Chapter 3: Before the cock crowed: Hennepin County jail
The next morning, after his allotted weekly shower, as he’s being escorted back to his cell, the mind-fuck games continue.
“Hey, this isn't my cell!” Jared protests, resisting the push in. “What the fuck's going on. man?”
The guard ignores him. Just shoves him in and leaves.
“Who . . . the fuck?” He’s not alone. On the far bunk sits a burly, tattooed, almost toothless, shit-ugly biker.
“Hi, cutie, c'mon ovah har 'n sets down,” his new cellmate entices while patting the mattress. Jared is at a total loss.
“Is this a motherfucking joke or what?” he swears, then turns, ignoring the guy and looking down the corridor. But he has to know! Over his shoulder, face pressed on the bars, “What's your name?”
The guy laughs: a small sound, almost a titter. Jared is buzzed. The stupid interview and now this!
Suddenly, he hears Matt's voice, rising uncommonly loud.
“Matt, where are you?”
“Hey, Brother J, I'm here.” Nervous—anxious.
“Where?”
“Next door I think.” Matt’s left arm appears through the bars of the cell to Jared’s right.
“Goddam, good to see someone,” Jared sighs in relief. Then thunk! and Matt shrieks, “Stop!” The sound drifts off into a faint drone.
“Jesus, Matt, what's going on?” Only thumps, thuds, and grunts answer. Matt’s in serious trouble!
“Matt! Matt!”
“Rest raht don har, sweetie!” his cellmate coos.
Jared spins around and stares wide-eyed at his mate. “What's going on?” He thumb-jerks towards Matt's cell. “What the fuck are they pulling on us now?”
The hulk stands up and takes one long stretching step towards Jared; arrives at arm's length.
“Cutie, c'mon, lats me shew yer a gud time.”
Fuckhead! Jared screams inside, shouting it over and over almost in unison with the grunts and bangs and curses from Matt's cell.
“Matt! Matt! Tell me what to do!”
Jared flings himself against the bars, jerks them, kicks and shouts frantically, “Guards! Guards! Riot! Riot!”
But no one responds. Not even echoes, as his cries fade. Jesus! With a chill he realizes that all the other cells in this strip are empty. There’s not one other inmate to pick up on his call. It's too late to be absolved for missing another survival clue: the quiet should have aroused his suspicion. In jail, a TV is always blaring on a cell block but he was overwrought and missed the cue. Absolve me, Pater!
Out loud, desperate, “Jesus, Holy Mother—Jesus, what are they doing this for?”
As Jared slumps off the bars and turns, his shoulder bumps his cellmate's. He recoils, more in shock than fear. “Back off, motherfucker!”
The mate says, “Neme's Brooza, wat's yers?”
“Jesus, motherfucker, you must be kidding me!” Jared almost laughs in comic relief at finding a fucking polite biker! “You're a stone cold motherfucking fag!”
“Yespth,” Bruiser winks, feigning a lisp.
Jared sidesteps to the far side of the cell. Bruiser drops his trousers, clutches his big cock and starts rubbing it, then waves it towards Jared like a radar gun.
“I'se nit lek Hareld nixt door. He'za real ass bangar. Nit me. I catch.” And with that said he crawls onto the lower bunk and sets himself up doggie style.
“Ef yer neece to me, I’se dun't snitch on yer.”
Jared can't believe this is happening. What's happening to Matt? Not another sound comes from that direction. What’s this asshole fag homo bitch queer doing here? Does he really expect me to bang him?
“Are you fucking crazy? I pitch only to broads!” Jared flings that remark, irritated but almost casually as if waving off an obnoxious door-to-door salesman.
Bruiser doesn't move from his spot. “C'mon, yer leecky. Hacks mek funnie mestake. Tink I'se a bangar. I'se not.” Coos again, “I lek to git broozed. Dat's how’da I git mis name! So, c'mon Big Mon, geve mes all yas got. I cun teke it!” A request that’s almost pleading, desirous, fearful of a lost opportunity.
Ominously, “Ef yer dun't tekes me. Hareld gets en,” as he thumb-points to Matt’s cell. “’N yer wun't lek wat he'za doin’!”
