CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

They Call It Black Jesus

Nobody warned you about the smell.

Before you saw anything, before you understood where you were or what that place was going to do to you, it hit you: industrial bleach, sweat, and something underneath, something coppery, like a penny pressed flat against your tongue. You couldn’t name it, but you would never forget it.

That was Lake Butler Reception and Medical Center. That was Florida DOC. That was day one.

That was the first thing that happened when you stepped off the bus.

The Monster was waiting for you.

“I swear to God, that man was a giant, he had to be. Larger than Andre the Giant from The Princess Bride. I later learned that he was famous within the system. He was a huge, corn-fed cracker. Hands that could smack you dead. His beady eyes were small, like a pig’s, and they checked out the shivering crowd that stood at attention before him and his penetrating gaze. That six-foot-five, 300-pound giant would fucking kill me if I blinked wrong, and if he couldn’t, somebody else would carry out the hit. He had a presence about him that screamed: Bitch, play with me, I dare you.”

–Excerpt from COUNT TIME by Emmett Tatter

That was who was waiting when you stepped off the bus.

All thirty of us stood shoulder to shoulder, dick to ass, bunched together so tight you could feel the chilled breath of the man behind you while officers worked the room with their mouths, using names and words designed not just to control your body but to defile your very soul. They called us pieces of shit. Sissies. Lowlifes. Words meant to strip whatever was left of you after the handcuffs, the bus ride, and the clothes they took. Then the long hard bench that lined the wall. You kneeled on it, nose pressed flat against cold concrete. Don’t move. Arms reaching back, grabbing both cheeks, spreading your ass wide, and holding it while an officer walked the line and looked inside every man’s asshole. When it was over, you were ordered into a pushup position. Naked. Twenty pushups. Then another twenty. Then another. Then another. And if you had gold teeth, you felt their eyes stop on your mouth. The officers said they had a jar. A jar of gold teeth beaten from the mouths of inmates who came before you. They told you about it. Casually. Like it was funny.

That was your welcome to Florida DOC.

Then you walked through the metal detector one by one, and the officers who lined the way kept making sure you knew exactly what they thought of you. Slick comments delivered slow and steady, with malice, just loud enough. The kind that weren’t for your benefit. The kind that were for theirs.

Then they walked you inside.

The first thing you saw was other inmates. Some were on their hands and knees, toothbrushes working back and forth between the grout of the tile floor. Punishment for talking. For looking wrong. For nothing at all. Others were in cages. Not cells. Cages. The kind that looked like they belonged in a history book about medieval torture, not a state-run facility in the twenty-first century. You stayed silent. Inmates who whispered were on the floor, bleeding, waiting on another inmate to come clean up the pooling blood. You didn’t ask what they did to get there. You just kept walking,........

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