Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 23:39:47 -0400
From: d.a. w <daw62@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Professor's Practicum Chapters 11 and 12

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The Professor's Practicum     Chapter 11


The initial overwhelming shock of the almost constant yelling that seemed
to be going on did wear off as we were herded beside a structure of think
glass windows and concrete that jutted into the bottom floor of this
building of cages.  I figured out that again this fortress inside the
fortress that was our prison allowed for officers to observe the animals
without the animals having any chance of access to the officers.

There was a small desk at the front of this structure and there was an
officer in a uniform which looked more important than the other co's
(correction officers) we had seen so far.

Beside the officer there were five brown clad, bald, inmates.  These five
were sitting on the floor by the officer's desk, and rested their backs
against the wall of the officer's bunker.

"PORTER!" the officer shouted to be heard above then den of noise.

"Boss yes Boss" the inmate closest to the desk said as he rose, and with
hands grasping opposite elbows, he moved to stand directly in front of the
officer.

"Grab the poop sheets on these fish, and bring them here." he was ordered.

With that each of us had the thick plastic envelope that had been hung
around our necks as we had gone through the induction process from being
stripped, almost all hair removed, and then offered an impressive five minute
mental and physical health evaluation.  As we had moved from station to
station after losing all our hair, paper after paper had been added to this
envelope which was returned to hang around our necks as we were
processed.

When the porter had removed all our envelopes the porter gave them to the
officer, and immediately returned to his place sitting beside the desk.

The officer then spent some time looking at each of our information packets
which were in the plastic envelopes.   I almost blushed to know that he now
had pictures of me naked from almost every angle that could be imagined.

After reading all the packets, the officer wrote something on a form and
affixed the new page to the pages already in our official packet.

Looking over at the porter, the officer ordered, not even bothering to look at
me.    "Take 213 up to B22."

I did not react as I had not yet become accustomed to being a number.

" I guess our new guest is not yet aware of his new name yet.  I guess he'll
need a little reminder."

The porter had by this time looked at my folder and its porno pictures of me,
and grabbed my arm and started to lead me away.

"Just hold dumb shit 213 for a moment.  I seem to need to school him on his
name here."

The porter made me bend over the desk.   The officer gave my butt three
strong swats with the little strap and I involuntarily yipped.

"Keep yippin' and I'll just keep swatting.  You need to take your correction
quietly, and concentrate on following orders, and in the presence of your
betters pay attention."

I involuntarily yipped as the pain of the strap well laid on three times across
my butt registered to my nerve endings, but which  I knew I needed to
apologize

"Boss sorry Boss.  I'll stay alert from now on."

"Offender I was easy on you as you're new, but I expect you to get with the
program fast."

I paused, and then decided another abject apology was in order.   "Boss
thank you for helping this offender learn."

Now holding my little packet of state supplied hygiene items the porter
began leading me to a stairway to the second of the four levels of cells.

As we were walking up the stairs the porter said into my ear, because all this
conversation was accomplished with the constant cacophony going on as
background.   "You got a great assignment.   The upper tiers are really hot,
and the bottom is really cold,  The second tier is the best tier for comfort."

:Thanks."  I replied.   "I have never been in prison before."

"No shit!" was his reply.  "Boi you look so green you almost smell like a
new fish that you are."

By this time we had arrived on the walkway down the row of bars.   Hands
came out of the bars to try to grab me, but there was no way to reach us
since we were too far away from the bars, and even the guy with the longest
reach could not get more than a foot outside his cage's bared outer wall.

I watched the cell numbers stenciled on the cell doors which were outside
the stationary part of the barred outer wall of the cell.   Finally we got to
B22.   My guide who had been holding on to me stopped, looked back down
toward the control room, and the door to B-22 opened.

"Inside!" was the porter's order and I walked inside my new home.   It was
probably 6 foot by 10 foot.   It was clearly smaller than my solitary
punishment cell in the jail.  Right by the bars was the familiar stainless steel
sink, toilet combination.

Inside at the back of the cell was a six foot plus black inmate.  His bald head
was beginning to show some hair growth, and so I guessed he had been here
a while.

"WHAT YOU DOING BRINGING WHITEY IN HERE!" he snarled at the
porter.

"Don't give me any shit!" the porter snarled back.  "You don't like the
captain's choice of you cellie, take it up with him."

"SURE AS SHIT I WILL!" he snarled back   "Well since whitey is here
move his dumb ass in so I can start educating him on proper cell etiquette."

I was given a not too gentle push and now I was inside the cell a good two
feet.   This was no easy task as the stainless steel toilet sink drinking
fountain combination was not only just inside the bars, but there was only
inches between it and the bunk.  I heard the cell door slide close and lock
behind me.   I just kept looking at the black man in front of me who look of
anger and snarling attack on my intrusion were uppermost in my mind.

I immediately thought of myself as being raped by this black man.   He was
thinner than I am, but I suspect he had prisoner honed skills in how to
control a naïve, white fish like me.

Instead, when the door was closed and the porter had disappeared from the
front of the cell, my cell mate looked at me and smiled...yes smiled.

"Look asshole, that dialog is necessary for me to preserve my rep.   This is
my second trip through this fine hotel, and I am going up for the rest of my
life in the caring custody of this great state.   I will do what I can to help you
adjust to this hell, but whenever any other cons are around I will verbally be
after your ass."   With that he held out his hand, and we shook hands just
like free persons who were meeting for the first time.

"You get the top bunk.   You will put your pillow at the back furthest from
the bars.  That is to save you from being right over the shitter, and also from
getting spit at from other cons as they go by the bars.   When the porter
comes up with your mattress, blanket, and pillow, be sure to thank him.

Porters can make a difference in your life here.  Sometimes we are not
released for meals, and if a porter wants to let you know you are on his shit
list your meal will arrive with his spit on it...and it will be clear that he has
spit on it.  Sometimes you will also not get anything.  You might get a meal
that they had already eaten, and there is really no way to protest.  You do not
report another con to the man.   That rep as a snitch will follow you all
through the system, and you will always be on everyone's shit list.   All the
cons will get you whenever they have a chance.   You might never be safe in
the shower."

I nodded vigorously to show I was paying attention   "Thanks

I realized I did not have a name for my cell mate, who had already shown
himself to be a valuable resource for my survival.  I decided to take the
initiative.  "My name is Jim Cox." I said as I held out my hand.

My cellie looked at me with a sort of sad expression.  SHIT man.  You are a
green a fish as I have ever seen.  This place is not some place where we are
neighbors meeting each other for the first time.  Here's how you `shake'
hands prison style.  He grabbed on to my hands, made them into fists, and
then we went through a ritual of banging knuckles, He made me practice a
couple of times more.   After my third attempt, he said at least I would mark
me and him by association as a dumb fish, and ready to be scammed and
used by the prison wise of this warehouse of prisoners who await being
shipped to their places of punishment for the next period of years.

As my prison guide stood looking at me, with a look included both sadness,
and laughter.  "My birth name is Charles Wilson, but no one who has known
me since third grade has ever called me that.   The only times I have heard
that name since then was when the judge was giving me a sentence.  You
can call me Stretch, and my homies will use another name, but you as a
whitie will never use that name.  It is for brothers, and you aint a brother.

I could see why he could be called Stretch, because he was both tall and thin.

"The other cons will give you a name when they get to know you.  Just wait.
When they ask you what to call you, you can try for a street name, but it
would be probably to say Jim.   They will already have figured you're a fish,
and you'll probably get a name before you leave here.  After you are born
into prison, which begins here, you might almost forget you previous name,
as everyone will call you by your prison name.   Boi you are now a totally
new person, an offender, and not to be confused with a free person in any
way."

By this time our porter had returned carrying a rolled up maybe one inch
thick blue plastic "mattress" (the name "mattress" is in quotes here only
because it had almost no relationship to a free world mattress),   In fact, the
mattress was so think, that the cell was not opened, but he unrolled it fed it
through the bars to me.  Then he pushed my pillow...also a thin imitation of
a real one... and a blanket in to me.

"Thanks" I said.

"New York's the name." he informed me.

"Thanks New York"  I said.

"Enjoy your stay in this five star hotel." he replied smiling.

Stretch and New York chatted for a minute and during that time I was able
to spread out the mattress and the blanket, and place my pillow at the back
away from the bars.

Finally, I felt a little tension come away from me.   New York seemed a
good mentor for me in this strange new world I now had to learn to live in.
There was only one little stool by the desk (just like my cell in the jail) and I
assumed that it would belong to the senior cell inhabitant, and so I chose to
sit on the floor at the back of the cell.

When New York turned around and saw that I had both finished dressing my
bunk, and also acknowledged his superior position in the cell.  He gave me a
smile.

"You know I am a little surprised you got assigned to this tier.  Tier B is the
best tier in this place because most of the year the top tier is too hot.  In the
winter and fall it is where the heat goes, and just stays.  In the summer, the
cool air stays at the bottom, and the floor cells can get cold, and the top stays
really hot,   Normally the screws put new meat in the top because they do
not knew what will happen to them up there.   Any con whose been through
this part of hell knows the score and will give the captain the look to let him
know that he expects to be respected for his experience in the system.

