Who’d have guessed I’d meet my best friend in prison? With TJ, it’s like we truly were born to be bros. He was part of what G, Eli, and I referred to as “The Suboxone Boys.” All I really remember about him from the camp is that he was decent at HORSE and loved drugs, so it was unsurprising when we became really close in the SHU. I honestly don’t remember an exact moment when TJ and I realized we were born to be bros, but it probably had something to do with making fun of Chicken Dick Kyle. TJ and Kyle are both white guys from North Carolina, which in prison means they should’ve been besties, but in reality, Kyle is short and he took the fucking chicken. Kyle is the kind of guy who dates the girl the rest of the team ran the train on.

Life is different in the SHU. We’re locked in a bathroom with bunk beds occupied by two strangers. Because of COVID, an experience that’s supposed to be a 30-day punishment designed to make sure a person never breaks the rules in prison again turned into a 240-day journey, a journey I’ll always remember with a smile because of TJ.

Let’s get into a little SHU lingo before I explain why TJ and I are BTBB. First of all, the SHU stands for Special Housing Unit. There are four “ranges” at the SHU in Edgefield. A range and B range don’t really matter; aside from making everyone get quiet while trying to yell loud enough for someone in one of those ranges to hear, neither range has any bearing on what happens on C and D. I was on C range for all but a week of my time in the SHU. D range was directly below us. The layout matters because of a little thing called “fishing.” There are 24 cells on C and D range which equates to 48 inmates, minus the cells so fucked up they can’t be used. Most of the time on C range we had 42 total inmates. Think of it as 42 people in a group message that can’t leave. There is no “Chicken Dick Kyle has left the chat,” no mute button. To communicate with someone on the range, we had three options. If the other person was next door, there was an air vent above the combination sink/toilet where we could talk at a semi-normal volume level and have conversations. My personal favorite option was putting my face against the crack in the door and hollering as loud as possible to get my intended’s attention. The third option was to start with option two, then yell, “Shoot me your line!” This is how fishing begins. A line is made of string from a blanket or a sheet or incredibly thin pieces of elastic from boxers spun together through a shampoo bottle. The “car” is made from an empty toothpaste container, soap, and a heavy-duty staple from a legal pad functioning as the hook. We would then slide the car under the door with as much force as possible in the direction of the intended target. If the person was close enough, they would toss out their line and try to catch the other on the hook and reel it in. Notes could be tied to the string and people could cut deals for drugs, food, books that have been torn apart to fit under doors, or just to talk shit about Chicken Dick Kyle and how we’re going to ruin his day.

Unfortunately, the logistics of fishing expeditions only extended to about a quarter length of the entire range. For anyone farther away, we needed assistance, and just like in a group messaging, some people refuse to play along. Of course, these same bastards expect everyone else to help them when they run out of envelopes or want to read an article someone else has. In the SHU, we all just help each other no matter what our race, religion, or creed.

For someone who hasn’t been to prison, even basic fishing probably seems a little hard to understand. But you haven’t even heard of the more experimental fishing. The fun fishing. With toilets. That’s right, toilets. People in prison are flushing strips of sheets attached to plastic spoons down the toilet while the people below them simultaneously do the same thing. At some point, the sheets and spoons get tangled up and form a connection between the two cells. All the water is drained out of the toilet with dry towels, then sealed food, drugs, and stamps are tied to the lines and pulled up and down between the ranges. I know, you want more of an explanation. I don’t know how else to describe it. If I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I wouldn’t understand it, either.

TJ was highly popular when I first got to the SHU. My cellie at the time was Mitch, aka @PrisonBirkin, who had gone viral on TikTok. I spent all day reading the Game of Thrones and Outlander books while he wrote his mom letters and explained things to me that I’d never even heard nor thought of. Mitch was my best friend for the 75 days straight we were locked in a cell together. His leaving marked the day I stepped on the SHU scene. Mitch left me with a nice car and some good fishing line, so I started to learn how to fish. TJ was only two cells away and everyone seemed to be trying to get ahold of him all the time. He started to get annoyed and made the announcement that he was no longer answering to TJ and would only be responding to anyone who referred to him by his new name, Pussy Destroyer. Of course, all the macho men in prison were not going to call another man “Pussy Destroyer,” so instead, they started calling my name and asking me to get ahold of TJ. I was well aware that TJ was not deaf and could in fact hear them trying to get in touch with him. Sure, I could’ve gotten frustrated like all the rest of the guys on the range that he wouldn’t give in and answer, but instead, I took the easy route. I started calling him Pussy Destroyer, and lo’ and behold, he suddenly got his hearing back. 

