By Joshua Ryan

“OK,” the officer said, when he got me out in the hallway again. “Your looks are improving, convict. I like that new ankle bracelet. I think you look real cute in it. And you’re gonna look even cuter after your next stop. I’m tired of watchin that little dick of yours floppin around on the outside. But I guess you faggots don’t mind hangin out — do you, boy?”

“Boss! No Boss!”

“Well, if I didn’t have no more than what you got, I’d never wanta bounce that thing. I’d keep it packed away. Look at it.”

He put his hand out and grabbed my dick, like you grab a piece of junk that you plan to throw away. He yanked on it, and I lurched in his direction. “You call that a dick, boy?” He opened his hand. My dick was lying there, open to inspection.   He was right. It looked like nothing compared to his thick hard hand, or the long gray sleeve, full of muscle, that connected the hand to his big, buffed shoulders.

I could smell the Krew Comb on his haircut. I could smell the cigar he’d been smoking. A voice inside me yelled, “Fuck, man! There’s a hillbilly grabbin your dick! There’s a fuckin prison guard grabbin your fuckin dick!” But that voice was a long way away. My dick was starting to grow. It was filling and hardening, and he was starting to stroke it and crank it, like I was his cow and it was time to milk me. The more he stroked, the more it hardened and swelled and thrust in his fingers. I didn’t want that to happen. But there was nothing I could do. It was his tool now. I wasn’t in control of it anymore. Maybe I never had been. My dick didn’t care whose hand it was in; it might as well have been my own hand milking it — except that this hand was attached to a man, not to a “boy” like me. It was sliding in his hand like a piece of well-oiled machinery, like a piston that’s found the right groove . . It was true, then . . . he was the man, and I was the boy . . . he was the guard, and I was the convict . . . My dick was throbbing and jerking, struggling for release . . . Just when it was about to lunge free. . . .

The stroking stopped. The hand clamped down. Nothing would be allowed to escape.

“This thing of yours ain’t much use, is it, boy?”

“Boss!” I choked out. “No Boss!” I looked at his face. There was no emotion. It was all just part of his job.

“But that’s what put you here, ain’t it, boy?” Clamping harder.

“Boss! . . . Uhhhhhh! Yes . . . Boss!”

“So now we’re gonna button it up, boy, and keep it out of trouble. We’re gonna put you inside your uniform.” Uhhhhhh! My dick was steel; now it was turning to jelly. Sad, disappointed jelly.

“I bet you been lookin forward to that, aintcha?”

“Boss! Yes Boss!” Uniform . . . They were gonna put me inside a uniform. “My” uniform.

He dropped my dick and it fell down, limp, against my leg. I felt the last, cold trickle of precum oozing out.

“I hear you faggots like to be in fashion. Well, now you’ve got your wish, boy. You’re gonna look exactly like every other convict in the joint. And you’re gonna be in fashion for the rest of your life. What’s that you say, convict?” Reaching out again and squeezing my balls like a bag of marbles.

“Boss! Yes Boss!”

“Awright. Don’t forget your manners, just cuz you’re about to get your new suit of clothes. Right, convict?” Another hard squeeze.

“Boss! Yes Boss!” I gasped.

“Awright, now follow me.”

UHHHHH! His hand relaxed. My breath was coming in little jerks; my balls were screaming with pain. “Boss! Y- Yes Boss! Following, Boss!”

I followed him down the hallway. I was trying to walk in my new shackle. When I saw Jake’s leg iron, I thought the thing looked heavy. Now I knew how heavy it was. My left foot rose and fell like it was still attached to me, but my right foot had to be lifted and set down like a weight at the far end of a crane. I hobbled along the corridor, one foot dragging behind the other. I kept forgetting the rhythm, trying to drag the left foot instead of the right. I thought I was gonna fall on my butt before I got to the door at the end of the hall.

“Inside,” he ordered. “Last stop.”

The barred door was already open. I went inside.

It was a square, high-ceilinged room, as big as the Reception Hall, with the same old-fashioned lights and the same numbered benches lined up underneath them. On the wall to the right was one of those big double barred windows, stretching up to the ceiling and beyond, with nothing but night outside it. On the wall to the left was a blank steel door. Facing me, on the far side of the room, was a long steel counter. Behind the counter was a convict.

