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.

Eventually there was an excuse to talk about it.  Something was going on at night around bunk number 5.  Something was waking people up.  It was easy to guess what the something was.  After two or three days of it I looked over the side of my bunk and saw the boss bitching under his breath to 9328, who was living in bunk number 5, and his buddy 9634, who was supposed to be living in bunk number 2.  There was less noise the next night, and finally it stopped.  Or seemed to.  Under the dark light it was hard to tell what was happening with those mounds of convict shelved on the bunks.  But I was so horny that I felt like climbing down my ladder and joining anything that anyone was doing.

When Sunday came, 8363 and I were on the Yard, and I brought up the bunk problem.  He claimed that he’d slept through it all.

“I don’t understand,” I told him.  “Sex is not permitted.”

“But you want it to be permitted, right?”  I hated it when he answered a question with another question.

“OK.  Is it permitted or not?”

“It is not permitted.”

“But it happens.”

“Yeah, it is permitted to happen.”  He understood what was going on—understood it all—and he was grinning at me.  “In college, I took a Philosophy of Ethics course.  The guards did not.  Neither did our boss.  Their job is to maintain the cell.  You can’t maintain the cell if you tell everyone that they can have sex.  And you can’t maintain the cell if you let no one have sex.  If they let me have sex and not let you have sex, that would also not be maintaining the cell.  All these are unnecessary causes of conflict.  So the guards and the boss let both of us have sex, as long as sex is not permitted, and the cell is not . . . disturbed.”

How did a guy like this get into prison?  And why did I want him so much?  But he couldn’t have made it clearer, what I should do.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.  “You and me–tonight!”

He paused no longer than a second.  “You hate being in the cell, don’t you?”

“Hate it?  What the . . . .   If something doesn’t change pretty soon, I’ll be insane.  I can’t do seven years like this!  I can’t do seven years, period!”

I was sorry I’d said that.  What began as sex talk had turned into a confession of weakness.

“You’re a criminal,” he said.  “This is the place for criminals.  We’re here to serve our sentence.”

“Fuck you!” I said, and walked away, out to a corner of the Parade Ground where I had nothing to do and nobody to talk with.  But that night and the next day I was still bunking next to him and marching to chow with him and watching him crouch on the cell floor listening while the other criminals told their interminable stories of their crimes.  The next Sunday I happened to turn up beside him on the Parade Ground, and we went on like nothing had happened.  Nothing, that is, except my hard, raging dick.

It was mid-September, time for us to change out of our summer uniforms and put on our winter ones.  The weather didn’t matter; there would be six months of one and six months of the other; that was the rule.  Winter uniforms were the same except that they were made out of thicker, less comfortable material, and the underwear was long johns rather than shorts and tees.  The House C guards trooped us down to the Locker Room in the basement, where each of us had the great privilege of a shelf to store our extra shit, which was our winter or summer uniforms and anything we’d stowed under our bunks that we wanted to “save”—letters from home or whatever, size strictly limited.  The shelves were locked, but a guard would let us in if necessary.

The convicts stripped off their clothes and stood naked in the Locker Room until the doors of the shelves swung open.  Then they stowed their summer suits and took out their winter suits.  I didn’t have any winter uniforms on my shelf.  I didn’t have anything there; I hadn’t been in prison that long.  Not to mention getting no letters!  So I went to the Store Room down the hall, where an officer issued my winter gear and I went back to put it on.  Of course I pushed into the Locker Room so I’d be standing next to 8363 while he was getting into his suit.  I could see his dick getting bigger all the time–he was really happy with his uniform.  He seemed especially aroused by the heavy, scratchy feel of his ugly old-farmer undies.  I thought he was gonna cum!  That was another weird thing about him, but it made me want to do the same—right away!  The smell of those suits coming off the shelves, the sight of his big brown cock—I mean, that was another thing you wouldn’t have predicted, the heft of that thing—the feel of my own cock bouncing up when it got the feel of its new, extra-ridiculous gear . . . .  When was the last time it had been happy?

But it was happy now.  And there was something else that got it hard–  When that officer gave me my stack of gear, I noticed an extra shirt lying sideways on the counter as he slapped my shit down.  When he turned back to his shelves I tucked it into my stack before he could turn around again—and made off with it, back to the Locker Room, back to the cell, back to the space under Bunks 11 and 12.  For the first time, I really felt like a criminal, and my dick was feeling pretty ripe about it.

