Life Inside at Attica For a Gay Man
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The following article arrived as an unsolicited manuscript from the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where the author is incarcerated. Because I was unable to interact with him in preparing the piece for publication, I decided to run it almost verbatim, making only a few minor corrections. However, the piece was quite long and included a few digressions that I thought detracted from the narrative, so I have taken the liberty of cutting these passages (totaling some 1200 words). These three cuts are marked by an ellipsis in brackets.
— The Editor
I SAT IN THE BACK of a dingy prison classroom listening to a community college professor conjugate Spanish verbs. My tuition in the pilot college program had been generously paid by Doris Buffet, Warren’s sister. Why she had such compassion for inmates in a prison infamous for violence, I had no idea. Most of society despises us. At times, I’m inclined to agree.
In Spanish, I joked with the guy next to me. A Native American, his Spanish was better than that of most of the guys in the class. “Juan es guapo. Juan es maricĂ³n. Le encata chorizo.” Contrary to Hollywood’s depiction, rabid homophobia reigns in prison. Homosexual behavior is rare. Partly to fit in, and partly out of self-loathing despite being a gay man, I conform.
The two-hour Spanish class usually ended at 8:45 pm. It was 9:15. The officers, most of whom deeply resent inmates getting an education, rarely let a class run late. Even the professor, who had spent six years in a military Special Ops unit stationed in Iraq, was anxious. I was certain a fight had broken out somewhere. Prison security is the only thing that would delay the end of night school.
Finally, at 9:30 pm, a bell whose clang reminded me of high school, sounded. Time for the “go-back.” Three classrooms emptied into the corridor, followed by the Spanish professor who made a beeline for the exit. About forty men began screaming and gesticulating—normal conversation in prison. Most inmates believe the volume of one’s voice is directly proportional to one’s IQ. I find the inverse to be true.
A guy standing next to me held open a jailhouse magazine—a mail order catalogue hawking items only seen in prisons: plastic hotpots, tape players, and typewriters in clear plastic housings, and an abundance of cheap clothing in numerous tacky shades of green. He shouted questions at me while pointing to a photo in the catalogue of a beige polyester blanket that I wouldn’t let my dog sleep on. Voices of bellowing men caromed off the green tile walls and terrazzo floor. He wanted to know if the prison package room would let the blanket in.
I tried to explain to him that it had to have a label with “fire-retardant” printed in big letters. It is typical of prison-mentality rules. All blankets currently manufactured are fire-retardant. But the screaming laughter and shouts around us prevented any effective communication. He kept saying, “So, I can get it, right? I can get it?” Finally, bitter and beaten by the raucous din, I relented. “Yeah, yeah. You can get it. No problem.” Full of resentment toward the throng of shouting inmates that filled the corridor, I headed back to my prison block, leaving behind the man with the catalogue who continued to page through it like it was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
I was disappointed at my lack of empathy, but I was worried and nervous. The previous night a fight had broken out in the recreation yard outside my window. An inmate was stomped and stabbed by gang members. Officers fired tear gas to break it up. I had an uneasy feeling that gang revenge had taken place while the Spanish professor was explaining the use of the vosotros verb form in our college class. ComĂ©is. DormĂ¡is. PeleĂ¡is.
As we walked silently in pairs through the corridors, like Franciscan monks back to our cells, I sensed tension. Sergeants, “white-shirts” as we call them, were shouting into telephone receivers. Normally at that hour of the night, white-shirts are in their offices, leaning back in comfy ergonomic chairs with boots propped up on their desks, watching TV and eating pizza. As we filed past officers in blue uniforms on our way back to the galleries, the officers glared at us without the usual ridicule and taunting.
In the stairway, we joked a little to relieve our anxiety. “Hasta la vista, cabrĂ³n.” “Besa mi culo, puto.” The gallery that houses my cell looks out at a one-acre prison yard that provides recreation for A-block, affectionately known as “Afghanistan.” It is one of the four yards comprising a five-acre quad, divided by raised concrete catwalks, which serve as recreation for the entire prison. Three-story structures, 500 feet long and clad in red brick, form a massive enclosure housing over 2,000 men.
As I neared my cell, through the barred gallery windows that rise from floor to ceiling, I could see the A-block yard: deserted, except for the perimeter where a couple hundred prisoners stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the brick walls. Their hands were raised high over their heads, pressed flat against the walls. Sergeants scurried across the catwalks, intensely focused on the yard below them. Over the loudspeakers, I heard a scratchy voice: “Stop fighting. This is your last warning.” An eerie silence hung in the air, followed by two flat pops of a gun. Canisters of teargas had been fired into the yard. Guys on my gallery, already locked in their cells, shouted at me as I walked by. “Shut the windows, shut the windows!” As I complied, my cell gate finally opened electrically with a grinding whirr. I stepped in and it slammed shut.
I sat at my bench, a narrow metal shelf, clutching my Spanish books to my stomach. I felt sick, scared. Tear gas is rarely used for fights in the yard. When it is, there are repercussions for the whole jail. Normally a loud raucous corridor of men shouting, cooking meals, and slamming dominoes, the gallery waited in silence as events in the yard unfolded. Outside my window, the A-block handball court had been abandoned, a single blue rubber ball its only occupant. Muffled shouts of officers on the catwalks penetrated the wire-glass windows. “Slide down the wall. Get on the ground, face down.”
I thought of Danny, who sits next to me in Spanish class. He has very little command of Spanish grammar. In hushed tones, I often help him as best as I can—translating, correcting his spelling, letting him peek at my notes and exam answers. He has such beautiful hands—large, sinewy, chiseled like Michelangelo’s David. He combs his hair forward, like an ancient Roman. His large, dark-lidded eyes plead for my help when the class conjugates verbs. An aquiline nose and full pouty lips anchor his face. I want to lie in bed with him, just lie there, one arm draped across his bare chest, and drift off to sleep, hypnotized by his rhythmic breathing.