He paused.   Then he came out with what my assignment might mean.   You
got any juice on the other side?   You got some great lawyer?   You got
connections?    Everybody's goin' to be after you to figure out how you got
this.   If you don't want to tell the truth, you better come up with a great
excuse because otherwise you will be labeled as a possible snitch or plant, or
something else and you will be watched, and will be expected to give a
truthful answer in the shower room.  If you don't come up with an answer
they can buy, you will slip in the shower, and come out bruised, and possibly
fucked up."

I realized that the closest to the truth I came in with the more likely that the
inmates who had outside connections would be able to find any absolute lies.

"I knew this guy who is a high up in the city police when I was in a class at
the university.   I figured my speech and vocabulary would show me to be a
person who had a college background, and I did remember that the real Jim
Cox was indeed a college graduate.

New York looked at me carefully.   His answer showed me that New York
was a keen observer of body language.   He smiled just a little smile.    "I
need you to shuck open that jumpsuit."

I froze.   He seemed like a godsend for me – giving me more about how to
really live in prison than I had even heard or learned from the offenders I
had helped.

"What?" was my lame reply.

"I need to see you to see if you got the full treatment on intake.  You smell a
little like some sort of plant... with this favored cell assignment, and you
don't sound like the right background for most guests in this lovely place.  I
need to check out for looks and any wires.   Get out of that jumpsuit now."

I looked at him, and saw a cold hardness that I had not seen before.

I shucked the jumpsuit.

"Drop the shorts." was the next order – clear and commanding.

I shucked.

"Turn around."   He saw both the fact that I was indeed totally denuded of
hair, but when he saw the black and blue bruises from my introductory
strapping, he gave a small whistle, and came up and felt my ass where I had
gotten my strapping in processing.

"Well if you are a plant, you did get a good butt strapping in process.   Those
look like Officer Wilson's work.   He loves to make an example of one
inmate in every group, and that butt shows his style.   I guess someone he
knew was a plant of any kind would never have gotten his special welcome
to prison beating.   Turn around, and let me see all of you."

I turned around, and without touching me he looked at my body's used and
abused appearance from the processing.

"That sounds like a good story.   Where you from?"

"I lived in Indianapolis" I replied.

"Well we'll call you `Indy Smooth.'"  cause boy you got a smoothness about
you.   You got more than you're showing, but I don't need to know much
more.   For sure as shit, you got the whole treatment on intake.

I said "Thanks.  I am just here to do my time.  I got six months to five
years."

"SHIIIIIT" was New York's reply.   "You will just have a little vacation in
here.   But I bet in six months the system will make an impression on you."

I did not know how to take that remark, and my look of confusion caused
New York to smile.  "You'll learn a lot in just six months.    Odds on that we
may meet again.   You'll be surprised that even though the state has a lot of
prisons, you'll find other cons you know after just a little time when you
come back."

He looked at me again, and smiled and then laughed.

"Of course your be back.   Once that state decides it owns your ass, it
decides that you'll be the patsy when they have to have a victim to convict to
clear some crime off the books.   Ex-con are a valuable resource for the
police department to find someone to get to plead to some crime.

"I am here for a crime I did not commit."  New York paused and looked at
me,    "Don't get me wrong I was committing crimes, but not the one I am
back here on.  I got picked up, and the cops said, `You're going down.  We
need someone to cop to this, and you're it.'    I have been around the block a
few times, and so I negotiated a plea deal with the cops to sell to the
prosecutor, and here I am for a dime."

I knew enough prison slang to know that a dine was a ten year sentence.

I nodded.  I did not doubt the truth of his statement.   Once again, thinking of
Officer Jim, I wondered if Jim ever framed a person to cop to a crime.

"Shit." I said to myself.   Of course he did.  He got to clear a crime off  his
record, and he removed an embarrassing arrest that resulted in the man's
being found innocent – or in police record keeping a failure.  I was his
replacement of a failure with another success.

At this point, I just sat there thinking.   New York let me alone.   I had no
idea of how long  I was there.   I became more aware of the increasing
amount of yelling and just continual barrage of sound that bounced around
the block walls of the inside of the prison house.   I finally went past New
York working on some crossword puzzle at the desk, and went to the bars.
Almost by instinct I grasped the bars, just like in all the prison movies.  It
was so natural.  You grasp the bars that hold you inside.  You test them to
just be sure that there is no chance that somehow some weakness might exist
in that cage which holds you helpless to the will and whim of others.

As I was standing there unconsciously playing out my thoughts that even
working with inmates and talking about their experiences, I realized how
little anyone can know of the humiliation, the debasement, and feeling of
anger, the feeling of helplessness without experiencing it in person.   I have
heard it said that prison changes a person.  A few days in jail, but absolutely
one day in the tender custody and care of the state had changed me forever.
Never would I look at a police person without a sense of fear.   I now knew
more clearly how the police can start a person on this experience that so
makes a citizen into a sub citizen object with no privacy, no rights, and no
dignity.  How easy and how ignorant are those who work with prisoners to
say "I understand what you are experiencing."   In the new base level of
discourse which I now found came to me so naturally I would now say,
"Asshole you don't know shit."



The Professor's Practicum Chapter 12


I do not know how long I held onto those bars, lost in my thoughts. I was
brought out of my self-absorption by Stretch.

"They ain't goin' any place, and neither are you."

I realized that somehow I had been drawn to those bars, and I was looking
out, not really thinking.   It must be something from the deepest and most
basic self that makes you react to being caged.  Suddenly I thought: "Just
like an animal!" I remembered seeing on television a documentary about
wild animals being caught and caged.  I remembered how the animals paced,
and the tigers and the big cats attacked the bars themselves.

I realized that the human animal still has a kinship to all the other intelligent,
0
thinking animals of the world.  When caged you test the cage.  Animals
instinctively hate cages, and this was clearly a cage.

I wondered why I didn't have this reaction in the jail, when I had those walls
around me.  Perhaps because walls are familiar--walls often surround us.
But bars and the bars of a cage--that returns the human animal to the
instinctual beginning of humanity's ascent into civilization and the mastery
of others, the mastery of beasts we have caged.

These thoughts went through my mind in just a moment of time.  Then I was
in the real world, where I had to turn and offer a lame reply to cover what
my real thoughts were.   "Just checking," I said. "You never know when
some shoddy work has been done by some lazy worker."

Stretch again gave me the pained look, the look that said, "What did I do to
the MAN to get saddled with this dumb piece of shit!"

What he said was, "I wouldn't say that too often and too loud. Those bar
panels there  -  those are made at the state prison by inmates like you.   And
if they send you there, you might just get your turn on the assembly line.
Big joke, huh?   You can get a chance to make your own cage.   And trust
me, the screws check out every one of those bars. They rap `em and smack
`em, and they do all kind of electronic stuff.   Any inmate crew that sends
out a . . . whadid you call it?   a SHODDY panel, their asses pay for that
mistake.  Their asses get the SWAT. And if the screws think they meant to
fuck up,  first they get their asses burned and then they get the HOLE.  Yeah,
you can trust those bars.  This cage is one thing you can definitely trust."

He was standing with a hand resting on one of the side walls.  Then he
stretched out his other arm and touched the other wall, easy.  I gulped. The
cell was just that narrow.  His knuckles tapped the wall.  It was steel, and it
made that cold, hard sound, like the side of a big truck that doesn't even
echo. The wall was that thick.   "If the screws forgot and left us here, you
could yell all you wanted to.  But we'd stay right here, dying behind those
bars.  Yeah, it's pretty funny, when you think about it."

I'd wanted to ask him what "the hole" was really like  because I knew that
the convicts I had helped with their cases had sometimes brought up the
Hole, and I knew it was a punishment they truly disliked or perhaps feared,
but what "THE HOLE" really was like I did not know.   I decided not to
move the conversation from information I needed to survive here.

"Do we eat in the cells," I asked, "or do we go someplace else?"   I realized I
hadn't had either breakfast or lunch at this point.

"We dine out!" Stretch said,  imitating what he thought would be some
elegant free person's remark. "I guess you didn't see the restaurant on your
way in here. Just down the block. They open the bars, tier by tier, and we
stroll down the steps. UNescorted."

"WOW," I thought. "We are actually allowed to walk down one level
without being cuffed and manhandled."

I must have looked pleased, because he continued, "Just keep your hands on
your elbows, the way you saw New York do it. Any time you're outta the
cell, walkin' or standin', if you ain't got nothin' in your hands—that you're
SUPPOSED to be carryin'--you do the hands on the elbows thang."

I could hardly think of anything more immobilizing, more humiliating.
"Why?" I said.
"Who knows why they do anything? But this routine is just to keep your
hands locked up. Keep `em from passin' a note. Keep `em from pointin' a
shiv."
A shiv.     He meant a knife. I knew that much from watching movies.

