by R. P. Lester
“Coxman! Innis!”
I verified I was me and rolled off the bottom bunk to stand, sweating and looking like I’d swallowed a bowling ball. Rivers poured down my face as pallor washed over my body. Wetness coated the chest of my orange jumpsuit down to the third silver button, matched only by the puddles in the armpits. Patches of my alabaster skin were scabbed over due to binging.
The deputy took note of my condition. He crinkled his face and asked if I needed an ambulance. A speedy, “No, sir!” flew from my mouth. (They’d transport me to a hospital with X-ray machines. Fuck that.) Shrugging his shoulders, he ordered me to turn around and cuffed me through the grey, flaking bars. I’d expected ankle shackles, but he said there weren’t any available. I was ordered to behave under the threat of mace to the eyes and a baton to the head.
Once my cell buzzed open, I walked out and was held tightly by my left arm as we muddled past the cells of other prisoners hollering obscenities and outlandish demands. The foulness of stale urine and sweat was an appropriate accompaniment to the heckling.
Two electric doors later, we were at the end of the block, rounding the glass hexagon control room to our final steel door. The Beluga Whale inside the hut put down his triple-meat heart attack special with fries and pushed a button on the control panel. The door opened, and the deputy and I walked under the red, handwritten “Judgment Lane” sign where he escorted me down a long corridor connecting the jail to the courthouse. It overlooked the street from three stories up. I looked out of the tinted five-by-five window panes as we walked along the brown speckled tile, eyeing the traffic below, the people on the sidewalk going about their day in fresh sunlight.
I wondered how long it’d be before I was pounding free pavement.
By the time we made it to the courtroom I felt like I was going to die, the sterility of Lysol stinging my eyes to bring additional moisture. The deputy placed me in the jury box to the left of the judge’s bench. It served as a bullpen for prisoners awaiting indictment, arraignment, etc.—if you were in cuffs, that’s where you stayed unless instructed otherwise. I sat slowly, puffing like Pavarotti on a morning jog. When my name was called, I stood and prepared to shuffle my parish slippers toward the waist-high podium between the defense and prosecution tables.
In every courtroom, the bailiffs are responsible for controlling prisoner movement during legal proceedings. It’s an essential part of the job. But when this bailiff came to lead me to the podium, he halted, his face twisting like he’d been offered a sack of diarrheic dog shit. He never laid a hand on me. I was treated like a leper and couldn’t help but turn it around on him.
“Oh no, I trust you, Mr. Coxman. You don’t look like you’ll do anything. Now just go stand over there. No, sir, I don’t need to escort you. Go stand over there. Right there, sir. Over there. No, don’t—sir, don’t fucking—get away from me! Mr. Coxman, I said go stand way the hell over there!”
I kept acting like I was going to brush up against him and he was losing his mind. It was hilarious.
Outward appearance reflected the distress of internal organs and the silver-haired judge didn’t attempt to hide his disgust at my rancid state. Sitting rigidly atop his wooden throne, he looked noble in his black, velveteen robe, but utterly repulsed at the zombified condition of the defendant stooping before him. I stood at the podium with my cuffed hands in the small of my back, bent at the waist like a cattail in a thunderstorm, trying desperately to mitigate the pain in my midriff. Ill as I was, it looked like I’d taken a full shower in my jumpsuit. The chancellor’s eyebrows crashed together as he flashed me from head to toe.
“Mr. Coxman, are you alright, sir? Do you need medical attention before we continue?”
“No, sir, Your Honor. I’m fine. I just have a mild touch of the flu. My unfortunate incarceration has hastened its umbrage. Hopefully, with the Lord as my healer, I’ll be rid of this detestable sickness with medicine and cold fluids, encircled by the grace of my beloved family.” I’m still waiting for my Oscar.
He gave a gravelly, “harrumph,” his exasperation obvious at having to deal with another smartass in his courtroom. He slowly swiveled the squeaky leather chair, never taking his eyes off of me. After forty-five degrees, he turned to face the Brooks Brother on my left: “Proceed, counselor.”