He was a tall, slender guy, leaning lazily across the counter, his shirt falling loosely away from his neck and his sleeves rolled loosely over his forearms. He looked like a young bartender, waiting to serve you — except that he had CONVICT 352021 stamped on his shirt. And except that he was wearing glasses. Horrible glasses. I guess the officer was right: I was a faggot; I cared about fashion. The glasses were the thing I noticed first. They were totally pathetic. They were clunky industrial-looking spectacles with heavy metal frames, the kind of glasses that no guy would ever wear if he had a choice, unless he was a total jerk. Or a convict. It took me that long to think of that. The guy wasn’t responsible for how he looked. That was the kind of glasses they made for convicts, and he was a convict. The glasses were like the bars of his cell, with the brim of his cap for a roof and his face peering out from behind the steel frames.

“Yo, College Boy!” Officer Nolan said.

“Boss! Yes Boss!” the convict said, pulling his long body up to attention and staring straight in front of him, stiff as a soldier being inspected.

“Get this boy his winter wardrobe. And finish his mugs. I need a smoke.”

“Boss! Yes Boss!”

The officer went out, and the bars slammed shut behind him.

“Hi,” the convict said, walking around to my side of the counter. “How you doin?”

He was a handsome guy, once you looked behind the glasses. Actually, they were so heavy and ugly that they made his face look even prettier than it was.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He grinned in a sarcastic way. “You don’t know. Then maybe you know what your name is, convict.”

Finally, after everything I’d been through, I was getting mad. This guy was making me mad. How much did he think I could stand? They’d taken my clothes, they’d taken my hair, they’d put a shackle on my leg and tattoos on my body, and now this guy wanted to know who I was and how I was doing.

“Convict,” I said. “That’s what it says on my chest.”

“Look, dude,” he said, dropping the grin. He was checking me out like I was the kind of merchandise he’d seen delivered about a thousand times before. “I know how you feel. I felt the same way. One minute, I’m doin a prelaw major at the state university; the next minute, I’m doin life in the state penitentiary.” He stopped for a moment, like he was waiting for me to laugh. I didn’t.

“We’re pretty sullen today, aren’t we? I’ll bet you looked a little livelier when you were listening to Officer Nolan, instead of some fuckin convict like me.”

He was right, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to help it, either.

“OK,” he said. “You’ll get over it. After all, you’ve got the rest of your life.”

I just looked at him.

“Sorry. Another bad joke. But it works with some guys. Anyhow, I asked you who you were. You never asked who I was. So I’ll tell you. The screws call me College Boy. That’s because of the glasses. Like I say, I did go to college, but there’s a lotta cons in here that are transfer students from Englilsh 101. I’m sure that the officer told you how much there is to learn in here. Anyway, man, my name is Brian.”

What was I supposed to say, “I’m happy to meet you”?

“Look, convict,” he said, “first I’m gonna take you over there in the corner, and then I’m gonna beat you up.”

OK, I thought. Go ahead. What difference does it make? I’m already dead.

“No, actually, believe it or not, I’m not gonna beat you up. I’m just gonna keep torturing you all night, by trying to talk to you. Jesus, convict, nothing I say makes any impression on you, does it?”

“No . . . I mean, Yes, Boss . . .”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t call me ‘Boss’! ‘Boss’ is for screws. Jesus! You must be a college boy, too. Otherwise, you couldn’t be so stupid.”

He was lounging with his back against the counter, smiling. In his clean brown uniform and his shined up boots and his cap pulled low on his forehead, he looked like a smart-alecky young janitor. He was a good-looking guy, and he knew it. He was the kind of guy that I’d see in a bar, and want him to notice me. When he didn’t, I’d get depressed and go home. Only I never chased a janitor. Or a convict. Except Jake, of course. . . . So maybe I’d been chasing Jake, all along, when I was chasing those other guys. . . . So I chased him, and the same thing happened. He turned away and rejected me. Only now I couldn’t go home and try to forget that it happened . . . .

This has got to be a dream, I thought. Or a house of mirrors. The convict was still leaning against the counter, looking at me. Laughing at me.

“So,” he said. “Now that you’ve thought about it, maybe you’ll listen.”

Sure, I thought. I’ll listen. I’ve got nothing else to do.