"Anyway, you just follow the crowd. Grab a tray, and the kitchen cons will
throw you some chow.  Then you will find a seat.  Normally you would eat
with your cellie; however, you will NOT eat with me.  No whitey sits at a
table with the bruthas.   Only exception is, if the whitey has been punked; so,
he belongs to a brutha that is sittin' there.  You can tell, cuz the whitey will
sit with his hands to his sides.  When all the bruthas have taken whatever
they might want from the whitey's tray, the whitey's owner will give his
white boy permission to eat whatever is left.  His owner also will let the
whitey know whether he can use his fork or he can go ahead and use his
fingers.

"Right now, ain't no white punks in here.  So you whiteys can go to your
white tables and the bruthas will go to our tables.  Sit at your white table,
and they will ask you `bout how Stretch is treatin' you.  You will tell them
honkies that Stretch is treatin' you like shit.  He has required you to stand at
the bars, then stand at the back of the cell. He has given you duties like
cleaning the toilet every day,  and otherwise, he's ignored your ass. And
then you will dummy up.   And the reason why you will be doin' all this is
cuz I have really gone out of my WAY for you, cuz I seen you was so
PATHETIC that I was overwhelmed with PITY for your ass."

He was laughing and sneering at me,  but I realized he was the most human
person I had met since the judge pronounced sentence.  I would follow his
lead and say what he told me, and then I would dummy up.  I might get in
trouble with the whites, but I wouldn't repay Stretch's kindness with
disobedience.

"Yes sir," I said. "Thank you. I won't say anything more than you told me
today."

"You won't enjoy the meal.  Not with the other cons grilling you.  They'll
grill you about your family, if you got any, and whether you got commissary
funds more than the state's ten bucks, and what connections you got on the
outside----meaning gang connections.   Since you ain't got no gang tats, they
know you ain't organized.  But you might be told to ask for a transfer to a
white cell.  If that happens, you should be seen doing that.   However  don't
say, `I've been instructed by a gang to ask for a transfer,' which you're just
stupid enough to say. Some a these guards, they got gang connections
themselves.  What you say is, `Sir I need a transfer--I been put in a cell with
an n-word.' Then you'll be told that you will not be here long enough to
worry about it, and that the DOC will decide where you are celled and who
you are celled with, and offenders will do as they're told, and shut the fuck
up.

"Mostly, though, you'll just be told to `Fuck off!' when you try to sit with
them crackers.  The good thing is, you have only a few minutes to eat. If
you're lucky, the other cons won't have time to really interrogate you."

I nodded my understanding. Without my saying it I tried to let Stretch know
that again I was hugely in his debt.   It was not too long after Stretch had
educated me about what to expect that the loudspeakers shrieked into life. It
was like trying to hear one of those announcements in an airport. Your life
might depend on it, but at first all you can hear is random syllables.

The second time around, I made out, `Tier B, Cells 1 through 25! Prepare for
cell opening!'"   Stretch told me to stand behind him, and when the cell door
opened to follow him out, then do a turn toward the left, and follow the
inmates from 1 to 21 down the tier, down the stairs, and directly to the end
of the cell block and through the mess room doors.

With a convenient clang of steel against steel, the bars slid open. I would
have been relieved to see that happen, but there was no blue sky on the other
side of them—just a river of brown-colored men, trudging along the catwalk
with their hands on their elbows. I put my hands there too, and the river
swept me along, down the stairs, and through an aperture in the far wall that
opened into the mess room.
"Mess" reminded me of Air Force guys in a movie. They always smoke a
last cigarette in the officers' mess, before climbing into their planes and
doing heroic things up in the big blue sky. But this "mess" wasn't the home
of heroes. It was a concrete box with slick white tiles, like you see in a
latrine, going halfway up the walls; a line of windows, fenced with bars,
running along the top; and a steel counter blocking off one end. Behind the
counter were three young men in browns, each with the familiar hands-on-
opposite-elbows stance.   Convicts.   But these cons were special; they were
wearing those little white paper caps that workers wear in cheap cafeterias.  I
could barely remember going into one of those places; the only cafeteria I
went to was the one in the faculty club, where nice ladies smiled and asked
what I wanted today.  In this place, you grabbed a plastic tray out of a tall
steel stack, and as you passed in front of the surly, bored young men with
their little white caps sliding forward on their bald white skulls,  they
dropped things onto your tray.  They didn't need to ask what you wanted;
everybody got the same.   As I finished going through the line I noticed that
after about six other walking bald inmates, there was a break in the line.
Immediately all the servers put down their spoons and assumed the hands
grasping arms stance.  If you were outside the cage, apparently a bald inmate
better be hands on elbows,

Everything went as Stretch had prepared me to expect. I immediately walked
toward a series of tables where only whites were sitting. Every table had
four seats—steel stools, no backs--and both the table and the stools were
bolted to the floor. It looked like everybody else knew where to head. I
hunted anxiously for an open seat. Then I spotted one. I went for it.

"Next table fish!   This one's taken."  Another guy slid into the seat.  A few
feet away, I discovered an empty table and sat down, momentarily thankful.
I looked down at my tray. There was no knife or fork—only a plastic spoon.
Automatically, I rose to go back and ask for the silverware. Then I
realized—convicts don't get silverware. They don't get knives or forks.
They don't even get metal spoons. They get plastic spoons.   I grabbed my
plastic spoon and tried to cut into the unidentifiable meat on my tray. The
meat resisted my efforts. I resorted to sticking the stiff little slab into my
mouth, in an attempt to tear it apart. I was marginally successful. A tasteless
glob of something headed down my throat. If it had been meat at one time,
whatever had been done in its preparation had turned it into a good
approximation of a hockey puck.

As I was doing my best to eat my first prison meal, I thought that now that I
knew the difference between jail and prison— I liked the jail meals more.
After I had managed to consume part of the meat, I tried other parts of my
rations. There were some things like peaches, which were long on syrup and
short on fruit. Finally there was a blob of something I guessed was supposed
to be mashed potatoes.   They were almost as hard as the meat.

That was the meal.  As I struggled to get it down, three other whiteys joined
me. They also began eating the meal, but,  in between chewing,  I was asked,
"What's your name, fish?"

I answered, "Jim Cox."

"Time?"
I figured this was referring to my sentence. "Six months to five years."
"SHIT, a damn part timer. How'd you get such a fuckin' sweetheart deal?"

"It was my first conviction, and my lawyer made a deal with the prosecutor."

"Public defender?"

I was not prepared for this question.  I knew I'd better have a quick answer.
I didn't know any public defenders, but I did know some defense attorneys,
and so I said, "My own lawyer."

"SHIT! I shoulda seen you were some rich fart that can afford a private
lawyer, and git you a pud sentence." There was a general discussion of
lawyers and of rich people.

"Yeah, but what about this Extended Sentence shit?  This dude just come in.
He must be . . . eligible."

"That's right, man. I sneaked in under the wire—thing don't apply to me.
You neither--I know you been here a while. But I guess this dude's got
enough cash, his lawyer can buy him out of it."

I wasn't sure whether they actually thought I was rich, or if this was just
what they'd say to anybody who got a shorter sentence than they did.
Eventually, though, they came closer to a point, and I started hearing things
like, "I think you need to realize that a lot can happen to a guy in prison,"
and "With all that money, you might wanta be generous to the rest of us
guys," and "Hate to see some accident happen to you that would land you in
the infirmary," and "Weird things can happen in the showers, even to an old
piece of ass."

I was not prepared for this gambit, but I had read and talked to enough stand
up offenders to know that if did not stand up for myself, I would be labeled a
punk and accept being used by every other con.

"Well, I don't have any money," I said, "at least Not any more.  And other
guys can have accidents around the cells and in the showers, just as easy as I
can."
It was partly a bluff.  I had taken judo classes years ago.  I remembered
some of the moves.  I decided that if I had to, I would try to use them on
whoever decided to attack me.  I would hope to make enough noise that
guards would come in. I thought to myself, "This plan sucks, and I might not
live through it, but I have to establish myself or lose all self-respect—as well
as mark myself as the weakling everyone else can victimize."

I forced myself to look down, confident about my threat, and go on plowing
through my "food." It was a good thing I didn't have to think of more things
to say. I'd only been sitting there for about 10 minutes when a bell rang, and
I heard an officer yell, "RETURN TRAYS! LINE UP--CELL ORDER! DO
IT NOW!"

Everybody stood up, grousing like they must have done every time it
happened, and jammed their trays back into the racks. Their trays all looked
empty. Mine was more than half full.

I picked Stretch out of the crowd and moved into line behind him.  He was
standing hands-to-elbows. I stood that way too—one more robot on the
assembly line.  But apparently our trip down to our dinner had been too
ambling and unorganized for someone in charge. The trip back would be
more disciplined.
"MARCHING IN PLACE—BEGIN! RIGHT. LEFT. RIGHT. LEFT.
RIGHT LEFT." We stomped right to left foot as ordered, and finally we
seemed to get it sort of in order. The officer could now throw the switch and
start us in motion.
"FOREWARD! BACK TO THE BLOCK! UP THE STAIRS!" In much less
than military precision, we began the ordered journey.

