Buster
It’s quite common knowledge that to stay safe in prison, the first thing one must do upon arriving is to establish some street cred.
To do so, one simply finds the biggest, baddest inmate of all and then beats the tar out of him. Unfortunately for me, said fella was, literally, at least triple my weight and 50 percent taller than me. Might need to eat some more Wheaties first. Pass on that plan…for now.
Plan B, sit with my back to the wall, keep quiet, be invisible. At 85 pounds soaking wet I was the smallest convict in the prison. I hoped that, being so small, I was less visible. This was bull, and I knew it, but was grasping at straws.
Fewer than 24 hours passed between the time that I crossed into the prison until I received my first ass-whoopin’. The good news was that I had had a full 24 hours to plan my “get-my-ass-whooped-the-least” strategy.
It was mid-morning on day two in prison, the nightmare of what was now my life. I was sitting in the corner of the bleary grey rec-room, the TV behind a dirty plexiglass shield was crackling loudly through a long since blown speaker. Its sound echoed off the hard walls, mixing with the cacophony of inmate voices and the rhythmic clack of the ping pong ball being hit back and forth by well-worn paddles on an equally well-worn table. Shiny, new and state-of-the-art it was not, but it was something…something for the prisoners to do to interrupt the boredom and monotony of the daily wash, rinse, repeat rhythm of prison life.
I was sitting in the corner, back against the wall, sheepishly watching the goings-on around me with my head down, eyes up. As I glanced around the room, I made eye contact with Brutus (the somewhat less than affectionate Popeye character name that I secretly called this guy to myself). He was six feet tall and probably 200 pounds. Very scruffy. He looked more like 27 than the 17 years old that he was. Big jaw that hung open half the time. A real tank of a guy.
“What are you looking at?” he shouted from across the room.
I quickly looked down at the floor and didn’t answer, hoping that he would turn his attention to something else, anything else…anything by me.
“Are you deaf?” He barked.
I peeked up nervously. He was walking my way, Uh oh…
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” he growled.
I stood up and took three or four steps toward him and faced him nervously. He stopped about two feet from me and said, “Time for your first lesson.”
I looked him square in the eyes, which were a good foot above mine. We stared at each other for a few seconds while I tensed my stomach, preparing the best I could for a sucker punch to the gut.
In the calmest voice I could muster I said, with perhaps a bit of a crackle in my voice “You’re definitely going to kick my ass. ” “You’re LITERALLY twice my size…MORE!”
He nodded in agreement and raised the corner of his lip on one side ever so slightly into what could only be fittingly described as a smug grin / menacing grimace.
“You’ll kick my ass, and I’ll break your fucking nose if you touch me,” I taunted, and then turned away from him, just enough that I could see him out of the corner of my eye, which was turned as far right in its socket as it could go.
Before I tell you what happened next, it is important to understand a bit more about me, and why I thought that the best possible move was to taunt Brutus into a fit of rage and invite him to royyyyally kick my ass.
Having grown up in a rough section of town, I had been in my fair share of fights. Truth be told, I had been in more than my fair share of fights. The hood, even in New Hampshire, was a tough place. As a child, whether I made it to school without an altercation was a coin toss. Same with the journey home. Take the bus. Walk. It didn’t seem to matter. I was essentially prey in the twice-daily-played neighborhood favorite, “Sport Hunting for Bullies.”
What I had learned over the years was that running worked, some of the time, but really only served to prolong the eventual beating. Occasionally I would be given the option to stop and take a light(er) beating or face the consequences of a good punch and kick session later. I chose to run most of the time, but occasionally opted for a light beating in favor of an all-out fox and hound competition.
Jamie Gillingham was my arch nemesis. That kid was cold and sadistic. He had it in for me and would lay in wait to ambush me at least once a week. This kid, while not much of an academic, had read the schoolyard bully book. Twice. (at least twice). The only nice thing that I can say about Jamie was that he was a bully of his word when it came to light voluntary beatings. A form of dickhead honor. Someone should have given this guy a badge.
