By Joshua Ryan

This story is for adults and about adults only.  It is also fiction.  Any connection to real entities is purely coincidental.

To BUCK, with deep gratitude for his inspiration.

Chapter 1: Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

I was 34 years old and I was already retired.  That’s what it felt like, anyway.  You’re probably thinking, “Great! Way to go!”  But if so, you may be wrong.

I’d been running the family business—it’s real estate—ever since I got out of college.  It was failing; I made it a success.  And if you think that running a real estate firm is a tiresome office job, you’re definitely mistaken.  As I found!  In fact, my work was risky and exciting.  It kept me going all the time, and I liked it a lot.  Just beating the bigger guys out of the market, hearing them whine about “aggressive tactics”—you can’t top that for entertainment.

Lately, though, I wasn’t liking what I saw when I looked at myself in the metaphorical mirror.  Cash flow great, staff pretty good, kid brother running most of the day-to-days. . . .  Fine.  But no problems, no challenges.  Whatever came up, my listless eyes had seen it all before.  In the mirror—a jaded businessman.

An attractive portrait?  No.  The picture in the actual mirror wasn’t exciting either, if I looked closely enough.  I was 34, but people still called me “the new kid”—for good reason.  Great hair, great clothes, and that million dollar smile . . . .  You can’t beat first impressions.  But I knew what was under the trendy tie and the slightly edgy dress shirt and the soft, gray, reassuring slacks.  I’d put on plenty of weight in the past few years.  And now I was doing what people do when they don’t really have to work—drinking more and more, getting up later and later, looking harder for friends to dine with . . . .

I even found myself messaging my last ex-boyfriend.  Terry was as hot as ever, and almost as nice.  Maybe “nice” wasn’t the right word.  “Boyish” would be better.  He’d discovered an innocent delight in making money.  When he talked about properties and investments and business conferences, his eyes shone and he yapped like a kid on his first job.  You couldn’t interrupt him, he was so full of himself.   He was already getting that way when we were together.  It’s why we broke up.  You can’t be a couple if you have to schedule your fucks a week ahead.  And Terry was the typical sub who turned out not to be a sub.  I’d never guessed that anyone could learn his new role so fast.  But that’s what did it—you can’t have two dominant guys in the same relationship.

So, we “revisited.”  Nice dinner, nice drinks, he never mentioned a boyfriend, and when we kissed in the parking lot he whispered, “You’re still my idol.”  But no, I didn’t want to go back to competing with my former office boy.

Clearly, it was time to find someone new, someone who actually enjoyed taking orders.  I saw a lot of them online, or so they said . . . . until I found that they just wanted to be taken care of.  When is somebody gonna take care of ME, I wondered.  Sort of a joke, but you know what I mean.  I also got the idea that I should do some traveling.  The stereotyped retiree!  But I’d never had time before.  I read travel brochures and talked to people who offered expensive trips to Europe.  After a while, the conversations got a little testy.  They seemed to think I was demanding too much—but hey, I just wanted to get what I wanted.  What my money deserved.  What’s the matter with that?

A nice thing was that I also had time for porn, lots of time.  It was amazing how much of it had become available while I’d been doing business 24/7.   There were sites where you could almost imagine that the cell blocks and cages were real, and the big cops strutting around were laying into things a lot harder than pixels.  Almost.

OK. I knew I had too much time on my hands when I noticed I was paying attention to the gobs of email I got every day. My policy had been, if you really want to get in touch with me, qualify yourself—keep trying.  But now I was scrolling carefully through the goo.  That’s how I found a notice from the Civic Club, and I actually read it.

The Club is one of those things you have to join if you’re a big fish in a medium-size town like Springport.  It’s basically a way of extracting ten grand a year from you for some charity you can’t even remember, but the check makes you respectable.  At times I’d felt that I had to attend those affairs that the Club called the Civic Forum.  On the second Thursday of the month there was a lunch and a “speaker,” preceded by a cocktail hour where you could work the crowd, make contacts, pretend that the other people were important—something that, admittedly, I found difficult to do.  But now contacts came to me; I didn’t have to snag them off the street.  So I attended the pre-Christmas lunch, slipped the chairman my tax-deductible donation, and that was it for the year.

But this notice from the Civic Club caught my eye.  The “talk” next week was going to be delivered by Gordon Bridger, Colonel, State Department of Corrections, on the subject of “Reforming Our Prisons.”  I can’t exaggerate my amazement.  Not because of the topic but because of the speaker’s name.  I was suffering the shock you get from discovering that somebody you knew in college may actually have succeeded in life.

