It Chooses You - Miranda July [20]
Miranda:
Right.
Ron:
And because of that, I had what you call thousands of hours of blackjack experience when I first started in Atlantic City. Unfortunately, I had beginner’s luck. I wasn’t good but I had beginner’s luck. And so I won. And then after a while, I lost. And I won and I lost and I won and I lost and eventually I lost and I lost more than I won.
The discussion of blackjack was long and detailed. He tried to explain what card-counting was, why it was illegal, and how what he did was legal, even though, technically speaking, it was card-counting. Asking a question was like merging onto the freeway – I had to accelerate and jump into one of his pauses.
Miranda:
What are your plans for the future?
Ron:
Well, I’ve had a period of several years of my life that was torture and torment. And I didn’t have the option to get married.
Miranda:
Right.
Ron:
Can you read into that?
Miranda:
No.
Ron:
It’s about to be over in a couple of months.
Miranda:
Okay.
Ron:
And it was business-related.
Miranda:
Okay.
Ron:
Business-related Martha Stewart–type –
He lifted his pants leg a little bit to reveal a house-arrest anklet.
Miranda:
Oh, okay. Okay. Right.
Ron:
It’s just about over.
Miranda:
It’ll be nice to have that off.
I said this cozily, almost maternally. The important thing was to continue behaving exactly as I had before I’d known he was under house arrest. A lot of people might have flinched, but hopefully he noticed that I had not. He leaned in toward me as if this next thing he was about to say was ultra-classified.
Ron:
I’m going to tell you something that’s fact. An anklet can mean any one of three things. If you’re gang related, you get one on, or if you’re a threat to the community because you have more than one so-called victim, which could be business-related or –
Miranda:
Right.
Ron:
– a sex offense or a drug dealer. Not small-time but what they consider a dealer-dealer.
Miranda:
Right.
Ron:
If you’re any one of those four, you’ll get one of these on. People think because you have that on you’re a sex-offender. Because sex-offenders have to have them on.
Miranda:
Right. Right.
Ron:
But the thing is, so do gang people. So do, like I said, drug dealers. So does anyone who the parole board thinks could be a threat to the community. I did do prison.
Miranda:
Really. Okay. Well, what was the hardest thing about prison?
Ron:
The people. The inmates. Very difficult being around so many people who are so scandalous, that’ll look to take advantage of someone who’s considered weak.
Miranda:
Yeah. Yeah.
Ron:
And to be totally honest with you, I was definitely considered to be weak. I was older. I was mellow. I was laid-back.
Miranda:
Yeah.
Ron:
I put on a little bit of a front the way I walked, just like when I’m outside. I walked with an attitude, so that if there’s gangs or something they kind of pick up an attitude from me, like “Don’t mess with me.”
Miranda:
Right.
Ron:
I don’t walk slow. I don’t walk like an old man. I have a certain walk, a pace and a clip. And I always notice who’s around me, and I always have done that.
Ron was exactly the kind of man you spend your whole life being careful not to end up in the apartment of. And since I was raised to go out of my way to make such men feel understood, I took extra-special care with his interview. But as he talked on and on (the original transcript was more than fifty pages), I realized that I don’t actually want to understand this kind of man – I just want them to feel understood, because I fear what will happen if I am thought of as yet another person who doesn’t believe them. I want to be the one they spare on the day of reckoning.
Brigitte had stopped taking pictures and was hanging out near the door with wide eyes. Alfred had become very still and silent somewhere