Gillingham never ate my lunch. He disliked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as much as I did. This mutual dislike of the PBJ did not make us friends, nor did it keep my midday sustenance safe from harm. Noooo, Jamie made a point to flatten and smear my brown bag into the ground when he caught me on the way to school. As a safety precaution, I had my mom individually wrap my sandwiches in multiple layers of plastic wrap, a shield of sorts from Jamie’s heavy foot. Sure, the sandwiches got smooshed, but gravel free, they were still eatable. Truth told, I preferred the packed sandwiches over the fluffy ones, but I would never admit that to Jamie.
Pockets were customarily searched for arcade change before being bid farewell, sometimes with a goodbye punch to the back of the head, sometimes not.
Jamie was great at keeping the beatings fresh and innovative, like rubbing gum into my hair so that it’s only way back out was with a pair of scissors (great for the bangs). One time on my way home from school in the middle of winter he took one of my shoes, which was never to be seen again.
The pre and post school “fox” hunts continued for years…right up until the middle of fifth grade. For weeks I had been plotting his overthrow. I had been daily practicing my moves with a gallon milk jug that I hung from the ceiling in front of my bedroom door. I had partially filled it with sand to give it some weight, to give it more of a “Jamie Gillingham’s head when I made contact with it” kind of feel. I practiced with my fists…left, right, uppercut…right, left, full right cross. I even invented a special tactic that I called the “walk-away-elbow-crusher-to-the-face” maneuver or “nosebreaker” for short.
I was small, but a powerhouse, nevertheless. A tactic that I often employed in fights was to rush and tackle during the shit-talking pre-rumble moments that usually preceded the violence. If I could get my opponent to the ground, I could sometimes pin his arms under my knees and then go meat tenderizer on his face. Life in the hood was brutal. There was a pecking order. Draconian tactics were required.
In addition to daily sessions on the poor boy’s punching bag, I practiced the nosebreaker and tackle and pin down move with my friend Ethan Dodge. Like me, he was a little hoodlum, and a bit of a scrapper himself. Each day was a day closer to my destiny, the day that I would face up to the biggest bully in the school, Jamie Gillingham himself. I took this seriously. I trained hard.
I was in fifth grade; Jamie was in sixth. He was already going through puberty at 13, had a greasy, thin mustache and a few whiskers on his chinny-chin-chin, which was also adorned with a gaggle of little pimples. He smoked Marlboro Red cigarettes and had a pleather jacket with some tough guy sew-ons adorning it. Sometimes he wore a red bandanna atop his unkept, shoulder-length, greasy, black, slightly curly hair. He was a full-blown junior thug. No one messed with Jamie. He was big, strong and knew how to handle himself. He was a major-league asshole. A true sociopath, perhaps even a psychopath. I have little doubt that he is either dead or in an adult prison today.
The day of reckoning came on a freezing cold winter day in 1981. I had a crush on a girl named Melissa. She lived down the street from me. I often walked to and from school, but it being so cold that day, I decided to take the bus home. I sat next to Melissa. We were friends. I wanted to be more than friends, but was too shy to let on, so just played the friend, biding my time. Someday, when the time was just right, I planned to tell her…but not just yet.
Jamie, being the prick that he was, saw me sweet talking my lady and decided that it would be fun to torment and embarrass me.
“I’m gonna kick your ass as soon as we get off the bus, Turner, he barked from a few seats back and across the aisle of the bus from me.
He kept heckling me for the final few minutes of the bus ride down the long street to our stop at the intersection of State Street. I was fuming, clenching my fists, embarrassed in front of my girl Melissa, my love.
“This ends—today!” I thought to myself.
As the bus rolled to a stop I jumped up and ran forward, using the momentum of the stopping bus to propel me. I wanted to get off the bus and take my position between two parked cars and the snowbank on the side of the road. I saw the spot as the bus pulled up and thought it the perfect ring for the main event.
