Something a bit odd has been happening. I imagine conversations ahead of time, and then they occur almost just as I imagined them. This first happened when I was eating with Earl—a late snack at my bunk— and saw Jimmy, “King of the Woods,” (I call him this, no one else does) saunter over. I just knew he was trolling for an offering of food. Of course, Earl and I could not offer him what we had just cooked, because no one who is not gay or HIV+ is allowed to eat “after” us, nor eat anything we’ve prepared. However, offerings of unprepared or packaged food are okay (like crackers or a package of soup). Even Jimmy did not wish to appear the beggar, so he sort of just said hi, and just as I had anticipated he would, Earl got him going on about his responsibilities and duties as “keeper of the keys.” This was prompted by a bandaged hand Jimmy purportedly injured laying down the law to someone who “was being an asshole” (The crime is always the same) This carried over to what was expected of us “should something go down” (i.e. should the whites be compelled to exhibit intimidating unity and a show of force to either of the other races) to which Earl threw in—like that would make a difference—that since we were HIV he didn’t know what was expected. After veering between reassuring us we were under his protection and letting us know he regularly kept the recalcitrant in line (where and where these enforcements are meted out is rather a mystery to me) I told him straight out that I very much appreciated that we can come to him if anyone “hassled us” (They haven’t – directly—but indirectly with warnings that one shouldn’t be “too gay.”) but that above all, I wanted it understood that I am congenitally non-violent, and though I would defend myself or my property if required, that would be the extent of it, and I wanted that to be okay and understood. (I recognize that this previous paragraph is somewhat tortured, but so was the conversation.)
Like Tank, Jimmy went on and on, in prison jargon that dulled the senses. At least it would have, had my senses not already been dulled by the deepest set of blue eyes imaginable. Truth be told, Jimmy is handsome—soap-opera stud handsome—and it’s a damn shame he didn’t get his ass into a casting director’s office before he did whatever he did to get here. If he had, he would now be memorizing lines like “Valerie, is that my baby you’re carrying?” instead of saying things like, “See, the paisas will stab you in the back every time, but I don’t trip on that shit.”
I finally sent him away with a handful of crackers. I had no idea if I felt more or less secure as a result of our conversation, in part because I wasn’t really sure what he had even said. And yet, it was very close to the amorphous conversation I had with him in my head prior to having it.
In a much more interesting vein, I was sitting back observing the “band of brothers,” the 8 or so black guys who “hang together” in this section of the wing, while imagining I was telling them that I was increasingly astounded at the chasm between the popular perception of them as angry, hostile, and dangerous; and my personal experience of them here as friendly, funny, and largely unacrimonious—to me or to each other. One in particular, a 25-year old, recent arrival named Cutty, has a killer smile and ready laugh that seems to cool the room like a blast of air conditioning. He has rapidly insinuated himself with the others who have been here longer. He’s charming and curious and while sitting on my black neighbor Dusty’s bunk, suddenly decided, for lack of a better word, to interview me.
In the hour before chow, he insisted on knowing everything about me and how I got here, but in the most disarmingly affable way imaginable. He followed up in the same vein this morning. “So, Marc, what are you doing?… Oh, who are you writing?… Am I annoying you?” Before you knew it, he knew all about the blog and my relationship with my sister and my relationship with the first and only girl I had carnal relations with back when I was seventeen. (Invariably, most straight men always want to make sure gay men have at least “tried” it with a woman. Like I would ever expect them to confirm they were “really” straight by sleeping with a man.) And I shared with him and Dusty—a pretty sharp cookie whose witticisms I told him I had noted extensively over the past 3 weeks—the very observations about the gap between perception and reality of black men that I had imagined sharing no less that 24 hours previous.
Here’s where it got almost spooky, I had literally in my hand the piece I had just written, “My Secret Heterosexual History,” that I was about to put in the mail to my sister, There is a line in it where I lament the C I got in 3rd grade, marring a grade school academic record otherwise exclusively consisting of A’s and B’s. When I told both Cutty and Dusty that it was a damn shame they were in prison instead of college, and that’s what I hoped for them both when they were released, Dusty exclaimed: “Damn, you are right! I used to do so well in school, till I started gang bangin’. I used to get all A’s and B’s, man I remember when I got a C it burned me!”
Now I’m sorry, that’s like oooo—eeeeee (Soundtrack: eerie music please) Bottom line, I’ve made some new friends who I can’t eat with, exchange food with, and who I’m supposed to be ready to fight “if it comes down.”
Not likely. This is no ordinary inmate they’re dealing with. I just successfully started smoking again, and stopped again.
MCO 2004
(King of the Off-Whites)