So that was a Sunday, and afterwards we went to the Parade Ground, and as always I followed 8363 around as he walked.

“I notice,” he said, “that you snagged an extra shirt today.”

“I was hoping you would.”

“Why?  Because you’re proud that you’re a criminal, or because you want to piss me off, because I like the rules?”

“Not sure.  Did I piss you off?”

“Yeah, about as much as you did when you gave me those chocolates you swiped from the Commissary.”

“They were sitting next to the checkout.  They won’t miss them.  You didn’t seem pissed when you ate half of them.  Or when you swiped that tube of body lotion.”

“You saw that?”

“Sure.”

“You’re smarter than I thought.  But I’m not pissed.  I’m liking you better.  You’re starting to realize that you’re not on vacation in here.  You’re a criminal, like everybody else.  And this is where you belong.  You’re a criminal, and you’re being punished.”

I let that go past.

“How much do you like me now?” I said.  “Like me enough to fuck?”

I wasn’t gonna say “fuck that plump little ass of yours.”  But the same thing was happening that happened before.  I was pushing him, and he wouldn’t be pushed; I was getting mad; he refused to be mad.  He just kept saying Buddha things like, “Forget about what I do.  Worry about serving your time.  Or don’t worry about it.  OK with me.  I’m fine.”  He could string that stuff out forever, then line up happily to be marched back to the cell.

Which we were doing, until—I was forced to take a detour.  While we were forming up to leave the Parade Ground, two guards with shoulders like horses moved in on me, grabbed me out of line, and marched me in the opposite direction—to some little steps leading down to the basement of the Administration Building and into a room where they put me into the Interrogation Chair.

You’ve probably never heard about the Chair, so I’ll tell you how it works.  It has two sections, hinged together, both made out of tubular steel.  The first section includes a seat, a back, and a footrest; bolted to the footrest is a pair of half-shackles with their open ends pointed forward.  The second section is a framework with a little table at the top and the other half of the shackles at the bottom.  When you’re taken to the Chair, you’re placed on the seat in the first section.  Then the second section is swung back on you, closing you in, with the table poking into your stomach.  Your hands are locked into rings embedded in the table; your feet are locked into the shackles, now joined together, half-shackle to half-shackle.  Then a tube of steel, hinged to the back of the chair, is swung across your chest, holding you erect.  One by one, you hear the locks fixing you in place—feet, arms, chest.  Now you are in the Chair, ready to be interrogated.

Of course I had my own questions, questions like “Why am I here?” and “What is this about?”  But asking questions was the job of the guards.  They wanted to know what was my number, what was my sentence, what house, block, cell, and bunk was I in, how long had I been in the Penitentiary—questions they already knew the answers to.  Each question was asked many times, and in many ways, so I had to follow what was said, I had to pay attention, I couldn’t just zone out.  The questions were asked in calm, steady voices, like water dripping, endlessly dripping . . . .

After a long time they started asking what kind of gear I’d been issued when I was admitted to the Penitentiary—how many pants, how many shirts, how many sox . . . .   Frequently they’d ask me, in the cold, even tone they always used, whether I was sure about what I’d said.  How many pants?  Are you certain?  How many sox?  Are you certain?  Did I recall how many winter uniforms, or parts of winter uniforms I had been issued that day?  Are you certain?  Did you count?  Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more—but what did that mean? I was in prison, I’d have to take it—they went on to more speculative questions.  Did I know whether the Officer in the Store Room always counted the number of uniforms, and parts of uniforms, that remained after he issued a certain number of uniforms to the criminals in C House?  Did I know whether the Officer had ever detected a discrepancy in his count?  Did I know whether he had detected a discrepancy in today’s count?  Did I know that in such cases the cell officer, in this case Officer Yan, must immediately check the stores of uniforms found under the criminals’ bunks?  Did I know whether the criminal who slept in the bunk beneath me wore the same size of uniform that I wore?  They knew the answer—and so did I, because he was a good guy, and he often joked about how small he was.

I’d realized for an hour, two hours, where this was going.  It was so excruciating that I was thrilled to be asked, finally, if I would be interested to know that an “extra and unauthorized uniform part” had been found under my bunk?

