throne of agony
this is probably going in my book if i manage to get out, though--hard as fuck to get a pen in there, they probably thought i was going to use it as a weapon. you have no idea how much i wish this was funny.
Queens is also-& this is perhaps its worst transgression against the glory that could have been humankind, if aforementioned borough had been executed in utero-home to Rikers Island. When they pepper your childhood with Scared-Straight videos telling you that little Johnny’s innocent offer of a joint, complete with an accompanying symphony of unicorns and rainbows, is gonna fuck you up later in life by turning into a crackpipe while the unicorns turn into thugs and the rainbows into hails of bullets, they’re talking about Rikers Island. In my first five minutes there I was privileged enough to bear witness to a cherubic little girl stuffing a ziplock bag full of cigarettes into her “special pouch” upon announcement of an impending strip-search.
While waiting for what I still naively hoped was the day of my freedom, I was accused of being a junkie, a prostitute, and a participant in an entire lexicon of activities involving crack but no one believed the reason I was actually there. I can’t really believe it myself but we may get to that later, if there is a later, I mean the dinosaurs got extinct why would they leave me behind like this? I can smell my comet on the horizon. Anyway, I was offered countless times the opportunity to trade my mammoth Fossil watch-the only means for most of the members of cell-block 3 of knowing the time-for a Newport and a white t shirt, but I’ll take the power of having the one meltable clock over the brief buzz a nicotine stick will supposedly offer me on its hands and knees, thanks. It took three days for anyone to even briefly hand me a pencil and even that was with the stipulation that I immediately give it back so she could fill out a cross-eyed cross-word puzzle.
The constant barrage of disapproval smells like body odor and it takes about three days to realize that it’s not just that you and everyone else lack deodorant. Your capacity for the English language gradually drains, replaced by some bizarre street patois comprising words like Shorty, Thirsty, and Gel, coopted from the regular language to signify mysterious things I still haven’t quite divined. I am, at this point, after four days, wishing for an electroshock Gel of some kind-how many methadone patients can dance on the head of a pin? If you’re the kind of sick motherfucker who actually wants to know, get your ass out to East Elmhurst, land of the fee and home of the raving lunatics and facial tics and watch my eye twitch like in the movies-may I have an oscar for my performance? I might be able to sell it for a wide array of splendorous goods such as a cigarette! a t-shirt! a thumb-sucking attitude problem! I watched at least three girls mired in thumb-sucking bliss during one of those long periods where they thought I was just sitting at a table staring at nothing-oh yeah sure fooled them I’d pat myself on the back but I think my hands fell off for lack of devils to use them as a playground. But this particular Shorty who originated the thumb-sucking craze brought a new meaning to the phrase opposable thumb-looking like nothing so much as a pygmy tornado of impotent rage, tying up the phone for an hour at a time like damsels to the track-marks with her faked phone calls staged for the sole purpose of preventing anyone else from contacting the outside world.
The common room resembles some sort of warped gymnasium of inactivity where the only sports are yelling, watching TV, eating, yelling, and lining up for methadone treatment. There is also a small lesbian-overtures league but this has not made it to Olympic levels yet. Keep your fingers crossed. A cultural anthropologist from a society without phones would be awed and mystified by the conflicts that grow up around the corded entities-lines stretching halfway across the room, with myself usually part of them, dialing up lawyers, families, significant others, insignificant others who might find it in some corner of their hearts to post a dollar towards bail, and so on.
The trade market inside is truly disturbing. Jelly is hoarded for days (or until the Monday morning strip-search also cleans out the stockpiled food from the cells) so that by bedtime, when everyone is hungry again despite the depressingly low activity levels and high quantity of bland sludge shoveled up three times a day in the form of bread, shit, bread, fried shit, frosted flakes (and no the irony is not lost on me, nothing is lost on me, I am one mapped motherfucker), the bread they snack on will resemble cardboard to a lesser degree. Keep in mind that the use of the term “snack” here is devoid of its normal connotations of a guilty pleasure as there is no pleasure in eating this sliced nothingness, and the popular idea of a snack is at its simplest something that tastes “good.” “Good” is probably the least commonly used four letter word in the entire penal system-MENSA this is not. At this point I’d kill for an intellectual conversation but hey, kids, don’t commit any crimes a week before you’re supposed to go back to school because you might not even get your coveted book-learnin’! You think I don’t know I’m wasting my mind? You think this isn’t why I’m completely, probably at this point 100% insane? This shit drives me up the wall, and eventually gets pulled over, & well it ends up behind the same bars.
Twice some jello-mold of a matron tried to convert me to Christianity, but she had two teeth and I wasn’t interested. By that time I’d lost even the will to laugh at her. They outnumber me, I was losing, I’ll be losing again when I most likely end up back there in a few hours. Sure it’s an incredibly poignant moment to read about-to reflect back on-but it’s another thing to live. I’m not expecting sympathy. I’m just saying this isn’t fucking Chicago here.
