1979/1980
New York City
Hell’s Kitchen
It is always strange when events put into clear perspective your limitations. And this was just such a night.
We had been living together for a few months now and while I understood that she owned a booking agency for cabaret acts, the nuts and bolts of such an operation were a bit foreign to me.
However, when she explained that Rock Hudson was appearing at one of her Venues as her guest - that got my attention.
It appears that Rock was a friend because her father had directed Rock in a Broadway production in the Catskills when she was in High School and spending the summer with the production.
OK, cool.
The performer at her cabaret booking was an old friend of Rock’s from a TV series and he was dropping by to support his friend.
What I did not know was that Rock would be attending the opening with his “constant companion” Tom.
Before we separated a year later, I had visited their home on Christmas with my lady friend to deliver some kind of candy that was a tradition with them. I was surprised to see they lived on the bad end of Central Park. Not an area I would have chosen.
Anyway - Here I was, fresh off the express turnip truck, with Rock Hudson hugging my girlfriend and the paparazzi crowding the sidewalk.
Not your normal night.
So it went. Her father being a Broadway producer had an eclectic group of friends and, to his credit; he often included me in his travels.
Her folks lived on the Upper East Side near the river. One Saturday morning I found myself drinking beer with her father and his lifelong friend who worked now as a New York Supreme Court Judge. Her father was the typical older Jewish man with a barrel chest and a scar from top to bottom from his open heart surgery – not exactly the health nut. While the Judge was his same age but fit as a fiddle and an avid tennis player. We sat at the kitchen table and swapped stories about gambling and their experiences in WWII.
One morning we were shocked to hear that our friend the Judge dropped dead on the Tennis court – there is no understanding the workings of fate.
But to travel in that circle with such friends and companions was to change my life in profound ways.
Years later on a trip to Austin Texas a group of my old college friends and I partied until about 1:00 in the morning and headed to get some chow. I love an early morning pastrami sandwich piled high with meat and good mustard, and nice sour pickle and a cold beer.
The beer was easy but at the few places that were open - a pastrami sandwich was not only unavailable but viewed as a ridiculous request. Chicken fried steak yes, but alas very little else.
I sat and thought of the hundreds of places in Gotham that were open and the huge number of choices available in both food and entertainment at all hours, and a little switch inside my mind flipped over.
From that time on I understood that I enjoyed the full palette of life and would never settle for anything less.
I never went back.
It is frightening to get a “lay-in”. If you have something scheduled then you are not surprised, but when you see your name on the board in the morning to lay in for sick call and you did not put in a slip - then it gets your heart racing.
And for good reason. If it is to be a private beating then this is when it happens. The beating that are used to make a point with population are always public and usually in the yard. But after the hoe squads have left the building is when the real damage is inflicted.
It is always written up as “fight among inmates” and in truth it really is. The building tenders, the turnkeys, the hired guns of the prison are all lifers with nothing to lose. If instructed, they will beat you to near death and eat lunch without blinking an eye.
My mind raced thinking about any infraction or offense that I might have committed, but nothing came to mind.
In the field I had earned my chops the old fashioned way. I fought when provoked and over the last few months, as I got better in the field, I had been used as a striker some.
A striker is someone who can work hard, get out ahead of the squad and then drop in behind someone struggling to keep up and catch up their row. What you do is tell the inmate to move up to the squad and you work like hell on his row until you get it back to where he moved to. Then you run to your row and catch back up to the squad yourself. Striker.
So my work in the field was good. I neither gambled or borrowed money, so they were not an issue.
Nonetheless I took my watch and commissary book to a friend and asked him to hold it for me. It was best to never have anything on you that could be stolen or broken should you have the unfortunate experience to be moving out of your block with a turnkey escort, when somewhere in the farm you are taken aside and given a bit of attitude adjustment.
Once was enough for me. Being a political type prisoner, there were plenty of jokers willing to make a name at my expense. I learned to avoid the issue.
I learned to do time the Old Con way. Keep to yourself, read always, do not make eye contact, respond to any slur with fists immediately and never violate any of the old school rules. You do not snitch, you do not report to sick call, you do not gamble on sports, you do not borrow money to buy commissary and you never ever dream that you will get out of this hell alive.