The Gordon Bridger I knew was the guy I met in Psych 101 (Abnormal Psychology) and soon became my boyfriend.  Gordy was tall and muscly in an I-barely-need-to-work-out way, and he had the kind of subby coltishness that can be very attractive.  Until you get tired of it.   He was fun to fuck, but definitely high maintenance.  He was smart enough; the problem was that he always needed to be told what to do.  Not just in bed.  Everything about him was a mess.  His idea of a hot combination was an orange t-shirt and a lemon-green cap.  I was majoring in Business; he was majoring in something called General Studies, which is what you major in when you can’t make up your mind.  I had to go down the list of classes with him and tell him which ones to take.  He was so awkward that I decided to put Public Speaking on his course list.  He took it, but I never found out how it went.  By then we’d stopped seeing each other.  Someone told me that he’d dropped out of college and—joined the Army! That would make him the first Sterling University student who had ever done such a thing.

So you can understand my surprise when I read that email.  Here was Gordy, giving speeches at the Civic Club!  At first I thought it must be some other Gordon Bridger.  I searched him right away.  There was a scattering of news articles from a couple of years before, stuff about the opening of the new state prison at Paris.  It was a big redevelopment project, and I’d intended to drive over there and take a look, but I never got around to it.  Paris was a typical factory town—or I should say typical former factory town, because nobody was buying what Paris used to sell.  It had lost half its population in the past 30 years.  I was vaguely familiar with the property that the state had taken over—several blocks of abandoned warehouses, factories, and so on.  The creditors must have paid the state to take them.  I wondered what the place looked like now.  But I was more likely to visit the Paris in France than I was to visit the Paris 50 miles from home.  I’d seen it before; how much would a prison improve it?

There were no pictures of the property in those little squibs on the net (“Big Plans: Prison Will Boast Population of 4000+”), but one of them had what I was looking for, a photo of “Gordon Bridger, Chief of Security, Paris State Penitentiary.”  It was him, all right.  The face had hardened.  The hair that used to flop over his forehead had been replaced with a flat top, giving a square look to his face that it never had before.  And the top of a uniform shirt could be seen, in place of the habitual t-shirts of the Psych 101 era.  But it was still him—in a way.  Another article, another publicity photo . . . .  They all looked like yearbook pictures from the 1950s—square and determined and firmly optimistic.  That wasn’t the Gordy I’d known.  Which meant that I’d have to go and hear his talk.

It’s funny how you walk into a room that you haven’t entered in months, and it seems like you never left.  Maybe just to visit the john!  Same furniture, same bar, same table settings, same waiters in their funny white and yellow outfits, and of course the same guests.  I knew to a certainty that Bob Baker would greet me with a reproachful “Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”, and then introduce me to the same people I’d known for years.  Frank Crutchfield would wonder when he could get me out on the golf course—“it’s the best form of exercise!”—and Larry Briscoe, the loser who tried to low-bid me on the Skylark Hills development, would slither up to me and say, “Hey, Colin!  Still peddling houses?”, then rub my stomach and say that Santa had been good to me that year.

Gordy arrived just before food was served, and was seated at a distant table.  I was expecting some type of uniform, but he was wearing ordinary slacks, shirt, and blazer.  I failed to catch his eye.  But when he got up to speak, he looked over the audience, saw me, appeared surprised, and gave me a grin and a wave.  He began his talk about penological reform.

Of course, I did have a healthy interest in prisons—not the real ones, of course, no one’s interested in them, but the kind you see in porn.  A bunch of subs get thrown in jail; a hot guard walks in—definitely my role model—and shows that he understands his duty as an officer.  Things develop naturally from there.  I didn’t expect Gordy’s idea of reform to involve any hot action in the cell block.  And I knew better than to expect him to play the butch, sadistic guard.  It wasn’t in his nature.  If it was, he would have shown up in uniform, with all kinds of handcuffs and tasers and so on dangling from his belt.  Instead he was wearing that commonplace blue blazer.  At least he wasn’t trying to compete with anyone.

