Pain Killers (21 page)

“You think?”

Maybe He was tapping me now! For a few heady seconds, I imagined sharing my recent experience, as a cautionary tale.
Take it from me, you may be years from your last shot—but you’re two seconds from your next one….
It could be cathartic.

“Addictive behavior,” I kicked off, clapping my hands. “Anybody have any problems?”

Three hands shot up: Half-faced Davey—who’d come in late—Cranky and Rasta Jim from the FBI. Cranky waggled his hand back and forth over his head like a second grader who needed to pee.

I gave him the nod. “Bring it, Cranky.”

“Okay, I got a fuckin’ problem, homes! When I was in Chino, I’s supposed to be learning how to dry-clean, right? I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna sign up and learn some kinda trade. Meanwhile, them fools in there was soaking lint in dry-cleaning fluid and callin’ it PCP.” He smacked his chair for emphasis. “I’m serious. They be rollin’ that shit up and passin’ it off in the yard as sherm. Lemme tell you, mang, sherm was fuckin’ pasteurized milk compared to this bunk. But guess what? I knew what the shit was,
and I still smoked it
!”

This got an appreciative chuckle from the clean-livers on hand.

“There it is,” said Roscoe, doling out a Buddha-like smile. “What people don’t know: Addiction is not a substance. Addiction is a
be-hav-ior.
” He gave it three syllables. “Until we understand the nature of the problem, it doesn’t matter what we do. We are never going to solve it.”

“Uh-huh,” said Cranky. “I don’t got a drug problem. I got a
me
problem.”

Just then Mengele entered, led by Rincin and Colfax. The wheelchair’d been scrapped. Maybe he found a pair of legs to transplant. By way of not obsessing, I waved to Rincin. “Glad you could join us, Officer. As I recall, whatever we talk about here stays here, right?”

“I am a corrections officer,” Rincin said. “When a CO makes a report it’s not the same as snitching.”

Roscoe smiled his sage smile. “See how they do? Staff always has to mess with a man’s head.”

Cranky, gripped by sudden panic, clutched his head with both hands. “Hey, man, you ain’t gonna write me up, are you? Does dry-cleaning fluid count as a drug?”

“Poor man’s PCP,” said Rincin. “To tell you the truth, I just got here.”

Cranky lowered his head. “So, you gonna charge me?”

Rincin’s grin made him threatening and pleasant at the same time. “Depends how my uniform looks when I pick it up. I find soilage, I’m gonna blame you for hogging the chemicals.”

“Better watch your ass,” the reverend snapped. “Pretty soon you gonna be Martinizing.”

“People,” I interrupted. “Remember it’s not about what you do. It’s about why you do it. It’s about that hole you’re trying to fill.”

“You want to talk about
hole
?” It was Davey again. Half a face but a thousand-watt intensity. “With me it ain’t even drugs.”

“Don’t have to be a drug to be a drug,” Roscoe intoned, speaking so softly we had to strain to hear him.

“That’s what I’m sayin’!” Davey’s voice quivered. He teared up. “I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no dope or pruno…. It’s like I can’t stop—you know…another thing.”

“Say it,” I said. “Once you name it, it loses power.”

Davey screwed up what was left of his face. He put his hand to his lipless mouth as though ripping the words. “I’m addicted to porn.”

“Good for you,” said the reverend. “Own it and bone it.”

“Reverend, please,” I said.

“I’m not talkin’ about regular shit. I’m talkin’ about sick stuff. On the Internet. With me it’s porn, mang!”

“Beelzebub cast a web, and man called it the Internet,” said the reverend.

“Whatchu mean, like JailBabes.com?” Jim giggled, back in character. “Them bitches is tore up!”

“Naw, man, JailBabes is like Little Miss Muffett compared to these sites. I’m talking about them personals websites. On that one, Alterna. com, jeezy-fuckin’-peezy, I saw a video of some blonde wrapping rope around her tits. She made these Japanese knots so tight her mama-bags swol’ up blue like they was going to burst. It was horrible, man, but, like, at the same time it was
hot.
It was like I had a demon.”

I stopped listening. If I found out Dave was jerking off over my ex-wife, then what? I went over the films in my head from our time in the trailer, but I didn’t remember any rope burns on her breasts. If you look hard enough, there’s always something to be grateful for.

