Straight Life - Art Pepper [169]
There was a black guy that killed a girl at the University of California in the library. He was a fat, slobby guy, and everybody hated him, including the blacks, because he killed this pretty girl for no reason. Every time he went to the commissary, whoever happened to see him in line would just beat him up and take his stuff. And the guards saw it, and they wouldn't do anything because they hated him as much as everybody else did. He never got any commissary. People would spit on him. That's the way guys were treated that killed women or anybody that molested a child. Gangs were excepted. There were a lot of Mexicans who used to go around, and that was their kick, to go out and rape a chick, that was part of their gang experience. That showed they were men and they got away with it because they were in a group and had a gang to fight for them. But any loner that killed a woman ... Murderers were treated awful because they weren't a part of any group.
No matter if you were white, Mexican, black, Indian, there was something everyone had in common-if you were sharp and hep and talked the language of whatever society you might be in, then you were accepted as a regular, okay, we all live the same kind of life. They don't want to admit it, but it's an unwritten law. And if you have that, you have something going for you out front. But if you're a murderer that just killed somebody, a passion killing, because somebody took your old lady out, well, you haven't been robbing or stealing or living that life so you're really an outsider. They wreak havoc on that kind of person.
When I first got to San Quentin I could feel people watching me. They look for weakness. They observe you for a day or so and watch who talks to you. And if somebody comes in that's young and pretty and doesn't have a lot of friends, then all the little splinter groups and the black group as a whole, they may want him for a sissy. They'll have talks among themselves about who's going to get him, and then they'll drive on him with a shank and tell him they're going to fuck him, and if the guy doesn't attempt to fight back it's all over for him. They'll just take him and fuck him and he belongs to a group. They'll turn him into a punk. If he fights it's different. He's accepted as one of them because he's got nerve. I didn't have to prove myself because I knew so many people. I was sort of a celebrity, although that was both good and bad. It was good in this one respect: I had many people come to me and say, "If anyone messes with you let me know." Guys that were real bad, tough people that were feared. On the other hand, some guys would say, "Oh, that punk motherfucker. He ain't nothin'. That lousy motherfucker, he's probably a rat, that stinkin' cocksucker. He's a convict just like we are, that cocksuckin' motherfucker. Who does he think he is?"
Nearly everyone in San Quentin seemed to be in some gang or other. Being a musician, I had friends that were black; I had a lot of friends that were Mexican; and I had friends that were white. I had more friends that were Mexican, so the whites really got on me. "What are you doing with those cholos? Those beans? Aren't you a white man?" Or when I'd play music with the black guys in the yard, they'd say, "What are you, a nigger now? Have you turned nigger?" It was scary, and I'd been told by different guys that they were going to kill me because