The Novice Master draws prayerful, shaking hands together as Friar Otto asks about the moans and groans late at night. “Is someone overdoing it with private flagellation?”
The Master sighs. Alien amidst their geography, Otto maneuvered past robes in heaps in front of dormitory beds as he stumbled without his glasses in disoriented nighttime piss runs quite often in the Seminary. Now in the Novitiate he’s “Sure, I'm absolutely sure!” that the closed cell doors, whose aperture width is defined with inches of specificity in the Common Rules, give absolute evidence and proof about a group of heretical extremists. “Definite flagellants!”
Ah, how the Master wishes it was so. He’d readily handle heretical Flagellants rather than roust and chastise catamites!
“Pray! Pray!” The Master assures Friar Otto that only prayer will chase this Evil One away.
“Matt!” Jared yells frantically, “MattMattMattMatt!” No response. Matt! ripped from his heart, his soul, but there is no energy left. He’s mute. He senses the hopelessness of it all. He desperately craves a response but no words or sounds come back.
Why what happens happens—what it is that moves from within him, what spiritual force capitulates him from the person Burston met to the force that Jared becomes, what is released by his capture and caging—Jared will only understand much later. For, as if responding to Matt's cries—and to Bruiser's siren invitation—Jared steps over to the bunk and kicks Bruiser hard in the ass. Quinn? It’s a rock-thud hard blow, tearing an inch of muscle. Bruiser squeals. The bleat ignites Jared. Quinn. Detonates a fuse, a long-distance detonation set off by remote depth control, a simple, small sound that draws forth avalanche and earthquake. “What did you do to get him so angry?” What did I do? Dad . . . What did I do? Why doesn’t anyone believe me?
With the swift and savage motions of a jackal upon a new kill, Jared repeatedly hits and strikes. Again and again. On the back, the neck. Grabs Bruiser’s head, turns him around, hard-drives a knee to his gut. Ceaselessly kicking and punching, Jared works up a steaming sweat. The cell is soon a steam bath: sweat dripping, piss odors, ancient crud and cum dust billowing up with each blow.
Jared is working like a blacksmith, pounding with thunder and intensity. Some part of him knows that he’s in the land of crazy but no part fights against it. Without qualms, he rages against Bruiser's body, a lump over two hundred and fifty pounds. A lump of meat which he beats, hammers, fashions as if iron on the anvil. He molds Bruiser’s animal sounds—growlings from deep caves—into a frenzy of hurt. He clubs with all his might into manic exhaustion.
At last, fists powerless, fingers limp, right arm like a dead fish, there comes a deep echo: “Ite Missa est!” The Mass is ended. Finished. Consummated. Jared steps away, teeters, almost faints as he staggers and slams his own forgotten body against the toilet’s wall, sliding down into a puddle, left arm resting on the lidless shitter.
Bruiser is all whimper and sob. Jared is totally oblivious. His mind went blank with the last flailing blow. All that registers are the aches in his hands and arms. Before he can figure out what just did happen, Bruiser is at his side, unbuckling Jared’s belt and tugging down his pants. Jared defends not against this assault; cannot. His eyes can barely focus on Bruiser, yet a spark of awareness burns into his soul. Green eyes! . . . Char green!
“Pell 'em dan er tha hacksa wun't beleeves mes.”
Mesmerized, Jared robotically jerks at his pants and slides them off. Bruiser yanks off Jared's shoes. Then he reaches up, twists and snaps a button or two from Jared's shirt with one hand while mussing his hair with the other.
Jared can’t will himself to move anymore. Bruiser stands, buckles
his own pants, and before going to the cell's gate, turns to Jared and says cloyingly, “Tanks, sweet pee!”
The perversity of it all doesn't hit Jared until Bruiser has left and he gets up to lie on his bunk. Streaks of blood and several wads of cum are prima facie evidence of Bruiser's delights.
That night, Jared desperately gives the story of the staged rape to the trustee, Victor. Is Victor part of the plot? Regardless, he’s Jared's only hope. The story cannot convey Jared's pain over his powerlessness. His anger at himself. His sense of guilt that he drew Bruiser by chance. Matt was removed at the same time that Bruiser left. Jared couldn't imagine what had gone on, doesn’t want to. He wonders if Matt fought back or whether he yielded in passive nonresistance.