***
The city prosecutor wasted no time in painting me out to be an urchin of the first order, flapping his gums about being under the influence, something about “possession” that I didn’t catch, and making reference to a “stack of homemade pornography in the glove box of Mr. Coxman’s vehicle.” Just being a dick and airing business that made the sexually repressed stenographer fall out of her chair more than once. Incidentally, the judge told him he couldn’t do anything about my porn stash and to stick to the transgressions he could actually adjudicate.
I quoth the coolest magistrate in the history of jurisprudence: “Sir, this court has no control over Mr. Coxman’s sexual proclivities with other consenting adults, no matter how much they stray from the avenues of convention.”
Checkmate, you tweed-coated cocksucker.
Throughout the prosecution’s finger-pointing I felt like I was going to pop. I hadn’t blown ass in three days and it was severely affecting my sexy. I was dizzy and feverish. I was a greedy tick in a dog pound. Had somebody thumped my belly, it would’ve sounded like a cantaloupe. Anguish clouded even the most basic of senses. Somewhere in my veil of suffering, I heard the judge say three letters that had never applied to me before: “ROR.”
Excessive cocaine ingestion can lead to auditory hallucinations; I thought one of the packages had burst and I was hearing shit. Either that, or I was so physically ill that my mind had crossed the line into schizophrenia. But I’d heard the judge correctly, and in the healthy portion of my brain, I was quietly celebrating. I didn’t even know if I’d make bail, let alone be released of my own accord. I was so floored with this turn of events I would’ve filled my fashionable orange attire with solid excitement had it not been for the quarter-pound of cocaine blocking the exit.
ROR. Are they fuckin’ serious?
I was about to get out of there! I was about to escape the Gulag at no cost! I still had the possession charge to contend with down the road, but it was a misdemeanor. Nothing a good attorney couldn’t handle. I’d take some Ex-Lax, blow out this delivery by noon, and be soaking in a hot bath shortly thereafter. By that time I felt my asshole and I both deserved some R & R.
Then the goddamn Jell-O pudding kicked in.
***
The entire courtroom heard the rumble coming from my bowels as I released a long, booming fart, permeating the room with viral death.
The judge raised an eyebrow.
The prosecutor covered his nose with his overpriced silk tie.
A black guy awaiting arraignment for killing his wife and her lover with a nine-iron threw his fist in the air and cheered from the jury box.
The audience chuckled before shifting to the rear of the courtroom once the turd blanket descended.
The bailiff I’d harassed gave me a toothy grin with a double thumbs-up.
And somewhere in the world, my doppelganger shot up from his chair with inexplicable assfire.
My body had had enough. It was backed up with three days of excrement, some of which was jail food. I frantically looked around for the closest bathroom.
A purse.
A shopping bag.
A wheelbarrow.
An empty baby stroller.
An occupied baby stroller.
A fucking red wagon.
Then I spied the witness stand.
Adrenaline quenched my arteries like the mighty Colorado breaking the Hoover Dam. I grimaced, pulled with every muscle in my haggard body, and broke free of the ancient, rusty handcuffs. Jumping out from behind the podium and brushing the prosecution table, I slipped passed the bailiffs and ran to the closest salvation I could find. When I got to the witness box, the judge screame
d and lifted his arms to guard his face, thinking I was going to hurdle the bench and assault him. But the only thing I needed from his eminence was his wife’s hot box big, wooden box.
Once in my guano gulch, I stripped out of the jumpsuit like it was stitched of pedophiles. Amidst confused faces and screaming cries of protest, I kicked the rolling witness chair behind me to squat in the privacy of my public shithole. The front of the stand provided me with a screen as I blasted out a load of ordure that is still responsible for His Honor’s policy of forcing prisoners to use the bathroom before they enter his court. He looked down at me with perplexion and odious contempt. Everyone else could only view me from the chest up as a look of orgasm settled across my face.
