Читать книгу Jail Speak - Ben Langston - Страница 17

Strip, Separate

THIS was life after the academy: Strip searches. Gorilla said, “This is a part of the job. Earlobe to asshole, inspect it all. Do the steps. This is for the good of the institution. So look close. And if you’re ashamed to look at another man’s penis, this is the time to grow up.”

THIS is what I was thinking: will “earlobe to asshole” be on the test?

In the army I went through a combat life saver school. That school was two weeks of watching gory videos and bandaging dummies. For an amputation, we tightened the tourniquet on the rubber dummy’s arm until the pretend bright red bleeding stopped. For a sucking chest wound, we taped plastic over the pretend hole on the rubber chest. To diagnose a lower lumbar fracture, we checked for a pretend priapism on the rubber crotch. We combat-saved our dummies over and over until the final exam when we had to partner up and give each other IVs, real human IVs. I got my partner on the first stick. He got me on the third.

That’s what I expected for the strip test: a real human experience.

We partnered up for the stripping and took turns playing the inmate, but did it dumbed-down, with our clothes on. We all passed and Gorilla said, “This is how I feel right now: proud. Take an extra twenty for lunch.” And I didn’t strip a person for real until at Rockview.

THIS is what gets inmates strip-searched: anything. Inmates working outside the jail cutting grass or picking up trash along the highway get stripped at the gate, out and in, no exceptions. Before and after inmates hug and kiss their visitors—no tongues allowed—they’re stripped and inspected, every inch. Court hearings, security investigations, lockups, shakedowns, hospital trips, cell searches, and threats on staff all have that one thing in common, too—the inmate gets naked, at least once. Gorilla said, “This is why we do all this: it prevents escape, it prevents contraband, it keeps the jail safe. Mostly.”

THIS is who brings in most contraband: staff. Ninety-nine percent of the time, when a staff member breaks a rule, it’s to an inmate’s benefit. Rockview was locked down for three days when two mobile phones were found in a bathroom vent—all two thousand inmates had their cells and selves searched. The state police discovered that a night-shift guard was paying for the phone service. The jail fired him. Hidden with the phones was a pocket pussy in a dirty sock. And even though there’s no actual proof that the guard brought in the pocket pussy, we still called him the pimp: the pink plastic pimp.

THIS makes the stripping job harder: old guards. Not all guards made inmates take everything off. Basically, the longer a guard worked at the jail, the less of a chance he’d make them strip naked. Complacency, it’s called. Usually, guards were alone with the inmates, so guards could, if they wanted to, bypass steps. I didn’t, so sometimes I got a complainer. When I did, it ruined the flow. I had to stop and explain that yes, I was really going to look at his ass, and that no, I didn’t actually enjoy looking at his ass. Some inmates just complained to complain, which was fine. I know I would. I felt exposed during the strip test, bending over in my pants.

THIS is the worst strip-search scenario for guards: being videotaped. Certain situations, like after fights, require a permanent record of a strip search—to document damage or weapons. The required witnessing lieutenant always says things like “Have fun” and “Analyze everything,” to be funny. If you laugh, you look like a sadist on the tape. If you don’t laugh, you’ve got an attitude problem, according to the lieutenant. There’s no avoiding it, though: if you work at a jail long enough, and you’re a man in a man’s jail, you’ll be videotaped looking at another man’s penis.

THIS is where inmates get stripped: cells, bathrooms, the gym, the cages in the bucket, they all worked. But I stripped most guys in the Shack. It sat at the main gate. Inmate-built, the Shack had vinyl siding, a linoleum floor, small windows near the roof, a bench, a heater, and a nail in the wall for the strip-search logbook. The Shack was small, ten feet by five feet maybe, but you could get two guys going at once in there. Do it right and you had one guy naked at all times. There was rhythm to it: one strips, one dresses, you mark the logbook, you call out “next.”

THIS is how long it takes to get to the naked truth: nine steps.

THIS is step 1: order the inmate to undress. As he removes his clothes, inspect every article. Gloves on, feel every seam. Empty all pockets. Look for modifications, patches on the inside, openings in the collar, strings for hanging contraband down the legs. Unroll all cuffs.

“Made by Inmate Labor.” That’s what the tags say on both inmate and guard uniforms. Inmates get brown. Guards get black and gray. All are single-stitched for laughs. The crotches are the problem. They blow out after one year.

During a pat search on a cook leaving the chow hall, my hand hit something heavy and solid below his crotch. I asked what it was. He said, “What do you think it is? My junk.” I took him to the bathroom and ordered him to strip. He wouldn’t at first. But after five minutes of my promises that I wouldn’t write him up if he complied, and my threats that he’d get a trip to the bucket if he didn’t, I got him out of his pants. His boxers were cinched tight around his thighs and bulging. It wasn’t his junk making them bulge. It was sugar. Six pounds of it in baggies—I weighed it later. He said he needed it for his coffee.

