Angola Ex-con: My experience in Angola, man, wasn’t nice at all. All it was, was like hard work for 5cents a fucking hour. You know what I’m saying?

Dege: 5cents an hour?

Angola Ex-con: Yep…like slave trade. And a lot cats up in there, wishing they could have out-dates that don’t have out-dates.

Dege: They wish they could have what?

Angola Ex-con: An outdate—a discharge date.

Dege: Oh.

Angola Ex-con: Dudes that got 4 or 5 life sentences.

Dege: And they’re hating on the dudes that have short sentences.

Angola Ex-con: Well, you see…yeh…and they’re getting on the dudes that’s trying to get that education…and get that knowledge, man, to get another chance to get out there in society.

Dege: Got you.

Angola Ex-con: But then you got your little, young wanna-be gangstas, trying to prove something…but they can’t bust a grape in a food fight…and they’re trying to get at people with 10 or 15 years…try and get them some more time.

Dege: Sorry, did you say “bust a grape in a food fight?”

Angola Ex-con: Yeh, them motherfuckers that acting all hard, but when shit hits—ain’t gonna do shit.

Dege: Got it.

Angola Ex-con: But you got to out-think them and school the young cats. Black, white, Mexican, whatever race they is.

Dege: Did you see a lot fights and stabbings?

Angola Ex-con: Seen a lot of fights and stabbings…and killings, too.

Dege: How often would you say you saw this kind of thing?

Angola Ex-con: One of my best friends got killed, man. Kilt.

Dege: What happened?

Angola Ex-con: They stabbed him in his sleep for a gambling debt.

Dege: What did they stab him with?

Angola Ex-con: They stabbed him with a icepick.

Dege: How do they get a hold of that in Angola?

Angola Ex-con: Easy to make. You get a collarbone off a dead cow. Chop it up. Crack the bone from the rib. Make you a knife. I seen a lot of that happen.

Dege: What do they sharpen it with?

Angola Ex-con: Sharpen it in the hobby shop. You know?

Dege: No, I’m just asking. It’s fascinating to me...the resourcefulness of convicts and stuff.

Angola Ex-con: Or you scrape cross the ground to a point. Hobby shop…they make belts. They make sun-visors (?). You make sanding. You do woodwork. You make gun racks. You make truss purses (sic?). You make plastic.

Dege: But they sneak them weapons in there to work on them.

Angola Ex-con: Well, if you can get a dead cow. I can bring you a dead cow and you can sharpen it down and make a weapon out of that. And you can dig a hole in whatever you need.

Dege: Right.

Angola Ex-con: You have some problems—you got to do what you got to do.

Dege: Protection.

Angola Ex-con: I ain’t saying that’s the way to do it. I won’t never say it’s the way for you to take somebody else’s life, you understand? You could be incarcerated.

Dege: It’s also a weapon of defense. I got you.

Angola Ex-con: Education is there. You can go to college. You can get your diploma. You can get high school degrees.

Dege: Who was the warden while you were doing your time?

Angola Ex-con: When I was there, Magio was there, running it.

Dege: Was he a good warden?

Angola Ex-con: He just did his job. It’s not him that runs the department of corrections; it’s the people from the state.

Dege: Sending it down.

Angola Ex-con: The governors and all that. It’s a money thing.

Dege: What were you in Angola for?

Angola Ex-con: I was in there for armed-robbery. Living a young life…on the streets…doing them things.

Dege: How long were you in?

Angola Ex-con: 15 years.

Dege: That’s a long time.

Angola Ex-con: Long time. I got kids, man. My kids was old when I got out. But you know what? It’s a blessing from God for me. I can say that.

Dege: You’re a good guy. I can tell you got heart.

Angola Ex-con: Well, I take care of my wife and I take care of my mom, cuz they took care of me when I was growing up.

Dege: That’s good.

Angola Ex-con: It was a blessing for me—to be free again. Lot of nights I slept with one eye open and one eye closed.

Dege: What’s the most fucked up thing you saw during your time at Angola?

Angola Ex-con: Seen a dude get his head cut off with a field blade.

Dege: No shit? How?

