By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 8: At Last, I Have a Real Job

The factories were on the other side of the Parade Ground, beyond the Chow Hall and the Training Team—old-fashioned barns with peaked roofs.  They were the kind of things you always see down by the railroad, next to the abandoned tracks.  But there was no rust on them.  They’d been cleaned up, fixed up, and given a new coat of paint—that same sick shade of yellow.  Their windows had been fitted with new steel frames and a light brown tint, to keep the sun out, as well as a full coat of bars, to keep the workers in.  But now their doors were open, and long files of prisoners were marching through them.  The Paris State Penitentiary had brought full employment back to the neighborhood.

Factory 5, the Clothing Factory, was the largest one.  Under its high steel ceiling, ten lines of prisoners, 50 in each line, were sewing pieces of clothes together—collars to coats, buttons to shirts, pockets to rumps.  Every prisoner was seated at a sturdy plastic table with a plastic chair and two plastic baskets attached to it; every prisoner was facing a pale-yellow electric sewing machine, bolted to the table; every prisoner was taking materials from the basket on his left, sewing them together, and passing them to the basket on the right.

Some of the prisoners were small and thin, some of them were tall and muscular; but their hands were all busy with the tiny motions that adjusted the material, their eyes were all following the tiny lights that helped to guide the needles, their feet were all pumping the pedals that made their machines go fast or slow.  Other prisoners hurried along the aisles, putting material into the baskets on the left, removing it from the baskets on the right, and passing the work to the next line of prisoners.  Banners hung from the beams above, white banners with tall red letters:

CORRECTION THROUGH PRODUCTION

MISTAKES WILL COST YOU TIME

TEAMWORK WORKS!

PARIS PRIDE, PARIS PRODUCTS™

Beneath the banners, a thousand striped shoulders hunched over the tables, 500 shaved skulls bowed to the machines.  It was an awe-inspiring sight.  It took your breath away—especially when your own shoulders were wearing stripes.

Cell 17 was marched to the factory, and the prisoners went quickly to their chairs.  4398 and I were new, so we got special treatment.  Officer Yan stood us in front of the factory guards and made us recite our numbers and our sentences.  One of the guards checked a list and nodded.  Then two others scanned our badges and took us up the line to install us behind our machines.  Every bone in my body revolted against being inserted in that production line; every cell in my brain went crazy.  My legs were so stiff with resistance that I thought they wouldn’t bend when they put me in the chair.

Then I saw what was happening up ahead.  There was shouting–4398 was shouting, “No!  I won’t!  You can’t make me!  No more!  I won’t!  No more!”  Instantly he was swarmed by the guards and carried out like a sack of refuse.  I watched him pass. Then the guard who was escorting me said, “This is your seat.  Sit.”  I sat in front of the sewing machine.  It was now my sewing machine.

A convict hustled up, bowed to the guard, and put me to work sewing arms onto sports shirts.  If you think it’s easy to sew, it isn’t.  The convict, whose name was 9267, had to stand next to me and teach me every step.  He was a haggard thirty-something who looked like he’d left four or five children at home, so I guess he was prepared to deal with me.  The first thing you learn is how hard it is to control the pedal.  Before I got used to that I’d ruined several stacks of material.  He never lost patience—he was not allowed to—but he had ways of assuring me that the guards certainly would, if I didn’t learn fairly fast.  The sound of the machines—the enormous buzzing that overwhelmed the room—assured me that I would learn, I would function like all the other convicts.

9267 also filled me in on the rules.  No talking.  No leaving your seat.  If you need to ask a question, or if you need to use the shitter, hold up your hand—a guard will see it.  For visits to the latrine you will be conducted to the control desk, where a “Toilet” badge will be attached to your right pocket and removed when you return—immediately—to resume your work.  Once you’ve learned enough to be “switched on line,” you will be expected to fulfill your quotas.  If you do not fulfill them, you will be worked extra hours until you do.  If you are lazy, you will be warned; if you continue to be lazy, you will be punished.  “Got it?”  “I got it.”

After four and a half hours of learning to sew, I was marched to the Chow Hall with the other inmates of Cell 17, then marched back to the factory.  After four and a half more hours of labor I was returned with them to the Chow Hall and Cell House C.  On my third day in the factory I was switched on line.  I marched out of Factory 5 a productive convict of the Paris State Penitentiary, having been told that I was only 53 shirts under quota, and I would be granted time to improve.

But I’m getting ahead of my story.  Here’s what happened when I got back to the cell after my first day of stepping on the sewing machine.  I’d fucked up all day, and the last thing I wanted to hear about was the factory.  But that’s what all the cell chat was about, because of the incident with 4398.  Some of the prisoners started off by praising what 4398 had done.  Most were indignant: “Who does he think he is?”  Then a lot about “making the cell look bad.”  Now no one was praising him.  When someone added, “I’m surprised they haven’t punished us all,” everybody nodded, obviously thankful that “they” hadn’t.

