Mama's Boy Behind Bars Read online

  I left her, deep in thought: she would do as a lover while I waited to finish my sentence and meet some real women. After all, if they tolerated Butterfly raping me every day, they could easily accept my having a relationship with Edith. Justice isn’t the only one wearing a blindfold.

  The idea worked itself out over hours and days, giving me new strength and a spring in my step. The idea of love knitted itself a cocoon where it could transform into an emotion. It worked on my body, somewhere between my guts and my heart, just like magic. The more I thought of her, the less I found her stupid and the more I thought she was beautiful. Love really is stronger than everything. The Beatles, a popular boy band, wrote a lot about that, and you don’t get to be multi-billionaires by singing nonsense.

  It’s unhealthy for men overflowing with libido to stagnate together without any possibility of relieving the tension. The general-population inmates had access to the conjugal visit room and could get spoiled by their wives or mistresses pretending to be their sisters. Or their actual sisters, who knows! But for the inmates under protection, it’s a dry regime. Visiting room, masturbation, and assault. It’s not surprising if there’s a slip now and again.

  Since I’d been sentenced, I was less into solitary pleasures. I limited myself to blowing my wad three times a day, since I no longer had access to my zinc cream to soothe my inflamed penis. And the guards doing their rounds, the crushing heat, and having a cellmate didn’t really help the masturbatory effort. Even in the shower I was always stressed that Butterfly would come and lean on my shoulder—or lower down. It was settled: a stopgap wife would be good for me. And I’d enjoy stopping Edith’s gap.

  * * *

  I was still thinking about my love life as I fed my doves. The hour after the evening meal was the only time we got outside all day, so we had to make the most of it. In our barred cage, under the insults and threats from the regular inmates stationed at the windows of the adjacent buildings, some people walked in circles, others smoked or watched Butterfly lift weights. I wandered to the corner of the enclosure, where my birds were weaving in and out of the fence.

  Over the time I’d been feeding them, I’d built a lot of trust up with my mourning doves, a couple of which always flew together. I had to protect their food, some dirty pigeons were always trying to push in. I chased them off with kicks; I never hit them, but it was enough to make them fly away. The doves could then enjoy the bread or rice I’d saved for them. They were comfortable coming closer and closer to me. After three months, some of them would even eat out of my hand. I was like Saint Francis, a famous Catholic Christian ornithologist.

  Some inmates mocked me because they were jealous. Even Giuseppe, who would soon be bathing in his own blood. People taunted me, but nobody dared to approach us. A current passed between me and the birds. Something invisible and essential, something indescribable. As soon as they landed in the yard, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I was glued to them. I spoke to them, fed them, treasured them, and got lost in them. Especially when they took off again. They were free to fly over the prison, the city, the world. Unbothered by our borders, our barriers. Then, with pain in my soul, I went back to my cell humming “I’m Like a Bird” by Nelly Cohen.

  3

  Destitution

  It really and truly was a letter from my mother. An indiscreet guard named Paul confirmed it for me. Pretty much. He told me it was personal mail, a long letter written by a woman. It could only be her. Unless Bell has a strategy of harassing former customers even if they’re in prison. No, it could only be my repentant mother, trembling with love and lost time. I could already picture myself moving in with her when I got out.

  At that time, around mid-June, I still didn’t know I’d have to kill again, and so quickly. I was amusing myself with Edith, reeling off a litany of suitable lies and playing at rehabilitation. Polishing my halo cost me nothing, and gave the young lady officer the satisfaction of a nice model inmate.

  Guards are human: they like hearing what they want to hear. And that matches up with government policy: nobody ever does all their time. Sentences are meaningless, they just pacify the media and shut the victim’s mouths. It costs too much to keep us inside. And people have to dangle carrots in front of us so we don’t all kill each other, or at least not too often.