“You want me to feel sorry for you,” he went on, “because you feel so sorry for yourself. You feel sorry because right now guys like you are goin out to parties and clubbin and dancin and gettin smashed. And tomorrow they’ll also be clubbin and dancin and gettin smashed, if they figure they can still roll into the office next morning. Or maybe they’ll just be talkin on the phone or washin the car or shoppin the malls or sittin in Warbucks shootin the shit. Maybe they’ll be lyin on the sheets jerkin off. Whatever. They’ll be doin whatever they think they want to do. But from now on, you won’t be doin that. You won’t be goin out for Thai. You won’t be hangin around the jacuzzi. You won’t be showin up for work with a hangover. You’ll be sittin on your steel bunk in your all-steel cell, lookin down at that hunk of steel that’s riveted to your leg and waitin for a bell to go off so you can suit up and march out with the other cons and scarf down some grub in the chowhall and spend your day workin the chain or scrubbin johns or washin uniforms, and then you’ll get marched back to your cell so you can get up nice and early the next morning and start it all over again. And that’s why you feel sorry for yourself.”

He stopped and looked at me. To see how I took it, I guess. Then he started in again.

“So you feel sorry for yourself. It’s only natural. But I don’t feel sorry for you. And you better stop feeling that way yourself. For one thing, it doesn’t do any good. For another thing . . . why is your dick poking out like that?”

I hadn’t realized it. But he was right. The thing was hard again.

“You didn’t notice it, did you? I guess you were just too mixed up to notice. But maybe you don’t notice much, anyway. Maybe you’re one of these guys that spent three or four years jerkin off over the football team before you ever noticed that you were gay. That’s you, right? Right, dude?”

Yeah, that was right.

“I’ll take your silence as assent. Well, now at least, you know what’s goin on down there.   Not bad, either. That’s not a bad stick you got. Once you figure out what it’s tellin you, you’ll probably get along pretty well in here. Long as you hook up with the right buncha cons. Like me, man.”

He paused, making sure that our eyes met.

“I got a lotta good features, and I’ll be happy to let you see em.”

He paused again, and glanced down. My dick was sticking straight out at him.

“Good for you,” he grinned. “So I’ve decided not to beat you up. What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna take a whole buncha nudie pics.. Sometimes the screws like to do that themselves, but I guess they don’t like it as well as goin out for a stogie. Or maybe these rookies just don’t know how to run the machinery as well as College Boy here. Anyway, I enjoy it. So walk your dick over there and put it in front of that chart, convict.”

There was another one of those height charts on the wall, and I walked toward it, my right leg limping across the floor, still surprised by its heavy shackle. For a minute there, listening to Brian, I’d forgotten I was wearing it.

“You’ll get used to that, too, convict,” he said. “Now stand a little more to the left, please. And try to look serious. Oops, sorry! You already are looking serious. I just wish you wouldn’t look like you’re about to bawl. You did that before, didn’t you?   Thought so. Well, don’t do it now. It’s bad for my morale.”

He switched on the spotlight, and the camera whirred and clicked. “Turn right. Turn left. Got any scars, dude? No? No surgeries? No fight scars? I guess you’re not the type. But you’ll look like it, pretty soon. A year in this joint, and you’ll look like Spartacus. Someday, you may even look like me! And I’d look even better if they hadn’t taken me off the chaingang and given me this trusty gig. I guess that must’ve been the glasses, too. Glasses just don’t make the right fashion statement, out in the fields.”

I wasn’t ready to laugh, or even to smile, but it felt good that he wanted to make me do those things.

“One more shot, dude. Gotta get a closeup of that cute little dick. That’s not a joke. It is cute, and I am taking a closeup. They don’t put guys’ dicks on the internet. I don’t know what they do with them. But I definitely take the dick shot. The Major’s probably got a complete collection of dicks, and he’s upstairs right now jackin off over it. I know I’m gonna be jackin as soon as I get back to my cage. Come on, dude — what’s your problem? You ARE gay, aren’t you?”

“Uh . . . ”

“I know you are, man. So don’t gimme that squirrelly look. In the joint, you take it where you find it. Even from a beatup ol’ trusty like me.” I couldn’t help smiling at that. If it hadn’t been for Jake, thinking about Jake, thinking about how Jake had ruined my life, I knew I would have said something back — even though I couldn’t stop remembering how this morning, I’d been taking calls and messages at my desk in the Freer Building, and tonight, I was locked away in the penitentiary, being hit on by another convict.

