A PRISON CHRISTMAS TALE
There is no nativity scene in prison. No manger, no Mary and Joseph, No baby Jesus, and I'll give you my last Ramen noodle soup if you can find me one wise man in this joint, let alone three. The closest thing we've got to a wise man is This Fucking Guy. That's the name that I've given to a particular individual back here because he seems to know something about everything. Just ask him. Every time I see him he's up to something outrageous and I'll say to whoever I'm with, Will you look at This Fucking Guy? But even though there's no nativity scene back here, amazingly, some pieces of the authentic manger found their way behind the wall to USP Lewisburg this year via my friend Don Corleone. Here's how it happened.
Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem in a manger around 2000 years ago. This is pretty well documented, established, and accepted as fact. Some of us white folk have turned Jesus into a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub and have the manger looking like a room at Motel 6, but the Caucasians' interpretation of pigmentation and domestication doesn't change the basic fact of the coming of Salvation. (That was my Christmas gift to you Jesse Jackson.) And it goes without saying that the predominant religion in the United States is Christianity. But America is a melting pot of religions and beliefs and federal prison reflects this. Back here behind the wall there's Christians and Muslims; Moorish Science Temple; Jehovah's Witnesses; Santeria, and even Voo Doo that all use the same chapel to worship in. And the Native Americans have dug a pit out back that they burn coals in and have put a tee pee over and use as a sweat lodge. But even though there's all kinds of religions back here, and that all of these religions may not necessarily believe in Jesus, everybody back here celebrates Christmas in one way or another.
I was sitting cross-legged on my bunk writing my girl Veronikah, wearing a pair of gray sweats and a long-sleeved crisp white tee shirt, a gray skully, and I was listening to Bruce Springsteen sing, "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" on my MP3 when Wadoo Scary appeared like a mist in front of my bars. I've christened him with this name because he's been down over 25 years and anything out of the norm freaks him out. He has surly white hair that shoots off of his head like fireworks, an unruly white beard, and he wears dark glasses all the time. He looks like a cross between Ray Charles and Moses. When I looked up and saw him holding onto my bars and staring into my cell I jumped. He looked back and forth down the tier like he was getting ready to tell me who shot JFK, then he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and asked, "Did you hear? They're not serving ice cream for Christmas this year." Then he shook his head and added, "And ever since Obama made all of those promises and got reelected, they haven't been serving ice cream like they did during his first term" I stared at him trying to connect his dots and trying to figure out what to say. In the end I did what I do to most people that I want to get the hell away from me...I told him what he wanted to hear." In a disgusted voice I said, "Those lying-ass Democrats." Obviously pleased at having his insanity validated he nodded and said, "Yep" and disappeared like a wisp of smoke. I hopped off my bunk and went straight to my bars and slid them to the slide and poked my head out and looked up and down the tier, but he was nowhere to be seen. I shook my head and wondered, How's he do that? I had to go to the laundry to pay my tailor for a couple of things I'd had sewn, so I got dressed and got ready to swing by The Don's house to take him along. In prison we tend to travel like girls in a nightclub do as they go to the bathroom-with a friend or in packs.
I came out of my house and slid my bars shut as I left and as I made my way down the tier I passed my white supremacist neighbor's cell, White Wally, and he yelled, "Hey Bank Robber! May all your Christmases be White!!!" and started laughing and stomping his foot. As I came to the end of the tier I heard "Christmas In Hollis" by Run DMC blaring from the shower so I poked my head in to see what was going on in there. In the common area in front of the showers, Ghetto Boy was on his knees in the corner shaking a pair of dice above his head and getting ready to toss them against the wall as a crowd of guys stood around him placing bets with each other on his upcoming throw. I backed out and kept on going. When I hit the stairwell Workie Workie was posted up against the wall on the stoop between the second and third floor wearing a humongous gray sweatshirt and busting a sag in a pair of Hunter Green pants as he sang along to Feliz Navidad and tapped an over-sized shoe to the beat.
