Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (37 page)

"Well, you know, I've got quite the reputation ..."

I knew about her reputation. "She sucks a mean dick," was the other thing I'd heard about her, which I suspect was her primary (if not only) attraction.

I had never received a blowjob before, so I wouldn't know what I was missing, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get it up for her. "Thanks, but no thanks," I said.

"Well, suit yourself, but you can't blame a girl for trying."

It may have seemed like a trivial thing, a simple book and a few cigarettes, but as I was quickly realizing, nothing came for free in prison.

Black Diamond placed them back on my bars. "Don't worry about it," she said. "My man puts plenty of coin in my commissary."

"Thanks," I said, but I felt uncomfortable taking it.

"You know, Tim. If you don't want what's been happening, to keep happening, you gonna have to learn how to work it."

"That's right," Ginger shouted. "Your pretty white ass is too fine to be up in here suffering. But don't just survive girl, you gots to learn how to thrive!"

"Never mind her," Black Diamond said. "She's just a nasty old cell hop."

"Don't be getting' shady with me, Miss Diamond. I'm just trying to help the boy. He's sitting on a gold mine, and he don't even know it."

"Ain't nobody gettin' shady with you, but you need to stay out my business. If that boy listened to you, Miss Gingivitis, he'd be turning tricks till he needed dentures."

"Oh yes you are, you ugly bitch, you're over there livin' on Shady Lane with all that smack you're jackin'."

"Say what?" Black Diamond said. "Do you talk to your momma with those lips, or do you just use 'em to suck the Milk Duds out your daddy's ass?" "Hello!" the scorekeeper yelled.

"Look," Black Diamond said, "If you don't shut your twat, I ain't gonna read to you no more."

Ginger didn't say anything.

"OK then. Now stay out my affairs." She turned her attention back to me. "I'm just sayin', as long as you keep hanging to the outside world, and walking around here like your some kind of lost sheep, then these motherfuckers are just gonna keep doggin' you. So you need to put that shit right out your head and start playing this game for real."

"Oh, shut up, you ghastly ho'," Ginger said. "I ain'tgonna read to you no more!"

"Look, bitch! I'm not kidding," Black Diamond said. "You better shut up."

"She's right," Ginger said. "You gotta stay strong, girl. Throw some shade and make these motherfucker pay! You've gotta go from What can I do? to What can I do You out of, baby? You know what I'm saying to you, girl?"

I wasn't sure I knew exactly, but Black Diamond was right about one thing-it was time I let go of the outside world. I was spending too much time thinking about it. Retreating from whatever was happening inside prison-to my memories of childhood and home-like my brother Rick had told me to do. "It would be my memories that helped keep me together," he said. But Rick had been wrong about a lot of things, and so maybe he was wrong about that too. So I was now ready to let go of the past, and to concentrate on being present, so I could learn what I needed to learn to survive in here. I don't know that I was ready to learn how "to work it," like Ginger was saying, but I was definitely tired of being a sheep that kept getting "dawgcd" by other inmates.

The next morning, I was transferred to Jackson Prison.

When I arrived at Quarantine, the deputies who had transported me to the state prison must have told them what happened to me earlier at the county jail, because I was processed immediately and placed back on TwoSpecial-the set of cells next to the guards station on the second tier. Ironically, I was put in Grasshopper's old cell, which had been next to mine the first time through.

I wondered how Grasshopper was doing, and if he had learned how to adapt by now. Perhaps he got a man to protect him. And if so, maybe he got as lucky as I had, by having someone who cared about him like Slide Step seemed to care for me. So much seemed to fall to chance, if you weren't proactive in some kind of way. "You can hurry up and get you a man," Black Diamond had said to me. "You choose one of them, before they choose you."

Since I had already gone through medical and educational testing last March, I didn't have to wait the full six weeks to meet with the Classification Committee. It only took three. Yet it seemed much longer. By now, I was eager to get back to Riverside. It wasn't the prison I missed so much, as it was Slide Step. With him there, I didn't have to worry about what was going to happen to me. And even the sex wasn't so bad. At least he didn't try to hurt me. And anything else an inmate could have in thereSlide Step made sure I had it. Including Brett! Yet oddly enough, I'd hardly thought about Brett at all since I'd been gone. It was Slide Step who I kept thinking about.

"Why do you want to go back to Riverside?" the head of the Classification Committee asked. He was a man in his fifties with short dark hair and glasses. He didn't look the type who would understand.

"I like it there," I said. "Can I please go back?"

"But it's a higher security and you now qualify for medium security placement."

He looked at the other two members, who were looking back and shaking their heads. "We don't understand why you'd want to go there, when you can go to a lower security facility with inmates who are closer to your own age."

"I feel safe there," I said.

I couldn't think of what else to say, and for the first time, I realized how deeply I had cared for Slide Step-because the pain I was feeling, deep down in my gut, had nothing to do with concerns for my safety.

"Please," I begged. "Can I please, just go back there?" But this sudden realization of how I felt for Slide Step, was too late.

