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.

But while I was making them up, I looked down at myself, and I was naked.  Nothing.  No clothes, no shoes, no identity badge.  Suddenly there were people on the street, lots of people, but I was the special one.  I was the important one, the one they were all looking at.  I needed my uniform!  I needed 8363!  He would find it for me.  I started running, looking for him.  But of course he was inside the walls, and I’d never be able to find him again.  Even in the dream, I was thinking, “I’ve never had a dream this bad!  I have to get out of this dream!”  And I did.  I woke up, twisted like a rag on my prison bunk, my head levering itself up from my plastic pillow to look for 8363.  In the dark light I spotted his bald head, an inch from my feet.  He was still in his place in bunk number 14, and I was still in my place in bunk number 12.  Everything was the way it was supposed to be.  I fell asleep again.  When I woke up in the morning I remembered, and I was totally confused and totally aroused.

Yeah, interesting thoughts.  If you’re crazy!  Around that time I was crazy enough to follow up on 8363’s life story by giving him mine.  The only thing that seemed to impress him was the part about Gordy—Colonel Bridger, the man in charge of our lives, and that dinner we’d had.  His eyes opened as round as I’d ever seen them, as round as they could get.  But he didn’t ask any questions.  I began to wonder why I was even talking to him.  I told about being arrested and sent to the Pen.  Then I needed an end to the story, so I said, “As you see, I got here by accident.  Just like you.”

“All accidents lead to Paris,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“People get what they should have.”

“Maybe that’s what YOU got.”

“That’s right.  But what makes me curious is Colonel Bridger—what will happen to him.”

“I guess you’re not curious about what will happen to me.”

“I know about that.”

And that was it, as far as he was concerned.

But soon afterwards, something else occurred.

It was a Saturday, and we’d been marched back from the factory to the Chow Hall to the Wash Room.  I was hanging up my uniform, ready to push my way into the wall of bodies in the showers, when the boss came up to me, cock dangling over his long, loose balls.  “Officer just told me,” he drawled, like his talk with the officer was so fantastic that he wanted to savor every bit of it, “you should clean up good–you got a visitor tomorrow.”

Of course I didn’t know who the visitor was—they don’t tell you that.  You might get upset.  You might get distracted and destroy a pocket on the shirt you’re sewing.  You might not want any visitors to come to the zoo and see you in your clown suit and baldy.  But if it’s a visitor, it might be a lawyer or somebody else who could get you out of this place . . . .   I hadn’t heard anything from my brother; maybe he was doing something about me.  It was possible . . . .

I did what I was used to doing when I got upset.  I looked for 8363’s cock and balls.  And there they were in the shower, wet and dripping, totally innocent of the dicks and asses crowding around them . . . .

“Time’s up!” a guard said, and grabbed me out.  The guards were good at that.  They all knew how to pull the overcooked meat out of the stew.  I took my wash bucket to the trough, dug out my tiny plastic razor, and did my best to make the image in that little steel mirror above the trough look somewhat more human.

Back in the cell, 8363 pulled me aside.

“Heard about your visit,” he said.

“I guess you know everything around here.”

“Just call me Charlie Chan.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.  Good luck tomorrow.”

It wasn’t the right time to have a heart to heart with him.  With his ugly blue hat clamped on his head and his ugly blue shirt buttoned up to his neck, he reminded me that there was something more than I’d seen in the mirror; there were those horrible clothes I had to wear.

“Thanks.  You ever have any visits?”

“Not any more.  My brothers used to come.  They came a couple of times.  They were weird.  It was like they were the ones who’d been sent to prison.  They were disgusted by everything, especially me.”

At that moment, I was disgusted too.  I hated that convict suit he didn’t mind wearing.  I hated his little grin.  I hated the fact that he didn’t mind being hated.

“I guess that made you feel good,” I said.

“Why not?  I finally told them, ‘I didn’t know what was good for me—that’s why they had to put me in here.’  They didn’t get it.  No taste for irony.”  He shrugged.  “They haven’t come back. Maybe you’ll do better.  Maybe it won’t take two visits.”