Up the stairs we went, and down the tier. Up ahead, you could see sets of
two offenders turning off into each cell. Stretch was in front of me, and I
turned when he did. Now we were back "home." And when we had all been
returned to our home address, they made sure we were there, and there we
would stay. The doors clanked shut; we were locked inside; then an officer
came down the line. I heard him shouting at each cell: "SOUND OFF!", and
as he got closer I heard two sets of numbers shouted back from inside every
cell.
The officer came to the front of our cell. Stretch shouted "100914," and I
followed with "117213." The officer walked on. 100914 and 117213 were
safe for the night in cell B22.

Clearly, Stretch had been here a while before, and now in returning he had
received his old number. My number was new. But it wouldn't always be
that way. If what they said was true, it could be with me for a long time, a
long, long . . .
"Hey! What's the matter with you, whitey? You gonna stand there, starin' at
your bunk?"   Stretch was already lying down, filling the space between the
steel wall of the cell and the steel posts of the bunk stack.

The truth was, now that I was locked back in my cage, I didn't know what to
do. There was nothing to see, nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to
think except wonder whether I should try to get up in that top bunk -  my
bunk.   I hadn't actually been on my bunk.   I had spread the mattress (an
honorary term...that thin piece of plastic with some lumpy filling didn't
deserve its name, and neither did that hard plastic pillow), but I was
wondering how I could launch myself up there. I'd never had a bunk before.

Stretch shot me an amused look.   "If you're wondering about whether to
step on my rack, honky, I'd advise you against it.  Put one foot on the rim of
the toilet, and swing up from there.  But first, get outta them shoes and put
`em next to mine, at the back of the cell - sox inside the shoes.  Then strip
down to your boxers, and fold your tee and your browns and stow them at
the foot of the bunk, next to the bars—and don't get `em on mine, boy.  If
they aren't there, the screws will fuckin' open the cell, give you a good swat
with the strap or maybe the baton, and tell you how to deal with clothes that
belong to the state."

I stood on one foot, then on the other, and got out of my shoes.  Man, what a
relief! Those things must have been made for a steelworker or something
worse—except that a steelworker would never put his feet inside anything as
heavy and misshapen as those black blocks of cement-grade leather.  Then I
started stripping out of my browns.  When you watch those square hard
clothes with INMATE stenciled across them leaving your body, you get the
illusion that you're no longer a convict. Then you look up and see that
you're still in that steel cage.

"You gotta shit or piss?" Stretch said.

I suddenly realized that I had not done either all day. Of course I'd had little
to eat or drink.  I'd also been too busy with other things—like being
terminally scared and confused. So I decided to try to piss before I climbed
up. I managed to do it, standing in front of the bars, where anyone that
passed could stand and watch the monkey in his cage. There was no escape.
Thinking about that, I no longer had a need to shit.  My bowels were like
iron. "I'm done," I said.
"You better try to shit," Stretch said. "At night, they shut off the water
supply to the toilets. You can shit after lights out, but you can't flush. And I
don't want to wake up at night smelling your crap."

I squatted down on the cold steel rim—there was no "seat" on these toilets--
and as he watched I strained to expel something. I finally got out a few
pebbles of shit.  I reached around to the little round hole into which a roll of
toilet paper fitted . . . just like jail. I wiped my butt and put the toilet paper in
the bowl, like always--but this time I had an audience. For the first time
since I was a child, I had to perform excretion in public and under evaluation
for my performance.

Stretch then got up and sat on the steel rim. He pissed and shat right away. I
turned my head to the wall to give him some privacy, but I couldn't help
inhaling his smell. When you're locked in with it, in a place the size of a
closet, there's no place to hide from that stench.

Stretch took his time getting up. "I guess you didn't know about this.  In
here, even your pissing and shitting are subject to . . . inspection and
observation.  If you think this is bad, wait till the days when they have
female screws walking the tier. The cells next to the stairs try to warn
everybody when a female is coming, but some of these bitches get off on
walking down the line and catching some guy sitting on the can. You learn
to accept it.  You're an offender--no part of you is private.  Guards watch
you piss and shit, and they can even shut down the toilets so you can't flush
your shit out of your house.  Anyhow, like I said, there's a certain whistle,
and when that comes from one or the other end of the tier you'll know that
one of these bitches is on the prowl for an inmate to humiliate.  Unless you
don't think it's humiliating to have to do your toilet functions while some
bitch is watching you want to get done and off the shitter as soon as
possible.  That's why these bitches wanta be guards—they finally got the
power.  They got the ultimate power."

I'll bet my friend Jim used to laugh when he heard some guard telling how
she caught some inmate wiping his ass, and how she came up with some
witticism to show that the inmate had no privacy, now that he was under the
absolute power of the state and its designated officer to watch, control,
humiliate, and degrade--to be certain that the inmate understood that the
state might talk reformation, but it really wanted humiliation and
subjugation. And Jim must have done it himself—laughed while he looked
through the bars at an inmate sitting on that steel rim, straining to shit while
an officer grinned back at him.
Stretch slid into his bunk, and I put my foot back on the toilet rim, to get up
to my own bunk.  I had to be careful as I did not want to literally "step in it."
I know both Stretch and I had flushed, but the thought of having my foot get
a shitter bath was scary to me.  I made it without a slip, and now I was in the
little box that is all a convict gets for his bedroom—bars at his feet, steel by
his side, steel under his ass, and another sheet of steel on top of him like a
coffin lid, right above his nose.

You can't really sit up in the top bunk, but I finally got my legs squirmed in
underneath my blanket. No sheets—just that thick, scratchy horse blanket,
and that little plastic mattress between me and the steel shelf I was supposed
to sleep on.  I leaned my head on my puny plastic pillow and tried to
comprehend just how awful my life was.  "If I hadn't allowed my penis to
do my thinking, I would be at home right now, lying on super silky sheets,
watching late-night comedy, and free to piss and shit any time I wanted to,
in complete privacy."  Then I realized how far I'd gone.  I'd come to the
place where I'd be ecstatic just to piss and shit by myself. "Damn I'm
dumb," I thought. "Damn I'm dumb."

About that time, the loudspeakers woke up again. "TOILETS SHUT OFF IN
ONE MINUTE" it barked.  After what I assumed to be a minute, a bell
started echoing around the walls. Then there was a sort of loud thud, and
immediately almost all the lights went out. I would guess the time was no
later than 10:00 p.m. I was used to staying up until 1:00 a.m. or even 3:00
a.m., reading, writing, watching movies, then catching a comedy show
before I dozed off.  Now I would go to bed, and I would sleep on a schedule
not my own, a schedule that had no relation to my entertainment. But this
day had been so terrible, physically and emotionally, that I went to sleep
almost as soon I got myself wrapped up in my blanket and my head had
found my mini-pillow.   I was asleep.