This brought up the subject of Collective Responsibility.  Somebody said, “One thing I can’t understand about that.  We’re sewin stuff all day, and we put our little tag on it—Paris Products.  Paris Products, TM—trademark!  That’s what it says.  Then we sew on this big label with the company name, and it’s like we never made it.”

“Sure,” 0631, my swabbing partner, said.  “Because they’re payin the Pen for it.  They say, make us another thousand pair a slacks.  Or whatever.  And we make it for them.  That’s what buys our food.”

“Bad food!” someone put in.

“Then sew better, dude!”  Everybody laughed, except the guy who was pissed about the label.  If you want to picture him, imagine some classic greaser from the 1950s.  Long, thick, wavy hair; big eyes, big nose, big mouth, big the rest of him too, probably.  Now picture him with his mane sheared and his body locked up in a cheap blue prison suit, spending all day pushing men’s shorts through a sewing machine.  Now you’re seeing the guy who was arguing with 0631.  He even had a sort of Elvisy accent.

“Yeah . . . . OK.  OK.  That’s how the Pen earns its money.  But then the stuff goes outta here, and it’s parta some company’s brand . . . .”

Right then, the sound of locks and bars was heard, the cell doors opened, and in came Officer Yan, leading our cellmate 4398, with shackles on his legs and a dazed look in his eyes.  We all came to attention, and the Officer told him “Now.”  4398 bowed his head and mumbled something.  “Louder, criminal,” the Officer said.  “I apologize to the Officer and to the boss and to the cell,” 4398 said.

“Very well,” said Officer Yan.  “The cell must also take responsibility.”

The boss bowed and said, “I apologize to you, Officer Yan, and to the Prison, for my failure of responsibility.”

Then everyone else bowed and said the same thing.  Including the guy who was pissed.  Including me.  Even while I was wondering, what the fuck?!

Officer Yan then dismissed us for the night, and 4398 crawled into his bunk.  Fortunately for him, it was a lower one.  He couldn’t take his pants off, because he couldn’t take his shackles off, but he shuffled over and hung his shirt and cap on the hook.  Then he lay with his face to the wall.  I was sure he wasn’t asleep.

Under those conditions, nobody wanted to talk about him.  But 0631 started in again, about the stuff we made.  “All I’m sayin—these other companies, of course they market the stuff with their own name.  Ain’t nobody gonna buy it from a buncha cons.”

“Here’s all I wanta say,” said the arguing guy.  “We’re wearin these little convict suits, and they’re makin money sellin’ Sports Klassiks.”

So that’s where Mr. Vandenberg got his merch!  That’s where “overseas” turned out to be—the Paris State Penitentiary!

“Which is why,” 0631 said, “they pay us our 20 cents an hour!”

“Which is twice what you’re worth, man!”

“Four times what I’m worth!”

Everybody laughed again.  “All I want,” the arguer said, “is to see that guy from Sports whatever-it-is-company steppin on the machine in fronta me.  Right in fronta me.  Sewin his own fuckin shirts and shorts.  See how he likes it!”

Shouts of “Oh yeah!” and “You got it, bruv!”

“No more three-thousand-dollar suit!  Just his convict suit.  And a guard standin over his ass, tellin him where he done got that one lil stitch in wrong.”

The fantasy continued, and only I knew it wasn’t a fantasy.  I and the body in shackles, lying on the bunk, face to the wall but having to listen to every word.

After that, 4398 was not a problem to the guards, except that when it was time for him to take a shower one of them had to unlock him for five minutes.  He remained a problem to the cell.  He was restless at night, and every time he moved, his shackles stirred and rattled and kept us awake.  When we went to the Chow Hall, when we went to the factory, when we went anyplace, we all had to hobble along at the speed he could shuffle.  The other cells in the block laughed at us on our way to the Wash Room.  The guards in the factory sneered when we came in the door.  But a cell is a cell, and everybody in the cell has to follow the same path.  We cursed him under our breath, but we felt our responsibility to act as one.  “Jus like back in the Trainin Team,” the arguer said, and everyone nodded.

So what happened?  Four days later, soon after I was switched on line, we were marching into the cell after chow, and we were so slow because of 4398 that I thought we were going to stop and be found frozen in the doorway five or ten years later.  It was bad.  Then that convict who was in the bunk next to me, 8363, the Asian guy—well, Asian American, as it turned out, when you heard him talk—stepped forward, bowed, and said something to Officer Yan.  He said it in a language they both knew.  The Officer jerked up his nose and sniffed in a foreign way and said something back, and the convict bowed and said something else.  There was a pause.  Then the officer nodded and made an impatient gesture.  When we got inside and got lined up, the convict bowed again and said, “I apologize to you, Officer Yan, and to the boss, and to the cell.  I should not have spoken.”