“That’s better!” he said, snapping on the light and clicking the camera. “Long and hard! I like it. And I’ll like it even better, dude, when I meet you on the backside of the motor pool. That’s where you get to meet the rest of me. Right now, unfortunately, I’ve gotta put some browns on you. Stand away from that wall and report to the counter, convict.”

I followed him across the room. He went to the other side of the counter and stood behind it like a shopkeeper, and I found my place in front. There was a pair of footprints painted on the floor, so I knew where I had to stand. Behind the counter was a wall of shelves with stacks of cloth lined up on them. Many, many, stacks of cloth. A few of the stacks were white, but most of them were brown.

“Usually,” he said, “when I’ve got a line of fish in here, I’ve also got some cons to help me out. But tonight it’s just you, man. So I’ve gotta do all the work myself. And you get to watch yourself being processed, man. It’s all going on in front of you.” He leaned over the counter and looked at my dick. “I can see you’re still excited.”

Part of me was, anyway. Everything was so confused. . . .

“First I’m gonna cut your stencils. No, not your balls. Just your stencils. What was that number again:?” He looked down at my chest. “That’s right. 3-5-3-3-0-8. 3-5-3-3-0-8. A number that’s worth remembering.” He went to the far end of the counter and typed something into a keyboard. Three long strips of cardboard oozed out of a little machine. He tore them off and laid them in front of me, one by one. The holes were already punched out of them. They were in three different sizes, but they all said 353308.

“Different sizes for different parts of you, man. Here at the Durant Unit, everything has to fit. Has to fit something, anyway. The first stencil fits on the back of your shirt, the second stencil fits on the butt and thigh of your trousers, the third stencil fits on your chest and the front of your cap. Three stencils, same message: 353308. The CONVICT part — that’s already on your clothes. It goes on everything, soon as we get a new batch of uniforms. Nobody wants a new guy to feel like he doesn’t belong. So CONVICT goes on right away. But there’s also the pleasure of being an individual, of seeing your own number on your own wardrobe. So that’s what I’m gonna do for you here. I’m gonna make sure that you don’t forget who you are. Let’s see. . . . stencils, ink, roller . . . Everything’s ready. So what’s your sizes?”

“Sizes?”

“Start with your pants. What you got down there, dude?”

“Oh, uh . . . 32 waist, 33 long, maybe 32 . . .”

“Don’t worry about the length. If they’re too long — roll em up. If they’re too short — sorry.” He turned to the shelves and, without needing to look, pulled down four thick pairs of trousers. “They come in fours, man. Wear one, wear another one, put two in the laundry; wear one, wear another one, get the first two back from the laundry. Four pairs of trousers. No less — no more. Four for the price of one.” A mass of brown cloth landed on the counter.   “And your shirt size is — let me guess — double extra large.”

“No, I . . . I just wear a large. Sometimes an extra large. . . . ”

“Not for long, dude. You’re gonna be usin those pecs for somethin more than just holdin your tatts.” Four brown shirts hit the counter, size 2XL. “I guess you’d like some underwear, too. We’re generous with underwear. You get eight t-shirts and eight pairs of boxers. Four to wear, four for the laundry — pretty good, eh? That’s a change every other day. Keeps the joint smelling fresh. And don’t worry, I know your size.” He grabbed a lot of things from the white part of the shelves and dropped them next to the trousers and shirts. Boxers, t-shirts, and a stack of white rib socks. “Boot size?”

“Boots? I . . . I don’t know. I never had any boots.”

“Not much of a leather boy, were you? See that thing over there? Step on it.”

There was another pair of footprints painted at the other end of the counter, a pair with numbers around it. College Boy leaned across and saw where my feet fell. “Size 9,” he said, hunting under the counter and dragging something out. A pair of boots clumped down on the steel surface — the heaviest pair of boots I ever saw. He picked up a marking pen and painted 353308 in white letters on the backs of the heels. Then the boots sat still on the counter, black and massive, their hard skin shining in the light from above.

“And, this being winter and all, you will require one regulation dark brown convict coat, size 2XL.” A mammoth roll of brown cloth fell on the little hill of trousers.

“I’m not gonna ask your cap size, because you wouldn’t know it anyway. Besides, a lot of things change after a guy’s lost his hair. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing things.” He set a brown convict cap on top of the brown convict coat.

