She’s just a job. That bitch is just a fucking job.
Why the fuck was my blood simmering when she was talking to that pig? Why did I want to rip his dick off when she said she was gonna have coffee with him? Why did I truly want to see those eyes, for myself not for the Lanzas, and look right into them when I was balls deep inside her? Why did I want to shelter them, not expose them? Why did I want to keep the privilege of looking at them only mine?
Why was I standing here, making a fool of myself for her pleasure, only so she’d be looking at me, teasing me with words that put a silly grin on my face and made my cock jump?
“Why am I in this class?” I started. It wasn’t to get distracted by a bitch. It wasn’t to stir shit for her sake. It wasn’t to get protective of her. It wasn’t to get a motherfucking erection when she put her hair down and did that thing when she flipped it a little off her neck. It wasn’t to want stupid things with her now or when I got out. A bitch like her didn’t end up with motherfuckers like me. Motherfuckers like me didn’t end up with a bitch like her. Didn’t end up with any bitch. Period. It was time I was reminded why I was really in Miss Meneceo’s class.
I opened my notebook and looked at the assignment I’d never written. The only words there were the ones that got her to blush that deep red that floored me. Making her uncomfortable, getting a rise out of her to see that redness to her cheeks was becoming the highlight of my week and my favorite source of entertainment.
“We’re listening, Laius. Why are you here?” she said.
I snorted and snapped the notebook shut. “You know what? Fuck this shit.”
“Excuse me?”
“I already told you why I’m here.”
“But we’d like to hear it from you, in more elaborate words as you followed the instructions. Please read what you’ve written so far. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfect. What matters is that it’s honest.”
She knew I didn’t write shit. She wanted honesty? Fine, I’d give her honesty. How hard could it be to give her a sob story a young girl like her would believe when my life had been a series of those for over forty years? Fuming, I opened the fucking thing and pretended to be reading. “In a life like mine, the most dangerous feeling you can get is fear. Whatever you do, you can’t allow yourself to be afraid because the second it sneaks up on you, you lose.” The first lesson I’d ever learned on the streets. “You have to be numb to fear. Everything you do, every ride, every rush, every drag, every pussy, it’s all to push it down until it’s no longer there.”
Some inmates nodded their heads. Others just had those deep looks of the sorrow and pain we’d learned to bottle down inside on their faces. Jo was blushing again at my saying pussy, but she didn’t dare scold me for it. She’d pushed me into this shit. She didn’t get to complain.
“With time, you convince yourself you’re doing great,” I continued. “You’re the king of your own fucking world. You’re even fucking happy. Because every second you live when you’re not afraid, that’s what happiness is. The only kind you know.” I glanced up to the bars that separated me from everything I cared about. “Then you hold your baby for the first time, and you realize you’ve never been happy a day in your life. You’ve never been afraid a day in your life either. Because when I held my boy in my arms, I knew what it truly meant to feel both.”
My gaze dropped back at her. “Bless your heart, Miss Meneceo, you wanna know why I’m here? I’m here in prison because I was protecting my boy. Even if his fucking bitch of a mom lied and framed me again, even if he didn’t believe me, that’s what I was doing. I’m here in your class because my son won’t even talk to me. This shit you teach is the fucker’s favorite subject. He’s fucking brilliant at it. I thought, maybe, if I read the books he liked and learned how to write at his level, maybe, I could write him a letter good enough to get him to speak to me.”
Again, I’d been distracted from my goal. I was supposed to feed her a sob story to make her trust me and loosen up, but I was the one here standing like a fucking idiot, with tears in his eyes. “After four weeks of education, I haven’t gotten closer to my goal yet because he hasn’t responded to any of my letters. The skills I’ve learned so far filled my head with other men’s shit, got me insight into Shakespeare’s and Hemmingway’s heads, but not into my boy’s. The difference I feel is that my hands are more fucking tied every second I’m here and he’s out there, because I know he’s been hearing nothing but more of the lies she’s been poisoning him with, and he’ll just keep on hating me. The measures I’ll take to reach my goal?” I paused, sniffling. Then I wiped my face and nodded to myself. “Whatever it takes because what truly motivates me to keep going, and not just in the slammer but in life, is winning my boy back.”
