By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 4: The First Time I Saw Paris

The bus seemed to be full; it must have made several other stops before getting to me.  Some of the passengers were dressed in solid orange, others in stripes.  A few were in normal clothes.  It was very quiet; the only sound was the rumble of the highway, the faint sigh of the A/C, and the rattling of shackles when somebody shifted his feet.  There was a guy in the seat next to me, a young guy with long blond hair—the kind of young guy that makes you feel old.  He was one of the prisoners in stripes, his yellow hair lying pitifully against the black-white bars on his jumpsuit.  From time to time he sniffled, and I knew he was crying.  I wanted to look out—to do something besides listen to my chains clattering every time I moved, but there were bars on the window and I couldn’t see much more than him, raising his hands to dab at his nose, and a blur of sky striped with steel on the other side of him.  The bus went fast.  Then we were off the freeway and driving through a town that had to be Paris.  Nothing else in the region had that beaten, rusted-out look.

The bus stopped for a train, and I saw the line of dead factories that followed the tracks.  After the last boxcar limped past we bumped across the rails and onto a wide street that should have been filled with cars and lined with businesses.  Should have, and wasn’t.  We were going slower, so I saw more, but all I could see was vacant lots, factories with rust creeping across their sides, and liquor stores with their windows blocked up.  Then, abruptly, the narrow lawns and the broken sidewalks and the parking spaces filled with derelict vehicles were replaced by a gray concrete wall rising next to the street, tall and long and getting longer as the bus slowed down.   And now it had stopped.

Leaning over the blond dude, I saw a white stone gate thrusting out of the concrete.  Beside the gate, between two marble pillars, was a sign:

PARIS STATE PENITENTIARY

Craning my neck, I saw an arch, 20 feet high, with a steel door filling it.  OK, this was the prison.  Here I was.

The door groaned and rolled slowly back.  The bus moved through the gate, stopped for inspection, and proceeded through a second gate.  On each side of the vehicle, buildings pushed forward.  I saw yellowish concrete.  Little square windows.  Bars on the windows!  And out of the buildings, swarms of blue uniforms heading for the bus and encircling it.  Someone was shouting, “Out! Everybody out!  Everybody out!  NOW!”

We piled down the steps, as fast as we could in our cuffs and shackles.  A prisoner fell; guards picked him up and tossed him outside.  Now all of us were “out!” and being greeted by a blue wall chanting, “Line up!  Squat!  Heads down!  Hands on your heads!  Line up!  Squat!  Heads down!  Hands on your heads!”  Behind the chanters was another line of men in blue uniforms—cradling rifles.

When I stepped, or lurched, off the bus, two lines of prisoners were already squatting on the pavement.  Like animals.  Like frogs.  Amazing.  Sickening!  But I had to join them.  I shuffled into the second line and squatted, head down, hands on my head.  Now there was nothing for me to do but look at the pavement.  It was macadam, black and rough–the remains of some former street.

How long can you crouch like that without feeling your legs cry out to you to stop?  I raised my head, looking for mercy, and what I saw was a man in a light blue shirt pointing his rifle at my eyes.  I was happy to look down again.

Guards went along the line, de-cuffing and de-shackling us.  When the clanking stopped, we heard “Stand!” and creaked warily to our feet.  A single guard was standing in front of the guards with the rifles.  He was a little man with dark skin and a very big voice.

“Welcome!  Criminals!” he shouted.  “I am Sergeant Gutierrez.  You have arrived at the Paris State Penitentiary, where you will now be living.  In this facility you will learn many things.  The first thing you will learn is the uniform of the Department of Corrections.  You will learn it now.   I am wearing that uniform.  You are not.  This means that you are a criminal, and I am an officer.  When you see a man in this uniform that I am wearing, you will stand at attention.  You will now stand at attention.”

We put our arms at our sides and straightened our shoulders.  We’d seen this in movies.

“Later, you will receive more instructions about this position,” he said, with a look that showed he was not completely satisfied with our current appearance.  “I will proceed to your next lesson.  When you are addressed by any person in this uniform, your response will be YES SIR! or NO SIR! or PERMISSION TO SPEAK SIR!  Those are the three possibilities.  Do you understand?”

Murmur of “yes sir,” which meant that the question needed to be posed again, and again, and again, until everyone was screaming YES SIR! back to him.  I was screaming too—ridiculous, but I wanted to get this over with.

