Chapter 15: Star Extreme
River CI Annex — The Box, Dorm P
This is part of a series. For more please go to the Table of Contents.
Late on Thanksgiving night — around 11:30 pm I believe — my cell door crashed open and a couple of officers brought in a new roommate, cussing & yelling at the officers and at other inmates who were on their doors yelling back and calling him a faggot and a check-in while he gave it right back at them. While he was at it he called me a chomo and cussed me out too. He was covered in tattoos and stank of toochie. He’d been stabbed in his upper arm, nicked in a few other places and there was blood all over his prison blue shirt. Everything about him scared the shit out of me! Why did they have to put this guy with me?!
For over an hour he stayed on the door cussing & bitching out almost everybody in the cell block. Then he parked himself on his bunk and smoked another joint of toochie while he continued to cuss me out, but after a while he nodded out and fell asleep. I, however, got very little sleep that night because I was totally spooked.
But the next morning was completely different. My new roommate apologized for the previous night’s behavior. I said, “You have to admit, you didn’t exactly make the best possible first impression … can we try this again?” So we did. She introduced herself as “Star Extreme,” a partially transgendered transsexual who’d been stabbed the day before for no other reason than she was gay and an easy target for a guy (named Ray) with a life sentence who had racked up truly staggering gambling debts he needed to escape from. Stabbing up the nearest “faggot” was that guy’s way of getting sent to the Box and, he no doubt hoped, transferred so that he could run from his problems.
For this story I named my new roommate “Star” after a small tattoo of three stars she had on her cheek. Only later did I discover that there was a TV series also called Star about a transgendered singer named Star. In fact, now that I’m transcribing this chapter over a year later I see that Star is back for a second season. I did not get the idea for my “Star” from the TV show!
Meanwhile Star was left with screwdriver puncture wounds in her arm — the exit wound was still bleeding, had meat hanging from it and the medical staff hadn’t even bothered to stitch it up. In fact they never did stitch it, and after a week of no treatment at all they told Star, Sorry! It’s too late, it’s healing as-is! They did clean it and dress it a few times but after that, nothing. She was fortunate not to end up with sepsis!
As Star described the details of the events leading up to her stabbing I became more convinced than ever that I’d made the right decision by checking in before I ever got stuck. First of all, her stabbing had taken place in I-Dorm — my dorm! Star had been in that dorm for only two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Day — which meant our time there hadn’t overlapped because she arrived there a few days after I left. The inmate who’d stabbed her — Ray — was someone I knew because he’d lived just a few bunks away from me, and Ray was a good friend of Mr. Bunk 6 who’d threatened me, whom Star was now able to identify for me by his prison name “Cornbread.”
Both Ray & Cornbread were gangsters — members of the “Unrepentant” gang. It turned out that Cornbread also had huge gambling debts that were directly connected with Ray’s debts. No wonder he was putting down on me, the closest sex offender he could get his hands on! In fact it occurred to me that if I hadn’t checked in when I did I might have been Ray’s stabbing target instead of Star! By the time Star filled me in on all this Cornbread had already checked-himself-in-without-being-a- check-in by sticking a sack of cigarettes up his ass during a shakedown and deliberately getting caught! Now all four of us — me, Cornbread, Star & Ray — were all in the Box at the same time. Cornbread & Ray were back out on the compound to face their troubles within a couple of weeks. My heart bleeds!
Over the next few days I learned Star’s very complicated life story. Half black and half Puerto Rican, she was not abused as a child but first realized she must be a girl trapped in a boy’s body when she was about age 8. When her parents divorced at age 10 they split up their two children, Star went with her mom and they ended up in my state, dead broke and living in an Econoline van. By this time mom was a drug addict and Star left her in disgust for a life of panhandling on the streets at age 11. It was there that she met I-Rock, a then 30 year old black man who taught her the art of crime — stealing wallets, purses, bicycles, cars & drugs, all of which (except the drugs which they consumed) were pocketed, re-sold or brought to the chop shop for quick cash.
