GORMAN’S PRISON STORY

Sample from Desist

My first night there my celly killed himself. I don’t know why. He hopped out of the top bunk head first at the toilet. I don’t think it was me but it always felt like me. When you meet a guy and he’s gonna be your roommate for the next few years and the guy kills himself immediately, I guess I suspected maybe he saw me and said, “fuck this,” and punched his own clock. I don’t even remember the guy’s name.

The next guy they put in with me was this dude, Sammy Pico.

Prison food is bad. That’s no surprise. The kitchen was run by a guy everyone called Crisco. I asked if they called him that because he cooks with a lot of Crisco. Guys laughed when I asked that. No one would tell me the reason everyone called him that.

Kitchen work is an enviable job. It wasn’t easy to get. Crisco was an old timer, grey haired and bearded, and withered like tree bark, but his body was still limber and his eyes and his mind were sharp and they never missed anything. The man learned to cook working at a diner at a Nebraska truck stop, the kind of place no one stops at unless they have to–a little island with a little dock in a vast yellow and green ocean of corn and wheat.

You get to talking, you know? Cus that’s mostly what there is to do. When I told Pico I was a chef, he asked a whole lot about that. So I told him about it. I told him how I got these good reviews my first weekend. I told him how we had a few famous movie people come in on occasion. I told him about how I was on the Food Network a couple times, on some shows. He called me a liar but I could see in his smiling eyes that he wanted to be wrong about that. The lucky guy was wrong about that. Pico asked around and someone with a smuggled cellphone checked to see if I was full of shit.

Soon as he knew I was for real, Pico wanted to put me in the kitchen and help Crisco. I told him that’d be good. Crisco wouldn’t have it though. I was new and I hadn’t earned a place in the kitchen.

A few days later, Crisco got sick. Real sick and real sudden. He was out of the kitchen and in the infirmary. A couple dudes who saw a YouTube clip of me on Food Network vouched for me, so I got kitchen duty.

The kitchen was a fucking hellhole. The budget was tight and I was pretty pissed and frustrated about it at first. I needed something, anything, and the answer was always “no.” Make do. What’s difference does it make if Crisco ran the kitchen or I did if I couldn’t do anything except what’s always been done? Then I thought: maybe I’m not mad because I didn’t have what I want. Maybe I was mad at myself. Maybe I’d been spoiled on having whatever tools and ingredients I asked for. Here I had to work within my limitations, and there were a whole fucking lot of limitations. But cooking isn’t a list of ingredients and a list of steps. That’s a fucking recipe. Anyone can do that. I had to get creative and think about food in a new way. I had to be like those French chefs in New Orleans who couldn’t make a mirepoix, so they made trinity. I had to be like those Manchu chefs running away from a death sentence back home to start their own noodle shops in California. I’d been coasting, creatively. It took prison for me to realize it, but I really was. I got too uncomfortable with how I did things.

I had a lot of people to feed in short order, cafeteria style. I had a budget so slim that EBT was bougie by comparison. I had a large Muslim population that had their own rules, so either everyone ate halaal or the cook had to make two meals. Interesting thing is, if you have an allergy, fuck you. They didn’t give a shit. You’d have to pay for that at commissary. If God tells you not to eat it, they’d accommodate you. If you histamines went berserk and killed you if you ate it? Fuck you, pay for it yourself.

Anything I asked for, I got denied. So I had to be an accountant. I had to make a budget. A complicated fucking budget. Cut out all the saturated corn oil and replace it with pork fat. But I couldn’t use pig butter because then the Muslims would need a separate course. So I used… You know what, doesn’t matter. Point is, it was complicated. And let me tell you something. It is not easy to make a budget when the screws don’t even let you have a pencil unsupervised.

I had several guys working for me, but three buys who were my guys. Two guys named Michael; one who never talked and the other who never shut up, and Jesus.

When Crisco got out, he didn’t like what he saw. A goddamn coup just happened under his nose. I do not blame him for being mad, I really don’t. This dude had worked his ass off for years feeding those people and as soon as he was gone, no one missed him. I’m sure he thought they were all some ungrateful fucks. Disloyal. It’s rough taking hits like that when you’re young, but when you’re old like Crisco, that kind of thing you can’t bounce back from. You can’t do things the wrong way your whole life and only get told when your life is way behind you.

