Straight Life

by Art Pepper; Laurie Pepper

  Sleepy had heard the whole thing. He said, "Man, I'd give anything in the world if that cat sounded me! Oh, man, he's a clean guy. He's, like, a nice-looking guy." This Sleepy had done more time than me for longer periods, and he'd only fallen into sniffing glue recently, but he'd been pretty sharp as a hustler in the joint. He knew all the people and all the angles. He said, "Man, I would give anything!" I said, "Yeah, but I'm not a homosexual. I don't dig them." He said, "What's the difference? Just close your eyes. All he wants to do is suck on your joint, man. All you gotta do is close your eyes and think of some beautiful girl, man, and just for that little thing, this guy will really take care of you. You won't have to sniff glue. Whatever's around he'll get it for you. He'll get you food, good clothes, cigarettes, coffee, all the best. And nobody'll mess with you because she'll let everybody know that you're her man. They'll have to answer to her, and they're really afraid of her. I'd give my right arm if she'd hit on me. You've got the chance of a lifetime!" I said, "I can't make it, man." And Sleepy said, "Well, be careful then. Don't offend her."

  I get downstairs. I'm nervous. I don't know what I'm going to do. I walk down the same stairway I'd walked down my first day in Quentin with Little Ernie when we saw the guy with blood pouring out of his stomach. I'm tripping out about all the things I've been through in San Quentin. I look up, there's a guard on the walkway looking down at me. If I make a wrong move he'll kill me. I'm going to meet a fruiter that digs me, and I don't want to incur the wrath of this fruiter or I may get killed by him. I get down to the lower yard, and here are all the Black Muslims on the football field going through their exercises to get strong so they can kill all the whites. And here's Mandy.

  I go over to him. The other guy, the messenger, stands off a little ways like a bodyguard. Mandy says, "Hi, Art." I say, "Hello, Mandy." His eyes are cold as death. He's dressed perfectly. He's got nice shoes, almost impossible to get, and they're shined. He's spotlessly clean. He smiles. He really looks deranged. He says, "Let's walk over here." We sit down on the lawn and he says, "Look at these black motherfuckers." He says, "One of these days, I'd like to form a group and wipe 'em out. Kill 'em all. Aren't they ridiculous! Look at that monkeylooking motherfucker!" He's raging and his eyes are beaming with lust for the violence he's going to perpetrate on the black people. "But," he says, "That can wait till later. That's something for the future I'm working on." Here's these white maniacs hating the blacks, and the blacks practicing and training to kill all the whites, and the Mexicans are standing there silent. I'm thinking, "What's going to happen one of these days when all this stuff comes to a head? What's going to happen to this country?" Mandy says, "Maybe they haven't been walking over here. I don't want to sit anyplace that they've been near, those stinkin', yella-teeth motherfuckers, big, black niggers!" We're sitting on the grass, and I look up, and from the lower yard you can see Mount Tamalpais. It's close, and there are beautiful homes on it. Little wispy clouds are floating across the sky, and the sky is blue. I'm looking at the mountain, and then my eyes drop back into prison, and I see the walls and the guards with their rifles and all these people full of hate. And then I look at this madman sitting here, going to tell me that he loves me.

  Mandy says, "I've been watching you. Even when you were here last time. At that time I had an old man and I was in love with him, but I kept looking at you, and you really move me." He had never been out. I'd been out and come back. I think he'd killed a couple of people in an armed robbery. He said, Now, things are different." His old man had gone home. "I like the way you carry yourself and I don't like to see you sniffing glue. You deserve better than that. You've got too much class to be doing that. I like you. You're clean and neat and you're talented. Whenever you play out in the yard I sit in the distance and listen and watch you. You're wonderful. I really care for you. If you could feel the same way you'd never have to worry about a thing. Clothes-look at the way I'm dressed." It was the epitome of dress in the joint. He says, "Dope-when anything comes in I'll go to 'em and jack 'em up and get part of it or else. Every night in your cell, until I can arrange to move you into my cell, every night you'll be delivered steak sandwiches. Anything you want. Canteen. From now on, if you have eyes, you won't have to draw any money anymore. Just take whatever money you got and keep it. Save it for when you get out. You won't have to worry about a thing-cigarettes, coffee, chucholucos. Anything you want you've got. And if anybody ever messes with you, or if there's somebody you don't like, tell me and I'll take care of them. That's it, man. I just want someone to be close to and someone to love."