At 14 I-Rock introduced Star to Angela, an aging drag queen who taught Star how to dress & act like a girl, which Star took to immediately. She’d already been turning tricks on the street and now, with I-Rock as her pimp, she became a cross-dressing child prostitute without missing a beat on all their other hustles. At age 16 she left I-Rock and struck out on her own, occasionally popping up at her mom’s house or calling her dad only to be rejected by both. She soon added computer assisted credit card fraud and identity theft to her repertoire, was never caught for that but landed in county jail dozens of times and was now serving her third prison term — two of them for armed robbery!
Star was nearing the end of a seven year sentence for accessory to grand theft with intent to sell. This time she swore things would be different. She’d reconciled with her dad — which must’ve taken some doing — and who now intended to turn over his trucking business to her when she got out. She wasn’t at all sure that was what she wanted in life, but if she went to her dad she’d have a secure job and good money, and was very anxious to complete her transition to womanhood by getting breasts and hair transplants. Penile surgery? Probably not — too limiting. I urged Star to embrace this new life and never look back. By the way, I read this entire “life story” back to Star one day. She approved it.
Star was an experienced prison inmate who knew all about how to survive and turn the system to her own advantage, both in the Box and out on the compound. I determined to learn as much as I could from her. The first of these lessons was the procedure for my appeals, the names and even phone numbers of the officials I was appealing to and the proper forms to use.
Another thing I learned from Star was sign language. In prison a lot of guys use sign language — especially the gangsters. They do this party to communicate over long distances or between dorm buildings, and partly so that you as an outsider don’t know what they’re saying. Trayvon knew sign language but never had the patience to teach me, and at the time I wasn’t interested. Now I changed my mind and had Star teach me. My purpose wasn’t to start signing all over the place. Actually I didn’t want the gangsters to know I could read what they had to say. I kept practicing sign language for the rest of my time in prison but have to admit I never really got very good at it — not good enough to read signing gangsters, who can go pretty fast. After I got out I stopped practicing and within months found I was beginning to forget some of the letters.
Another thing Star got me thinking about was how to keep myself out of trouble during my upcoming three years on probation. After hearing other inmates’ horror stories of life on probation I’d become concerned. The gist of these stories was that the goal of every probation officer (PO) is to violate you and send you back to prison. Star had her horror stories too and they made me more concerned than ever. I became determined not to be accused by any PO of doing something I had not done. I later wrote a very paranoid essay about this which my editor on the “outside” — namely my brother — refused to post. I have to admit that turned out to be a good thing because as usual the Inmate.com rumor mill and inmates’ horror stories turned out to be greatly exaggerated. At the time I was languishing in the River CI jail, however, my view of the future was pretty bleak.
As the days dragged on Star got on the door pretty often but not so much as to be irritating. Most of the time she wanted to talk to her “prison husband” “Smidge” who had come to the Box on a disciplinary charge just a few days before her and was now just a few cells away from us. They also frequently passed kites [see definition #3] back & forth. Apparently they’d had some torrid romance in the two weeks they’d been together in I-Dorm and now Smidge swore Star was his one & only love forever and he’d take care of her when he got back out on the compound and blah blah blah … Ain’t love grand? But guess what? Once Smidge got out of the Box Star never heard from him again!
Star also had a Bible with her albeit one with a bunch of pages missing because they’d been used to make toochie rolling papers — so I picked up reading again where I’d left off in Smith’s Bible (at Ezekiel) and got as far as finishing off Luke by the time she left three weeks later. I also put in a few Inmate Request forms to get some of my property and one of the things that eventually showed up was Game of Thrones Book 3 — Storm of Swords which I’d gotten a bit more than halfway thru at the time I checked in at River CI.
P.R.E.A., Part 1
One day, a week after Star arrived in my cell, two officers came to our door and notified me that the Senior Classification Officer (SCO) had denied my appeal of the Protective Custody Hearing decision denying my transfer. This had actually happened two weeks before and they were just now getting around to notifying me. And remember — they’d promised me in writing that I’d “get the opportunity to speak to the SCO regarding this issue ”— presumably before any decision on my appeal. So much for their promises!
Did I want to make one final appeal to the “State Central Office”? Hell yeah! Check this box and sign here. You will need Form XYZ. “I hereby request Form XYZ” I said to make sure it was on both audio and video, which they have in the Box in my state. But guess what? They never brought me that form. So much for their obligations!
