By Joshua Ryan

The gate was stuck in the wall like a black tooth.  “Cargo of eight,” we heard the driver say.  “Yeah.  OK.  Thanks.”  Soon there was the sound of an old motor reluctantly starting up, and half of the double gate swung back on its hinges.  The bus moved through and halted, blocked by another enormous gate.  The first gate closed behind us; we waited in the stone box between the gates, engine switched off.  Finally two men in gray were seen, walking around the bus and inspecting it.  Then the engine came on; the second gate opened; the bus crept into the prison.

What’s the first thing you see when you enter the walls of Maskawa?  You see crap.  You see a giant wall with razor wire attached to its top and a line of prison trucks parked at its foot —white bugs ganging in a basement.  You see a garage made out of an old Quonset hut.  You see delivery trucks — Philly’s Farms, Industrial Needs, Plastics Plus — backed into a loading dock.  Then you see a low brick building with glass blocks where windows used to be, and RECEPTION carved in stone over the door.  That’s where the bus stops and you have to get out.

You risk the steps one more time and drop onto the cracked old concrete.  The officers put everybody in a line next to the bus.  No difference between the two prisoners that were caged and the rest of you — you’re all equally dazed.  While you’re standing there, held up by your cuff mate, you get a longer look at this street of crap, at the walls wrapped around it, at the towers guarding the corners, and at what rises up on the other side, behind the low brick building and the Quonset hut — a city of ancient brick and weathered stone.  Some of the buildings look like they’re 60 feet high; others are short and nasty looking.  All of them have windows heavy with bars, and roofs topped with razor wire.  Even the building we were waiting to go into had its Christmas display of jagged steel, as if otherwise someone would climb to the roof and make an unauthorized entrance.  In a book, it would be picturesque to describe the pairs of men in ghost-white clothes shambling into the black mouth of the Reception building.  As one of the men, I found the experience less poetic.

Inside — a cavern smelling of moist concrete.  Officers were waiting to scan our bracelets, confirming our right to be locked up.  The scanner buzzed; I was In.  Then “Kneel on the bench! I said kneel on the bench!”  One cuffed and shackled prisoner kneeling on a bench — hard to do.  Two prisoners, cuffed together, flopping onto the bench — you think it’s impossible until you have to do it.  But you hear steel clanking on the floor and you know that thank God! you’re being taken out of your restraints.  The Siamese twins are separated, and they’re both alive, rubbing their wrists and learning to walk by themselves again.  “Follow the line!”  We followed.

Ahead of us were three men who were clearly not officers.   They were all young guys, you could tell that; but they were encased in mammoth suits of denim — thick, baggy blue denim trousers; long, thick, heavy blue denim coats buttoned up to the collar; stiff blue denim caps pulled low on their foreheads.  And that wasn’t all.  As they were telling us where to stand, I saw something on their coats, over the pecs.  I looked closer.  It was no cop-like name tag.  It was a number, stenciled in white on the coarse blue cloth.  These guys were wearing numbers!  Then one of them turned, and I spotted something on his back that I didn’t need to look any closer to see.  You could have seen it from a block away.  It was the same, only bigger — a tall, white, six-digit number, spreading across his broad denim back.

My mind flashed back to the old prison movies I’d seen, and I knew what I was looking at.  These were convicts, labeled with their convict numbers!  It took me another second to realize: this was how I’m going to look!  If it was humiliating to be sent to prison, it would be even more humiliating to be wearing that prison garb.

“Would be” — was about to be.  Looking at the convicts, I saw my own future.  I saw what I was about to become.

“All right, fish!”  It was one of the men in blue, in a voice too young to be using that drill-sergeant tone.  “You got this far.  Now see that line in front of me?  TOE that line.”  Just like an officer, I thought.  Just like a cop.  “I mean you!” he yelled at the fat guy, who oozed into place, barely in time for the next command: “Strip outta them suits!”  Jumpsuits and flipflops were thrown in a bin; we all stood naked before the young convict with the loud, high voice.  “See them heads?”  We saw a line of showerheads along one wall.  “Stand under em!”

When we were under the heads, another convict went along the line with a bucket.  There was something slimy and stinking and brown inside it.  “Grab some,” he said.  “I said grab it!”  Reluctantly, each of us reached into the bucket and grabbed out a handful.  “Now smear it on.  Head.  Pits.  Junk.  Crack.  Rub it in.  It’ll take care of your lice.”