“Yes!” I shouted.  “I took it!  I put it there!”

They accepted my response without comment.  But now the purpose was to discover how far my thievery extended.  Questions were asked about what I had stolen from the Training Team, the factory, the Chow Hall, the other criminals in the cell.  My back was breaking, my arms and legs were pulsing with the pain of being trapped in one position, my head was aching with the thought that this might never end, that this might go on forever.  When they asked what I had stolen from the Commissary, I saw my chance to end it all.  “Yes!” I said.  “There were chocolate bars.  I took two!  Two of them!”

Saying “two” was a mistake, because the next part of the session was about who I’d given the second one to.  It was then I discovered how much I loved 8363.  “I ate it all!” I screamed.  “I ate it all!”

I said that ten or twenty times.  Then an officer came in with LIEUTENANT SANCHEZ on his pec.  One of the horses—a white guy who had the disappointed look of a man who is just getting started on something he really enjoys—talked to the Lieutenant in low tones while I sat in the Chair, exhausted.  I felt better, now that I’d confessed.  I felt that I’d done what criminals do—I’d taken my punishment, and I’d also lied.   I noticed, too, that I had an enormous erection that I couldn’t cover up.

The Lieutenant approached and stood over me.  I saw the sharp crease of his pants; I smelled the faint, young-man scent of his crotch.  His dick was clearly outlined under the dark blue cloth.  I was sure he was looking at my dick.  What else was there to look at?  Then he stepped back, nodded, wrote something on his tablet, and departed.  The horses took me out of the Chair, told me to put my nose against the wall, and locked a pair of shackles on my legs–the same kind of shackles that they’d put on 4398.  They turned me around, asked me the Three Questions.  I answered, and they escorted me back to the cell.

I’d missed chow, but that was all right.  I would have thrown it up anyway.  Most of the prisoners looked at my legs with sorrow, not because of any suffering I was experiencing but because this was another fucking thing that would slow the march.  I went to the rear, squatted, and shat.  Then I paraded back through the cell and retrieved my blue plastic wash bowl.  I took it to the sink and washed my head.  I knew that I looked like hell.  But the truth was, I felt good.  Good about getting out of the Chair— yet weirdly, also good about what 8363 had said: I was a criminal, and I was being punished.  The fact that I’d been punished for stealing a shirt and a couple of freakin candy bars just made it better.  I didn’t know why, but that was good.

8363 helped me climb the ladder in my shackles and get in my bunk.  He seemed as happy as I was—more.  I was sure he wouldn’t have been mad if I’d confessed that he ate the candy, and they’d made him sit in the Chair and wear the punishment chains.  Somehow I knew that he would have liked it as much as he liked seeing me that way.  Probably more.

The other prisoners in the cell didn’t resent me as much as they’d resented 4398.  They made a lot of jokes—“How do you like your new jewelry, 4411?”—but they didn’t mutter about getting behind me in line.  Not much, anyway.  On my first trip out of the cell I got a lot of laughs from the convicts in the Wash Room.  They enjoyed watching me squat to shit with my chains ratting all over while I tried to keep them out of the hole.  There was gawking on my way to the Chow Hall and on my path to the sewing machine.  Gawking and laughing.  Humiliating?  What do you think?  Especially when I thought, “Is this the same Colin Perry who was taking the Chief of Security out to dine, only a few months ago?  And paying for his meal?  Would anybody have been able to convince that Colin Perry that he’d soon be shambling around in a prison yard, wearing shackles on his way to his job behind a sewing machine?”

Five days in irons—that was my punishment.  8363 didn’t say anything to get me off, the way he’d gotten 4398 off.  At the end Officer Yan came to the cell and lined everyone up to watch me kneel on the concrete floor while he unlocked my shackles and hung them on his shoulder and waited for me to bow and say, “I apologize to you, Officer Yan, and to the boss, and to the cell.”  I did so.  After he left there was some joking about “too bad we don’t have any extra shirts for you,” but the shackles were off, and everything went back to normal, except for my ankles, which were as red as beets, and 8363, who seemed disappointed.  While we were getting ready to climb into our bunks, he got close to me and whispered, “You were hard when you were wearing those shackles.  And I’ll bet you were hard when they put you in the Chair.” I didn’t say anything, so he said, “Right.  I thought so.”  I’ll guarantee that I was rock hard that night in the bunk.