As I came down Don Corleone's tier he was sitting in his plastic Wal-Mart lawn chair in front of his house reading a book. As I walked up he yelled, "FUCKING SCUMBAG!!!" and I saw that he was reading the book I'd gotten him on The Witness Protection Program. I said, "C'mon, take a ride to the laundry with me." He threw the book on the tier and as we walked off he started carrying on about how "That cocksucker Vinny who told on Petie's cousin Jimmy Brown Eyes' best friend's brother in law Carlo is in one of those fucking Cheese Factories." Blah, blah, blazio. The Don goes on every day about somebody who got ratted out like it's something new and he's surprised by it. People have been ratting since Judas Iscariot snitched out Jesus.
As we came out of the cell block and cleared the metal detector and cruised down the main corridor that runs through the middle of the prison we saw Chief Smith & Wesson talking to another Indian. They were both wearing blue and white head bands that held their long black hair off of their face. The kid that the Chief was talking to is a young buck that The Don calls "Two Fingers Digging" because every time we see him he's picking his nose. Sometimes we'll see him and bet each other on how long it will be before he goes rooting around in his snout. The Don is a degenerate gambler and will bet on anything. When I told him that one time he replied, "I'll bet you I'm not." Before we got too close to them The Don grabbed my arm and pulled me against the stone wall and said, "I got five packs a tuna fish that says Two Fingers takes a trip to the booger factory within the next three minutes." Figuring that it was at least a possibility that The Don had things fixed and that the kid was going to get two packs of tuna fish to go digging in his nose in about a minute and a half I said, "I don't have time for this. Let's go." As we walked by them The Kid buried the index finger of his right hand so far up his nose that I thought his eyeball was going to pop out.
The laundry is down a tunnel that's two stories underground. It's lit by dim light bulbs in cages that hang down from the ceiling every 25 feet or so. The tunnel is about 10 feet wide and the ceiling has steam pipes running the length of it. There are other tunnels that cut off of this tunnel but entrance to these tunnels is prevented by barred gates. These tunnels are not lit. As we came down the steps, This Fucking Guy was standing in front of the gate to one of these tunnels talking to a group of about five people whose eyes were fixed on him in rapt attention. They reminded me of a group of Chihuahuas perched up on their hind legs waiting on a treat. Always up for a good show, The Don and I stopped and listened.
As he held onto one of the bars of the gate, This Fucking Guy looked down into the dark tunnel and said, "Most people think that Jesus was born in a manger inside of a barn...but that's not exactly true." I groaned and said, "Now he's This Fucking Theologist!" The Don brushed against me and said, "Shhh, let's listen to him. He's got em eating out of the palm of his hand." With the authority of a cardiologist discussing a heart transplant, he continued to explain that, "Jesus was actually born in a cave," and then he paused for effect and pointed down the tunnel and softly said, "Much like this." His circle of sycophants swayed like a Baptist choir and leaned forward in unison peeking down the tunnel hoping to get a glimpse of the Christ Child. Hell, I even looked. The Don whispered, "This Fucking Guy is good." Like a clove of garlic simmering in olive oil, I could smell his brain cooking up a scheme. One of the clueless coterie reverently asked, "How do you know these things, sir?" This Fucking Guy paused and then dropped his voice and octave and said, "I've led several trips to the Holy Land, and I don't like to tell a lot of people this, but my great great grandfather Moshe Rosenbloom was a world-famous rabbi." When I heard this I threw my hands up and said, "Oi Vay!!! Can you believe This Fucking Guy?" The Don said, "It looks like you might have to start calling him This Fucking Jew." Disgusted, I said, "Let's go. I have to drop these fish off to my tailor." As I said this I patted my pocket where the fish were and felt that they were gone. I yelled, "Hey!!! Where's my fish?" I looked down and saw them in The Don's hand and grabbed them back. He said, "While you were trying to find Jesus you got clipped. You gotta tighten up, you're getting slow." As we headed down the tunnel to the laundry the last thing we heard This Fucking Guy say to his brain-dead audience was, "When I need answers I often consult the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Hours later I was sitting in my green plastic lawn chair in front of my house reading LONELY NO MORE by Seymour Shubin and I decided to go down to The Don's cell. As I walked in he had "Jingle Bell Rock" by Frank Sinatra flowing through the speakers of his radio, and he had a broom handle that he'd broken into little pieces and he was dipping them one at a time into a cup full of soy sauce to give them a darker color. Then he would tape the dried piece of wood to a little pre-cut piece of white cardboard that he'd drawn a little cross on. I asked, "What the hell are you doing?" He replied, "I'll not have blasphemy in this house. I'm on a holy mission." I looked down at his production line and asked him, "What kind of racket you got going here, Don Corleone?" As he dipped another wood chip into the cup of soy sauce he said, "We're gonna sell these as authentic pieces of the manger that were imported from Bethlehem." I asked, "Why?" He blew on the newly-minted relic in his hand to dry it and then taped it to a square of cardboard and said, "I'm making a hundred pieces and we're gonna sell them for a dollar a piece. Then we're gonna take the money and put it on Alabama in the BCS Championship game." I knew there was a reason that The Don wanted to stop and listen to This Fucking Guy...besides so he could brush against me and pick my pocket. A thought occurred to me and I said, "Isn't Alabama playing Notre Dame?" He said, "Yeah. Why?" I replied, "So let me get this straight. You're going to sell fake pieces of the manger that Jesus was born in and use the profits to bet against the predominant, and I might add undefeated, Catholic college football team in the country? And you're Catholic?" He proudly replied, "You got it." I shook my head and said, "You're going to hell." He gathered up some of the finished pieces and shoved them into my hands and said, "Well at least I'll know somebody because you're gonna help me sell these. Now go find those five sheep that That Fucking Guy was talking to and shear them.
