Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St Berkeley CA 94705
Never, Ever Bring This Up Again by Scott Lambridis
Romeo and Julie were the names he gave his biceps, two star-crossed lovers
separated by the thick torso that would keep them from their embrace as long as fresh
blood pumped through its bulging veins. The first thing he did when they threw him in
the cinderblock cell was remove his orange inmate shirt and showed off their inked
names to anyone who would read the script on his arms. Months later, his new cellmate
did the same thing and they stared at each other’s biceps until the building buzzed and
the dusty bulb above them dimmed from yellow to orange and then to black.
Dean entered as Doru was hanging from the window’s bars, counting pull-ups
with each sharp exhale, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, and he didn’t stop until he
hit fifty-one, always one more than his goal, and snapped his bare feet on the concrete.
His new cellmate must have seen the script names lining those perfect biceps as he was
still standing just inside the bars, a bible in his hand, his own biceps covered by the
standard-issue orange shirt.
Doru’s fight-time survival system was a simple reversal of his prison survival
system. The calculated self-deprecating announcements towards other inmates kept
them confused enough to have left his physical condition unmarred, leaving his record
of good behavior and his hopes of early release untarnished, but as he confronted Dean,
this transformed into a calculated reduction of his opponent’s self-esteem, putting the
thick black man off his guard for the onslaught of battery that would follow. He did not
care who was the victor. The important thing was that his adversary would know he
1 of 14
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
was better off keeping his imposter tattoos to himself.
Once the lights went out preceding their first night together, Doru began:
“You are called Dean? In the old country, that is what we called the flap of skin
between the penis and the asshole. So, you are a Dean then.”
He was careful not to mention the tattoos. The unmotivated randomness of his
attack was paramount.
“I have knocked out a heffer,” he said to Dean, “But I have never pounded a
Dean. Always new experiences.” He stared a moment longer, deep into the dark eyes of
the confused Dean, and then the punching began. Doru would lose. He was not so
stupid that he did not know that. But still.
As the two took turns vomiting out their exhaustion, Doru over the remains of
the now-split latrine, Dean over the flooding sink, Doru took stock. When the lights
flickered and flashed back to bright life, he would both be thrown into confinement,
ending his streak of good behavior, which meant that if he had any hope of seeing his
daughter while he could still remember her face, an alternate strategy of compromises
would be needed. If becoming friends with someone first, and then having a
disagreement that escalated into fever and war that would be their ruin was the usual
order of things, it made sense that starting that way would lead to a moment of inspired
cooperation. As he pulled himself up by the iron bars inside the single two-foot square
window letting in the humid breeze, paint chips and dust from the old concrete puffed
out and stuck to his wet skin. He shook the bars again and the left bar budged the
2 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
tiniest of budges, and it all became clear again. Since most people tried to escape out of
desperation first, and then when they failed, they resolved themselves to becoming
model inmates and hoping for early release, then the opposite would be what worked.
They sat on the rough ground at opposite sides of the cell, just close enough to
whisper to each other but keeping their tattoos far enough away, and Doru told Dean
his plan, and the gravity of its success in lieu of Dean’s unfortunate arrival. It began
with a simple resolution regarding their shared tattoos to never, ever mention them
again. “They will rape us in the asses,” said Doru to Dean, and Dean nodded. They both
understood prison life enough to accept that they would be laughing stocks, forced to
defend themselves around each corner, at every meal, through all stages of lighting,
indoors and out.
The logic was natural to him. Reversals were powerful and overlooked. The past
mattered more, and if he focused on it, the future would work out. He was nearing sixty
and he’d still snap any bone in your body if you thought you knew better. Anything
that worked one way should work equally well in reverse. Conversely, reversal of a
failing order revealed problems with frontwaysness, and presented a new solution. Of
course, you must first define the parameters of your experience, and then find its
components. You understand a story in reverse by reading the paragraphs, not the
sentences. You read a sentence in reverse by looking at words, not the letters. You read
a word in reverse by looking at letters. And so on.
Instead of wearing German clothing to maintain his ethnicity, he dressed like an
American: rose pink socks, camouflage pants, a teal shirt that stretched around the odd
3 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
protuberance of his sternum, and thick black aviators. This was a real German’s way to
dress in America. He was actually Hungarian, but fuck his mother’s last minute
decision to emigrate.
