“Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be is a fantasy. A terrible, terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago.”

— Lenny Bruce

While Marie was misquoted, my associate was not. He’d killed a couple of guys and had no compunction about doing so again. He would kill again if the situation called for it just like COs if recalcitrant inmates pushed them. Justice was often immedate and not necessarily just. Whether you were an addict, a drug dealer, a pedophile, a thief or a murderer– or innocent — either before or after being imprisoned, decisions were swift and final.

The politiics was not democratic. Ron did my laundry, told off-color jokes, and had my back. Unlike my Hamptons lawyer who was in bed with the criminal D.A. Until the whole corrupt structure came down.

As they all eventually do.

As it will for the current crop of bullies fucking with our Democracy.

________________________________________________________________________________________

“The weather had been gloomy for a couple of days by the time I had a chance to talk to Ron, the laundry porter. I’d talked to him in the past but now that Mike had left and was fully installed doing everyone’s wash, we talked from time to time.

As we stood in the Rec room, thunder and lightning had started again and the rain was now torrential. I envisioned Jack Torrance talking to Delbert Grady in The Shining.

Ron had had a checkered past and had made the rounds of several of the Max facilities. Since the early nineties when he first went in to now there has been a significant transformation in the prison system. He’d been in Elmira, Attica, Southport, Wyoming and a few others, before he came to the current Medium. He was 22 when he first came in for a double homicide and was now 47 years old. While he’d likely go to his first Board in a year, it was probable that he would not be released for another 10 years.

“The first time I went to the Box it was over a piece of cake,” he laughed. He had piercing blue eyes, bald head, 5 or 6 days beard growth and was usually in very good muscular  condition. He had that Mr. Clean look.

“A  piece of cake?” I laughed.

“Yeah, I was on line in Mess Hall and they gave a black guy before me a big piece and the guy behind me a big piece.  They gave me a tiny one inch square. I was pissed. So, I says, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.”‘ 

“And?”

“So I went back to the Mess Hall the next day, jumped over the counter and stabbed both guys about 10 times each,” Ron laughed.

“I see,” I said, grimacing. 

“Yeah,” he said, “well, y’know I was young.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“They put me in the Box for almost 3 years for that.” 

“Did they live?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, with a slightly sarcastic smile, “I mean, I wasn’t tryin’ to kill them, y’know. I just wanted  to make a  point.”

“The point being?” I asked, feeling slightly ridiculous.

“Well,” he looked a little confused. “Y’know, that they should give me my cake.”

“Well, that makes sense,” I reasoned. 

“You were in a Max first, right?”

“Oh, yeah, It was different in the nineties, though.” 

“There were no tickets then. You hadda fight and the COs didn’t give a shit. It was wide open. And, the food was a hell of a lot better then. Steaks, fish, eggs, bacon, none of this soy shit you get now.”

“But, it was more dangerous, right?”

“Well, the guards would fight with you then and if you were a problem they’d beat the shit out of you. Listen, I was knifed in the kidney, broke all of the bones in this side of my face…” as he rubbed his hand on his left cheek, “broke my leg in 4 places, and was stabbed several times.”

“What was the broken leg about?”

“Guards were pissed off at me. I was in the Captain’s office about the Mess Hall stabbing and I threw a chair at him when he said I was goin’ to the Box for 18 months and he called his squad. They took me to the Box and broke my leg. Four guards.”

“Sounds a little harsh?”

“Well, you gotta remember, I was young and lookin’ for trouble. I mean, at this point I was 28 and facin’ at least another 20 years, so what’d I give a fuck? I’d killed two guys and I didn’t think I’d ever make it through this far, this long. I figured, I had nothin’ to lose.”

“Were you ever in any gang fights?”

“Nah, I stayed away from them. But, one guy was giving me shit one day. He was part of a gang. So, I took care of it.”

The thunder rumbled outside and there were flashes of lightning. I started to FEEL like Jack doing an interview in The Shining. There was a strong smell of ozone throughout the prison. The air was electric.

“What’d  you do?” I asked.

“Well, I went to the Yard an’ saw the guy with his friends, the other gang members. So, I attacked them.”

“You just attacked them? How many were there?”

“Oh, there were at least eight of them. All standin’ around. Had no idea what I was gonna’ do.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t such a great idea. Went to the Box again for that.”

“Well, what happened?”

“I got about 4 or 5 of them. Y’know, cause I had surprise goin’ and fucked THEM up pretty bad. Then, ‘course, they got me ’cause there were so many of them. But nobody ever fucked with me again.”

“I’m sure. So, what happened at your hearing?”

“The Captain laughed. He thought some white guy attacking eight black gang members was funny. I only got 6 months in the Box for that one.”

“Jesus.”

“I still got problems from that, though,” he said, touching the spot on his face about an inch from his nose, under his eye and about an inch above his mouth. “When I touch this area, I feel it in my tooth.”

“So you’re not afraid of anyone?”

“Pretty  much,” he said. “There’s no one in here who can take me and if they could, that wouldn’t stop me anyway,” he said matter­-of-factly. “I’d just fuckin’ kill ‘em.”

“I mean,” he continued, “like I’d go to the Yard in Attica and a bunch of guys’d be walkin’ around. And, once I was sittin’ and watchin’ T.V. and a guy comes over an’ changes the channel. So, I get up and go an’ get a bat an’ come back and just destroyed the T.V. with the bat.  They all fuckin’ ran when I did that.”

“So, how’d you get here?”

“Ah, I was a kid. I was doin’ angel dust. I was outta my mind.”

I was felling out of my mind as well. Like having to do this time. He could understand how Ron might feel that way. But, I hadn’t killed two people. I’d just written about corruption. Who knew any more?

“What did you do before prison?” I asked.

“I was in the Army. I fought in the first Iraq war. Piece a cake. I drove an Abrams tank.” 

“Was that scary?” I asked.

“Nah, nothin’ to it. I had fun. But, then I got a scorpion bite playing volleyball.”

It reminded me of downtown politics.“

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