Lice!  Who has LICE?

“And don’t get any of this stuff in your eyes.  It’s poison.”

The stuff looked like shit, smelled like shit, and clung to your skin like a piece of shit that’s stuck to the side of the bowl.  Just putting my hand in that stuff made me gag, but seeing it dribble off my cock and slither out of my pits, and feeling it snake through my hair and into my crack … Even Junior looked like he was about to puke.

Then, without warning, the shower heads sprang into life, and we were gasping for air under a Niagara of 50-degree water.  A cake of soap landed at our feet, and we passed it blindly around, sudsing ourselves as well as we could until the heads cut off.  Then we stood like drowned rats, watching while the last of the brown water gurgled into the drain.  No towel this time: the strategy must have been to let us dry in the air.

The two convicts watched us haughtily, arms crossed on their chests.  At the side of the room, two others seemed to be tidying up.  Their coats were hanging on the wall; their shirts contrasted with their caps and trousers — lighter blue, almost gray … and with large BLACK numbers across the backs.  One of convicts was pushing a broom, another was moving a stool, positioning it carefully…

“All right!  Follow the line!  Wait your turn for the barber!”

What I’d been watching was the preparation of the barber shop.

We waited in line while the convicts at the side of the room completed their arrangements.  A haircut? I thought.  I don’t need one.  I always keep my hair in shape.  But sure — they probably didn’t want anybody’s hair getting too long.  Junior certainly needed a trim.  And they’d treat everybody the same.  But I couldn’t keep my eyes off those coats hanging on the wall.  Those coats, and those numbers stretching across their backs…

“See ya lookin at the numbers, dude.”

I hadn’t noticed — one of the convicts was standing next to me.  Me, the first one in line…

“I … I guess so,” I said.

Young face, faint sarcastic smile, brown eyes glinting under the brim of his cap.

“Oughta be happy, dude. You’re gettin all new stuff.  Brand new home, brand new clothes, even a brand new name.”  He pointed at his chest.  Yes, his shirt was a lighter shade of blue, but it still looked heavy and coarse, and he had it buttoned to the neck.  Who buttons a shirt to the neck?  And yes, his name was on his chest — a six-digit number, the same as the numbers on the coats, only this time stamped in black letters.  “You’ll be wearin one too,” he said.

He stopped, watching for my reaction.  Which was shame — the deep shame of a naked body, out of shape, out of place, still damp from its delousing ritual, standing before a cocky young man, fully packaged in his manly convict suit.  I guess he liked what he saw, because he grinned as he walked away.  As he did, I read his name in black numbers on his back, and in white numbers on his left butt cheek.

“Sit down,” another voice said.  “I’m almost ready.”  It was the second convict, rolling up his sleeves and pointing to the stool.  He was also a young guy — they were all young guys — and I guess might be hot, if you could make out his body under that thick shirt buttoned to the neck.  He had dark eyes and olive skin, and when he bent to plug something into the wall I saw a wide hard ass under the baggy denims with the numbers stamped across them.  Stamped like the brand on a cow.  He clicked a switch, testing his clippers.  “Hey,” he said.  “I’m Pablo.  I’ll be your barber today.  What hairstyle do you prefer?”

My bare ass was planted on the metal stool.  My body was tensed, waiting for him to do whatever he meant to do.  I didn’t reply.

“You prefer NOT to select a style, sir?  Then I will give you the spec-i-al-i-ty of the house.  We call it … the Doorknob!  That’s because we ain’t got no doorknobs here.  All we got is locks and bars, and a handle sometime, to pull the bars open.  Or closed!  Especially closed!”  “So,” he continued, switching the clippers on again, “we’ll just make you a doorknob.”

With that, he pushed the clippers onto my forehead and cut a path through my hair from front to back.

“You know, like they say, dude, if you could see the look on your face right now!  But you ain’t alone.  All the noobs gimme that disgusting look.  They’re all like, ‘You shaved off my fuckin HAIR!’   Yeah dude!  I’m the fuckin barber.  What you think I’m gonna do?”  He bent his head slightly and cleared more land from my forehead to my neck.