The guard spent a couple more minutes staring at us—why, he did not explain.  Then he said, “You will now be moved into the Intake Unit.  While in the Unit, you will do exactly what you are told.  You will do it quickly, precisely, silently.  You will speak when spoken to, and you will speak at no other time.  While waiting you will stand in the Attention position.  When an officer, a man in THIS uniform, has issued a command to you, you will, first, bow from the waist; second, return to the Attention position; third, acknowledge the officer with the words “yes sir!”   Is that understood?”

“Yes sir!”

“Bow and acknowledge!”

We bowed from the waist; we shouted “yes sir!”  Our performance was ragged; he told us how ragged it was.  Ten repetitions later, he was prepared to move on.  He glanced behind him, at the guys with guns.  “These gentlemen will show you the way to the Intake Unit.  Right face!  Bow and acknowledge!”  We bowed and yes-sirred.  The riflemen rearranged themselves into two lines, pointed toward the door of a low yellowish building.  Then we heard the word “Move!”  The first prisoner in line went where the rifles showed him, and the rest of us followed, walking the gantlet between the guns.

Inside—one of those rooms you never want to be in: big, square, featureless, and packed with bodies routed snakewise through a maze of plastic barriers, inching toward a desk, a computer, and a man in uniform.  The worst airport lobby in the world.  I did what you’d do: I reached for my phone—which of course had been taken away from me.  All I could do was look at the sorry group I’d been thrown into.  They would have been funny if I hadn’t been in line with them.  More clothing was on display—all kinds: solid orange, orange stripes, black and white stripes, green stripes, shorts and tees, even flipflops.  Who goes to prison in flipflops?  A couple were in good clothes, like me.  An older guy was dressed in a suit and tie—one of those outfits that’s made to show it’s expensive.  Pretty pathetic, when a guy like that ends up in prison . . .  especially when he’s looking so indignant about it.

Anyway, I saw whites, blacks, Hispanics, even an Asian.  They were tall and short, and I put their ages at 18 through 55, most in their 20s.  It was funny to see them standing at attention, then slumping into their normal, sloppy poses, until a guard surprised them with a stick in the ribs from one of those things that cops call “batons,” and a shriek of “Watch your stance!”  I promised myself I would avoid being humiliated like that, but as soon as I promised I felt the stick in my own ribs too.  “No slacking, boy!”  I was one of the oldest ones there, but I was a “boy.”

How long did I stand in that line?  With nothing else to do, I kept trying to guess how many minutes or hours it would take me to get to the desk.  I wanted to figure the time each person spent doing whatever it was in front of that computer-desk-uniform combination, but without my phone, time became something I couldn’t measure.  All I could think was, “Get on with it!  Let’s get this thing underway!”  Couldn’t they use some of those prowling guards to open a second desk?  You go to a hotel, you don’t wait forever to check in.  If it’s a good hotel, you can do it online, in advance.  Couldn’t they manage it like that, and save everyone some time?

I was convinced that the ordeal would never end, but at long last I found myself at the desk, where I heard the words, “You will recite information!”  I reminded myself that I had to stand strictly at attention and bow before this person in his little blue uniform, this person who was seated while I was required to stand.  He was an older Asian man, and he wrestled with his computer like a master of some martial art, barking questions at me in a kung fu voice and demanding that the machine let him know whether my answers matched whatever was already lodged in its gut.

Name!

“Colin Perry, sir.”

Place of residence!

”151 N. Oakhill Way, Springport, sir.”

Sentence!

It wasn’t easy for me to say “seven years to life, sir.”  But I said it.

Education!

“B.A. in Business, sir.”

Latest employment!

“Real estate business, sir.”

“That is not a job.  What were you?”

An embarrassingly shaky “Yes sir?”

“Salesman?  Clerk?  What were you?”

“Owner, sir.”

“Not anymore.  Follow the line to the next station.”

At the last moment I remembered what I had to do now.  A bow from the waist. “Yes sir!”  An impatient motion of his hand dismissed me.

The “line” was a yellow strip on the floor.  I followed it to the next room, where guards were shouting “Strip it off!” and prisoners were hurriedly removing their clothes and throwing them into a line of plastic bins.  “Everything goes!  Shuck em!  Now!”  I started getting bare.

