You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  "The warden and prison medical director have asked me to pass along a… health advisory. This prison has a combined HIV and hepatitis C infection rate of 60 percent. If you choose to just say yes, and use drugs, and you will— that's your job— then snort them, smoke them, or swallow them, but don't shoot them." Grafter irritably perused the rest of the memo before crushing it into a ball and tossing it over the rail.

  "So if you must get some cock action, let the con sitting next to you suck your dick. Also, there are plenty of homosexual prostitutes on the yard, some of 'em with better tits than your old ladies." This got a big laugh from both benches, which only encouraged Grafter.

  "You stick your dick into one of these HIV homos and get the AIDS— and you will— you got nothin' comin' from the state. The prison infirmary is full of dying faggots and cocksuckers. Some of you geniuses might think getting a tattoo is okay if you supply the artist with a fresh needle. Wrong! Every day we confiscate two or three tat guns off the yard— from deep inside someone's keister." Some nervous titters from the bench as a few of the white dawgs unsubtly readjust their butt cheeks on the steel bench.

  "Finally, don't cross the red lines unless you like getting shot. Above all, don't get caught! We catch you, you got nothin' comin'."

  The uplifting welcome speech over, Grafter and Strunk ran us through the intake maze: Fingerprints (two sets, one for the state and one for the FBI), even though we all were just printed in the county jails. We were given our prison number, called back numbers, and photographed holding the cardboard number signs beneath our chins. All of this was accompanied by helpful comments from Grafter.

  "Carry your photo ID cards with you at all times. Failure to produce your ID card when ordered to do so by a correctional officer will result in disciplinary action, which could include solitary confinement in the Hole."

  Having just seen the cesspool they call the Fish Tank, I couldn't imagine how the Hole could be worse. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a fish.

  The convict clerks called us to the desks, four at a time, under the supervision of Strunk and Grafter.

  "Occupation?" asked a toothless (don't they give these guys dentures?), goateed clerk of one of the toothless, goateed white dawgs.

  "I'm a cook," said the fish, not without some pride. The clerk just smirked.

  "Dawg, the only thing you ever cooked was your morning wake-up shot."

  The fish protested. "Nah, dawg, straight-up business, on my skin, bro! I was a short-order cook."

  "Where at, dawg? Last place of employment?"

  "Uh… it's been a while, dawg. I been down all year in county, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "Aiight, dawg. 'Unemployed' is what I'm puttin' down."

  "That's cool, dawg. I'm down with that."

  The next four fish also belonged to that vast fraternity of unemployed short-order cooks. Then Sergeant Grafter shouted out the next fish on his list.

  "Lerner! Jimmy! Six-one-six-three-four!" I took the just-vacated chair by the clerk's desk, clutching the plastic bag that still contained my suit, shirt, underwear, and socks. The shoes, of course, were gone long before I stepped out of the shower. The sergeant gave me the option of "donating" the suit to a local charity or having it shipped home at my expense. "Of course, if you have it shipped home, we put a freeze on your spending account till we deduct the shipping and handling fees."

  "How long would the freeze last?" I asked.

  "Oh, usually about four months. That's four months you'll go without being able to buy anything from the canteen."

  "I'd like to donate it."

  "A wise decision."

  The clerk inserted a personnel card into the typewriter.

  "Race? Forget it, dawg. Caucasian." A painfully slow pecking ensued.

  "Age?"

  "Forty-seven." The clerk, twenty-something going on eighty, looked up from his labors.

  "Kinda old to be up in the mix, dawg, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "I unnerstan' what you're sayin', dawg." Damn! I was picking up on the convict jargon, know what I'm sayin'?

  "Height?"

  "Six feet."

  "Weight?"

  "One sixty-five."

  "Scandalous, dawg. When you hit the yard, better check out the weight pile, bulk up a bit, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "Thanks, that's one of my top priorities."

  The clerk gave me a puzzled glance. "You talkin' sideways, dawg, 'cause I don't need no fuckin' fish leaking outta the side of their neck on my shit."

  "Nah, dawg. Straight-up business." The clerk, temporarily placated, went back to studying the card.

  "Aiight then. Got any tattoos? No sense lyin' 'bout it— the police gonna check you anyway."

  "No tattoos."

  "Occupation?"

  "Office worker," I answered, knowing better than to give the job title that's been on my business card since the last corporate restructure: Strategic Planning Manager. One of the hidden benefits of constant downsizing, right-sizing, reengineering, restructuring, and market repositioning was that I received new business cards after every corporate bloodbath.

  "Ya mean like a clerk in an office, dawg?" The convict clerk's speculation was actually much closer to the truth than my job title. Among my male peers in the company, we routinely referred to each other as "glorified clerks," except when we got really honest and called each other "gofers," "ass-kissers," "butt-wipes," and "dick-lickers."