CHAPTER 13


Suddenly there was this loud, irritating bell. I wondered, "What the hell! I
don't have a bell like that. Who's come to my house to make this outrageous
racket?" Then I really did wake up. Above me was a sheet of steel. Under
my back was a slick, hard piece of plastic. My chest and legs were
buried under something harsh and heavy. I looked down past my feet,
and I saw a wall of bars. Around me, I heard piss splashing, shit
dropping, toilets flushing. It was like I'd been locked in a restroom for
the night. Then I remembered--I was in prison.
I could hear Stretch moving in the bunk below. "You need to piss bad, fish?"
"No sir," I replied, acknowledging Stretch's superiority and seniority in my
new home.
"Good. I'm pretty regular. I piss and shit first thing. Senior man in the cell,"
he sighed with satisfaction, "gets first use of the toilet. You keep in the
rack until you hear this toilet flush. Then you turn over and climb down and
do whatever you need to do."
When it was my turn, I just needed to piss. I realized that yesterday I had
survived on only one so-called meal. I had missed breakfast in the jail, as we
left before it was served. During what should have been lunch time, I had
gone through the hell of processing, and far from being fed, I had
experienced just the opposite. My alimentary canal had been thoroughly
cleaned out, and I had had to experience without protection having fingers
and thermometers and other probes stuck up my ass.
Finally I had had dinner here, but I had been able to eat very little. My
stomach was growling, but remembering yesterday's meal, I was not
looking forward too much to breakfast.
When I snapped out of my mental review of yesterday, I saw that Stretch
was staring at me. Which wasn't a surprise, since I was just standing at the
toilet, my dick in my hand, looking down at it and the liquids stinking in the
can. Right then, I was thinking about how weird my dick looked,
sticking out that way, without any hair to protect it.
"Well," he said, "I seen fish do a lotta strange things while they're learning
to be a prisoner, but that pose is a new one. I guess you're in some other
world over there, looking into the toilet and holding your own dick."
Snapping back into this hellish new world, all I could do was hurriedly stuff
my cock back in my boxers, and reach for my stack of browns. Until you
put on your browns, you can pretend to yourself, for a minute, that you
just stopped in to use the can, or that you are one of those nice, well-
meaning visitors like I used to be, just getting to know an offender or
two, or that you are on your way to the showers in some primitive kind
of gym. But when you put on your browns, you know that this is a
prison, and you are a prisoner, and this is your prison uniform. Now
you are one of the offenders that you are getting to know, and this is one
of your ways of doing that. Pulling the brown shirt that says INMATE
down over your chest . . . sticking your legs into those brown inmate
trousers—which is easy, since there's no belt to worry about, just elastic
. . . pulling them up over your cock . . . then looking down at your body,
the way it is now . . . Yeah, you think, this is a convict. I am a convict.
If I were back at my own house, the house I owned, I'd be looking
through my wardrobe for a shirt and slacks that would complement
each other and project a quiet dignity. I would never dream of wearing
a shirt of exactly the same color as my slacks. Or wearing thick,
clodhopper shoes. Or being shaved bald. This morning, however, I
didn't have to choose my clothing. It had all been done for me. And the
color scheme was simple—it was completely the same, top and bottom.
It projected insignificance. It projected a dumb subservience. It
projected an ability to line up and be caged with all the other offenders
who were wearing the same color of dirt.
"Yeah," I said. "I guess yesterday was almost too much for me. What comes
next in this entrance to the inferno?" That was my oblique reference to
Dante, which I didn't expect Stretch to recognize. "Well," he said, with that
same quizzical look, "this is about as close to hell as anybody would like to
get."
There was something about the way he said it that made me feel again that
there was much more to Stretch than he ever let show.
"What comes next?" I said.
"The Count."
"Really? They really think one of us did a Star Trek and beamed out of here
last night?"
Stretch gave me his half smile again. "Must be. I never figured any reason
for it myself, and that reason is as good as any."
He was right. Now the loudspeakers were on again. "INMATES WILL
STAND AT THE BARS AND RESPOND TO THE COUNT!"
Stretch took the more open space next to the toilet. I moved to the narrow
space between the end of the bunk and the bars.
I heard the cadence as it approached us. "B15, SOUND OFF!" "B16,
SOUND OFF!" I wondered why it had to be shouted. The officer could only
be four, maybe five feet from the bars of the cage, even if he were standing
by the guard rails at the edge of the walkway. However, I was coming to
understand that if some action was the rational and reasonable one, that
would be the one that would be totally rejected by prison authorities.
"116198 SIR!" a convict shouted back.
"116198 present for count," an officer repeated, bored and surly, as if any
time he spent saying it was so much time he couldn't spend smoking and
texting. But inmates were not permitted to be bored or surly. They had
to respond with alacrity.
"117156 SIR!"
"117156 present for count."
Once I got the idea of the count, I fell back in my world of thoughts. How
would I be using my own time right now, if I wasn't stuck to the bars,
waiting to shout my number? I'd be eating my cereal and pouring
myself a second glass of orange juice. I'd be going over my schedule for
the day, planning my appointments. Seminar, office hours, student
advisees, maybe an interview with the newspaper . . .
"B22! SOUND OFF!"
Suddenly an officer's uniform appeared on the other side of the bars,
blocking the light in front of me. The face on top of it did not look
happy. Another officer stood in front of Stretch. That face didn't look
happy either.
"B22 !" bellowed the first officer, reminding me of my address. "Report for
count!"
"100914 SIR!" Stretch dutifully replied.
"100914 present for count," the second officer intoned as he marked
something on his clipboard.
"117213 . . . SIR!" I shouted, trying to sound as loud and confident as the
others I had heard respond.
I wondered whether making his response as loud as he could was the one
way a prisoner could make himself feel almost a citizen. For that moment,
anyway.
"117213 present for count." The officer noted my indication that this piece
of state property was stored where required by the inventory list.
We had performed to specifications, although we had to stand by the bars
until the count was complete. Stretch smiled at me and said in a carefully
low voice, "Nice job kid. Thought you were gonna lose it there for a
second."
"Yeah, almost," I said. But I felt pride that I had not brought dishonor to our
cell.
"A11! Sound off!"
"C28! Sound off!"
I became more aware that the scene going on down our range was being
repeated above and below us.
I looked to see if we were dismissed, but Stretch wasn't moving and so
neither did I. We remained facing the bars. I soon noticed that I'd gone
back instinctively to the caged man's behavior—I was gripping the bars
with both hands and peering out between them, as if there were
anything on the other side that I wanted to see. What I saw was a lead-
pipe railing, then an empty space-- the drop-off to the floor below--then
a concrete wall with a line of thin windows, too thin and too full of bars
to make out anything except the greenish color of a field at some
indeterminate distance from the bars that were pressing against my
chest. If a camera man came by, he would have a perfect picture of a
Locked Down Convict.
Finally I heard the shout: "TIER A COUNT CLEAR." Then another: "TIER
B COUNT CLEAR." THEN ANOTHER: "TIER C COUNT CLEAR."
"Inmates prepare for mess!" was the order that boomed from the speaker
system.
I looked at Stretch for some idea of what that order meant.
"We have fifteen minutes to shave and if you ain't pissed and shit before
Count, you gotta that done. I shave first."
I sat on my second floor bunk and watched while Stretch used the cold water
to shave. I noticed he had shaving cream. He finished his preparations by
making sure his brown trousers were straight and his white tee was straight
and showed correctly underneath his brown pullover shirt.
I'd noticed that his number was inked in, small but visible, on his shirt tale.
Now I noticed it on the inside of the waistband on his trousers.
"Oh yeah," he said. "Today New York will come by with a clothing marker.
He'll tell you to have all clothing marked by the next time you're out on tier.
It's so your clothes don't get lost in the wash." He paused. "I'll help," he
added.
Once again, I was thankful for one decent person in my new world. The
more I thought about Stretch, the more I decided he was actually one of the
better people I had known in my life. Even though I had worked with many
inmates, I had to admit to myself that I did feel superior to all of them, both
as a person and as somebody who was "giving of himself" to others "in
need." In need of what I had. By this I smugly meant my superior position
in society and in intellectual prowess. I told myself that these convicts had
shown themselves unable to resist base impulses, whereas I was built of
sterner stuff.
Now I realized that Stretch was superior to me in almost every way possible.
I told myself that in six months, when I escaped from this hell, I would
devote myself to helping him. I couldn't do so personally, not without
giving myself away, but I could certainly spend the funds and call in favors
to be sure he had superior legal representation, would receive every chance
for parole as soon as possible, and would have job opportunities after
release. I owed him, and I resolved that I would repay.
As I was thinking of the nobility of Stretch, New York came to our cage
with a paper bag.
"Commissary for 117213," he said, glancing briefly at me. "Yo Stretch,"
he said, and smiled.
"Whazzup," Stretch acknowledged. We were three men in brown, but
one of us was still on the outside, and that was me.
"I haven't ordered any commissary," I said, reminding the porter of my
existence.
"You didn't have to," he replied. "This order was placed by the state. It's
your shower shoes, your shave cream, your soap. All stuff like that."
I looked in the bag. Yeah, there was a bar of soap, a little can of shaving
cream, an extra pair of boxers, and a pair of rubber flip flops.
"I have no money on my books to pay for this" was my irritated reply. The
last thing I needed was to get caught stealing something. I didn't mind
not shaving for a few days, if that was allowed—although looking at
New York's beardless face implied that it probably wasn't.
This is when Stretch chimed in. "You remember that ten bucks the state put
into your commissary fund?"
"Yeah," I replied.
Stretch smiled broadly. "Well lemme tell you the state scam. Some dude in
the legislature, probly white"—this caught a laugh from New York, who
was standing with his hands on his elbows, turning from time to time to
see if the officer at the desk could see him hanging out with his buddy—
"some dude in the legislature somehow got to wondering about us
inmates."
"Yeah?" New York sneered.
"Yeah. Don't know why. Maybe one a these . . . humanitarians. So he
thought, maybe, just maybe, you get some new fish in here, and he's
comin' through all bald and naked and shit, and this fish ain't got no
cash. No cash, no relatives or shit like that, no commissary."
"Yeah, that could happen," New York joked.
"So, this dude thinks that possibly, just possibly, this might lead to the
fish buyin' all his . . . shaving cream by selling `sexual favors.'"
"No shit! That couldn't never happen here!" He leaned in toward the
bars, cracking up and trying to keep the officers below from noticing.
"No, it couldn't," Stretch continued. "But anyway, that's what these
ignorant honkies think. So what he does, he gets the state to give every
fish a brand new $10 credit in the commissary. Which is cool, right? We
should all be on our knees, thankin' this honky. So then what happens?
The DOC just reduces what they give us in those little bitty tiny little
Induction Packages, which is what they call your toothbrush, fish. And
they use the $10 to pay for your shower shoes. And so, like always, the con
gets screwed, and the screws get all the money."
I was mad; but Stretch and New York were laughing like crazy over the state
scam. That was it, all right. For that minute, I thought I was still on the
outside. I was the outraged citizen, preparing to write a firm letter to his state
representative. But they were on the inside, knowing what all that meant.
"Oh man! He seen me! I'm fucked!" New York said, turning back from
another glance at the desk below. "I'm outta here!" With his hands still
holding his elbows, he strode on down the tier. Right away, the loudspeaker
started ordering the tiers to march to breakfast.
The day in this warehouse of offenders awaiting assignment to their long
term place of punishment went pretty much as I had already experienced.
We went to mess three times—"breakfast," "lunch," and "dinner." I was
grilled on each of these occasions, and got myself identified as an arrogant
son of a bitch. But I didn't need to take Stretch's advice about complaining
to an officer about my mixed-race cell assignment.
That afternoon, New York came by with a marking pen, and Stretch showed
me where to write my numbers on my uniform. The trick was to write them
large enough so some laundry geek would see them but small enough so you
might not notice them yourself. "Next shower day, they'll hand you your
change of browns, and you can have the pleasure of doing it all over again."
Yeah, pleasure. Every time I wrote my new name, no matter how small I
wrote it, I was writing it deeper and deeper into myself.
On my third full day as an RDC con, everything began as usual. We got
through breakfast and finally I found a "white" table where my fellow diners
just asked the normal stuff...who are you...where are you from...when are
you getting out. That's about all that can be done in 10 minutes, besides
shoveling prison "food" into your mouth. Breakfast was some mysterious
round meat wad, with yellow something that might at some time been a part
of an egg, and a piece of bread that could have been used as a component of
a building project. This was "toast." Thus my official breakfast was sausage
round, scrambled eggs, toast and coffee or orange juice... I forgot to include
the orange juice. It was in a little, and I mean maybe two inches high, plastic
cuff with some sort of metal top, which I could only get off by putting it in
my teeth and pulling. This action amused my table companions.
After breakfast we returned to our cage and got ready for inspection. I was
with the program now, and knew that my duty in our apartment was to be
sure the toilet and sink would pass inspection. I had no idea what would
happen if we did not pass inspection, but I knew that officers would have
found some way to make this awful place even worse as a consequence. My
chief motivation was not to cause Stretch to be disappointed or dissatisfied
with me. He clearly saved me from having an even worse time than I was
having now.
After inspection, I was sitting at the back of the cell, writing more of my
observations on some sheets of paper that Stretch had given me. Suddenly
there was an officer at the front of our cage.
"Offender 100914," he shouted, as if Stretch was on the far end of a football
field. "Pack up your shit. You are being transferred to your place of
incarceration. Here's your bag. You got five minutes." He pushed in a white
plastic sack. It was like the white plastic sacks I used to line my kitchen
garbage pail.
I was devastated. I relied on Stretch for everything--companionship, safety,
and just as much of a feeling of security as I thought I could have in here.
Stretch looked down at me, I think with a bit of sadness. "Sorry boy. I guess
you're on your own now. Be careful." He didn't say anything more; he just
went around the cell and collected his "personals." His bag was still
practically empty when the guard came back.
This time he was joined by two other guards and a little parade of three other
offenders. These were linked together onto one chain, a chain that had a set
of handcuffs every two feet or so. It was just like the chain and cuffs I had
worn on my trip to the RDC.
Stretch knew the drill and as soon as the order to "Cuff up" was given he
held the plastic bag in one hand and backed up to the open door to our cell.
Very efficiently his wrists were inserted in one of those sets of cuffs, and his
hands were locked behind his back. Now he was part of the chain of convicts
which, as soon as he cleared the door, began its journey to his permanent
home. Wherever that was—nobody said.
I watched as long as I could as Stretch and the others were marched along B
Tier. They stopped at two other cells, and two other cons were attached to
the chain. Then with all six cuffs secured around the wrists of all six
convicts, the group shuffled away, on the first stage of their journey out of
the Reception and Diagnostic Center to their final place of imprisonment.
Stretch sort of looked back once; then they were gone.
I repeated in my mind that when my six months were over, Charles Wilson,
100914, would be the object of my generous support of his canteen--I would
review his case, his trial, and every aspect of the investigation. I would use
my own knowledge and the knowledge of the best criminal and appeal
lawyers I knew, people I would pay to find a way to reduce or overturn his
sentence, and if there was no possibility...I did know there was a
possibility that Stretch had done the crime... then I would be sure that his
records would be examined for any clemency and early parole he could be
given. AND once Charles was out, he WOULD have a job, a place to live,
and as much support as I could give him to stay out of prison in the future. I
made this vow with as much emotion...no, perhaps more emotion...than I
had ever brought to any resolution before this.
At lunch I was so depressed that I ate even less than usual. When I sat down
at a white table with only one other inmate there, he looked over at me and
to my surprise said, "Saw you lost Stretch this morning."
"Yeah. I am really bummed."
I realized my reply was not inmate quality. It had no profanity, vulgarity, or
macho bravado.
The guy then amazed me with, "Stretch was a good guy. Not many in here
have any honor. He did."
That was it. Stretch was recognized by other experienced inmates as an
extraordinary man.
After trying to eat something, I just sat there. The others who came after the
inmate who made the original comment all nodded at me, but said nothing. I
began to think that maybe there was some "honor among thieves"...or at
least some imprisoned men.
The bell rang. I stood up and stuffed my tray into the rack. Then I went over
to the line that was forming to march us back to our cells, where we would
be caged for another six hours. We trudged up the stairs, stomping with our
right foot first, as for some reason we were required to do. I marched in line,
hands on my elbows, stomping along with the others.
Back at B22, I stood inside and waited until I heard the door of bars slide
shut, locking me inside my cage again, but this time alone.
I stood there, and then for the first time sat on the steel seat by the wall. I sat
there and felt sorry for myself all over again.
I alternated moping and looking through the bars, as if looking would
suddenly bring Stretch back. I knew that would never happen. Then I heard
the cat calls and shouted comments announcing that a new batch of fresh
made state prisoners had arrived. I went to the bars and looked down the tier.
I heard all the yelling and banging on the bars. I realized that all that noise
was present at some level almost all the time, but by this time I almost
ignored it. I sat down to mope some more. Then I heard the pounding of
inmate shoes on steel stairs, and I realized that the new batch of convicts was
now being distributed.
I heard stomping coming toward my cage. I suddenly I had this awful
unacceptable thought. One of these new born prisoners was coming into my
cell, but I did not want someone else. No one could take Stretch's place, and
I wanted to be left alone in my self- pity.
But while I was formulating a protest against some new convict coming into
my house, the parade stopped at my door.
"Back of the cell, 213!" That was the order. I knew I couldn't disobey. My
induction experience had convinced me that the free persons who were
running this entrance to hell could and would do anything they wanted with
me.
"SIR yes SIR" was my response. Gone were the brave thoughts of protest. I
knew that somewhere in this warehouse of misery there could be a someone
who would make my cage seem like a place of pleasure.
There was a clanking of chains. One suit of brown was being removed from
the other suits of brown.
Detached from the group came a bald teenager. He looked at me with the
same look of contempt that I am sure covered my own face.
"Harris 117236--IN!"
Harris 117236 walked in with the sort of swagger I had seen on campus and
found particularly irritating. As far as I could tell, teen males who had the
least in brains and abilities showed the most attitude.
The door closed behind him, and we two were unhappily in the cage
together. I realized again how small a prison cell can be. Small, and made of
steel.
"Yo gramps. What you in for—drivin' your wheelchair without a license?"
He laughed, easily amused by his own puerile humor.
"No," I said.