Sunday came, and we had our private talk about the Chair.

“I wouldn’t have minded trying it out,” he said.  “And of course I deserved it.  I was your accomplice about the chocolates.”

“I wonder if they care about the chocolates, or even the shirt.  I think they’re just trying to scare us.  And obviously, they get a lot of fun out of it.”

“Sure.  Why not?  Doesn’t mean they don’t care about the chocolates.  They do.  I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings, but lotsa cons have got the Chair for less than that.  It’s the way the Colonel operates.”

Was that true?  Gordy?  Gordy the do-good?

We were sitting on the Parade Ground in front of the Cell Houses.  I looked at the Administration Building, a couple hundred feet away.  Like everything else in Paris, its windows were filled with bars.  If Gordy was behind one of those sets of bars, looking out at his prison, looking out at 8363 and me chilling our butts on the concrete, no one would see him.  No one would know what he was thinking.  It was hard to imagine that he was the same person as the awkward sub lying on my sheets in the College Hill Apartments.  But maybe he was right.  Maybe prison really could reform you . . . .

I must have been lost somewhere in my thoughts, because it took me a while to remember that 8363 was still sitting next to me.  Maybe he’d forgotten about me too.  He was gazing out across the Parade Ground.  It was the usual sight—the Chow Hall, the gate to the Training Team, the zigzag roofs of the factories, where convicts who hadn’t fulfilled their quotas were lining up for the overtime they had to do, the Barber Shack, with its line of little blue insects coming in to get their heads re-balded . . . .

“It’s so beautiful,” he said.  “I love to watch it.”

“Sure,” I said.  “I love watching those lines.  It means I’m not in them, at the moment.”

“I like that too,” he said, turning to me and looking into my eyes.  “Watching them.  But I also like being in the lines.”

Usually, he didn’t look at me.  I’m not talking about how many times he looked at the way I swabbed the floor or the way I made my cube or the way my uniform behaved when he was doing something that aroused it.  I mean how many times he looked in my face, my eyes.  (And yeah, how often does YOUR friend look in your eyes?)   So now he was looking.  I thought he wanted to see how surprised I was about what he’d just said.  He must have seen “You WHAT?” written all over me.  But there was something else he was looking for.  Something like a signal to keep on talking, no matter how strange he might get.

“I’m guessing,” he said, “that you won’t repeat this to anybody.  But I know you hate everybody in here anyway.”

“You’re right about that!”

“Just remember, I’m your only friend.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Of course he was.  Not only that; I’d admit to anything, just to get in his ass.  But that wasn’t where this conversation was going.  He was looking back across the Parade Ground again.

“Maybe,” he said, “you’d understand why I like this place if you knew that I have three brothers.  Two of them are doctors, and the other one is a lawyer.  So you can tell what my parents are like.”

“Uh . . . right.”  I suppose.  It seemed obvious to him, anyway.  So did the next thing he said.

“When I was a kid, I fell in love with criminals.  I looked for them in movies and videos.  I searched for them on the net.  But I loved them best when they were in prison.  They were like, I don’t know . . . wild animals.  Or dogs, or horses, or monkeys or something.  Or those bulls that they use in rodeos.  But the thing about animals like that, the thing that makes them so interesting, is what happens when they stop being free.  They’re captured, and penned, and collared, and paraded around on a leash, or maybe put in a zoo or something.  That’s how you know they’re so powerful, because they have to be managed like that.  Even a dog is powerful.  A big dog.  Man-size.  Did you ever meet a wild dog?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I hope you don’t.  But I have.  I think I was one of them.  Not on the surface, just way inside.”

“OK.”

“So that’s pretty fascinating.  And at the end, they aren’t wild anymore.  They’re tamed.  You can actually use them for stuff.  And they like it.  Because they’ve been trained.  They’ve been domesticated.”

Where had I heard that word before?

“So that’s what you like?” I said.

“Sure.  That’s what I like.  That’s what I wanted.”

He leaned back, propping himself on his arms, inspecting me from a distance.  I could see he was hard under his pants and his long johns—definitely very hard.  It was a hell of a thing, that he had to be out on the Parade Ground before he showed me his hard!  Did he know he was making me crazy?  Yeah, he knew.  Maybe he didn’t care.  But why should he?  I wasn’t fat anymore, but a prison uniform always looks worse on a 35-year-old than it does on a guy in his fucking arrogant early twenties.