It was plentiful. Bountiful. Copious enough to match an anthrax outbreak. Load after load of pudding cups, coke, and dry baloney sandwiches blew from my ass like brown snow in a shitty blizzard. The prosecutor threw up in his briefcase, spectators fled the courtroom, the bailiff drew his parish issue Glock, and I didn’t notice any of it until my bowels were thoroughly evacuated.
The judge never moved. He sat in his chair the whole time, awestruck. He just stared at me and my smile of satisfaction when it was over. Still squatting, but smiling, I faced him and asked if I could use some paperwork from his bench to wipe my ass. His reply was an open mouth and befuddlement.
Fuck it. Silence doesn’t necessarily mean “No.”
Snatching up the closest sheet of paper, I cleansed myself—wipe, fold, wipe, fold—before crowning the mound with a steaming page of legal grandeur. When I stood and buttoned up, the jumpsuit fit better. My tummy was flat again.
After rounds of vomitous from the dwindling occupants, I was re-cuffed by the bailiff—this time with new, sparkling cuffs and ankle shackles—before he gingerly led me back to the cell block. He didn’t even hold my arm as was policy for prisoner escorts. A ten-foot gap was purposely maintained for our hike back to lockup.
Call me crazy, but I could’ve sworn I felt a smile warming the back of my neck.
***
Reality set in after ten minutes in my cell: it wasn’t just a pile of waste in the witness box. A great majority of the substance was pure cocaine.
Alfonse’s cocaine.
What if, by some fluke, I’d actually gotten out that day? Even replacing my ROR with a high bail, it was possible. Taking into account all that’d transpired, probably not, but stranger things have happened. I began to worry heavily about Alfonse’s reaction when I showed up with no money and no product, as well as brooding over the mountain of offal now sitting in a courtroom. The discolored contents of my colon were surrounded by a judge, some sheriff’s deputies, and anyone else who wanted to investigate the anatomical miracle of saran-wrapped shit.
My worry over the latter was all for naught.
Apparently, three nights in a hot sphincter is the half-life for cookie’d cocaine. Upon expulsion, the two substances blended evenly to match a dessert topping at a family reunion.
Nobody was that interested to learn how I’d produced eggshell-cocoa meringue.
***
There’s something to be said for the axiom, “If you mess it up, clean it up.” When I called for a deputy to my cell, I asked him to relay that I’d be more than happy to go in and remove my inner goodness from the judge’s courtroom myself. He laughed heartily and said it’d been taken care of.
I felt bad for the trustee who was tasked with the sanitation, but from what the deputy said, he chuckled to himself as he shoveled everything away and disinfected the box.
My guilt subsided.
Curiously, I was still released ROR, much to the bewilderment of myself and everyone else. When asked, the deputy escorting me to processing said the judge let me go due to my flu, stating it’d be inhumane to lock me down for such a small amount of marijuana with, “gastrointestinal calamities so forcefully afoot.”
That deputy did secure my arm, standing behind me, diagonally to the right. My smirk cleared three frontal feet so as not to get popped at the end of the tunnel. He saw a poker face when I turned and asked him to give the judge my thanks and warmest regards.
An Ivy League education bought the guy a title, but goddamn, it didn’t buy him sense.
***
Low-cut Chucks slapped the sidewalk in front of parish, my Dickies and Big Johnson t-shirt smelling of mothballs from the brown envelope that’d housed my clothes all weekend. The Kool at my lips tasted like freedom. And fiberglass. I inhaled deeply, feeling five ten twenty pounds lighter.
I walked the half-mile to the impound lot to obtain my Studebaker, immediately checking the glovebox for my portable haram. Someone had lifted it from me while I was in lockup. It was of no concern. I was pissed to be sure, but it was a small price to pay for taking a coke-riddled dump on a witness stand in front of an unwitting judge and some stupid cops.
And a full courtroom.
And a handful of prisoners.
