By Joshua Ryan
I was in another tall, old room, but this one was tall and narrow. Along one wall was a set of shelves, with line after line of metal baskets on top of them. Along the opposite wall was another one of those big old-fashioned desks — only this one was loaded with computer equipment. The equipment looked strange in a room like that, almost eerie. It was like two worlds were being jammed together. . . . The tears were still in my eyes, running down my face. I was having a hard time focusing . . . “Hit the prints!” someone barked.
There was a guard sitting behind the desk, and the guard was already yelling at me. “The prints on the FLOOR!” I looked at the floor. There was a pair of yellow feet painted there. I put my freshly polished black shoes on the fading yellow feet and looked back at the guard. He wasn’t looking at me. He was writing something, and it took him a long time. That is, I think it did. Time was strange at the moment.
The guard put a stamp on a thing that must have been part of my “docs”; then he got up and strode to the other side of the desk. He was young. He was Mexican. He was short and slight. His grays were freshly washed. His hair was freshly slicked and combed. There were deep thick furrows running through it, like newly plowed earth. And he had a paddle dangling from his belt.
He stood still for a minute and looked at me. He wasn’t frowning. He wasn’t sneering. He was just looking at me with total contempt. I could feel my own lips trembling. I could feel the snot running out of my nose. I couldn’t do anything about it.
“Drop that briefcase,” he said.
I discovered that I was still holding a briefcase. The briefcase clattered to the floor.
“Kneel.”
I knelt on the tile floor. I felt him unlocking my leg irons.
“Stand.”
I stood, and he unlocked my handcuffs. He hung my cuffs and irons on the wall behind his desk. There were a lot of other cuffs and irons hanging there.
“Hands on the plate, palms down.” He pointed to a thing on his desk. It was a sheet of plastic. I spread my hands on the sheet, and a white light came on, underneath. Then it went out. “Those are your handprints, boy. Now I’m gonna do your visuals. Stand against that wall. Face this way.” There were lines painted on one wall of the room, and numbers painted next to the lines. 5’9″, 5’10,” 5’11” . . . I recognized that wall. It was the one that Jake had stood in front of, when they took his mugshots. It was strange how much larger the lines and numbers looked, when you saw them up close. Then I thought — mugshots! They were taking my mugshots! My pictures would be all over the web! Joey could see them. Terry could see them. Peter could see them. Mr. Dietrich could see them. The people I knew in college . . . The people I knew in high school! Suddenly a spotlight came on, right in my eyes. I was blind; I was staring like an animal that you catch in a flashlight, outside your tent in boy scouts. A funny little animal. What is it? Do you think it was trying to get in? Then something whirred and clicked, and the light went off as suddenly as it came on. “Turn to your left!” I stumbled to the left, blind and dizzy, and the thing happened again. “That’s it for now. Here, boy.” He was calling me like a dog.
I staggered back to the desk and stood in front of him. “Give me your watch, your rings and earrings, and any other jewelry that you may have in your possession. This is also the time when you will surrender your wallet.” My wallet! I had the same automatic reaction that any guy would have: No way! That’s MINE! Then I remembered. I no longer owned a wallet. I no longer owned anything. And I wouldn’t be needing money anymore. “Slap em down, boy! Hurry it up!” I pulled out my wallet and threw it on the desk. I must have thrown it pretty hard, because it splattered open, and the stuff fell out. A couple of twenties and a one. My Visa card. My monthly train pass. That piece of paper with the list of party supplies that Joey wrote down on it, the supplies that he wanted me to get this afternoon . . . My driver’s license. There it was again, that pale, smiling, helpless face, looking up at me. I’d always hated that face. Now I was surrendering it to a prison guard, and I felt sorry for that face. It would never be needed again. The guy in that picture would never drive a car. He would never visit a bank. He would never go out to a bar or stop off at a liquor store. I felt my chin trembling, and I tried not to start crying again while I took off my college ring and the new watch that Joey gave me, only a week before. I wouldn’t need a watch in the Durant Unit. Other people would be keeping track of my time. I just hoped that they gave the watch back to Joey. I really hadn’t been good for him. . . . But I needed to hurry. I didn’t want to get hit again.
