James St. James: You said you were a porter. Tell me again about porters, what they are and what you do.

Michael Alig: The porters are. . . OK. The company has something like 40 cells, it’s just a long hallway with 40 cells, and there are no officers around, everything is done by other inmates, the inmate porters. When everybody’s locked in their cells, the inmate porters pass out the food, or sweep the floors, or mop or hand out water because they don’t have hot water in our cells, so they bring a bucket of hot water to every cell, stuff like that. They also pass notes and. . . .

James: . . . Get blowjobs!

Michael: Yeah, well, that’s the thing: If you’re going to be a porter, usually it’s for people who want to get blowjobs. It’s so funny because, you know, nobody understands my sense of humor here at all. One day I’m mopping, I’m scrubbing the floor, on my hands and knees; and, you know, they pay us fifteen cents an hour. I’m on the floor, scrubbing on my hands and knees, and it’s in the summertime and I’m hot and I’m sweaty, and it’s a rust stain and it isn’t coming out, and I’m grumbling to myself and an officer walks by and he stops because I guess he heard me grumbling, and I looked up at him and I said: “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the dirt!”

James: And, of course, nothing. Crickets. You’re like, “Tough crowd. Tough crowd.”

Michael: I was like the only gay porter, the only openly gay porter; the other porters were on the down-low, they were like getting their dicks sucked but nobody knew it.

James: So tell me how you get your dick sucked. You mean you just walk up to the cell?

Michael: Yeah, just walk up to the bar. . . usually. Sometimes the inmates. . . . You see, when I was a porter, everybody knew that I was gay. I tell you, the first day that I was serving the food, there were 40 people in the company, 15 of them, when I would get to their cells, 15 of these guys, at least, had their dicks out and were stroking them lewdly, and were making dirty faces at me like, “You wanna touch it?” And I said to them, “I’m not going to do that while I’m serving the food!”

James: Well it’s disgusting!

Michael: No, it’s rude. First of all I would have lost my job because everybody would have known.

James: So you’re telling me you were the only porter who never got your dick sucked?

Michael: No, no, not at all. I was just the only porter who was openly gay. Other porters were gay but nobody knew about it. And they were all coming up to me and were like (in deep gruff voice): “Don’t tell anyone else, but I fool around.” They all basically said the same thing. So there was some animosity towards me from some of the straight inmates who don’t fool around because they don’t want an openly gay porter because they know they’ll be jerking people off while they’re serving people food and stuff, and they don’t want that.

James: That’s what I’m saying: It’s unsanitary.

Michael: Right. So there was this animosity towards me in every little thing that I’d do. They would get mad at me. Like I’d try and serve them coffee and the coffee in here is really poor quality. People in here have an ego problem, they have Napoleonic complexes, some of them get offended if you offer them this coffee because it’s really awful quality and their attitude is, “What, you think I can’t afford to get my own coffee?” But then again, if you don’t give it to them, it’s like, “Give me everything I’m suppose to get” – so you lose either way.

James: Now, what other jobs do you have?

Michael: That’s the only one. I quit. I quit. Well, that was when I was dating Cowboy. Remember Cowboy?

James: No

Michael: I didn’t tell you about Cowboy?

James: No. Tell me about Cowboy.

Michael: James, Cowboy was the one who killed the Prince of Park Avenue!

James: Michael, I don’t know about this.

Michael: Well, you know the case.

James: Oh, is this the whole Screaming Rachael thing? Oh yeah yeah yeah.

Michael: She was dating, supposedly, this Prince of Park Avenue character and coincidentally this boy, his name is Cowboy, he was 17 and he was with this older guy and they were jewel thieves and they broke into this apartment on Park Avenue, this prince, and they stole all his crowns and all his jewels, all the crown jewels of his country, and they killed the prince and three other people in the house. Well, Cowboy is from a trailer park in Georgia and a really sexy baseball player, he was going to be a professional baseball player, and he had no idea the value of these jewels and so he takes his share back to his trailer park in Georgia and he’s doing the laundry and walking the dog and shooting raccoon wearing this king’s crown thinking it’s fake gold or something. And it was solid gold with rubies and emeralds and priceless, you know. So anyway, he gets caught, and they give him a hundred years for that and he’s in Attica with me and, as it turns out, Screaming Rachael also testified against him. So that was our connection. He was so hot – I mean, with this beautiful white trash Southern accent and had no idea, could not understand why it was so sexy to be this white trash trailer-park boy named Cowboy.

James: Oh totally.

Michael: So we became friends and he was coming at me, you know, with this Southern charm. They called him “The Gentleman Killer” because he was

like. . . .

James: “Yes sir, no sir.” I love that. So hot.

Michael: So we dated for a while, and that’s why I became a porter, because he was a porter, and he said, “Become a porter and that way we can spend all day together in the rec room.” I thought I told you about this. We would sit in the rec room and jerk each other off and kiss and stuff like that, while watching soap operas.

James: I don’t remember that at all.

Michael: Well, he was really, really sexy. But he became crazy – like possessive. He was like one of those white-trash wife beaters who’s going to kill his wife for, like, looking at the postman.

James: Right right right. Where was this? Attica?

Michael: Yeah. There was another guy in the company, an artist, and I was in his cell, we were looking through an art catalogue, ordering paints and canvases, because you know I wanted to start painting and when I came out of his cell, Cowboy was sitting there, standing there with his watch, tapping his foot, saying “Fifteen minutes? Fifteen fucking minutes you’ve been in there. What were y’all doing, sucking each others dicks?” It was just getting, like, really crazy so we had to just break it off.

James: But then you were still in Attica, still in the same company. Wasn’t it sort of awkward because you can’t escape seeing someone?

Michael: Well, that’s why I quit being a porter, because I didn’t want to work with him anymore.

James: So you aren’t a porter at this place?

Michael: No no no.

James: Anything else? We’ve got to keep this short. I’m sick of transcribing for hours, listening to you yammer on.

Michael: OK. . . . Wait a minute! You can’t. . . . We are going to deal with this RIGHT NOW. You can’t just . . . .

Recorded voice in phone: YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS.

(Both laugh)

Michael: When you do you want me to call again?

James: Tuesday.

Michael: Bye.