So there was this one time....I was six months into my incarceration - just after having taken a 5 year, 8-month sentence - in Wayside, LA County, in a working yard. The job was laundry service. 4:30 AM, sharp. The days ended around 3:00 in the afternoon. After stripping naked and having our balls and anuses surveyed, we went back to our dorms.
The dorms had been segregated: there were no blacks in here; only Surenos (Southerners), Pisas, and we whites. Most of us took naps. I did as well, dozing off while reading George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, both which I had read cover to cover within a matter of days.
One day, a Cuban kid came to the dorm. He was only 20 y/o or so, and very skinny. He wanted to run with the whites, who were only 5-6 people “deep” in this dorm. AH! But the Southerners had a "green light" out for the Cubans.
Apparently, a few months prior, some Cubans had lost a card game against the Mexicans. Afterwards, either from a disagreement or a loss of temper, they then stabbed a few of them. So who was going to dole out the (un)necessary punishment to this kid (who likely had no idea about that card game)?
The whites, or the Southerners?
We, the whites, debated on what to do. If I recall correctly, the decision was left to us. “You handle him, or we will.” Word of the “green light” reached the white "shotcallers" of this yard, who were in another dorm. They decided that Cubans were not white-boys, and therefore he was fair game.
I was playing a game of cards at front of the dorm (with the other whites!), while this Cuban kid was in the showers, way in the back. Little did he know that he was about to get pummeled by a bunch of psychopathic, immoral, ignorant "street" gangsters (real gangsters are far different, as anyone would know).
As we played our game of cards, we suddenly heard the scream of what sounded like a little girl. 2 or 3 of us looked around at each other. Was it right? If it had been us, we could have given him fewer bruises. Knowing that the real choice was not among any one of us (we would have let him “roll it up” and get out of the dorm), and also that they’d stomp us out just the same, we kept playing.
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