  In fact, we only do a fraction of our sentences, but which fraction it is remains to be determined. It’s all negotiated in the office of the rehabilitation people with the agents of conditional liberation. You have to give them so much that their files are completely overflowing. From note to note, from therapeutic activity to good behaviour, with a bit of bonus snitching, you end up with an evaluation that means you’re allowed back into society. Then reality catches back up with the fiction, and respectable people are scandalized by a rape or murder that could have been avoided. But whoever has drunk, will drink; whoever has killed, will kill; and so on. This is an old whores’ tale that I too will honour.

  I’m ftill trying, Edith. I’m monitoring the company I keep. I’m working on myfelf. I’m juft one big building fite!

  Edith made a note of everything I said, nodding her head vigorously. I guessed she’d give a pretty athletic blow job; her neck could keep a rhythm. She was a young officer, somewhere in her twenties, puffed up with goodwill and hopes of promotion. She truly believed in social reintegration. If she could only imagine everything that went on, all the other types of reintegration, inside the walls of her beloved prison, she’d be quickly disillusioned.

  I’m getting ufed to privon life, but I’m ankfiouf about my fycholovhical state, I’ve had fuifidal thoughtf… I’d like to fee the doctor…to make fure I’m not depreffed. This speech was supported by an incredible acting job, I was really inhabiting the role. I was reaching the heights of interpretation worthy of a young Marlene Dietrich.

  She stopped talking, put down her pen, and said, That’s really how you’re feeling? Silence. You can tell me what you’re going through, you really can, what’s wrong? I had tears in my eyes. But I didn’t cry. Tears in the eyes is good, as long as they don’t fall. I tipped my head back to make sure, took a deep breath, and listed off the symptoms I’d learned about in the prison library. Three cheers for books!

  Yef, yef, I fwear, loff of weight and appetite, infomnia, loth of intereft, irritability, mood fwingf and even dark thoughtf for over two weekf.

  She took a few notes and confirmed she’d send me to the doctor, but in her opinion what I needed most was to be listened to. Silence. The bitch really wanted to see me sob. I thanked her as I raced off to go back to sweat in my cell. I curled up in a ball with my face in my pillow.

  * * *

  Edith attracted and repelled me at the same time. Like a magnet soldered to a spring. Or a grandiose fate plotting its own tragic denouement. Maybe I had the gift of clairvoyance and could already feel, in the vibrations of her aura, the drama that awaited us. What I really want to know is, as Lenny Kravitz once sang, his voice full of questions, is she gonna go my way?

  The emotional tension between us sizzled. I spent more time in her office than any of the other guys she was responsible for, she always called me by my first name and looked me in the eyes, that tells you all you need to know. She didn’t turn me on at a genital level but there was something about her that burrowed its way into my brain. And the brain is an extension of the heart.

  I admit she’d taken her time winning my heart. I don’t want to seem picky, but I should point out that Edith had a pear instead of a body. A willowy head and neck, small shoulders, a slim torso, but an enormous ass. She had the pelvis of a greedy whale. To her misfortune, she didn’t have one of those beautiful enormous asses some women know what to do with, firm and rounded at the same time. No, she got to lug around the typical female jogger’s bum. Boring!

  She was a ordinary brunette, almost cute, who could have aspired to a good-looking partner, but out of the 206 bones
in her body, it had to be the pelvis that was the megalomaniac. A huge, wide, fat ass, with no meat to flesh it out. No curves anywhere else either, just width, just ass. It was like one of those graphics showing global wealth: she was very badly distributed.

  In her defence, she did have what is commonly called a fuck-me face; she was a sexual woman. There was an unspoken invitation to sex right in her face, from the little lifting of an eyebrow to a smile at the corner of her mouth. And I figured her out better and better as I paid attention to the equivocal signs that she was sending me. Tons of them! Our relationship was heading toward intimacy with the precision of a GPS fresh out of the box.

  * * *

  Friendship between a man and a woman is rarer than a shy reality-TV star. There’s always some kind of seduction or desire happening on one side or the other. Whether it’s professional, personal, or ambiguous like our relationship, men and women only have sexual relationships. Relationships that might or might not get consummated, depending on the level of beauty, wealth, violence, or charm of the principal actors.