While I was in the SHU, I didn’t care about my appearance. Literally no one would ever know what I looked like in there. I wasn’t signing a cop-out to get on the list for a haircut; I didn’t give a fuck if my beard was crazy and my hair was long as fuck. PD called me “Big Germ” for some reason, which is really the lamest nickname for Jeremy. Then it became “Big Perm Germ” because Pussy Destroyer’s cellie, Spank, thought my hair was starting to look like a perm. One day I was talking about my long-term plans, and Country added “Long Term” to the beginning of my nickname. So it was that over the next six or so months, I responded to “Long Term Big Perm Germ” every day in prison. Pussy Destroyer and I would yell each other’s names like Michael Buffer wrestling announcers. The two of us would talk shit to other people on the range and make up clever matches for partners like Spider and DeFranco, who would threaten to stab each other at rec the next day, even though we knew there was never going to be any rec. I would instigate the two of them daily by asking if DeFranco had gotten the gummies from Spider yet. Spider had made a deal with two people for one bag of gummies. He needed another piece of deuce. Somehow, Spider owed everyone his next chicken sandwich or lasagna tray for some stamps to buy more deuce to get high. Everyone just put up with him owing because he was the only person on the range to make red heads. What the fuck is a red head? I had no idea, either, until I got to the SHU. Spider would roll toilet paper up tightly and take wires stolen from the emergency panic button while prying the light fixture open with the metal plate that covers the panic button. Somehow, Spider then connected one wire to the right side and one to the left while he stood on top of the tiny desk in the cell. When the wires met in the middle, the lights would flicker, sometimes go out, and a loud pop could be heard throughout the whole range. (He was hospitalized one night because he blew himself off the desk and hit his head against the metal bunk beds. His clothes had burn holes in them. Is it bad that I found all of this hysterical? It can’t be too bad because Pussy Destroyer also found it funny, and as long as two people are laughing, it has to be funny. I don’t give a fuck how offensive other people find it.) When the process did work, he would set the rolled-up toilet paper on fire while holding it in his teeth. Then, he could fish copies of the red head to everyone else who needed fire on the range. One time, he sold fried bologna sandwiches by building a big enough fire under his metal desk to use the desktop to fry the bologna on. I’m pretty sure Pussy Destroyer bought one. The dude literally has a spider web tattooed on the top of his bald head. I can’t make people like Spider up.

DeFranco was cooler, but he really wanted the gummies Spider owed him. His New York accent sounded hilarious as the two of them went at it. I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed harder than I did when they were going at it about who was going to suck whose dick, and a Spanish kid yelled, “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!” like it was the Jerry Springer show. I still call Pussy Destroyer today, and the entire fifteen minutes is spent laughing about stories from the SHU. It was our own secluded life while everyone else in the world went through COVID. We were just in a cell laughing at Kyle getting caught beating his meat or taking the fucking chicken.

Every night Pussy Destroyer and I would call each other after the 10 p.m. count. In prison, normally it’s a big deal to make noise. Guys spend their whole lives in prison and see us short-timers as disrespectful little twats who are too loud and don’t show the respect we’re supposed to. So basically, old people in prison are just like they are on the outside. We didn’t give a fuck. Normally, between 11 p.m. and midnight, we’d start talking about all the biggest SHU gossip, what we were going to do when we went to Twin Peaks on the outside, and how his tits managed to stay off the ground when he jumped off his bunk. I still can’t see how he doesn’t step on them. We realized we were born to be bros as our senses of humor emerged and Chicken Dick’s continued to show serious flaws. One time that loser told us we should go ride a donkey backward. I don’t even know where he was going with that! I do know that Pussy Destroyer has to get a tattoo on his ass of a man with tits riding a donkey backward when Chicken Dick gets out of prison in 2084.

The dudes in our group message would never complain when it was Pussy Destroyer and I shooting the shit. In fact, we could hear them laughing along. Our nightly radio show gave us the idea to one day do a podcast called “Full Circle” because we always brought every joke full circle. Then, Chicken Dick would try to tell another story about meth that had no punch line and wasn’t impressive, and Pee-Paw would tell us to pipe down. Pee-Paw is a 46-year-old ex-bank robber who escaped from prison while he was facing the death penalty. I wrote about him in “Guns, Handcuffs, and Whores” because his story is a literal movie. But now he’s just a cranky middle-aged man who would kill anyone with a smile on his face. He loved Pussy Destroyer and me, but he couldn’t stand Kyle. Or maybe he was just flirting with Chicken Dick all along.

One time it was really fucking hot in the SHU. It was the middle of July in Edgefield, South Carolina, where it’s hotter than Satan’s asshole after Chipotle. COVID was going crazy, and the air conditioning was broken on my side of the range. A guard named Gomez—we called him “The Circumstance” because he was a knockoff version of the Jersey Shore’s “Situation”—took my cellie, Sarge, out to see the doctor and exclaimed, “Holy shit! It’s like an oven in there!” when he opened our cell door. Damn right it was. It was so hot that we couldn’t take showers because the water only came out one temperature, scalding, which made the room so hot and humid that we’d sweat profusely for hours after taking one, thoroughly defeating the purpose of the shower. It was about to be over though, we were going to make a stand.

