By Joshua Ryan

That afternoon I collapsed on my bunk and began to think.  I thought about what a fool that counselor was and about how he must be wrong, how he must have been talking to some imaginary Steven Meres who was going to spend his life in prison.  I thought about how much I hated him for saying those terrible words to me, and how many things I’d like to do to show him that I had a life and he didn’t.  Every time I looked down at the childish orange clothes they’d put me in, I saw how much he and “the institution” had on their side.

But … I needed to come to my senses.  After all, I was there to write a book.  I should be remembering my observations, collecting my story descriptions … I tried, but I couldn’t focus on that.  It all seemed like thoughts in some other person’s mind, the mind of somebody who wasn’t locked in a steel box.

On the morning of the seventh day I was cuffed and taken out of my box and marched to the end of the big hallway, where there was a door that led to a loading dock.  Standing on the dock was a cage with bars on its top and all four sides.  It was a very large cage, and I was put into it with about 80 other prisoners.  The officer who put me in pointed to a small steel toilet next to the bars. “You need to use the can, use it now.  You’re goin on the chain bus.”

Chain bus?  It didn’t sound good.  The time must have been about 5 a.m. — in the sky beyond the dock there was only a glimmer of light.  I hadn’t pissed that morning, and I thought I should do it, so I lined up with ten other prisoners at “the can.”  When it came my turn, I closed my eyes and prayed I could perform.  Finally the warm, stinking stream drizzled out of my dick.  I felt better — until I turned and saw the jungle of orange animals watching my performance.  There were a lot of big ones in that jungle.  Big arms, big legs, big attitudes, big equipment.  The little orange suits covered none of it up.  In fact, they had a tendency to roll up around the arms and crotch … I put my head down and backed into the shadows.

The sign on the wall said NO TALKING.  Which didn’t stop the low mumbling that filled the cage.  I couldn’t help listening to the mumbles around me.  “Yeah my public pretender–fucked me over.  This dude…”  “So my old lady says, you better plead out.  And I says, that ain’t so easy…”  “So whad you get?”  “Five ta life.”  “I got it too.  Three ta life.”  “You fucked, dude!”  “Yeah dude?  That ain’t no LIFE!  That just three-TO.”  “Hate to tell ya bro, in this state it IS.”  “Huh?”  “Guess that lawyer ain’t tell ya nothin.  Lissen bro, ‘life’ means life.  Once they get you inside, bro…”

I wanted to stop listening, but once you start … Although obviously it was just talk, all just talk, from a bunch of guys being sent to prison.  Criminals.  Losers.  People I wouldn’t talk to on the street. Why would I believe anything they said?  No reason — except that I was being sent to prison myself!  It was the same with that “counselor.”  I’d been trying to remember what Dean said about being reviewed and opting in and opting out, and how one year meant life but he would get me out anyway … I was panicking again.  Suddenly I had no idea what “life” meant.  “One to life” must be a lot better than “five to life,” right?  But maybe not.  And now there was a bus coming for me.  A “chain bus.”   A bus to take me to prison — maybe for life!

The exact meaning of “bus” soon became clear.  Beyond the bars, white vehicles were pulling up like ghosts, and the shadowy forms of prisoners were being taken out of the cage and loaded onto them.  The cage was emptying out.  What happened if I missed the bus?   Would that mean that I got to leave?!  Then I heard an officer intoning, “Crandall, Baker, Kucinski, Meres…”  MERES!  I’d made the bus after all.

I joined Crandall, Baker, and the other prisoners passing through the little gate in the cage and out to a place where our cuffs were unlocked and an officer told us to “Strip off!”  Soon our shirts, shorts, and shoes were things of the past.  They all went in a bin, and an officer passed out our new attire.  It wasn’t cute little orange fag togs; it was dead-white jumpsuits with big billowing arms and legs.  Apparently they were all the same size, which must have been 4XL.  Even a couple of big-and-talls looked at them like, what, you want me to wear this?  It didn’t help that the only color was provided by red letters running across the back and down the right leg:

PRISON TRANSPORT

It was a struggle to get into my jumpsuit (“my” jumpsuit!).  Mental, because my whole body revolted against wearing a thing like that.  Physical, because when I held it in front of me it flapped like a sail, like the skin lost by some giant creature.  On the front there was a line of steel snaps that were supposed to keep me inside it, but first I had to open them all.  Then I had to learn how to get my body in.  How would I know?  I’d never come near a jumpsuit before.  Eventually I realized that you have to put your legs in first, but it was still a struggle to locate the leg holes and arm holes and pull the thick white tent over my shoulders.  Officers were roving around, shouting at everyone to hurry up, and what the fuck is the matter with you, are you STUPID?  When I finally got inside I looked around and saw seven other prisoners in the same suits, looking down at themselves, ashamed.  “Here’s your shoes,” an officer said, and eight pairs of flipflops landed at our feet.  Flipflops, like kids wear to the beach.

