(Written October 29)
I am happy to report that Jimmy the Handsome’s disciplinee backed out of his encounter with Jimmy. So no discipline was meted out by Jimmy, and a potential episode of violence was happily averted. I understand that in this type of forfeit, the unpaid debt was likely paid. The debtor probably owes his “homeboys” now instead, but this is only a guess.
Don claimed it was the talk of potential trouble that led him to ditch Earl and me for chow this morning. He told Earl he didn’t want us involved if something “went off.” If I could count how many times in prison I’d heard this crap. It is a self-perpetuating myth that one must always be at the ready for a race riot. I find it highly unlikely that anyone would ever choose to settle a score and expect back-up from his race in the chow hall, where we are surrounded by C.O.’s and punishment would be swift and guaranteed. Don, more likely, was invited to chow by his new neighbor, who I would wager suggested he ditch the gay guys. But of course Earl completely swallowed Don’s explanation.
Yes, I am sure there have been fights, even riots in prison chow halls. But to hear it from most inmates, one would have to believe they occur at a frequency that would make it mathematically impossible for me to never have witnessed one. And neither have they ever witnessed one, you’ll find out if you prod a little.
So I was eating with Earl, and he offered two of his untouched portions of breakfast to neighbors, both of whom declined.
I was astounded and said so. “What are you doing? You know no one can eat ‘after’ us!”
“I didn’t touch it!” Earl asserted.
“I know that, I know it’s perfectly safe, but you know the ‘rules’ don’t differentiate!”
“It’s fine! I know what I’m doing,” answered Earl, with finality.
Earl, I’m afraid, is in denial. Since we are only recently eating together, I can’t know for certain whether his offers have in fact been accepted in the past, but in a setting where everyone is supposedly on the alert for any signals to go battle-ready, I sincerely doubt anyone would risk direct defiance of known protocol that strictly prohibits taking from the plate of a known gay inmate, much less one who is HIV positive.
Earl insists they occasionally accept his offers. Perhaps some inmates don’t know “the rules,” or don’t care. But when they say no, I’m reasonably sure why, and I also think I know why Earl makes the offer despite “the rule.” He is wired to be provocative, which is not too surprising given the distressing stories of his abusive childhood. My experience of such individuals is that they dwell in the kingdom of drama. One law reigns above all: Attention Rules. Positive attention is great, but it’s far less familiar than negative attention, as its far harder to get. And human beings will almost always choose the familiar over the unfamiliar, even if it’s painful.
As if to illustrate this, when I returned from chow, we discovered someone had switched our locks. While we left them hanging, unlocked, someone had taken Earl’s lock and put it on mine and vice-versa. When we then locked our locks, we couldn’t reopen them until we’d figured out the switch. This was a harmless prank anywhere else, but in the current atmosphere, a tad unsettling. I was annoyed, but Earl seemed secretly pleased. “They’re just fucking with us” he explained, suppressing a smile. Negative attention was still attention. This kind of asinine, time-consuming, chop-busting pain-in-the-ass adolescent bullshit drives me up a wall, but Earl, like most of the inmates here, have more than anything else this one thing in common: Immaturity. I joke about it being the third grade here, but it’s not far from the truth.
My female readership is probably rolling their eyes, thinking about the men in their lives, and wanting to tell me “believe me, it’s not confined to jail.” It’s true, adolescent behavior, or “arrested” development in the case of prison, seems to be epidemic among adult males. Has it always been this way, and only now getting press? Is this a specifically American phenomenon? If it is a symptom of modern society, what does it stem from? The lack of male adult role models? Smothering mothers? An overextended childhood run amok?
I’ve never tried to initiate a “Diablog.” But this topic seems as good as any. Comments welcome.
MCO 2004
P.S. Lest you think I can’t poke a little fun at my own guy, politically, I thought I’d share a term I thought up to describe Kerry, particularly in debates: “Infactuated.”
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