Smith 1976
YESTERDAY’S NEWS; TODAY’S POTENTIAL
“Smith, You’re gonna be hit hard when you read your prison journal. It’s heartrending. Here you are in the first half of your journal – ‘I love Robin, everything is beautiful, la tee dah tee dah.’ And then WHAMMO! You’re hit with four other men. One thing I want to know: is this one passage in your notebook an affair?”
No. That woman I’m fucking in that motel is my wife. I was faithful from when we married to just before the end.
I even turned down free sex from other women when I was married. On Charles Street in Baltimore, the woman upstairs was real lonely. She came home, turned on her TV for companionship and would walk all over. She offered herself to me.
I was too scared to follow through. Bought grass from her. Couple times when she was gone, I crawled up the fire escape and got some grass anyway.
And, one of the secretaries from the ad agencies repeatedly offered sex. And I turned her down. Then I found out she was epileptic. I started fantasizing what it might be like to have sex with an epileptic.
See, wives don’t get this kind of information from husbands.
“Why not?”
Well, normally, when a man is with a woman, it doesn’t help the situation for the man to talk about sex he’s had with other women. It tends to bring about hostile situations.
You and I do not have a normal relationship. I know way more about you than anybody else does, and you know way more about me. You can start calling me “Waymore.”
– – –
When I was still in the tiers, I was going fug bucky. I couldn’t see a clock anywhere. I didn’t know what time it was. I like to know time so I’ll know how long before we’re walked into the little tiny cells from the big cells or when we’ll eat or when my wife would be there for a visit.
I had my wife smuggle me in a wrist watch face. I can’t remember how we transferred it, because there was a screen between her and I, but I got the watch. Sarge the large sadistic guard caught me. Took me into the office. Searched me up and down and up and down. All the time, my hands are over my head so he can pat me.
Can’t find it. Finally he checks my hands, and it’s in my right palm.
“I can’t believe you had the chutzpah to try hide a watch while Sarge was searching you.”
Once again, if you give it to him right away, you’re caught. If you try to get away, maybe you’re not caught. It’s logic. *Known* bad versus *maybe* bad.
I couldn’t see Robin for four or six weeks after that and went buggy. It really isn’t much fun to be locked up; I don’t care what the movies or the books say. But I do got some stories. And I paid for them.