I may just be some dummy that society doesn't want hanging around their banks, and someone whose light at the end of his tunnel is most likely a train, but even I have limits. There was no way I was going to walk around a prison at Christmas time and sell fake pieces of the manger that Jesus was supposedly born in.
So I contracted the job out to Workie Workie. It took him an hour to sell out and he doesn't even speak a lick of English.
I passed him in the stairwell and he had packs of tuna fish scattered at his feet and he was was holding up a piece of The Blessed Broomstick in one hand and pointing to it with the other and he was saying, "Si, senor. Uno tuna for uno baby Jesus." What a sales pitch. Only in Prison. The championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame isn't until till January and I didn't tell The Don, but took my portion of the Manger Money and put it on Notre Dame. It's Christmas time so decided to go with Providence. I like to hedge my bets...both spiritually and financially.
I'll let you know what happens. Merry Christmas.
There is no nativity scene in prison. No manger, no Mary and Joseph, No baby Jesus, and I'll give you my last Ramen noodle soup if you can find me one wise man in this joint, let alone three. The closest thing we've got to a wise man is This Fucking Guy. That's the name that I've given to a particular individual back here because he seems to know something about everything. Just ask him. Every time I see him he's up to something outrageous and I'll say to whoever I'm with, Will you look at This Fucking Guy? But even though there's no nativity scene back here, amazingly, some pieces of the authentic manger found their way behind the wall to USP Lewisburg this year via my friend Don Corleone. Here's how it happened.
Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem in a manger around 2000 years ago. This is pretty well documented, established, and accepted as fact. Some of us white folk have turned Jesus into a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub and have the manger looking like a room at Motel 6, but the Caucasians' interpretation of pigmentation and domestication doesn't change the basic fact of the coming of Salvation. (That was my Christmas gift to you Jesse Jackson.) And it goes without saying that the predominant religion in the United States is Christianity. But America is a melting pot of religions and beliefs and federal prison reflects this. Back here behind the wall there's Christians and Muslims; Moorish Science Temple; Jehovah's Witnesses; Santeria, and even Voo Doo that all use the same chapel to worship in. And the Native Americans have dug a pit out back that they burn coals in and have put a tee pee over and use as a sweat lodge. But even though there's all kinds of religions back here, and that all of these religions may not necessarily believe in Jesus, everybody back here celebrates Christmas in one way or another.