“Course I ain’t really a barber — I just play one in prison!  I always think that’s funny.  But you’ll find out how it is.  This is Maskawa, dude.  Mighty, mighty Maskawa, where you’ll be doin all kinda shit you never thought you’d do.”  Another long strip of hair bounced off my shoulder and fell onto my crotch, as my body tried to twist away.  “Nah, I ain’t gonna rape you or nothin.  Not now, anyways!  He he!  Guess that’s what everybody thinks.  And they all doin what you doin now.  They all lookin roun the room, tryin to spot some officer!  Some screw, man!  Like now you WANT one!”  He was taking off those stylish waves on the side of my head.  They were coming off in masses; my dick was covered with them.  “Guess what, you gonna be seein lots more a these screws than you want to.  That’s for sure.  They just ain’t aroun when there’s any work to be done.  That’s when the CONS take over.”  The clippers were buzzing around my ears, so I missed the rest of his rap.  Then suddenly the machine clicked off.  Pablo stood back to inspect his work.  His crotch was at eye level, and either it was really big or the guy was carrying a huge load of wood next to that number on his thigh.  Fuck!  They put a number on you everywhere!  “Ya know,” he said, “sometime I think this style, they shouldn’t call it the Doorknob.  They should call it the Dumbbell.”  He drawled out the words.  Thee DUMM-bell.  “Cuz we are all so dumb at Maskawa.  That’s how we got here!  Ha!  Am I right?   Well, you finished, dude.  Jus hike over to that window over there.  Dudes’ll fix you up.  Next!”  Another prisoner took my place on the stool.

The “window” wasn’t anything that lets you see outside.  It was a hole in the wall, closed by a metal shutter.  On my way, I passed the prisoners lined up to get their Doorknobs, and saw all eyes staring at my head.  I reached up, and there was nothing.  My hair was gone.  I was a doorknob.

I stood at the window, wondering what I was doing there, and listening to the noises coming from behind the iron curtain — footsteps, mutter of conversation, a door being closed.  Then the shutter shot open, revealing a wide steel counter and the two men who were there to attend it, two more young men in prison shirts buttoned up to the collar.  Behind them I saw shelves loaded with stuff that had to be clothing — stacks of blue, stacks of white, a tall stack of round blue objects that might be caps.  On the wall were two convict coats, hanging like signs to show the products you could buy at this store.  Under their caps, the faces on the storekeepers looked identical, as much alike as those cops in charge of the chain bus.  The only difference between these two young, white, blue-eyed convicts was that according to their shirts, one had a number ending in 57 and the other had a number ending in 43.  Number 57 laid his hands on the counter and said, “What the FUCK do YOU want?”

I was standing there naked.  And I’d had it.  “I want some clothes!” I yelled.  I’d spent the day being transported in chains to this Ultima Thule, where I’d been stripped, baptized in cold water, deprived of all my favorite lice, and given a bald head.  I wasn’t in the mood to be interrogated by some beach boy wearing a prison number.

“So,” he said, “you’re asking to be put into your prison uniform?”

“Yes!  I need a uniform!”

“Your prison uniform?”

“Yes!  My prison uniform!”

“Should we give him one?” 57 asked 43.

“I guess so.  If he agrees to be nice to us,” 43 replied, and broke into a spluttering laugh.

“All right, sweetheart,” 57 said.  “We’ll give you one.  I’m sure it’s just what you’ve always wanted.  Now stick out your hand and let me see who you think you are.”  He was laughing as he grabbed my arm and rotated my wristband.

“Hmmm …  Steven Meres … Steven Meres … I know who you are!”

“Probably you do,” I said.  As I told you, I was at my wit’s end.  I was desperate for someone to show me respect — some respect, any respect.  I heard myself adding, “Lots of people know my name.”

“That’s right,” he replied.  “Everybody in that ‘health club’ on 15th Street.  I’d recognize that dick anyplace.”

They were both giggling so hard that 57 could barely use his keyboard, and 43 walked off, trying to stifle his laughter.  Eventually 57 looked into the computer screen and muttered, “746051.  Let’s see … Here’s one.  Meres, Steven Curtis, 746051.  What a coincidence.  The name on your wristband is the same as the name in your records.  So that takes care of it.  Your birth certificate is confirmed.   Just call me daddy.”

“And just call me yo baby mama,” 43 stated from the background.

“But don’t worry,” 57 said, patting the number on his chest.  “You don’t need to memorize your name.  You can always look down at your clothes.”