When the bus came to a full stop, I was a few standing kids from the front of the bus. I turned and looked behind me. Jamie was next in line.
“Not quick enough,” he said, “You’re dead Turner.”
I hated him. I was boiling over; my fingernails were digging into my fist-clenched hands. I said nothing, walked off the bus behind the other kids and then turned right and quickly walked over to the ‘ring’.
Half the bus piled off for the exhibition. Kids destined for stops down the road got off at my stop so they could watch. Although enjoyed the most by Gillingham, the other children never bored of a good old fashioned afternoon ass kicking event. Kind of like a Broadway matinee, ghetto style.
Everyone gathered around. Jamie faced off at me, saying nothing, shaking out his arms and legs and neck while he bounced up and down, alternating from foot to foot like he was getting ready for a prize fight. This guy was such a cliché douchebag.
Without thinking and without hesitation I sprinted right at him like a football tackle coming in for the kill on a quarterback full speed, no brakes. I knocked him backward and onto the ground on the ice and quickly pinned his arms under my knees. I raised my right fist and held it high over my head. Ohhhh, the look in Jamie’s eyes. Shock AND awe. I had him.
I hesitated. I was panting, fuming, excited. We stared into each other’s eyes, motionless for what seemed like an eternity. But rather than meat grinder his face with my fists, I let him up. I LET HIM UP!!! I let him up and backed up a few feet. I said nothing. Nothing needed to be said. I stared him down, ice in my eyes.
Ohhhhhh, Jamie was going to get his ass kicked today. The reign of Jamie Gillingham was about to end, and I wanted it to be clear that it wasn’t caused by an unfortunate slip on the ice and a lucky day for the underdog. No, I wanted to be clear for everyone to see that cold afternoon day in 1981 that there was a new silverback on the block…me.
“That was your first mistake,” Jamie said arrogantly.
The words barely escaped his mouth, and I was on him again, tackling him to the ground and quickly getting his arms tucked under my knees as my fists began flying.
Right-left-right-left-right-left-right-left.
I barraged him with punches to the face until he stopped struggling. I remember clearly taking aim at parts of his face to inflict maximum damage. I ‘massaged’ his cheek bones, his nose. gave him a bap-bap-bap-bap to the kisser, bloodying his lips against his foul, cigarette-yellowed and unhygienically-kept teeth.
A few punches after he stopped struggling, I stopped, right fist raised high in the air above my head, lingering, shaking. I was panting, Jamie was lying beneath me, wide-eyed, spattered with blood, the look of shock, fear and astonishment on his face. I stared at him in silence for five seconds, then ten. If it weren’t so cold, a cricket may have chirped for effect right then. But it was cold, icy cold and grey. We remained there, frozen in the icy cold. Not a sound was spoken from anyone in the crowd. The silence was deafening.
I slowly lifted my knee and landed my right foot on the ground with a thud just an inch or two to the right of his ear, staring at him intensely for a few more seconds.
I stood up to the roar of the crowd. The big bad wolf of Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s only ghetto, had been out-wolfed by the new ruler of State Street, Michael the benevolent.
My new posse followed me across the street and to the doorstep of where I lived, the upstairs right unit in a two-story, run-down fourplex. Two or three kids asked me if I would be their protector. I would. The reign of Gillingham was over. It was Turner’s turn to run the E- (lementary school) Block.
Jamie had a black and blue face, two red, blood-stained eyes and two big, fat lips, the bottom one with a gash in it that nearly needed stitches. His lips were so fat the first week that he sounded like Mushmouth from the cartoon Fat Albert. It was embarrassing. For weeks he looked like the fool that he was. He no longer picked on me or anyone. He talked less. Kept to himself more. He was defeated. I defeated him! The good, triumphant at last.
