Chapter Fifteen

The bullpen around me was clean and bare, and filled with the naked faces of men who were guilty, except for the innocence in their hands…

Here it was, all laid out for me, full circle and with whatever meanings I felt like charging to my scene. I knew there would be men who had spent longer, in jai than I had, who would scoff at what I was thinking, saying, "What the hell areyou making such a big thing for? You haven't been in long. You ought to try it for ten years or so.Then you can play the martyr." I knew there would be people who would say I was making a big socialmegillah , a federal case, a mountain out of a molehill, from my one lousy day in the slammer. Guys who would call me a bleeding heart, and a fanatic, and a kook, because I saw what I'd seen and interpreted it the way I had. People who would say, "Hell, I've been in the can, too, and I just laughed it off. You're making a big case out of a little problem." And they might be right. Perhaps I should have taken it easy and settled back and waited for the bail to come through—as I knew it had to, eventually. Perhaps I shouldn't have beaten my chest and pissed and moaned about the Inglorious Evils Of A Corrupt System. Perhaps I should have played the clown, as would these others, with ribald little tales of my goofy, happy-go-lucky sojourn in the pokey.

But that wasn't the way it was for me.

It wasn't a game or a lark or something to laugh at.

It was a place where men are sent to pay for their sins…that's the strictest literal purpose of a prison, you know…where you can smell the stink of desperation, and the odor of men's souls slowly rotting. I saw it in those terms, and to write about it any other way would be selling out.

It is possible to be petty and literarily inventive and caustic and bored by this sort of scene, and I presume that is what is considered sophisticated and very hip. But don't talk of sophistication or hipness to a rag full of rotten, sour liquor and crab lice. Don't talk about the chic of being a jailbird to a seventeen-year-old kid locked in a cell with case-hardened homosexuals, junkies in the first stages of withdrawal, acknowledged rapists and heist artists, deadbeats and homicidal types. Don't tell me about how I could take it with a twinkle and a chuckle and away we go, because that's a pile of psuedo-sophisticated horse manure! It all comes down one way, and that way is pure and simple and don't give me any of your sophistic guff about being too serious when a smile will help.

Iknow it stinks in the Tombs.

Iknow I saw young cats being warped and altered and twisted right in front of me.

So get away from me with that crap. This is the way it Is, not the Pollyanna pink lace and rose-colored glasses tomfoolery we use in this country to delude ourselves about everything from True Love to Disarmament. We are going straight to hell, gentle reader, and if you need proof of it just get yourself pinched in New York, or go out in the streets and dig those kids.

And somehow, without meaning to do it, I've made the point of this book … even before I've finished writing it. I've made what desperate little point I have to make, and all the rest is ant-climax. We're in trouble. We're in serious trouble. It's like Jim Baldwin says, the only way we'll solve—for instance—"The Negro Problem" is if we solve The American Problem. So don't look for hidden meanings and morals, friend, I'm not subtle enough to give them to you candy-coated. The word is simply that for all our national pride and all our jingoism and all our heavy-duty platitudes, this country is losing a lot of battles, and we are sitting around with our fingers up our noses deluding ourselves that we're doing just fine, thanks, just fine.


It all ties in. It's all part of the scene. It's Purgatory, with singing commercials. Hell with an 8-cylinder fish-finned Detroitmobile. It's Perdition with indoor plumbing

And it's a teen-aged kid named Pooch locked away in a cell with forty other damned souls, waiting to find out if he's going to spend some years of his life behind walls too high to climb, or be turned back into the streets, to do the best he can until his luck runs short.

That's why I wrote this book.

That's why I knew I'd write it, in that bullpen.

And when this book is done, I'll shut my mouth.


It was something out of Kafka or Dinesen, almost sure realistic, the narrow grey world of the bars; dark and many-faceted, and constantly terrifying. I saw two Negro homosexuals sitting close together at one end of a bench, almost hugging each other. They were a fine pair of spokes- men for their people. They were junkies.

I asked myself, who did this to them? Did they do it to themselves, with weak characters? Or did the ofay, the White Man, do it to them, with his "culture"? And I didn't have an answer. But it seemed to me that they were more offensive a millionfold than White fags would have been. Because here was a race that was on the move, on the march, as Baldwin—again—put it, "The Magic People." It was true, and these two men, correction: individuals, were no part of it.