“You came to the right place for it.”

“Right!  That’s what I really like about prison.  You go in through the gate, and when you come out—if you ever come out, because personally I think that criminals should be locked up forever—you’re a totally different animal.”

I guess that in prison, you’re always doing things you didn’t expect to do.  Like finding yourself saying, “So did you want to be a different animal?”  Which is what I said to him.

“What do you think?  Who wouldn’t?  Especially with my family breathing down my neck, wanting me to be all these totally uninteresting things.  So, like I told you, I went to Kingston and got a degree in Business . . . .”

“You never told me that.  In fact, you’ve never told me your name.”

He looked puzzled.  “You know my name!  It’s 8363!   Oh, you mean my former name.  So here’s another thing you don’t need to spread around.  It’s Orlando.  Yeah, I know.  But it’s not from the town.  It’s from an old story.  My dad thought it sounded special.  I didn’t turn out to be like the hero.  But he wouldn’t know about that.  He never reads anything,   Anyway, I’m Orlando.  Orlando Liu.”

“OK.  I won’t tell anybody.”

“You must have one of those names too.”

“Sure.  If I can remember it.”

“Why should you?”

“Because you brought it up.  My name is . . . my name was Colin Perry.”

“Fine,” he said, completely indifferent.  “I’ll go on with my trashy story.  I did all right at Kingston, not a surprise, because all I did was study and look at pictures of handsome criminals . . . .   Probably you did the same.”

“I went to Sterling.”

“Yeah?  Well, like they say, it isn’t Kingston.  Did it get you a job?”

“Yes.  One of the contacts I made at Sterling put me in an . . . interesting position.”

“That’s good.  Anyway, I got out of college and landed a pretty good job.  I was assistant to the VP—one of the VPs—at Decembro.  It didn’t pay much, but like my dad said, at least I was on the executive ladder.  It wouldn’t take me long to go on up.  That can make you feel kind of . . . ”

“Superior?  Arrogant?”

“Self-conscious.  Anyway, my best friend in college—I guess he had to be ‘best’ because I didn’t have that many—he was in town, and we got an apartment together.  Paul was beautiful—I mean a really beautiful, gorgeous guy—and I wanted to sleep with him like I never wanted anything before.  So obviously he went out a lot, and I obviously he slept with everybody but me.  He was always teasing me about not puttin myself out there.  He said I’d have to get over being shy.”

“You don’t seem to care about that now.”

“Not now I don’t.  Do you think I’m shy?”

“With everybody but me.”  Like I said, anything to get in his ass.  But I guess that was true.

“That’s good.  Back then, I wanted to be the way he was.  Anyway, off to the races—he was always going on about this friend of his, this former friend who was former because he’d loaned money to this guy, and the guy kept making excuses and wouldn’t pay it back.  So one night Paul told me, ‘Cmon bro, you need some adventure in your life.  I’m gonna go and collect that debt.’  So we got in my car and drove over to the friend’s house, where I’d be his backup.  ‘Wear your tank top,’ he said. ‘I want him to see those muscles.’”

“I’d like to see more of them myself,” I said.

As usual, he didn’t take the cue.  “Long story short, we get there, the guy hands out some more excuses, there’s an argument, and Paul fuckin pulls a gun!  It’s surprising how small a room can get when there’s suddenly a gun in it.  ‘What the fuck?’ the guy says.  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doin?’  And grabs for the gun.  Which goes off.  The guy goes down.

“I couldn’t believe it—it was like a movie.  Neighbors break in, cops break in, I see Paul being cuffed and taken away, I see myself being cuffed and taken away.  My first time in cuffs.”

“That must have made you happy.”

“Are you kidding?  I was scared, insanely scared.  And it wasn’t till the next day that I found out that the guy didn’t die.  He wasn’t in any danger of dying.  Of course I pled guilty, but there was still a lot of court stuff, and the jail was . . . it was a piece of trash, basically.  All these inmates strutting around, yelling, demanding respect.  That’s a laugh.  It was a relief when the judge gave me 10 to life, because I knew that now I was headed for prison.  That was sort of the Defining Moment.  I’d dreamed about having a boyfriend, and I’d dreamed about being in prison, and now one of those dreams had come and taken me in its arms.”

