I’m coming back from morning Pill Call, and D-Roll comes up next to me, walking his people-to-see, places-to-go Hustler’s walk. He says to me, “C’mon, Square, put some get in your go, and walk with me!” It is very rare for a black and white inmate to walk with each other in prison; it happens, but accidentally. D-Roll is suggesting I do so purposely. What the hell, I speed up. (I am a fast walker, but D-Roll makes a sport of it.) I ask him how it is that he seems to have leeway to go everywhere on the yard to carry out his various hustles, and he pulls out a paper that has been folded and unfolded many times, that details his status as an umpire for the prison softball league. This allows him yard access during all times yard is open, not just the times it is open for his particular dorm. Of course there is hardly a softball game underway at all times, nor does D-Roll umpire more than a fraction of them, but D-Roll is the type of guy who could have convinced a Nazi policeman in 1938 he was President of German Swaziland, and had full rights of passage in Berlin.
I ask him why his nickname is “D-Roll” and he tells me the following story. “When I was 8, I used to have a thing with this 15-year old ho’, and we used to do the ‘nasty.’ No kidding, a couple of times a week, and she would give me a dollar every time.” (D-Roll is about my age, so this would have been 1966.) “And back then I used to sell candy bars—I was a hustler from the very beginning, so I did well—and between what I made and what she gave me, I always had a roll of dollar bills. So when this bitch would see me, she’d say ‘Hey D, where’s your roll?’” ( I assume the first initial of his real name is D) “and that’s how I got the name D-Roll!”
Yes, it has also crossed my mind that if there was a flow of bills, it was from D-Roll to the lady in question, not the other way around, and that his age in the affair has probably crept down from 15 to 8 over the 30 years or so that he’s been telling that story. But D-Roll is someone Richard Pryor would have patterned a character on, and I certainly do believe that many things that might appear unbelievable or outrageous to my white middle class experience may not be so foreign to the kind of childhoods familiar to Pryor or D-Roll.
But while I sang the praises of the surprisingly non-hostile incarcerated black males yesterday, D-Roll’s story did set the tone for a contrasting reality check. Some of the other black guys got into a conversation about Vietnam and Iraq, 9/11, Japan, immigration and foreign policy, and I’m very sorry to report the degree of misinformation and ignorance I overheard was astounding. (It made me think the right-wing is stupid wanting to deprive felons the vote, because convicts generally have a kick-their-ass-before-they-kick-yours mentality, and when it comes to foreign policy, at least, largely consider any war American are in to be justifiable self-defense.)
What shocked me most was the mishmash of fact and history, the screwing up of time-lines, and distorted half-truths like: “There are more American babies born over there than are born here, but they treat them like shit” and “The Japanese are just waiting to take over, just like the Russians, they just want to see if we’re weak!” There was even nodding assent to an assertion that “they” (the Iraqis, Al-Qaeda, the Japanese, whoever) are about to devastate us with nuclear bombs AFTER they start a civil war here—between whom I’m not exactly sure.
Where do they get these ideas? And such an ignorance of basic history? Some of them couldn’t tell you whether the Civil War and World War II were 5, 80 or 100 years apart. (I asked). Worse, some of these guys who do try to read or listen to the news are just not equipped to understand it and interpret it. They seem only to reduce sound bites to the simplest subjective denominator. This is why it s pointless for me to try to educate then, any more than it would be for be to try to convince a fundamentalist the Bible was written by men, not God. Some people don’t want uncertainty, gray, nuance. They want black and white, the good guys and the bad guys, us and them. And that’s exactly what they get, at least in how they apprehend the world. (Ironically, inmates are viewed as the “bad guys” by society, so you can imagine the internal conflicts they must experience, as they basically agree with the assessment, whatever their external pose.)
After listening to this bullshit, I was anxious to escape into a good night sleep, which lasted until my 4am bladder break. Across the way, I could hear the (blessedly classical) music through Scott’s Walkman headset, as he “engraved” a cup with eagles and various decorations, a sideline that earns him the money for the meth that was keeping him up all night.
I tried to get back to sleep, but the tubercular coughing of Earl’s neighbor, Tefunk, was relentless. I swear that boy should be in the hospital. I don’t care that his chest x-rays and TB test are negative, the boy is seriously ill, and one night he is going to start coughing up blood or simply won’t wake up. Obviously Tefunk couldn’t sleep either, and, evidently cold from the giant overhead fan, got up and unplugged it. This meant there was no “white noise” to cover the sound of the coughing he promptly resumed.
Then my bunkie, Steve, who was up reading, decided to light a cigarette. I am no longer craving cigarettes, but am now easily irritated by the smoke when there is no fan to move it along. So I opened the window, to get a blast of cold fresh air, forgetting it would be laden with the pre-dawn stench of cow-manure.
I gave up trying to sleep and wrote this less-than-sensical poem instead.
Wake Me Up When It’s Over
Today is the first day
of a test of your life.
Or maybe the worst day
of the rest of your wife.
You may just have a date
with hurry up and wait.
Or you may be running late
To a rendezvous with death.
The evil might be live
Your dog might be God
You may have gotten up on the right side of the bed
But the wrong side of your head.
Playing both sides against the middle
Nero played the fiddle
When Caligula was little
Children live what they learn
Strike up the band, watch Rome burn
It occurs to me
You rarely see
The bus that runs over you.
That Labor Day,
Is a day of rest
And that God’s way
Is to constantly test you.
I’ll stick with my dog, thanks.
MCO 2004