“Does it matter?” Jared asks himself, audibly. He can hear Matt's response: “Nope.” Fuck that karma shit, man! “Look, man, it’s about ignorance. No matter if you’re violent or nonviolent, what are you learning about yourself?” Fuck that karma shit, man! He can see Matt’s sly smile.
Jared knows that Matt's commitment to “passive nonresistance” is as profound as his many silences. What will he say about my actions? Have I betrayed the principles that bind us together? Shamed, Jared cannot suppress his sense of relief that he had not had the opportunity to “lay down his life.” Quite simply, getting raped or being forced to suck cock were sacrifices beyond the pale, demands for a fidelity beyond his comprehension, a call for obedience more radical than he has ever conceived possible. No matter if you’re violent or nonviolent, what are you learning about yourself?
For Jared, it’s to be a long night of bad dreams.
There is one haunting dream that comes back again this night, comes back time and again after Jared escapes the dream, drenched in sweat, heart pounding. Time and again upon release back into sleep, it reruns. Through the main door of a medieval cathedral he goes, processing down the center aisle, drawn by the scent of frankincense and the lure of Gregorian chant, here the beauty of the Ambrosian Gloria. Met at the altar rail by a hooded monk, they proceed behind the altar to a hidden doorway that opens upon a blessing whose phrases are garbled. Down a swirling stairway they float, feet almost not on the ground, till they come to a second doorway, the entrance to a confessional. They enter and find themselves standing before a lectern from which a bodiless voice emanates: “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” This phrase repeats over and over.
He and his companion bow and leave by another door, foreboding in its massiveness, opening this time with words clearly understood, “Christus Victor!” They enter into darkness. Hear refrains of “Kyrie eleison!” reverberate. The companion lights a candle that casts a misty glow about the room. Through the mist flow decapitated bodies, mutilated faces, and a stench of pungent lilac perfume so dense that he gags. They wade through the carnage slowly like pilgrims sightseeing. His companion chants, “Christus Victor! Christus Victor!”
Then another room unveils upon the battle cry, “Milites Christi!” Within is a staggering squad of these “Soldiers of Christ” in military dress of uncountable wars, each mutilating his own flesh. They do not scream or writhe in pain. One walks to Jared and cuts a chunk of flesh from his own arm, offers it on point's end. “Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” the soldier intones (“To the greater glory of God.”) Two, three others approach him in like manner. Still Jared and his companion reveal only the curiosity of relic seekers.
They approach a fourth door, tabernacular in design and upon entering hear “Hoc est enim corpus meum!”(“For this is my body!”) which is soon muffled as wild screeching racks his ears, loud martial music booms and the two are suddenly in a vast hall of grand Baroque design, filled with crying babies and mothers being raped, mothers of all colors by men of all colors; the noise is cacophonous but glorious, itself one with the Gregorian swell.
Jared and his companion proceed, observing the utter terror in the eyes of the women, registering the frantic wails of the babes. They move towards a large divan at one end of the room, a gilded, plushly arrayed, silk and diamond-studded couch. Upon it reclines a fright-eyed young damsel, amply endowed, with flowing black hair, wild black eyes. An exultant voice rising in pitch repeats, “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” and as if practiced in this ritual Jared disrobes. Naked, his companion girds him with a golden cord, drapes his back with a cloak of moonlight white. Then Jared kneels on the divan, effortlessly parts the woman's legs, she is like the mouse trapped by the cat, narcotized by fear. As he lays his body upon her, whispers rise from her trembling lips, gaining in volume, “I am NOT your body. I am NOT your body!” Words that catapult him back in wrenching screams: “No, no, no . . . !” The sounds fade in echoes as if falling into a bottomless well . . . he wakes.
It’s almost a ritual by now, his waking response. Despite himself he reaches for his penis, holds it gently and massages it, ever fearful that it is receding within, never to return. Once erect, fondling it, he falls into a deep sleep. It is hours before he wakes again. Once awake, conscious of his dreamy adventure, Jared habitually reaches for his Bible. He holds it, yet never reads it. Sits there holding it like a talisman.