He looked beyond me, at some place far across the Yard.  Someplace or no place.

“I didn’t know I’d be happy,” he added.  “And I didn’t know I’d be going to Paris.”

“Big surprise.”

“Oh yeah.  When they took me off the bus.  And I saw it.  Saw all of this.”

Now I realized what he’d been looking at.  It was himself on the day when he got off the bus.  “I was totally lost.  But when I saw that sign with the Three Questions, everything changed.  It wasn’t a fantasy.  It wasn’t some legal game I’d lost, and I was pissed because they wouldn’t let me get up from the table and go home at the end.  And it wasn’t just some big, scary place.  Not anymore.  I realized who I was.  I was a criminal.  And I was in the right place.  The place for criminals.”

“And now you’re happy.”

“Sure!  I have everything I need.  A cell, totally secure.  Food—it’s bad, but it reminds me that I’m in prison.  Clothes—every time I look down at my uniform I get hard.  You may have noticed that I wear my sox in bed.  Which you don’t.”

“Yeah.  But what does that . . . .”

“When I wake up at night . . . .   You know I’m a sort of nervous sleeper.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”  Like I wasn’t tracking everything he did.  Like I didn’t know every time he got out of his bunk to go to the rear room and take a piss.  Like I didn’t feel his arms when they reached out in his sleep and fell across my legs.  Like I didn’t wonder, whenever I felt him turn in his bunk, whether this was the time, this was the moment when he would come into my bunk, when his arms and his legs would crawl out across mine . . . .

“Anyway, when I wake up, I look down at my sox, and I see my prison sox, and I know I’m in prison.  Then I feel good.  You know what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“That’s too bad!  And I listen to what’s going on.  The other criminals in their bunks, breathing or snoring or tossing around—you too—and they’re all just criminals in their bunks, like me.  I knew I didn’t want to be alone, and when they put me in the cell I knew that I never would be.  Even when I’m with you.  That’s a joke, by the way.”

“Make sure to tell me when you’re making a joke.  Otherwise I wouldn’t know.”

“Also punishment!  Obviously, I needed to be punished; that’s why they sent me here.  But I was a criminal, so I needed more than some one-time punishment.  I needed to be controlled.  I needed to be uniformed and numbered and locked and guarded and supervised all the time.  I discovered that I liked that.  I liked having everything planned out for me.  You know the Third Question—“What are you doing here?”

“Yeah, seems like I’ve heard it before.”

“So, the answer is ‘I am here to serve my sentence.’  You don’t just HAVE a sentence; they make you SERVE it.  They tell you to squat; you squat.  They tell you to sew; you sew.  They tell you to march, you march, and you swing your arms exactly the way they tell you.  You would never have come up with that stuff on your own, but it’s right for you.  You need to serve.”

“Sure you’re not just brainwashed?”

“Yeah.  But my brain needed to be washed.  Didn’t yours?”

I had nothing to say to that.  I was asking myself, “How many people do I know who are happy?”  Somehow, I was shocked.  Until then, everything he’d been telling me seemed like it was just a story.  Just something you make up.  Him too.  Something that I made up.  Then I asked that question to myself, and he was the only one that passed the test.

“What happened to your friend,” I asked.  “What’s his name?  Paul.”

“Oh yeah.  Paul.  He’s doin 20 to life in Cell House A.”

“Right here?”

“Right here.  Actually, he’s in one of those blocks that yards on the same shift as ours.”

“That’s pretty creepy.”

He gave me a quick look, like “I know you’re fuckin jealous, dude!”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Pretty creepy.  Matter of fact, if you turn around and look toward the door of the Chow Hall, I believe you’ll see him in that group of cons standing in front of it.”

I looked at the group, trying to pick out the beautiful, gorgeous one.  “Which one is he?” I asked.

8363 gave a little half-turn and looked.  “Hard to say for sure,” he said.  “He’s a convict.  We all look alike.  He’s never got over that.  He still thinks he’s so special that somebody is gonna get him outta here.  We haven’t talked in a year or so.  I don’t worry about that.  But hey! Look at the line over there.  Time for our haircuts.”

He got up, with his dick pushing his pants at a 90 degree angle.  He was happy, all right.

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