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POPS He was not the only white guy in the holding cell but surely was the oldest. So it took no more than an hour to receive his new baptismal name and the Holy Spirit incarnate in an Oscar Meyer baloney and cheese sandwich: Pops. Pops: about as original as metastasis and only a bit less funny. Talking's supposed to cut fear in two so of course he responds like an idiot, the Big Bad Tuff Niggah, white hair and pink fuzzy skin with "Stab me here" marked on the invisible perforation-- another slave on the monochrome plantation of County Corrections: "Shit, man, even my kids don't call me 'Pops', they might call me 'The old prick' but never 'Pops' for Chrisake." Pace Edmund Kean, dying is not at all easy and comedy is still a raging bitch, its face the ex who helped get him in here, who he will learn thought it was funny that the man who banged her into two children was in El Carcel de Monmouth County for delinquent alimony. There is death on a late winter night, cold as law misapplied: cold outside, cold within, an air conditioned holding cell when it's 39 degrees outside, and these men who scream at unseen demonic powers curse Jesus and they're not even Orthodox Jews, or yell "Get this baloney fuckin' sandwich the hell out of my face you scumbags!" At 2:15 in a not-yet dawn, he is cut to the waiting car, release has been bought by some friends. He is not yet institutionalized, never made it upstairs to be gang-banged, didn't have to answer to Pops anymore, he is the same as 20 hours before except older, more tired, a new-made convert to the faith of The Prince who took advice to trust no one, to fear everyone for we do so for his name's sake. kw/4-15-07 -- ------------------ Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com "It takes a big man to cry. It takes a really big man to laugh at that man."