The Professor's Practicum Chapter 12


I do not know how long I held onto those bars, lost in my thoughts. I was
brought out of my self-absorption by Stretch.

"They ain't goin' any place, and neither are you."

I realized that somehow I had been drawn to those bars, and I was looking
out, not really thinking.   It must be something from the deepest and most
basic self that makes you react to being caged.  Suddenly I thought: "Just
like an animal!" I remembered seeing on television a documentary about
wild animals being caught and caged.  I remembered how the animals paced,
and the tigers and the big cats attacked the bars themselves.

I realized that the human animal still has a kinship to all the other intelligent,
0
thinking animals of the world.  When caged you test the cage.  Animals
instinctively hate cages, and this was clearly a cage.

I wondered why I didn't have this reaction in the jail, when I had those walls
around me.  Perhaps because walls are familiar--walls often surround us.
But bars and the bars of a cage--that returns the human animal to the
instinctual beginning of humanity's ascent into civilization and the mastery
of others, the mastery of beasts we have caged.

These thoughts went through my mind in just a moment of time.  Then I was
in the real world, where I had to turn and offer a lame reply to cover what
my real thoughts were.   "Just checking," I said. "You never know when
some shoddy work has been done by some lazy worker."

Stretch again gave me the pained look, the look that said, "What did I do to
the MAN to get saddled with this dumb piece of shit!"

