By Joshua Ryan

The party happened at a really nice steak place (“top ranked,” my brother said), and Wyatt and his friends ate and drank, and you could tell that in five years they would all be totally fat.  Not that I don’t like to eat steak and drink.  Because I do.  But anyway, they were going on and on with all this sports talk that is totally uninteresting to me, while I kept ordering drinks with my fake ID, which made me feel like the kind of person the Department of Corrections calls “an offender”! although everybody at Kingston does it, and they’re all on their way to boring jobs, and finally I heard something that sounded like an interesting story.  Which was that Donald so and so, who was in their class at St. Swithin’s, had fallen on hard times.  His dad had gotten in all kinds of complications and Donald had to leave his job, which was “nothing to brag about anyway,” and come back and live at home, and now he had this terrible job that was barely enough to pay the mortgage.  It was some manager job with, “get this!  The Department of Corrections!”  They all laughed at their friend Donald.

Then Wyatt said, “Hey Collypus!  Maybe that’s the job that you should train for!”  I blushed and squirmed, and they wanted to know why.  Wyatt said, “Because he spends his time taking pictures of convicts,” and I had to explain that OVER A YEAR BEFORE we’d been on the ferry to Maskawa, and I saw something interesting, etc.  “Yeah?” one of them said.  “Sure you don’t have a boyfriend in prison someplace?”

They were always mentioning how they had “nothing against LGBQ,” which I guess guys in business are supposed to say, in those words.  But they didn’t mind ribbing me every time they saw me.  “Found a good man to marry yet?”  And so on.  “It so happens,” I said, “I’m going to write my senior thesis on the subject.  Images of prisons and prisoners.”  That quieted them a bit.  I was kind of surprised that I enjoyed lying so much, or that it came so easy to me.  I wasn’t surprised by their gullibleness.  Gullibility I mean.  But it wouldn’t be time for me to start my thesis for another year, and I hadn’t even thought of a topic.

But here’s where I was thinking like Steven and Danny again, because I said, “Hey, maybe I should contact this guy Donald and see if he can give me some information.  For my thesis.”  So one of them said, “Why not?  He’s got nothin else to do,” which made them all laugh.  Then he took out his phone and sent me the guy’s address, and that night I looked him up on the net and saw that he was Vice Manager for Institutional Services, Department of Corrections.  Even I knew that’s the kind of title you have if you’ve got a job just because your family used to be rich.  And I contacted him, and three weeks later I took him out to dinner at La Ridicule.  I’m not totally into French food; I’m sort of a meat and potatoes guy.  The food in that place is all right, though.  But the point was, it’s absurdly expensive.  Hanging around my family, I’d always known that you can get a lot just by showing you have money.

I could go into detail about Donald Harmon, but he wasn’t even gay, so why bother?  Also, he didn’t have anything much to say about Maskawa — anything that was hot, anyhow.  He just kept calling it “our premier maximum security facility.”  When he’d gotten drunk he called it “the bastille.”  He obviously didn’t know much about actual prisons.  I have to admit, I enjoyed seeing him suck up to me, with him being older than me and having a job, even though it wasn’t a good job, and to see him subtly mentioning other jobs that he might be qualified for — as if I knew how he could get them.  I could tell he didn’t mind lying about his qualifications.  So, having established all this, I waited for the right moment and asked him if he could get me any information about the novelist, Steven Meres, who was one of the authors I was researching and apparently had some, uh, ongoing connection with prisons in the state.  He never heard of Steven Meres, but he did guess where I was going.  He said that all information about “residents or former residents of our facilities” was strictly confidential.  So I went back to his own favorite subject and asked him to tell me more about the kinds of jobs that interested him, and mentioned my own sojourn at St. Swithin’s and all the alumni I claimed to know … and when I invited him to dinner the next time I sent him another casual request for information, and at dinner he gave it to me, very completely.  He must have done a lot of research.  There was also a long discussion of a job he wanted in my brother’s company.