You remember the first time you had sex?  I mean, when you actually had SEX?  Do you remember the amazing pleasure it gave you to take off your clothes and stand naked in front of the other guy, not because you were on the same sports team but because you were proud of your dick and ass?  I wasn’t feeling that way now.  I was feeling ashamed—ashamed of being in prison, ashamed of being ordered around by these dumb cocky guys in their little cop suits, ashamed of being next to a young black guy without an extra ounce of flesh on his frame.  His back and butt were a tapestry of muscle.  I couldn’t help thinking how that beautiful array of flesh would feel with me on top of it, pumping its hole.  Too bad—because of that fucking highway accident, all I could do was throw the last remnant of my clothes into a bin and join the slow parade to the next station on the tour.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

It was another one of those guards.  He was pointing to the gap I’d allowed to open between me and the guy in front, the black guy I’d paused to admire.  “Hurry it up!”

I had hardly started hurrying when he reached out a size XXXL arm and spun me to face him.  He was 20 years old.  His eyes were gray, his lips were red, and his chest filled his uniform.  “Squat!” he ordered.

At first I couldn’t believe it.  Then I could.  I squatted.  I was a naked, overweight 34-year-old looking up at the cock of a prison guard—an organ officially garbed but highly visible in his dark blue polyester trousers.  He was enjoying his job.  “What do you say when you’re given an order, convict?”

“I don’t know.  ‘Fuck you, sir’?”

OK, that’s not what I said.  I said, “’Yes sir,’ sir.”

“What else do you do?”

“I bow, sir.”

“Stand up, convict.  Do it now.”

I got to my feet.  I was afraid to cover my nuts.   Or my belly.  He looked down at the paunch.  He was amused.

I bowed.  I mouthed the words “Yes sir.”

A baton, expertly aimed to catch me between my butt cheeks, propelled me yelping toward my next stop, where a guard was waiting for me.  This one was a stocky Hispanic with the same kind of biceps I’d seen on the last guard.  Glancing at his crotch, I could see what qualified him for a forward position in the Unit.  He wasn’t aroused, but he might as well have been.  The man was in charge of searching me.  At the beginning the job was performed at arms’ length.  “Ruffle your hair.  Open your mouth.  Wider.  I said wider!  Wiggle your ears.  Show me your pits.  Lift your balls.  Wiggle your dick.  Turn around.  Grab your legs.”  I bent like a broken knife, and his glove invaded my ass.

Nothing had ever gone in there before.  His hand was an alien force.  Through my pain I tracked the hand as it probed the terrain, punished resistance, withdrew in contempt.  Fuck–what’s that?!  Am I bleeding?   No time to find out.  “Stand up.  Turn around.”  He plopped his plastic glove into the trash, with a look suggesting that I should go there too.  “Move your ass, convict.  Follow the line.”

Bow.  “Yes Sir.”  I walked down the line.  I was happy I could still move my ass.

Before I reached the next station, another delay, and another wait.  Despite his military posture, the black guy’s muscles were writhing with impatience and humiliation.  Neither of us could see what was coming.  Then we turned a corner, and saw it.  A barber chair.

Nothing more innocent, right?  That’s what I thought, in the moment before the black guy was hustled into the chair, where a guard shaved him bald.  Just like that, no more dreds—they were lying on the floor, like little dead animals.  In two minutes he was shorn, stood up, reminded to bow, and ordered to the next station.  Oh fuck—now it was my turn in the chair!

I’d always been concerned about my hair and was worried about any sign that I might be losing any of it.  Every two weeks I visited my stylist—Felipe, a sweet little gay guy with reassuring hands—and was pleased to give him a huge tip.  The guard playing barber was no Felipe; he looked like the biggest one they had available, and there was no hint of sweetness in the voice that said, “Get your ass down there,” referring to the chair.  “Gonna git yo baldy now.”

He hadn’t bothered to turn his clippers off after his last customer.  Immediately I felt them roaring across my head, mowing one field of hair after another.  Hair fell into my eyes, my nose, my mouth; the remains of my style fell onto my shoulders.  Before I knew it I was also bowing and saying “yes sir” and scuttling down the line, with swatches of severed hair clinging to my crotch, and cold air smacking my naked skull.  Unbelievable!  I was bald!  What could be next?

Next was a room with MEDS over the door and 20 naked men running through it like rats in an experiment.  Some were having their blood pressure taken, some were having blood samples taken, some were being rubbed by a stethoscope, some were standing in front of an X-ray machine, some were being given shots in the arm, some were standing at attention, answering questions posed by another one of those guards-at-a-desk.  They were all bending, coughing, extending their arms, pissing in bottles, bowing, and being sent to the next stop.  I was happy there was a urine sample, because by that time I really needed to piss, and there didn’t seem to be any way on that planet to ask where the restroom was.