IN THE MORNING, when I woke, the prison seemed normal—the usual sounds and banter of the 7:00 AM shift change. Once the morning count cleared, the gates opened. I grabbed a pint of milk from the fridge on the gallery, plugged in my plastic hot pot, and made a huge mug of instant coffee spiked with cocoa to kill the bitterness. I never went to the mess hall for breakfast. Prison food—mushy, bland, and cold—depressed me. Men braver than I headed to the dayroom and waited for the chow bell.
Waiting for the hot pot to heat up, I looked out at the A-block yard, strewn with detritus from the previous night’s melee. Lifeless sweatshirts littered the grass. Balled-up latex gloves, used to strip-search inmates, dotted the pavement. A clear plastic garbage bag, propelled by the wind, danced in circles around the blue handball on the empty court.
An unintelligible message blared on the squawk box near the dayroom. The company officer shouted down the gallery. “Lock in. Everybody. Lock in now.” Guys who had been waiting for chow quickly abandoned the dayroom. “Ah, shit. Here we go. They musta killed that nigga last night, ya heard.”
I dread the lockdowns. The uncertainty, the helplessness, are torture. One has no idea when they will end, when the somewhat normal routine will return, freeing us from purgatory. However, lockdowns are also sometimes a calming respite from the shouting and chaos that swirl outside my cell. Every night, as it approaches 10:00 PM, the cacophonous din builds to a crescendo until the slamming gates resound like the clash of cymbals. The hollering slowly abates, transformed to a mindless chatter, until ultimately forming a melodic Chopin nocturne as men become entranced by ancient black and white TV’s, drifting off into fitful sleep.
“Hey yo, check out TMZ. That bitch is thick, son, ya heard.”
“Put on ‘Breaking Bad.’ They’s killin’ that nigga. Word is my motha, son.”
“Hey yo, this shit is crazy, son. Na mean?”
Donning headphones, I sometimes watch CNN to keep abreast of the news. The Arab Spring, a momentous turn in history, transfixed me. I was riveted by Anderson Cooper’s reporting, mesmerized by his handsome features. I tacitly cheered the Libyan rebels as Cooper fielded their poignant reports, transmitted by cell phones. Anderson had an aura enhanced by the charmed life he has led—whisked into Studio 54 at eleven years old with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, dancing with Michael Jackson as Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger looked on, insouciant, yet covertly amused.
Many nights, as an escape from the prison rancor and hostility that fester like an infection, I choose a good read—20th-century literature, anthologies of powerful essays, collections of creative nonfiction. I aspire to some day see one of my essays in print. Nurturing a prison dream takes stamina, but I thrive on the challenge. It gives me focus in a feckless environment.
To take my mind off the lockdown and forget the ugly drama of the previous night’s fight, I picked up Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel GarcĂa MĂ¡rquez’s masterful, career-defining novel. Reading in Spanish helps me to block out the banal babble that intensifies whenever bored men are locked in their cells.
“Hey yo, you think these niggas gonna burn us for commissary? I ain’t got nothin’ but crackhead soups in ma house, na mean?”
“Hey yo, young god, send me a rolly, son. This shit is stressin’ me out. Ya heard?”
“Nigga, fall back and smack ya head. You done smoke up all my shit.”
“Hey yo, kiss ma black ass, nigga.”
Visually, I find that phrase so erotic. Black men have beautiful asses. Their muscular butt cheeks sit high on long, powerful legs. At times, walking in formation through the prison’s brick corridors, I can’t help but lustfully stare at the undulating butt in front of me. Do black prisoners have any idea how they arouse gay men by strutting with their pants pulled halfway down their asses like rappers, their shirts draped in the deep cracks of their butts? How can men be so homophobic, yet walk around like butt billboards?
I returned to MĂ¡rquez’s village of Macondo. Its sassy matriarchs, sage and potent, animate the pages. I love Pilar’s irreverent humor. “Santa madre de Dios. Estoy ocupada destripando conejos para tu guiso. Por el amor de Dios, suĂ©lteme.” I skipped to the scene detailing JosĂ© Arcadio’s huge cock. I debated what MĂ¡rquez, a Nobel laureate, was thinking when he conjured that passage. Was it autobiographical, or wishful fancy? Do straight men, just like most gays, have a big dick fantasy—a barely subconscious desire for a powerful weapon of sexual dominance? I admire MĂ¡rquez’s courage in broaching a subject considered taboo by most heterosexual men.
In prison, an inane code governs all references to a man’s body parts. Innocuous statements such as “Take it out” or “Stick it in,” when talking about the microwave, for example, have to be immediately followed by the requisite statement, “No homo.” Even common mess hall words like “meat,” “sausage,” or “buns” require an emphatic “no homo.” I refuse to participate in the insanity. Instead, I retort with statements such as, “You’re not seriously afraid of homosexuals, are you? Come on, they can’t hurt you.” I noticed most white guys are more comfortable joking about their sexuality. Black men never cross that line. Their culture precludes any inference of homosexuality, in jest or otherwise. An extreme machismo, most likely instilled growing up in the ’hood, forbids any gay reference. Black men wear their manhood like breastplates.
Yet, I have no right to criticize another man’s armor. I get nervous simply awaiting a call-out to the prison library. I’m apprehensive of having to negotiate my way past the four different officers that sit between my cell and the library. When I used to “lock” in another block and tried to go to the library, the officers who ran the call-outs would tell me, “Library? You ain’t got no call-out for the library.” Then they would slam the metal lobby door. As I stood there, defeated, I could hear them snickering as their bootsteps faded. “Library, what’s he a fuckin’ queer?” [...]
