You wanna hear a prison story? Amiri King

In Kentucky, before you go to PRISON prison, you go to a place called the Roederer farm for classification. It’s right by the reformatory. And yes. It’s very much a prison as well. 

You go there to have your security level assessed and they eventually decide what prison you are going to. It’s a mix of everybody, from petty thieves to stone cold killers. 

One time in the middle of the night, the doom squad rushed in the wing and snatched up the guy on the bunk next to me. They took him away. He had the fucking death penalty and somehow fell through the administrative cracks. 

So one day they bring in this guy that I recognized from school. A guy named Tim. I went to Buechel Metropolitan in Louisville Kentucky. The most dangerous school in the entire state. 

You get sent there as punishment if you brought a gun to a public school, or had gang affiliations, sold drugs, got into fights, etc. 

Well Tim went there too (for reasons unknown to me) and that’s how I knew him. 

So Tim gets put in our wing and we start chopping it up for a couple of days. Played a lot of chess. I was young. Only 18. The older cats knew I was a ‘fish.’ A term used for someone serving their very first prison sentence. 

Tim was a fish as well. He was a pale, hefty, awkward kind of guy. On the nerdy side. He wasn’t a street motherfucker is what I’m saying. 

We were both fish and naivety was par for the course. Sometimes your inexperience could get you a pass from some of the ‘old numbers.’ Sometimes it didn’t. 

Well. One day someone stole Tim’s lock off his locker. Tim had A LOT of commissary. 

He had a very supportive grandmother on the outside. He came to me and was freaking out that someone stole his lock. He feared he was about to get robbed. I said, ‘here man,’ and took the lock off my locker and gave it to him. 

I said, ‘put this on your shit. I don’t have much to take.’ And he put it on his shit. 

Later on that day I was in the shower. These two big street motherfuckers named Bobby Bottoms and Joel Sanchez ran up on me. Yes. In the shower. Bobby was a big son of a bitch. Joel was too. Bobby was a clean cut guy with tattoos all over the place. A real street motherfucker from a tough Louisville neighborhood called Portland. 

Bobby looked at me, pissed, with daggers coming out of his eyes and said, ‘get your fucking lock off that locker NOW. You have no idea what the fuck you are doing.’ Affirmative. 

I grabbed my towel, I dried off, got dressed, and I went to Tim. I told him I needed my lock back. He took it off his locker and handed it to me and that was that. 

I won’t say what happened after that, but let’s just say Tim drove a bus for special needs adults and had sexually abused some of them and everybody knew but me. 

They handed out justice ‘A La inmate’ and I never saw Tim again. 

Later that same night, in the dark prison wing, I heard someone behind me sneaking up to my bunk. I turned around and it was Bobby Bottoms. All I could see was his silhouette but there was no mistaking this motherfucker. He looked at me and whispered, ‘Lesson number one. Mind your fucking business. That’s your first lesson, and that one was for free.’ 

I never forgot that.

(Photo circa 1998, my mother and I on visit at Northpoint ‘the point of no return.’)

Cedar's Take: Amiri King is a mess. And yet he posts some crazy sh*t. To say he's been around is an understatement. He's an undiscovered talent. If someone was smart they'd give him an hour slot on cable post late night. He'd wipe the floor with someone like Trevor Noah or Seth Myers.'Not Kidding. If I was 20 years younger I'd bank roll the project myself. I know people well not people like Amiri knows.