I was sitting cross-legged on my bunk writing my girl Veronikah, wearing a pair of gray sweats and a long-sleeved crisp white tee shirt, a gray skully, and I was listening to Bruce Springsteen sing, "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" on my MP3 when Wadoo Scary appeared like a mist in front of my bars. I've christened him with this name because he's been down over 25 years and anything out of the norm freaks him out. He has surly white hair that shoots off of his head like fireworks, an unruly white beard, and he wears dark glasses all the time. He looks like a cross between Ray Charles and Moses. When I looked up and saw him holding onto my bars and staring into my cell I jumped. He looked back and forth down the tier like he was getting ready to tell me who shot JFK, then he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and asked, "Did you hear? They're not serving ice cream for Christmas this year." Then he shook his head and added, "And ever since Obama made all of those promises and got reelected, they haven't been serving ice cream like they did during his first term" I stared at him trying to connect his dots and trying to figure out what to say. In the end I did what I do to most people that I want to get the hell away from me...I told him what he wanted to hear." In a disgusted voice I said, "Those lying-ass Democrats." Obviously pleased at having his insanity validated he nodded and said, "Yep" and disappeared like a wisp of smoke. I hopped off my bunk and went straight to my bars and slid them to the slide and poked my head out and looked up and down the tier, but he was nowhere to be seen. I shook my head and wondered, How's he do that? I had to go to the laundry to pay my tailor for a couple of things I'd had sewn, so I got dressed and got ready to swing by The Don's house to take him along. In prison we tend to travel like girls in a nightclub do as they go to the bathroom-with a friend or in packs.
I came out of my house and slid my bars shut as I left and as I made my way down the tier I passed my white supremacist neighbor's cell, White Wally, and he yelled, "Hey Bank Robber! May all your Christmases be White!!!" and started laughing and stomping his foot. As I came to the end of the tier I heard "Christmas In Hollis" by Run DMC blaring from the shower so I poked my head in to see what was going on in there. In the common area in front of the showers, Ghetto Boy was on his knees in the corner shaking a pair of dice above his head and getting ready to toss them against the wall as a crowd of guys stood around him placing bets with each other on his upcoming throw. I backed out and kept on going. When I hit the stairwell Workie Workie was posted up against the wall on the stoop between the second and third floor wearing a humongous gray sweatshirt and busting a sag in a pair of Hunter Green pants as he sang along to Feliz Navidad and tapped an over-sized shoe to the beat.
As I came down Don Corleone's tier he was sitting in his plastic Wal-Mart lawn chair in front of his house reading a book. As I walked up he yelled, "FUCKING SCUMBAG!!!" and I saw that he was reading the book I'd gotten him on The Witness Protection Program. I said, "C'mon, take a ride to the laundry with me." He threw the book on the tier and as we walked off he started carrying on about how "That cocksucker Vinny who told on Petie's cousin Jimmy Brown Eyes' best friend's brother in law Carlo is in one of those fucking Cheese Factories." Blah, blah, blazio. The Don goes on every day about somebody who got ratted out like it's something new and he's surprised by it. People have been ratting since Judas Iscariot snitched out Jesus.
As we came out of the cell block and cleared the metal detector and cruised down the main corridor that runs through the middle of the prison we saw Chief Smith & Wesson talking to another Indian. They were both wearing blue and white head bands that held their long black hair off of their face. The kid that the Chief was talking to is a young buck that The Don calls "Two Fingers Digging" because every time we see him he's picking his nose. Sometimes we'll see him and bet each other on how long it will be before he goes rooting around in his snout. The Don is a degenerate gambler and will bet on anything. When I told him that one time he replied, "I'll bet you I'm not." Before we got too close to them The Don grabbed my arm and pulled me against the stone wall and said, "I got five packs a tuna fish that says Two Fingers takes a trip to the booger factory within the next three minutes." Figuring that it was at least a possibility that The Don had things fixed and that the kid was going to get two packs of tuna fish to go digging in his nose in about a minute and a half I said, "I don't have time for this. Let's go." As we walked by them The Kid buried the index finger of his right hand so far up his nose that I thought his eyeball was going to pop out.
The laundry is down a tunnel that's two stories underground. It's lit by dim light bulbs in cages that hang down from the ceiling every 25 feet or so. The tunnel is about 10 feet wide and the ceiling has steam pipes running the length of it. There are other tunnels that cut off of this tunnel but entrance to these tunnels is prevented by barred gates. These tunnels are not lit. As we came down the steps, This Fucking Guy was standing in front of the gate to one of these tunnels talking to a group of about five people whose eyes were fixed on him in rapt attention. They reminded me of a group of Chihuahuas perched up on their hind legs waiting on a treat. Always up for a good show, The Don and I stopped and listened.