Angola Ex-con: They was playing the dozens. Two best friends was johning—started talking about each other’s mommas. Dude got mad. Hit the dude with a disc-edge blade and cut his whole head off.

Dege: He hit him with a scythe blade?

Angola Ex-con: A sugar cane blade.

Dege: Oh.

Angola Ex-con: Head went this way and his body went that way. Tripped me out.

Dege: You saw that shit?

Angola Ex-con: I seen it.

Dege: Did they bury him out there in Angola?

Angola Ex-con: Well, his people may have come got him or they put him at Point Lookout.

Dege: What is that?

Angola Ex-con: That’s where all the inmates that died who don’t have no nobody to come get them.

Dege: Any last words?

Dege: How long did you work as a prison guard?

Prison Guard: About two years.

Dege: What kind of shit did you see within the prison?

Prison Guard: Saw a guy try to kill himself with a razor.

Dege: Like a shaving razor?

Prison Guard: Yeh, he broke apart one of those cheap Bic disposables and sliced up his wrists.

Dege: Was he on suicide watch or something?

Prison Guard: No, but after that they put him in isolation for a while.

Dege: Lot of fights in there?

Prison Guard: Not a lot of them on my shift for some reason.

Dege: What other kinds of stuff did you experience?

Prison Guard: The inmates try to bribe you more than anything.

Dege: To get dope and drugs and stuff?

Prison Guard: Some of that. Mainly to get special things like a certain brand of cigarettes. Most of the cigarettes in prison are the cheap kind.

Dege: GPC’s?

Prison Guard: Yeh, so they try to get you to bring in Kools and Marlboros and, of course, I smoke Marlboro and they’d see that. They’re always trying to wheel and deal.

Dege: What else? What other kinds of things did you see?

Prison Guard: Not too much. One guy, he hung himself in one of the cells. It’s amazing that he pulled it off. It’s hard to hang yourself in a cell.

Dege: Why’s that?

Prison Guard:: Well, you’ve got guards and other inmates walking around. And you don’t have much material, other than a sheet, to do it with. Sheet and the bunk…and the bunk’s not very high, so you’ve really got to want to die if you hang yourself in prison.

Dege: Was this guy successful?

Prison Guard: Yeh, he was.

Dege: How much homosexual activity or rapes did you witness?

Prison Guard: Not too much, but I wasn’t looking. I’d rather avoid seeing all that. They had one block where they put most of the punks—Fag Block. It was F block, but everyone called it Fag Block. They only had, like, 12 people in there. It was the most quiet, well-behaved unit at the prison. Clean, too.

Dege: When I was in Baton Rouge Parish Prison, they kept them in a specific dorm as well.

Prison Guard: Did the punks do alterations on their prison garb?

Dege: Yeh, they did. They’d take out the stitching and re-hem their pants, tight, so their asses would look like a woman’s. And they’d bikini knot their shirts.

Prison Guard: The homosexuals weren’t that creative at the St. Martinville Prison, but that’s a lot bigger place. We had a few murderers and the rest were, like, people in there for bad checks, lot of drugs, and other stuff.

Dege: It was trip to see…like, whoa, there goes a 6’5”, 250lbs black, football player looking dude, dressed up like a chick.

Prison Guard: You get in any fights?

Dege: A couple. Scraps over bullshit.

Prison Guard: How’d you fare?

Dege: I can hold my own. You’ve got to fight or they’ll treat you like a punk.

Prison Guard: They had a lot of Cubans where I worked. They were pretty mean, but I can understand why.

Dege: Because they were detained without a release date?

Prison Guard: Well…arrested on drug charges, usually, and then held indefinitely on immigration orders, cuz nobody wants them—U.S. or Cuba. The prison gets federal funding for each of those detainees…like $100 a day.

Dege: It’s a business.

Prison Guard: That’s another reason why they don’t want to let them go.

Dege: What can they do?

Prison Guard: I don’t know…even I feel kind of bad for them.

Dege: Curve Ball. You ever shit your pants as an adult?

Prison Guard: I was just thinking about that!

Dege: No fucking way.

Dege: How old were you when you first got arrested?

JuvenileDelinquent: 16.

Dege: What’d you get arrested for?

JuvenileDelinquent: Marijuana.

Dege: And they locked you up for that?