That’s how I learned that Steven was serving one to life for unauthorized possession of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for sale, driving under the influence, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer of the law; that he was “located” at Maskawa in Cell No. 435, B Block; that he had a cellmate, one Finn Kolchak, who was serving five to life for armed robbery, terroristic threats, and possession of controlled substances; that cell assignments were very rarely changed at Maskawa, a longterm institution where stability is vital and residential alterations are required to be initiated from the top; that Steven’s labor assignment was Scrub Squad; that his disciplinary record included six reprimands for disrespect, loitering, and failure to follow orders, as well as two restrictions (three days and five days) for loitering in a near-off-limits area (“usually, they tell me, that means contraband, buying or selling”); and that, just between Donald and me, this was “not a profile that will result in a favorable review for release.”

“In other words,” I said, “Meres is in for life.”

“Looks that way.”

When he told me the charges that sent Steven to the Pen, I knew they were phony.  I knew he had planned to put himself in prison for life.  He was just that smart!  “Well,” I said.  “I guess I won’t be contacting him about my thesis.”

This was in December of my junior year, with Christmas wreaths in the windows and eggnog on the menu.  Knowing that Steven was definitely locked away like that — for life! — was the most exciting gift I could possibly get.  A great fantasy can get you through the holidays — especially when it turns out to be real!  But you know how it is when there’s something inside you that’s working on something, and you don’t want to know what it is?  Maybe because it’s sort of risky or dark or whatever, so part of your brain clicks off.  You stop following what’s going on in there.  I think that’s what happened to me.  The whole Steven thing … After a while it sort of went on vacation.  Retired into the background.  It had given me plenty of ideas to jerk about, so maybe that was enough for right then.  When I thought about the last time I’d hooked up with somebody, I could hardly remember, it seemed so long ago.  That’s what fantasy can do to you, or for you — you can have plenty of fun, and you don’t need to dress up for it!  But gradually an idea was coming to the front of my mind.  It was like a prick that’s gradually getting itself hard.  It starts pushing against your shorts; then before you know it, it’s so far out of your jeans that you’d have to fight to push it back in.

So, the way it happened … One day I was studying for my midterm in Cultural Theory, which is horrible stuff but you have to take the course if you want an English degree, God know why, and I saw what I wanted to do.  I would get myself sent to Prison.  It would be for life, and it would be in Steven’s cell!

When you get one of these big insights, I guess you always think, “Why didn’t I think of that before?”  I’d known what I wanted.  Steven had shown it could happen.  And if I could make it happen too, why not with him?  True, I didn’t know exactly how he’d done it, but these mysteries are usually simpler than they seem.  It was a mystery how to get across the ocean, but after Columbus did it, suddenly lots of other people did too.

And I already had the perfect tool.  That guy Donald was still around, still banging on me to help him, put in a word for him, get him a job. “Hey, how are you, loved our last chat, I heard about an interesting position in Wyatt’s branch over at…”  He’d be easy to use.  I figured the simplest way to do it — I’d pay him to put me in the DOC databank as a convicted offender with a sentence of, say, 20 years to life (straight “life” might attract attention), and arrange for me to be sent to Maskawa and put in the same cell with Steven.  The trick would getting rid of the current cellmate, that guy named Finn, but if I could be moved in, Finn could be moved out.

OK, it seems like a lot when you write it out that way. But when you look at each part, you see how easily it could be done.  Money would be no object; after all, this was an investment — I was providing for the rest of my life.  Everything in the DOC was pretty much done with computers; Donald was always complaining about how old and creaky they were.  But even the oldest computer could do what I wanted, once it was told what that was.

As for Donald … I had a hard time feeling sorry for him.  He’d recently bought some bullshit stocks and lost whatever money he had left.  “In six months he’ll be on the street,” Wyatt said. “At least his father died.  So he won’t need to pack two bags.”  His incompetence was a good thing for me, though.  As long as I took some precautions.  Can’t let the risk get outta hand.