I rarely get involved in physical confrontations because I’m afraid to fight. I don’t know how. I nearly always get my ass kicked. My prison fight record is 0 for 3. But the issue is deeper than simply the fear of losing. The problem is an innate terror.
The ineffaceable memory of being beaten as a child by my father causes flashbacks whenever I see violence, or sense it. The recollection of helplessness, the complete inability to defend myself from a parental ogre three times my size, causes me terrifying flashbacks. The mere sight of men going at it leaves me shaking, overwhelmed by a deafening white noise.
At the risk of promulgating a stereotype, I must admit that most gay men aren’t exactly known for being pugilists. Yet we are tough in our own way. Emotionally steeled, we’ve cultivated a flinty skin to protect us from ridicule, harassment, and scorn. We rarely go mano a mano. Snatching a wig off a drag queen is about as confrontational as we get. Yet when it comes to a battle of sarcasm and wit, we are fearless warriors.
“Oh really, honey? Tell me, did your mother have any normal kids, or were they all just as retarded and ugly as you?”
“You nelly handbag, you make Richard Simmons look butch.”
Gay men hone their humor to hide their pain. But in prison, there is none of that witty repartee. Incarcerated men are reluctant to expose themselves, to let the façade peel away. Many are scared little boys still looking for acceptance. Fitting in is a survival mechanism. Prison gangs are an extension of that cowardice. They provide protection to those too afraid to stand out from the crowd—to fend for themselves and defend their beliefs.
Any deviance from prison norms is suspect. A man who doesn’t walk with a swagger, his pants loosely hanging, exposing his ass to the world in a defiant “fuck you,” is considered soft. A prisoner with a good vocabulary who doesn’t refer to everyone as “that nigga,” who doesn’t punctuate every spoken thought with “ya heard” or “na mean,” is perceived as a homo. Prisoners who read literature, not ’hood novels, are queer. Most prisoners are afraid to listen to their inner voice, to be unique.
Yet I too am guilty of failure to sustain my beliefs, to tackle introspection. For years, I suppressed my honest feelings in prison. I feigned; I prevaricated; I denied to others, and to myself, that I was gay. To disguise my true identity, I espoused the anti-gay hostility and embraced the ignorance. Like a gang member, I feared to be distinctive, to stand up for what I believed in. As a result, my sexual orientation began to shift. My sexual fantasies started to include women. Late at night, on a rickety black and white TV, I watched straight porn—antediluvian movies with laughable dialogue, provided by the Department of Corrections (DOC) to appease and quiet the masses. Some of the male “actors” turned me on (some were fat hirsute beasts), but I was also turned on by the women. In much better physical shape than the men, they were often resplendent Sirens.
Like stodgy parents, DOC only broadcasts the risqué movies on weekends, never on school nights. When the TV porn is unavailable, in an effort to induce sleep, I masturbate in the darkness of my cell. I envision big-breasted women getting fucked by muscular men. During orgasm, I shoot my load into a woman, fantasizing I am a straight man. [...] After seven years of incarceration, I see my sexuality transforming from exclusively gay to bisexual. I have become a victim of my fellow prisoners. I have convinced myself I need to think, and be, straight.
Prison is so full of animosity and bile that all men are subconsciously affected by it. We attack each other in the yard—punching and stomping—without recognizing the source of pent-up anger. Revenge takes the form of cuttings and stabbings. I see countless men with heinous scars stretching from their ears to the corners of their mouths, some horribly disfigured. Genetically prone to hypertrophic scarring, black skin often produces ugly welts when injured or cut. Guys on their way to the prison showers proudly display knife scars that wrap around their rib cages like vestiges of great white shark attacks. [...]
BEFORE GETTING LOCKED UP, I was a proud gay man. I never hid my sexuality. I reveled in it, vitalized by the aura of the forbidden. At times, entering the chic gay club of the moment, passing the masses waiting to get in, I flaunted my elite status, my membership in the haut monde of New York’s nightlife. But once cloistered behind Attica’s concrete walls, cut off from the world of shirtless, sweaty men on the dance floor and pavonine drag queens decorating overstuffed furniture like throw pillows, I retreated into my shell like a scared turtle. I shut the door so tightly, not a ray of light passed the threshold. Slowly, insipidly, like a metastasizing tumor, fear and self-loathing overtook me, corroding my self-esteem.
Only a small number of prisoners are openly gay, even flamboyantly so. I admire their courage, yet I treat them with disdain, avoiding the nelly ones like a contagious skin disease. I’m afraid that if I even speak with them I will be labeled gay, a “fuckin’ faggot.” Before being incarcerated, when I encountered an effeminate man in a nightclub or at a cabaret show, I was amused, freely laughing at their self-deprecating humor. In prison, that open acceptance came to a screeching halt. Weakened and emasculated by prison attitudes, I failed to stand on my beliefs. Incarceration changed me, and I didn’t like what I saw in the warped, scratched prison mirror.
Surreptitiously, shame transformed my values. Prison morality overtook me. The poison and hostility spewed by inmates toward sex offenders, the government, the police and just about anyone who was different from us invaded my mind, my cells, my DNA. Animosity toward the outside world altered my personality, the very neurons and axons that comprised my gray matter. Bitter and venomous, I fantasized about revenge. At night, with my prison blanket pulled over my head, I looked forward to getting out of this Kafkaesque shithole so I could tell the entire world to just leave me the fuck alone.
As I sat in my cell, penning this essay, trying to turn the prison lockdown into something productive, my concentration was interrupted by the jangling of keys and clomping of boots on the gallery—the ominous sound of an officer approaching. I looked up as he passed my cell wearing purple latex gloves. Panic set in. Purple gloves were used for cell searches and strip-frisks. I heard the sound of more boots approaching, along with snickering and laughter.