It was a timely thing to say, because what he’d done was against the rules.  But he got what he wanted.  The Officer told 4398 to kneel, and he removed his punishment shackles.  4398 stood up, sort of unsteady, because he was old and surprised.  He bowed and said, “I apologize to the Officer, and to the boss, and to the cell.”  And that was all the trouble we had from him.  After that, he was just another prisoner.

Like me.  At least 4398 had once had the distinction of stumbling around in chains.  But I was no different from anyone else.  Even my stomach had gone away.  I was 34 and about to be 35, but that doesn’t matter when you’re sewing the same shirts that everyone else is sewing, or buttoning your neck into the same uniform that everyone else is wearing, or being marched in the same line across the same Parade Ground at the same hours every day, swinging your arms in the same way as everyone else, or eating the same chow at the same table every day, or squatting with the same cellmates to shit in the same holes before washing in the same trough every day.

The rule at Paris was that any variations in a rule had to be part of the rule.  As in the Training Team, six days of labor were followed by one day that was “special” and “different”—and totally routine and controlled.  In the “real prison,” Sunday was the criminals’ “free day in the Yard.”  “Yard” meant the Parade Ground.  “Free day” meant joining the queue for 30 minutes of marching Exercise; lining up at the Barber Shack for our heads to be buzzed; lining up for the Visiting Room, if there was anyone who wanted to see us (one visit a month permitted); lining up to visit the Library (one visit a month permitted); and reporting to a Classroom for an Education Meeting (one visit a week, required).

The topics were more advanced than those presented in the Training Team.  There were lectures on subjects like Listening to Your Officer, Learn Something Every Day!, Feeding the Multitude—What Goes on in the Paris Kitchen, Don’t Second-Guess Your Orders!, and Know Your Uniform (“the history and message of our distinctive clothing”).  Every lecture presented opportunities for Self-Report and Self-Correction, which were the “discussion” part.  Criminals who wanted to improve their Record of Self-Correction stood up, bowed, and confessed that they had sometimes not respected the Kitchen Service or learned all there was to know from the Uniform and Its Symbolism—the blue stripes symbolized the bars of our prison, the white stripes our chance for a new life—but once they had begun to understand all these things fully, their lives had been changed and they were on their way to Adaptation and Rehabilitation.  The lectures repeated in a regular cycle, like those in the Training Team.

Provision was also made for visits to the Commissary (twice a month), where we were allowed to spend the 20 cents an hour that had been credited to our badges.  We could purchase things like candy bars, mints, potato chips, lotions, ear swabs, pencils and paper, and stamps for our letters home (two letters a month permitted).  Or we could walk around in the Parade Ground (two hours permitted, in appropriate weather).

In the Penitentiary you’re never alone, except maybe when you’re being punished; you’re always with people who look like you, people you’d mistake for yourself if you saw them in a picture.  On my first Sunday, I thought it would feel fantastic, being allowed to walk by myself for a while.  But as with so many other times in the Pen, I had to admit I was wrong.  I was so nervous that I kept turning around, looking for someone to march beside me.  Then I noticed 8363, the next-bunk guy, hanging with some convicts from Cell 18.

I walked towards them and stood at a distance.  I was an outsider—out of my cell, out of my queue.  There was a wind blowing across the Parade Ground, and I got ready to follow it to the farthest point away.  But at that moment 8363 saw me, turned, and sent me a nod.  I nodded back, and he drifted away from the group.  “I’m going to the Library,” he said, and I followed him.  I would have gone anyplace, with almost anybody.  So we headed for the Library line.

When I was on the Outside, I had no problem talking to anyone.  Unless you’re like that, you can forget about working in real estate.  Now I seemed to have lost the ability.  It must be someplace—where had it gone?  I pictured myself searching my uniform, poking my hands into those little pockets on my shirt, pulling down my pants to look into my crotch, trying to find where I’d put my self-confidence.  Maybe, I thought, I should let this guy know why I wasn’t talking.  “Sorry I’m so quiet.  I didn’t use to be . . . .”  But that would be a faggot thing to say.  He wasn’t talking much either.

After we got in the door and had our badges scanned we were given 15 minutes, and allowed one selection.  He immediately picked up a dogeared copy of something called “Ohmir the Conqueror: Book 3, The Escape from Al-Ziba.”  On the cover was a bronzed, totally ripped guy, holding a sword and gazing confidently upwards—into the future, I guessed.  Obviously junk.