  "Yeah, dawg, just type in 'clerk.' "

  "Aiight, Pops. Watch your back in the Fish Tank now. Got some psycho J-Cats comin' in for processing from Lake's Crossing tomorrow."

  "Lake's Crossing?"

  "Guess you ain't from around here. Lake's Crossing would be the Nevada Prison for the Criminally Insane. They get overcrowded they pack the J-Cats in with the rest of the fish."

  "Aiight, dawg, thanks." I was particularly pleased with my enunciation of "aiight," remembering that a contracted "all right" should rhyme with "tight."

  I was just starting to feel like I was making progress in building rapport with these dawgs when Grafter read out the cell assignments. Following some unwritten rule, he scrupulously placed the blacks with the blacks, the white dawgs with the white dawgs. He didn't ask for any preferences, such as nonsmoking cell or a vegetarian cellmate.

  I was assigned to cell 47, upper tier, lower bunk. I had no problem with either the lower bunk or the upper tier. My problem was the dawg he assigned to cell 47, upper bunk: Neck Swastika Boy and Goliath of the Trailer-Trash Tribe— Kansas.

  Mr. Lapidis, a former boss (and self-appointed "mentor") back at the phone company, once shared his management philosophy with me: "There are no such things as problems; problems are merely opportunities in disguise."

  My new, unchosen lifestyle was about to be blessed with an abundance of opportunities.

  I just prayed that they didn't include any "par-tays."

  With or without all my friends coming.

  * * *

  Following in the wake of the new fish, Kansas and I trudged up the steel staircase to the upper tier of the Fish Tank. We had been given yellow plastic footlockers, called tubs, to store our "state issue." On top of the tubs we placed our blankets, sheets, towels, and three-inch-thick vinyl pallets that the prison generously referred to as mattresses.

  Kansas was also carrying a small cardboard box containing whatever county jail treasures Grafter had decided he could keep. As I had expected, Grafter kept my wallet and my belt but gave me back my wristwatch, which now read 10:30 P.M. I was also given a large brown envelope (after Grafter removed the metal clasp) containing my legal paperwork— plea bargain agreement, Notice of Judgment, and my Presentence Investigation Report, which the cops and cons refer to as a PSI.

  Bubblecop waited till all the new inmates stood silently in front of their respective cell doors before pushing a button on his desk console. Crack! The cell doors all popped out an inch from the walls, sliding open on the tracks on the concrete floor.<
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  Clearly an old hand at this ritual, Kansas grabbed the handle of cell 47 and yanked till it slid open a few feet.

  "Fuck, dawg! This is outta line!" Kansas said, tossing his burdens on top of the lower— my— bunk and sitting down. "Last time I was down, these was one-man cells— fuck!"

  Strunk was screaming from the lower tier.

  "LOCK IT DOWN! LOCK IT THE FUCK DOWN!"

  Like a well-conditioned Pavlovian dog, Kansas extended one tree-limb-size arm (requiring me to move against the wall) and yanked the door across its tracks.

  Thwunk! The door locked tight, sealing me in with this skinhead giant who had just usurped my bunk. The cell was identical in dimensions to my old SW3 studio apartment, except for the additional rectangular metal slab bolted to the cinder block wall about five feet above the floor.

  Eight by six feet with a twelve-foot-high ceiling containing a fluorescent bulb protected by a wire-mesh screen. An integrated stainless-steel toilet (no seat cover) and sink unit. Cinder block walls yellow-brown from decades of cigarette smoke. Lots of moronic graffiti.

  The one improvement over my county jail cell was the small square window cut into the concrete above the upper bunk. Heavy-gauge metal wire was woven into the glass.

  It was the window that decided me not to contest the lower-bunk issue with Kansas. That, plus personal health concerns.

  Sitting on the steel tray of the upper bunk, I could look up at the immense desert night, glittering with stars. If I could remember not to lower my gaze, perhaps I would forget the guntowers and razor-wire-topped fences below.

  I've always had a mild case of claustrophobia, but until cell 47 in the Fish Tank it had never been more than a minor inconvenience. With the beds jutting out three feet from the wall, only one man at a time could comfortably stand up.

  With the exception of one occasion when I had to have an MRI, I simply avoided enclosed and cramped places. I did not view forsaking such hobbies as spelunking and deep-sea diving for treasure inside sunken Spanish galleons as a lifestyle sacrifice. Even during my MRI when they slid me into the cylinder, I managed to be calm. I think I would have behaved very bravely even without the shot of Valium the doctor insisted on administering, claiming my shaking and sobbing would interfere with obtaining a clear image. Radiologists are not known for their people skills.