When you had been needled and probed and sampled and had reached the exit from this maze, you suddenly found yourself at the shower station, where a guard handed you a sliver of soap and motioned you under the head with a gang of other prisoners.  If I hadn’t been 25 pounds overweight—if I hadn’t been in PRISON!—I would have been feeling good about sharing the head with four young dudes.  The shower room was a little tile box, with barely enough room to soap and rub, so you couldn’t avoid contact, even if you wanted to.  Nobody dropped any soap, but they were all checking each others’ bodies, in the way that young guys do, and gawking at the other guys’ skulls, to see how they looked themselves with their brand new baldies, then looking down at the floor, bashful, and totally fuckable . . . .  Just when I needed it, I discovered something big and hard between my legs.  If Paris was going to be like this, then maybe . . . .

“You! Step out!”  The guard, a pimply white guy, looked contemptuously at my groin and gave me a towel the size of a handcloth.  I wiped off, anxious to get away from him.  “Clothes are that way,” he said, pointing with his thumb.  I executed the bow-and-yes-sir, my dick shrinking like a snail that’s been hit with a fistful of salt.  OK, time for some clothes.

At the end of the yellow line was a barred door and a tall black guard who told me to “Stand back!” while he unlocked the bars.  It reminded me of something . . . .  What was it?  Oh yes.  The times when I’d watched my neighbor unlock his gate and push his dog into the back yard.

“In there,” he ordered.  “Onto the prints.  Stand until called.”

I didn’t need to look for “the prints.”  Just beyond the gate there were two naked feet painted on the floor.  I stood at attention, gazing fixedly at what lay ahead of me—a long room with a steel counter on one side.  At the end of the room, a guard watched me like a reflection in a distant mirror.  The difference was that he was clothed and I was naked; he was a guard and I was a prisoner; he was real and I wasn’t.  Behind the counter, other forms were moving, doing something that I knew I would soon find out about . . . .

“Next!” my reality shouted, gesturing furiously toward the counter.

I bowed and moved forward.  Beyond the counter I saw rows of shelves, stacked with objects that must be clothing.  Finally I would be allowed to cover myself!  I realized: I hadn’t thought about what I’d be wearing in prison.  Now, I guessed, I was going to learn.

A man came forward and stood at the counter, like a clerk in a store.  His face was young; his eyes showed the drugged stupidity of employees who stand all day taking other people’s orders—typical guy in a dead-end job.  In this case, must be a convict.  What startled me was what he had on.  He was wearing a kind of clothes I’d never seen before, unless it was on the guys from the janitor service who came at night to clean my office.  But no, not even them.

Picture a dark blue shirt or jacket—not clear which—fastened to the neck with five large plastic buttons, like pajama buttons.  Like pajamas, the shirt is untucked, and it stops abruptly, just above the place where a guys’ balls bottom out.  Two small pockets are attached to the chest, each with a flap covered with vertical stripes, light blue and white, like the symbol of some unidentified firm.  On top, a cap to match the shirt—blue, with a strip of light blue and white vertical stripes above the brim, just like the ones on the pockets.  You had to pity this guy, buttoned up in a suit like that.  But there was more.  A second guy was working, back in the shelves.  He was also buttoned up in blue, and when the counter guy turned to tell him something I saw that each of them was sporting a wide swathe of the same kind of stripes, covering his shoulders.

Paris fashions!  That was the type of janitor’s suit you wore if you were working a clothes counter in Paris.  Too bad, because under his big square-cut suit the counter guy, at least, might have been hot, if it wasn’t for the horrible clothes he had to wear—and the dead-fish expression that he wore on his face, as if to match his clothes.  Of course, he was a criminal, but it was too bad that anyone had to put on something like that, just to work a counter.

He turned back to me, as if to take my order, but instead of asking any questions he looked at me and said “Size 4.”  “Yeah,” replied the other one, and started pulling items off the shelves.  He too was young, and hot, and unfortunately all banged up in that same costume.  But he was more efficient than these counter jockeys usually are.  In one minute, a stack of yellow-green something had plopped onto the counter.  “Underwear,” he said, as he turned back to the shelves.

All right, forget about the color—I can use something to put over my dick.  But then, in another minute, the undies were covered by a taller stack.  This one was dark blue, and ominous.  Although the garments were presented in tight, department-store folds, they exhibited the big flappy collars, the pajama-size buttons, the little-kid pockets, and the weird, horrible stripes that the counter boys were wearing.  Oh my God!  I was going to be dressed like them!  All doubt was removed when a blue and white-striped cap appeared on the counter.

“Shoes?” the first one said.  “Shoe size?”

