Jésus already had an outstanding bench warrant for his arrest, failure to appear at a pre-trial hearing First Degree Rape charge when he went on that last fatal burglary job.

 “That was a lie.  I didn’t rape nobody.  That bitch is a lyin’ ho!”

 Things had never gone right for him, since he arrived on the beach of Key Biscayne, Florida, under a U.S. Coast Guard escort.  The medium endurance cutter, The Defiant, from Mariel, Cuba, in 1980 during president Jimmy Carter’s boat lift.

 The detention camp, Fort Chaftee, Arkansas … relatives in West New York, New Jersey on his mother’s side of the family who originally sponsored him, when they met face to face and were stunned by his unfamiliar dark complexion, heavily tattooed arms, legs, neck and torso, from his prison days in Habana, suddenly withdrew their sponsorship, suddenly remembered it was another sister in Cuba they were waiting to re-unite with.  The fate of the Marielitos, not the acceptable Cubanos of previous migrations.  – Escovia.  Scum.  Que Mierda.  WHAT SHIT.  – rejected by their own people, victims of the rigid caste system of the so-called Jews of the Caribbean. 

 What was left for him?

 The men’s shelter in the Armory on 168^th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, Washington Heights, across from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital’s Vanderbilt Pavilion.  Panhandling.  Hustling.  Petty thievery.  Jail …. once again.  Boosting.  Shoplifting.  Token sucking.  Cocksucking.  Occasional vacations to Camp LaGuardia run by New York City’s Human Resources Administration in Westchester County.  Temporary legit jobs as porter, or cook with the Salvation Army at Grossinger’s resort in the old borscht belt of Sullivan County before it went belly-up bankrupt and closed.  Side trips, excursions to Riker’s Island or Ward’s Island, the men’s shelter or New York State’s Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital, Kirby Forensic unit when the voices between his ears got too loud, too strong, el espirita susto, the spirits urging him to KILL to KILL HIMSELF.

He eventually got a girlfriend, a fellow Marielita.  He finally got a second girlfriend, a Santo Domingo woman.  She was trouble, a jealous bitch who was envious of his other enamorata.  It was she who told all those lies to the police:  “He didn’t have to rape nobody.”  The ladies loved him.  His beloved Marielita esposa, his mujer, his wife, common-law, got pregnant.  He needed some money for a real place, not the men’s shelter on East 3^rd Street and the Bowery – hence, the burglary.

Easiest method, over the roof, down the fire escape, or a rope to the top floor apartment, in through an open window, snatch/grab a TV or a VCR and out again, gone in sixty seconds.  Only in theory, only on paper.

What exactly did happen?

A super running up to the roof with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat in response to some motherfucker prowling around up there after midnight.  Or maybe that too tempting window open on the seventh floor of the building across the shaftway from the roof with the armed super.  Either way.  Jésus took his chances, backed up, got a running start, leapt off the battlement with his good left leg, got the parabolic arch trajectory perfectly, his the window ledge almost ten feet through thin air.  Had a good enough grip until the awakened tenant slammed the casement shut on his fingers, snapping off all ten digits like pretzels and hurting Jésus all seven stories to the alleyway below.

It should have been fatal, a mortal wounding, besides all ten phalange fractures in two broken arms, legs shattered to splinters, crushed windpipe, and a spinal cord injury which the orthopedic surgeons sadly assured him would paralyze him from nipple-level down for the rest of his life.  He lived.  The paramedics of the Emergency Services Unit scraped him off the dogshit-stained sidewalks with putty knives and poured him onto a stretcher in St. Luke’s ER.

Despite his permanent paralysis, one organ still fully functioned below his belly button, the first time I had observed such a phenomenon.  On an open ward overflowing with like-injured hemi-paraplegic males, something about turning him side to side, cleaning the semi-liquid fudge of diarrhea off of his incredibly furry wool blanket of fur incontinent anus sufficient stimulated Jésus’ nether regions or prostate to elicit a frightening response.  Assigned to a ward bed nearest the open door of this unit, whenever this manifestation occurred he would solicit the attentions of passing female passersby:  nurses, eucharistic ministers, nuns from St Hilda’s and St Hugh’s, Episcopal volunteers, even the hospital vice assistant in charge of patient representatives, Mrs. Choloofian, and cat call them like a Latino Lothario that he was through the wall.

“Psst – psst – Mami, Mami – Mira, Mira – look, look!!!”  then display his eleven-inch fully-erect meat-baton dark-skinned Havana cigar at the horrified female spectator in the hallway outside his room.  For some fucked up reason, the aghast victim always seemed to blame me!  His rotund obese wife would show up for conjugal visists to the prison.  Urologists may tell you that a catheterized male patient cannot anatomically perform – tell that to Jésus.  Despite a “Garden Hose” stuffed up the hole in his penis as far as his incontinent bladder or eighteen gauge French Foley the thickness of our middle finger, he would pull the curtains around his bed, disconnect himself from the foul-smelling urine collection bag at his bedside, and roundly roger his retarded partner for a good half-hours’ session.  The nozzle of the tube still protruding from his one-eyed trouser snake must have acted like some sort of 21^st century French tickler to his wifey-poo.

Yes but all good things must come to an end.  The Department of Corrections arrived at 4:00pm one evening to take custody of their wheelchair-bound prisoner.  It was a tearful parting.  Jésus had grown so very fond of me.  “No me olvidé, Miguelito”  Never forget me, Mickey, big Mike, Miguelito.

How long would Jésus last behind bars, unable to run away from his pursuing predators?  Bartering for his services, passing him around the prison yard like a dainty after-dinner bon-bon for as little as a drag on a Newport 100, or a suck on a crack stem.

It’s almost midnight.  Unbelievably, the DOC officers wheel him back to the floor.  Thre are tears of joy in Jésus cheeks.  A happy reunion.  “I told you not to forget me, Miguelito!”

It turns out the doctors at the Riker’s Island Prison Informary took one look at his physical condition, tore up the outstanding warrant on the spot.  Let someone else clean up the crap spewing from Jésus anus!