Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (49 page)

My stomach tightened. I didn't think I could ever eat again. I was losing not only my best friend in prison, but also the boy who had protected and taught me so much.

"Can I help King carry his stuff?" I asked the guard at the desk.

"No," Simon said from the landing above. "Get Williams or Nichols to help, but Parsell you stay here."

I tried to protest, but Paul stopped me. "Don't. It's not worth it."

"Yeah, boy!" an inmate called out from the side. "Your little Popsicle ain't gonna help you now."

Paul shot him a look, but he was unmoved. "Go on, bitch, and get yourself a man while you're at it."

"That's enough," Simon said. "King! Get moving."

I walked to my cell, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of knowing I was crumbling inside. "I'll see you at chow," I said to Paul. "Hang back if they call you first."

"I'll see you," Paul said. He looked at me, and I could tell he was feeling exactly as I was. He looked up at Simon and grabbed his bags.

Later that week, when I reported to work early, Sherry's door was closed. I sat at my desk and started typing job orders that were in my in-box. I didn't know who she was in there with, but it had to be another staff member, since she never closed the door with an inmate. I heard a man's voice rise, and I went to listen at the door to see if I could tell who it was. He sounded angry. "You'd make warden a hell of lot sooner, if you weren't such an arrogant . . ." He snatched open the door and his face dropped when he found me standing there.

He was a black man, in his late twenties. He was wearing a suit, and walked out without saying another word. He looked embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," I said to Sherry. "I was just ..."

"It's OK," she said.

"I just wanted to make sure ..."

"I said it's OK."

That afternoon, I tried to ask what happened, because I was dying to know who the man was. "Don't," she said. It was the first time I felt like she was closing me out, the same way Mom used to.

"What?" she asked, annoyed. "You think you're the only one who gets harassed?"

I'd never heard her take such a harsh tone with anyone.

"Don't worry about me," Sherry said. "I can handle myself. There are battles worth fighting, and there are some you can only lose. So I pick mine wisely. What about you?"

"What about me?"

"There are no victims in here," she said harshly. "Everybody feels sorry for themselves, but what about what you did to get yourselves here in the first place? What about the victims of your crime? How much pity do any of you have for them?"

"I didn't hurt anyone," I said.

"Yeah? What about the people you stole from?"

"It was a company."

"And the woman inside the Photo Mat? You don't think she was frightened? Don't you see? All you're worried about is how you feel. How you've been messed over-but I don't hear you taking responsibility for anything. Regardless of what was done to you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "I'm going to school." I almost felt like crying. I didn't understand why she was attacking me.

"Sure, you're gong to school. That's great. I'm very proud of you, but what I'm talking about is growing up. Getting rid of these baby attitudes, like how wrong the world is and how everybody is always hurting you. A lot of you guys use that stuff as an excuse for your behavior-like it's OK to act any way you want."

"I do not!"

"Yes you do. That's all I've been hearing from you-how unfair it is that Simon had Paul moved. You know you two are lovers and that sexual misconduct is against the rules, yet the only thing I hear you talking about is how wrong Simon is."

"Well he is! They didn't catch us doing anything." I hated her for turning on me like this. What did she know about "sexual misconduct"? Had she been gang raped or forced to turn to a man for protection and then had to do anything he ordered her to do? I had thought she was cool. With Paul gone, Miss Bain was the only bright spot in my life. I needed her attention now, more than ever. Only she wasn't listening. She was talking just like Goodman, Simon, or the warden.

"Oh never mind!" I said. "I thought I could talk to you."

"You can talk to me," Sherry said. "You can always talk to me. But it doesn't mean you'll always hear what you want to hear."

"You're all just a bunch a homophobes."

A bunch of what?"

"Homophobes," I repeated. "Homophobia." I read it in the book Paul gave me.

"I'm not afraid of homosexuals," Sherry said. "And I don't dislike them either, but the rules are the rules, and the issue is not whether anything is wrong with being gay. The issue is-the enforcement of rules and your willingness to accept responsibility."

"Forget it!" I stormed out of the office.

How could she be so callous?She was probably taking Simon's side because she had to, and I didn't want to hear it. I felt betrayed by her, and I didn't care if she reported nee, or wrote me up. I wasn't going to listen to any more of her bullshit. What made me think anyone inside would be different?

"You always have a choice," she had said to me once, after Paul and I beat up Reese with our locks. "You can let what happens in here harden you upor soften you. And only you can decide that. But take a good look around. Which one do you think will take you further?" She obviously knew what we had done, but neither of us would discuss it with her directly. Besides, she knew we would never admit it, so we talked around the matter without putting either one of us in an uncomfortable spot.

Paul's lips tasted sweet, but his stubble pinched the skin around my mouth reminding me of old times under his bed. When Slide Step first kissed me, I had asked if he wouldn't do it again. I didn't like kissing. I told him about the girl I had once dated in seventh grade and the time she stuck her tongue in my mouth after a dance. It grossed me out. Slide Step understood. But now that Paul was doing the same, I was able to surrender to it. In fact, I loved it. He was holding the back of my head while caressing my neck. When I opened my eyes, I was expecting to see his shut, but they weren't. He was staring at me intensely, and it drove me wild. Paul was the first person who made me feel I could do no wrong. He even liked it when I acted like a geek and embarrassed myself. When he nibbled on my lip, I felt my dick grow.