“Uh,” I muttered, stunned.  “Uh . . . nine and a half . . . . usually . . . . ”

“Ten,” he said to the second one, who went to the shelves and returned with a pair of dark blue shoes, which he dropped on the counter next to the rest.  They looked like they were made out of canvas.  Their tops were high, but instead of laces they had a fat little flap.  They were like slippers pretending to be boots.

“Here’s your starter suit,” Counter Boy said in a sullen, uninterested way, yanking garments out of the stack and placing the shoes and the cap on top of them.  “Get dressed.”  I looked around, like . . . where?   “Over there,” he said, giving his head an infinitesimal nod toward the rear of the room.  “Then back to the counter.”  He was through with me, for the present.  It was about the twentieth time I’d been dismissed that day.

“Over there” was a wooden bench.  I put the clothes on the bench, shuddering.  Not only because of the way they looked.  The smell alone . . . .  Cheap, new cloth . . . .  Some kind of sharp-smelling chemical dye . . . .  The odor rose from the pile like the stink of cleaning fluid.  Nauseated, I turned from the smell and noticed there was somebody else in that part of the room.  It was the old guy who’d looked so indignant in his suit and tie.  He was looking the same as he stared, naked, at the costume he’d have to wear.  He saw me looking.  “They expect me to wear these – garbage bags?!  Look at them!  Just look at them!”  He held up his shirt for me to see, as if I didn’t have one of my own.  “I’d rather be dead than put something like that on my . . . . ”  His sentence ended in a squeal.  The guard had come up behind him and smacked his ass with his stick.  “Hurry up, boy,” he said in a calm, level voice, while his stick administered another smack.  “No loitering in the Uniform Room.”  The old guy gave him a hurt and unbelieving look.  Then he bowed and said “Yes sir.”

I stopped looking, so I wouldn’t get my own ass slapped.  I knew I had to get going.  I had to start with the underwear.  I’d always loved soft, clingy, sexy shorts, with the brand proudly displayed on the waistband.  I wasn’t the only gay guy who studied the underwear ads.  And I was happy to pay for my preferences.  What confronted me now was a set of puke yellow boxers made to cover my junk in a droopy cotton cube.  It was unbelievable how cheap and coarse they were.  But I had to put them on.  Still wincing, I pulled on my new tee—an exact match for the shorts.  It was brutal.  Would I rather be standing there naked, displaying my stomach—which was even plainer to me now, given my contrast with the fit young men who seemed to be drawn to this prison like a magnet—or modeling these repulsive undies, designed by someone who must have been determined to do away with sex?  That would be a close decision, but it wasn’t mine to make.  I had to put them on.

I knew that all those thoughts were just ways of delaying the inevitable—the parts of the outfit that others would actually see.  I unfolded the pants.  For a moment they looked like the bottom half of a track suit—no belt, just elastic at the waist; no pockets, not even a fly.  My hands would have nowhere to hide.  To piss, I’d have to pull the thing down, or maybe piss like a woman.  Then I saw it: the line of horizontal stripes, white and blue, running down the seam on each leg—again, the prison trademark; this time, a ladder to nowhere!  I wondered how often I’d look down and count the stripes on my legs.

I forced my feet into the pants and pulled them up to my waist.  What I felt . . . .   It wasn’t the suave, stylish material you want other guys to see you wearing when you’re lounging around the coffeehouse or the outside bar.  It was hard and tough.  It insisted that you march off someplace, under orders.  But there it was, hanging on my body.  Capturing my body.

And now what?  Sox, of course, and shoes, those little blue step-ins, with rubber soles about a third of an inch thick.  I wondered why the counter boy had bothered to ask my shoe size; it wasn’t exactly a precision fit.  The dark blue sox matched the shoes; they managed to reach over my ankles.  On each side of the shoes I saw a pair of wide, white, vertical stripes, running down to the soles; on the sox, white vertical stripes, every couple of inches around the tops.  I’d be wearing the prison logo on every visible part of me.  You would know I was in prison if you only saw my sox and shoes.

The shirt was the worst thing—even worse than I thought when I saw it on the prisoners behind the counter.  Maybe because it’s different when you’re the one that’s going to be wearing it.  Maybe because they were 20 years old, and I wasn’t.  Watching my fingers buttoning the shirt over my stomach was proof of that.  The shirt was made of the same tough, ugly material as the pants.  But speaking of body shape, I could understand why a simple size “four” was all they needed to fit me with the right clothes.  That shapeless suit could fit any number of guys.  Buttoning the cheap, ugly shirt up to my neck was like locking myself into my own personal prison.  But it wasn’t just mine.  When I got the thing on, I was just an older version of those monkeys at the counter.