  Most of the guys in the joint go for whatever situation they're in. That's how they conduct themselves. I'd asked a lot of guys how they could make that scene and they said, "Well, it's just something you do while you're here, and then when you get out it's different." But I couldn't do it. I just could not do it. I've seen three or four guys get some cigarettes together and pay them to a fruiter; they meet someplace and he gives them each head and they don't see anything wrong with it. But I couldn't do it. It would have been much easier if I could. I looked at Mandy and I said, "Man, I'm sorry. If I made that scene you'd be the one I'd want more than anyone else, but I've just never made that scene, and I can't do it. I can't do it." He said, "Well, let's be friends and we'll see what happens."

  I got away from him and I got nervous. I talked to some friends of mine. I talked to Frank Ortiz. He said, "Man, watch out for that cat because if you accept anything from him you'll put yourself in a position-he might think you led him on." And right away Mandy started offering me things, so I told him no, that I couldn't take them because it wasn't right. He got drug, and he got hurt, but then he said, "I appreciate your honesty. We could have had a ball. But I can't rank you for being honest, and I admire you for not trying to take advantage of me and get something for nothing." And from then on we were friends.

  I finally quit the glue sniffing, but I kept taking black-andwhites. I'd take sixteen or eighteen of them every morning in my cell with my coffee. With black-and-whites you lose your equilibrium. You fall down and run into things. There were three or four of us who'd been taking them, hanging out together. One day I was sitting with these guys on the yard, sitting on one of the domino tables, and I dropped my cigarette. I went to pick it up. I bent down and fell off the table. I cut my head and got all bloody. When blood is drawn it's a serious thing. The guards think you've killed somebody or somebody's shanked you, so my friends stood around me while one of them got a wel rag and cleaned my forehead. I'm goofing around, and right away I fall off the table again and hit my head in the same place. Now, they get a guy to sneak in the hospital and get some bandages to stop the bleeding. That night we're all lined up to go into our cells. I get into line, and we round a little bend. I go to take a step and I step too high. I fall back, hitting my head on the cement. The guards rush out and grab me and take me to the hospital. They interrogate me. Finally they put me back in my cell. The next morning walking out of my cell on the fourth tier, I walked straight out and smashed into a bar. If I hadn't hit the bar I would have fallen over and killed myself. The guards took me to Fourposts. They interrogated me again. They had had a lot of reports about me. They took my blues and put some old, beat clothes on me and walked me to the adjustment center.

  The adjustment center is for people that stab people and things like that. They said, "This is where you have to go." A guard came in and said that the psychiatrist thought I was trying to kill myself with the black-and-whites. He said, "What are you doing this for? Look at you!" I said, "There's nothing wrong with me. I just want to get out." He said, "Well, you're never going to get out this way."

  In the adjustment center you only leave your cell for about five minutes each Saturday when they walk you down, one at a time, to take a shower, with guards watching you through a glass. They bring you your food in your cell, push it through a slot. You sit there for the whole time in a cell, and that's it. I was there for about two months. You nev
er see anyone because there's nothing across from you, just a wall, but everybody knows what's happening and who's there. On my second day a guy down the way asked me, "How're you doing?" I said, "Terrible." He said, "Well, I'm So-and-so. I'm a friend of So-andso's. I'm going to send you down something." He hands something to the next cell, reaching outside the bars. He says, "Pass that to number seven." The guy passes it down to me, and I open it up, and here's about twenty-five black-and-whites! I took them and got wasted. For two days I had a ball.

