We all saw it coming. Talked about it. Like something malevolent was moving through the buildings and we all hoped it wouldn’t pick us to land on. But we all felt its inevitability. Trained as we were to know how insecurity lurks in every heart and can turn any boy into a lethal missile if directed at someone with the right velocity. We knew the fear was building and so the temperature was rising so the violence would get more baroque. And swifter.
While we were chowing down, a Viking-large biker prisoner — muscular arms sleeved with tattoos, long bushy ZZ Top beard — stood up, put one thumb under each arm pit, then flapped his arms like a bird. He shouted out, “Quack quack, I’m a duck. I can’t call games worth a fuck! Quack quack, I’m a…..”
Led Zeppelin hard rock songs are primal music, and wonderfully able to prepare you for any kind of action. You want to confront your cheating husband but are worried about what the cost to your marriage might be? Listen to “Black Dog” first. Wanna march into your boss’s office and call him or her a prick? Listen to “Rock and Roll.” Been foreclosed on and wanna rob the neighborhood Bank of America? Listen to “Immigrant Song.”
I have a photo of myself shot during the late campaign days of 1988. I’d invited friends of like cynical mind to come and watch the presidential debates at my house. In the photograph, we are on my porch: I, the only brown man, am seated on the front right edge of the group, in khaki shorts, sockless ankles, casual loafers and a “Nixon in ‘88” T-shirt. A T-shirt slogan which spoke to a crude truth: It takes a crook to admire another one.
Watching the Tyson-Holyfield fight, I thought my friend seated next to me was going to puke when he witnessed the minor-league cannibalism. He gasped and covered his gaping mouth. His torso convulsed. I, on the other hand—habituated to violence at home, in the schoolyard and in prison—leaned in and recognized the swift teeth-to-the-ear move as my own.
I once bit off a piece of a man’s ear in a prison brawl.
MS: In elementary school at recess I got stuffed into a doorway and the rest of the kids would line up and they’d be given three balls and they’d just throw them at me as hard as they could while I tried to dodge it. And if the kid missed all three then they lost their turn and it was the next kids throw. The game was called, “Can you hit Mark?”
JL: [morbid laughter] That’s fucked up.
MS: [chuckling] And I didn’t resist. Because by going along with it then at least I had a role. Someone once asked me why I didn’t complain to a teacher? Well, because a part of me was gratified that at least I was being played with. You know, finally I fit in, in some way.
JL: You were participating. [low laughter]
MS: Yeah, I was participating. (beat) I was playing sports for god’s sake. It was better than not playing sports.
JL: You felt like an athlete? [laughing louder]
MS: Yeah, cause I got really good at dodging. (beat—laughter) To this day there are very few people who can hit me with a ball.