Prison Process

The Adventure Begins

21.

And speaking of fences, during yard time some of us cons hang out next to one of them, wondering if we’re gonna see somebody we know comin in on the bus.

How about you?  When are you coming?

The Adventure Begins

20.

Brendan M. continues:

Going back to uniforms—here’s a line of us convicts in our winter coats.  We dress the same, we eat the same, we’re celled the same, we’re worked the same, we’re punished the same, and we’re managed with the same walls and fences.  Ya gotta love it.  It took Blake and me a while to really get into a total life in uniform, but finally we’d both got the point.

The Adventure Begins

19.

Brendan M. continues:

At first, Blake was a little hard to manage.  After all, he’d taken a long, long time to work up the guts to get sent to prison.  He was bound to be, shall we say, dissatisfied with certain features of life behind bars.  But now we were partners, and I had to work with him.  I let him know what I would tolerate in the cell, and the prison let him know what it would tolerate in general--which wasn’t much.  We’re convicts.  We’re in prison because we needed to be put there.

Let’s face it.  Even when you finally get to where you want to be, there are things about it that you’re not gonna like.  You need to learn that they’re all part of the things you DO like.  Prison gives you the chance to learn about that.  And eventually you discover that, yeah, you DO like every bit of it.

The Adventure Begins

18.

Brendan M. continues:

He was right.  He was there.  And there was nothing I could do about it.  He’d been assigned to my cell, and I’d have to put up with him.  Unless I decided to fight him.  Which I could do.  I had the muscles.  I’d win. 

I was thinking about that while he shifted from one foot to another and looked at my face and said, “Well, uh, where should I put my uniforms, man?”  Lookin really guilty.  But the way he said “uniforms” meant that we might be on the same wavelength.  So I said, “Why are you here, Blake?”  And he said, “Cause I wanted to be in a cage.  With you.”

I thought it was cute, the way he was so startled when the officer finally came and slammed the cell door shut.  I think I mentioned how hot Blake was.  And now we were locked up together.

It occurred to me, it was a logical problem.  If it hadn’t been for Blake doing those crap things he did, I probably wouldn’t be spending my life in a cage.  But because he did those things, now I was happy.  So how could I keep hating on him?

The Adventure Begins

17.

Brendan M. continues:

I was laying my gear on a shelf when the bars slid open.  The other convict had arrived.  Stepping in, very slow, very quiet, very respectful, carrying his gear like it was the crown jewels or something . . . .

And it was Blake.

“So, uh, it’s me,” he said.  “They kept me in Isolation . . . .   It was, like, I’d fixed it all up with Cody, but somehow . . . .  It took a while.  But here I am, Brendan.”

The Adventure Begins

16.

Brendan M. continues:

As soon as I saw my new cell, I started missing the old one.  Yeah, this can was maybe a foot or so wider, but there’d be two men caged up in here.  Otherwise, though, it was just like the old one.  Same crappy metal mirror screwed into the wall—as if you want to see yourself in your convict suit!  Same seatless steel toilet that you put your ass on and try not to lean back because the rest of it is the sink.  Same steel shelves where you can stack those convict suits.  Same steel bars like a zoo . . . .  This was it.  This was my house.  This was all a convict needed.  I just wondered who the other con was gonna be.  I’d been around too long to mess with some a-hole they sprang on me.  If the dude was an a-hole, I’d have ways to deal with him.   

The Adventure Begins

15.

Brendan M. continues:

So now I’m five years in and it’s obvious I’m here for life.  Brendan’s excellent adventure has officially become BD’s bogus journey.  That’s my jailhouse name—BD.  My profile is “surly-gotta-be-respected,” and I’ve added about two tons to my muscle mass.  Feels like that, anyway.  Single-celled and I haven’t had sex since I got here.  Island Boy, who’s one of my work mates, keeps sayin, “I’m here, I’m queer, so what?”  Agreed.  I’m an ape.  They give me a cage.  I don’t expect anything more.

Then one Tuesday, I think, I got called to some office in Admin.  Somebody wanted to “review” my “cell assignment.”  My own suggestion would be—gimme a cell in Palm Beach.  Last time I walked through an office, I was a corporate executive with a standard corporate body, courtesy of the Main Man Fitness Center.  Today I’m the gorilla that got into the suite.  I’m the asshat in a convict suit with my owner’s name stenciled across my back.  I’m not here to report sweet nothings in a committee  meeting.  And I get nervous when I’m not following the routine.  The young little style-guy that’s facing me moves his chair so far back from his desk that he nearly falls out of his cube.  I lean forward.  “So what do you want?  Sir?”

“We’re assigning you . . . that is, you have been assigned . . . that is, you know, it’s thought that you’ll be . . . happier . . . in a double cell.  More room, of course.  Somewhat more room.  And you’re one of the . . . older . . . residents.  You’ve been here . . . . ”

“Five years.”  I knew this guy went to college.  Guys like him always do.  He must have started college after I got myself sent up.

