My Prison Idol

If only I could be like him

Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash

If you think the old bitties down at the beauty parlor hold the gold medal for being the world’s biggest gossips, you could be wrong. The rumor mill in a prison concerning what guys are in for might possibly exceed that of the geriatric ladies’.

And when you’re a sixty-something white guy with no tattoos who just landed in a federal prison, the assumption is that you’re a “chomo” (a child molester).

If I hadn’t discovered this reality while endlessly Googling “prison life,” and “preparing for federal prison” before going in, I found out quickly from my counselor.

On my very first day at the facility that would become my home for 336 days, I asked him (the first person I met), “So you know what I’m in for, right?”

He gave me a look of derision that said, “If you think I study up on all you crimey mother fuckers, you got another thing coming, rook.”

Regardless, I continued. “I’m in for tax fraud,” I announced with some pride as if to say “I’m not really a criminal — and I made a lot of money at some point if I caught a prison sentence for the indiscretion.”

His response while looking over the top of his half-glasses was, “They’re gonna think you’re a chomo.”

“Well, my State charge is promotion of prostitution” (I was employed as webmaster and photographer for a big NYC madam and was prosecuted in the State’s conspiracy charge), I offered alternatively.

“Go with that,” he advised. And that was the end of that part of the conversation.

During my almost year inside, I suffered at least three rumors as to my crimes. The most benign was revealed to me by a multi-millionaire Muslim realtor who bought my kitchen worker food daily (those who worked in the kitchen were given a heap of food after the shift which most of us sold when we got back to the unit).

“I heard you’re a porn comic,” said Ali asking about my past. That rumor he’d picked up from a Chinese inmate who happened to be a big fan of what I thought was my obscure escort blog before he was convicted and sent to prison. Not that obscure, apparently.

Number two wasn’t as harmless. After moving in who would become my 6th and last bunky (we lived in two-man 70 square foot cells), the biggest and baddest douchebag in my section of the prison told my new roomie, “You fucked up! You’re living with a chomo.”

Espy (the counselor) was right. Old white guy with no tattoos? Gotta be a chomo! Not good! I had to do something — and quickly!

The NY Daily News, one of New York’s leading daily murder and mayhem rags, had featured a full page story on me when their cops and court reporter found me on the docket while looking for something to write about the day I pled out on my federal charges.

I knew Looch or one of his crimey friends had a contraband phone and could Google me to find out my actual crimes. So I approached him to say, “My name is William Mersey. Google me and find out my real charge. I am not what the rumor mill says I am.”

Looch gave me a threatening look and spat, “You talkin’ about that chomo shit. Why you askin’ me?”

This was a pivotal moment. If I’d responded with the truth: “Because I know you told my new bunky he fucked up and was rooming with a chomo,” he’d have denied it outright. That’s how criminals roll. Plus, I’d have effectively thrown Chan under the bus thus sullying my relationship with my new chosen partner.

I hadn’t planned my response and surprised myself with what I came up with on the spot: “Because you’re a man of influence in the unit, and I want you to let everybody know I’m not what they’re saying.”

It was the perfect comeback. Looch nodded and repeated my name and its spelling. He was going to check me out on somebody’s phone.

The next day, his boy Dolo approached me in the sallyport as he returned from rec and I went down to the kitchen.

“Yo! Big pimpin’,” Dolo fist-bumped me and winked. When a prisoner reads that you ran an escort website and paid big dough to the IRS? That translates as a pimp to a ghetto thug. Whatever! Mission accomplished. I got no more chomo looks after that.

Even if the boys knew I wasn’t a chomo, a perversion of rumor 2 — which would become rumor 3 — persisted.

My 5th celly was Paul Manafort, Trump’s disgraced campaign manager for part of the 2016 election cycle. Paulie was big in the news at the time, and some Republican douchebags on the other side of the unit wanted him for themselves.

So while I was down in the kitchen working and/or watching Jeffrey Epstein on my other job (suicide watch), they convinced him that I was a sex offender who sold ads for Hustler Magazine. How they came up with that I have no idea. But it conveniently convinced Paul to move out — and in with them.

After Paulie moved, I told him whatever those assholes had said about me was bullshit to which he responded he’d heard nothing. I knew he was lying, but whatever!

While Paul was educated and refined (he was a lawyer who went to Georgetown Law School), he also farted and snored — and got up in the middle of the night to read the bible. He wasn’t exactly the ideal bunky.

I only found out what his new buddies had said years later when Paul actually wrote it in his book. Seeing his newly-released excuse for why he’d been prosecuted in my local library’s stacks, I checked out his book to see if he’d written anything about his stay at MCC prison where we briefly shared a cell.

And not only was there a chapter about the facility — but a paragraph about me! He was not happy reading what I’d written about him in the Daily Beast and NY Daily News and wanted to register his anger. In that passage, Paul revealed that the boys had told him I was a sex offender who sold ads for Hustler magazine.

Now to my prison idol (finally). The inmate who’d been reading my escort blog before he got locked up was a huge fan. You’d have thought he’d just found Brad Pitt when he verified that in fact, I was whom he called Psycho Bill (the blog was titled “Dollar Bill’s Psycho Roundup” based on the reality that catering to escorts’ whims while being their advertising agent — which is what I was — not their pimp — was driving me to distraction). And he told everybody about my supposed fame.

That brought our transsexual inmate out of the closet. She had indeed been an escort as well as a drug dealer before she was incarcerated. But that girl wasn’t my idol.

The guy I so admired was a friendly Hispanic prisoner who confessed after hearing I’d been involved in the pay-for-play world that the night before he self-surrendered to prison, he’d hired no fewer than six escorts to smother him with “love” before heading off to do his bid behind bars. He figured tht might tide him over for the first part of his “bid.”

The two months between the time the judge told me I’d be serving a year and the day I actually had to report were probably the two worst months of my life. I felt as if I was in a state of limbo with nothing to do but take care of all the odds and ends of my miserable life before reporting to prison.

I could not even contemplate having sex with one — let alone six — women during those two months. Yet this guy, with a reckless abandon I admired — had done just that.

I would love to be that kind of guy. Alas, I am not — and suffered those two months mightily while no doubt, he’d have partied endlessly until his money ran out.

You only live once, right? He acted on the old platitude. I did not.