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fuck you," the biker shot back.
The black guy and two others jumped to their feet.
"Yeah? What are you gonna do about it?"
Two more blacks stood up.
"Yeah, honky. What are you gonna do?"
A flash of fear registered in the biker's eyes.
"Nothing" he said quickly, brandishing a pathetic smile.
The biker was missing teeth, which gave the impression he wasn't so meek, but he didn't stand a chance.
"All right then," the black guy said, slowly backing down. He looked over at one of the others. "Someone's got to teach these woods."
The biker took a seat on the floor, looking more like a defeated fat guy.
The other two whites looked away, disavowing any connection.
Wood was short for peckerwood. It was used like "nigger" or "coon," "porch monkeys" and "spooks"-except peckerwood was a word blacks called whites, along with honky and rednecks, crackers and ghosts. But on that side of the bars, only blacks spoke those words aloud. The jail was located in downtown Detroit, where the whites were highly outnumbered.
It felt like I'd walked inside a photographic negative, where all the values were reversed.
The bullpen was quiet.
An inmate at the back of the cell broke the silence.
"There was this fag in here once," he said. "Called herself Angela Davis."
"I knew her," another said, referring to her as naturally as if she were a woman.
"She sucked off the whole bullpen," he said.
"The whole bullpen," the con next to him said. "No shit?"

"Square business!" He nodded. "Went right around this cell. Must've blown a dozen guys."
"I remember that," another said. "She sucked a mean dick."
"She sure did. And then, when she was done . . ." he paused, holding everyone's attention. "The bitch dropped her drawers and wanted to get tucked!"
The others laughed, and shook their heads, saying things like, "Damn!" or "Shit! Can you believe that? You'd think one dick would be enough."
"Uh, uh." The guy shook his head. "That bitch loved to suck dick!"
"She sure did," the other said, rubbing his crotch. "And I sure could use her now."
To my right, the convicts who were standing at the front of the bullpen looked out at reception with their hands resting on the cross section of bars. It was dark inside our cell, and the deputies didn't seem interested in what went on in there.
I was glad I was dressed. My right leg continued to bounce.
When the heavy metal door of the cellblock slammed shut, a shudder went through my body. A sudden jolt of panic made me want to scream out to the guards, "I was just kidding! I wasn't really going to rob that Photomat. Could I please go home now?"
But it was too late. The guards were already gone.
It was ten o'clock by the time they moved me upstairs. I was placed in a cellblock with mostly white, nonviolent offenders. They no longer segregated by race, the deputy had told me, but they did try to separate first-time offenders. I was six foot two, but at a hundred and forty-eight pounds, I wasn't much more than skin and bones.
On some level, I was still half expecting my parents to show up and take me home-hoping I'd learned my lesson. That maybe this was all just part of a Scared Straight program that I had heard about, where they took teenagers inside a prison to frighten them away from crime. But the reality of my situation was as cold as the metal slab that would cradle me to sleep that night.
I started to cry, but quickly muffled it. I was certain that if the other inmates heard me, they'd see me for what I was-a sniffling coward who was pretending to be something he's not. Or worse, they would see for me for what I was.

"Never!" My brother Rick smacked me on the chin the night before. "Never, let them know what you're thinking."
I could still almost smell the tobacco on his finger, from when he shook it in my face. He was imitating Marlon Brando in The Godfather. We shared a love of gangster films, but in that moment, I was alone in my cell, and the wall of my emotional front was about as thin as the cheap mattress that was