My first few months inside, my OCD served me well. All I would listen to — and, by extension, all I would allow my cellmates to listen to — were Miles, Mingus, Monk, Mahler, and Eminem. My cellmates kept requesting transfers, so I’d have the whole cell to myself for as long as four days at a time. One of my new cellmates, formerly a guitarist in a Brazilian bistro in Bermondsey, suggested we form a yacht rock duo with him playing and me singing. Bossa nova and yacht rock can be nearly indistinguishable in the wrong hands.
When the warden hosted a big muckety-muck from the Department of Corrections, he would have me and Justin entertain. But then my vocal cords were injured in the big inadequate blankets riot of my second winter inside, and I had to think of another way not to be subjected to erotic indignities in the showers and other areas where there were no, or out-of-service, closed-circuit TV cameras. Noting my lovely mocha skin, soulful brown eyes, and soft, melodic speaking voice, one of the other members of the Floral Arrangement club suggested I apply for the prison sissy position that would open up when RL-6881 got paroled, and I thought to myself, “Why not?” The warden was worryingly enthusiastic about my decision, and supplied me with the Agent Provocateur for Men catalogue from which I ordered my first outfits.
I was an immediate hit with both fellow inmates and the prison staff. The first week of every month, I would service the warden and the highest-ranking correctional officers. The second would be the Aryan Brotherhood, and the third the Crips, Bloods, and Mexican Mafia. The prisoners of colour were my favourite. Their hygiene was far superior to the others’ and they never showed up empty-handed. Sometimes my cell would become almost impassable with bouquets, making my cellmates openly resentful to the point of threatening me, but I had many protectors among the three groups I serviced —Lt. “Lefty” Latham from the correctional officers, Feekle Inbrede from the Aryans, and LaShu’juandray Cooper from the Blips, as the African-American inmates called themselves after the Bloods and Crips realised they had common oppressors, and merged.
Everything was fine until the Blips and Mexicans demanded an additional week with me at the end of every month because they outnumbered the guards and Aryans combined by around six to one. In the resulting riot, which made the blankets brouhaha look in comparison like a slapping contest at a parochial girls’ school, one of the prison’s three Sons of Isis, who spent most of their time in solitary confinement, tried to behead me. I survived, obviously, but with an unsightly neck scar that allowed that little tramp Rodolfo Gomez to overtake me as the prison’s No. 1 object of desire.
In recognition of past services rendered, even if with the utmost reluctance, the warden arranged for me to be paroled prematurely, whereupon I became the social media influencer and composer as which you know me.
[I’ve written a whole novel in this vein. Advise by private message if you’d like to read it.]
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