The Rodney Situation

I never like it when a new white guy lands in my cell after they transfer into Fort Dix. It’s a prison thing. Nothing personal against white guys—I’m white. The reason is that when they end up in my room, they become my problem if they become a problem. Which is often the case, since most are drug-addicted and lost and just don’t give a fuck about anything.

Case in point, in walks Rodney. He puts all his shit down on top of his bunk, 3-upper, two beds away from mine.

He’s a chubby, snaggle-toothed thirty-something with a devious look on his face and a big green shamrock tattooed on his forehead.

I’ve never seen him before, but I already know: here we go, just by the way he looks.

Young Buck, another white kid from PA, is immediately in my room and on Rodney’s ass, asking questions and giving him the new-guy rundown. YB can sense it too. He knows Rodney is a fuck-up. Young Buck loves politics and playing the role, unlike me, and he has great instincts for it—better than mine. He tells Rodney to roll up a cigarette and let’s go to the bathroom to smoke and talk.

I’m included, Young Buck says.

This bathroom trip isn’t about smoking a cigarette; it’s about quiet intimidation. Young Buck wants to lean on Rodney and feel him out. I know the drill because I’ve been through this too many times and I go along with it, and the first thing I notice is Rodney’s hands are shaking when he passes me the cigarette. He’s scared. What’s he scared for? It’s a bad sign, which means Young Buck’s plan is working—slick bastard that he is.

I don’t know if YB saw his hand shaking too, but this tells me everything I need to know. Rodney failed the test already. He’s got some shit to hide. I say nothing because I know I’ll find out why he’s shaking soon enough.

—

A day goes by and I see Rodney hanging out with a white boy we call Toboggan. A major drug addict in the building. Now I know for sure what’s coming.

—

Another day goes by and I’m walking across the compound with my friend Pat from a different building when Rodney walks up behind us. Pat whirls around, recognizes him, and says something doomsday-ish, like, “Oh, Rodney! You’re finally out of the hole. I hope you don’t pull your shit again in 5851, because you’re not gonna get away with it in their building like you did in ours.”

That’s when it clicks. Pat’s been telling me stories about this guy for a month—Rodney, the one who crashed the entire white car in 5852. The junkie who passes out on the floor, pisses and shits himself, screams through psychotic episodes at all hours, and tells everyone who tries to help him to go fuck themselves. The whole building wanted to beat his ass, but nobody had the heart. Until a gang of black guys ran down on him instead and gave him the choice: leave on your own or leave on a stretcher. Rodney checked himself in fast. He knew his own people wouldn’t really hurt him. Those other guys would, and they’d enjoy it.

I realize all this in about ten seconds and think, “Yup, the universe hates me.” Then I say it out loud to Pat.

This is exactly what I was afraid of.

Ten or twenty years ago I might have enjoyed the opportunity to deal with this guy, but I’m getting older and I hate this kind of shit anymore. It gets old. Violence never solves anything. And in three weeks the prison will send us another Rodney to replace the one we beat off the yard. It’s a no-win dilemma, like throwing yourself down the stairs with the junkie. It’s dumb.

Anyway, Rodney behaves himself for a while, until he gets comfortable. Then I notice him coming back to our room high as hell. He creeps over to his bed hoping nobody notices, jumps in, and goes unconscious. I don’t say shit. I just watch—observe. Since he gets away with it for a while, it emboldens him and he pushes his luck some more.

Then Toboggan starts coming around more often too. I overhear them talking and Toboggan is putting shit in Rodney’s head while I’m sitting right there, listening. Shit like, “We’re grown men… We’ll do what we want… Fuck the white car.” They’re five feet away from me, saying this. I am the white car, so I know it’s “fuck me” now. That message was for me. These two clowns are growing big-ass balls because I just want to live peacefully in here and I mind my own business. To them, peace is weakness. It’s consent. That’s how it goes.

Strike One.

As time goes on Rodney becomes even more comfortable. He grows elephant balls, and gets so high he can barely make it back to his bunk. I see him coming in the room, grabbing onto other people’s bedposts, holding on for dear life, trying to stay on his feet—comatose and episoding out like a zombie, doing some kind of half-unconscious deuce-head shuffle with a moronic smile on his face. He actually says “Weeee!” out loud, sounding like a little kid on an imaginary slidey-board, while he’s trying not to fall over. It’s funny and infuriating at the same time.

Another time he comes in the cell, trying his best to slidey-board his way all the way into outer space while I sit in my bed and watch him lay down on the floor and kick his arms and legs like he’s swimming. Then he stops suddenly and vomits all over the place.

I get up and help him to his bed and clean up the puke.

Strike Two.

Strike Three comes when Rodney is half-comatose again. This time I hear him banging on something and doing the retard shuffle across the room. I look over, and there he is humping his locker with his pants down and his dick hanging out.

So I yell: “RODNEY! Put your dick away, you fuckin’ idiot. Somebody’s gonna kill you.”

He snaps out of it, looks embarrassed for a half a second, and puts his dick away.

He’s so pathetic, and I’m chilling, so I let it go again. He just hasn’t pushed the right buttons yet. But he’s getting closer.

—

Another week goes by.

Young Buck keeps stopping by every so often, asking me if we can beat his ass yet, laughing at me because he can see I’m stressed out and it amuses him.

—

It’s early in the morning one day and I’m trying to sleep while someone is shaking my bed, over and over and over again. I hear other people’s laughter in the background. I wake up, and the first thing I think is, “Somebody is fucking with me.”

Angry, I am.

I throw the cover off my head and look down toward the foot of my bed. It’s Rodney ep-ing out again. This time it’s my bed he’s holding onto for dear life because he can hardly stand. Finally, he’s given me a pitch I can swing at. I jump up, hop down barefoot, and close the distance quickly, mad as hell. I throw three very fast, very hard hooks to his body—left, right, left—that each land with a vicious cracking sound and the punches wake him right up.

All the laughing in the background stops, and Rodney starts howling. “What did I do!?” he cries, looking at me like Satan came to knock the rest of his ten teeth out.

I look straight into his eyes and glar at him. I could easily land more punches, but I don’t. I restrain myself.

“Give me your hand,” I say. He looks confused, so I just grab it and drag him across the room to his bunk and push him in his chair.

He sits there and squirms and retches in his seat, with a pained expression on his face from the body shots.

I have mixed emotions because I lost control, and I feel bad for hitting him, but I also say some cold blooded shit and tell him if he wants to throw a fair one when he sobers up, we can do that. And I sit there and wait for him to sober up so we can do that.

But another fight never happens. He decides to chill out and start respecting the room, and that’s all I wanted from him in the first place. Just a little respect.

The Rodney situation ends.

Young Buck is happy when he hears what happened and runs straight to our Shotcaller to gleefully recount the news.

Nobody cares.

Pat was transferred to the west side a few days earlier, so he doesn’t get to see how the Rodney situation turned out, but I know he wouldn’t have been surprised.

—

This is why I said I don’t like it when new white guys transfer in and end up in my cell.

It’s a prison thing. An “I-don’t-want-anything-to-do-with-anything thing.”

But this is the kind of shit that happens.