“No earrings or other body jewelry, boy?”
Body jewelry! God, no. Who did he think I was?
“Boss! No Boss!”
“I thought you were one of these pretty boys.”
“Boss! No Boss!”
“All right, boy. But we better not find any jewelry down there, once I get you naked.”
Naked! God! All that stuff, the stuff that I knew about, in the back of my mnd . . . That stuff was about to happen . . . I couldn’ t think . . . But the officer was waiting . . . I had to say something right away . . .
“Boss! No Boss!”
“All right,” he said, looking like a bomb that had been ticking and had almost gone off, “I’ll proceed. On the shelves to your left you will find a number of wire baskets. You will remove one of those baskets, set it on the floor, and place your briefcase in the basket. You will then remove a second one of those baskets, set it on the floor, and place all of your clothing in that basket. You will then replace both baskets on the shelf.” He was talking like a machine, but that was reassuring — machines don’t paddle you. I removed one of the baskets, set it on the floor, and laid my briefcase carefully inside it. It made a good fit. It was like the basket had been especially made to hold an expensive briefcase like mine. It was like the basket was waiting for me to arrive. Then I removed the second basket, set it on the floor, and pulled off my coat. I folded it and laid it in the basket. Then I thought, no, it’ll get mussed like that. I should put my slacks in first. But before that, I’d have to take my shoes off . . .
SWAT! His paddle hit my butt. “What the HELL are you doing, boy?”
“Noth- . . . Boss! Nothing, Boss!”
“That’s right, boy. You’re doin NOTHING!” Another heavy SWAT! “From now on, boy, when an officer gives you an order, you do it double-time, hear?”
“Boss! Yes Boss! Please don’t hit me again, Boss!”
SWAT! “And no back-talk, neither. SHUCK them clothes, boy!”
I shucked.
I yanked my tie off and threw it into the basket. I pulled my shirt off and threw it on top of my tie. I pulled off the shoes that I’d paid so much for, only a month ago, and my soft gray socks, and my slim soft belt, and I pulled down my zipper like I was in a rush to have sex and I dragged off my slacks and I threw everything onto the pile in the metal basket. So I was standing with only my shorts on, and I was scared to take them down, because something was happening inside them. It was something that I never would have believed could happen at a time like this. But it was, and it was happening just when there was nothing left but my shorts. The shorts were baby blue, with little red hearts all over them, because it was Joey that had bought them for me.
The officer was looking at my shorts. He was looking at them like he was the kind of guy who never wore anything except freshly bleached pasty-whites.
“What’s the matter, boy? Afraid to show what you got?” His paddle was pointing right at my crotch.
“No . . . I mean, Boss! No Boss! Boss! I’m sorry, Boss!”
“Then take em DOWN, boy!” My briefs lingered a moment, stuck to my dick by the stuff that was oozing out of it. Then they fell to my feet, and I bent over (fearfully, watching the paddle) and threw them into the basket. Now I was totally naked.
I knew that my face was burning red. I also knew that my dick was as hard as rock and it was jutting straight out in front of me, dripping and vibrating and wondering what was gonna happen next.
This time, the officer didn’t even lower his eyes. It was like he knew what was going on without even having to look. “I’ll give you 15 seconds,” he said, “to shrink that thing.”
“Boss! Yes Boss!” There’s nothing like panic to make your dick shrink back in your crotch. I think I beat the time by at least five seconds.
“You offenders are all alike,” he said.
“Boss! Yes Boss!”
“Open your mouth!” he said. I opened my mouth.
“Wider!” He peered inside.
“Raise your arms!” I raised my arms.
“Raise your balls!” I raised my balls.
“Bend over!” I bent over. “Grab those cheeks!” I grabbed my cheeks. “Spread em!” I spread em. I heard the snap of a rubber glove. I felt his fingers burrowing up my ass. He searched my ass very thoroughly.