THIS is step 2: order the inmate to hold his hands out in front of him, to spread his fingers, then to flip them over.

Every other inmate had a hand tattoo: a cross, a spider web, a teardrop, a scribbled 88 (a white supremacist thing. H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. So 88 means HH, which means Heil Hitler). A poor man’s jailhouse tattoo gun is just a staple and the ink from a BIC pen. Most guys only have tattoos on their left hand. Which makes sense. The majority of jailhouse tattoos are self-inflicted, and about 90 percent of the world is righthanded.

THIS is step 3: order the inmate to open his mouth, to pull out his cheeks, then to lift his tongue. Have him remove his dentures or partials. Look up his nostrils at the same time you check his mouth.

Tardive dyskinesia is a rare side effect of the antischizophrenic drug Thorazine. People with it have involuntary and repetitive body movements, usually in their faces. One of the inmates, who always carried a Bible, had it. Every five minutes his mouth opened as wide as it could go and his tongue muscled out to his chin. His eyes squinted from the strain. He did it while talking, eating, and singing—he sang in the jail choir. I can guarantee that he never tried to smuggle anything in his mouth. But during a search, for appearances, I checked his mouth anyway. Skip it, and the stripping just became personal. Gorilla said, “This is how you treat every inmate: the same.”

THIS is step 4: order the inmate to turn his head to each side and bend his ears forward. Look in and behind each. A little piece of anything can be rolled up in toilet paper and pasted in any fold on the body like a spit wad.

A twenty-year-old inmate, in for five DUIs, had tingling sensations in his right ear for two weeks. He woke up one morning in severe pain. He went to the jail doctor. The doctor flushed a bug out of his ear, an earwig. After the flush, that inmate went by “Rat.” You know, because he was bugged.

THIS is step 5: order the inmate to run his fingers through his hair. Have him remove any wigs or toupees.

I’ve only seen one inmate with a toupee. An oldhead, and his hair hat was ten years older than me—I asked.

Another guy had a fist-sized, fleshy growth on the left side of his head. No hair on the lump, like it had been rubbed off. I stripped him after a concert in the gym. All three hundred inmates in attendance got stripped. Another keep-the-jail-safe rule. He wasn’t embarrassed about the lump. He called it his mood cyst. It turned red when he was mad.

THIS is step 6: order the inmate to lift his arms, visually inspect his armpits.

Not every inmate could afford deodorant from the jail commissary, so the poor ones—called indigent by the state—used the state-issued bars of soap instead. Crusty and yellow, that’s how the soap looked—their pits, too.

Jail jobs for inmates, like single-stitching uniforms, paid nineteen to seventy-nine cents an hour—minus taxes. So after buying the necessities (tobacco, instant coffee, and Honey Buns) from the commissary, inmates had choices to make. They could buy deodorant, or buy the three bags of chips they owe to the card shark in the next cell. That’s why some used the soap. Those bars of soap also worked for washing clothes, smashing windows, and putting inside a sock to beat a man unconscious, or, at least, bloody.

THIS is step 7: order the inmate to lift his penis and scrotum, then to separate the two. If uncircumcised, order the inmate to pull his foreskin back.

Mumbles was a sex offender with a speech impediment who lived in the Special Needs Unit. Guard-given nicknames are cruel—always. And Mumbles was orange when I first stripped him. I had to know why. He told me, “Hep C.” He was jaundiced. At Christmas, the chapel filled for his solo performance of “Silent Night, Holy Night.” It was one of the jail’s traditions, and an honest good time.

Another guy named Benders, who lost all his front teeth to meth, got busted for humping Mumbles. But before being sent to the bucket—an automatic ninety days for sex acts—Benders filled his pants with toilet paper and lit them on fire. He said he was ashamed. A month later, when I stripped Benders during a shakedown (jail speak for every cell and asshole searched) in the bucket, I couldn’t tell whether or not he had foreskin. That’s how bad the scarring was. And for the first time ever, I skipped a step.

THIS is step 8: order the inmate to turn around, to lift his left foot and wiggle his toes. Repeat for the right foot.

Jail socks are cheap, linty. That’s why the floor was always dirty in the Shack—sock lint. Once a month inmates got a new pair. They lasted one week. One day if the inmate went for a jog in the yard.

I’m no expert, but ugly seems to be the rule when it comes to men’s feet. Or maybe I am an expert. I’ve been through a lot of step 8s, more than seven hundred.