Growing up on a farm, Doru noticed that his cows would fall asleep after
milking, so he punched them out first and milked them after. When he visited the
country home he used to share with his American wife and daughter, he saw that her
new rich old Wall Street banker of a husband had replaced his heffers with a fold of
Scottish Highland coos that shook their long wavy pelts in the dusk like a bunch of
dreadlocked yahoos. Instead of waiting to take his aggravation out on them after the
confrontation that was about to ensue, he punched out the first horned one that
lumbered over to him as his boots ground the gravel on the long driveway.
Everything about his old place was already different. They had changed the
mailbox, changed the roofing tile, and filled the driveway with dozens of glossy
vehicles. If all this was changed, he could only imagine what they’d done to the inside.
He imagined his little girl up there in the room he had built for her, now surrounded by
cheap reprints of the artwork seen on the walls of financial institutions that would
never give him a job. He had to see it for himself. He had to talk with his daughter and
tell her that it was his room, not this new guy’s that she was living in. He stood there,
admiring the mane of the downed cattle that looked to be breathing into the puddle
below its head no more. He pulled his black hair back into a bun and thought about
maybe braiding it before letting his daughter see him for the first time in ten years. Only
then did he remember how much she loved this type of cow. He closed the big wet eye
4 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
facing the sky and continued to the house. He knocked hard three times on the door,
refusing to use the new brass knocker, and a man in a black suit answered.
“I’m sorry but you can’t come in.”
“This is my god damned place. Who the fuck are you to tell me I can not come
in?”
“I’m sorry, but you’re confused. If you did, you haven’t lived here for years.”
“My daughter grew up here. I must talk with her.”
“I’m sorry, but now’s just not the time. Can’t you see the cars? We’re having a
wake.”
“Who the hell died? It is bullshit. You are hiding something.”
“Yes, and I’m a hired good and you’re on camera and this is all an elaborate ploy
just to keep you from your daughter. Please.”
The attitude was too much. Words were shouted. Punches were thrown. A
crowd of black suits and dresses gathered at the front door and the moving mass
pushed back down the driveway, but not before he got a peak inside at the chalk-white
face of his wife in the casket. In the aftermath, a second mourning was scheduled for the
second husband lying on top of the downed cow with its long brown horn rising
through the old man’s chest. Blood spread around the horn and soaked the man’s white
shirt, like wine spilling in reverse, from the inside.
He told the police that it was all a misunderstanding. All of his arrests had been,
traceable back to when he first arrived on the boat from Europe forty years ago and the
man with the checklist saw the name Dimitrius, crossed it off and wrote “Dino,” as he
5 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
spat tobacco juice and told him that he needed a pronounceable name to get an
American job. He couldn’t see how passengers in his taxicab cared what his name was,
so reclaimed the name his parents used to call him back in the old country. When they
processed him at the prison, Doru wore the clothing he felt most comfortable in so that
he had extra motivation to reclaim it when he would be released.
Across the cell, Dean called him an idiot, and Doru whispered that he may be an
idiot, but many people have trouble letting their past remain in memory. Dean pointed
out that such was the crux of his problem. Dean takes his time, like all craftsman,
focused on future payoff. Only the future matters. He reached out and palmed the
floppy bible on his mattress, and Doru rolled his eyes in the dark. They offered him a
bible his first night and he took it. He didn’t care for the bible’s stories and always
wondered if there was a better one if he read it in reverse. On his soggy, sagging
mattress, he had no need for religion, but admitting it wasn’t the German way.
They swapped stories of their crimes so as to gain each other’s trust, but their
eyes looked only sideways at each other. Doru knew never to trust a black man who
called himself a craftsman or a Christian, let alone both.
In whispers that bounced off the shadowed concrete and filtered through the
moonlight rays with the airborne dust, Dean described his humble beginnings being
booted from the family church for stealing the tithe. He became a diligent veterinarian’s
assistant, cleaning and sterilizing the instruments to an alien shine, excelling at the
closing stitches needed after surgeries, never minding the smell of urine or feces left by
6 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
frightened and delirious beasts, and generally earning the trust of the head vet so that
he could swipe vials of pure ketamine and cook the liquid down to powder on the
stovetop in the trailer he shared with his girlfriend and their two kids. Whether they
arrested him for stealing or dealing ketamine, he could never remember, but the cell
room wasn’t much different than the peak of a k-hole anyway. What he really wanted
was a pencil to write with, but they’d never give him one. He always did his best
writing in a delirious k-hole.
A smart man writes, said Doru, but a wise man dances. But what was really on
his mind was the stitches.
“So you know how to sew?”
“I could strangle a needle. I have delicate fingers, in case you didn’t notice them
when they dented your face.”
“You are black man. You know how to braid too, yes?”
