WHEN MIKE TYSON recently mounted a stage at the Hudson Theater for his pre-fight press conference, started a melee with Lennox Lewis’s entourage, then munched a hunk out of Lewis’s thigh, the media called Tyson everything from a cretin to a cannibal. But they failed to label Tyson a cliche. For in one of the more underreported details of that day, after a journalist yelled out to Tyson that he belonged in a straitjacket, Tyson gathered himself, began massaging his crotch, then called the male journalist a “white bitch” before promising him that “I’m gonna f— you ’til you love me.” Presumptuous though it may be, I think I speak for most white bitches when I say that if Iron Mike decided to [take] us until we loved him, he would indeed be at it for a very long time. Call us old-fashioned. But we like a little romance. If Tyson were serious about courting this journalist, he should’ve invited him over to listen to some records, or at the very least complimented him on his really sharp sweater. But of course, this was no storybook romance. As any prison psychologist will tell you, making someone your “bitch” is not about love, or even lust, it’s about brute intimidation. It’s the kind of courtship that Tyson is likely all too familiar with as a creature of the yard (arrested 38 times by the age of 13, his lengthiest prison hitch was the three years he served for raping Desiree Washington at the Miss Black America Pageant). For Tyson to speak this way, however, is a tad disappointing, since his threat was such a honking cliche of a faux-tough guy thing to say. According to my vast network of sources in correctional facilities–many of them avid Weekly Standard readers–overtly threatening to make a male rival your “bitch” is the mark of an amateur, an anachronistic threat that instills about as much fear as boasting that you are a “mean motorscooter,” or that you’re about to serve up a “knuckle sandwich.” It’s the fastest way to signal a hardened con that you are a suburban workadaddy doofus who watches too much “Law and Order.” As if that isn’t bad enough, it is also the surest way to telegraph that you are a subscriber to the most irksome esthetic to come down the cultural pike since wraparound belts: that of prison chic. You see it everywhere. There are the urban lofts that feature stainless steel Neo-Comby toilet-sink-storage cabinet combos (modeled after prison bathroom facilities, which refrain from using porcelain fixtures since they can be shattered and the shards employed as weapons). Then there’s faux-prison garb, so popular amongst designers, teenagers, and gangster rappers that the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution actually has its inmates manufacturing commercial clothing apparel, from work jeans to yard coats, with buttons that contain the slogan: “Made on the inside, to be worn on the outside.” The most ubiquitous and cloying tic, however, is the all-bitch-speak, all-the-time. It’s been run into the ground by everyone from sitcom gag-writers to morning zoo jocks. When a gay Village Voice writer recently took Eminem to task for his homophobic rants, he didn’t want to get the rapper censured by GLAAD, rather, he wanted Eminem “to be my bitch.” And when Ion Storm, the video game company, marketed their new offering, their ad promised that John Romero, the company’s founder, “is going to make you his bitch.” Even Bernard Goldberg, a conservative, middle-aged white guy who recently wrote a book detailing liberal media bias by his former employer CBS, wrote that “If CBS were a prison . . . three quarters of the producers and 100 percent of the vice presidents would be Dan [Rather]’s bitches.” While this is doubtless true, what a horrifying word picture. The only thing more disturbing would be a visual of the CBS anchor turning his v.p.’s out while spouting his patented Ratherisms: “You’re hotter than a Laredo parking lot. . . . You’re more nervous than a pig in a packing plant.” Now I don’t personally claim to be an expert on prison lingo. I’ve never done time–which could easily change if the IRS catches up with my last several years’ tax returns. But I’ve seen enough prison movies to know how to handle myself: get in-processed, de-loused, quickly align myself with the Aryan Brotherhood or Mexican Mafia, wait for lunch, then stick a shank in the neck of the biggest mother I can find in order to prove I’m crazy, or “loco,” as my new Latino ese’s would say. What I wouldn’t do is pull a Tyson, calling somebody a “bitch,” then threatening to make them my best gal. Why would I need to? In the interest of helping Tyson expand his vocabulary, I canvassed everything from Internet prison slang dictionaries to “Soviet Prison Camp Speech”–a book I keep on my coffee table as a conversation starter (it has yet to generate any, though it will if I can get Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn over for cocktails). Prison argot, it turns out, is rich and vivid, with a sort of ironic precision that’s more impressive than anything favored by rappers like C-Murder, who, after a recent second-degree murder charge, is himself in for a language lesson in the Big Hizzouse. In the joint, a child molester is a “diaper sniper.” “Family style” is not the way they serve salad in the prison cafeteria, but rather, refers to performing sodomy in the missionary position. “Flip Flop” is not a reference to shower shoes, but expresses a dominant partner’s willingness to assume the bottom position in a man-love transaction. In prison-speak, food almost always refers to something pejorative. A “fish” equals “fresh meat.” A “cheese eater” is an informer. To “bust a grape” means to get violent, a “skin beef” means you’re doing time on a sex crime, and “tossing salad” means something so foul that I’d be fired on the spot if I detailed it here. A “Keester Bunny” is not what you’d expect–it refers to someone who stashes contraband where the sun doesn’t shine–but there are plenty of other names for those who suffer forcible backdoor violations. Much as the Eskimoes have thousands of words for “snow,” convicts have an endless supply of creative synonyms for what Tyson coarsely calls a “bitch”: butterfly, chump, flip, sweet meat, june bug, may tag, punk, pillow biter, sister, son, cupcake, twinkie, and basically any other sugary confection from the Hostess family. Considering that the Las Vegas police have recommended that prosecutors charge Tyson with sexual assault in two new cases (making him a “tree jumper” in prison lingo), he may want to familiarize himself with all the aforementioned terms. Several years ago, a self-pitying Tyson complained to Playboy about his lack of defenders. “Nobody’s fighting a crusade for my black ass,” he said. In all likelihood, that will change rather soon. Plenty of people are going to be fighting a crusade for said ass, though not for the purpose of defending it. Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