Crisco didn’t want to share the kitchen with me. There’s that saying: too many cooks in the kitchen. Well two’s too many. There was some yelling at first. A lot of passive aggressive bullshit with Crisco doing things his way, the wrong way. Getting mad when I noticed. Mostly he was quiet until he was yelling. But Jesus and Michael and Michael were the best guys we had and they had to take a side eventually. Mom and Dad were fighting and they had to choose who to live with. They chose me. They liked the way I was handling things and they were acting like I was the boss.

I didn’t like it, man. Crisco quit for a while. Didn’t see him around. He even refused to eat my food for a couple days. He got hungry though. He tasted what I made and saw everyone else eating it. He came back. He didn’t ask to, he just showed up to work one day and did his job. He didn’t say shit and neither did I. No need to talk about it. Crisco didn’t talk much in the kitchen after that. I didn’t want him in the kitchen making trouble but I didn’t like seeing the fight in him vanish, either. He was a prick but I didn’t like seeing him give up.

Where was I going with this? The menu. We were getting fed on expired surplus MREs from the military at less-than dogfood prices. I don’t know entirely how legal it was but that’s what was going on. What showed up at receiving changed from week to week.

And then there’s all the things you don’t know about until you have to know about ‘em. Michael fucked up and didn’t get the tomatoes in the morning. So I told him to go to the storage and go get them. Only he can’t. The storage isn’t even in the prison. The storage is a building on the other side of a concrete wall and two barbed wire fences and on the other side of the road. I asked why. He told me that they don’t want us to have lots of food on hand.

“Well why the fuck not?”

“Cus if we riot like Attica, we won’t have food and they can starve us out faster.”

The burner went on the fritz. I tried to pry the dial but the dial wouldn’t pry. I tried opening it up to see about the gas supply but the thing was welded shut. I asked why. Michael explained: 11 years back, someone popped the dial and used it to stabbed a guy in the eye. We couldn’t pop the oven and look inside it ‘cus someone once stole piping out of there to make a shiv. So if something needed fixing, we had to take the whole damn thing out and have someone else fix it offsite.

It was like I had to live with the consequences of every asshole who ever pulled something in that prison. We all did. Once someone fucked up by pulling something, none of us can every enjoy it again. It’s just like that outside prison, too. When you go on an airplane they make you take off your shoes all cus one asshole made his shoes into a bomb–which didn’t even work–like fifteen years ago. Now we all get inconvenienced by that one asshole every flight forever.

We couldn’t make bread. There’s no yeast allowed because someone used it ferment fruit and make booze. No food allowed with the bone in it because someone shaved it into a spike and he tried to stab his wife when she visited him. No nutmeg cus you can smoke nutmeg and get high, which I didn’t know.

They let me have a knife on account of my green jumpsuit. They never let the orange suits in. That knife was fucking chained to my body. No joke. Like a dog choker. Checked it in and out with a guard before I could leave the kitchen.

Someone told someone told someone about me and I got a news story about me. I ain’t playing. This dude from VICE came by and did a story on me. I got more fucking media in prison than I did when I had my own restaurant.

We had all these dietary requirements but, you know, they weren’t entirely on the up and up about em. They might call Capri Sun a serving of fruit. Trash is cheaper than real food and this place was only worth what it could squeeze in its margins. They didn’t wanna give me a damn thing I asked for. So I started asking differently. Started showing em how I could put out better food and save em a buck. I used all my computer privileges putting that together. Took longer than it should have but it was worth it because when I showed them my numbers, they checked em. It’s the government, and the government always thinks you're lying to em. They checked em over and over. They liked it and they gave me what I wanted.

People liked it a lot. I gave them something almost like food. After that, nobody would fuck with me. I can’t brag too much since I was only the only restaurant in town, so it’s not like they had other options. But I won’t lie. It was nice. Kinda hometownsy in a fucked up kinda way. I knew all my diners by name. We all lived together and had yard time together and shat in front of each other. It’s not like a big city where people come and go and even your regulars are anonymous.