“The assholes in honor block think they’re special, don’t they?”
“Yeah. Well, we got somethin’ special for ’em.”
About thirty officers assembled on the gallery, one or two in front of each cell. A white-shirt walking down the gallery shouted, “Take all the sheets off ya mattress. Strip down to ya boxer shorts. Step outta ya cell holdin’ ya mattress.”
The whirr and grinding of electric motors began as cell gates opened. I yanked the sheets off my bunk, folded the mattress, and got undressed. Making a mental inventory of my cell, I tried to recall if I had any contraband—extra sheets, pillows, a TV with no permit—fuck it, they can have it. My books: I knew I had over the limit of 25. Between the writing class, college classes, favorite authors, Spanish and English dictionaries, and a world almanac, it was easy to far exceed the maximum. They can have anything, just don’t take my books. There was no way I could replace them on a prison salary of seven bucks a week.
Two officers came to my gate. I immediately sized them up. One was older, looked pretty laid back. The other, a young kid, I knew was a straight-up asshole. He always had some smart-ass comment. If you asked him a question, his standard response was, “What are you, a fuckin’ retard?”
My gate opened. The young kid said to me, “Step out, stupid, with your mattress.” I picked up my stained, decrepit mattress, folded it in half, and carried it out onto the gallery. Standing there, facing my cell, wearing just boxer shorts and shower scuffs, I felt embarrassed and vulnerable. The older officer started looking through items in my desk area—papers, books, typewriter. He checked to see that my ID number, etched into the clear plastic case of the typewriter, matched the faded yellow permit taped to the wall above my desk.
The younger officer started taking stuff out from under my bunk: storage bins, two bags of books, and folders with college notes and essays. Riffling through the folders, he threw paper onto the barren steel bunk, forming a pile. He opened my storage bins and took the neatly folded clothes and threw them onto the bunk also. When he came to the bags of books, he looked at me through the bars of my cell. “What the fuck is this? How many books you got?”
I wasn’t sure, but I knew there were more than 25. “I’m not sure, sir. I think about thirty or so.”
“Thirty! What the fuck. You know you’re only allowed 25, don’t cha?”
“Well, I’m in the college program, so some of the books aren’t mine. I have to turn them in at the end of the semester.”
“College. That’s a fuckin’ waste of taxpayer money.” He threw the books onto the bunk, still in their bags, without even looking at them. Opening my metal storage locker, he looked inside, then picked the locker up and threw it onto the bunk. The steel door banged open. He started removing the contents—batteries, typing ribbons, pens, deodorant—suspicious of each item. Opening my jar of instant coffee, he stuck his index finger into it, swirled the contents, then closed the jar and tossed it onto the bunk. He came across my Braun electric razor—a gift from a good friend. Inspecting it carefully, he asked me, “You got a permit for this?”
“No, sir. The package room didn’t give me one. But they engraved my ID number on the case.” He flung the razor out of my cell. Striking the brick wall just to the left of my head, it shattered, and lay at my feet in three pieces. I was so stunned, I said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only fifteen minutes, the two officers exited my cell. The one who had busied himself examining the items on my desk left everything exactly as he had found it. The other officer, with a baseball cap turned backwards and a snotty attitude, left a mountain of debris.
As the officers walked away, the younger one said with a smirk, “Take it in.” I wanted to tell him, “Why don’t you take it in? Take it in your ass.” Instead, meekly, I entered my cell, propped my ancient horsehair mattress against the wall, and started to reassemble my cell, slowly picking away at the mess on my bunk, while still in my boxer shorts. An hour and a half later, with everything put back in place, I tossed the mattress onto the bunk, threw my sheets and blanket over the mattress, and lay down, exhausted, my back screaming with pain. Frustrated with the humiliation and abuse freely served up by prison administration, I fantasized about revenge.
I had once naĂ¯vely espoused the importance of change in prison. In classrooms, as a facilitator, I lectured about the opportunities for education and the value of volunteer programs like AA and Alternatives to Violence. In my personal essays I wrote about my transformation as another step on my path to enlightenment. I embraced prison as an opportunity for personal growth. But I didn’t foresee that I would fall victim to the acrid, hateful culture that pervades the institution. Not only the inmates, but the correction officers and even the counselors that run the supposedly rehabilitative programs toss dead branches and logs on the funeral pyre that heats the prison with contempt and scorn. The institutional mantra is “Fuck it, why bother?” I try to be vigilant against such negativity, but it’s so easy to kick back, to exude hatred and prey on the weak. [...]
As the potent summer sun heated up A-block yard, beefy men on the weight pile stripped off their shirts. Sinewy muscle glistened under the unctuous coat of sweat. In my cell, hidden from their view, I admired the chiseled chests and lean stomachs. I lusted, tussling with guilt. The lustrous black skin radiated strength. The olive complexion of Hispanics enhanced their meaty pecs and stood in contrast to nipples the size of quarters.
Yet like a frightened child guilty of venal sin, I hid in the shadows. I couldn’t share my feelings with anyone. Drawing inward, afraid of prison prejudice, I built a façade with bricks and mortar. The guilt festered like a boil that needed to be lanced. But as the infection went untreated, the pain intensified, until the pus had nowhere to go except outward. As I stared out at the A-block weight pile, the handsome shirtless men dissolved. The sun retreated behind the clouds of a steel-gray sky. Verdant grass withered, leaving a yard empty of life. Latex gloves dotted the muddy terrain like used condoms under a shadowy concrete bridge. A ripped pulp fiction novel littered the barren yard. Its pages held the story of a mensch, a Gregor Samsa character, whose transformation left him trapped. Bitter and helpless, he could not escape the confines of his prison.