Davey rushed on, dabbing at his lipless mouth and shifting on his chair, mega-agitated. “It’s that one with the personals, with ladies who want to put clothespins on their titties and all like that? Man, it’s like sick hot, ’cause, you know, it’s not posed, it ain’t porno porn. It’s like, this is what they’re into…. And it ain’t even that the stuff they do turns me on so much, you know….
It’s that they wanna do it!
I’m sitting here, trimming my toenails, and there’s some lady in Kentucky who looks like my mom on the webcam, squeezin’ an avocado out of her ass. In her profile she says, ‘All holes are the property of Master Don from Hollywood, Florida.’ I guess he’s the guy who got to put the avocado in. And right at the end, it says, ‘Will do doghouse.’ I don’t even know what that means, but I know it’s super-fucking-nasty. And it’s like, these are regular folks. They ain’t models. Spankhappy72 wants to meet a dude for kennel training.” Davey looked genuinely scared. “I’m serious, man, this stuff is all real. I thought my head was gonna explode!”

“Your head already exploded,” said Cranky.

“Cranky,” I said, “come on, okay?”

But Davey was too deep in it to hear anyway. “Naw, man, I’m serious.” Sweat coated his face, somehow rendering the cosmetically enhanced patches more waxen. “It’s so wrong-like, but at the same time, it gives me some weird kind of hope. Like, Jesus gumdrops, there’s chicks out there who wanna drink mailman pee, get tea-bagged by fat guys. Maybe there’s a girl out there for me.”

Reverend D let out a sigh. “A romantic. Ain’t that the shit?”

Things got quiet, except for Jimmy giggling behind his hand. Davey whimpered. “It’s killin’ me, man. I’m on the computer, supposed to be preppin’ for my GED….”

“So,” I said, “should I even ask how you get the computers?”

Rincin shook his head. I said, “Forget I asked.”

“I can tell,” Davey sniffed. “I get three hours a day, on accounta my educational status.”

“And they’re not monitored?”

“I think maybe the guy who’s supposed to be monitorin’ gets off on that sick-ass shit as much as I do.”

“See that?” said Roscoe. “And you want to stand there and ask
this
black man how he knows there is an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator—bless him by any of his thousand names. Don’t even! ’Cause depravity is a virus that comes in every color.”

Davey stared straight ahead, his jaw sliver working furiously. He worked a bony fist in his eye, dislodging some unspeakable image of online personals degradation.
“Caramel cutie craves party-fist….”

Now everybody was talking. Except Mengele. He had his eyes closed. But that was okay. Tribes who didn’t easily interact were interacting. Maybe that was the ticket to world peace: the universal language of nasty ass and pussy.

Finally Davey got down to the real problem. “I got a chafe like I been rubbing my johnson on a screen door.”

“Son,” said the reverend, “how long you been down? Ain’t you heard of lotion?”

“Can’t use lotion, stupid. That shit gunks up the keyboard.”

Taking pity, Jim slipped Davey a Twinkie from his canteen stash. But the half-faced porn dog was so wound up he squeezed it in his hands, crushing the cream out. “Look at that, he even chokin’ his Twinkie.”

Davey wiped his hands on his pants, too desperate to take offense. “You don’t know, man. Fiendin’ for crack ain’t nothin’ compared to this, ’cause it’s endless, man…. You get on and you start lookin’ at freaky shit, then that links to some other freaky shit, and that links to some other freaky shit…. It’s like the broom in ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ you know, in that Disney movie.”

“Fantasia,”
said Rasta Jim.

“Yeah, yeah. Fanazia. And before you know what happened, you’re goin’ bug-eyed over some big-ass ho from Hueto, North Dakota, tit-clamped to a shower nozzle with a ham sandwich hanging out of her kitty…. It’s like, it ain’t even sex no more.”

Now Cranky pulled up his shirt and slapped his stomach. “Man, I’d love me a ham sandwich. Meat in this place taste like it come from raccoons or somethin’. They say it’s ham but only thing hammy about it is it’s bein’ served by pigs.” He turned in his chair. “Just kiddin’, Officer.”

“Well, see if I am,” the CO said cryptically.

“I’m still sharing,” Davey whined.

Reverend D jumped out of his chair. “Give somebody else a chance. Fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me. You the one jumpin’ out your chair.”

Roscoe interrupted. “Son, how old were you when you come into the joint?”

“Seventeen.”

“How many women you have?”

Davey looked over, fighting back tears. I quickly stood and clapped my hands. “I think what Davey did here was pretty brave.”

“The fuck he do but whine and get pervy?”

