A couple of uneventful days pass, and then a Deputy with his arm in the air twirling a set of handcuffs yells: "Flagstone Walker, come with me."

He hauls a bunch of chains out of a box and shackles me all over serial-killer style. We pass through the steel door and outside into the blazing sunlight, where an armored vehicle ships me off to SF General for a chest X-ray, ordered up on the basis of a skin test the previous day in the Medical pod indicating positive for TB. I'm informed the skin test results mean I'm susceptible to getting TB and may or may not have it.

At the hospital, additional news: I'm told an "aberration" has been spotted on my X-ray. Unlikely it's TB, but a pack a day for 40 years makes me a good candidate for lung cancer. I'm waiting for the doctor to examine the X-ray and make his call.

Just as I've decided life has meaning I conclude I'm faced with two prospects: The impending sentence coming down from the bench of Wonder Woman 2 or slow death by cigarettes.

Ordinarily, I'd be mortified waiting to find out what the aberration will yield. But now: Three cheers for lung cancer! Mutate on! Surely the judge will only slap me with probation knowing I've only got about four months to a couple of years remaining. What little money I have left I'll spend in sushi bars, stuffing myself with unagi and yellowtail while the Big C eats away my lungs. And how wonderful knowing approximately how many days remain. I'll have time to get my affairs in order before facing infinity eyeball-to-eyeball.

Once free, I'll play my trump card: Vietnam. At last, those days I spent in the Asian shithole will pay off. I'll hobble onto the #38 bus, coughing and hacking all the way to the VA hospital, working those Camel Lights to the bitter end.

Maybe along with lung cancer, I'll end up with a triple bypass and the prostate humdinger for good measure. Fort Miley never looked so good, like a sanitarium on a magic mountain. A real nice view of the Bay out there. I can sit in a red plastic chair with a shawl over my shoulders and read books until the final Camel casts me down into Dante's sixth ring of Hell, a trench filled with shit where the Big District Attorney in the Sky sends all the pimps and panderers.

Not to be.

The doctor returns, informs me the aberration means nothing at all, but assures me worms and flies will be all over future X-rays if I don't stop smoking. I'm reshackled and returned to F-pod, where Slicer and Slinky are doubled over in laughter, their right fists with thumbs and forefingers in circles slashing through the air like piston rings stroking along imaginary three-foot cocks protruding from their orange crotches. This mock masturbatory exercise, directed toward Queen Gene in a cubicle on the opposite side of the pod, is a continual source of gratification for these two characters.

Pistoning on, Slicer and Slinky mumble short phrases, sometimes mixed with rap, keeping their voices low so the Deputies won't hear them. "Yo, butt boy, watch out... backyard boogie...suck-o, suck-o, suck-o, dough, dough, doughnut hole...5-shot on Polk Street...Faggotstein...butt pirate, prepare to board...Git the one-eyed trouser trout..."

Both high-school dropouts in their early twenties, they are high-tetosterone hets who strike me as gay-nervous rather than gay haters. Slinky, 6'4," rail-thin, runway-model mixed-race face, hopes to score with his raps when he gets out. He's in for assault, a first offense made nastier when his steel-toed boot slammed into the side of his opponent, who was flat on his back. Slicer, a white guy with a pug nose and a cliché mobster scar on his cheek, got busted for selling crack around 16th and Mission.

Queen Gene has not been attacked by anybody in F-pod, but Slicer, Slinky, and many others subject him to verbal abuse and limped-wrist gestures, though always at a distance. Hardly anybody talks to the gay man. Neither do I. Slicer says he was in a cell with Queen Gene before they were transferred to F-pod. He claims the gay man lay naked on his top bunk and committed the crime of self-abuse in full view of all those in the cell. I doubt this is true, but it provides the basis for much snickering. And the man ostracized.

For Slicer, homosexuals are not revolting, merely remote as Martians, a species doing things with their bodies beyond comprehension. At the same time, Slicer tells me he seeks out gays on Polk Street, pretending he's a male hooker. He's selective, picks only men driving expensive new cars. After agreeing to $20 for a blow job, Slicer draws a knife from his boot, assures his prey he will neither suck him off nor hurt him, but will slice up the upholstery if the twenty is not handed over. No cut cars to date. Slicer exits with the money. "Easy targets," he says with a shrug.