As a cold, steady rain fell, a gusty wind picked up and scattered the sodden pages—pages that told a story with no resolution, a plot that failed to unfold.
— The Editor
I SAT IN THE BACK of a dingy prison classroom listening to a community college professor conjugate Spanish verbs. My tuition in the pilot college program had been generously paid by Doris Buffet, Warren’s sister. Why she had such compassion for inmates in a prison infamous for violence, I had no idea. Most of society despises us. At times, I’m inclined to agree.
In Spanish, I joked with the guy next to me. A Native American, his Spanish was better than that of most of the guys in the class. “Juan es guapo. Juan es maricĂ³n. Le encata chorizo.” Contrary to Hollywood’s depiction, rabid homophobia reigns in prison. Homosexual behavior is rare. Partly to fit in, and partly out of self-loathing despite being a gay man, I conform.
The two-hour Spanish class usually ended at 8:45 pm. It was 9:15. The officers, most of whom deeply resent inmates getting an education, rarely let a class run late. Even the professor, who had spent six years in a military Special Ops unit stationed in Iraq, was anxious. I was certain a fight had broken out somewhere. Prison security is the only thing that would delay the end of night school.
Finally, at 9:30 pm, a bell whose clang reminded me of high school, sounded. Time for the “go-back.” Three classrooms emptied into the corridor, followed by the Spanish professor who made a beeline for the exit. About forty men began screaming and gesticulating—normal conversation in prison. Most inmates believe the volume of one’s voice is directly proportional to one’s IQ. I find the inverse to be true.
A guy standing next to me held open a jailhouse magazine—a mail order catalogue hawking items only seen in prisons: plastic hotpots, tape players, and typewriters in clear plastic housings, and an abundance of cheap clothing in numerous tacky shades of green. He shouted questions at me while pointing to a photo in the catalogue of a beige polyester blanket that I wouldn’t let my dog sleep on. Voices of bellowing men caromed off the green tile walls and terrazzo floor. He wanted to know if the prison package room would let the blanket in.
I tried to explain to him that it had to have a label with “fire-retardant” printed in big letters. It is typical of prison-mentality rules. All blankets currently manufactured are fire-retardant. But the screaming laughter and shouts around us prevented any effective communication. He kept saying, “So, I can get it, right? I can get it?” Finally, bitter and beaten by the raucous din, I relented. “Yeah, yeah. You can get it. No problem.” Full of resentment toward the throng of shouting inmates that filled the corridor, I headed back to my prison block, leaving behind the man with the catalogue who continued to page through it like it was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
I was disappointed at my lack of empathy, but I was worried and nervous. The previous night a fight had broken out in the recreation yard outside my window. An inmate was stomped and stabbed by gang members. Officers fired tear gas to break it up. I had an uneasy feeling that gang revenge had taken place while the Spanish professor was explaining the use of the vosotros verb form in our college class. ComĂ©is. DormĂ¡is. PeleĂ¡is.
As we walked silently in pairs through the corridors, like Franciscan monks back to our cells, I sensed tension. Sergeants, “white-shirts” as we call them, were shouting into telephone receivers. Normally at that hour of the night, white-shirts are in their offices, leaning back in comfy ergonomic chairs with boots propped up on their desks, watching TV and eating pizza. As we filed past officers in blue uniforms on our way back to the galleries, the officers glared at us without the usual ridicule and taunting.
In the stairway, we joked a little to relieve our anxiety. “Hasta la vista, cabrĂ³n.” “Besa mi culo, puto.” The gallery that houses my cell looks out at a one-acre prison yard that provides recreation for A-block, affectionately known as “Afghanistan.” It is one of the four yards comprising a five-acre quad, divided by raised concrete catwalks, which serve as recreation for the entire prison. Three-story structures, 500 feet long and clad in red brick, form a massive enclosure housing over 2,000 men.
As I neared my cell, through the barred gallery windows that rise from floor to ceiling, I could see the A-block yard: deserted, except for the perimeter where a couple hundred prisoners stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the brick walls. Their hands were raised high over their heads, pressed flat against the walls. Sergeants scurried across the catwalks, intensely focused on the yard below them. Over the loudspeakers, I heard a scratchy voice: “Stop fighting. This is your last warning.” An eerie silence hung in the air, followed by two flat pops of a gun. Canisters of teargas had been fired into the yard. Guys on my gallery, already locked in their cells, shouted at me as I walked by. “Shut the windows, shut the windows!” As I complied, my cell gate finally opened electrically with a grinding whirr. I stepped in and it slammed shut.
I sat at my bench, a narrow metal shelf, clutching my Spanish books to my stomach. I felt sick, scared. Tear gas is rarely used for fights in the yard. When it is, there are repercussions for the whole jail. Normally a loud raucous corridor of men shouting, cooking meals, and slamming dominoes, the gallery waited in silence as events in the yard unfolded. Outside my window, the A-block handball court had been abandoned, a single blue rubber ball its only occupant. Muffled shouts of officers on the catwalks penetrated the wire-glass windows. “Slide down the wall. Get on the ground, face down.”
I thought of Danny, who sits next to me in Spanish class. He has very little command of Spanish grammar. In hushed tones, I often help him as best as I can—translating, correcting his spelling, letting him peek at my notes and exam answers. He has such beautiful hands—large, sinewy, chiseled like Michelangelo’s David. He combs his hair forward, like an ancient Roman. His large, dark-lidded eyes plead for my help when the class conjugates verbs. An aquiline nose and full pouty lips anchor his face. I want to lie in bed with him, just lie there, one arm draped across his bare chest, and drift off to sleep, hypnotized by his rhythmic breathing.