We were lying beneath the junipers next to the gym. It was cold outside, and an occasional pine needle cut through my jeans. They were sharp, like his chin, which scratched a light trail across the skin of my stomach. He had been sucking me for what felt like an hour. He caught my load, as I exploded, and continued sucking. My breath was racing as fast as my mind, but in those few moments, I felt as if I had transcended the barbed-wire fence that surrounded us.

Paul was in D-unit, and I had been moved to C. We waited a few weeks and asked if I could be moved to D; meanwhile Paul asked about C-but we were both told no.

I took Jake on as my man. I didn't have a choice, and Paul was being pressured as well. Something happened to him earlier in the day, but he didn't want to talk about it.

Paul scooted up beside me against the wall and took my hand. "I just can't take it no more," he said. His eyes glassed over. "I've been down a long time."

We sat there silently-holding each other's hand and listening to inmates come and go from the gym. "You know, before coming to prison," Paul said. "I'd never harmed anyone physically. I never even considered it. People don't realize how difficult it is to keep your mind when you're in an environment where at any moment you might be assaulted. It's a had way to live."

I squeezed his hand.

"In order to survive, you have to become an animal just like everyone else, because the only thing they respect is violence."

"I wish people on the outside knew what went on here," I said.

"Shit. We're convicts," Paul said. "Nobody cares about convicts."

I looked up at the sky through the trees.

He was right, but it still didn't seem right.

"You'll be out in a year or so," he said. "I still have a long time to go. I'm just tired, you know?"

I looked at Paul and nodded.

The consequences of what we were considering had not occurred to me.

We had devised a plan of escape. On the face of the inside fence, was a tightly woven metal mesh that ran about halfway up. It prevented hands and feet from being able to climb it. And the rolls of constantine wire created an extra hurdle. But the gun tower on the corner fence, behind the gym, was often unmanned.

Paul and I discussed our route as we hid in the bushes and watched for movement in the tower. "I'm not sure I can climb the fence where the mesh is," I told Paul.

"I'll be right behind you," he said. "I'll give you a boost."

Paul had taken forks from the kitchen and rolled tape around the handles to give us something to grip. "But what if they bend?" I said. "You're not tall enough to boost me."

"Don't worry," he said. "You'll make it."

"Maybe we should wait and go over the gate to the rec yard, then scale the other fence in back." The fence that enclosed the recreation yard was different from the others. It was a single rather than a doubled fence, and the gate to the yard didn't have any mesh on it, so we could climb it easilywithout having to use the forks.

"Yeah, but then we'll have to climb the outer fence in back," Paul said. "And that one has the mesh."

"So what," I said. "If we wait and go on a foggy night, the guards won't be able to see us. So we can take as long as we need." There was another tower, along the back line of the yard, but that was only manned when inmates occupied the yard.

Paul looked at me and considered it.

He leaned back against the building, nodding his head. He looked relieved.

"We can slip out our windows in the middle of the night and meet over here." He pointed to corner of the gym. "Or better yet, I'll come tap on your window. I know how you like to sleep."

A couple of days later, when they were late clearing the morning count and called my unit to chow, I looked for Paul but couldn't find him. Certainly, the fog hadn't made it easier to locate him.

"Hey Tim!" an inmate shouted. "Your boy broke camp last night."

I stopped in my tracks. He did what? Suddenly, it made sense. The fog, the delayed count, they were off by one. I couldn't move. Several more inmates walked past, "He made it, Dawg. He got away!"

He was supposed to come get me! How could he leave without me? I'd never felt so abandoned, not even by my family.

"You should be happy," one of the inmates said.

He had waited for the perfect night. The fog was so thick the guards couldn't see the fence. It felt like a gunshot had crackled from one of the towers, and it hit me squarely in the chest. I couldn't breath. I looked over at the gates next to the gym to see. The barbed wire drooped at the top. I just couldn't believe he was gone.

I even watched and waited as the last of the white guys straggled out of D-unit. Naturally, Paul wasn't there. "He made it!" someone cheered. It was true. Paul was gone.

I went back to my cell and cried. Now I was truly alone.

A few minutes later, I was called to Unit Manager's office.

"I'm sure you're aware," Fitzsimmons, the ARUM for C-unit, said. "King escaped this morning. They've asked me to see if you know where he is?"

As if I would help them. Fitzsimmons was just like the others-a pompous prick who didn't give a fuck about Paul or me. They couldn't stand that we were happy together. Fags weren't entitled to happiness. Even inmates who raped the boy they kept weren't separated. If it weren't for these bastards, Paul would still be here. Well, fuck Fitzsimmons, and the rest of these motherfuckers. But I couldn't say that and jeopardize myself, so I simply shook my head no.

He started to say something, but stopped himself. "OK then. That's all."

I went back to my cell laid on the bed. I faced the wall, blocking out everything else, as I did the next day and the day after that. I had classes to attend, but I didn't care. A letter slid under my door. I didn't bother to get up. I left it there on the floor.

"C'mon," I said to Randy. "Please?"

"No way."

Randy was the best tattoo man in the prison. I wanted him to put Paul's name on my arm or shoulder, but he wouldn't do it. Yet he did everyone else's tattoos. He had taken apart an alarm clock, and attached a sharpened piece of guitar string to the hammer that rang the bell. Once wound up, the hammer went back and forth, puncturing the skin. He dipped the "needle" in ink that was made from torn-out pages of a Bible.

"You'll end of up regretting it," he said, "and you'll blame me."