They huddled together like a pair of small, thin girls, their Continental slacks so tight they fit like leotards, and so short I could see the bad taste of their striped socks. One was in bad shape. He needed a fix and he was going to need it even worse, very shortly. He was bone-sick then, and he sat with his right leg crossed over his left so completely that his right foot wound around back of his left calf and hooked around the shin. He had his arms folded across his stomach as though someone bad slit him up the middle and he was afraid his cold guts would drop out unless he held them in. That one was the old queer, a cruising queen who had turned too many other young cats on to be left in circulation. His partner was a pretty, very hairy swinger whose clothes reeked with inbred filth, but who smelled lovely from the perfume daubed behind his ears. And I thought of these lovers:You, stink, Group. You really stink. No one condemns you for your morals, or your odor, or your habit, or your skin color. They condemn you because you show how rotten a good thing can get when there's no personal integrity, when there's no character.

They weren't even niggers. Theycertainly weren't Negro, despite the color of their skins. They were something almost sub-human, on the way out, and hanging on, doing harm, by creating an image.

Their sin was their existence.

Next to them was an old man, his clothes of fairly good grade and his weathered, pocked face clean-shaved, still red and puffy from scraping too close with a straight razor. He was shaking. Terribly. Convulsively. As though his clockwork mechanism was beginning to shudder to a stop.

Even as Pooch and I watched him, he leaped up and threw himself staggeringly against the barred front of the cell, and the door sprang open …

I had thought it had been locked, but apparently they were planning to move us down the induction line, and had left it unlocked.

He went bursting through, arms flailing like a great blue serge seagull, his collar points up thrust and white, his hair like blowing snow showers, his eyes quite mad, and his mouth agape. He flung himself into the compound, and the hacks were on him in a moment, trying to pin him, trying to silence his screams, trying to avoid the other men's going berserk. But the old man, the poor old man who wanted his taste of rot gut and was quite out of his head, would not be silenced, He flung himself about, over the benches, across the floor, banging his feathery head against the steel barred doors.

And finally Tooley, our friend with the teeth Tooley, the hack Tooley, caught him with a shoe-tip. He caught the old man in the gut, and the old man rolled over gasping like a beached fish. The guards picked him up, and I heard the Captain say something about violent ward and Bellevue. And then the old man was gone.

All he'd wanted was his juice.

I never felt like crying so hard for someone I'd never known. But he was gone, and I was still here, and Pooch was withdrawing into himself, and I wanted to tell him who I was, really, and what I was doing here, and what I'd been doing in the Barons. But it wouldn't have worked.

Communication is a strange thing.

When you need it most, it fails.

"Awright, you prisoners," a back yelled, coming up to the still open door of the bullpen; "we got cake'n coffee an' a few sanniches here for ya, so file out one atta time an' take one helping is all." A trusty in grey wheeled up a huge stainless steel serving cart.

I didn't feel like eating. My stomach was numb.

All around me the noises of the bullpen, strange and in their own way jungle-like, merged together to make one great clamor. The men dashing for the food outside the cell, the coughs, the mumbled dirty words, the hissing sound of men with unruly systems breaking wind, the snoring of a lush sleeping it off before they roused him, the tinny whine of cowards' voices and the brassy boom of braggarts back for their fiftieth journey. It was all the same, as Pooch came back and sat down, a brown-bread sandwich of butter (oleo?) and a tin cup of watery black coffee in his hands.

"Whyncha go and get something?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Not hungry,"

"Good coffee," he mumbled, sipping at the steaming thin stuff.

I figured the coffee might help. I walked out and drew a cup with the ladle. One of the prisoners standing just inside the door hissed at me, then urged, "Take a sandwich."

"No, thanks," I said, dumbly.

"Take a sandwich; you sonofabitch,take a sandwich!"

I walked back into the cell, and he stepped in front of me. "What the fuck's the matter with you, you dumb bastard?Take a sandwich!"

"Say, what the hell is your problem?" I jammed him. He was a big, nasty-looking cat, with two sandwiches and two cups of coffee, one in his band, the other propped against the wall on top of the metal partition shielding the toilet. "I'm not hungry, I don'twant a sandwich," I concluded. I tried to elbow past, but he stopped me roughly, and shoved me back with his hip.