“Five years.  Yes.  So since you’re long-term, you know, and you’ll probably . . . very likely be here for . . . a long time in the future . . . the protocol is that . . . for the future . . .  it would be best . . . to cell you up with another . . . man.”

I watched him squirm.  He was wondering if I was gonna start “acting out” or doing something “seriously inappropriate” to his carefully knotted little tie.  I started thinking.  I hadn’t done that for a while, so it didn’t come fast.  But eventually I said, “All right.  Can I go to my new cell now?”

The Adventure Begins

14.

Brendan M. continues:

Every day in the joint is pretty much the same.  Every year, too.  At the end of 12 months somebody sits down and writes you a “review.”  Then one day when you’re sitting in your cell, the go-boy comes by and flips a form through the bars at you.  “Looks like your contract has been renewed,” he says.  At the top of the form is your convict number in big black letters, then your name, last name first, in little thin ones.  The form lets you know that no recommendation for release has been found appropriate.  Twelve months later, rinse and repeat.

Sometimes when you’re on your way to your labor detail you look through the fencing and you see a bus or a van or a cop car pulling up, and a cargo of new convicts getting dropped off at their new address.  Sometimes you think you see somebody you used to know.  Sometimes you look at them and you think that you see yourself.  But all you can do is keep shuffling along to your labor detail.

The Adventure Begins

13.

Brendan M. continues:

One day LC-23 got a treat.  We were trucked out to a place that was off the highway.  Somebody was about to develop some lake property, and we were leased out to clean up the lots.  There weren’t any windows in that steel can they lock you into, the lock-box on the back of the truck, but when we got there and we were climbing out, I saw a new world.  A beautiful summer--beautiful light, beautiful trees, beautiful water.  Totally different from the prison planet where I had to live.  Then I realized—this is my own land!

WAS my land.  In the distance I saw a sign that said “SOLD! By Reardon Realty.”  My lawyer had sold my lakefront.  When I looked up from my shovel, I saw the new owners sitting on my deck--two fat guys in bright-colored clothes, obviously boyfriends, having drinks, enjoying the spectacle of convicts being punished, and commenting on the scene they were watching.  “Nice butt on that one.”  “You think so?”  “If you don’t mind the monkey suit.”   “Yeah.  But that’s what they are.  Monkeys.”

The Adventure Begins

12.

Brendan M. continues:

The rule is that every convict works.  It’s a way for us to repay our debt to society.  By the time I’d been in for three years, I must have been recorded as one of the more innocuous convicts, because I was assigned to Labor Crew 23, which was trucked outside the walls to “enhance conservation.”  Which meant picking up trash beside the highways, while cars slowed to take pictures and chunk beer cans at our heads.  The good thing was, by the time the truck took us back to the Walls, I was so tired that it was a fight to keep my head from falling into the pig chow they give you in the mess hall.  No consciousness—that was good.

The Adventure Begins

11.

Brendan M. continues:

I’d been in the Pen for six months when an officer unlocked my cell and took me to the visiting room.  Which is actually just a storeroom with some windows on the side.  You stand in front of a window and look through the glass and talk to your visitor through a phone.

On the other side of the glass I saw a young guy in a dress shirt and a baseball cap.  He looked like a young executive going out for a drink with friends.

“Hey!” he said.  “It’s me.  Blake!”

I’d chatted with him online; I didn’t know what he looked like.

“I came to see how you’re doing.  Great, I hope!”

I couldn’t believe how happy he was. 

“Definitely,” I said, expecting that he’d catch the irony.

“I thought so!  You know, I really wanted to see this place.  It’s all, like, bars and fences.  And towers—lots of guard towers.  I bet they’re keeping you on your toes!”

“Absolutely.”

“You know, you look amazing in that uniform!  It really makes you look like . . . . ”

“A bellboy.”

“That’s right!  A bellboy in some old hotel . . . .  ‘Boy!’  ‘Here, sir.  I’ll carry your bags, sir.’  Ya gotta love it--that outfit really shows you your place!  Only your kind of bellboy is kept in a cage.  How large is your cage, dude?”

“About six by nine.”

“Awesome!  My bathroom is lots bigger than that.  You’re living in my bathroom!  Adjusting well?”

“Don’t have much choice.”

“How true.  Last time you had a choice was that night when . . . ”

“You convinced me to come to this place.”

“Right!  I’m responsible!  You should thank me!”

“Thank you, Blake.  I owe it all to you.  But there’s one thing I want to mention.  The night before I . . . checked in here, I tried to contact you.  I thought you’d be interested.  But you weren’t online.”