JuvenileDelinquent: For a year a half. LTI.

Dege: That’s a long time for weed.

JuvenileDelinquent: Oh, yeh.

Dege: How often would you see fights?

JuvenileDelinquent: Pretty much everyday. Every other day.

Dege: Lot of kids fighting?

JuvenileDelinquent: Oh, yeh. LTI’s a bad place.

Dege: Where is that?

JuvenileDelinquent: Madisonville (Louisiana).

Dege: What else did you see while you were in there?

JuvenileDelinquent: Seen a guy getting beat by the guard. He’d jumped the guard.

Dege: You get in any fights?

JuvenileDelinquent: One fight. I got hit with a soap sock. Dudes jumped me.

Dege: What’d they hit you with?

JuvenileDelinquent: A Soap Sock. You put a bar of soap in a sock…and swing it. Broke my nose.

Dege: That broke your nose?

JuvenileDelinquent: Yep. Busted it up.

Dege: And what were they fighting with you about?

JuvenileDelinquent: Honey Bun. They wanted my Honey Bun and I stuck it in my shirt. And they tried to take it.

Dege: They love those Honey Buns in jail.

Dege: Care to comment on any of the conspiracy theories out there concerning our government’s participation in 911?

NYPD Cop: Well, I think the government knew it was coming…but they didn’t know when. They just didn’t handle the information right—they botched it.

Dege: What’s the strangest case you worked on as an NYPD cop?

NYPD Cop: The weirdest case? There was a barrel full of rats—it was a mafia hit. And they put the guy in the barrel full of rats and dropped it in the East River. And when we found him…you can imagine what he looked like.

Dege: What’d they find?

NYPD Cop: Just bones…and the bones were broken.

Dege: How long had he been in there, do you think?

NYPD Cop: Oh, I’d say about a week.

Dege: Are there any other mafia cases you worked on?

Dege: There’s a lot of folklore about soldiers doing drugs during their tours of duty in Vietnam. Is there much truth to any of that?

NamVet: Yeh, Yeh. Oh, yeh. We did morphine, Black Tar Heroin, grass. Smoked a lot of weed.

Dege: Where could you get it while you were there?

NamVet: It was all over the place. You could buy it over the counter in some places.

Dege: And how long where you over there?

NamVet: Two years. I did two tours.

Dege: What made you decide to get back for the second tour of duty?

NamVet: They offered me a little bit more money. And I was young and dumb and full of cum.

Dege: That’s some gutsy shit. Did you lose a lot of friends out there?

NamVet: Out of 13 of us, only 3 of us come back alive.

Dege: That’s incredible.

NamVet: No, it ain’t incredible. It’s just what the good Lord had in mind…but I know what you’re saying. I got flew out of the jungle twice. Toted out the jungle once.

Dege: What happened on those occasions?

NamVet: Oh, I got shot three times. Another time I got blowed out…by a Bouncing Betty.

Dege: A mine?

NamVet: Yep. Bouncing Betty’s a knee-high. A mine that comes up about knee-high and then explodes. It ain’t no fun.

Dege: Did they have some good looking Vietnamese whores over there?

NamVet: Oh, shit yeah! Some beautiful women.

Dege: How much would that cost you back then?

NamVet: 10 bucks.

Dege: Overall, how would you rate your experiences in Vietnam?

NamVet: Oh, don’t get me wrong. I had some good times. I had more bad times than good times, but…uh, you know, it was an experience.

Dege: How old were you at the time?

NamVet: When I went in, I was 17, because the judge said, “You’re either going to prison or you’re going in the military.”

Dege: So you’d gotten in some trouble?

NamVet: Yeh, back then, when somebody would mention a fight, I’d say, “When and where?”

Dege: What branch of the military did they send you?

NamVet: Army. The only two branches that’ll take dumbasses is the Marines and the Army. If I’d have been smart, I would’ve stayed in school and went in the either the Navy or the Air Force. I’d rather be wait up there (pointing to sky) and have a few people shooting at me, than be down on the ground and have 30 or 40 people shooting.

Dege: What’s it look like when you see napalm drop out of the sky?

NamVet: Oh, man. Have you thrown gas on a fire and seen it go woof? That’s about what it was…but on a way bigger scale.