  It had a lot of romance, being in the adjustment center. People look up to you for being there and being cool, not whining. There were guys in there waiting to go to trial for murder or for shanking people, and I was digging this whole scene. I'd hear the others talk, and I started thinking how great it would be to kill someone and really be accepted as a way-out guy. As a rough cat. All the guys that were really in would know about it. "Man, that cat, Art Pepper, he wasted a cat, cut him to ribbons. Stabbed him and stabbed him, blood pouring all out of the guy. Don't fuck with him, man." I started dreaming about it and thinking about it and seriously planning it. I was all ready to do it and could have done it. I had the nerve, I had the shank, and I was in the process of choosing my victim when I got my date to get out.

  (Jerry Maher) I'd seen Art play before I ever met him. I first met Art, I think, in Quentin through John Wallach. John Wallach and I were working on the waterfront together, and him and Art were close for years. I was working at the paymaster's office in Quentin, and Art decided he wanted to work, so I got him a clerk's job in the paymaster's office. It was me and him and Joe Coletti and a guy named Larry Steckler. We worked there for a couple of years. There were some trips in that paymaster's office, really some trips.

  Art was a pretty good-lookin' dude then. When you first meet Art, he's pretty quiet and introverted, but after you get to know him well, and he's around people he feels comfortable with, he falls his loony hand, you know. He's pretty comical. And we used to have a lot of laughs together. But right off the top, right after you meet Art, talk to him a little bit, you snap that he's extremely sensitive. And I also snapped that he was highly uncomfortable in that setting. You know, I've been raised in YA's (Youth Authorities) and joints, so I was as comfortable as you can get when you're surrounded by a bunch of lunatics, but Art doubted his own ability to cope with it and was a little ill at ease behind that. His music and gettin' high was his refuge. I used to get on his case all the time behind his talent, fuckin' off that talent in the pen. I told him I wish I had that much talent doin' anything, you know, and we used to argue about that all the time. That and niggers. Art was tellin' me Ray Charles was a genius, and I told him there wasn't any nigger alive that was one step above a blithering idiot.

  I was a little bit in awe of the guy: he was older than me and he had so much talent. And I used to just sit and trip on it, you know, how come some people are born with so much talent and others none. I also see something in Art, which he's quick to admit to, which is almost a suicidal, a real strong selfdestructive, drive. Like those black-and-whites. We used to get on him about those black-and-whites because he'd get like a zombie, just slobbering. He was sittin' at the domino table one day, on the yard, and just fell forward and gave himself a black eye. The corner of the domino table hit him in the eye. One day he got up to go to the head on the yard and made a big, staggering U-turn and wound up pissin' on this little stage that was set up against the East Block wall, a little raised stage about two feet up in the air and about six by six. There was a stool on it where the yard cop could sit and be elevated about two or three feet above everybody, you know. Art took off from the domino tables goin' in the opposite direction, to the head, and wound up makin' a big, staggerin' U-turn around the yard and standin' there pissin' on this. He thought he was at a urinal when they arrested him.

  I used to tell him, "Man, you're just a walkin' bust. Get yourself together." And Johnny Wallach, he's another dude with a heavy suicide ... And John and Art kind of reinforced each other's sickness. Both beautiful dudes, man, but they'd get on those black-and-whites together staggerin' around, and they didn't know who they were for days at a time. John finally fell out in the North Block with convulsions one day. Took him out of the North Block on a gurney. Art wound up, I think, in the hospital too. Either in the hospital or the hole.

  I was in Quentin doin' a forgery beef. I'd started at Soledad, and I got popped in Soledad makin' it with a secretary. I was workin' in the procurement office. I was twenty-one at the time, and I hooked up with this little twenty-one-year-old secretary. She hit on her husband for a divorce, told him why. He snitched on us. Got her fired and me transferred. I did about two years on that, got out, got a violation and came back, and got out and got another violation and came back.

  Next time I saw Art on the streets-I got out the day Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, August of `62. I was livin' in West Hollywood with my second old lady, Yolanda the Snake, and I ran into Art one day on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was just comin' out of the unemployment office. He was livin' in a little apartment behind a barber shop off La Brea and Sunset with Diane. I was dealin' at the time, and he hit on me to score, so I wound up sellin' him some stuff.