“All right, that’s it. Now I’m gonna stencil you in.” He was already unfolding one of the shirts and spreading it out on the counter. He was right: CONVICT was already written across the back of the shirt. He slapped down a stencil, inked the roller, and pulled it across. . . . there was a smell of greasy ink . . . he lifted the stencil . . . CONVICT 353308 was stamped in tall black letters on the crisp brown cloth.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said, turning the shirt over. “For some reason, most guys hate to watch this. I’ve even had a couple guys faint on me. Wonder why. Maybe it’s the ink smell.” He dropped a stencil onto the empty space over the big square pocket on the left side of the shirt, opposite CONVICT printed on the right. The roller crossed the stencil. Now I was CONVICT 353308 on the front of my shirt, too. He folded the shirt, laid it aside, and picked up another one.

“Goes pretty fast, once you’ve done it a few thousand times. So, tell me about yourself. Are you ready to divulge what your name used to be?”

It was hard to talk. It was hard to remember. I knew how those other guys felt. “Uhhh . . . . I . . . . It was Jason . . . Jason Rossetti.”

“Jason, eh? Wasn’t he the one that went after the golden fleece?”

Now he was talking about somebody else. Somebody in a story. I remembered. “Right. . . . That’s right.”

“And someplace along the way, didn’t he have to sow a bunch of dragon’s teeth?”

“Yes . . . I guess. I guess that was him..”

“I guess that’s what you did, too, pardner. But it’s not gonna get you any golden fleece. What it’s gonna get you is one of these little brown suits.”

“I . . . I . . . I guess you’re right, man. I guess that’s what happened.” It was true. My name never meant anything to me before I lost it. He was unfolding my trousers, one by one, and stenciling my number across the ass and thigh.

“So what did you use to be, Jason? What did you do for a living?”

“I was . . . I worked at Freer and Sons. I was in the junior executive program.” Use-to-be meant “this morning at 9 a.m.” But all I could remember was that phrase, junior executive program. Junior executive program. Junior Executive Program. I remembered seeing it printed out that way . . . in tall black letters on a white piece of paper . .

“Sounds important.”

“I don’t think it was.”

“Did you have a boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“How was that?”

“Not very good.” It was amazing. I was telling stuff like that, personal stuff, to a guy I’d never even seen before. To a convict. A fuckin convict! First you lose your freedom, then you lose your clothes, then you lose your hair, then you lose your name, then finally you lose your secrets. All right, then. “Actually, it was bad.”

“Obviously. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have wound up in the Durant Unit.”

That was true, but it was a strange way of saying it. It was as if Joey Madison, who’d never even been inside an army surplus store, had something to do with the uniform room in the Southern Regional Longterm Correctional Facility. But I guess he did. I guess he had a lot to do with it. But Jason Rossetti had even more.

“You’ll find a guy in here,” he said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Have no fear. College Boy is here.”

That was my first laugh. I had to laugh about that.

“See, you’re beggin for it. Despite the fact — as I couldn’t help but notice — that you’ve been losin your hardon here. But you can get it back. You can fix anything, as long as you’ve got the right tools. And I’ve got the right ones with me.” He ran his roller across the front of my new coat, folded it up, and looked down at his trousers. There was a big hill of brown poking up at me.

“I see,” I said. Those trousers were pushing out to the fuckin counter. He was a really good-looking guy, too. But I guess I said that already.

How can I be thinking that way, I wondered, at a time like this? Nothing matters to me after all, I decided. They were right: the Durant Unit was the place where I belonged.

“Too bad we can’t get it on right here,” Brian said, “but you’ve already wasted most of the officer’s stogie time with that little fit of depression you had. He may be back, as they say, ‘any minute.’ And I don’t wanta start the new year with a paddle job. So I’m gonna perform my official duty and direct your attention to the stack of clothing that I’ve separated out for you here on the right. You will find that that stack of clothing consists of one complete newly issued regulation convict uniform, fully stenciled and labeled. You will now don your uniform.”

I looked at the pathetic pile of cloth lying on the counter next to the big black boots. One suit of underwear. One pair of socks. One pair of trousers. One shirt. One coat. One cap. That was my uniform.

“Do it right now, dude. This is dress-in. Start with the undies, sweetheart. And get a move on.”

 

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