“Hit the prints!” I hit the prints. Now it was my naked white feet on the painted yellow feet. The officer threw the glove away and wrote something more on my documents. He was involved in his work. He paid no attention to me. I might as well have been the file cabinet standing behind his desk.
I was afraid to move. I stood with my arms at my sides and my feet on the cold tiles. I was naked. I was a naked prisoner, waiting for whatever my guard decided to do. After a few minutes, one of the computers came to life and spat out some pieces of paper. The officer reached over without looking and put the papers down on the desk. He scribbled some more on the documents.
Someplace behind me, a door opened and shut. “Hullo Doc,” the officer said, looking up. “Glad you’re still here. This is the one they just delivered. He’s the last of the year — I promise!” The officer spoke pleasantly and conscientiously. He was a young professional who cared about his job. He stood up and handed the doctor a sheaf of documents.
The doctor stood in front of me, glancing through the papers. He was a tall, thick man, wearing a white coat. He must have been about 35, but he was already combing strands of yellow hair over a slick bald head. I remembered how Joey always said “Get a rug!”, just under his breath, when one of those guys came into the bar. And one night, the guy heard him . . . I thought, when I was with Joey, that life could be very embarrassing . . .
“All right, Gonzalez. I hope so,” the doctor said. He was obviously in a hurry. “Buzz us in.”
“Sure thing, Doc. Wait a sec — don’t want to lose any of his paper work. I just need to slip these mugshots into the folder. . . ” He picked the printouts off the desk and inserted them into the papers in the doctor’s hand. As the printouts went past me, I saw a strange, scared looking man in a rumpled suit, pinned like an insect to a numbered wall. It was one of those pictures that they flash on the screen for a microsecond. News at Eleven. Stalker arrested. Terrorized local neighborhood . . . .
“OK, I’ll buzz you in now, Doc.”
The buzzer went off. The doctor pointed me forward, and I walked through another doorway. I was in a room that might have been the twin of the last one, except that the first thing I saw in this room was a scale. “On the scale,” he said. “Off the scale.” “Hold out your arm.” “I’m going to take your pulse.” “Have you ever had . . ” “Open your mouth.” “Wider.” “Take this cup and piss in it. I said PISS in it. God damn it, you have thirty seconds to piss in that cup, before I install a catheter. That’s better. Now bend over and grab your cheeks. Stop that quivering, I’m not gonna rape you! All right, you can straighten up.” The whole exam must have taken 5 minutes. The doctor was holding my file and making a lot of check marks on it. “No congenital infirmities, no history of dangerous illnesses . . . All right . . . uh . . . Rossetti . . . so far, you’ve had good luck. You are now certified for admission to this institution and pronounced fit for hard labor.” He signed something; then he looked up. He had that expression on his face that Mr. Dietrich used to get, when he didn’t want to take any more time with you but he felt that he had to say something because he had a professional duty to say it. The doctor’s eyes were small and beady, like a bird’s eyes, only blue.
“You are a very nervous individual, Rossetti. My advice to you is . . . Lighten up. You’ll get along better that way.”
I was expecting him to say something more, but he didn’t. He was waiting for me to say something.
“Boss! Yes Boss!” I said.
“Very well. Wait in the next room. I’ll send your paperwork on. That’s all, Rossetti.”
Another buzzer sounded, another steel door slid open, and I walked out of the doctor’s office into the Reception Hall. I knew that was its name, because one of the walls said RECEPTION HALL in big Victorian letters.
Aside from that, the room was like all the others, except that it was much bigger, and it had a window. The window started about five feet off the ground, and it went up to the ceiling, then on to someplace above. It was about four feet wide, but there were two sets of bars on it, one inside next to the wall and the other outside beyond the glass, and you could tell that the wall it went through was about three feet thick. You couldn’t really see anything out of the window. You could catch a glimpse, up near the ceiling, of the last faint color of sunset, broken into pieces by the bars. That, and a drift of white snow huddling at the bottom, were the only things you could see.