IN THE MORNING, when I woke, the prison seemed normal—the usual sounds and banter of the 7:00 AM shift change. Once the morning count cleared, the gates opened. I grabbed a pint of milk from the fridge on the gallery, plugged in my plastic hot pot, and made a huge mug of instant coffee spiked with cocoa to kill the bitterness. I never went to the mess hall for breakfast. Prison food—mushy, bland, and cold—depressed me. Men braver than I headed to the dayroom and waited for the chow bell.
Waiting for the hot pot to heat up, I looked out at the A-block yard, strewn with detritus from the previous night’s melee. Lifeless sweatshirts littered the grass. Balled-up latex gloves, used to strip-search inmates, dotted the pavement. A clear plastic garbage bag, propelled by the wind, danced in circles around the blue handball on the empty court.
An unintelligible message blared on the squawk box near the dayroom. The company officer shouted down the gallery. “Lock in. Everybody. Lock in now.” Guys who had been waiting for chow quickly abandoned the dayroom. “Ah, shit. Here we go. They musta killed that nigga last night, ya heard.”
I dread the lockdowns. The uncertainty, the helplessness, are torture. One has no idea when they will end, when the somewhat normal routine will return, freeing us from purgatory. However, lockdowns are also sometimes a calming respite from the shouting and chaos that swirl outside my cell. Every night, as it approaches 10:00 PM, the cacophonous din builds to a crescendo until the slamming gates resound like the clash of cymbals. The hollering slowly abates, transformed to a mindless chatter, until ultimately forming a melodic Chopin nocturne as men become entranced by ancient black and white TV’s, drifting off into fitful sleep.
“Hey yo, check out TMZ. That bitch is thick, son, ya heard.”
“Put on ‘Breaking Bad.’ They’s killin’ that nigga. Word is my motha, son.”
“Hey yo, this shit is crazy, son. Na mean?”
Donning headphones, I sometimes watch CNN to keep abreast of the news. The Arab Spring, a momentous turn in history, transfixed me. I was riveted by Anderson Cooper’s reporting, mesmerized by his handsome features. I tacitly cheered the Libyan rebels as Cooper fielded their poignant reports, transmitted by cell phones. Anderson had an aura enhanced by the charmed life he has led—whisked into Studio 54 at eleven years old with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, dancing with Michael Jackson as Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger looked on, insouciant, yet covertly amused.
Many nights, as an escape from the prison rancor and hostility that fester like an infection, I choose a good read—20th-century literature, anthologies of powerful essays, collections of creative nonfiction. I aspire to some day see one of my essays in print. Nurturing a prison dream takes stamina, but I thrive on the challenge. It gives me focus in a feckless environment.
To take my mind off the lockdown and forget the ugly drama of the previous night’s fight, I picked up Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel GarcĂa MĂ¡rquez’s masterful, career-defining novel. Reading in Spanish helps me to block out the banal babble that intensifies whenever bored men are locked in their cells.
“Hey yo, you think these niggas gonna burn us for commissary? I ain’t got nothin’ but crackhead soups in ma house, na mean?”
“Hey yo, young god, send me a rolly, son. This shit is stressin’ me out. Ya heard?”
“Nigga, fall back and smack ya head. You done smoke up all my shit.”
“Hey yo, kiss ma black ass, nigga.”
Visually, I find that phrase so erotic. Black men have beautiful asses. Their muscular butt cheeks sit high on long, powerful legs. At times, walking in formation through the prison’s brick corridors, I can’t help but lustfully stare at the undulating butt in front of me. Do black prisoners have any idea how they arouse gay men by strutting with their pants pulled halfway down their asses like rappers, their shirts draped in the deep cracks of their butts? How can men be so homophobic, yet walk around like butt billboards?
I returned to MĂ¡rquez’s village of Macondo. Its sassy matriarchs, sage and potent, animate the pages. I love Pilar’s irreverent humor. “Santa madre de Dios. Estoy ocupada destripando conejos para tu guiso. Por el amor de Dios, suĂ©lteme.” I skipped to the scene detailing JosĂ© Arcadio’s huge cock. I debated what MĂ¡rquez, a Nobel laureate, was thinking when he conjured that passage. Was it autobiographical, or wishful fancy? Do straight men, just like most gays, have a big dick fantasy—a barely subconscious desire for a powerful weapon of sexual dominance? I admire MĂ¡rquez’s courage in broaching a subject considered taboo by most heterosexual men.
In prison, an inane code governs all references to a man’s body parts. Innocuous statements such as “Take it out” or “Stick it in,” when talking about the microwave, for example, have to be immediately followed by the requisite statement, “No homo.” Even common mess hall words like “meat,” “sausage,” or “buns” require an emphatic “no homo.” I refuse to participate in the insanity. Instead, I retort with statements such as, “You’re not seriously afraid of homosexuals, are you? Come on, they can’t hurt you.” I noticed most white guys are more comfortable joking about their sexuality. Black men never cross that line. Their culture precludes any inference of homosexuality, in jest or otherwise. An extreme machismo, most likely instilled growing up in the ’hood, forbids any gay reference. Black men wear their manhood like breastplates.
Yet, I have no right to criticize another man’s armor. I get nervous simply awaiting a call-out to the prison library. I’m apprehensive of having to negotiate my way past the four different officers that sit between my cell and the library. When I used to “lock” in another block and tried to go to the library, the officers who ran the call-outs would tell me, “Library? You ain’t got no call-out for the library.” Then they would slam the metal lobby door. As I stood there, defeated, I could hear them snickering as their bootsteps faded. “Library, what’s he a fuckin’ queer?” [...]
I rarely get involved in physical confrontations because I’m afraid to fight. I don’t know how. I nearly always get my ass kicked. My prison fight record is 0 for 3. But the issue is deeper than simply the fear of losing. The problem is an innate terror.
