February 5, 2005
This morning I perused an article in the L.A. Weekly about the Aryan Brotherhood, a notorious prison gang with enormous power that radiates through the entire prison system. My widening eyes read that they had been born in Chino, (where I was incarcerated,) back in the 80s, and still exerted enormous power there. I remembered when I was locked up for one hellish week in a cell in Sycamore Hall with "Drifter," a wannabe member of the Brotherhood. He told me that the reason they asked for your CDC number the moment you were brought in was that your supposedly confidential docket was immediately looked up by inside spies to determine if you were either a "chester" (child molester) or a "rapo" (rapist), and more importantly, if you had an outstanding beef with the Brotherhood. Blessedly, I met none of these criteria. But Drifter made clear that if he was "tapped"--required to carry out an assault against another inmate or participate in a gang riot, he felt he would have no choice but to comply. Refusal marked you for retribution. I found much of this fantastic at the time; the article makes clear that it is all true.
When I transferred from Sycamore into Protective Custody at Birch Hall, I now understand why the inmates there were on constant alert, to put it midly. Some of them wouldn’t even go out to yard, so sure that if they were marked, the Brotherhood would find a way to "hit" them. Some of them were scared to death for the safety of their loved ones on the outside, and when they got out, would be looking over their shoulders for a lifetime.
Ironically, what saved my ass was precisely what we all feared could put me in danger. Because I was gay, and open about it, I was of in interest to these "pure men." At the same time, my being white trumped my being gay, so it allowed for a modicum of protection. But even more ironically, the only protection I needed was from other whites, not from the black or latins. The blacks have their gangs, but the requirement for membership is not a function of killing a white—any white. Whereas killing a black inmate—any black inmate--will automatically earn you your "stripes" (literally, tattoed "SS": insignia) with the Aryan Brotherhood.
The leadership, (who are now being indicted en masse under the RICO laws—hence the article) are ruly irretrievably evil men. But there are individuals among the " foot soldiers" that I got to know at Delano. Men with swastikas tattoed on their necks. Funny, friendly guys, who even kidded around with blacks, and acknowledged my gayness with a wink. We parted with almost affectionate words. "You’re a good guy Marc, I don’t care what you do in bed."
They had succumbed to the desire of young men to have status in the eyes of their peers by being accorded approval by their nominal superiors. (Not so nominal in this case, their "superiors" could have them killed.") However, by and large, one is not forced to join the brotherhood. The pressure can be intense to "stand with the whites" in the event of a race riot, but they don’t usually seek out someone who clearly does not want to participate to operate as an enforcer, for example. That doesn’t mean an "innocent bystander" like my buddy T, for example, couldn’t be caught in their machinations.
He discovered his cellie was hiding three knives in their bunk. If the bunk was searched, he could easily have received three months added to his sentence, even if the knives were not his. So he dropped a kite to a guard and was put into Protective Custody, where I met him. He was the one too afraid to even go to Yard.
I also discovered that the C.O. stabbed to death on January 10 at Chino was the first killing of a guard in the California Prison System since 1996. My poor ex-buddies, living in lockdown for the insanity of others. And lucky me, oh so lucky me. I feel like an undercover reporter who went on the assignment of his life in there, and got out just before the going got real tough.
In other news, I picked up a vase at a yard sale next door for $1. I’m going to decoupage the life out of that thing.
And here is the next installment of Rhett and Belle.
So when his father set forth his plan for a military future for his son, Rhett saw temporary acquiescence to it as the only likely way in which not to jeopardize his inheritance—and with it a standing in society and wielding of financial power that would facilitate the pursuit of his passion for women with much greater ease than if he was consumed by the mundane tasks of keeping body and soul together. He even took the opportunity to apply himself to his studies—an apt choice given there was little else to do at the military school besides drilling and the plotting of elaborate practical jokes.