So what did he say?  He started off very technical.  He said that when the Sentencing and Rehabilitation Reform Act had been passed five years before, an opening had been created for the kind of prison reform that was long overdue.  The Act had mandated the concept of indeterminate sentencing that was enjoying a revival throughout the country, as a way of tailoring sentences to their purpose, which was the reduction of crime.  Sentences would now be given for terms such as seven years to ten, two years to 20–even one year to life.  The availability of the indeterminate “life” sentence was particularly important for criminals sometimes called “first offenders.”  When cases in which past criminal records are nonexistent, what sentence can you give?  It’s impossible to determine how long it will take to rehabilitate the offender.  The indeterminate sentence allows the state to evaluate each offender in terms of his learning experience in prison, and to release him, or not release him, on that basis.  At present, an enormous percentage of convicts are re-arrested and returned to prison.  Why not keep them there, until they are ready to be let out?  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  Everyone nodded that it did.

“But there was one problem.  One major question.  What was prison doing to educate the offender, so he wouldn’t re-offend?  Maybe I shouldn’t say what I’m about to say . . . .   But OK, I don’t see any press in this room.  (Laughter.)  Here’s the truth: our prisons have not been providing the discipline that offenders so desperately need.  A ten-year sentence is ordinarily the same as an invitation to spend ten years goofing off, at taxpayer expense.  (Laughter and applause.)  So we proposed a new kind of prison—new in America, anyway, because it draws on successful models from all over the world, and especially from Asia.  After all, we get everything else from Asia, don’t we?  (More laughter.)

“I won’t bore you with the details, but when we in the Department of Corrections studied the issue, we discovered that for less than the cost of a normal prison, we could operate a modern, high-discipline facility in which offenders are held to discipline that becomes habitual, that becomes a way of life, that becomes a mentality they cannot escape—and do not want to escape.  I’m not talking about brainwashing, you understand!  (Ironic laughter.)  I’m talking about the discipline that normal people spontaneously learn from society, the discipline that tames them, domesticates them, and makes them useful citizens.  We found that we could create a prison that domesticates criminals, and that we could do it—for nothing!  (Expressions of surprise and skepticism.)

“Of course, I’m just havin fun with you.  Everything has a price.  What I mean is this: in most prisons, we pretend to make convicts work, and they, in turn, pretend – to work.  That’s natural.  But we at the Paris Penitentiary see no reason why, with appropriate discipline, convicts can’t be made to work, and work profitably.  Yes, this requires a higher than normal ratio of officers to offenders.  But as you know, you can’t make money without investing money.  (Expressions of agreement.)  So we have invested the money, and we have passed the point where our industries can declare a substantial profit.  (Loud applause.)

“I know you’ve limited my remarks to 20 minutes, which, as convicts are always saying about everything, is totally unfair (laughter and applause), so I will now complete my report to you.  We opened the doors of Paris two years ago, and we’re populating the place rather quickly.  I have nothing bad to tell you–and no wonder, because we’re working on the principle of actions and consequences.  Action: you commit a crime.  Consequence: you get sent to the penitentiary, where you are treated like a person who committed a crime—like a criminal.  Simple as that.  But the—what do they call it?—the corollary, is that since you have been sent to the penitentiary, you are now state property.  And property, as you know, needs to be maintained.  So at Paris, the state is assuming its responsibility.  When you come to Paris, gentlemen, the state will fulfill its duty to maintain you in good order, to work you at a profit, and to improve you if you are capable of improvement.  All very simple.  And we think we’re succeeding.  Thank you for your attention!  I’m told that I do have some time for questions.”

It was a good thing that I’d told him to take that Public Speaking course.  He wasn’t coltish anymore, but it was easy to impress this group, and he did.  He received only two questions.  One was, “When can you come back?”  (“Any time you want me—happy to serve.”)  The other was, “What has been your greatest problem?”  At this he looked thoughtful and said, “At first we accepted offenders pretty much at random.  If we had room, and one of the traditional facilities didn’t at the moment, we took that offender.  Then we noticed that we were getting some offenders that were already recidivists—I’m sorry, that’s technical language for ‘repeaters’—and many of them resisted the Paris system of discipline so stubbornly that we were forced to punish an unusual number of them.  So we formed a committee of officers to work with the Judicial Affairs Department and the local jurisdictions to prioritize commitments that were most likely to benefit from the Paris system.  Mainly first-termers and so forth.  Without going into the complications–let’s just say, now we get our pick!”

Big applause.  While the audience was milling around, Gordy and I walked slowly toward each other.  He gave me a little hug and said how great I was looking.  I’d noticed him giving me the long body checkout, so I doubted he was being sincere.  But it was a nice thing to say.  He was fending off well-wishers and waiters with drinks (“sorry, I’m on duty”), but I was able to invite him for dinner a few days down the line.  It was the least I could do, after all those years.

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