Larry Noodles & The Tossed Banana

Last night a group of guys got together in the prison shul for a kumsitz, one inmate playing the acoustic guitar and guys singing. Mostly Jewish songs. A few songs from the 1960s.

This inmate G says he composes songs for Matisyahu every now and then. He played a song that he recently submitted to Matisyahu, who may include it in his next album. He said not to repeat the song to anyone for copyright reasons, as if I would ever remember this song.

I asked him what his royalties would be. He said Matisyahu gets 17 percent of each song, and he would get 2 percent of the 17 percent. The record company gets the rest. Not a lot of commissary money for composing a song; it probably comes out to less than the 13 cents an hour he earns as in inmate working in the prison warehouse.

This inmate G reserved the shul just for singing on motzei Shabbos (the hours after the Sabbath ends). He didn’t really reserve the room; he just ran it by the prison rabbi chaplain, who said, ​“It sounds like a good idea. Until anyone complains about it, the room is yours.” Inmates love to complain around here; no matter what you do somebody will complain about it.

In the room sat an 80-year-old man who was finishing up his meal and saying his prayers for grace after meals. He was mad that the room was being taken over by a bunch of young pishers with a guitar. He said he didn’t think the chaplain approved this, and everyone should stop singing and playing the guitar. He didn’t like the songs. He also wanted all the lights back on, as the inmates turned off some of the many lights in the room.

The guys said,” Fuhgetaboutit! We are not leaving,” and ignored the old man.

The man calmly started to slice a banana into pieces. After he finished slicing up the banana he proceeded to throw the pieces of banana at inmate G, who was strumming the guitar.

There were some loud words exchanged, some yelling. The 80-year-old man called G a ​“shaygetz,” among other things, and berated him for not going to services on a regular basis. G shot back and said the old man had no ​“derech eretz” for someone who is so religious.

A new little bald inmate, who got some guys mad for talking about how he used to paint his toenails and wax his betzem on the outside, started to curse out the old man. The little bald guy knew the old man from the outside for many years, and hated the old man, and said he was a career criminal; he said he burned down half of Brooklyn.

After the dust settled the old man calmly walked out of the room. G, who is a new inmate here for five years for financial fraud, was embarrassed. He organized this kumsitz, and he had a new inmate in there who wasn’t really religious, who was transferred from the medium.

I told G he was making a big deal out of nothing. ​“This old man does this all the time. I watched all kinds of fighting over the summer. He likes to throw stuff; he usually only throws rolled-up napkins at the inmate leading the services. I have never seen him throw a banana. Don’t be embarrassed in front of the new guy; he has seen alot worse in the medium.”

I tried to give this inmate G a new nickname in here as a result of this fiasco. I floated the name ​“Dana Banana” or ​“Banana Dana” by the other inmates. 

G didn’t like this nickname, so I stopped calling him that.

It is not proper prison manners to give someone a nickname that he doesn’t approve of. I agreed to the nicknames ​“Larry Luv” and ​“Larry Noodles” and ​“Noodles” and ​“General Noodles.”

The Larry Luv nickname I think was related to my job as a divorce lawyer.

The Larry Noodles nickname was related to an incident in which the Blue Boyz found a small bag of cooked pasta in my cube. The General Noodles nickname had to do with an Israeli guy whom I embarassed when I debunked his theory that Ariel Sharon was a great general, with a book I found in here. In reality Ariel Sharon was a coward and led his troops from the rear; he never led an attack.

Then there was the nickname Larry Ding Dong, which I did not approve. That one was based on a bet I had with another inmate. One of the inmates told me that he can start any nickname in the camp and get it to stick if he wanted. Stupid me, I challenged him. So he called me Larry Ding Dong, and by the next morning everyone was calling me Larry Ding Dong. 

I hated that nickname. It took a month or so before guys stopped calling me that. Now I am back to Noodles or Larry Noodles, which has stuck to me since the summer.

New Haven attorney Lawrence Dressler is currently serving a 20-month sentence in an out-of-state federal prison for his part in a mortgage-fraud ring.