He climbed onto his bunk and sat there, quietly reading his book.  What a prick.

We didn’t say much the next day, just lined up as usual at the Barber Shack, to make sure we were bald.  Then I knew it was almost time, so I crossed the Parade Ground and got into the line of cons that was pointed at the gate to the Visiting Room.  As we inched forward, I noticed sweat forming on the convicts’ foreheads.  Mine too.  I don’t know why, except that in prison, surprises are usually bad, and every visit is a surprise.

At the gate: a scan of our ID badges, a cross-check with a tablet held by an unsmiling officer, a set of shackles applied to our feet—after all, we’re entering a “public area.”  Then, a long walk in a hallway like a tunnel, filled with the clanking of chains, another check of IDs . . . .  I look down at my uniform, making sure it’s neat and clean and buttoned up.  Finally, I’m into the Room itself—long and high, with a line of little plastic stools facing a barrier extending the length of the room and up to the ceiling, a thick wall of plastic fronted with bars.  There were 40 stools in the line.  I know this because I was paraded to the stool tagged with the number 36.  Like all the rest of them, my stool was bolted to the floor, a few feet back from the barrier.  On the other side was a line of wooden chairs that looked much more comfortable.  Staring nervously at the vacant chairs, I listened while the last of the convicts clattered to their stools.

The room was concrete, and cold; the tension was hot.  You could feel waves of anxiety radiating from the captives on their little plastic perches.  I could imagine what the other convicts were thinking.  Who am I waiting for?  My brother, my son, my boyfriend?  What will he say?  Is it bad news?  Will he tell me that this is the end, that he won’t come to visit me anymore?  Or will he tell me there’s a way to get me out?  “What’s that noise?” I thought.  “Why doesn’t that clanking stop?”  Then I saw that it was my own feet shuffling weirdly back and forth, anxious to escape, if not from the prison then at least from this terrifying room, where the Inside had contact with the Outside.

But now the visitors were coming in, peering at the numbers on the wooden chairs, looking for their places like bad actors entering, stage left.  At face level in front of every criminal was a little hatch in the plastic, which the visitor could pull to open.  The pop of plastic sounded up and down the room.  Greetings were exclaimed across the remaining barrier of bars.  Prisoners were jumping up to be seen—during the moment before they remembered the NO STANDING sign posted on the wall.  But the chair across from my stool stayed empty.  I was giving up when a form abruptly filled my view, descending into the chair.  It was not a lawyer.  It was not a brother.  It was my ex-boyfriend Terry.

Before I could unscramble my feelings he had figured out the little plastic hatch and had pulled it open.  “Colin!  I almost missed my appointment!  I’ve never been in Paris.  It’s farther than I thought!”  He paused, as if he’d exhausted his lines and would now have to improvise.  “Parking is so easy, though!  But hey!  It’s great to see you!  You look . . . . ”

It took that long for him to move out of his rush and confusion and actually look at me.  I knew what his look meant.  It meant, “Fuckin hell!  You look like a fuckin clown!”

“You look like you’re, like you’re . . . gettin along all right,” he said.

There was something about the way he said it.  I didn’t know what it was, but then I did know.   It meant there was a big question about whether I was, or could possibly ever be, “getting along” in prison.

Suddenly I was thinking clearly—not thinking very well, but how much do you want from me?   What if I tell him, I thought, that I am NOT getting along all right?  What would happen then?  What would happen if I told him that I hate this place, that I don’t belong in this place, that I need to get OUT of this place, NOW?  What would he say?  I knew what he’d say: “Uh, fuck . . . Colin . . . .   That’s . . . that’s really too bad!  REALLY!  But . . . good thing is—you look, like, really healthy to me.”  Then he’d go back and tell everybody how shocking I looked, and they’d all have to pity me.

“I’m fine,” I said.  “How are you?”

“I’m great!  You remember, last time I saw you, before . . . . ”

“Before I went to prison.”