Then came the chaining.  All right, I’d heard the words “chain bus,” but what they did to us was still a surprise.  One by one we were told to face the wall while we were put in shackles.  Then it was time to cuff us up again, but instead of just cuffing our hands together they stood us in pairs and told the prisoner on the right to put his left arm under the right arm of the prisoner on the left, following which they cuffed each guy’s hands together.  Which meant that I was locked by my arm to the prisoner that was next to me, and was now my Siamese twin.

I looked at this other guy that was sharing my body.  He was a tall, firm 35-year-old, with dark, unkempt hair and some kind of tattoo on his neck.  When my left arm went under his right arm and got cuffed that way, he jerked back like I had some kind of disease.  Then he gave in, like he remembered where he was, but he was still flexed like steel against my increasingly jello-like body.  His hands had tattoos on them.  One of them said JUNIOR; the other one I couldn’t make out.  I always hated tattoos and the people who wear them.  Somehow I was now arm in arm with a guy who had “Junior” inked on his hand.

We heard the heavy breathing of the short, snubby bus that had arrived to transport us to wherever we were going.  It parked face forward, and you could see the sign above the windshield.  The sign said STATE PRISON.  “Your ride is here,” an officer said.  “Hump on down.”

“Hump” meant shuffle in flipflops and chains while being dragged along by the body attached to you.  Then there were the steps you had to climb to get into the bus.  The chain between my legs barely let me reach from the ground to the first one, or from the first to the second.  While struggling with that I was being smothered by the thick, industrial smell of the jumpsuit ahead of me — if that’s the right word for Junior’s body, which was climbing the ladder a half step in front, with its ass hovering way too close to my face.

At the top of the steps there was a cage for the officers who were manning the bus, then an aisle leading back into the space arranged for the cargo — that is, us.  An officer stood in the door of the cage, chanting, “Down the aisle.  Into your seats.   Down the aisle.  Into your seats.”  The bus was short but fat.  On the right side of the aisle was a series of little cages, each containing a steel seat and supplies of appropriate restraints.  On the left were little pairs of school bus seats for prisoners who might not, at least immediately, need to be caged.  One married couple after another found their places in the seats on the left.  Junior slid in, pulling me after him.  Once we were officially in our seats, an officer walked back and secured us for the trip.  He locked our free hands in cuffs attached to the end of chains that were in turn riveted to the seat.  Neither of us was going anywhere.  Each prisoner could use an arm, but only with the active participation of the other.

The officer returned to the front of the bus.  I had nothing to do but look at him and his colleague as they hovered around the driver’s compartment, waiting to transport me somewhere.  Two handsome packs of muscle, fitted neatly into their smooth gray uniforms, with black batons dangling from their belts — sticks to beat us with.  In prison, apparently, enough is never enough.  There’s always something more you can do to punish people — in this case, by presenting not one but two unattainable specimens of manhood, and making them so impossibly similar that anyone would be confused about which was Officer X and which was Officer Y.  Meanwhile, I was squatting in the rear of the bus, snapped into a white suit resembling an enormous recycle bag, and chained to a convict named Junior, who was wearing the same suit and the same chains — an object that to the casual observer would look identical to me.

The door of the bus banged shut.  The driver relaxed into his seat.  The officer who had been locking us down stood at the front and announced, “This bus is leaving.  You will be on this bus for approximately four hours.  This is not a guided tour.  I do not need your questions.  At some point, you will be fed.  In the meantime, there will be NO loud noise.  If I can hear you, I will have to quiet you.  You will not be happy about that.  You see that I got my buddy here.”  He clapped his hand on the rod hanging from his belt.  “I got my other buddy right over there.”  He pointed into the front cage.  Between the seats there was something sticking up, and it wasn’t an umbrella.  It was a rifle.

He started to turn, and a prisoner yelled, “Where you takin us?”  It was a guy so chunky it seemed like his jumpsuit might almost fit him.  The officer took two strides to reach him.  “State Prison,” he said.  But “said” isn’t the right word.  Those pretty lips knew how to snarl.  The fat man squeezed himself back in his seat, but the officer was on him, unlocking him from his partner and from the seat, pulling him up, and squeezing him into the first cage on the right, where he was harnessed and rendered incapable of motion.  “Now zip that lip, boy,” the officer added, dragging the guy’s partner into the second cage and rigging him up in the same way.  Guilt by association, and a good example to everyone of what happens when your lip isn’t zipped.  Then the officer stepped into his own cage, banged it shut, and closed it with a padlock big enough to be seen by all.  And we were off — down the drive, through a gate, and out on the road.  To where?