It was October of my senior year, and I hadn’t taken him to dinner in a long time.  Guess why?  He was a fuckin bore.  Anyway, he writes me saying, can we get together?  So I say sure, let’s do it Thursday at Holly’s.  Which is this chain restaurant.  So he’ll remember what his social position really is!   So we got there, and we did some small talk and I told him what I wanted, very simple.  Course, he was surprised, to put it mildly.  But we go back and forth and he says, yeah, if that’s what you want, I know a guy who can probably set it up for you.

I could see he was desperate for cash.  But he still wanted to bargain.  He thought for a while, like a greedy bastard, and told me he needed $150,000, which he’d split with “the guy.”  Now it was my turn to be surprised.  He must have been doing a bunch of other dirty deeds, only not so profitable!  I had the money, all right; I’d just need to sell a little bit of stock.  MY stocks were still good!  But I knew if I didn’t bargain with him, he’d start taking liberties with the deal.  So talk and talk, and another meeting, and there’s nothing like tension to make the whole thing hotter.

By January, I could barely see my keyboard — my dick kept climbing up and telling me some new story about what my life was gonna be, once they put me behind bars.  And yeah, my senior thesis was going OK, cause I did use that topic I made up.  All bullshit anyway.

But to continue — I agreed to 100K and gave him 25K as a downpayment, and I made it a check so he’d know if he welshed on me or ratted on me there’d be the proof and he’d suffer too.  I told him I didn’t mind going to prison, but I thought he would mind!  He gulped and agreed.  We called it a loan, which he would later not pay back, ha ha.  There’d be other checks along the way, but he’d get the final one only after I got to Maskawa and settled in and was satisfied about the way I was housed.  Meaning with STEVEN!  Soon as I could communicate with my lawyer — he could fix it if my letter didn’t get out — I’d tell him to mail an envelope to the appropriate address with the last installment of the “loan.”  My final act of charity!

It was February or March before I put the last part of the deal in place.  I’d decided I didn’t want to turn myself in.  I wanted to make “life” more likely by being entered in the records as not showing up when they told me to. They’d issue an order for my arrest, and the cop would come and bust me right at my place, right in front of my neighbors.  Very humiliating!  Another good thing: I could see the order before I handed him the … what’s the word? … penultimate check.

So yeah.  Like a robot I kept working on my thesis, I guess because when I was an old guy in prison they’d give me a job in the library, since I had a degree in English!  My arrest was scheduled for June 21.  I had time to do some things with the lawyer, which was all boring, but I told him I was having some problems that might send me to jail (“hold on — I’m not a criminal lawyer” — “I know you’re not”), so I needed this and that to happen in case I did, blah blah.  That took care of that.  Then came the day when I met Donald at Holly’s again.  He was practically going into cardiac, wanting his check, but I insisted on ordering food.  “Nothing for me,” he muttered.  It was like he was gonna run out of the place as soon as he saw my signature.

Once the waitress was gone he opened his laptop and showed me the order for my arrest.  So I’d know there wasn’t any funny business, I insisted on pulling it up myself.  I’d already found out where it was on the Department of Corrections website; what I needed was the password for that section.  He gave it to me, I scrolled down to “Abbott,” and there it was!  The webpage that would change my life!

ORDER FOR ARREST

ABBOTT, Carl Owen III

Failure to Report for Imprisonment

After that there was a picture of me.  I have to say it — I always look good in pictures.  Even that one, which I recognized as the picture on my driver’s license.

“How’d you get my DMV picture?” I asked.

“Don’t know.  I leave all that stuff to the guy.”

I wanted to ask, well, what did YOU do for my money?  But I didn’t intend to screw things up.  I am actually VERY risk-averse!  And, actually, I was SO BORED with him.  If “the guy” was the one who was doing it all, fine — there was no reason for me to know who he was.  Safer not to, really.