“Right.  Before you . . . went to prison.  I was, like, there was that big merger that I, I was . . . . ”

He was looking for things to say, and naturally he remembered his business deals.  A good choice; he could talk by the hour about that subject—the prosperous young guy in his carefully dark blue blazer and his stylishly narrow tie, studiously unknotted at the neck, explaining everything to the thinned, hardened, substantially older man squatting on his stool on the other side of the bars, dressed in a convict uniform.  I listened as he went through the details about what “Don” said to him about the “market model,” and how “Rob” said no, he shouldn’t buy, he should sell, but he bought anyway . . . .

I remembered how it used to be in my life.  Waking up on Sunday morning to see whether So and So had sent me a document, smirking while I smacked out messages (“sorry, no deal!”), watching from my office while Bill Alford, former king of the north county developers, trudged through the snow to surrender the deed to the Summerside property.  “Now that I’ve got that,” I’d thought, “I’ll go after Lee Severson.”

“ . . . . so, like I said, now I’m positioned to acquire that whole portfolio.”

It was a natural pause.  He had finished his story.  But the little shift of his eyes, which had been aiming at some point above my head and beyond me, and had now returned to a place approximately on my forehead . . . .  Was that embarrassment?  He looked back at me, and suddenly, mysteriously, I felt sorry for him.  So sorry for him in his innocent dark blazer and his beautiful loose aqua green tie.  He’d dressed carefully, not knowing whether prison was a formal occasion or not.

I was searching for something to say.  “You look good,” I said.  Which was true.

“I’m staying on top,” he said.

It was warm in the Visiting Room.  There were a lot of people in it.  I took off my cap, and he saw my gray, hairless dome.  Eventually, I knew, I’d be like 8363, whose skull was the same color as the rest of him.  My scalp would adapt completely to prison.

“Fuck!” he said.  “You’re bald!”

“Yeah, they keep us this way.”

He looked at me again, like he was seeing me for the first time.

“And they make you wear those clothes!”

What I heard in his voice was pity.  Pity and contempt.  I wanted to say, “No, I designed them myself!”

“It’s my uniform,” I said.  “I wear it.  We all wear the same.  What’s wrong with that?”

I was surprised by my own voice.  Was that pride I was hearing?

“I’ve gotta be honest.  You look like a . . . .”

He’d thought twice about saying whatever he had in mind.

“Like a delivery guy?” I said.  “Like a janitor?”

“No, I just . . . .’’

“I’m a convict.  This is how we look.”

Being treated like an object by guards who were paid to treat me that way—that was one thing.  Being treated that way by some guy who’s gonna go back to the parking lot and drive away in a sports car—that was another thing.

“So . . . uh . . .  Colin.  Do you need anything?  Anything I can get you?”

I didn’t know what to say.  I was remembering some more episodes from normal life, the life of the normies, as we say in Paris.  Doing taxes at 4 a.m.  Spending days with loud, ugly men, so I could get their money.  Making sure I had plans A, B, and C.  Hiring and firing.  Risk management.  Wondering why the guys I fired seemed glad to leave.  Then, when I had time to relax, feeling like I’d been fired myself . . . .

“Thanks, Terry.  I don’t need anything.”

The convict on stool number 37 must have been having a bad visit too, because I saw his normie, a tall young man in a thick-corded sweater, scrape his chair back and leave.  Immediately one of the guards came from the end of the room, where they were seated to observe our behavior, and took the convict away.  I heard his chains clattering past me and turned to look.  When I looked back I saw that Terry saw those chains too, that Terry’s eyes were following them down the line.  I guess he’d never seen anybody wearing shackles before.

“You,” he said, “you don’t have to wear those things, do you?”

I was tired of him, tired of his meaningless visit.  I’d fucked him in the ass a hundred times, and now he was worried about some convict being restrained?

“Of course I do,” I told him. “I need to be secured.  Prevents further harm.”

If you’re so smart, go figure that out.  Meanwhile, go fuck yourself.  I don’t have to do it anymore.