THIS is step 9: order the inmate to bend over and to spread his buttocks.

What to look for is a string. A string coming from the ass. Strings are for the quick and easy removal of, say, two lighters wrapped in a plastic bag, or a cell phone. The strings are hard to see. They’re usually black so they blend in with the hair. The ass hair. It’s pretty easy to turn any string black. Shoe polish works.

If you see a string, don’t pull it. Never pull the string. Contact a lieutenant. A lieutenant verifies, then contacts medical. Medical does the removing. Make sure it’s a string. There’s usually some rolled up bits of toilet paper, so you have to be sure. Use a flashlight when in doubt.

The trick to get through step 9 is to only look for what doesn’t belong. Look for those strings, or the end of a condom. Don’t look at the dingle-berries or hemorrhoids—work that tunnel vision.

THIS is what I found stripping: one suspicious-looking hollowed-out pencil. At least a hundred loaves of bread (an entire loaf was down the sleeve of one guy’s shirt). A case worth of the yellow plasticware from the chow hall, mostly butter knives. A few hundred pounds of jail meat wrapped in napkins: turkey burgers, chicken legs, Salisbury steaks, seafood salad. A thong converted from boxers. A bread bag full of ice. A dozen razor blades extracted from the BIC razors sold at the commissary. A nine-inch mop-handle whack (jail speak for club). Five and a half dead cockroaches—four were in the pants cuff of one inmate—not contraband, just nasty. Enough trash (toilet-paper wads, ketchup packets, old write-ups, passes, whatever) to fill a dozen full-sized trash bags. And a love note to one of the jail’s prostitutes. He sold blowjobs for Snickers bars. Everyone called him Snickers. Even the superintendent. The opening line of the note: So you have Hep C, what else?

Contraband includes any modified item or items in excess. I found a bag of forty oranges under a guy’s bunk. That was excess. He was going to make hooch (jail speak for jail wine). Extension cords are the most modified item in the jail. Inmates stick paper clips and disassembled nail clippers into the socket end. Anything metal works, the thicker the better. Plug it in and it’ll boil water instantly. It’s called a stinger. I found eight of them.

THIS is why we confiscate any food taken from the dining hall: food poisoning, jail fauna, sour-milk bombs. Meat spoils—inmates didn’t have refrigerators. But they had roaches, field mice, and great aim when it came to throwing a two-week-old carton of curdled milk at the bubbles. The two big blocks (A and D, 450+ inmates each) got bombed the most. The bubbles were in the corner by the door. They had tin roofs and windows for shields, but the sour milk, the gag-able clear liquid part, ran and soaked into the metal seams and windowpanes and layers of paint. After a bomb was the only time those blocks didn’t smell like cigarettes and piss.

THIS is how much all the dumb shit is worth: something. The entire jail economy was a barter system. A pound of sugar stolen from the chow hall might get a broke inmate two bags of chips and a bottle of instant coffee.

The de facto jail currency was Kite, a pouch of roll-it-yourself tobacco, which cost about a dollar from the commissary. The pouches were green; inmates even called it money. A jailhouse tattoo gun, made from a Walkman’s innards, a guitar string, and tape, cost something like thirty Kite.

Kite was the standard, but inmates hoarded everything. A few guys on each block ended up with forty rolls of toilet paper or three dozen blankets. Once a month, minimum, each block ran out of toilet paper. That was when the TP hoarders made their Kite.

And each block had a couple of inmates who had a little extra of everything. Those guys ran stores from their cells. The markup was 25 percent. They sold three-dollar packs of batteries for four Kite. Businessmen, they called themselves. Or hustlers. A hustler would get an extra hat and trade it away for a bag of chips. Then the hustler who bought the hat would sell it for anything worth more than the chips. It didn’t matter how much he made—a ten-cent profit got the hat resold. That kept happening. The hat would be sold from hustler to hustler until it made it around the block and back to the guy who had it stolen from him in the first place. And he’d buy it back with one of the twelve dirty towels he had stolen from the laundry. All this, a hat hustler told me, passes the time.

Some inmates who had nothing ended up working for others. Six soups (jail speak for ramen noodle packs) got you a haircut (five for the barber, one for the lookout), a Honey Bun got your laundry washed, an Oatmeal Cream Pie got your toilet scrubbed, and a Snickers bar, well, you already know what that got you.

THIS is what some guards talked about to avoid the reality of stripping another man: sports. Weather. Parole-board dates. The latest staff member fired for bringing in implements of masturbation. How the jail used to be, you know, in the good old days before insurance copays and when the dining hall still served real steak. Small talk isn’t just for parties. Usually it’s one-sided. The guard does all the small-talking. Inmates thought it was weird—which it was.