I tell this story because it is the foundation of the strategy that I used with this new prison monster, a real-life caricature of a giant bully. I forgot his real name. To me, I secretly called him Brutus, like the bully from the Popeye cartoon. He was over six feet tall and probably 200 pounds. Big jaw that hung open most of the time.
What I have learned from my experience with Jamie is that bullies only respond to and respect people who stand up for themselves. Jamie picked on me and tormented me for years. That ended the day that I stood up to him. That ended the day that I bloodied his face.
And now here I was again in the same situation, as we stood there in the rec room of the kid jail, off in the corner farthest from the cage where the guards sat and watched TV, ignoring us.
Just as I turned away, Brutus stepped toward me, swinging his fist-clenched right arm in a sledgehammer-slamming motion. I swiftly stepped backward toward him with my right foot, rotating my upper torso and right elbow back and upward with as much force and determination as my pipsqueak frame could muster.
This was the first time that my patented “walk-away-elbow-crusher-to-the-face” nosebreaker move had ever been used on anything but a partially sand-filled gallon milk jug hanging from the ceiling above my bedroom door.
Ohhhh man, here we go. I hope I don’t miss; I thought to myself as this all unfolded in real time.
The sound of Brutus’ nose breaking was like cold celery snapping. Oooph!
He did not go down, but rather fell forward and enveloped me with fists flying. I hit the floor and balled up, covering my face and the back of my neck with my arms and hands the best I could and took what could only be called a severe ass-kicking. By this point I could hear a raucous crowd yelling and screaming around me. I could see nothing, balled up and taking the licks, now furiously coming from kicks rather than punches.
It took what seemed like an eternity for the guards to get there and break it up. My guess is that he punched and kicked me a good 30 times before the pulverizing stopped. Truth told, it (strangely) didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.
Gillingham had beaten me far worse many times. Perhaps the broken nose left his punches and kicks less accurate.
The guards, with some effort, pulled Brutus off me, handcuffed him and marched him off to the cage, which was just that—a cage—in the corner of the rec hall, where he was left to calm down. While in the cage, he explained to me multiple times how dead I was. At lunchtime they let him out with the promise to not beat me up again. By this time his nose was rather swollen, and both of his eyes showed partially red in what used to be the whites of his eyes.
I most definitely didn’t win that fight, but I also didn’t completely lose—although I expected the lose part would be coming soon enough.
Fortunately for me, Brutus was in a different dorm room, so I didn’t have to worry about spending the night, unsupervised, locked in a room with him and nine other larger male prisoners.
But I was in huge trouble. Thunk, went the pit in my stomach, as it transitioned further downward into the bowels of despair.
Could it get any worse? I thought to myself.
Yes, it could, and it will, I silently acknowledged to myself.
You’re screwed!” said the voice in my head. The thought of the word “screwed” immediately took me to the thought of being raped. Would it happen tonight in the dorm? Would Brutus catch me alone at some point and beat me or rape me…or beat AND rape me? Was he biding his time until his nose healed to brutalize me?
There were all sorts of dark hallways and corridors far away from the guard cage where bad things could happen. I already heard stories.
I already been threatened by multiple inmates that my time is coming. In less than a day in prison, a bleak picture was becoming clear to me. The anxiety that I felt entering the prison the day before seemed mild compared to how I was feeling now.
The combination of overwhelming anxiety, fear and hopelessness was nearly unbearable. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to be out of this place. I wanted to be home.
The reality was that I was going nowhere. The reality was that I was stuck in a child prison.
Stuck in a child prison full of dangerous thugs.
This was a bad place, and this bad place was my new home. I folded my arms on the steel table in front of me and laid my head on my arms.
Take some deep breaths, I thought to myself.
Calm down, get a hold of yourself.
I started to cry. I could feel the tears drip onto my hands, the snot filling my nose. I began to shake.
You can’t let them see you cry, I thought. That will only make it worse.
I took some deep breaths and clandestinely wiped the tears and snot from my face. I peeked up to see if anyone was watching me…if anyone had noticed me crying like a baby.