The ineffaceable memory of being beaten as a child by my father causes flashbacks whenever I see violence, or sense it. The recollection of helplessness, the complete inability to defend myself from a parental ogre three times my size, causes me terrifying flashbacks. The mere sight of men going at it leaves me shaking, overwhelmed by a deafening white noise.
At the risk of promulgating a stereotype, I must admit that most gay men aren’t exactly known for being pugilists. Yet we are tough in our own way. Emotionally steeled, we’ve cultivated a flinty skin to protect us from ridicule, harassment, and scorn. We rarely go mano a mano. Snatching a wig off a drag queen is about as confrontational as we get. Yet when it comes to a battle of sarcasm and wit, we are fearless warriors.
“Oh really, honey? Tell me, did your mother have any normal kids, or were they all just as retarded and ugly as you?”
“You nelly handbag, you make Richard Simmons look butch.”
Gay men hone their humor to hide their pain. But in prison, there is none of that witty repartee. Incarcerated men are reluctant to expose themselves, to let the façade peel away. Many are scared little boys still looking for acceptance. Fitting in is a survival mechanism. Prison gangs are an extension of that cowardice. They provide protection to those too afraid to stand out from the crowd—to fend for themselves and defend their beliefs.
Any deviance from prison norms is suspect. A man who doesn’t walk with a swagger, his pants loosely hanging, exposing his ass to the world in a defiant “fuck you,” is considered soft. A prisoner with a good vocabulary who doesn’t refer to everyone as “that nigga,” who doesn’t punctuate every spoken thought with “ya heard” or “na mean,” is perceived as a homo. Prisoners who read literature, not ’hood novels, are queer. Most prisoners are afraid to listen to their inner voice, to be unique.
Yet I too am guilty of failure to sustain my beliefs, to tackle introspection. For years, I suppressed my honest feelings in prison. I feigned; I prevaricated; I denied to others, and to myself, that I was gay. To disguise my true identity, I espoused the anti-gay hostility and embraced the ignorance. Like a gang member, I feared to be distinctive, to stand up for what I believed in. As a result, my sexual orientation began to shift. My sexual fantasies started to include women. Late at night, on a rickety black and white TV, I watched straight porn—antediluvian movies with laughable dialogue, provided by the Department of Corrections (DOC) to appease and quiet the masses. Some of the male “actors” turned me on (some were fat hirsute beasts), but I was also turned on by the women. In much better physical shape than the men, they were often resplendent Sirens.
Like stodgy parents, DOC only broadcasts the risqué movies on weekends, never on school nights. When the TV porn is unavailable, in an effort to induce sleep, I masturbate in the darkness of my cell. I envision big-breasted women getting fucked by muscular men. During orgasm, I shoot my load into a woman, fantasizing I am a straight man. [...] After seven years of incarceration, I see my sexuality transforming from exclusively gay to bisexual. I have become a victim of my fellow prisoners. I have convinced myself I need to think, and be, straight.
Prison is so full of animosity and bile that all men are subconsciously affected by it. We attack each other in the yard—punching and stomping—without recognizing the source of pent-up anger. Revenge takes the form of cuttings and stabbings. I see countless men with heinous scars stretching from their ears to the corners of their mouths, some horribly disfigured. Genetically prone to hypertrophic scarring, black skin often produces ugly welts when injured or cut. Guys on their way to the prison showers proudly display knife scars that wrap around their rib cages like vestiges of great white shark attacks. [...]
BEFORE GETTING LOCKED UP, I was a proud gay man. I never hid my sexuality. I reveled in it, vitalized by the aura of the forbidden. At times, entering the chic gay club of the moment, passing the masses waiting to get in, I flaunted my elite status, my membership in the haut monde of New York’s nightlife. But once cloistered behind Attica’s concrete walls, cut off from the world of shirtless, sweaty men on the dance floor and pavonine drag queens decorating overstuffed furniture like throw pillows, I retreated into my shell like a scared turtle. I shut the door so tightly, not a ray of light passed the threshold. Slowly, insipidly, like a metastasizing tumor, fear and self-loathing overtook me, corroding my self-esteem.
Only a small number of prisoners are openly gay, even flamboyantly so. I admire their courage, yet I treat them with disdain, avoiding the nelly ones like a contagious skin disease. I’m afraid that if I even speak with them I will be labeled gay, a “fuckin’ faggot.” Before being incarcerated, when I encountered an effeminate man in a nightclub or at a cabaret show, I was amused, freely laughing at their self-deprecating humor. In prison, that open acceptance came to a screeching halt. Weakened and emasculated by prison attitudes, I failed to stand on my beliefs. Incarceration changed me, and I didn’t like what I saw in the warped, scratched prison mirror.
Surreptitiously, shame transformed my values. Prison morality overtook me. The poison and hostility spewed by inmates toward sex offenders, the government, the police and just about anyone who was different from us invaded my mind, my cells, my DNA. Animosity toward the outside world altered my personality, the very neurons and axons that comprised my gray matter. Bitter and venomous, I fantasized about revenge. At night, with my prison blanket pulled over my head, I looked forward to getting out of this Kafkaesque shithole so I could tell the entire world to just leave me the fuck alone.
As I sat in my cell, penning this essay, trying to turn the prison lockdown into something productive, my concentration was interrupted by the jangling of keys and clomping of boots on the gallery—the ominous sound of an officer approaching. I looked up as he passed my cell wearing purple latex gloves. Panic set in. Purple gloves were used for cell searches and strip-frisks. I heard the sound of more boots approaching, along with snickering and laughter.
“The assholes in honor block think they’re special, don’t they?”