Habitually but not now. There is no Bible. Just him holding this dream. Jared raises his eyes to heaven, utters not a prayer rather angrily implores, “Why do you let your demons in here? Isn’t the monastic hermitage their den of pleasure? Wasn’t that enough? Am I never ever to sleep alone?”
Curse God and die! The sage advice of Job’s wife glides through his mind.
What adds to the fright tonight is the appearance of Aaren's face. She’s the woman on the divan! What does that mean? Jared knows enough about dreams to understand that all this is supposed to mean something about him, not her, not his mother, not his girl Char, not any other woman. But do I believe that?
He has shared only a fragment of this dream with Char. He can't bear to tell her the graphic parts, just an abstract rendition of the rape. He trusts her. She’s a comforting nurse, one with depthless compassion. Plus she shares his Catholic background.
Char’s take on it: “Men hate women. Catholicism teaches that. Adam really hated Eve, didn't he? And American males get a double dose with their macho cowboy culture. You have a lot of violence which you have to face. That's the road to nonviolence, isn't it, through violence?”
God, how she left him feeling like an insect wiggling on a pin! Am I violent when I avoid violence? If I accept my own violence, how will I ever get out of its clutch? Such questions just churn up his psychological water and point to no harbor in sight.
Damn, what would she say about Bruiser?
Would she say that he did right? He knows why he attacked Bruiser. Violence—that he knows how to give. He stated the same to Burston, underlined it. “We're programmed for violence!” Said it while standing, flexing his muscles like the famous body-builder, Charles Atlas.
Bruiser’s easy to please because he’s a sicko male. Just “Thwack!” and “Pow!” punches. He receives and Jared figures he probably can pitch, too. The baseball imagery fits. Pitch and catch. That's all there appears to be: fuck and come! It defines the satisfied male. Religion just raises it to a symbolic level. Bread and wine. Flesh and blood. Blood and guts. “YOU'RE GOING TO BURN FOR THIS!” is a warning dredged from his early Catholic formation. But he knows he won't. Or will he?
To the empty cell, “Hell, if I'm going to hell, fuck it all!” Moving around slowly Jared makes his bed and attempts to sleep one more time. He has no idea what time of night or early morning it is. The row is quiet. Ominously quiet. Apparently he’s still alone. Strange.
Jared dips back into sleep only to bolt awake again within minutes. He shivers then shakes. Shudders into cold sweating without warning. The cell is freaking Midwest July hot but Jared is ice-cold, chilled. He starts to dry-retch. He coughs and grabs his gut, dry-heaves until he prays he'll pass out.
He strips the blankets from the upper bunk, cocoons,
curls to fetal. Hands, feet, lips and teeth shake, tremble and grind.
“Oh sweet Jesus, Mary mother of God! What's happening?”
His eyes burn, itching and on fire. His legs jerk up and cramp into fetal lock. His calves and thighs knot and spasm like twisted fingers. He’s all ache and burn, then everything lurches downward, out of his control. Thoughts of They've drugged me! clamor inside his throbbing head. He’s never felt such seething pain. Hot stabs randomly occur at his joints, legs, wrists, ankles, and he continues to retch violently loud. Like a bullfrog with a bullhorn, “Gaaaoomph! Gaaaoomph!” But nothing is delivered, nothing born. Nothing propels out from within.
When Jared wakes in the morning, he feels glued to the sheets. Only the daylight convinces him that he has survived. Had it been dark still he might have surrendered all. Every muscle in his body is sore and twitching. This must be what it's like to get run over, crosses his mind as he lugs and drags his hands from his toes to the top of his head. He could not begin to count the aches nor discern what happened. He's just grateful that at some point he passed out—or at least his mind can’t confront in memory what really happened.
Jared knows what he must do. “Beseech Jesus! Beseech His forgiveness with your groans! Groan loud enough to wake a deaf monk!” He kneels down by the side of his bed, folds his hands in worship, straightens up his back and tilts his face upwards, whispers, “Thy will be done!” Murmurs, “Thy will be done!” Then increasingly loudly, “Thy will be done!” Till he bellows. “THY WILL BE DONE!”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole, I'm trying to sleep,” lets Jared know that the jailors have returned this day to normal.