  I took him out to this little old hooker's pad in North Hollywood. I had a couple of workin' girls, and one of them, I had just sold her my last quarter when Art called to cop. So I went out, and Yolanda and I picked him and Diane up and took 'em out there. I fixed Art in the bathroom and he immediately OD'd on me. He fell down on the floor. And that's when I started hating Diane. I was cookin' her fix when Art fell out, and I stopped, naturally, and turned around to help him, and she said, "Oh, he's alright. He'll be alright. Go ahead and cook my fix." I said, "You cold-blooded, stinkin' son-of-a-bitch! Your old man is layin' on the floor turnin' blue and all you can think about is gettin' fixed?" Anyway, I turned around and fixed her, and she fell out on me. And I found out, they copped later, that they'd been drinkin' Cosanyl all day. That got me hot, hot, hot because I, you know, I had to work on them for about an hour, hour and a half, somethin' like that, and I threw `em in the back of the car, soakin' wet, both of 'em, and drove from North Hollywood back to their pad at about eighty miles an hour at night with the cold air blowin' on 'em, and Art kept groanin', "Man, roll up the window! I'm freezin' to death!" I told him, "Fuck you. I hope you do freeze to death, you ignorant bastard!"

  As for Diane, well, at one time Diane was a beautiful girl. I've seen pictures of her. When I met her, she was a dog. She looked like she was a hundred years old and had lived every one of `em on her face. All her teeth were gone: completely false uppers and lowers. Haggard, tired, worn. She'd put herself in the gutter and wallered in it long enough to where she couldn't ever get back. It sounds kind of cold, but her dying wasn't any loss to anybody in the known universe. In my opinion she wasn't nothin'. She was a tramp. And that wasn't Art's fault.

  Art's very dependent, and in my opinion Art's relationship with women is one basically of dependence. Because of that, I could never accept the idea of Art being responsible for anything Diane did. I'd have to look at it to the contrary. I think that any man-woman relationship Art's gonna be involved in, the woman is going to have more influence with Art than Art's gonna have with her.

  Art doesn't have an evil bone in his body, and he's-I don't mean this in a demeaning manner because on Art it's totally acceptable, you have to know him-but Art is a pathological physical coward. I guess it's the way he was raised and he's been in music all of his life, moving with that element of people. He's never been called upon to get violent or be violent. I remember an instance in the joint. I can't remember if it was Big Woody Woodward or Tubby Whitman. It was one of the notorious hogs that had some words with Art. They got into a hassle, and the guy told Art, "Man, I'll tear your head off and shit in your neck!" Somethin' to that effect. He had no intention whatsoever of doin' it; he wouldn't have laid a hand on him. But Art took it seriously, and he came to me and a half
a dozen other people, and he was just in a panic: "Oh, God, what am I gonna do? That animal's just gonna ruin me, man! That guy's gonna break my spine, gonna tear my arms off!" I can't remember who it was, but I went and talked to him: "Man, what is this shit with you and Art?" The guy said "What?" I ran it down, and the guy cracked up. He said, "Man, you know me better'n that, Jer. I wouldn't put my hands on that guy." I said, "I didn't think so but Art goddamnsure believes it." Art was panic-stricken; "Oh my God, it's all over. I know it's all over. Fuck it, this is it!"

  I WAS released in June of '66 with another guy that got out on the same day, a friend of mine, Richard Fortier. They gave us each a package and a suit-a cheap, single-breasted, black suit, but at least it fit well. I paid the guy some cigarettes to have it fixed. I put a white shirt on and a tie. We went through the gate and they gave us our ticket home and a little money. Richard had been there a long time. This was his second time, too, so we both knew all the guards. They said, "Well, good luck, man, hope we don't see you back here again."

  We walked out into the little town of San Quentin and got a ride to San Rafael, and when we got there we stopped at a bar immediately and we both got brandy. Everybody could tell we had just gotten out of the joint. The bartender said, "It must be a great day." We had a few drinks and got a nice buzz and rode into San Francisco. I didn't have to be back in L.A. till Monday to report to the parole department, so we decided to goof around in San Francisco for a while.