12 April 05

Pops and Slingblade
It’s 1pm and I’m sitting with Pops at a picnic table. Pop's is talking about his cellmate, Slingblade (they live next door to me). It's rumoured that Slingblade came back from Vietnam and killed his father in law . He barely talks to anybody but he can often be seen standing alone in the day room, staring blankly or cackling and muttering to himself. When he gets excited his body trembles and he shakes his massive fists. He is heavily medicated and his jumpy behaviour has caused most inmates to stay away from him.
“So how’s Slingblade doing, Pops?”
“He’s getting worse. I’m gonna' have to get out of that cell. As soon as he gets his toilet paper, he trades it for soda, and then he wipes his big butt with pages out of the TV Guide and takes a shower to clean his ass.”
“He wipes his arse with the TV Guide?”
“Yeah. He craps a minimum of three times each day. He already went twice today. He sounds like a pop gun when he’s shittin’ – pwk-pwk-pwk –like his ass is shootin' out a wad.”
“What’s a wad?”
“A little round turd.”
“Like rabbit poops?”
“The same shape but bigger. He’ll sit on the toilet for fifteen minutes and then he starts sneezin’ and coughin’, and the cell stinks.”
“How do you hang with that?”
“I cover my face with a sheet or a pair of ol’ worn-out shorts. I’ve got a jar of perfumed vaseline that I put up my nose.”
“And do these methods work?”
“It don’t stink so bad, but sometimes it comes through the sheets.”
“Why don’t you just leave the cell before he goes?”
“Oh hell! He never tells me that he’s gonna go. Sometimes he’s talkin’ and he just pulls his pants down and – bam! – before I can even move.”
“How long has he been your celly?
“Three years and he gets worse and worse. When we were in CB2 [a different prison] in single cells, five guards came in, opened his cell, and threw a five-gallon pail of water, with a bunch of disinfectant in it, on him. He was layin’ on his bunk and they just threw it on him.”
“Why did they do that?”
“Because he wasn’t cleanin’ his room, makin’ his bed, or takin’ a shower or nothin’.”
“Are the rumours true that he pees in the sink?”
“Yeah. I’ll be sittin’ on the pot and he just can’t wait.”
“Who’s that you’re talking about?” a Chicano inmate called Cortez asks.
“My celly. He’s crazy.”
“Yeah. I saw him in the shower the other day barefooted,”Cortez says.
“I told him that if he keeps peein' in the sink I’ll have him moved out. He has no manners. He’s never heard of Emily Post.”
“I haven't either," I say.
"Who’s Emily Post?" Cortez asks.
“Where’ve you two been? She wrote the best book on etiquette ever written. Ol’ Slingblade doesn’t read a goddam thing. He doesn’t write or anythin’. He crawls up on his bunk, turns the TV on, falls asleep, snores loudly and leaves his goddam TV on all night.”
“Does he go to the store?” Cortez asks.
“Yeah, he got eleven-hundred dollars recently, and he eats all the goddam time. It’s half spent already. At CB2 someone dropped a hamburger patty and asked for a new one and ol’ Slingblade just picked it up and ate it – like a Dewrock Jersey hog.”
“Did he clean it off?”
“Nah. It was layin’ in the dirt on the filthy floor. He didn’t give a damn.”
“I’ve seen him eatin’ out of the trash bag," Cortez says.
“Oh, yeah. I saw an officer once stop him from eatin’ a bun and a hamburger out of the trash.”
“Doesn’t he get enough food?” I ask.
“Hell no! Never. He’s all gut. He’s not built. He’s got a flat chest. He just sucks in air and gas. He doesn’t chew anythin’ Have you noticed him quiverin'?”
“Yeah,” I reply, fixating on Pops' unshaven turkey neck that wobbles as he speaks.
“He takes psych meds," Pops says. "If I clap my hands, it sets him off. He’ll be going duh-duh-duh-duh. In all my life I’ve never come across such a person before.”
“Is the rumour that he strangled his father in law true?”
“I heard he walked in and found his wife huggin’ another fella and he just squeezed her to death.”
“Does he have kids?”
“One daughter.”
“Does she visit him?”
“He’ll no!”
“I don’t know if he was ever slimmer but I can’t imagine a woman under that guy,” Cotez says.
“I see him laughin’ a lot,” I say.
“Yeah. All the time – whether he’s layin’ in bad or on the pot, it's like he’s watchin’ Bob Hope with the TV off.”
“Does he choke his chicken in front of you?” Cortez asks.
“He lopes his mule layin’ on his side facin' the wall. I can tell cause he’ll be squeezin’ his butt cheeks, tryin’ to get his rocks off. Sometimes I clap while he’s doin’ it and it’ll startle him.”
“Does he make a mess?” Cortez asks.
“I don’t know. If I was gonna do it, I’d take a wash cloth or old towel, but I don’t have to do that. I’ve had a very good life with female friends and sweethearts. Most guys are stupid, they think that women are fuck machines.”
“And how do you view women?” I ask.
“I treat 'em like ladies, and if they want you, they’ll make the moves. That’s what I always found.”
“That’s good advice,” I say, nodding in agreement. “Do you think that there’s any difference between European and American women?”
“European’s have hairy underarms,” Cortez says.
“I’d say that European’s have better manners, they’re real polite.”
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8th April 05