Dege: Could you feel the heat from it…from where ya’ll would be positioned?

NamVet: Oh, Shit! It ain’t nothing but gasoline and diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate…and it lights up pretty damn good. You every play with Silly Putty? That’s kind of what it felt like before it went off.

Dege: What would ignite it?

NamVet: They got a blasting cap in there with it when it drops.

Dege: What was it like to witness bombs dropping at close range?

NamVet: Well, if you call in the coordinates right…you hope they don’t drop it on your head. It’s a little big bigger than the 4th of July, but the ground shakes.

Dege: What were firefights like…at night?

NamVet: Interesting, but dangerous. When you’d engage at night, you’d send up parachute flares and they’d go up and sometimes hang in the trees…and they keep burning. And you can see the enemy coming at you through the jungle. Weird light and shadows. But the thing is, they can see you, too. That’s some trippy shit—shooting at another human being through this psychedelic light show…in a jungle on the other side of the world.

Dege: Insane.

NamVet: I’m telling you.

Dege: When you came back to the United States, after your last tour, how difficult was the adjustment process…switching environments and all?

NamVet: They wouldn’t let some of us off the base when we first got back. They knew we was too wound up, so they kept us locked up for a week.

Dege: They knew ya’ll were nuts.

NamVet: Yeh. You know, people on the streets would spit in your face and call you a “baby killer” and some of us’d come unglued. You don’t want to hear that stuff. That’s why, the first time I came home on R&R, I didn’t even wear my uniform, man. You know?

Dege: Too much hassle, I guess.

NamVet: Yep. People wanted to talk shit in your face…and they really didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

Dege: What do you think about the Iraq War?

NamVet: Well, it’s a different type of war, but we’re fighting on their homeland…and we ain’t gonna win it. They ain’t gonna win it.

Dege: It seems to me like a big, corporate venture, funded by taxpayer money.

NamVet: Well, let me tell you what war boils down to…I don’t know if you ever realized this. 1) It thins out the population. 2) It creates jobs…if you’re having to go to war, you’re job back home becomes available to somebody else. And, 3) It makes defense contractors a bunch of money.

Dege: Last question, if you’d had to do the whole thing again—go to Vietnam—would you? Not that you had a lot much choice in your situation.

Dege: How you doing?

OG: Not too good, right now.

Dege: What’s up?

OG: My old lady’s trying to scandalize on me.

Dege: You want to do this later?

OG: Nah, we can do it later, but I need you to call this number.

Dege: What number? What’s going on?

OG: I’m checking up on my old lady. Just call this number ___________.

Dege: What’s up with her?

OG: I think she fucking around on me. Bitch has been acting stupid. Almost got me put in jail this afternoon. Bitch called the police. Said I hit her. But they seen she didn’t have no marks, so I got let go. They seen she was perpetrating some bullshit and using the police.

Dege: Ya’ll get in a fight?

OG: Bitch trying to plot on me, man. We been married 8 years and struggling for the last two. Shit ain’t good right now. I think she trying to get me put back in jail.

Dege: That’s fucked up.

OG: Yeh, that’s fucked up! (points) You got your cell phone?

Dege: Yeh.

OG: Call that number. (Gives me a number to call. I dial it. It rings).

Dege: Who do I ask for?

OG: Jake.

Dege: Who’s Jake?

OG: Don’t worry about it. Jakes me.

Dege: And what if somebody answers?

OG: Just ask for Jake.

Phone Conversation:

A man answer on the other side.

MaleVoice: Hello?

Dege: Jake there?

MaleVoice: (jittery) Nah, he ain’t here right now. Whose this?

Dege: Ok, thanks, man. Bye.

OG: Who answered?

Dege: Some dude.

OG: What’d he sound like? Nervous?

Dege: Kind of.

OG: Sound like he was sleeping?

Dege: No, it took him a while to answer, but he didn’t sound sleepy. It was quiet, like a room…not a club. No background noise or TV or nothing.

OG: He sound suspicious?

Dege: Kind of.

OG: I got that nigga now!

Dege: Man, you’re way deep into some tricky shit! What the fuck is going on?