Over that weekend Star & I discussed my best way to proceed. She helped me to realize for the first time that I could make allegations against Cornbread, the man who’d threatened me, under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act or P.R.E.A. (pronounced “pre-yuh”) by saying that when Cornbread was threatening me one of the things he kept saying was I could either Pay him (which I couldn’t do because I was broke at the time and refused to do anyway) or I’d be sucking his dick.
Star suggested I say that I hadn’t made these allegations to that point because I was ashamed and felt “uncomfortable” with the officers & staff at the River CI Jail. After all, with all the lies and broken promises I’d experienced up to that point how “comfortable” should I have felt? Nevertheless at this point I was desperate and needed to make whatever allegations I needed to. I could not go back out on the compound — I truly feared for my life out there!
Star also explained that these new PREA allegations would require a new separate investigation by an outside investigator. As long as that investigation was on-going (and it could take months) I’d remain in protective custody — which might suck but at least I’d be alive & safe while my allegations tied the prison system up in knots. In the meantime if the jail officers & staff at River CI got tired of my shit (which they surely would) all they had to do was transfer me — which was my objective after all!
Even better than this, Star told me that once a PREA case was opened Cornbread would be sent to the Box, where he’s languish for 6–8 months. Ah, sweet revenge! This is what I mean when I say Star was an experienced prison inmate who knew how to turn the system to her advantage.
So Star assisted me to fill out a PREA allegation on an ordinary Inmate Request form which I turned in early on Monday when the nurse came around with AM medications accompanied by an officer. Star assured me that someone would come back to talk to me about it right away. But what actually happened was — nothing!
The next afternoon when the nurse came around with PM medications accompanied by an officer I turned in another allegation, this time on a plain piece of paper. This time I gave it to the nurse and said (loud enough to get it on camera & audio) there’d been no response to my previous submittal. This time they called me out (handcuffed behind my back) to the jail lobby all right, but only to be cussed out by the jail officer the inmates called “Captain Chaos.” I immediately recognized this angry officer as the one I’d turned myself in to when I’d checked in weeks before (see Chapter 14, subheading “Checking in at River CI”), and I was sure he recognized me too.
“This PREA allegation isn’t on the proper form!” he bellowed, to which I replied “I request to be given to proper form,” which he of course had no intention of doing.
Then he barked, “This isn’t a sufficient allegation to qualify under PREA!” which was a judgment he had no right to make under PREA and I knew it (Star had taught me). So I said “I request to speak to a PREA investigator,” to which he growled, “Request DENIED!!”
But he knew he was exceeding his authority, and he was doing so in front of the camera and several witnesses including the nurse, so after a staring match between us lasting several seconds he said, “Well I’ll put you on the list — but the PREA investigator is very busy so he won’t see you until about July!” to which I replied “Thank you.” Little did I know at that moment that his prediction about when the PREA investigator would get around to visiting me turned out to be almost right on target!
After cussing me out some more he sent me back to my cell thinking, well, if that means I’ll be in protective custody for the next six months at least I’ll be alive and safe! I also knew that what had really happened was that Captain Chaos had blocked my PREA allegation from going anywhere.
That night Star & I again discussed how I should proceed. One thing was, Captain Chaos definitely had a point when he’d said my PREA allegation wasn’t good enough. It was vague and only alleged sexual threats. Star had urged me beforehand to make a more serious allegation, and now I admitted she was right — next time I needed to do better. Also, I needed to get hold of at least two Form XYZs — one for my new PREA allegation and another for my appeal of the Senior Classification Officer’s denial of my transfer. Fortunately Star knew how to get hold of that form — use an Inmate Request form to request up to five copies from the prison library. I never would’ve guessed that without her help, but I filled out “the form to request more forms” that very night.
I also wrote letters to my ex-wife & brother explaining PREA to them and asking them to make phone calls in my behalf to various levels of my state’s DOC bureaucracy (addresses & phone numbers all provided by Star, of course).