Queens is also-& this is perhaps its worst transgression against the glory that could have been humankind, if aforementioned borough had been executed in utero-home to Rikers Island. When they pepper your childhood with Scared-Straight videos telling you that little Johnny’s innocent offer of a joint, complete with an accompanying symphony of unicorns and rainbows, is gonna fuck you up later in life by turning into a crackpipe while the unicorns turn into thugs and the rainbows into hails of bullets, they’re talking about Rikers Island. In my first five minutes there I was privileged enough to bear witness to a cherubic little girl stuffing a ziplock bag full of cigarettes into her “special pouch” upon announcement of an impending strip-search.
While waiting for what I still naively hoped was the day of my freedom, I was accused of being a junkie, a prostitute, and a participant in an entire lexicon of activities involving crack but no one believed the reason I was actually there. I can’t really believe it myself but we may get to that later, if there is a later, I mean the dinosaurs got extinct why would they leave me behind like this? I can smell my comet on the horizon. Anyway, I was offered countless times the opportunity to trade my mammoth Fossil watch-the only means for most of the members of cell-block 3 of knowing the time-for a Newport and a white t shirt, but I’ll take the power of having the one meltable clock over the brief buzz a nicotine stick will supposedly offer me on its hands and knees, thanks. It took three days for anyone to even briefly hand me a pencil and even that was with the stipulation that I immediately give it back so she could fill out a cross-eyed cross-word puzzle.
The constant barrage of disapproval smells like body odor and it takes about three days to realize that it’s not just that you and everyone else lack deodorant. Your capacity for the English language gradually drains, replaced by some bizarre street patois comprising words like Shorty, Thirsty, and Gel, coopted from the regular language to signify mysterious things I still haven’t quite divined. I am, at this point, after four days, wishing for an electroshock Gel of some kind-how many methadone patients can dance on the head of a pin? If you’re the kind of sick motherfucker who actually wants to know, get your ass out to East Elmhurst, land of the fee and home of the raving lunatics and facial tics and watch my eye twitch like in the movies-may I have an oscar for my performance? I might be able to sell it for a wide array of splendorous goods such as a cigarette! a t-shirt! a thumb-sucking attitude problem! I watched at least three girls mired in thumb-sucking bliss during one of those long periods where they thought I was just sitting at a table staring at nothing-oh yeah sure fooled them I’d pat myself on the back but I think my hands fell off for lack of devils to use them as a playground. But this particular Shorty who originated the thumb-sucking craze brought a new meaning to the phrase opposable thumb-looking like nothing so much as a pygmy tornado of impotent rage, tying up the phone for an hour at a time like damsels to the track-marks with her faked phone calls staged for the sole purpose of preventing anyone else from contacting the outside world.
The common room resembles some sort of warped gymnasium of inactivity where the only sports are yelling, watching TV, eating, yelling, and lining up for methadone treatment. There is also a small lesbian-overtures league but this has not made it to Olympic levels yet. Keep your fingers crossed. A cultural anthropologist from a society without phones would be awed and mystified by the conflicts that grow up around the corded entities-lines stretching halfway across the room, with myself usually part of them, dialing up lawyers, families, significant others, insignificant others who might find it in some corner of their hearts to post a dollar towards bail, and so on.
The trade market inside is truly disturbing. Jelly is hoarded for days (or until the Monday morning strip-search also cleans out the stockpiled food from the cells) so that by bedtime, when everyone is hungry again despite the depressingly low activity levels and high quantity of bland sludge shoveled up three times a day in the form of bread, shit, bread, fried shit, frosted flakes (and no the irony is not lost on me, nothing is lost on me, I am one mapped motherfucker), the bread they snack on will resemble cardboard to a lesser degree. Keep in mind that the use of the term “snack” here is devoid of its normal connotations of a guilty pleasure as there is no pleasure in eating this sliced nothingness, and the popular idea of a snack is at its simplest something that tastes “good.” “Good” is probably the least commonly used four letter word in the entire penal system-MENSA this is not. At this point I’d kill for an intellectual conversation but hey, kids, don’t commit any crimes a week before you’re supposed to go back to school because you might not even get your coveted book-learnin’! You think I don’t know I’m wasting my mind? You think this isn’t why I’m completely, probably at this point 100% insane? This shit drives me up the wall, and eventually gets pulled over, & well it ends up behind the same bars.
Twice some jello-mold of a matron tried to convert me to Christianity, but she had two teeth and I wasn’t interested. By that time I’d lost even the will to laugh at her. They outnumber me, I was losing, I’ll be losing again when I most likely end up back there in a few hours. Sure it’s an incredibly poignant moment to read about-to reflect back on-but it’s another thing to live. I’m not expecting sympathy. I’m just saying this isn’t fucking Chicago here.