OG: I’m checking up on that nigga. I think he creeping on my girl.

Dege: I have no idea what you’re doing, but it seems crafty.

OG: I might need you to drive me by the Waffle House.

Dege: Waffle House? I thought you’d be telling me some crazy gangster stories, not chasing down your old lady.

OG: You got kids? You married?

Dege: One kid. Never married.

OG: Your baby momma ever put you through some heavy shit?

Dege: Yeh, but a lot of it was my fault.

OG: You still with her?

Dege: No, but we’re cool.

OG: She with another man, now?

Dege: Yeh, but I’m cool with him, too.

OG: Does he make more money than you?

Dege: I guess…I don’t know. I think so.

OG: What’s he do?

Dege: Uh…he plays in a band with some whiteboys.

OG: So you ain’t hating on him?

Dege: No.

OG: You got beef with any of his friends? His people?

Dege: No, I go out of my way to be extra nice to all of them…so as not to stir any dumb bullshit.

OG: So none of them got no war in their hearts?

Dege: Nah, they’re all…they don’t fight. They’re like nice whiteboys.

OG: They faggots?

Dege: No, man.

OG: But now you see all pain a woman can put you through? That’s some serious shit.

Dege: Agreed.

OG: Now I want you to call this other number and ask for Mary.

Dege: Not again.

OG: Do the shit!

Dege: Chill, ok…you’re get all gangster on me…I’m a civilian. What’s the number?

OG: It’s ____________. Ask for Mary.

I dial it on my cell phone. No answer. I get an answering machine and hang up.

OG: Who picked up?

Dege: Answering machine.

OG: Bitch ain’t home yet. Yep, she out there, creeping. I know it. I can feel it.

Dege: What are you going to do?

OG: Handle the bitch. Plant a zone on her.

Dege: What’s a “zone?”

OG: A zone…an “O-Z”…an ounce. Rock.

Dege: Cocaine?

OG: Plant it in her car…under the seat. Tip the police. They put her in jail and I got one less problem to worry about.

Dege: That’s pretty crafty.

OG: Bitches do some crooked shit…call the police and get you arrested when you ain’t even hit them, so you got to think smarter than them. Think ahead. Plot your shit.

Dege: That’s some hardball tactics…

OG: You got to be hard to survive or they will eat you up out there. Ain’t no messing round. I had a dude rob me one time. Took some money and dope. I had to give it up, but I sat back, waited, and plotted the shit out, cuz you can’t let that shit ride.

Dege: What’d you do?

OG: Handled him.

Dege: Like how?

OG: What you think?

Dege: Don’t know.

OG: Had him taken care of. Gave a nigga some money and he did what he had to do.

Dege: How much does getting someone “handled” cost?

OG: At that level—the street—$300.

Dege: Damn.

OG: But that’s at the street level…small shit. Taking a nigga out. Other shit cost you a lot more if it’s serious.

Dege: Right.

OG: Man, I been in the game a long time. Since ’78. Hippie days. That ain’t shit. You always got to plot. Never react to a situation right away. Always wait and plot out how you gonna handle it.

Dege: Without getting too specific, tell me another story.

OG: Another time I had a nigga in the hood that was a rat, had his nose up in my business. I fixed him up some rock…cooked it up in formaldehyde. Gave it to somebody to drop it off to him. Nigga smoked that shit and lost his mind. Running round in the street—all crazy—ripping his clothes off, scratching his self up. Convulsing on the ground.

Dege: Damn!

OG: Fuck that nigga up. But he never gave no problems after that. Everybody know that nigga’s crazy, now. Won’t nobody believe a thing he say.

Dege: Got you. What other advice do you have about dealing with these kinds of problems?

OG: Just don’t trust nobody. Trust only yourself. You can be your worst enemy or your best asset.

Dege: What are you gonna do about your old lady?

OG: I’m thinking about that right now. Bitch probably plotting on me, thinking she gonna get rid of me now that things ain’t so good and she got another man, but I’m gonna beat her to that game. I ain’t going down like that. She played herself with that shit this afternoon, trying to get me locked up. Now I got her.

Call that number again.

Dege: Not again, man.

OG: (silence)

Dege: (pulling out cell phone) What’s the number?