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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 10

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 10: So Good for You to See Me

It was an interesting conversation—so interesting that now it was even harder for me to sleep in my bunk at night.  A few months before, I would have dismissed his prison shit right away–nothing but weirdness.  Now I was confused.  Why was he telling me this stuff?  Was it to make me love him, or warn me not to?  The sight of Paul in his convict suit, indistinguishable from the other cons—that was me, wasn’t it?  Wasn’t that what he meant?  And if I loved him, that’s how I’d end up?  But that’s how I already had ended up!  I flipped up my badge and looked at the picture.  That gray little blob might as well be “Paul.”

So now I was playing with my badge when I should have been sewing.  And at night, it wasn’t enough to jerk—yeah, I was doing that, what do you think?—but I had to dream, too.  One dream I remembered: I was outside the Pen—they’d let me out!  I was so happy!  At last I was free!  I walked off down the street, and I looked back at the walls, which I knew, even in the dream, I was mainly just making up in my head, because I’d only seen them once from the outside, and then I was squinting through the bars of a prison bus.

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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 09

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 9: Bunks, Chairs, and Other Furnishings

8363 . . . . the guy in Bunk 14.  I found myself maneuvering to get beside him in the shower, just for a few seconds to look at his plump, well muscled ass.  I tried to get the seat next to him at chow, just to feel his arm touching my arm through our uniforms.  In the factory I spent every extra second I could spare from my needle looking up the line of backs bent over their machines to watch his back moving rhythmically beneath its stripes.  At night I lay next to him, feet to head, and thought about what it would be like if I caressed his naked head with my naked toes and he wriggled across the few inches of bunk-frame and climbed in with me.  In dreams I told him, “You are about to be fucked!  Assume the position!”

Dreams vs. realities . . . .  If we were on the Outside, I’d do the usual: take him to Bleue, invite him to my place for drinks, become insistent if he noted that the hour was late . . . .  But in prison, I was no better than he was; I couldn’t impress him with my bald head, my convict uniform, or my criminal record.  And he evaded all my cues.  He saw how hot I was for him, but he treated it as a fact he didn’t need to do anything about–a fact of life, like the walls and bars.

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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 08

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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.

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Story

My Trip to Paris – Chapter 07

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 7:  Everyone’s Dream Is a House of His Own

The three months were over, and it was a Sunday—time to celebrate the end of Training Team.  The 16 convicts in my cell spent the day cleaning every inch of it, so we would leave it, as 7930 said, “much better than you found it.”  Sergeant Wong came to inspect the cell, found problems invisible to us, and made us spend two more hours on “tidying up.”  When he returned, the place had been re-cleaned, our bunks had been stripped, our gear had been piled on top of them, ready to travel, and we had dressed up in fresh uniforms, ready for our final inspection.  Several of us needed to straighten our shirts or hitch up our pants or screw our caps more firmly onto our heads, but finally, with shoulders squared and eyes gazing resolutely forward, we left our barracks and marched to the Parade Ground, where Colonel Bridger was waiting to review us.

I don’t understand why I was so shocked.  I knew he was running the place.  I no longer assumed that was a good thing.  I did hope I would never have to encounter him, that he would never see me in my convict suit with my number and picture clipped to my chest.  Wrong again.

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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 06

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 6: What You Need Is a Regular Schedule

The bright light came on.  We scurried to put on our uniforms.  Sergeant Wong appeared in the cell, lined us up, and welcomed us to what he called “your first morning behind the High Walls.”

The Sergeant supervised us as we made our beds and turned our blankets into tofu cubes.  Then he conducted us and our blue plastic pails to the Wash Room at the end of the corridor, and guarded us as we waited in line to squat over the 20 toilet holes, piss in a steel trough accommodating 20, and use our pails to wash and shave our faces in the water flowing into the sinks, which were also troughs accommodating 20.  He then returned us to the cell, where he “organized our labor” by giving out jobs.  There were two prisoners for every job—“this is the PRINCIPLE of COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY.”  Two prisoners got the job of cleaning the sink, two got the job of swabbing the floor, and so on.  I got the worst job—scrubbing the shit holes.  Me and Farmboy.  We had 15 minutes to get our brushes out of the locker, bend and scrub, and wash the brushes thoroughly in the trough—sorry, I mean the “sink.”  The Sergeant walked past and told us to go deeper into the holes.  We did.

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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 05

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 5: Home Is Where They Won’t Let You Leave

The sun hit my eyes and almost knocked me out; in those windowless rooms I’d forgotten that there was any such thing as sunlight.  I heard guards screaming around me; I felt my shoes smacking the concrete as I tried to run.  Then I heard “Squat!  Gear on the ground!  Squat!  Gear on the ground!  Squat DOWN!”  I saw lines of prisoners crouching, their gear stationed in front of them, and other prisoners, lowering their gear, preparing to squat.  Somebody—that old guy from the Uniform Room—stumbled, spilled his stack, then bowed and fumbled and bowed again, while a guard stood above him, shouting.  I made it to the third line and crouched, heart pumping out of my chest as the last of the prisoners got in position and the guards made a circle around us.  At least these guards didn’t have rifles.

But where was I?  It was a giant field covered with concrete—old concrete, the kind you see where some big building used to stand, and now there’s nothing left but the floor.  Around it, other old concrete, a city of old, yellowish buildings . . . .  What did Gordy say?  He said they’d repurposed some of the warehouses, and the old factory floors . . . .  Afterwards, they must have given all the buildings that coat of Soviet paint . . . .  Covers the weather damage, anyway . . . .  Smokestacks are still there . . . .  Must be the railroad on the other side . . . .  But thinking about real estate couldn’t make me forget the pain spreading up my legs.  The pain of having to squat on the pavement like a toad!  Whatever might exist in my head, my life was totally dependent on the choices of these men in their little light blue shirts.

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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 04

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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.

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My Trip to Paris – Chapter 03

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 3: Ideas Have Consequences

When I was a freshman in college I went through the kind of depression that kids sometimes have when they’re away from home for the first time.  Finally I got myself out of bed and went to a counselor.  He told me that depression is anger and the way to escape from being angry is to express your anger.  Your anger is your truth, and you should release it.  I listened, and since then I’d never been depressed.  I’d lost some friends, but whatever.  They weren’t real friends; they were just people who wanted to control me.

The same with Gordy.  Call it disappointment, call it partnership envy, call it a frustrated dick—something was showing me that this guy was a control freak.  It wasn’t the job of Colonel One and a Quarter Drinks to make me pay for tales of his partner, or monitor my alcohol consumption.  I’d been drunk a thousand times before, and I’d managed to keep my car on the road.

But . . . on the other hand . . . .  A thought occurred to me.  Maybe I’d been too hard on him.  Way too hard.  Maybe this Patrick person wasn’t his one and only.  That was a thought!  Next time, I’d be nicer to the guy.  Much nicer.  And maybe he’d wear his uniform.  It must be more interesting than he was letting on.  I loved a man in uniform!  But I wasn’t fooled by Gordy’s superman act.  I knew how much civil servants made; I’d had enough trouble getting those dudes through escrow.  And here was a guy who had to live in a fuckin prison!  I’d have no trouble outbidding “Patrick.”

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