“Do they have my fingerprints too?” I said.

“Yeah.  Same source, I guess.”

I knew he was waiting for his check, so I took some more time to look at my picture.  Here’s this young guy with the floppy blond hair and the big innocent smile, like “Come and get me!”  What could turn this happy guy into a criminal?  Must be his socio-economic status.  That’s what I learned in college, LOL!  One thing I knew: this was his last picture as Colly the Cool.  From now on it would be Colly the Convict.  Those pictures should be interesting!

So, OK, so much for the wonderful photo.  Let’s see what else I could find on my deep dive into the soul of Abbott, Carl Owen III.

“Offender has failed to appear for imprisonment and is reported to be living at 519 Amherst Way, University City.  He is not considered to be armed or dangerous.  On arrest, apprehending officer will convey offender to Owosso OPC to begin serving his sentence.”

Fuck!  Serving my sentence!  There was always such pressure in my family to train for some job where I’d be running things.  Issuing orders!  Writing reports!  Consulting spreadsheets!  That’s what my brother loved to do.  That’s why he thought Collylocks was such a pussy — he didn’t want to “take any responsibility” — that is, for doing those things.  So now I was gonna get a position that reflected the real me — I’d be SERVING MY SENTENCE.

“Let me see that sentence,” I said, and he gave me the code to get to Sentencing Files.  And there it was: ABBOTT, Carl Owen III.  Burglary of occupied residence (three counts), possession of stolen goods (six counts), assault, resisting arrest, assault on an officer of the law, possession of controlled substance for sale (five counts).  20 years to Life.”  Then an addendum:  “Escape (failure to report).  5 years (consecutive).”

I was impressed!  I was a real fuckin criminal!  And the sentence was just right for me: 25 years to life.

“I don’t suppose this could be changed,” I said.

Sweat broke out on his forehead.  I knew he was thinking what I wanted him to think: “Shit!  If I tell him no, maybe he won’t pay me.  Because he already got what he wanted.  It’s in the system.  But if I tell him yes, maybe I can get some more, because he’ll think I can back him out of the system if he doesn’t pay it…”

He didn’t say anything.

“OK,” I said.  “I’ve changed my mind.  Back me out of the system, or you’re not gettin this check I’ve got in my wallet.”

“I’m sorry … I can’t back you out.  You’re in the system.  Order for arrest has already been issued.”

So I knew he was telling the truth.  “Great,” I said.  “Here’s your check.”  And I gave it to him.  “You remember, you’re gonna have me living with Meres.”

“Yes.”

“And you remember what happens if you don’t.”

“No final check.”

“That’s right.  And some other consequences, yet to be named.”  I had no idea what that meant, but what the hell.

He was starting to go, and my hamburger hadn’t even come yet.  “Wait a minute,” I told him. “Let’s confirm the arrangements for my…”

“Arrest.  It’s June 21, just when you said.  You’ll be picked up around 9 a.m.  That’s when he told me.”

“He?  The arresting officer?  Is he in the know?”

“I can’t tell you that.”  His hand kept clutching his shirt pocket, where he’d put the check.  Asshole didn’t remember that I could just go online and cancel that check if I wanted to.  After all, I was still a free man!

“OK.  Anything else you can or can’t tell me?”

“Just don’t get into any … involvements with law enforcement.  In the meantime, you know.  If you get stopped by the police, they’ll find your arrest order and grab you right then.  Now if you’ll excuse me…”

I excused him, and a minute later I saw him hurrying into the car that he’d parked next to Holly’s big, well-lit windows.  What an asshole.  I’m sure he hated me.  And I wondered how much of that money really got to the guy who did all the work.

Not my problem.  I had no problems anymore.  My hamburger arrived, and it was as great as I’d expected it to be.

Click for next part

Click for previous part

Click to start at Chapter 1