He saw I was getting lost in the banter, so he said, “No problem, sweetheart.  Yo mama and me got work to do, so you just go and sit on one of those benches over there and wait till we’re finished.  Ain’t gonna forget about you.  At Maskawa, nothin ever gets forgot about.  Just gimme your sizes, sweetheart.”

“Sizes?”

He leaned over the counter and pretended to look at my dick.  “I’d put that one at about two inches.  Just a joke, darling.  Tell me your gear sizes.  Your UNIFORM sizes.  What size of CLOTHES do you wear?”

“Uh … I guess … shirt is a large … Pants are, uh, usually about 34 waist and 30 length … Maybe 32.  Shoes are size 10.  Usually.  Sometimes 10 and a half…”

“Got it.  Extra large, large, size 11.  Size 7 for the cap.  Now go find a bench and sit on it.”

My butt hit the steel and I waited for whatever was about to happen.  I didn’t want to turn and watch the other prisoners being shorn.  Running my hand across my own demolished, naked skull had been enough for me.  In the distance I could hear Pablo chattering about something, and the occasional swish swish of a broom from the other convict, cleaning up the hair that Pablo had trashed.  I looked down at my crotch and flicked the remaining dead stuff away.  Now there was nothing left that could be detached from me — hair, clothes, money, home, freedom, dignity.

Gradually other conversations started happening at the window, and other butts started planting themselves on the benches.  Nobody was talking.  Some of them looked like they were in a state of shock.  Others, like Junior, were vibing “I’ll tough it out.”  In front of us, there wasn’t much to see.  Number 57 came to the counter whenever a newly shorn prisoner wandered up.  From time to time one of the boys in blue appeared in profile, taking something off the shelves, then returning to the shadows, where you could hear low-volume chat, punctuated by occasional squeals of laughter and by odd thumping noises.  There was a strange, acrid smell that seemed to come from behind the window.  Pablo and his friend attracted brief attention by lugging a trash can out and slamming a door behind them.  Then it was just the big cold room and a few naked men squatting on a bench without a back, looking either at our toes or at the brick walls and the steel roof.  One of the shower heads slowly dripped.  Light slowly shifted in the skylight, the bars protecting it looking darker as the day went past. It was hard for me to remember why I was there, but I knew I’d been there for a long time…

“Meres! Front and center!”

Fifty-seven flumped a pile of something down on the counter.  “Here’s the new fall fashions.  Also the winter, spring, and summer.  At Maskawa, you’re never behind the times.  You’re lookin at four t-shirts, four pairs of boxers, four pairs of sox, three pairs of trousers, three shirts, one belt, one coat, one cap, one pair of work boots.  All made with the sturdiest and most compellingly attractive materials — modern, but with just that hint of nostalgia.  OK, now take your gear back to your bench and start suitin up.  Oh yeah, gimme your arm again, honey.”  He grabbed my wristband and scanned it.  “Now get into that uniform.”

I slid the pile off the counter and lugged it all to the end of the bench.  I never knew that clothes could be so heavy.  It made me tired just to look at them.  Especially the boots.  They felt like they weighed 20 pounds, and they looked like they belonged to some monster from outer space.  The cap was on top — round, stiff, flat on the crown.  I guess it was the perfect match for an ugly bald skull, but I set it aside for the present.  Fortunately, the underwear was right beneath it — I didn’t have to dig any deeper to find the stuff that would (finally) cover my balls.  But nobody could actually want to put those boxers on his ass, much less on his nuts.  They were thick.  They were heavy.  They scratched like a window screen.  They were dead white, except for the lines of black numerals on the ass and thigh — 746051, my new name, which I’d be seeing every time I crapped or pissed or jerked — if I ever jerked again.  My hands were shaking.  I didn’t want to wear that thing.  It would be less embarrassing just to keep squatting on the bench with my hands over my nuts.  With a shudder I stuck my legs in.  I pulled it over my tackle.  I was inside.

The matching white tee was almost as bad.  The “cloth” did something to my nips that might have been erotic, if I had been in the mood, or anywhere near it.  They were always sensitive, but now they were on fire.  Of course my “name” was stamped on the back and pec, and now I discovered the source of the peculiar odor I’d smelled.  The t-shirt reeked of it — it was the ink they lavished on the stencils used to number me.  I bent down toward my stack of “gear.”  The whole pile stank of ink.