What he said was, "I wouldn't say that too often and too loud. Those bar
panels there  -  those are made at the state prison by inmates like you.   And
if they send you there, you might just get your turn on the assembly line.
Big joke, huh?   You can get a chance to make your own cage.   And trust
me, the screws check out every one of those bars. They rap `em and smack
`em, and they do all kind of electronic stuff.   Any inmate crew that sends
out a . . . whadid you call it?   a SHODDY panel, their asses pay for that
mistake.  Their asses get the SWAT. And if the screws think they meant to
fuck up,  first they get their asses burned and then they get the HOLE.  Yeah,
you can trust those bars.  This cage is one thing you can definitely trust."

He was standing with a hand resting on one of the side walls.  Then he
stretched out his other arm and touched the other wall, easy.  I gulped. The
cell was just that narrow.  His knuckles tapped the wall.  It was steel, and it
made that cold, hard sound, like the side of a big truck that doesn't even
echo. The wall was that thick.   "If the screws forgot and left us here, you
could yell all you wanted to.  But we'd stay right here, dying behind those
bars.  Yeah, it's pretty funny, when you think about it."

I'd wanted to ask him what "the hole" was really like  because I knew that
the convicts I had helped with their cases had sometimes brought up the
Hole, and I knew it was a punishment they truly disliked or perhaps feared,
but what "THE HOLE" really was like I did not know.   I decided not to
move the conversation from information I needed to survive here.

"Do we eat in the cells," I asked, "or do we go someplace else?"   I realized I
hadn't had either breakfast or lunch at this point.

"We dine out!" Stretch said,  imitating what he thought would be some
elegant free person's remark. "I guess you didn't see the restaurant on your
way in here. Just down the block. They open the bars, tier by tier, and we
stroll down the steps. UNescorted."

"WOW," I thought. "We are actually allowed to walk down one level
without being cuffed and manhandled."

I must have looked pleased, because he continued, "Just keep your hands on
your elbows, the way you saw New York do it. Any time you're outta the
cell, walkin' or standin', if you ain't got nothin' in your hands—that you're
SUPPOSED to be carryin'--you do the hands on the elbows thang."

I could hardly think of anything more immobilizing, more humiliating.
"Why?" I said.
"Who knows why they do anything? But this routine is just to keep your
hands locked up. Keep `em from passin' a note. Keep `em from pointin' a
shiv."
A shiv.     He meant a knife. I knew that much from watching movies.

"Anyway, you just follow the crowd. Grab a tray, and the kitchen cons will
throw you some chow.  Then you will find a seat.  Normally you would eat
with your cellie; however, you will NOT eat with me.  No whitey sits at a
table with the bruthas.   Only exception is, if the whitey has been punked; so,
he belongs to a brutha that is sittin' there.  You can tell, cuz the whitey will
sit with his hands to his sides.  When all the bruthas have taken whatever
they might want from the whitey's tray, the whitey's owner will give his
white boy permission to eat whatever is left.  His owner also will let the
whitey know whether he can use his fork or he can go ahead and use his
fingers.

"Right now, ain't no white punks in here.  So you whiteys can go to your
white tables and the bruthas will go to our tables.  Sit at your white table,
and they will ask you `bout how Stretch is treatin' you.  You will tell them
honkies that Stretch is treatin' you like shit.  He has required you to stand at
the bars, then stand at the back of the cell. He has given you duties like
cleaning the toilet every day,  and otherwise, he's ignored your ass. And
then you will dummy up.   And the reason why you will be doin' all this is
cuz I have really gone out of my WAY for you, cuz I seen you was so
PATHETIC that I was overwhelmed with PITY for your ass."

He was laughing and sneering at me,  but I realized he was the most human
person I had met since the judge pronounced sentence.  I would follow his
lead and say what he told me, and then I would dummy up.  I might get in
trouble with the whites, but I wouldn't repay Stretch's kindness with
disobedience.

"Yes sir," I said. "Thank you. I won't say anything more than you told me
today."

"You won't enjoy the meal.  Not with the other cons grilling you.  They'll
grill you about your family, if you got any, and whether you got commissary
funds more than the state's ten bucks, and what connections you got on the
outside----meaning gang connections.   Since you ain't got no gang tats, they
know you ain't organized.  But you might be told to ask for a transfer to a
white cell.  If that happens, you should be seen doing that.   However  don't
say, `I've been instructed by a gang to ask for a transfer,' which you're just
stupid enough to say. Some a these guards, they got gang connections
themselves.  What you say is, `Sir I need a transfer--I been put in a cell with
an n-word.' Then you'll be told that you will not be here long enough to
worry about it, and that the DOC will decide where you are celled and who
you are celled with, and offenders will do as they're told, and shut the fuck
up.

"Mostly, though, you'll just be told to `Fuck off!' when you try to sit with
them crackers.  The good thing is, you have only a few minutes to eat. If
you're lucky, the other cons won't have time to really interrogate you."

I nodded my understanding. Without my saying it I tried to let Stretch know
that again I was hugely in his debt.   It was not too long after Stretch had
educated me about what to expect that the loudspeakers shrieked into life. It
was like trying to hear one of those announcements in an airport. Your life
might depend on it, but at first all you can hear is random syllables.

The second time around, I made out, `Tier B, Cells 1 through 25! Prepare for
cell opening!'"   Stretch told me to stand behind him, and when the cell door
opened to follow him out, then do a turn toward the left, and follow the
inmates from 1 to 21 down the tier, down the stairs, and directly to the end
of the cell block and through the mess room doors.

With a convenient clang of steel against steel, the bars slid open. I would
have been relieved to see that happen, but there was no blue sky on the other
side of them—just a river of brown-colored men, trudging along the catwalk
with their hands on their elbows. I put my hands there too, and the river
swept me along, down the stairs, and through an aperture in the far wall that
opened into the mess room.
"Mess" reminded me of Air Force guys in a movie. They always smoke a
last cigarette in the officers' mess, before climbing into their planes and
doing heroic things up in the big blue sky. But this "mess" wasn't the home
of heroes. It was a concrete box with slick white tiles, like you see in a
latrine, going halfway up the walls; a line of windows, fenced with bars,
running along the top; and a steel counter blocking off one end. Behind the
counter were three young men in browns, each with the familiar hands-on-
opposite-elbows stance.   Convicts.   But these cons were special; they were
wearing those little white paper caps that workers wear in cheap cafeterias.  I
could barely remember going into one of those places; the only cafeteria I
went to was the one in the faculty club, where nice ladies smiled and asked
what I wanted today.  In this place, you grabbed a plastic tray out of a tall
steel stack, and as you passed in front of the surly, bored young men with
their little white caps sliding forward on their bald white skulls,  they
dropped things onto your tray.  They didn't need to ask what you wanted;
everybody got the same.   As I finished going through the line I noticed that
after about six other walking bald inmates, there was a break in the line.
Immediately all the servers put down their spoons and assumed the hands
grasping arms stance.  If you were outside the cage, apparently a bald inmate
better be hands on elbows,

Everything went as Stretch had prepared me to expect. I immediately walked
toward a series of tables where only whites were sitting. Every table had
four seats—steel stools, no backs--and both the table and the stools were
bolted to the floor. It looked like everybody else knew where to head. I
hunted anxiously for an open seat. Then I spotted one. I went for it.

"Next table fish!   This one's taken."  Another guy slid into the seat.  A few
feet away, I discovered an empty table and sat down, momentarily thankful.
I looked down at my tray. There was no knife or fork—only a plastic spoon.
Automatically, I rose to go back and ask for the silverware. Then I
realized—convicts don't get silverware. They don't get knives or forks.
They don't even get metal spoons. They get plastic spoons.   I grabbed my
plastic spoon and tried to cut into the unidentifiable meat on my tray. The
meat resisted my efforts. I resorted to sticking the stiff little slab into my
mouth, in an attempt to tear it apart. I was marginally successful. A tasteless
glob of something headed down my throat. If it had been meat at one time,
whatever had been done in its preparation had turned it into a good
approximation of a hockey puck.

As I was doing my best to eat my first prison meal, I thought that now that I
knew the difference between jail and prison— I liked the jail meals more.
After I had managed to consume part of the meat, I tried other parts of my
rations. There were some things like peaches, which were long on syrup and
short on fruit. Finally there was a blob of something I guessed was supposed
to be mashed potatoes.   They were almost as hard as the meat.

That was the meal.  As I struggled to get it down, three other whiteys joined
me. They also began eating the meal, but,  in between chewing,  I was asked,
"What's your name, fish?"

I answered, "Jim Cox."

"Time?"
I figured this was referring to my sentence. "Six months to five years."
"SHIT, a damn part timer. How'd you get such a fuckin' sweetheart deal?"

"It was my first conviction, and my lawyer made a deal with the prosecutor."

"Public defender?"

I was not prepared for this question.  I knew I'd better have a quick answer.
I didn't know any public defenders, but I did know some defense attorneys,
and so I said, "My own lawyer."

"SHIT! I shoulda seen you were some rich fart that can afford a private
lawyer, and git you a pud sentence." There was a general discussion of
lawyers and of rich people.

"Yeah, but what about this Extended Sentence shit?  This dude just come in.
He must be . . . eligible."