“Can’t you find something better?” I said.  OK, that was stupid.  I say one thing to the guy, and that’s what I fucking say.  Why should I be disappointed about some convict’s choice of reading matter?

“Agreed,” he said. “Probably not the best book in the world.  Now what about you?  You need to grab something, fast.”  We were walking past the “Science” shelf.  He surveyed it for a moment and pulled out a fresh, unfaded copy of “Stories of the Stars: Your First Astronomy Book.”

“That’s a kid’s book,” I said.

“Maybe.  So what?  Around here, everybody’s a kid.  All the criminals, anyway.  The whole Library’s just stuff that’s thrown out by some school.”

He was pushing me towards the convict at the checkout station.  I turned to put the book back where it came from.

“Stop that,” he said.  “It’s time you learned something.”

I was actually happy he gave me that insult.  I know how dumb that sounds, but at least somebody was noticing me.  I wondered if anybody ever noticed him–not that he seemed to care.  He didn’t talk very much; he just sort of hung around and listened.  I’m still having trouble describing him.  You wouldn’t call him short or tall.  He wasn’t hot . . . .  I guess he was kind of good-looking.  He wasn’t a guy that I looked for in the showers.  It was quite a while before I saw that his body, which I’d been thinking was “little,” was actually, what’s the right word—solid.  Solid like a stone.  He wasn’t ripped or stacked, but even when you finally did notice him and saw the way his uniform sat on his chest you could tell there must be a lot of muscle hiding under the little blue suit and the smooth brown skin.

“I don’t need to learn about stars,” I told him.  “All I can see from our window is concrete and floodlights.”

“And that’s a good thing,” he grinned.  “Makes us secure.  Go on, check out the book.”

Now we were back on the Yard, with nothing to do but hold our books in our hands and wait in line for our haircuts.  I always hated having to stand in line.  It was worse, now that I was with somebody I should be talking to, but I had nothing to talk about.  Neither did he, although he didn’t seem upset about it.  Maybe that’s what happens to you when you’re in prison.  Maybe you just wait for orders, and when there aren’t any . . . .

But wait a minute.  There was something I wanted to know.

“I was wondering,” I said. “The other day . . . when you . . . .”

“Got out of line?  Bothered the Officer?”

“Yeah, that’s it.  In another language . . . . ”

“Well, I’m American, but I can talk a lot of it—as much,” he laughed, “as some of these guards can talk in English.”

“But Officer Yan . . . . ”

“Was born right in this country.  That’s what I mean.”

So this quiet little guy . . . he’s actually pretty funny.

“What did you say to him?”

“I begged him to take the old man out of his irons.  Because the cell was being disrupted.  He saw the point.”

“You cared that much about the cell?”

“You’ve got a lot to learn,” he replied.

He smiled, but I didn’t.  Now it was like he was an officer.  Worse than an officer.  A little guy in a convict suit!  I was starting my reply (“Look, dude . . . ”) when it was his turn for the barber.  Then mine.  When I got out of the Barber Shack I knew I’d be by myself again.

But there he was, waiting for me.  Why should he do that?  In this place, nobody gives a fuck.

“How do you like it?” he asked, taking off his cap and rubbing his hand over his baldy.  The smile was hard to resist.

“Very stylish,” I said.

“You got that right.  Style is everywhere.  Style is what everybody’s doin.  Only in here, you don’t need to work on it.  You don’t need to follow the style.  The style follows you.”

From that moment I started to love 8363 and to hate 8363.  He was the last convict I saw before I fell asleep at night and the first convict I saw in the morning.  That was enough to make me hate him.  He said almost nothing to anyone; he just sat on his bunk or squatted over a toilet or marched beside me across the Parade Ground or sewed on his chair ahead of me in the factory.  He was a standardized convict.  But now, whenever I saw him, my dick got hard.  I was happy to see him in the morning, and when we had Yard I looked for him and, as he said, “followed him around.”

Which meant that my crotch wasn’t dead anymore.  But I haven’t finished with why I hated him.  I hated his calm, obedient attitude.  I hated the pleasure he took in bowing to the guards.  I hated the fact that he always answered the Three Questions with a SHOUT.  I hated the fact that when he complained about the food he used the same words that everybody else used, so his words wouldn’t be any more or less severe than the words of the cell.  I hated the fact that he smiled to himself when he was mucking his uniform into the washtub, wringing it out in his hands, and hanging it up in the drying room, like he was calmly hanging himself there with all the other bodies.  I hated the way he looked at his uniform in the morning, holding up his shirt and pants as if he was saying hello to them, then buttoning himself in slowly, like he was making love.  I hated 8363, and for the same reasons that I hated him I envied him and I needed to fuck him.

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