“Yeah?  Sorry, dude.  I must have been chattin with some other guy.  But hey, it’s gettin late, and one of these guards said he’d show me some of the security features they use out here.  Like, you know, the perimeter fences, and the gate checks, and the restraints they put on you . . . .  So, hang in there, dude.  You’re lookin SO good.  Later man.”

He left the window.  The officer took me back to my cell.

I was lonely in the Pen.  I hated everything.  I hated everybody.  And Blake looked incredibly hot.  Which made everything worse.

The Adventure Begins

10.

Brendan M. continues:

From then on, it’s all about being the new ant in the colony.  You eat when they all eat, you shower when they all shower, you stand at the bars to be counted when they stand at the bars to be counted.  You’re just one more faceless cons in the endless lines of faceless cons.

The Adventure Begins

9.

Brendan M. continues:

On your first morning in the Pen they pull you out of your cell and take you to Uniform Issue, where you get your permanent (guess what?) uniform.  I’d always thought if I went to prison I’d be wearing one of those hot orange outfits, or one of those gnarly sets of stripes.  I guess I should have asked Cody for more of the specifics, because in the Pen they dress you up like a janitor: heavy square boots and a matching set of shirt and pants—thick and white, with distinctive blue accents.  Again, no cost; uniforms provided at the expense of your employer.  And in case you forget who owns you, you have DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS stenciled across your back.

The Adventure Begins

8.

Brendan M. continues:

They only kept us in the cage for a couple of days—just long enough to give us some tests and find out whether we had any diseases, or whether we were too crazy to be in prison and needed to be sent someplace else.  But like the guy in the next cage said, “Nobody ever fails the tests.”  All the other guys laughed at that.  I guess it sounded good to them.  I’d spent my life passing tests; they’d spent their lives failing them.  But we were all in the same place now.

So after the two days they spent “classifying” us, they stuffed a bunch of us into a van and took us to the Northeastern State Penitentiary, which turned out to be not very far from where I lived.  Used to live.  I remembered Cody saying something about “this facility will make it easy for you to get visitors.”  Like I wanted somebody to come and see me with my bald head and my clown suit. 

When I traveled, I used to get nervous about whether there were vacancies in the hotels where I wanted to stay.  Before that, I got scared about whether I could afford to pay the rent in the places where I wanted to live.  Now I’d been sent to live in the biggest hotel in the most expensive part of the state, with nothing but a prison uniform on my back.  But no problem.  They issued me a mattress and sent me straight to Cellblock 5, where my room was waiting.  They’d kept the lights on for me.  And there was no charge for the first 15,000 nights.

It took me a while to realize that those white things behind the bars of the cages were other guests, just like me.

The Adventure Begins

7.

Brendan M. continues:

After my hair was removed, the rest of it happened—take off your clothes, show your pits, pull your cheeks, into the showers, grab a jumpsuit, stand for your mugs, this way to the cells. 

When they locked me in my cage I just sat on my bunk, stunned.  Then I did what you do when there’s nothing else to do—you stand at the bars and talk to the other specimens in the zoo.  Everybody was talking about the jolt he got.  “Ten years.”  “Five years.”  “Eight years.”  I said, “Two years to life,” and they all started laughing.  “Other words,” one of them said, “you got yourself LIFE!”  “Two to life!” another one said.  “That how they get the rich boys inta tha joint.  They think they gittin OUT on that two!”  “Shoulda tole you, two TIMES life!  They be lettin you out when they wanta let you out—which is never, bruv!”

It was a good thing I was in a cage, and they couldn’t see me huddled in the corner, crying.

The Adventure Begins

6.

Brendan M. continues:

It took only about two minutes, but that gave me enough time to remember all my visits to the stylist and how much I paid and all my looks in the mirror to make sure everything was perfect and how much I worried about my hair whenever I went to a bar.  This time,  I wasn’t asked for my opinion.  The razor mowed my skull.  The inmate put a mirror in front of me.  He thought that was funny.  What I saw was an egg with eyes-nose-mouth drawn on it, like a kid’s Easter egg.  He said, “Remember it’s free, dude.”  The inmate hanging in the background chuckled, “All free. For the rest of your life.”

They both laughed.  Before, I’d been scared.  Now, I was dead.

The Adventure Begins

5.

Brendan M. continues:

I was thinking, at least we’re gonna get naked, which is what you always hear about, and then these guys will shed their dumb looking trashy clothes that you wouldn’t buy at the Salvation Army, and everything will get better.  But what happened was, we were standing there, all lined up in this place like a warehouse, with no windows and concrete walls and weird piles of boxes in the corners, and after we’d stood there for a while an officer said “YOU” and pulled one of us out of line and told him to sit in a chair and have his hair taken off by a prison inmate.  While we all watched.  When the guy came back, he was bald.  Then the same thing happened to all the rest of us.