It was later revealed that my two arresting officers were as corrupt as a Southern governor. They’d been under watch by IAB for quite some time. In the end, they did themselves in: a few weeks before my arraignment, they were busted smuggling illegal drugs into the jail.
Cocaine.
In their asses.
Their integrity was compromised and I was found innocent of all my charges. The headlines said they’d received ten years apiece for their crookedness.
Irony is where you find it, I suppose.
Alfonse wasn’t upset about his lost product. He accepted everything as the cost of doing business and was pleased I didn’t snitch, happy that I, “dealt with it like a man.” His gratitude was politeness in its purest form, however. If I had snitched he would’ve heard about it.
And given me a bullet within minutes of hitting the street.
***
I learned many important lessons from my muling days, one of which was to limit my load to two cookies, goddammit.
Another was to avoid that life altogether. It’s a trap, man. The only thing waiting for you is the prison yard or the bone yard. I’ve seen too many people walk into the void and many of them didn’t come back—for various reasons. I’m proud to say I’ve left my scandalous ways in the dust, thanking God for every new day I shirk the need for any debilitating drug.
Redemption is the greatest high in the world.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep. The salon closes at four and Klaus will only bleach men’s assholes on Tuesdays.
Rushin’ Roulette
A nasty gash with a dick in her mouth rides me on a broken couch while a humongous nutsack flaps wildly near my face. Somewhere in our canoodling, the nutsack’s owner announces that he’s about to achieve release somewhere in the vicinity of my bloodshot baby-blues.
The three lines of speed I just bumped are perforating my brain like a sewing needle. Images from the robbery they came from flash in my mind like movie clips. Primal grunts yank me back to the two-faced chick we’re double-teaming and the impending splooge that may shoot across my peepers:
I can’t wait to get this over with.
Her nipples are freakishly huge.
Christ, am I still even hard?
Dude, please aim it at the Pink Panther doll.
I’ve gotta get better friends, man.
***
My buddy Jay used to run a tattoo parlor called The Dirty Needle. It was located in a brick, two-story tenement in a part of town that always had fresh chalk outlines on the sidewalk. Jay owned the building and ran his shop out of the second floor. The first floor was rented to a mortician and his funeral home. I never asked questions, but from what I saw they seemed to have a good business relationship. It had deep roots, going all the way back to when they were both struggling up-starts trying to make it.
You see, when Jay was first learning his craft and the funeral home was still begging for bodies, Jay would let his tenant fudge on a payment in exchange for some late-night practice.
The mortician got a free month’s rent.
The bereaved never knew Grandma went in the ground with “CARROT TOP RULES!” carved in her asscheek.
It was a win-win.
To say that Jay’s place had a diverse clientele would be an understatement. If the casts of Oz and L. A. Law had a bunch of bastards running around, that would about cover it. It catered to everybody—from wannabes in suits to the lowest sacks of dirt to ever duck a Morning-After pill.
Drug dealers, strippers, doctors, nurses, drug dealers, lawyers, hangers-on, paralegals, drug dealers, addicts, real estate shills, and drug dealers all crossed his threshold on a daily basis.
There were bars on the windows to protect his investment, electric doors in case a snappy shutdown was needed, and weaponry strategically stashed for quick retrieval. It was a successful business that brought in sacks of cash and Jay kept his patronage in line with a .44 Bulldog that resided on his person at all times.
Which is why it blew my mind when he asked me to help him rob the meth-dealing husband of this meth-addicted whore who frequented his cock frequented the shop.
***
Jay’s office was a relaxing mahogany room in the rear of the building with Bob Marley on the wall and The Geto Boys blasting from the stereo. An oakwood desk obtained from an “after hours sale” at a furniture store sat at the far corner. A black filing cabinet was on the right as you walked in. It was his private oasis from the hustle of business where only a few people were ever allowed as guests. He and the artists under his employ would congregate back there before going home, smoking blunts and sniffing lines, unwinding after a day of tattooing rainbows and Winnie the Poohs on homosexuals who were trying to convince themselves they’d made the correct life-choices.