (Pizza Face), and I wanted to do something, but there was nothing I could do. Speaking up would have turned their attention on me, so I just lay there on my bunk fingering a zit on the side of my face. I didn't want to get Slide Step involved in something that wasn't any of my business. It was the kind of thing that Manley had been warning me against.

I felt sorry for Bottoms, because of how he became a punk. And because of how he struggled to accept his circumstances. He confided in me once that he used to think he was straight, but then a few times-while he was being fucked-his dick got hard by itself. "I even came once," he said, "without touching myself. So I figured that maybe it was a sign that I'm really gay." If Bottoms could have talked to the prison doctor, he might have been told that his involuntary ejaculations had something to do with the involuntary massage of his prostrate-but Bottoms remained convinced that it was his own fault.

I heard Red say once, "The tip of my dick can't tell the diff. It's hips, lips or fingertips," he said. "'Cause when I close my eyes, it's all good." But for some men who were uncomfortable with the notion of having sex with other men, the more their boys looked like women the better. Sonic made them even change their names. One boy, who was named Bobby, became Barbi, while others were forced to dye their underwear red (using hot Kool-Aid) because their man wanted to see them in panties. The men generally wore boxer shorts. While the white fitted briefs, because of how they hugged the ass-were preferred for the boys. The inmates called them Come-Fuck-Me's.

I didn't care what happened to me, I was not going to change my name and become like one of those queens. They made me feel ashamed of what I was becoming in there, and the further away from them I got-the better.

I thought about Cisco and how helpful she was the day after my rape, as I walked the yard in a daze. I didn't feel threatened by her, nor by the two old timers that were with her. They were small and weak, and I could have easily defended myself. And because California was a queen, I felt superior to her, so I was willing to make an exception. So I swallowed my pride to talk to her. Especially since she was leaving in a couple of weeks.

Manley explained "swapping up," which was when two boys got together to take care of each other sexually (since a man wasn't going to be any help in that area). "But clear it with Slide Step first," he said, "because you don't want to start any problems."

It wasn't going to be a problem, because none of the "boys" appealed to me. The drag queens were too swishy for me, and I didn't care for the few boys I'd met. It was all a bit overwhelming.

Except for Manley and Red, the rest of the men in Slide Step's circle all had boys. Chet's boy was away at court but was due back later that week, and I had almost met Eddie's, the day he came after me with the razor blades that were taped between his fingers.

Taylor's boy, Paul, was eighteen. He was slender and short, about 5 feet 6 inches, with long red hair, which he kept pulled back in a ponytail. Taylor called him Green Eyes. When I first met Paul, he was distant and cold, and I was convinced he didn't like me, but Slide Step said it was because I was prettier than him and he didn't like the competition.

I blushed when Slide Step said it.

"You know you're a bad motherfucker, right?"

I didn't, but I did like hearing it. I never heard that back home. The girls in my neighborhood liked me, but not like that. "You're the sweetest boy we know," Tammy and Carol said, as they kissed me on the cheek and ran off with the bullies.

"Well you are," Slide Step said. "You're the baddest motherfucker in here. And you've got quite a few of these motherfuckers jealous."

I wouldn't have been able to admit it, but I was beginning to enjoy the attention. I felt my step lighten, just a little bit higher. I raised my eyes from blacktop and saw that people were watching as Slide Step and I circled the yard. He didn't say anything for a while. We just walked and I felt less selfconscious the second time around.

"You know," he said. "You'd make a good drug dealer some day."

"How's that?"

"Because you don't use," he said. "Most guys who get high, end up using their profits, and then you can't trust 'em."

Slide Step didn't do drugs either, except for an occasional joint or little spud juice every now and then. He seemed smarter than the others and I was beginning to trust him.

"Maybe you can work for me some day," he said.

"Really?"

He nodded. "But after we both get out of here." Slide Step's sentence was a lot longer than mine. He was serving a fifteen-to-twenty-five-year sentence for assault.

His gaze became serious as he stared off across the yard. His eyes gleamed with all their power, but underneath his cool icy stare seemed to be a lonely man who wanted to reach out and connect with someone. Yet prison was hardly the place where you could let your guard down easily.

A few days later, Slide Step and I were talking when Red walked up to us. I asked Red if he could give Slide Step and me a minute alone.

"What!" Red shouted. "What did you say?"

Suddenly, Slide Step was standing between us and then marched me up the hall. I didn't know what I had done.

"Bitch!" Red shouted. "You don't be asking me nothing. Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Hold up, Red!" Slide Step said. He had an embarrassed look on his face, but I couldn't tell which one of us had embarrassed him.

"That's your man's job, Bitch. You don't ask a Man nothing!" Red said.

Slide Step walked me into the shower room and sighed. "Let me handle this."

He explained that Red was still pissed he couldn't have me. I couldn't help thinking how differently my life would've been had Red won the coin toss. He treated people like shit. I was afraid of him because he was shorttempered and mean, and from what I gathered from Slide Step, he didn't treat his boys much differently.

"The last one locked up for protection," he said. "Red chased him across the yard."

"Why?"

"Because Red was smacking him around."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because that's Red," was all Slide Step would say at first. The two of them had been friends forever, Red having worked for Slide Step's mom. He and Slide Step also served their first bit together.

"Red wanted to brand him," Slide Step said, "but the boy wasn't having it. So he broke loose and ran screaming, buck naked, across the yard to the Control Center."

"Brand him?"

"Red was going to tattoo RFD's Pussy across his ass."

The boy was Grasshopper, my friend from Quarantine. "He'll be all right," Slide Step said. "He's been transferred to H-ward, the protection unit over at M-R."

Grasshopper had arrived at Riverside a couple of weeks before I did, but by the time I got there he was already gone. They held a similar reception for him as they had for me. I asked Slide Step if Red won the coin toss that time, but he didn't answer me. He just looked at me for an uncomfortable moment, and then he tussled my hair. "I wouldn't know, Squeeze, I wasn't around when it happened."

"How can you be friends with him?"

He shrugged. "We grew up together."

I was quiet. I didn't know what else to say. Slide Step just stared off.

"We're very different," he said, "but if I need him, I know he's got my back."

I wondered what would happen to me if something bad happened to Slide Step. One thing was certain; I'd run to the Control Center as well. Slide Step said that Red had another boy, for a long time, and that he was crazy about Red. He must have treated him differently, I said, but Slide Step told me Red always treated his boys the same. He treated his women the same way too. I couldn't understand how someone would be loyal to a man who was mean and abusive. Not even in prison, where there's little choice. It didn't make sense to me.

Drugs were smuggled into prison by way of rubber balloons. They were double wrapped if it was heroine or cocaine, and the inmates would swallow them in the visiting room. The next day, they'd shit the balloons out and clean them up before opening them.

Manley said, "You can get just about any drug you want in prison; heroine, cocaine, reefer, or speed. Whatever it is you need."

"What if the balloon breaks?" I asked.

Manley smiled. "Well then you go out happy," he said.

Slide Step was quiet. We were lying on the grass talking.

"The drugs in prison are always the best," Manley said.

"How come?"

"Because they have to be," Slide Step said. "There's nowhere to hide."