We sat in silence, but not for long.  Visiting time was almost over; another 40 criminals were waiting for their turn in the Visiting Room.  One of the guards shouted “Time!” and criminals started saying their last words and rising from their stools.  The noise of shackles began again–40 times louder.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said, standing up.

Terry was already moving into a standup position—more to get a sight of my shackles, I guess, than to say good-bye.  I was joining the line of criminals being herded toward the exit when he raised his voice: “See you later, Colin!”  Big man—promising to endure another visit to the big ugly prison!  If he meant it!  I didn’t care if he did.  The interesting thing was how strange those last two syllables were.  For a moment I didn’t know what they meant. Then I realized, hey, that’s my name.  But it wasn’t.  It wasn’t assigned to me anymore.

I was wondering about that, but the sounds in the tunnel blocked out my thoughts.  Forty—OK, 39—pairs of shackles make a lot of noise in a space like that.  They give you a big feeling of strength—all this steel that has to be used, just to lock you up.

It took a while to scan us out and make us kneel so the guards could take off our irons.  I wished that Terry could see it, if he was so interested.  But what a wimp he turned out to be!  “Oh, do you need to wear shackles?  Do you need to have a bald head?”  Like THAT made you weak.  He should have seen the pile of shackles we left on the ground for the next batch of convicts to wear.  He would really have made a whimper about that.

But then I was back on the Parade Ground—which after the tunnel and the Visiting Room and Terry yapping at me for an hour and then the tunnel again looked even larger than it did before.  I still had Yard time, but what was I supposed to do with it?  I’d had my haircut.  It wasn’t my week for Commissary.  My visit had preempted my designated lecture.  Maybe I could find 8363.

I couldn’t see him in any of the lines, and I didn’t see anyone wandering by himself—except me.  I wandered like that for a long time, looking at the walls and the fences and the lines in front of the Library and the Barber Shack, and feeling weird because I was alone.  There was the mystery of that name.  Colin.  Colin Perry.  Why was it so hard to recognize?

Now that I was alone, things looked different.  The walls . . . they seemed more like they were in that dream.  Only a few feet outside the Parade Ground, things were going along as normal.  Terry was getting into his car, grabbing his phone, checking his dinner date, driving fast down the street, slowing to check out any hot dude that appeared on the sidewalk, calculating how far to let the market go before he put some stocks back into bonds . . . .  He had a busy life.  And that was me, actually.  That’s what I’d be doing, if I was only those few feet away.  But I didn’t have to do any of that . . . .   Not now . . . .

“You!  Where you going?”

It was a guard.

I bowed.  “Back to my house, sir!”

“I’ll get you there.”

He started marching me to my destination.  I wasn’t allowed to walk; I had to march—legs pumping, hands swinging like parts of a machine that had been wound up and dropped onto the Parade Ground so its movements could be observed and measured.  It was good that my legs had been programmed to head for my cell, because my eyes were blurred.  Maybe with tears.  Frustration?  Relief?  I couldn’t tell—until I passed the Chow Hall and read the giant red letters over the door:

I AM A PRISONER!

THIS IS A PRISON!

I AM HERE TO SERVE MY SENTENCE!

 

“Hey, that’s true,” I thought.  “What else do I need to know?”

Nothing, I guessed.

“What else do I need to do?”

I couldn’t come up with anything.

So, yeah.  I wasn’t Colin Perry anymore.  I was 4411.  I was there to serve my sentence.  I was doing it.  I needed to be punished; I was being punished.  I had my bald head and my blue uniform with my number attached.  I had chow to eat and work to do in the factory.  I had guards to keep me in line.  I had a cell where they locked me up.  I was going there now.  Everything was the way it should be.

I was put in a line to enter the Houses and filtered into the line for my own House.  I was checked at the door of the House.  Then I was lined up in front of my cell.  I saw that 8363 was ahead of me in the line, so I was sure of being in the right place.  The line went through the double doors of Cell 17, and Officer Yan scanned us in and locked us up.  It had been a long day already.

When I got inside I found 8363 in the rear room.  He was just pulling up his trousers after squatting for a shit.

“You’re looking happy,” he said.  “Good visit?”