Question Time

Nick asked if I had any stock picks

Although I am itching to analyse individual companies I have insufficient info at my disposal to make specific recommendations; however, the general investment advice that I’ve had published since my arrest has been fruitful. My long gold recommendation (published in the Investors Business Daily) was followed by a spectacular $150 rise. My main investment themes were blogged here, which are long gold, long oil, short the dollar, and exercising caution with common stocks (especially when dealing with deceitful mutual fund companies and pension fund managers who are skimming invisible fees from your capital).

From studying geopolitics I believe that there are several profitable sectors to invest in - especially when sell-offs occur. Defense companies should do well, especially those enabling the military to fight video-game-style wars from computer terminals utilizing networks and satellite technology. Bush’s re-election equals an increasingly militaristic Uncle Sam. Also look at companies that are profiting from the rises of China and India, and companies producing raw materials whose prices will escalate during global conflict.

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Gravano On Gotti

7th April 05

In the day room today I was joined by Junior Bull Gerard Gravano (Sammy the Bull’s son), and I asked him about growing up in a Mafia family and his relationship with John Gotti the Gambino crime boss known as "the Teflon Don." The following is blogged with Junior Bull’s permission.

“John Gotti was a good guy. I considered him an uncle. I remember getting hit by a car, and I was in hospital, and he came and visited. There was an aura about him. I was at a Holy Communion service once, and there was about one-hundred-and-fifty people. There was a bunch of made guys there and Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons,
and there was a bigger line to shake John Gotti’s hand than Frankie Valli’s. Everyone loved him: the women, the kids. You knew when he was in the room. He had presence, an aura. Everyone wanted to meet John.”
“Did you know what John and your dad were up to?”
“I saw money and guns. I didn’t know that it wasn’t legit. My dad had a construction business. People were always visiting, paying respect. I didn’t realise what the mob was until I was sixteen, after the government got him.”
“Can you tell me more about John?”
“He shoulda moved to Hollywood and been a movie star. He woulda been a huge movie star. I think he thought that he was a movie star, not a gangster. Once, my father was eating with John at a restaurant in Brooklyn and a married couple a few tables away were pointing at John and laughing. My father asked John if they were bothering him, and if he wanted those people out of the restaurant, and John said, ‘No. Leave them alone. This is my public.’ My dad was a mobsters’ mobster. People are not supposed to know who you are. Mobsters are supposed to be on the DL [down low].”
“How did you feel about John’s death?” (John Gotti died of throat cancer on June 10th 2002.)
“When John died I was sad, very upset. I shed tears because of the way and the circumstances he died.”
“What were the circumstances?”
“He died in Springfield Medical Unit. He couldn’t eat or talk for six months. He died a brutal death. He died in a lotta pain. A guard told me that John suffered for a good ten months.”
“Did John ever show a bad side?”
“I have mixed feelings. I didn’t like what he did and how he handled some things. He threatened to kill a lawyer who was cross-examining my dad and someone got found guilty of a murder that he didn’t conspire to commit. My dad even admitted to it but they didn’t care. John was the down fall of the Mafia. He brought the entire Mafia down because of his big mouth.”

4th April 05

Dr.B

From my final session with Dr.B:

“You had success," Dr.B said,"and you learned that making money is not a panacea. Spending time with your family, reading a child a book, are more important than material things.”
“I agree, but I have an overwhelming desire to succeed. It's in my genes. Surely I can use my success to help my family, pay back the legal bills that I owe them. I can put the fruits of success to good use, philanthropically, helping the oppressed and exposing injustice. Or maybe I’m delusional?”
“You’re not delusional because in the past you have achieved everything that you’ve set your mind to. You were a top stockbroker, a successful day trader, and even prison hasn’t stopped your achievements.”
“So my ultimate goal of acquiring enough knowledge to conquer the stock market isn’t a product of megalomania?”
“I’ve questioned you to test for megalomania but you have viable answers carefully expressing how you will achieve your goals. You’re definitely not delusional. You are one of the most ambitious people that I have ever met, and even if you only achieve half of your goals, you’ll be doing very well. But will you ever be happy? Look at the Kennedys. Where did wealth get that family? How many of them died young? Wealth did not make them happy.”
“I want to be happy, but my will to succeed drives me relentlessly. In the future I will spend more time with my loved ones. They are the people who have been there for me throughout this ordeal.”
“You must see the trade off: the harder that you work, the less time you’ll be able to spend with your family.”