He found he excelled in the subject of literature, for even in the driest tomes one could find contemplations on women and the consequences of their existence. Although many of these ruminations occurred in historical volumes, (allowing the tutors to distance the boys from any potentially suspect passages from which they might draw unclean conclusions), Rhett saw no reason to that believe human nature had changed fundamentally in thousands of years. The truths imparted in the great works could certainly be applied to the present. Not only the lessons of love, but also the lessons of history.
Rhett’s spoiled fellow Carolinians thought themselves, as "southern gentlemen," to be somehow unique creatures in history. Despite his similar background, Rhett possessed no such hubris—his truly keen intelligence saw through such blatant subjectivity. In fact, he found it quite ironic that those thinking they had nothing to learn from the past were the same ones most steeped in glorifying a Southern "civilization" that was galloping backwards through history, as evidenced by the elaborate cultural anachronisms, the feudal agricultural economy, and an outmoded concept of prosperity that was measured only by the wealth of a few.
The North, on the other hand, was charging into the future. (Fortuitously the Academy subscribed to several northern newspapers—although it seemed only Rhett and the odd professor looked at them). Industrialization was the basis of a new kind of prosperity, one that took into account the fortunes of all, not just of the landholding few. Unlike in the South, workers were paid, but immigration provided a large and cheap labor pool, and consequently masses of wage earners with money to spend. They fueled demand for the very products they made and required services that expanded the middle class. As they didn’t need to be fed, clothed and given rudimentary medical care by their employers, their labor was actually cheaper than that of the slaves And they were strivers, whose effort and ingenuity could provide rewards that no slave had cause to aim for. The northern economy had elasticity, the southern economy stagnated. One half of the country was running with the pack of Europe in the modern world, the other half was drifting lazily along the river of obsolescence.
All this Rhett could see. He had no outlet to articulate his understanding--the academy hardly being a bastion of freethinkers—but voiced or not, his intuitive grasp of the big picture was invariably sound and prescient. It would serve him well. It would have served the South well if she were able to listen.
Rhett also applied himself to learning the French language, as he not only found he could use it as a pretext to gain him access to a far less strait-laced literature, but thought it wise to develop a tool that would gain him access as well to women never even encountered by most young dandies on the "Grand Tours" of Europe that were becoming the fashion of the day for the new American rich. They usually traveled Europe with other Americans, or at least the southerners did—with other southerners. His father following slavishly the cultural cues indicating social status, Rhett was sure he too would be sent on a Grand Tour, but he had no intention of hewing the a path no more adventurous than that from Savannah to Atlanta. He would meet some real Europeans, and most decidedly, some real "Belles"—the French kind.
. Rhett did not actually take his father’s proposal of West Point seriously, not realizing his acceptance, having less to do with grades and more to do with his father’s close business ties to a South Carolina legislator, was guaranteed.
Making it through an entire four years at West Point, a boring institution that was training him for a career that held no interest for him, was not a prospect Rhett relished. His first plebe year, though unpleasant, had been somewhat cushioned. Although he was destined to reserve feelings of true friendship and loyalty to women only, a coterie of classmates wanted terribly to be his friend, and he was effortlessly popular.
During his second year, he even used his status to intervene on behalf of a few unfortunate classmates, including the new class of plebes, who were picked on from the beginning, risking retribution---physical and otherwise---from the upperclassmen for his impertinence. But those punishments rarely went beyond some extra push-ups and drills, which Rhett performed with an enthusiastic smile to frustrate and confound his punishers. He found when he deprived the cruel of the pleasures of cruelty, they became disoriented. When he refused to show fear, they became unsettled. No doubt the most intimidated among them might well have eventually made it his goal to "break" Cadet Butler, especially since Rhett was increasingly hard put to continue suppressing the witty barbs that perched on his tongue so readily during moments when others exhibited an annoying sense of self-importance. But by the end of the year, he developed an athletic silhouette and bearing of an adult that garnered him the psychological-if not chronological-status of an upperclassman.
Rhett dreaded the official change in status, as he would be expected in his third year to abuse the lower classmen as he had been abused. The whole system was the height of idiocy, as far as he was concerned. But just as his junior year was about to commence, Fate intervened, as it tends to.
MCO 2005