“Real good.  The best.”

“So what happened?  It was your lawyer, and he told you that you’re gettin out?”

I was actually surprised.  How would it be good to see my lawyer?  As for getting out . . . .

Then I realized he was joking.  His eyes were shining with sarcasm.  Did I tell you that 8363 had beautiful brown eyes?  I knew that now.  He wasn’t an ordinary young guy in an ugly convict suit.  He was a beautiful criminal in a beautiful convict uniform.  I was lucky to be dressed in the same way.  I was lucky to be there with him, standing beside the squat toilets.

“No,” I said.  “He told me . . . .  No, I mean I discovered . . . .”

I stopped there. I didn’t know how to put it.  His eyes flashed through stages of amusement, fear—I’d never seen fear in his eyes before—and finally, understanding.

“That this is your home,” he said.

“That’s right.”

That night I was happy and excited, like I knew something was about to happen.  And it did.  Just when I was finally falling asleep under the dark, dark light, I felt something large and smooth crawling slowly and reassuringly across my legs, my crotch, my chest.  I felt what it was—it was him.  Our lips touched and locked; now every part of us was locked together, quiet and secure, shaking with excitement.  “Take down those long johns,” he said.  My dick, balls, and legs slipped out of my underwear.  He’d left his own long johns behind on the other bunk.

“You know what I’m gonna do?” he said.

“You’re gonna fuck me,” I said.

He didn’t need to answer.  I smelled something sweet, and felt his fingers lubing my ass.  That body lotion he stole, weeks ago . . . .   Why did he need any lotion?  He didn’t.  He was just planning ahead.  If a con like that wants to fuck you, you have to obey.

So that’s what happened.  My ass had never been opened before, unless you count that search I got when I arrived at Paris, and yeah, it hurt like hell.  His dick was big.  But you don’t care about pain when you want something as bad as I did.  And after all, I was just doing what I was told to do.  I was an animal that was being mated.  As for him . . . .  I could tell that he’d never fucked anybody before, but somehow he knew all about it.  Convicts are animals, and animals have instincts, right?

Sex does all kinds of things.  One thing it does is make you happy about who you are.  With that big brown dong caressing my ass, moving into my ass, possessing my ass, exploding into my ass, then leaving my ass very slowly, with a promise that it would return, I knew who I was, and I knew I was happy.  “Better lick that up,” he whispered about the cum he knew I’d pumped onto the bunk.  So sex can make you happy to be licking your own cum.

We lay together till we heard the little snick of the hatch that covered the peephole, telling us that a guard was watching.  We froze, holding each other close, pretending to each other that we were afraid.  Then we heard the plap of the hatch being closed, after a slightly longer time than usual.  The next thing I knew, dawn was coming in through the bars of that window in the rear room, and 8363 was kissing me as he started slipping back into his bunk.

The next day was normal.  Wash, chow, factory, chow, factory, chow, wash.  There was a small break in routine when the boss cornered 8363 and me in the rear room before the cell went to chow.  I’d finished helping 0631 swab the floor.  8363 had finished helping 2617, his labor pair, wipe down the bars on the door, after which he’d climbed up to clean the bars on the window in back.  It was always fun to watch him climbing on the bars like a little prison monkey.  The boss grabbed us and drew himself up to his full height, the way he did before threatening to do things that he probably didn’t intend to do.

“You boys were havin a good time last night.” he told us.

I kept quiet.  I knew that 8363 would do the talking.

“Slept well, boss.”

The boss’s sharp blue eyes met 8363’s bland brown face.

“Keep it that way,” he said.

The contract was signed.  From then on, we would fuck, and keep our fucking to ourselves.  Everyone would know, and no one would officially notice.  8363 and I were a unit.  He was the motor, and I was the appliance.

So that day I sewed, and ate my chow, and washed my uniform, and read the first chapter of “Stories of the Stars.”  I thought one more time about all the things I’d be doing if I were on the Outside.  They all looked like things that I didn’t want to do.  After lights out 8363 wriggled into my bunk, and I didn’t think any more.

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