Phew! No one noticed. I regained my composure as best that I could and made my way to the bathroom to wash my face.
Would someone jump me in the bathroom? I thought, as I walked toward the wide hallway that separated the bathroom and showers from the rec room. Upon entering I could see that I was the only one in the bathroom. I walked to the sink and stared at myself in the scratched shiny metal sheet bolted above the sink that acted as a mirror.
Through the scratches and warping of the metal I recognized myself. My face was red, my eyes were glassy, my hair was all messy. Dressed in a one-piece orange jumpsuit that was many sizes too big on me, I was a sorry sight to behold. Uhhhhhg, I could feel the butterflies trying to escape. I felt nauseous again. I began to sweat. I felt hot and cold at the same time. Hot, cold and clammy.
I turned on the water and washed my face. The water was cold. Refreshing. Calming.
Hand towels were not provided. I did my best to wipe my face on my oversized jumpsuit. I tried to pat my hair down and arrange it to look more presentable. It was no use.
I walked back to the rec room, returned to the table in the corner where I had been sitting before, and sat down. I surveyed the room, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I hoped no one had noticed me. I hoped to sit in the corner of the rec room and be invisible. I hoped to be left alone.
Fast forward about two weeks. Round two. Another big fella came for me, not a Brutus, more of a tall, lanky “grew like a beanpole” type.
I remember sitting on what can only be described as the million fart couch. It was nasty, but more comfortable than the steel benches. The whole place was nasty. At least the couch was nasty but comfortable.
Big fella (Larry Bird was my nickname for him) said something insulting to me, I forget what. At 14, I had already begun to use my default response when people are being complete wankers.
I simply say, in a calm, quiet, slowly spoken and pompous voice: “Perhaps–you should go fuck yourself” and then proceed to slowly nod my head up and down annoyingly a few times with an upside-down Robert De Niro-like smile for effect. To me, it’s a way of cutting to the chase, which is to say that if you are going to talk shit, how about just taking a punch.
The symbol of the American eagle on the one-dollar bill shows the eagle sporting 12 arrows in one talon and 12 olive branches in the other. It means that I come in peace but will break your fucking nose if you touch me
So when Larry Bird said something insulting, I told him to get fucked, he feigned not hearing me, I called his bluff.
Sensing that Larry was about to slam dunk me, I jumped up. When I jumped up, he jumped up, and when he jumped up, everyone jumped up, and then with everyone all jumped up it was ON.
He pummeled me. My swing reached his elbows. He windmilled me with his fists as I turned to get away. After landing three or four hard hits he shoved me backward, slamming me through a wall of inmates like a bowling ball through pins. I fell on the ground and quickly scrambled back to my feet just as he pushed me again, this time so hard that I went airborne and slid across the floor on landing.
I flipped over as I slid and stood up facing away from big Larry in a semi crouched position, my right foot positioned in front of my left, my head tilted slightly right, my eye, turned as far right in its socket as it could go.
I froze, motionless like the spider. He lurched forward with a half out of control overhead windmill punch.
I swiftly stepped backward toward him with my right foot, rotating my upper torso and right elbow back and upward with as much force and determination as my small frame could muster.
Wash, rinse, cold celery cracking, the “walk-away-elbow-crusher-to-the-face” maneuver, the Turner nosebreaker extraordinaire. I broke Larry Bird’s nose, right there, right then, for all to see.
What differed this time is that rather than hit the deck, ball up and take my 30 licks from bloody Larry, I split. I ran right for the guard cage and tagged out, and from that day forward, my prison name was ‘Lil Nosebreaker.
Buster for short.
It was true, most of these guys could kick my ass in their sleep. But not without the distinct possibility of getting a broken nose in the process. And while math was not the strong suit of my comrades, everyone knew this score: It was far more embarrassing to get your nose broken by the 85-pound child than it was for the 85-pound child to get beaten up by some big kid.
No one ever touched me again.