A loudspeaker crackled and a voice shouted, “Find a place and sit!” So there was a camera in the room! I looked around hurriedly. The only furniture was rows and rows of wooden benches. There were no backs to the benches, only black numbers stenciled across the tops, every couple of feet: 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . There must have been a hundred of those little numbered seats. I slid into number 12 and sat very still. I didn’t hear anything more, so I knew that was all right.
Then I noticed there was somebody else in the room. Way at the end I could see a man swabbing the floor. He was wearing black workboots and a brown uniform, and he had numbers on his butt and the back of his shirt. He turned and glanced at me for a second; then he went back to swabbing the floor. The room was warm, but a shiver went through me. Soon, very soon . . . that was what I was gonna look like. I was gonna look like that guy.
I instinctively put my hands over my balls, the way any guy does when he’s scared. The loudspeaker came to life again: “No masturbation in the Reception Hall!” My hands flew off my crotch. The convict raised his eyes again, momentarily, and went back to his job. I guess he’d seen it all before.
I hadn’t. Before long, I was sweating so much that my butt was glued to the bench and there were rivers flowing out of my pits. I could hear the mop swishing back and forth . . . Swish . . . swash . . . swish . . . swash . . . a slow, endless rhythm, broken only by the gulp of the bucket when the convict thrust his mop into and out of it. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. How many thousands of guys, I wondered, had sat there and listened to that sound before? How many thousands of guys had glued their butts to seat number 12? Maybe Jake had waited on that same bench . . . .
Now I was really sweating. I hadn’t wanted to think. I would die if I had to think. But now I could feel it coming. It would have to start. I couldn’t help it. Now I had nothing else to do but think. . . .
What had happened to me? What had he done to me? He’d sold me for a “reward”! What reward? What could it be? The only thing I could think of . . . They’d agreed to let him out! That must be it. They must have agreed to let him out. So long as he agreed to . . . find a replacement! And so long as the replacement brought in money. But what was I saying? “Agreed”? He never “agreed.” He “proposed”! It was his idea all along!
It made sense. He’d planned it out. I would take his place in prison. Sure, he probably liked to talk to me, at least the first couple times. But then he got tired of me. And then he decided, what the hell! Let’s see if the officers will go for this. So he got rid of me for a while. “Come back in two weeks.” In two weeks, he’d make sure that all the deals were made, all the arrangements were in place, all the cameras were working. And at the end of those two weeks, he knew I’d be desperate. “It’s up to you . . . it’s your responsibility . . . you step over the wire.” He couldn’t be the one who took that step. It wouldn’t work that way. It had to be in the prison zone, and I had to be the one who went there, so it would be my crime and my responsibility. And he made sure that he was waiting in the sun. No hiding in the shadows, where the camera couldn’t see us. He even showed up early, because he knew that I would too. I thought I was so smart, so much smarter than he was. After all, I was free, and he was in prison. I was so much smarter and so much better. But he was the one who was smart. Now he was free — and I was in prison! If only I hadn’t signed that guilty plea!
And then I knew why I’d signed it . . . signed it so fast. . . . I couldn’t wait to get to Jake again! Couldn’t wait to be with the guy who’d betrayed me.
It was sickening. It was horrifying. But that was it. That must be it. I loved him, and I wanted to be with him, even if it meant going to the penitentiary. That’s what made the difference. That’s why I couldn’t stop and think. That’s why I gave up so soon. That’s why I signed for my free ticket for the bus to Durant. Now I was the Durant Unit’s newest convict, and Jake was . . . gone!
I hadn’t wanted to think, but I was thinking now. I jumped up from my seat. I started to walk. I don’t know where I was going, but I started to walk. I had to get out of seat number 12.
“Sit DOWN, convict! This will be your final warning.” The voice from the loudspeaker filled the room. The mop stopped swishing. The convict hunched his head up and looked at me. I was standing alone in the center of an enormous room, and I was naked.
I found seat number 12 again. I sat down in my sweat. I tried not to think. If you don’t think anything, you don’t feel anything either. You don’t exist anymore. That would be good.