The next morning Star was called out to her Protective Custody Hearing at which they approved her transfer right away. She was able to show what neither Smith nor I could — blood! She wore her bloody shirt for the occasion — she’d hung onto it just for that purpose. Congratulations Star, you’re outta here sometime in the next two weeks.
There followed several days of almost complete inactivity on either of our cases while we waited for shoes to drop, so I will take this opportunity to describe a few amusing diversions:
Extreme Fishing
I described fishing while in the Box back in [see Chapter 7, subheading “Fishing.”] Fishing is made possible by the fact that the electronically-controlled cell doors sit on rollers so they can be remotely opened & closed. Therefore there are about two inches clearance between the door and the floor — enough room to reach out and toss a fishing line up & down the cell block. However, at River CI Jail the staff had attempted to defeat fishing by attaching metal plates to the bottoms of the doors, leaving only about 1/2 inch clearance. This meant that if you wanted to pass a kite or make a dope deal you were at the mercy of the run-arounds and they charged high prices for their services.
Even so, never underestimate the ingenuity of prison inmates. Even with 1/2 inch clearance many were skilled enough to pass a fishing thread at least 1–2 doors down. Then with the assistance of others the line could go further. But Star Extreme took this one more step. She took sheets of paper and rolled them up into skinny tubes, then hooked them all together to create a long “fishing pole”! On one occasion while we were in Cell 11 she made a fishing pole longer than our room — long enough to sent a kite under the door of Cell 14! Then she just left it there long enough for that guy to read the note, write a kite of his own and attach it to the end of the pole so Star could pull it back to our cell. Brilliant!
Psych meds as recreational drugs
Star was, among other things, a psych inmate diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and seizures, both related to an incident in which she was beaten in her head with a steel can and raped in prison. She said the seizure medication makes you feel drunk and described the PTSD drug as “straight speed.” She several times saved up a two day supply of these meds and took a double dose of one or the other as a recreational drug. Of course she offered it to me too and after a long period of hesitation I decided to try each one of them just once — just to say I did it. I had never done pills before in my life.
Here’s what I will say about it: If that’s what speed is like I want no part of it. I disliked the highs of both drugs, which were nothing like a pot high , so you’ll never see me tempted to do anything like that again.
Then one night Star got hold of some toochie from a trusted friend in a nearby cell (yes, using a fishing pole) who guaranteed her this stuff was “just like pot.” She urged me to share it with her — again just this once. I decided, well, I’d tried the pills and they’d only made me less of a pill-popper than ever, so … yeah, I’ll do this just once too.
Here’s what I will say about it: Yeah, actually, it really was just like pot! In fact, pretty good pot! But again I resolved that no, I’ll never touch toochie again.
Just friends, thank you
Star & I got along very well by this time, so well she swore I was one of the best friends she’d made in prison. I don’t know how true that might have been, but I will say that for my part she was without any doubt the most useful friend I’d made in prison — a more interesting friend than Trayvon, who was my protector and “friend with benefits” all right, but not much of a storyteller or conversationalist. Star & I talked endlessly about almost any subject. As I’ve said she was a magnificent font of prison knowledge. She taught me almost everything I now know about how to survive as a social outsider in prison.
As I said early, Star had been a child prostitute even before she began to dress in drag at age 14. She told me stories about some of her “customers” as a child prostitute — guys who would seriously make your skin crawl. But others of those guys she’d come to love, after a fashion, and stayed with them as “regulars” for years. In fact one of them, a very old man, had passed away while she was in prison this time and left her a sizable amount of money — six figures! — which was waiting in a CD account for her when she got out in about six months.
As we talked and laughed and told each other our stories, Star made it pretty clear that she thought I was “just her type” and that if I was at all interested she’d be happy to have every imaginable kind of sex with me! I had to tell her — sorry, but you don’t meet my minimum physical requirements for a male sex partner (see Chapter 9). You’re not nearly dark enough, you have a lot of body hair & tattoos (although she insisted that whenever she was out on the compound she religiously kept the body hair off using Magic Shave (available at the canteen), and you are just way too feminine, grrrl! In short, you’re not Trayvon.
This made her a little jealous, but she understood from lots of experience that some guys will get off on what she has to offer and other guys won’t. So we kept it “just friends, thank you.”
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