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31 March 05

Bon Voyage Balls

One of the strangest prison stories I've heard is about an attempt by a man named Graham to convert himself into a woman named Gina. Equipped with a razor blade, needle, thread and a cigarette lighter, Gina....

Let's hear Xena tell the story.

“Xena, tell me what happened with Gina and the sex change?”
“She," said Xena, who refers to prison transsexuals as women,"wanted to have a vagina on the streets [outside of prison] but they wouldn’t giver her a sex-change op because she’s a felon. She would have had to wait somethin’ like seven or eight years without committing a crime before they’d do the op.”
“So she ended up back in prison and she decided to take matters into her own hands?”
“Yeah, she cut her nuts off and flushed ‘em down the toilet.”
“Wait a minute. How did she manage to do that in a prison cell?”
“She cut open her sack like this [Xena drew a circle with a vertical line down one side] and severed her vas deferens with a razor blade.”
“What’s the vas deferens?”
“It’s a vein, nerves and a tube that carries the sperm, it’s attached to the balls. She cut that, popped her nuts out, and flushed them down the toilet.”
“So the vas deferens is like a branch holding the nuts in the sack?”
“Yes. The branch was severed. The nuts were free.”
“Yikes!”
“Then she used a cigarette lighter to cauterize the wound and a sewing needle and thread from inmate hobbycraft to stitch herself up.”
“But she messed it up and got caught? Got caught performing the sex change on herself?”
“Yeah, the wound got infected.”
“She was wheeled out on a stretcher. She was all strapped down,” String Bean said.
“So, was she happy with the job?”
“Kinda. She said that she had lost a lot of weight and now that the nuts are gone she overheats a lot.”
“What about her penis? Does she still have one?”
“Yeah, and she still gets erections. She doesn’t like erections.”
“What gives her erections?”
“She gets excited suckin’ someone’s penis or takin’ it in the butt. She doesn’t like the erections though, she wants to have a vagina.”
“Is the empty scrotum sack dangling down there?”
“The sack’s shrunk quite a bit and she gets sensations where the sack is at. She’d be much happier with a vagina.”
“Do you want to have a vagina, Xena?”
“We’re all gonna get vaginas - fuck it! I wanna get a vagina on my right hand, that way my fingers won’t get tired. I’ll be able to fuck someone with my hand and tickle their balls at the same time.”
Xena stood up, bumped my shoulder with her hip, licked her right armpit, and sat back down.
“I don’t really wanna vagina, but I do believe that if someone wants to change themselves or their lifestyle, and that will make them a better member of society, they should be free to choose those changes.”
“How do they make the penis into a vagina?”
“They slice the penis in half and fold it into the body.”
“But they can’t get their rocks off then can they?” String Bean asked.
“Kinda. The incoming penis would rub against the prostrate and they get the same pleasure as getting’ fucked in the ass but just from the other side.”
“Would it look like a pussy?” String Bean asked.
“Yes. They take the urinal tract and they place it to look like a clit and it works the same way.”
“But the clitoris contains highly sensitive nerve endings?”
“And there’s nerves in the prostrate.”
“That cause jollies?”
“That cause jollies. Yes!”
“OK. We’ll leave it at that. Thanks for the info Xena!”
“Anytime.”

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27 March 05

Question Time


Q.Paula in the UK asked if I ever hear from any of my previous cellies.

A. Mark, my final cellmate at the Madison Street jail, who is now on house arrest, recently sent a letter. He wrote: “ Sorry I haven’t written sooner but I have been so busy working so I can pay my stupid lawyer fees, so he can sit around and do nothing.”

Q.Dave & Edna asked if, in my opinion, gays or straights have it tougher inside.

A. My gay friend Jim said that if an inmate can get into a stable relationship and the potential for separation can be overcome then an emotional return can be obtained. Jim also identified negative effects such as younger inmates being taken advantage of by older ones, and some ultimately becoming cheetos.

I asked Xena the same question and Xena’s short answer was:
“It’s worse for heteros because they can get raped!”

I haven’t been raped but I have had my arse pinched a few times, and upon one occasion George took advantage of my focus on a book and licked my foot before I could pull it away from him.

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