My first discovery was that the chain bus was like the cop car Dean drove — no springs in the prisoner section.  Every bump sent me bouncing as far as you can bounce when you’re locked in a bear hug with your neighbor — who seemed not to notice, being fully occupied with some secret Junior thoughts.   Out on the freeway, I found that a prison bus attracts more attention than a cop car with only one stray prisoner inside it.  When cars passed or traffic slowed for an accident, you could see kids pressing their faces to windows and older people twisting to get a better look.  Our windows were school bus size, with three stout bars bolted across them.  We couldn’t get out — if there was an accident or a fire, we would be dead in there, cuffed to each other and locked in our seats.  But we could see out, and people on the outside could see us.  It wasn’t hard for them to comprehend what the large white lumpy bags in the bus really were, not with those black letters running along the side of the vehicle:

PRISON BUS – DO NOT APPROACH

You could see people’s faces change as they looked at us, read the lettering, got the concept, and started to laugh.  It always happened.  Adults smiled and snickered.  Little kids laughed with their mouths wide open and their fingers pointed.  Young males extended their middle fingers and said things that weren’t hard to interpret through the glass.  I wondered what stories they were making up in their minds, but I didn’t need to wonder much.  Looking at their faces, I could see what part I’d play in those stories.  My role would be Sack of Garbage No. 7.

The other sack of garbage, the one cuffed to my arm, kept silently looking forward, unmoved and unmoving, except for an occasional contraction of his arm that suggested he was awake.  Junior.  His name was Junior.  I pictured him working in a garage.  I pictured him flaunting his thick cock in the cheap gym where he worked out.  I pictured myself crawling into bed with him, if ordered … I’d never been with a man like that — the kind that stories call a real man.  Then I remembered Dean.  Maybe he was my real man.  What was he doing right now?  Dicking his boyfriend?  Or was it the other way around…

“What you in for?” I heard someone say.  It was Junior.  He had spoken.

I tried to remember what my crimes were.  “A … buncha stuff.”

“Yeah.  OK.”

“What about you?”

“Killed my old lady.”  He shifted slightly on the seat, making himself more comfortable.

What do you say when you hear something like that?

“That’s … too bad,” I said.

His head turned and looked at me.  Apparently he’d accepted my existence, was prepared to forgive my prissy expression of sympathy.

“Had to,” he explained.  “Wonder when they’re gonna give us some food.”

We had an amazingly long discussion of the food crisis.  It was true, as he pointed out, we hadn’t had any chow that day, but it was possible, barely possible, that the screw could be believed, and we’d get some.  This story proved correct, because after an hour or two the screw riding shotgun walked down the aisle passing out our fuckin little johnny sacks.  That’s how Junior talked, and it gave me a pretty good hint that he’d visited prison before.  Inside the johnny sacks were a sandwich and a plastic water bottle.  I didn’t need to wonder if the meat was baloney; you could smell it coming down the aisle.  So the guy who’d killed his old lady, and Steven Meres, the author, munched their sandwiches, lifting them with arms that were wrapped together, learning how to get them to the right altitude to stuff the grub into their mouths.  At times our heads got so close that anyone would say we were boyfriends enjoying some campy familiarities.  Maybe you’d expect me to add that my dick was as hard as that rifle up front, but no.  If it had been, I would have noticed.  Inside the tent I was wearing there was nothing but me — no underwear to obscure my sensations.  My dick was not stimulated by the canvas-like dry goods it was chafing against.  It was outraged.  It was shrunken and angry and scared — a good thing, considering what Junior might have done to it if he’d seen it tenting my suit.

There was no place to put our empty sacks and bottles, so we dropped them on the floor.  Well, Junior dropped his on the floor.  I didn’t want to get yelled at, so I didn’t.  Then I felt ashamed that I wasn’t as brave as Junior, so I dropped mine too.  OK, that’s what my life was down to.  Not exactly something you’d want to put in a book.

“I’d like to know where we’re going,” I said.

“I thought I was goin back to Shawnee Springs,” he said.  “But we passed that exit a long time ago.”  Then, à propos of nothing, “I been waitin for the chain for three weeks.”

“Really?  I just … checked in six … seven days ago.”  Six or seven?  I’d have to think about that.  It didn’t matter…

He shrugged, which meant that I had to shrug as well.  “Guess you’re lucky.  They wait till they got a busload.   You come at the right time.”

Big, tall, full of muscle.  Full of “I don’t give a fuck.”  Undoubtedly full of cum.  My dick should have been filling with the stuff again, but … not.   Nothing happening.  This was absolutely the wrong time to get boned — but was there something wrong with me?  With my dick?  Nobody wants to lose his…

“And we’re goin the wrong way for Round Rock,” he observed.

Yeah, that was another name.  Maybe he’d served time there too.  I wanted to search my memory banks for the prisons Dean had mentioned.  Maybe that would tell me something.  By some process of elimination, maybe it would tell me where I was going.  But Junior’s body overwhelmed my brain.   I was feeling his body, wrapped up in that horrible bag; I was smelling his body, the ripe smell of his sweat, mingling with the smell of cheap soap wafting out of our suits… I wanted to lean against him, but of course I couldn’t.  Maybe, wherever we were going … there’d be some chance … just to get out of these clothes…

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