The saga of Tefunk the Tubercular continues. As I reported a few blogs ago, he was irritated that Ms. Oyen, the TB. R.N., had called him in to check on him because it meant “someone was messing in my business.” Ironically, I have been summoned to see Ms. Oyen again tomorrow, though I shall not berate her for telling Tefunk too much. I’d rather tell her about the dream I had about her where, at my old Third street residence in New York, I witnessed her from my sixth floor apartment there manhandling difficult inmates while wearing a trench coat. She should get a kick out of that.
Tefunk is a "Crip" who takes gangbanging and rapping very seriously. He alternates from being the nicest of guys to being vaguely menacing. Last night when I was listening to the Vice-presidential debates, he took advantage of the fact that everyone was out to dinner to put on his headphones and rap so loudly I literally winced, pushing my earphones closer to my ears and turning up the volume on my walkman to hear the debate. Tefunk saw this and jumped up, almost gleefully asking/telling me: “I was so loud you couldn’t even hear!” All I did was mouth back that I was listening to the debate. I refused to take the bait.( “Debate the Bait”-- that’s a good rap song for you) and get drawn into a denunciation of hip-hop and gangsta culture that I suspect he wanted to hear from the white boy.
No thank you ma’am, I will not be provoked. Of course what I would like to ask him is "would you really want to me to like rap, Tefunk? I’m part of exactly the population you want to alienate, aren’t I?" I might add that the population of Tefunk’s neighbors is thoroughly alienated by the coughing fits that spasm him for 45 minutes at a time in the middle of the night. One almost expects a fatal asthma attack, it gets so bad. At long last the seizures cease, leaving poor Tefunk spent and us struggling to get back to sleep. During the day, when most of us snooze at least an hour or two, we are subjected instead to the bizarre sound of Tefunk’s breathing (while awake). It has morphed into an annoying, repetitive snort.
It is generally made more tolerable by the white noise of the fan, but with the colder weather disputes are erupting over its use. Tefunk will unplug it, and my bunkie, Steve, who is leaving tomorrow and therefore a bit braver and more reckless, plugs it back in. The result has been words that could lead to more words that could lead to more words and unpleasantness with racial overtones if we are not careful. Tefunk and some of the other "youngsters" who have plenty of testosterone coursing through their bodies consider violence a completely legitimate, even desirable form of expression, and they have been overheard by Earl discussing in low voices the need to assert black dominance in the dorm.
I completely blame the C.O.’s for allowing this sort of situation to arise and fester. When they walk the ward at night, they must have heard Tefunk's wracking cough and have to realize it must be very disturbing to his neighbors. Not to mention that a medical intervention might be in order. He needs to be in a hospital room until the doctors figure out what the hell is wrong with him. Yes, this is expensive for the prison, but considerably less expensive than a wrongful death lawsuit the family could bring.
Tefunk’s cough is a deep wheeze that is unrelenting and has gone on non-stop while I am writing this. If it is merely a severe bronchial infection that for some reason resists the antibiotics he has taken, then put him in a single cell until it’s over so we can sleep. We don’t even have the fan now to mask it; at least without freezing our butts off. The C.O.’s should also step in and determine the fan rules in the colder months. Although normally I'm one of those who prefer things breezeless when the temperature drops, I threw in my two cents to keep it on because it makes life immeasurably more tolerable for this non-smoker in a virtual sea of smokers. Tefunk’s reply to this was “well then you shouldn’t have come to jail if you didn’t want to deal with the smoke.”
I stood defenseless in the face of such steel-trap logic, and decided not to throw any more cents into the discussion. Later, Tefunk came up to me, and I was ready for an adversarial question, but he just asked “how do you spell ‘sincere’"?
I told him, squashing the impulse to use it in a sentence like: "I’m sincerely worried about you and sincerely want to sleep undisturbed."
MCO 2004