"No. I'm afraid not."

My heart sank.

"We're sending you to the Michigan Training Unit, where you can finish high school and acquire a trade, so you can be productive when you get back out."

I didn't want to get back out. I wanted to go to Riverside. I didn't care anymore, about guys my own age. I just wanted to go home, to Riverside.

27

Greener Grass

We had gone out to eat at a family restaurant. Everyone was there except for Ricky. He was down in Florida serving time for forgery. Dad ivas hungover and was making up to Sharon fora disappearance.

I looked over at the family sitting at the table next to ours. The son, who was about my age of fourteen, was talking and everyone at his table was listening to him. His dad smiled as he placed his hand on the back of'his son's neck. Everyone laughed.

The boy's clothes looked different than mine-they were cleaner and new-and he sat up taller in his chair, even though he seemed shorter than me.

I wondered how different my life would have been, if' I had lived with them.

According to the orange-covered rulebook, The Michigan Training Unit was a nmediunm-security prison for the more educable inmates under twenty-one years old. The focus was on rehabilitation, and everyone there was required to work and go to school.

For all the structure that had been missing at Riverside, the Michigan Training Unit had made up for in programming. They offered high school and college, GED preparation, and training in vocational trades. The place was so strict that if you stepped on the grass between the walkways, you were issued a misconduct report.

The warden, Mr. Richard A. Handlon, prided himself on running a model facility. He was a man in his fifties, who was fat and bald and wore his pants so high above his waist that he looked like Humpty Dumpty. But Warden Handlon was not the kind of man you could fuck with, because he didn't play. The rules were strict, and if an inmate received too many tickets or filed one too many grievances, he'd have them "rode out" or transferred to another prison.

For the most part, the inmates in medium-security were all within a few years of parole, so it wasn't as dangerous as a close-custody or maximumsecurity prison. But just because there was less violence, didn't mean there was none at all.

When I first arrived, I was assigned to G-unit, which was a converted shop class that resembled an army barracks. It had a high ceiling with long double rows of bunk beds and lockers. Fish had to wait up to three or four weeks until a room opened up in one of the six main housing units.

From the outside, the main housing units looked like student housing. Two-story tan brick buildings with faded turquoise trim. But inside, there were open-tiered cellblocks, with single-man rooms in place of the cells. In the newer buildings, the windows opened onto lawns and were large enough to crawl in and out of. Inmates also had the privacy of rooms with doors that locked, and each of us was given a key to his room. The central chow hall once a week served cheeseburgers and pizza. Were it not for the double barbed-wire fences and gun towers that surrounded the compound, it could have passed for a college campus.

But it wasn't just my surroundings that were different: the inmates' behavior and attitudes were different, especially when it came to queers. Perhaps it was because many of them had just come from the outside world and they didn't have long to go before they got out. Or maybe it was because everyone was so young. I heard a guard say that younger inmates were more difficult to control because they were quick tempered and got into fights easily. I had hoped to keep secret all that happened to me earlier, but the inmates had already heard about me.

"He's laying that way," I heard a guy whisper. "He was fucking at Riverside."

I was up on my bunk reading, when someone said, "Uh-oh, Don't squeeze the Charmin." That's when one of them grabbed my ass. I spun and swung at whoever it was, jumping down from my bunk all in the same motion. It electrified the barracks, where hostilities were already tense. The inmates started yelling and cheering.

He was a black man, about my size, and we exchanged a few slugs before wrestling to the floor. "Kill that peckerwood," a black inmate shouted. "Don't take that shit from a nigger," a white hollered, and another fight broke out on the sidelines.

The racial make up was almost evenly split, so tensions were higher than I'd seen earlier at the other prisons. The guards handcuffed us quickly and took us to A-unit, where we were placed in isolation. Three days later I would go to "court."

Since major misconducts could result in the forfeiture of good time (time off your sentence for good behavior), inmates were granted due process and given a hearing. The Hearing Officer was a thin, dark-skinned black man who wore a navy blue suit and tie. The inmate advocate was also present. She was a young white woman who dressed plainly.

The Hearing Officer read from the incident report. "At approximately 1600 hours, C.O. Miller observed an altercation between inmate Parsell #153052 and inmate Williams. . ." There was more to the report, but he stopped reading and looked directly at me. "So what happened?"

"The guy squeezed my ass." I shrugged. "So I hit him."

The Hearing Officer nodded then glanced at the advocate. She said nothing, tucking her long brown hair behind her ear.

He placed the report on the table and checked the box marked, Not Guilty.

"OK, then," he said, without looking up.

We were sitting at a small conference table, and I watched as he wrote something in the Findings section of the report. His handwriting, like his hair and suit, was neat and orderly and his gold wedding band looked new.

"You'll get out of segregation this afternoon," the advocate said with a quick smile.

"I'll call Housing," the Hearing Officer said, "and get you moved to a regular unit."

"Today?" I asked, sounding surprised. I was told it took up to six weeks.