As he held onto one of the bars of the gate, This Fucking Guy looked down into the dark tunnel and said, "Most people think that Jesus was born in a manger inside of a barn...but that's not exactly true." I groaned and said, "Now he's This Fucking Theologist!" The Don brushed against me and said, "Shhh, let's listen to him. He's got em eating out of the palm of his hand." With the authority of a cardiologist discussing a heart transplant, he continued to explain that, "Jesus was actually born in a cave," and then he paused for effect and pointed down the tunnel and softly said, "Much like this." His circle of sycophants swayed like a Baptist choir and leaned forward in unison peeking down the tunnel hoping to get a glimpse of the Christ Child. Hell, I even looked. The Don whispered, "This Fucking Guy is good." Like a clove of garlic simmering in olive oil, I could smell his brain cooking up a scheme. One of the clueless coterie reverently asked, "How do you know these things, sir?" This Fucking Guy paused and then dropped his voice and octave and said, "I've led several trips to the Holy Land, and I don't like to tell a lot of people this, but my great great grandfather Moshe Rosenbloom was a world-famous rabbi." When I heard this I threw my hands up and said, "Oi Vay!!! Can you believe This Fucking Guy?" The Don said, "It looks like you might have to start calling him This Fucking Jew." Disgusted, I said, "Let's go. I have to drop these fish off to my tailor." As I said this I patted my pocket where the fish were and felt that they were gone. I yelled, "Hey!!! Where's my fish?" I looked down and saw them in The Don's hand and grabbed them back. He said, "While you were trying to find Jesus you got clipped. You gotta tighten up, you're getting slow." As we headed down the tunnel to the laundry the last thing we heard This Fucking Guy say to his brain-dead audience was, "When I need answers I often consult the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Hours later I was sitting in my green plastic lawn chair in front of my house reading LONELY NO MORE by Seymour Shubin and I decided to go down to The Don's cell. As I walked in he had "Jingle Bell Rock" by Frank Sinatra flowing through the speakers of his radio, and he had a broom handle that he'd broken into little pieces and he was dipping them one at a time into a cup full of soy sauce to give them a darker color. Then he would tape the dried piece of wood to a little pre-cut piece of white cardboard that he'd drawn a little cross on. I asked, "What the hell are you doing?" He replied, "I'll not have blasphemy in this house. I'm on a holy mission." I looked down at his production line and asked him, "What kind of racket you got going here, Don Corleone?" As he dipped another wood chip into the cup of soy sauce he said, "We're gonna sell these as authentic pieces of the manger that were imported from Bethlehem." I asked, "Why?" He blew on the newly-minted relic in his hand to dry it and then taped it to a square of cardboard and said, "I'm making a hundred pieces and we're gonna sell them for a dollar a piece. Then we're gonna take the money and put it on Alabama in the BCS Championship game." I knew there was a reason that The Don wanted to stop and listen to This Fucking Guy...besides so he could brush against me and pick my pocket. A thought occurred to me and I said, "Isn't Alabama playing Notre Dame?" He said, "Yeah. Why?" I replied, "So let me get this straight. You're going to sell fake pieces of the manger that Jesus was born in and use the profits to bet against the predominant, and I might add undefeated, Catholic college football team in the country? And you're Catholic?" He proudly replied, "You got it." I shook my head and said, "You're going to hell." He gathered up some of the finished pieces and shoved them into my hands and said, "Well at least I'll know somebody because you're gonna help me sell these. Now go find those five sheep that That Fucking Guy was talking to and shear them.
I may just be some dummy that society doesn't want hanging around their banks, and someone whose light at the end of his tunnel is most likely a train, but even I have limits. There was no way I was going to walk around a prison at Christmas time and sell fake pieces of the manger that Jesus was supposedly born in.
So I contracted the job out to Workie Workie. It took him an hour to sell out and he doesn't even speak a lick of English.
I passed him in the stairwell and he had packs of tuna fish scattered at his feet and he was was holding up a piece of The Blessed Broomstick in one hand and pointing to it with the other and he was saying, "Si, senor. Uno tuna for uno baby Jesus." What a sales pitch. Only in Prison. The championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame isn't until till January and I didn't tell The Don, but took my portion of the Manger Money and put it on Notre Dame. It's Christmas time so decided to go with Providence. I like to hedge my bets...both spiritually and financially.
I'll let you know what happens. Merry Christmas.