I’m like a local celebrity. And I’m on good behavior because none of the other prisoners give me any problems. If some new guy thought they might, someone’d correct them real quick. My eyes and hands fed those people and no one was gonna let anybody fuck with that. That’s what I thought, anyhow.

I’m a week out from my parole hearing and I know they’re gonna let me out. I’m already training the Michaels and Jesus how to do what I do, and they’re getting it. They even got some creativity, some flex, which is really more important than technique. The technique you can figure out, but I don’t think artistry can be taught. Creativity is maybe some kind of bravery. Just to try something no one else is doing. Maybe you fuck it up. Maybe it’s great. But you tried.

What was I saying? Oh, right. Sammy Pico finds me. And I owe this guy, right? He got me that kitchen job. He’s the reason it could’ve been harder time than it was. And we were friends, right? We were good. But he comes and finds me after everyone else was done eating and I was doing cleanup and he comes into the kitchen and he’s being weird. He’s just there suddenly. He doesn’t say nothing, he just stands there. I ask him what’s up and he doesn’t say anything at first. I tell him he’s being weird.

When he did finally start talking, he said some shit. Some real fucked up shit, man. This guy. I’d talked to this guy every day for two years. Talked a lot. He knew a lot about me. And he started saying some shit he knew would get under my skin. And it did. It fucking did. You know me. I can get emotional. Pico knew that.

I don’t remember all of it. But he was talking about Genie. Saying Genie was probably getting fucked by other guys right now. Saying no woman holds out for two years. A woman needs a man around. And some of these guys she probably picked up at a bar were in our house, raising my boy. Shit, maybe molesting my boy. Pico said he’s seen that a lot. He’s seen guys who find a woman with a kid. She thinks he’s into her, but really the guy’s into the kid. And. Uh. He described it, man. He went into some graphic detail about some dude in my house fucking my wife and raping my little boy, and when he describes it… he ain’t guessing, you know what I mean? He’s talking about this like a man who did it or a man who had it done to him. Like he was saying all the things a pedo would say to get the kid to go along with it. He even told me the recipe for a drink to make a kid drowsy and pliable and cause short-term memory loss. I think he said Hi-C and cough syrup. He knew all kinds of lies he could tell a mom to make her think nothing was happening. Lies for everything she might ask, lies to cover every clue that might make a mom suspicious. I’m telling you. He wasn’t guessing about how to rape kids. He knew. First hand, he knew.

And he’s saying these things to me for no damn reason. And he can see I got a knife chained to me and he knows he’s making me upset. At first I ain’t saying anything cus I don’t even understand what’s going on. Then I’m yelling and he’s stepping up to me like he wants to fight me and I almost did something. I almost did.

But I didn’t cus Crisco did it first. Crisco, that old guy, came in behind and just grabbed his balls man. I’m fucking serious. Just reached around and vice-gripped Pico’s balls. Hard. Crisco had those huge baker’s forearms, man. He was old, but he had some Popeye arms, man. Crisco looked wilted, but he could squeeze like a boa. I thought Pico might be over, but Pico got free and beat the fuck out of Crisco. Guards were in there breaking it up before I could do shit.

Pico got solitary and Crisco got another hospital visit. It made no sense to me. It really didn’t. But then! Then it made sense. Things like that, things that make no sense? They always make sense. It’s just that there’s something you don’t know or something you haven’t thought of yet. It made sense. I doesn’t make sense in a way that a normal person thinks, but it makes sense if you’re a psycho like Sammy Pico. You figured it out? Took me while to figure it out. I think you gotta be a little bit psycho to figure it out, and when I did, I figured prison must’ve made me a little bit psycho, too.

The reason Pico was fucking with me is because Pico wanted me to stay. He wanted me to stay real bad. He needed me to fuck something up before my hearing so I wouldn’t get paroled. He wanted to fight me so I’d be stuck there cooking for a few more years. Crisco jumped in so I wouldn’t fight Pico cus Crisco wanted his kitchen back. Crisco saved me because he wanted me to get the fuck out of his domain.

Think about that. How fucked up is it that my best friend there wanted me in prison and my biggest hater wanted me to go free? You asked what prison was like. Well, that’s what prison was like. It’s like middle school, and all the kids carry knives and got cigarette burns on them from childhood from whichever guy their mom was fucking that week.