So now I was bearing the weight of four black numbers on what I’d thought was my body — back and pec, butt and thigh.  I didn’t want to look up, but I did, and saw seven pairs of eyes following me from the benches.  I guess it was like watching a werewolf movie; they wanted to see what it looked like to become a convict.  So all right, I had to finish the job.  I guess you can trust a neat-freak gay: 57 had arranged my pile of gear very conveniently for the newbie getting his first crack at a prison uniform.  He’d put a complete uniform on top, and the repetitions of the parts underneath.  The next layer was a pair of jeans.  Well, not “jeans” in the way you think of them.  No.  In prison, things may look the same, but they always turn out to be different.  These pants were simply slabs of blue denim — thick, shapeless, leaden, and as I was about to discover, pocketless and zipperless.  Seeing my number stenciled in white on the cheek and thigh was like seeing a ghost — you don’t really believe in it, but there it is.  Putting my legs into those things was like sticking them into a drainpipe.  Then when my hand reached for the zipper, all it found was a line of steel buttons.  I’d never even seen pants like that!  Driving the buttons into their hard new holes took so long, I was sure that everybody was staring at me, wondering what kind of idiot I was.  And when I got the last button into its hole, the pants started drooping and falling off.  They weren’t made to fit your waist: they were square at the top, with a dead drop down to your toes, and that was it.  Luckily, the next item was a belt — a piece of junk leather with a steel buckle like a little black cage.  But at least the belt was l-o-n-g — long enough to keep my pants up, and long enough to hang from my waist like a bull dong after I got it through the buckle.  I looked at the bench to see if my success had been noted, but by then Junior was standing next to his pile and everyone seemed to be watching him.  No surprise — he had the kind of body that would be worth watching.

But now I had to put on my shirt.  Thick and scratchy again, more gray than blue, and yes, they didn’t forget to ink my numbers over my pec and across my back, so that everyone who saw me would see my brand as well.  If I was writing a psychological novel, I’d discuss my feelings about prison shirts, but since I’m not, I’ll just say that I tucked my shirt into my pants and tried not to look at anything but the bare feet protruding from the ends.  So OK, sox next.  They were like white athletic sox, only chunky and scratchy and square.  It seemed like nothing I had to wear bore any relation to the shape of my body.  The boots were the same.  I was going to say “my boots,” but from a gay man that sounds like a brag.  I’d never worn boots in my life, and I’d never wanted to.  Now I had to.  Squatting on the bench in my hard new pants, I threaded the thick hard laces through the hard new holes, not looking up for fear of seeing the other prisoners laughing at me for taking so long to do what most of them probably did every day at some garage or construction site.  Stuffing my feet into those things was an even bigger embarrassment.  Halfway through on my first try, I lost my balance and almost toppled to the floor.  It didn’t help to realize that no matter how outrageously outsized my boots were, I had to wear them.  They were mine — they both had 746051 stamped on their backsides.

I knew what was coming next, but I was trying not to think about it.  I had to put on my coat, the same kind of convict coat that had been hanging on pegs by the barber stool and behind the uniform counter.  I also had to don the hideous cap that the convicts wore.  Once I was in my coat and cap, I would be a convict indistinguishable from any other convict, as indistinguishable as 43 from 57, or Pablo from that guy who swept up around him and who’d talked to me about all the new stuff I’d be getting.

There was no lining in the coat, but the denim was heavy enough without it.  Obviously, nothing in prison was going to be light and easy; everything was going to be heavy and bulky and hard to deal with.  But this thing was a monster, and every part of it was monstrous.  Finally they’d given me some pockets; there were two on the front — big square bins hanging down at the bottom on each side of the coat, about halfway down my thighs.  Four steel buttons, as large as quarters, completed the ensemble.  This coat was made to dwarf any guy who had to wear it, any convict who had to heft that line of numbers marching across its back.

Slowly I buttoned myself in.  Then there was one more step in my process of self-obliteration.  My cap was still lurking on the bench.  When I picked it up I saw that it, too, bore my number, stamped on its back like a tiny license plate.  I’d always hated those caps that everybody wears, advertising their identification with some band or sports team.  Now I’d be advertising my own — I was playing on the penitentiary team.  This hat was ten times worse than a ball cap — dark and heavy, with a stiff, flat top encasing the head and a long brim blocking out the light.  It fitted perfectly on my newly balded dome.

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