"For me, you little c—"

I didn't need to have him outline it in Anglo-Saxon. I went back and drew him another sandwich. I hoped he'd choke.

We sat there, Pooch and me, and I had nothing to say. I was feeling miserable. Lonesome and sad and just plain gritty. Then a hack came up to the cell and yelled, "Throw your extra food in a disposal can there, and line up out here." The vags who hadn't eaten since hitting the slammer the night before weren't about to waste the food so they stuffed it in their mouths and fell into line. Aside from the two queers, most of the men were Negroes, hauled in for a number of charges from wife-beating and knife-fighting to policy and numbers raps, possession of narcotics (or "holding" as we cons called it), non-support, exposing their privates in public, drunk & disorderly, assault, disturbing the peace, authentic auto theft and simulated rape.

They were, however, the cleanest-looking of the prisoners, and carried themselves with more dignity than their ofay brothers, who were here for aggravated assault, pushing junk, prostitution, gambling, auto theft (in this case known as "boosting"), confidence robbery, grand larceny, failure to pay traffic fines, authentic rape and simulated murder.

My hammer-killer was nowhere to be seen.

But he had been replaced by the Sandwich-Gobbler, who looked like something out of Long John Silver's nightmares. He was as swarthy and beefy and nasty looking a cat as I've ever seen, and while I suspected him of the foulest deeds known to Western Man, I'm sure he was in for something innocuous, like poisoning pigeons in Washington Square.

"Beat it," I heard Pooch say, with a snarl, and turned around to look at him behind me.

One of the fags, the younger one, the Princess, had propositioned him. Great fun for a Monday outing. The line moved out, turned left, and we passed in front of the wooden counter.

I figured now was my time to make my play.

"Hey, I want to call my lawyer," I said.

"No phone calls," I was told.

"But—"

"No phone calls. You can write a message on this form," the hack said, passing me a 5 x 8 1/2 sheet on which I could list my name, offense, and message. I stepped aside, borrowed a pencil (which bugged the ass off the hack) and wrote a note to my agent, Theron. It said, simply:

PLEASE GET THE BAIL MOneY AND GET ME OUT

OF HERE PLEASE! IF YOU DON'T GET IT SOON AND

COME FOR ME, THERE WON'T BE ANY NEED TO

BOTHER. PLEASE!

I gave the note to the hack, he read it, laughed, and shoved it into a little box. Lord only knew how long I'd wait before that note got to the proper party.

I got back in line, behind the younger fag, watching my rear at all times, for the older one, the junkie, still clutching himself, was behind me.

"Take everything out of your pockets," I was listening to the back behind the ledger talking to the young fag. The young queen lisped (so help me!) something quaint and stripped his pockets clean. I thought it was lovely that he had carried two bottles of his favorite scent with him, as well as a bottle of new, clear Stopette roll-on deodorant.

Then it was my turn. They took everything, including my money and my glasses, tossed them all into a manila envelope, and passed me down the line into a disrobing room where everyone was undressing, putting their clothes into a wire basket provided by a hack.

I heard one of the young guys who had been in line ahead of me squeal as the fag struck again. I cursed inwardly, and felt myself reeling just a bit. What a mad house!

The hack in attendance went through everybody's clothes in the baskets, slapping the shoes hard to make sure there were no files, knives, packets of heroin or razor blades in the heels: or soles. He turned all the jackets and shirts inside out. When he'd done with mine, I offered him my tie to search for a Thompson sub-machine gun, but he didn't think that was funny.

I went into the shower, leaving my basket on the bench in front of the long line of steaming nozzles. It was an education, watching the teen-agers duck and blanch as the fags tried to goose them, studying the scummy bodies of the old men, with their filthy, rotting feet; it was a scene out of Hogarth'sBedlam, with the junkies and their scabrous, gray-fleshed arms full of needle tracks, the winos puking on the floor, the lice-ridden derelicts and the masturbators who didn't carewho watched them as they took their momentary pleasures under the stinging spray of the showers.

I could feel myself slipping again.

One cat got led away to be de-loused. He needed it. He left a vapor trail as he passed. Then I was washed, and stepped forward, to hear a hack yell, "Okay, step over here before you get dressed, over here, over here, c'mon!"

I stepped forward, continuing the dehumanizing but sanitizing assembly line routine, with the Tombs physician waiting to ask how I felt. I might tell him, too.


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