“Fuck you. Yeah.”
And Doru grinned. It was set. After their punishment for fighting, they would
sew a rope made of single threads and keep the rope tied inconspicuously to one of the
strong iron bars, letting the growing length stretch down outside under the shadow of
the roof, invisible to the tower’s watchmen. In the time it took to lengthen the rope four
stories to the ground, Doru was confident he could loosen the one bar enough so that it
could be removed at the moment of their escape.
When the building buzzed again and the light bulb sparked and glowed, Doru
said to keep their shirts on until they next met, and to never speak of this again. Dean
7 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
nodded as they were both hauled away by angry guards.
In the cellar, Doru had two tasks: sort and peel potatoes. The warden was an old
WWII vet and did things old-school, just like he had done with his troops when he
caught them trying to go AWOL after their first sight of a split skull of a child, or a
pregnant woman’s beaten, flattened belly. We all come from the earth, and end up there
eventually, he said, just like a potato. Had to keep ‘em grounded.
The work would have suited Doru, since he had worked with many potatoes on
his family farm before he escaped and emigrated, had it not been for the power of that
particular vegetable. In the dark cellar, he picked one up from the towering pile of
cardboard boxes and closed his eyes. His thumb scraped its rough skin and dimples,
and the potato grew in his mind and became the enormous curved landscape of the
earth in his palm. His fingers were little lenses that focused the hills and valleys into a
scene of light and grass and trees. He smelled the rancid perfume of the beetle collecting
plastic sacks hanging from the trees, the smell of forgotten summers spent playing
under the tree with his daughter. The past always waited below the surface to be dug
up, while he was stuck where the sun would never quite set, the moon would never
quite shine, and night would turn into day without much fuss. He wanted to walk over
and grab one of the sacks and hear the crunch of hundreds of dead exoskeletons, and
hear his daughter mess her face in disgust before grabbing the bag herself, but instead
he opened his eyes again and dropped the potato into a plastic drum at the other side of
the room. After half a day, he moved eight potatoes.
8 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
After a week of poor output, he returned to his cell and the sight of Dean’s dark
arms. They made agreements for alternating days and schedules. They would never be
near each other outside of the cell, and would keep the exposure of their shirtless arms
to places and times that would prevent any patterns forming in the minds of the other
prisoners. One would take the lunchroom; one would take the lifting yard outside. One
would take laundry detail; one would take visitation days. They would alternate weeks
in their cell, they would never walk the halls together, and they would leave their shirts
on for long stretches and only let their babies out in small, punctuated moments. That
way, they could establish their identities, but the inmates that knew of one of their arms
would not be tempted to communicate with the inmates who knew about the arms of
the other.
We are not so hardened that we do not feel their plight.
While Doru did pull-ups on the bars in his cell, his rippling biceps flexing and
expanding with German precision, passing inmates asked Dean if he was too
intimidated to take his own prison shirt off, but Dean laughed and told them he liked
how the shirts fit like the scrubs in the veterinary offices he worked in, which allowed
him to sell ketamine to their junkie mothers and daughters, and they flipped him off to
the prods of the guard’s rifles against their naked, tattooed backs.
The embarrassment of both the men grew, though they feigned otherwise.
Arguments in the night followed. The agreed schedule of their displays of skin became
a constant tug of war. The company each other was keeping became suspect as
9 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
temporary alliances and adversaries showed themselves. Secret games are played, and
they are almost caught at the lunch line together with their sleeves rolled high, holding
packs of cigarettes. Concessions are made. The rope’s construction would need to be
accelerated, mused Doru as he counted the bricks in the shadow outside their window.
The rope reached a almost halfway down under the shadow of the roof and felt strong
enough to hold a body, but Doru noticed that the shadow cut short and their rope
would be visible on the white brick outside after only another foot or two. He kept his
discovery silent, and coughed as he loosened the right bar. He watched the tower
spotlight shine around it as he twisted the bar in a circle, like the white spiral of a
barber’s pole. His chest filled with air as he thought of taking his daughter to a carnival,
but he dreamed of large dead cow eyes that made the sound of crunching beetles when
they blinked a twitching involuntary blink.
He remained troubled by the problem of the shadow’s end along the wall and
the red brick color that would give them away. He slid his tray along the metal railing,
keeping his eyes down until the server slapped a pile of some indescribable substance
before he could get his tray under it, splashing food on his shirt and arms. He looked up
to scold the scooper, but said only yes when he recognized the rust colored uniform of
the cafeteria workers as the same as the bricks outside.
