The story went that Geraldine had a thing for white boys. She loved to suck their dicks. According to legend, she'd trick them into her house (which is what inmates called their cells) and she'd hide them under her bed where she'd give them the best head they'd ever had.
"She's quite experienced," Grasshopper bragged, as if he'd sampled her trade. "She's probably sucked hundreds of dicks in her day, especially in here, where there's an endless and eager supply."
I was surprised he was talking about it so freely, given all his fears, but maybe if he joked about it, he wouldn't seem so afraid.
"Anyway, she'd suck their dick, and then when she was done, her voice would get all full of bass, and she'd say," Grasshopper dropped his voice real low, "OK, motherfucker. It's my turn."
"The only problem was," he said, "these white boys were straight, so as soon as they'd start to object and say something like, `But Miss Geraldine, I'm not that way . . .' BAM! Miss Geraldine would knock 'em out."
Grasshopper paused to laugh. "And then, when they woke up, the white boys would say something like, `God damn! That bitch hit me so hard my asshole hurts."'
The next morning, we were escorted to the infirmary. Two of the drag queens from Two-Special were in our group. I wondered why the guards weren't suspicious of all the appointments they had to see the doctor. The inmate clerks kept putting them on the call-out list.
"I'm a diabetic," I heard one of them say.
"Sugar needs her sugar," the other explained.
I didn't know if she was referring to insulin shots or the Zoos Zoos and Wham Whams they returned with later.
To the right of the infirmary, I noticed a building that had a major pharmaceutical company's name posted over the doorway.
"That's where they're testing the Swine Flu vaccine," one of the old timers told us. "They pay inmates to test new drugs and run experiments on their asses."
"Cheaper than chimpanzees," another said.
Rooster laughed. "Ain't no fuckin' way. I ain't gonna be a guinea pig for nobody."
"Medical records have a funny way of disappearin'," the old tinier said.
Inside the infirmary, an inmate clerk explained the program. It was a clinic that paid inmates to participate in Phase I and Phase II drug trials. The clinic measured side affects and inmates were paid up to two dollars a day. It was good pay, he said, considering most jobs paid about fifty cents a day. The money came in handy for those who had no other income.
"Oh yeah?" an inmate said. "When your dick falls off, then what do you do?"
"You better hold onto that," Rooster said. "These motherfuckers done took everything else."
The old timer said they measured side affects, but they didn't say they'd treat 'em. "They just record and measure," he said, "as your nuts roll off the side of the catwalk."
"Yeah," Rooster added, "They'll wanna see how high they'll bounce from base."
Everyone laughed, until the old tinier told us about a study down south, where a bunch of blacks were infected with syphilis as scientists sat back and watched, even after a cure, as some of the men in the study went blind and died. Or another one, down in Ohio, where inmates had cancer cells injected into their arms and a few weeks later, so they could study cancer growth, researchers cut parts of their arms off.
None of those things had anything to do with this particular pharmaceutical company, but the inmates didn't care. To them, it was all the same thing. "Just put me back in my hamster cage," Rooster said, "and leave me the fuck alone."
Some inmates looked a little skeptical. "It's been in all the papers," the old timer said, "don't any of y'all dumb asses know how to read?" He was old and black, so he could get away with talking like that. "You silly ass jitterbugs are too busy boostin' records and bustin' caps, that none of you all don't know nothin'. These motherfuckers will have you ass strung out so bad, your own momma won't recognize ya."
"Now that's some fucked up shit there," one of the younger blacks said.
"It sure is, son. Your own momma won't know you."
"Oh, don't bring my momma into this, Pops, or we'll be boostin' that silly old ass of yours. And the only thing we'll be bustin'-is that head."
Boostin' was the term for stealing, and bustin' caps meant firing a gun.
"The Man just wants to see the black man eradicated," Moseley said, "it's as simple as that. If we can't shoot 'em off the streets, we'll send 'em to prison, and if that's not enough, we'll poison their asses. But either way, we're gettin' rid of the niggers."
I once heard that if you weren't a racist when you went into prison-you would be by the time you got out. Again, I was suddenly aware of how many blacks there were in the room, and how few whites.
I was surprised that private companies like Upjohn and Park/Davis had a laboratory in Jackson prison. The pay they were offering inmates wasn't much, but the old timer said they wouldn't pay more because they considered it unethical.
"Unethical?" It was the first time I spoke up, but I was surprised by what he said. "If they paid any more," he looked over at me. "They'd be afraid it would fuck their results. If inmates are making too much-they might not report their problems out of fear of being dropped from the study."
Two dollars a day wasn't more than enough to buy smokes and a couple of extras at the inmate store. It hardly seemed worth it, considering you had no idea what you were getting yourself into. And what really seemed unethical was that inmates would be reduced to selling their bodies for commissary. But just then, the drag queens got up and went into a room marked X-ray. They weren't seen again until later in