"That's right, man. I sneaked in under the wire—thing don't apply to me.
You neither--I know you been here a while. But I guess this dude's got
enough cash, his lawyer can buy him out of it."

I wasn't sure whether they actually thought I was rich, or if this was just
what they'd say to anybody who got a shorter sentence than they did.
Eventually, though, they came closer to a point, and I started hearing things
like, "I think you need to realize that a lot can happen to a guy in prison,"
and "With all that money, you might wanta be generous to the rest of us
guys," and "Hate to see some accident happen to you that would land you in
the infirmary," and "Weird things can happen in the showers, even to an old
piece of ass."

I was not prepared for this gambit, but I had read and talked to enough stand
up offenders to know that if did not stand up for myself, I would be labeled a
punk and accept being used by every other con.

"Well, I don't have any money," I said, "at least Not any more.  And other
guys can have accidents around the cells and in the showers, just as easy as I
can."
It was partly a bluff.  I had taken judo classes years ago.  I remembered
some of the moves.  I decided that if I had to, I would try to use them on
whoever decided to attack me.  I would hope to make enough noise that
guards would come in. I thought to myself, "This plan sucks, and I might not
live through it, but I have to establish myself or lose all self-respect—as well
as mark myself as the weakling everyone else can victimize."

I forced myself to look down, confident about my threat, and go on plowing
through my "food." It was a good thing I didn't have to think of more things
to say. I'd only been sitting there for about 10 minutes when a bell rang, and
I heard an officer yell, "RETURN TRAYS! LINE UP--CELL ORDER! DO
IT NOW!"

Everybody stood up, grousing like they must have done every time it
happened, and jammed their trays back into the racks. Their trays all looked
empty. Mine was more than half full.

I picked Stretch out of the crowd and moved into line behind him.  He was
standing hands-to-elbows. I stood that way too—one more robot on the
assembly line.  But apparently our trip down to our dinner had been too
ambling and unorganized for someone in charge. The trip back would be
more disciplined.
"MARCHING IN PLACE—BEGIN! RIGHT. LEFT. RIGHT. LEFT.
RIGHT LEFT." We stomped right to left foot as ordered, and finally we
seemed to get it sort of in order. The officer could now throw the switch and
start us in motion.
"FOREWARD! BACK TO THE BLOCK! UP THE STAIRS!" In much less
than military precision, we began the ordered journey.

Up the stairs we went, and down the tier. Up ahead, you could see sets of
two offenders turning off into each cell. Stretch was in front of me, and I
turned when he did. Now we were back "home." And when we had all been
returned to our home address, they made sure we were there, and there we
would stay. The doors clanked shut; we were locked inside; then an officer
came down the line. I heard him shouting at each cell: "SOUND OFF!", and
as he got closer I heard two sets of numbers shouted back from inside every
cell.
The officer came to the front of our cell. Stretch shouted "100914," and I
followed with "117213." The officer walked on. 100914 and 117213 were
safe for the night in cell B22.

Clearly, Stretch had been here a while before, and now in returning he had
received his old number. My number was new. But it wouldn't always be
that way. If what they said was true, it could be with me for a long time, a
long, long . . .
"Hey! What's the matter with you, whitey? You gonna stand there, starin' at
your bunk?"   Stretch was already lying down, filling the space between the
steel wall of the cell and the steel posts of the bunk stack.

The truth was, now that I was locked back in my cage, I didn't know what to
do. There was nothing to see, nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to
think except wonder whether I should try to get up in that top bunk -  my
bunk.   I hadn't actually been on my bunk.   I had spread the mattress (an
honorary term...that thin piece of plastic with some lumpy filling didn't
deserve its name, and neither did that hard plastic pillow), but I was
wondering how I could launch myself up there. I'd never had a bunk before.

Stretch shot me an amused look.   "If you're wondering about whether to
step on my rack, honky, I'd advise you against it.  Put one foot on the rim of
the toilet, and swing up from there.  But first, get outta them shoes and put
`em next to mine, at the back of the cell - sox inside the shoes.  Then strip
down to your boxers, and fold your tee and your browns and stow them at
the foot of the bunk, next to the bars—and don't get `em on mine, boy.  If
they aren't there, the screws will fuckin' open the cell, give you a good swat
with the strap or maybe the baton, and tell you how to deal with clothes that
belong to the state."

I stood on one foot, then on the other, and got out of my shoes.  Man, what a
relief! Those things must have been made for a steelworker or something
worse—except that a steelworker would never put his feet inside anything as
heavy and misshapen as those black blocks of cement-grade leather.  Then I
started stripping out of my browns.  When you watch those square hard
clothes with INMATE stenciled across them leaving your body, you get the
illusion that you're no longer a convict. Then you look up and see that
you're still in that steel cage.

"You gotta shit or piss?" Stretch said.

I suddenly realized that I had not done either all day. Of course I'd had little
to eat or drink.  I'd also been too busy with other things—like being
terminally scared and confused. So I decided to try to piss before I climbed
up. I managed to do it, standing in front of the bars, where anyone that
passed could stand and watch the monkey in his cage. There was no escape.
Thinking about that, I no longer had a need to shit.  My bowels were like
iron. "I'm done," I said.
"You better try to shit," Stretch said. "At night, they shut off the water
supply to the toilets. You can shit after lights out, but you can't flush. And I
don't want to wake up at night smelling your crap."

I squatted down on the cold steel rim—there was no "seat" on these toilets--
and as he watched I strained to expel something. I finally got out a few
pebbles of shit.  I reached around to the little round hole into which a roll of
toilet paper fitted . . . just like jail. I wiped my butt and put the toilet paper in
the bowl, like always--but this time I had an audience. For the first time
since I was a child, I had to perform excretion in public and under evaluation
for my performance.

Stretch then got up and sat on the steel rim. He pissed and shat right away. I
turned my head to the wall to give him some privacy, but I couldn't help
inhaling his smell. When you're locked in with it, in a place the size of a
closet, there's no place to hide from that stench.

Stretch took his time getting up. "I guess you didn't know about this.  In
here, even your pissing and shitting are subject to . . . inspection and
observation.  If you think this is bad, wait till the days when they have
female screws walking the tier. The cells next to the stairs try to warn
everybody when a female is coming, but some of these bitches get off on
walking down the line and catching some guy sitting on the can. You learn
to accept it.  You're an offender--no part of you is private.  Guards watch
you piss and shit, and they can even shut down the toilets so you can't flush
your shit out of your house.  Anyhow, like I said, there's a certain whistle,
and when that comes from one or the other end of the tier you'll know that
one of these bitches is on the prowl for an inmate to humiliate.  Unless you
don't think it's humiliating to have to do your toilet functions while some
bitch is watching you want to get done and off the shitter as soon as
possible.  That's why these bitches wanta be guards—they finally got the
power.  They got the ultimate power."

I'll bet my friend Jim used to laugh when he heard some guard telling how
she caught some inmate wiping his ass, and how she came up with some
witticism to show that the inmate had no privacy, now that he was under the
absolute power of the state and its designated officer to watch, control,
humiliate, and degrade--to be certain that the inmate understood that the
state might talk reformation, but it really wanted humiliation and
subjugation. And Jim must have done it himself—laughed while he looked
through the bars at an inmate sitting on that steel rim, straining to shit while
an officer grinned back at him.
Stretch slid into his bunk, and I put my foot back on the toilet rim, to get up
to my own bunk.  I had to be careful as I did not want to literally "step in it."
I know both Stretch and I had flushed, but the thought of having my foot get
a shitter bath was scary to me.  I made it without a slip, and now I was in the
little box that is all a convict gets for his bedroom—bars at his feet, steel by
his side, steel under his ass, and another sheet of steel on top of him like a
coffin lid, right above his nose.

You can't really sit up in the top bunk, but I finally got my legs squirmed in
underneath my blanket. No sheets—just that thick, scratchy horse blanket,
and that little plastic mattress between me and the steel shelf I was supposed
to sleep on.  I leaned my head on my puny plastic pillow and tried to
comprehend just how awful my life was.  "If I hadn't allowed my penis to
do my thinking, I would be at home right now, lying on super silky sheets,
watching late-night comedy, and free to piss and shit any time I wanted to,
in complete privacy."  Then I realized how far I'd gone.  I'd come to the
place where I'd be ecstatic just to piss and shit by myself. "Damn I'm
dumb," I thought. "Damn I'm dumb."

About that time, the loudspeakers woke up again. "TOILETS SHUT OFF IN
ONE MINUTE" it barked.  After what I assumed to be a minute, a bell
started echoing around the walls. Then there was a sort of loud thud, and
immediately almost all the lights went out. I would guess the time was no
later than 10:00 p.m. I was used to staying up until 1:00 a.m. or even 3:00
a.m., reading, writing, watching movies, then catching a comedy show
before I dozed off.  Now I would go to bed, and I would sleep on a schedule
not my own, a schedule that had no relation to my entertainment. But this
day had been so terrible, physically and emotionally, that I went to sleep
almost as soon I got myself wrapped up in my blanket and my head had
found my mini-pillow.   I was asleep.