  Up to now, I’d basically only fucked ugly women, mainly volunteers. Escorts were often more attractive. But you have to pay for everything, especially prostitutes. I had to face the evidence; I had loved little, and been loved little in return.

  I imagined this thing with Edith would be a love as real as it was free. I was determined enough to climb a mountain at the drop of a hat. With a little effort, I could even find her sexy. I wanted her and wanted to fuck her. Wanted to make love to her as well. One doesn’t exclude the other, everything in moderation. They play at being all innocent, but women love rough sex, it’s very well documented online. There are millions of specialized sites.

  Her face was already tangled up in my fate. I used my fox’s cunning to keep it close to me: I asked them to give me the prison’s administrative manual, fo I can read about my rightf! Jocelyn, the unit boss, was suspicious but was obliged to give me a copy.

  I spent hours poring over Edith’s photo. Among the listings of the guards I hated, she sparkled like a diamond in the sky, reminding me vaguely of an old song. I neglected my reading entirely to concentrate on her photograph, right in the middle of the prison’s organigram on page 12. It was like a sex-free porn mag. I was jerking off my heart.

  * * *

  All the guys had visitors in the visiting room. Everyone, and I mean everyone, without exception—except for Pedo and me. The black guys, the crazies, and the murderers all maintained close family ties. Killers’ mothers are indulgent, it’s well documented. They certainly visit more than the mothers of orphans.

  It didn’t bother me, I stayed in my cell reading, self-harming or practising my onanism. Obviously I still hoped my mother would come and visit me. Hope is a hopeless burden. Even when it’s as thin as a popular teenage girl, it’s hard to carry. But life is life and life’s a bitch, I sang to myself.

  Anyway, right up to the trial my mother persisted in refusing to recognize me. With the dirty fat Greek at her side, she swore under oath that she’d never had a child. I yelled at her to show her stomach to the court, wanting to file her paunch as evidence for the prosecution, wanting her to show off her Caesarean scar. My Caesarean scar! In addition, I demanded a maternity test. But it was deemed inappropriate and I was taken out of the room once again.

  While I waited for her excuse letter, I brooded on my bitterness. I felt like a legless tightrope walker as I navigated the fine line between the hope of seeing her and eternal disappointment. It’s complicated, grieving for a living person. I can hate her all I want, but I still love her. Like a scab or an itchy wound, I scratch her memory when I feel lonely. I scratch a lot. In prison it’s worse, but I’ve always been solitary against my own wishes. It’s not just her fault. I was constantly changing fathers, schools, and social workers. No time to put down roots. I never had the chance. Like the old saying goes, it takes a whole village to neglect a child.

  The trial reminded me of it all. Everyone I’d ever known paraded through to kick me down and betray me in the name of justice. Some were angry with me, hurling abuse at me. When I was convicted, I consoled myself with the thought that everything would go back to normal after the judgment. Once the justice system had sentenced me, their resentment would fade and they’d forgive me.

  Since I’ve been rotting away in jail, my only visitor has been my lawyer, who is repugnant and disagreeable. He’s also rich and ugly, which makes his presence hard to stomach. Isolation’s tough for a humanist. When you feel lonely, the best support often comes from someone even lonelier than you. I consoled myself by going to hang out with Pedo.

  Steve Jobs proved that the apple never falls far from the tree. In Pedo’s case, the hairy nuts didn’t fall far from the palm tree. He suffered from a chronic lack of a model of manhood: he’d had an absentee father as far back as he could remember. His father was already doing time for attacking modesty and assaulting minors, including his own children. Handing it down from father to son: a great statistical reality.

  I don’t know if the father showed the same level of vulnerability, but Pedo was an excellent whipping boy, which is kinda funny because what else would he want to whip but a boy? Scapegoat might suit him even better though, with his goat’s face and his sullen attitude. Mid-thirties, paunchy, and dirty blond, he had the personality and social skills of a dirty toilet. The one might explain the other.

