How I Learned to Make a Prison Burrito
or, The Battle of the Commissary
Since quitting my job I have been slowly drinking myself to death. Slow-motion suicide, it’s called. The only meaningful social interactions I’ve had in a while have been with Phil, an ex-convict, who lives in the building next to the laundry shed. I like Phil because he talks about his prison days as if he were telling war stories. In prison — somewhere out of state — he was employed as a sewer of McDonald’s uniforms. He mostly stayed out of trouble, but with fifteen years on the sidelines he was witness to more than a few beatings, shankings, buggerings, riots. . . . He once told me about a cell mate of his, who, with his teeth and more free time than anyone on the outside can comprehend, filed down the plastic handle of his toothbrush into an ice pick of sorts, which was later found lodged into a guard’s neck. It was traced back to Phil’s cell mate using dental records the prison had on file.
“Did you see it happen?”
“No, didn’t even see the body, but I hear it was pretty gruesome. Really bloody.”
“What happened to him, your cell mate?”
“He was charged with murder and transferred to another prison. Never saw him again.”
Phil has bit of a combover. He doesn’t necessarily look like an ex-con, whatever they look like. He looked like any other weathered older dude. The craziest story he had for me was about a riot, the Battle of the Commissary, it would come to be known by those in the know. An inmate by the name of Spyder (he insisted on the “y”), a scrawny, ratty man of average height and a penchant for rolling up his shirt sleeves and slicking his hair back with any suitable fluid on hand, had failed to receive his Commissary funds — indeed, he would find out in this way that his parents were finally cutting him off — and, in a fit of red rage, had taken hostage the guard posted there, holding him in a one-armed headlock, blade in his other hand, his partner, who’d jumped right into action, holding the legs with his entire body. This should not have been allowed to happen, but, being that this was a private prison and the economy being on an upswing, they were essentially operating with a skeleton crew. Their equivalent of a SWAT team were either out sick or on lunch, so the prison staff was left without support of firearms, teargas, riot shields, or the right training, left to hold down the fort until reinforcements from the local sheriff’s department arrived. In the meantime, the guards had to secure the door to the Commissary, muster what forces they could, then burst through with nothing but nightsticks with which to defend themselves against — and who could have seen this coming — a barrage of all kinds of condiments, ketchup, mustard, mayo, relish, and Tapatio packets which — in the melee — coalesced with sandwich-bag bombs full of urine and excrement, producing a swamp of sludge the horror of which Phil tells me I’ll never truly understand.
“That happens a lot in prison with some of the loonier folks — the shit and piss, I mean,” Phil says one night, chilling in the white glow of the LED porch light, sipping Bud Light, smoking Turkish Royals, while I, totally captive in the fenced-in porch area, sat drunk and nauseated over too many cigarettes and proceeded to empty my guts all over the concrete, some of which got on Phil’s sandeled, foot.
The commissary, he went on to tell me, had been completely emptied of goods in the aftermath of the debacle, inmates, some of whom had merely watched, gathering all the snack items they could carry, all of the Top Ramen, Doritos, Coke, Fanta, whatever. Phil, an unashamed opportunist, did not pass up the opportunity to loot some swag himself. Phil never had any money in prison. This is the first time he had obtained anything resembling wealth there. He could have traded the food for any number of things, cigarettes, toilet wine, weed, even heroin, had that been his thing. But instead he got cooking, coming up with all sorts of ingenious, makeshift recipes, the most popular of which being the dish I make now, the Big House MSG Burrito. First, crunch up bags of ramen and flaming hot Cheetos, and combine into one bag. Add a splash of your choice of cola, mixing thoroughly into a thick paste. Next, roll out the tortilla, flour, preferably, and spread the radioactive paste across the tortilla. Since one cannot effectively store cheese in a prison cell, often inmates will resort to using the little parmesan cheese packets, but not every prison has pizza day, however, so one may have to resort to using Cheeto dust. I’m using shredded cheese because I can. Finally, top the little donkey off with whatever kind of crunchy, carby stuff you have left lying around and — voila — you’re golden. Go ahead and roll her up, buddy.
I will not die hungry. I will make a meal out of anything. I will live off of the garbage of America if I have to. My belly will not be deprived. I poke out onto the balcony, positioning myself between the short, wooden guard railing and a dying topiary in a halfhearted attempt not to expose myself as I proceed to piss between the balusters. Look out below. It splashes around, forming a dark puddle, fumes rising up, visible in the yellow glow of a streetlight.