  Of course, I had heard of the chronic problem of prison overcrowding. I had even voted for a bond issue once to finance new prison construction. The issue had seemed academic, vague, as far removed from my life as the latest atrocities being reported in the Balkans. The issue had a bit more immediacy now, or, as my old boss, Lapidis, would have said, "granularity."

  With my phone company-financed M.B.A. mind I considered the problem from a monopolist's perspective, while trying to make up the "bed" as best I could. As guest demand exceeded capacity, the prison, unconstrained by market forces such as competition and customer price sensitivity, simply bolted a second slab of steel a few feet above the original one and called it a bed.

  Problem solved.

  "LIGHTS OUT!" screamed Strunk, and Kansas flicked off the switch. Moonlight bathed the upper bunk, and soon Kansas was emitting the peaceful snores of a man who had just arrived home to the comfort of his own bed after a long and tumultuous journey out in the world.

  * * *

  For thirty days in the Fish Tank, Kansas never shut up. The unifying theme of almost all of Kansas's remarks was a simple one: Nevada prisons are crawling with punks, J-Cats, snitches, and child molesters (called Chomos). The Kansas pen where he served five years ("Did a nickel there, dawg") was home only to "righteous, stand-up cons." Whenever Kansas sensed that I wasn't giving my undivided attention to his Kansas penitentiary anecdotes, he would reach up and pound the bottom of my steel tray.

  "Yo, O.G.!" Yogee! "You awake, dawg?"

  "I am now." I didn't bother to move. It was too hot and Kansas never required eye contact to register his latest observations on the "punk-ass" nature of Nevada penology. Besides, I had been studying the patterns of mold and wall sweat on the ceiling.

  Our conversations had a surreal, incorporeal quality.

  Kansas in his new state-issue boxer shorts, on his back on the lower tray, addressing the underside of my steel tray where he judged my head to be.

  "You ain't no Chomo, are you, dawg?"

  "Excuse me?" I had been gazing out the sealed window to the small Fish Tank yard. A summer sandstorm was raging across the basketball court and weight pile. Beyond the Fish Tank fenced-in yard, general population inmates huddled against the concrete walls of the nearest buildings, trying to shield their faces with blue shirts they had fashioned into Lone Ranger masks.

  "Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin' to you, O.G.?" Kansas rapped his knuckles (also tattooed) against my tray for emphasis. "You some kind of fucking Chomo? 'Cause I don't put up with no child molesters in my house, know what I'm sayin'? Back in the pen in Kansas we threw the fucking Chomos off the top tier, y'unnerstan'?"

  This time I did roll away from the window. Poked my head over the edge of the tray.

  "No, Kansas, I'm not a child molester— you know what I'm here for." Kansas glared up at me with his patented cold convict stare. His Murder One look. Of course, I didn't flinch— that would be considered "punk-ass bitch" behavior. Very un-Kansas.

  "I know what I heard, dawg. Lemme see your paperwork, your Notice of Judgment and shit."

  I tossed the envelope down to him. Waited for Kansas to pass judgment.

  A few minutes later, "Shit, O.G.! You must of had a real lawyer… pled a Murder One down to a voluntary manslaughter… plus they hit you with a deadly weapon enhancement." I rolled back against the sweating wall to check the progress of the sandstorm. The entire prison was enveloped in a brown whirlwind.

  "…and they got your shit running wild, O.G. That's outta line."

  "Running wild?"

  "Yeah, dawg— bowlegged sentences, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  "No."

  Kansas idly stroked some sweat into his neck swastika and perused my criminal history until he was satisfied that I hadn't raped any babies.

  "Running wild— bowlegged— that's consecutive sentences, O.G. You got one to six for the manslaughter and another one to six for the deadly weapon. Whatchu do, dawg? Cap the motherfucker? What was the weapon, your punk-ass attaché case— ha!"

  Before I could answer, Strunk was screaming outside the cell door.

  "COUNT! STAND THE FUCK UP FOR COUNT!"

  Every day throughout the prison at 6 P.M. there is a "standing count," officially called an Inmate Health and Welfare Inspection. I climbed down carefully and stood a few inches behind the tattoo mural that was Kansas's back. We both faced the cell door till Strunk peered through the window before moving on to the next cell.

  Kansas, of course, was dissatisfied with the process.

  "They can't count for shit here, O.G. In Kansas they line ya up outside the cell door, stand the cons up on their front porches, outside the house, three, four, five fucking times a day. Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin' to you, O.G.?"

  "I understand. Listen, Kansas—"

  "And I'm talking about a hardcase fucking joint! None of this pussy barbed-wire fences neither, dawg, got fucking walls five hundred foot high, scandalous, dawg, on my skin, bro, that shit is just outta line. Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin', O.G.? This ain't shit—"