We’d been fed bologna sandwiches and less than a thousand calories a day for months. They were lying to us about what was happening, keeping us there for no reason, telling us we were safer in there, that it was only a matter of time, that we weren’t being punished, just awaiting transfer. The Psychologist refused people who had problems with mental health, the Lieutenant told a guy to wait until Monday when he said he was having thoughts of suicide, and oh yeah, it was fucking hot. Pee-Paw pulled out one of those “Win one for the Gipper” speeches about how the only way to get anyone to hear us was to starve. After three days of refusing food, the region is required to send someone to check on us and see what the problem is. Going three days without food when I was already starving was a tough sell, but I believed in us. I was writing senators, fighting with everything I could to help our situation. I had my sister out there making calls and forwarding messages. It really was a big deal. Everyone agreed to sacrifice food to make a statement, so Thursday morning at breakfast, we all made the stand. Every single cell denied breakfast and told the cop to go fuck himself. We weren’t putting up with it anymore. The sense of camaraderie and fighting for something greater felt nice. But damn, we were fucking hungry. 

Chicken Day is sacred in prison for some reason. Leg quarters are considered the highlight meal of every week. Men who never went to chow make sure to travel to the mess hall to worship the lord of chicken leg and thigh. After three months of nothing but bologna sandwiches, we were finally getting one hot meal a day at lunch. Spider had probably sold his next three months’ worth of chicken for tiny squares of paper, but that was his business, not mine. When we decided to go on the hunger strike, Pee-Paw left the fact that Chicken Day was tomorrow out of his passionate speech. We didn’t care, though. Fuck your goddamn chicken! We needed to stand together on this. Even the other ranges heard our cries and threw the breakfast bags in the guards’ faces. Figuratively, at least. As they brought the cart down the range piled high with styrofoam trays laden with oven-baked leg quarters and mashed potatoes, we started yelling again. The first trap opened and the person said no. We all started cheering. What a wonderful moment. The guard, this fat motherfucker named Mason—so fat that he waddled, but he wore a Fitbit (I’d still rather be in a prison cell hotter than hell than be a fat as fuck corrections officer)—started looking in the windows and asking if we were denying the tray. He wasn’t going to waste his time opening the flap when he knew what time it was. They’re required to ask if anyone wants the food even if they know a demonstration is taking place. Halfway down the range, he got to cell 207. It was the last cell I could see from my window. I recognized it because I had spent the last three weeks trying to slide my car perfectly to fit under that door for fishing. I’d made it a few times, a shot that deserves to be on SportsCenter, but no one had a way to record anything. My buddy lived there. He might tell shitty stories and respond to “Sweet Ass” as a nickname, but I still fucked with Kyle, for sure. The flap opened. What the fuck?

I saw Mason slide two trays into the opening and lock the flap shut again. Motherfucking Kyle had taken the fucking chicken. He just couldn’t resist the meat. We all went crazy and started beating on the door. Our hunger strike was ruined by that short little bastard. Once someone gives in and takes food, the power of the strike is lost. One guy, the Somalian pirate from the movie “Captain Phillips,” ended up staying on the hunger strike for seven full days. While it was admirable, it didn’t bring the region or anything, they just stuck him in the observation cell they put the crazy people in. When Kyle took the chicken, it killed everything we were fighting for. I stopped writing senators and started focusing on writing my novel. I just accepted that the BOP was taking COVID as an opportunity to fuck us even more than they already did. As long as they followed some protocol made up by people who’ve never even thought of what it’s like to actually be in prison, they were covered legally and that was all they cared about. We didn’t need to have some unknown person at the BOP to direct all of our anger toward anymore. We had Chicken Dick Kyle, and he was right there.

It may sound like Pussy Destroyer and Long Term Big Perm Germ are bullies, but… ok, yeah, we’re bullies, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t take our fair share of ridicule, too. I am a sucker for Deez Nuts jokes; I literally fall for them every time. One time Pussy Destroyer’s cellie, Spank, told him to call down the range and ask if I like pears. We’d been getting pears for breakfast, so it made sense to me that he’d ask. I’m relatively indifferent to the odd fruit, but yeah, I guess I like them alright. Of course, when I admitted that, he hit me with the “pair of Deez Nuts” punch line, and I was already yelling, “Goddamnit, you got me again!” before he could even finish. I am so gullible sometimes. Pussy Destroyer has tits and sub-par meth stories, so we’d make fun of him, but he would always deflect the ridicule by yelling, “BUT KYLE TOOK THE FUCKING CHICKEN!”

Kyle finally broke and told us to go fuck ourselves. He loved eating chicken, any part of the chicken, and he was hungry, so he wasn’t going to say no. Country asked if he even loved eating the dick, which he did, and so that’s how Chicken Dick Kyle was born.