“He made the link between addiction and behavior,” I said, feeling
Welcome Back, Kotter–
ish. “He got that addiction isn’t a substance, it’s an action.”

“You said that last time, hoss.” Movern opened up a magazine stuffed in his notebook. It looked like a
Modern Bride.

“I’m addicted to saying it,” I said. “An addiction is any action we take, compulsively, over and over, even though we don’t want to, and even though we know it’s gonna make us feel horrible, we are powerless to stop. Might be drugs, might be sex, might be lookin’ at sex, might be anything—as long as we don’t wanna do it and we don’t stop.”

Cranky cackled. “Hey, mang, that mean my grandma’s an addict? She’s always fiendin’ for churros, you know? She’s this skinny old lady, but she’s, like, scarfing down churros from morning to night.”

“Sounds to me like she has an eating disorder.”

“Nothing funny about that,” said Reverend D. “I know plenty of girls, size minus-three, they look in the mirror they see Queen fucking Latifah. I blame the media.”

Suddenly Mengele, who until now I’d been successfully blocking out, aimed his gaze at me and slapped the desk, infuriated. “What I don’t get is the Nazi stuff.”

What an opening. “You mean like
Ilse, She-Wolf of the SS
?”

“Yes! You have seen that?”

“I have. As a matter of fact, it was shot on the set of
Hogan’s Heroes,
on weekends.”

He ignored this bit of trivia, clucking his tongue. How was Josef Mengele supposed to know about
Hogan’s Heroes
?

“Ilse was nothing like that…that character. This is what I’m saying. The American ignorance of my work. The continuing insult.” He sputtered as if the sheer quantity of wrongs done him were too vast to mention. “You always get it wrong. Something as simple as Waffen-SS insignia…The uniform. Always the lightning bolts, the women in leather boots…
Accch!
”

“I ain’t got nothing against women in black leather boots,” said Movern.

Mengele winced. “I cured influenza. What you call the flu. Your so-called flu vaccines? You might as well hang flypaper to catch machine gun bullets!”

“Sound like somebody gonna be winnin’ that whatchamacallit prize,” Roscoe teased.

“What prize?” Mengele wanted to know, hungry for anything.

“You know, the one that don’t ring—the No Bell!” Roscoe scoffed out a laugh that sounded like
kick kick kick.
“The No Bell Prize.”

But Mengele was sincere. “I don’t want the Nobel Prize. I want to help…. I want my notes to be read! I want my work to be recognized.”

Fourteen words kept blaring through my brain:
Get out of your chair, walk three steps, stick a pen through his heart.
Why not? I already had friends in prison.

Mengele’s frustration came out like a whimper. “I want to do good!”

“Gimme fifty dollars,” said the reverend. “That’d be real good.”

Jim giggled behind his hand. Movern clucked his tongue. Davey hugged himself.

I vacillated: seeing the ninetysomething bottle blond with a chewed-on mustache, then imagining his younger self, the dapper scalpel-wielding monster whose legendary cruelty was the reason I was there.

History had just shown up. I couldn’t focus. I had a head full of Heil Hitler ringtones and spinning iPhone screens, each projecting random Mengelalia: the castrated dwarves, twin vagina surgeries, the selections. The deliberate wounds. The dissected babies, their intestines. The murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder murder.
He who has done that is here.
But what was I supposed to do?

I could have texted the papers, alerted CNN, posted something on Huffington. Surrounded by San Quentin convicts. I thought about the other prisoners, the ones he dispatched straight from the trains to the ovens.

Rincin, I noticed, had his hand on his mace. I managed a mild glance at Mengele.

“So, uh, what’s bothering you again?”
Never respect him.

“Besides the fact that degenerates have perverted the noblest idea of the twentieth century and turned it into masturbatory fodder? Reduced it to the whip-wielding dominatrix with stylized SS wear? What bothers me is when they show so-called soldiers. SS men.”

“What bothers you about that?” I’d have to meet the Christian hooker to find out if he was who he said he was. In the meantime, it was dizzying trying to reel him in.

I thought he would say “disrespect,” then rant on about Jews running Hollywood. Instead he said, “They get it wrong. The outfits, the insignia. They mix up death’s head and lightning bolts like it’s meaningless. But if you know the Wehrmacht, or the SS, that’s like sewing a Doberman’s head on a goat.”

That analogy alone told me he was the man. But I needed more.

“Have you tried that?” I asked. “The goat and Dobie?”

“Is that a joke?”