Except for one thing.  The cap.  They’d each been wearing a cap.  I’d forgotten about that feature of the outfit.  But there it was, staring up at me from the bench, grinning at me with that line of blue and white stripes over its brim.  A little monkey cap.  I reached down and planted it onto my skull.  When they take your hair, your head feels lonely; the cap took care of that.

The prison now covered almost all of me with its style, smell, and feel.  As I walked to the counter in my new outfit I saw three prisoners—three other prisoners, since I was now one of them—waiting naked and clueless for the boys to fix them up.  One of them turned to me, and winced.  He was seeing what he was about to look like.

“You’re back,” the counter boy said, moving lazily down to the place where I was standing.  Then quickly: “Bow to the officer.”  The guard was coming my way.

“Back against the wall,” he said, “convict.  THAT wall.”  I bowed and obeyed.  It was a white wall, with numbers painted onto it—5’, 5’3”, 5’6” . . . .   It was a height chart.  “Cap off.  Look at the camera.”  There was a camera hanging from the ceiling.  He pressed a control and it buzzed and clicked.  “Turn right.  Turn left.”  Buzz buzz, click click.  “Cap on.  Back where you came from.”

On the counter, a piece of plastic dropped out of a little machine.  The counter boy tucked it into a holder and handed it to me.  “This is your ID badge,” he said.  “Clip it here.”  He pointed to the square of plastic clipped to his left pocket flap.

I looked down at my new piece of bling.  At the top, two lines of black letters:

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

PARIS

In case I forgot where I was!  Then, in the center—a picture.  A picture that made me catch my breath.  It was the face of something dead, or something that had never been alive.  Gray naked skull; eyes staring helplessly forward; dark uniform, buttoned to the neck.  At the bottom, a line of numbers: G023104411.

“That’s your name,” the counter boy said.  “That’s who you are.”  His eyes turned warily toward the guard, who had moved on to harassing the prisoners still waiting for clothes at the other end of the counter.  “I told you to clip it on.  Do it now.”

I clipped the badge to my chest.  “And here’s the rest of your uniforms.”  He pushed the remaining stack of clothes at me.  “I gave you three boxers, three tees, three pairs of pants, three shirts, three pairs of sox, one pair of shoes, one cap.  Remember, take care of your uniform, and your uniform will take care of you.”  I stared.  Was he being sarcastic?  Was he reciting what he was told to recite?  Or was everything you heard in this place sarcastic?  “You’re done.”  He jerked a thumb sideways.  “Pick up your stack.  Through that door.”  I picked my clothing off the counter and went where he pointed.

I had entered another room with a line of prisoners wrapped snakewise around it.  They were the same prisoners who’d been coiled up in the first room, but now they all looked the same.  Different skin tones—what you could see of skin—but that doesn’t matter when you’re all in the same prison suit, being yelled at by the same prison guards.  In the first room there were guys who looked like waiters and students and executives and men who were happy not to be employed.  Now everyone was employed as a prisoner.  In the first room there were guys who were body proud and cock proud, with their minds going to their happy place about their gym or their family or their friends or their boyfriend or their money or their little gay dog; now everyone was thinking, “What the fuck has happened to me?”  I knew that, because that’s what I was thinking.  I was sure I had plenty of happy places to go, if I could only get out of the place I was in.  But that was the problem, right?

Orders must have been given, because everyone was standing at attention, and everyone’s stack of clothing was placed neatly in front of his feet.  Guards were prowling to check.  Then the last of the prisoners came in, and we heard “Arms forward! Palms up! Stacks on your arms!  Hold in front!”  This voice definitely had an accent, but we got the message—we needed to scoop our stacks of clothing off the floor, pile them onto our arms, and display them in front of us.  Soon everybody was carrying his uniforms like a pallet of bricks on a forklift.  Then “Eyes forward!  Move!”, as two of the guards gestured us furiously past yet another a door.

We were going through a room where prisoners on either side of us grabbed things from shelves and dropped them onto our stacks.  The first thing they dropped was another stack of yellow-green cloth.  The second was a bright blue plastic pail.  The third was some nameless stuff that went into the pail.  I didn’t have time to see what any of it was; I was struggling to keep all these things in my arms and not let them crash onto the floor.  Guards were shouting “Go, go, go!”, and when we got to the end they were shouting “Through the gate! Run!  Run!!”

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