I looked at the window. The sunset was gone; the outside world was completely invisible. All you could see in the glass was a reflection of the lights inside. Then I realized. That was the first time anyone had called me “convict.”
A door opened and an Officer walked into the room. “Stand up, boy.”
I stood up. I was facing him. He was a guy my own age. My own height. My own shade of hair. Only this guy was wearing a prison guard’s flattop and a prison guard’s grays and a prison guard’s boots and a prison guard’s paddle. He wasn’t a really big guy, but he was a really buff guy. He really filled out that uniform. I was standing naked in front of him.
“What’s that you said, boy?”
He was scowling at me. Not a mean scowl. Just a scowl. I knew what came after a scowl like that. I looked at the paddle on his belt. His fingers were caressing the handle. Then I remembered what I was supposed to say. “Boss! Yes Boss!” I shouted. There was no more danger of showing wood. While I was thinking about Jake, my dick had shrunk to nothing.
“That’s better, convict. Not best. But better. You’re startin to learn, boy. Now that you’re on the inside, you’re gonna find out that there’s a lotta things you gotta learn.” He was talking slowly, like he’d just memorized his speech. “And the first thing you gotta learn is this: I am Line Officer Nolan. I am the officer who will be taking you through your processing today. Since you are the only offender here at present, I will be giving you my full and undivided attention. You understand what that means, boy?” His fingers tightened on the handle.
“Boss! Yes Boss!”
“Awright, you learned that pretty good, boy. Now I’ll teach you somethin else.” He reached for his belt. I closed my eyes, waiting for the paddle to hit. But it didn’t. There was a noise coming from his cell phone.
“Nolan,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah. I don’t care if it is New Years Eve. I got a convict, and they got a contract. Yeah right. Tell him to git on that bike and git up here now. If not earlier. Over.”
He clicked off the phone and looked back at me. There was no effort to explain. I had to be the convict he was talking about, but convicts don’t get explanations. He started again, just like nothing happened, except that he’d lost his rhythm.
“Now I’ll teach you something else, see. So listen up, boy. Anytime an officer, like me, is with you, boy, you stand at attention. I said, you stand at ATTENTION! Put your fuckin SHOULDERS back! Pull your fuckin ASS in! Christ almighty, didn’t nobody ever teach you nothin? KEEP that ass IN, FAGGOT! We already know what you like to do with it. You don’t need no advertisin. That’s better, boy. From now on, you stand AT ATTENTION, and you stay AT ATTENTION, and you stay SHUT UP and BUTTONED UP till the officer is ready to make you move. Got it, boy?”
His forehead was creased. He was tightening his fingers on that handle again . . .
“Boss! Yes Boss!”
“All right,” Officer Nolan said. He was sighing like he’d had a terrific time not swatting my butt. “You’re a pretty slow learner, ain’t you?”
“Boss! Yes Boss!”
“Didn’t do real good in school, did you?”
“Boss! No Boss!”
“Well, this is where you learn what you never learned before. Number One, you speak when you’re spoken to. You think you want somethin, you think you need somethin, you think real good before you open that trap.”
“Boss! Yes Boss!”
“Number Two, any time you’re doin somethin that the rest of the cons in your gang ain’t doin, you’re probly doin somethin wrong. You think you gotta do somethin different, boy?”
“Boss! No Boss!”
“You think you’re somethin different than the rest of the cons we got here, boy?”
“Boss! No Boss!”
“You think you’re somethin different than that boy swabbin the deck there, boy?”
I looked at the convict — the other convict. He didn’t react. He just kept swiping away at the floor.
“Boss! No Boss!”
“You think you’re somethin different than any of these other cage rats, boy?”
“Boss! No Boss!”
“That’s right. You ain’t no different and you ain’t no better. Not in the Durant Unit, you ain’t. Think you can remember all that, boy?”
“Boss! Yes Boss!”
“All right. Let’s see if you can keep it in mind. Cuz this is where it starts, boy. This is where you get that ass of yours processed in.”
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