At his next opportunity, he followed the Filipino who collected their dirty
uniforms in a cart and rolled it to the laundry facilities. When he got there, he saw an
entire crew of Filipinos sliding and shuffling between dozens of carts and rows and
10 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
rows of uniforms hung like beef carcasses on hooks from the ceiling, revolving and
scuttling along lines into and out of machines that emanated heat and steam and the
smell of starch.
It was like a German plant, and Filipinos had no place understanding its beauty,
let alone working it. He was about to say as much when he spotted the Filipino behind
the steam cleaner and recognized him as the tattoo artist who had given him his prized
ink names. Doru snatched one of the lunch worker’s shirts from a moving hook
overhead and stuffed it down his pants, then retreated back to his cell.
At night, he showed his cellmate his bounty. Dean’s careful hands removed
individual unbroken threads and wove them into the end of their rope. As he watched,
Doru spoke about the Filipino. Dean silently rubbed the threads and twisted them
together, pulling it tight every minute and checking the tensile strength.
“I met the Filipino at a bar I went to at the end of my shifts. There has never been
a man, woman, or animal, that any of us have met who has not loved him and would, if
asked, do anything for him, and so those entering the for the first time watched this
interest in the actions of the workers and regard him who we listened to with absolute
mistrust. He is a man who takes what he wants now. And he has many stories of lovers
both captured and hunted. He is a wonderful artist, and his tattoo parlor is impeccable,
even cleaner and more ordered than a veterinary office, I am sure. But I can only say
that I am half surprised that he ended up in here too.“
As dawn made the sky look slashed so that you could see the paleness beneath
11 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
the bruised colors, Dean lowered the rope down outside the window. It’s length
stretched another few feet past the shadow’s edge and onto the red brick where it
became all but invisible.
Doru returned four more times with shirts tucked into his pants, and Dean
scowled at the tarnished smell of the starched fabric. The rope was halfway down the
side of the building, but they wanted more fabric and so they went together to the
laundry room to double their take.
As Doru led him into the screaming, mechanical room, Dean stopped and
pointed towards the steam-cleaner.
“That fucker,” he said. “That’s the same fucker who inked my arms too.”
“Impossible,” said Doru. “They just all look the same to a racist like you.” They
crouched behind a card full of inmate shirts and rolled it forward for a better look until
Dean confirmed his suspicion.
“Stay cool, we can’t fuck this up now,” said Doru.
Filipino takes what he wants now, which happens to often be Romeo and Juliet,
star-crossed lovers, how he feels about every cute white girl he meets, particularly the
ones that get him in trouble.
The Filipino has his own. He’s been perfecting it.
The Filipino told them a story of the girl he raped and they listened like it was a
campfire horror story, attraction and repulsion in full magnetic force, and they realized
12 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
all too late that it was being told only to distract them while the other Asians worked
their room.
She had many facial expressions. Bright blonde hair, long and wavy and
unkempt enough to prove it was real and casual, knelt down revealing a perfect
hourglass five and a half feet tall, as she put on a fire engine red wool coat lined with
red leopard print, a secret I had seen, before I watched it fall with big buttons to her
knees like a trenchcoat as she stood. She smiled, I swear, as I looked back, knowing I
had seen the animal print hidden inside.
We are silly, prideful little things, and quick decisions like the Filipino are the
only way. German guy, in the moment of truth, trusts them and that is his mistake.
Their pride prevents them from seizing an opportunity to escape (the last ingredient to
their rope), and so they are thrown out too early and are stuck holding only each other.
They try to distract him to get what they want, a perfectly transparent piece of cloth, but
become enamored with his story, and the black guy tells the German guy to be patient
despite the German’s intuition. Filipino finds out about the escape plan so they have to
race and rush outside, but the line is too short. “Now is not the time to worry about the
past.”
“Let us never speak of this again,” he said, and they agreed.
He grabbed him and the two of them jumped, the braided rope in both their
hands, out the window. Minutes later, the two guards in the tower pointed and
snickered, taking their time before sounding the alarm or raising their guns. In the
13 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com
Romeo & Juliet
by Scott Lambridis
scopes of their guns they could see the two tattoos.
There they were, hanging and hugging from a thin line of rope out the busted
window of the Filipino’s cell, their biceps clenched around each other, two star-crossed
legendary lovers finally embracing their lovers from another mother.
+++
14 of 14
Scott Lambridis ● scott@omnibucket.com ● 614.537.9070 ● 2125 Woolsey St. Berkeley CA ● www.slambridis.com