“Yeah. Well, we got somethin’ special for ’em.”
About thirty officers assembled on the gallery, one or two in front of each cell. A white-shirt walking down the gallery shouted, “Take all the sheets off ya mattress. Strip down to ya boxer shorts. Step outta ya cell holdin’ ya mattress.”
The whirr and grinding of electric motors began as cell gates opened. I yanked the sheets off my bunk, folded the mattress, and got undressed. Making a mental inventory of my cell, I tried to recall if I had any contraband—extra sheets, pillows, a TV with no permit—fuck it, they can have it. My books: I knew I had over the limit of 25. Between the writing class, college classes, favorite authors, Spanish and English dictionaries, and a world almanac, it was easy to far exceed the maximum. They can have anything, just don’t take my books. There was no way I could replace them on a prison salary of seven bucks a week.
Two officers came to my gate. I immediately sized them up. One was older, looked pretty laid back. The other, a young kid, I knew was a straight-up asshole. He always had some smart-ass comment. If you asked him a question, his standard response was, “What are you, a fuckin’ retard?”
My gate opened. The young kid said to me, “Step out, stupid, with your mattress.” I picked up my stained, decrepit mattress, folded it in half, and carried it out onto the gallery. Standing there, facing my cell, wearing just boxer shorts and shower scuffs, I felt embarrassed and vulnerable. The older officer started looking through items in my desk area—papers, books, typewriter. He checked to see that my ID number, etched into the clear plastic case of the typewriter, matched the faded yellow permit taped to the wall above my desk.
The younger officer started taking stuff out from under my bunk: storage bins, two bags of books, and folders with college notes and essays. Riffling through the folders, he threw paper onto the barren steel bunk, forming a pile. He opened my storage bins and took the neatly folded clothes and threw them onto the bunk also. When he came to the bags of books, he looked at me through the bars of my cell. “What the fuck is this? How many books you got?”
I wasn’t sure, but I knew there were more than 25. “I’m not sure, sir. I think about thirty or so.”
“Thirty! What the fuck. You know you’re only allowed 25, don’t cha?”
“Well, I’m in the college program, so some of the books aren’t mine. I have to turn them in at the end of the semester.”
“College. That’s a fuckin’ waste of taxpayer money.” He threw the books onto the bunk, still in their bags, without even looking at them. Opening my metal storage locker, he looked inside, then picked the locker up and threw it onto the bunk. The steel door banged open. He started removing the contents—batteries, typing ribbons, pens, deodorant—suspicious of each item. Opening my jar of instant coffee, he stuck his index finger into it, swirled the contents, then closed the jar and tossed it onto the bunk. He came across my Braun electric razor—a gift from a good friend. Inspecting it carefully, he asked me, “You got a permit for this?”
“No, sir. The package room didn’t give me one. But they engraved my ID number on the case.” He flung the razor out of my cell. Striking the brick wall just to the left of my head, it shattered, and lay at my feet in three pieces. I was so stunned, I said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only fifteen minutes, the two officers exited my cell. The one who had busied himself examining the items on my desk left everything exactly as he had found it. The other officer, with a baseball cap turned backwards and a snotty attitude, left a mountain of debris.
As the officers walked away, the younger one said with a smirk, “Take it in.” I wanted to tell him, “Why don’t you take it in? Take it in your ass.” Instead, meekly, I entered my cell, propped my ancient horsehair mattress against the wall, and started to reassemble my cell, slowly picking away at the mess on my bunk, while still in my boxer shorts. An hour and a half later, with everything put back in place, I tossed the mattress onto the bunk, threw my sheets and blanket over the mattress, and lay down, exhausted, my back screaming with pain. Frustrated with the humiliation and abuse freely served up by prison administration, I fantasized about revenge.
I had once naĂ¯vely espoused the importance of change in prison. In classrooms, as a facilitator, I lectured about the opportunities for education and the value of volunteer programs like AA and Alternatives to Violence. In my personal essays I wrote about my transformation as another step on my path to enlightenment. I embraced prison as an opportunity for personal growth. But I didn’t foresee that I would fall victim to the acrid, hateful culture that pervades the institution. Not only the inmates, but the correction officers and even the counselors that run the supposedly rehabilitative programs toss dead branches and logs on the funeral pyre that heats the prison with contempt and scorn. The institutional mantra is “Fuck it, why bother?” I try to be vigilant against such negativity, but it’s so easy to kick back, to exude hatred and prey on the weak. [...]
As the potent summer sun heated up A-block yard, beefy men on the weight pile stripped off their shirts. Sinewy muscle glistened under the unctuous coat of sweat. In my cell, hidden from their view, I admired the chiseled chests and lean stomachs. I lusted, tussling with guilt. The lustrous black skin radiated strength. The olive complexion of Hispanics enhanced their meaty pecs and stood in contrast to nipples the size of quarters.
Yet like a frightened child guilty of venal sin, I hid in the shadows. I couldn’t share my feelings with anyone. Drawing inward, afraid of prison prejudice, I built a façade with bricks and mortar. The guilt festered like a boil that needed to be lanced. But as the infection went untreated, the pain intensified, until the pus had nowhere to go except outward. As I stared out at the A-block weight pile, the handsome shirtless men dissolved. The sun retreated behind the clouds of a steel-gray sky. Verdant grass withered, leaving a yard empty of life. Latex gloves dotted the muddy terrain like used condoms under a shadowy concrete bridge. A ripped pulp fiction novel littered the barren yard. Its pages held the story of a mensch, a Gregor Samsa character, whose transformation left him trapped. Bitter and helpless, he could not escape the confines of his prison.
As a cold, steady rain fell, a gusty wind picked up and scattered the sodden pages—pages that told a story with no resolution, a plot that failed to unfold.
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