  Pedo might have had a chance to respond to our constant stream of insults if he hadn’t been in a permanent overdose. Haggard eyes, pasty mouth, random snickering. More knocked out than medicated. He was the only one who took his medication intravenously, on court orders. This crazy dude was a real psycho.

  I heard Louis-Honoré spreading a rumour that our head psycho was also undergoing some kind of chemical castration. If that’s true, it’s stupid. Pedophiles are sick in the head, not the dick. But whatever, given the way they drugged us up, our Pedo couldn’t have been a threat even if he’d been left alone with a bottle of lubricant in a Toys“R”Us.

  Scapegoats are absolutely essential when you live in a group. They perform a basic function. First, since they’re the scapegoat it means that we’re not the scapegoat. These martyrs channel the negative energy, and we can console ourselves by comparing ourselves to them. I tried to explain all this to him when I was showing an interest in his situation. But there was nothing there to reconcile me to the human race.

  Pedo’s real name was Thomas-Olivier Chagnon-Dubé. Whether it was Latin influence or end-of-race consciousness, by saddling him with these double-barrelled names his parents basically guaranteed he’d never have a happy life. And it worked.

  I questioned him at length, but I couldn’t figure out how he’d ended up in our section. He should have been locked up with the other scum like him, in section G4, the wing reserved for protecting pedophiles, jointly known as the diaper snipers. I guess he was too crazy. But I suspected he was gaming the system, that he had deliberately schemed so he could switch sections. Some debt or threat, most likely. Never trust a chomo: they’re always manipulative and underhanded. Good as the little girl who had a little curl, except they’d rape the little girl.

  * * *

  Life is not like a box of chocolates, it’s like poutine. There’s rarely one pure, clear taste. Everything’s thrown in and mixed up together. You might have more fries or more cheese in any one bite, but everything’s swimming in gravy. It’s the same thing with life and its problems: alkies are a bit depressed, anorexics self-harm, the schizo dabbles in kiddy-fiddling between two periods of psychosis. People who are obsessed with clinical labelling call it comorbidity. I call it sad reality.

  So Thomas-Olivier Pedo-Whatsit was rotting away in our section, definitely not right in the head, probably bipolar and anxious and psychotic and addicted, as well as being a pedophile. They say you can’t have everything, but he certainly gave it a good go.

 
Pedo was serving a long sentence because he’d killed one of his young victims, a distant cousin. He thought he could see the devil in her; he was a classic textbook case of modern psychiatry. He even tasted a little morsel of her. I’ll let you guess which part. We talk about how crazies have a screw loose, but this guy had an entire bag of nuts and bolts rattling around upstairs. But he’d been judged fit to stand trial. Whatever, he could barely even paint with his fingers.

  I left Pedo in front of the TV and pretended to go back to my cell. Instead I burst into his. As I moved stealthily, my heart fluttered as if the twelve horsemen of the apocalypse were getting ready to ride me. I had to move fast and find some drugs.

  I could no longer wait for Butterfly to drug me so he could rape me better. I’d been using too much for too long, I needed a dose right then, just like everyone else in the place. I’d watched my rapist going to and fro from Pedo’s cell, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t cheating on me. Pedo was too ugly. He had to be a mule, there was no other good explanation for it. He must have drugs, or the pharmaceutical equivalent, stashed away somewhere in his cell.

  The seconds were ticking away. I risked capital punishment if I was caught. Stealing is beyond the pale in the kingdom of thieves.

  And bingo! A box of Tic-Tacs stuffed in a crevice in the window frame. Time was slipping away. If I was caught red-handed I could say goodbye to my last remaining teeth. I cast a glance around me; the guard was looking the other way. I went back to Pedo, still hypnotized by the screen, even though it was turned off. I turned it on and he smiled.