Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 19:10:53 +0100
From: David Haslett <davidhaslett@mac.com>
Subject: Chain Gang 3

Chain Gang 3

Part 2

The First Day


When you're a slave, you get to thinking. There's a lot of time for
thinking in a place like that penitentiary. I was no great shakes at
learning - lazy and a bum rather than stupid, I'd say now. But in there you
get to thinking all kinds of things. Oh, there are the normal things - like
when am I gonna be fed and will it be, like, worth eating? Let me tell you
that sure doesn't go a long way in a place like that. You need more to fill
your time than the thoughts of a dumb animal. That's giving in to
them. That's playing their game. There's no books and sure as hell no TV -
nothing to educate you except what you make of your situation. I guess I'm
apologizing in advance for giving you some of the thinking I did and I'm
not claiming it's profound or anything.

Like this whole thing with the chains, welded on and all. They're there,
they're like that, to fuck with your mind. If you were tied up, say, rather
than in chains then I think you'd waste a lot of time thinking about escape
- because you know ropes can be cut. All right, you may not have a knife
but then you might be foolish enough to keep your hopes alive by thinking
of a bit of broken glass, or a jagged beer can or a broken beer bottle. But
what way is there out of chains and metal? They know that. It fucks your
mind because you soon know there's no way out., know it deep inside
yourself. The reason chains have always been used to bind slaves and
animals is to keep them in their place and that place is pretty damn low so
that a slave begins to think he's an animal and not a man. Then, they keep
you in A place, a physical space and you soon know you're not going far
with the weight of them, and the restricted length of them.

Remember the other 'slaves' had all shuffled out, linked to one another?
Reminded of their status with every step. Leaving me on my ownsome. And
when you're not stepping out on a work detail but chained to a wall then
you are going nowhere, and man I mean nowhere. You're kept on too short a
chain to do more than shift around a bit now and again to stop cramp
setting in. Yep, they know that. And that's all they care about. A guard
can easily forget all about the prisoners under his charge when they're not
in front of his eyes. You can't misbehave, you can't do anything. But sit
there and think. And they sure as hell don't care where your mind takes off
- lucky for you if it does; lucky for you if you have a few pleasant
memories to cling to for survival.

Some slaves couldn't take it. The States raise us in a culture of instant
gratification. We got money, we gotta have something to spend it on. So
we're assailed on all sides with glittering imagery. They set out to seduce
us and they do that by throwing all this crap at us. Buy this! And this!
And this! Pleasure is bought and our souls lose out. So when a slave finds
himself chained by the neck to a wall what distractions are there in his
surroundings? What when he is in one of the punishment cells with days on
end with so little to look at? What when, worst of all, he is in the Pit
and he can see nothing at all? Then you need inner resources and we're not
brought up with much in the way of those. You panic, first off, you fight
the chains that enslave you. Then you calm down a little, maybe whimpering
to yourself a bit, grateful just to hear a human sound, even if it is being
drawn from you in your misery and pain. The lucky ones have something
inside them, something to fall back on, to help them through the darkness
of their souls.

But it takes a while for the mind even to try to escape because at first
you don't realise that where you go in your mind is the only freedom you're
gonna know. At first all I could do was stare at the chains in
disbelief. And there's a reality about chains and manacles and metal
collars that you can't get away from. They don't give a bit, there's no
subtle moulding to the body going to take place, no matter how long they're
welded on for. So you shift and the metal bites. Before he left me, that
fat bastard Bob had switched the chain that attached me to the wall from a
piece over a metre long - giving me the opportunity to lie down and turn
around a bit during the uneasy sleep I'd managed from sheer exhaustion - to
something no longer than the distance from wrist to elbow.

My bare feet touched the rough wall behind me. I was on my knees, facing
the door of the cell. Already they hurt and strangely enough it was the
straw I had slept on which had caused the problem. That chain held me in
that position. I couldn't lie down; I couldn't kneel any lower. I was more
or less fixed there. When the chain had been attached to my collar, I had
been kneeling on the straw. But it was unevenly scattered so that it
bunched and sloped and rolled. That meant one knee was higher than the
other, not much but enough to concern me - should I try to move about a bit
and even it up? But if I did, what if I were to fall? So all my thoughts at
that stage were directed to my worry of strangling myself. So much so that
I did try to spread the straw about a bit, the lovely outcome of my efforts
being that I ended up more or less kneeling on the hard, cold, stone
floor. And during that first, endless day, now and again I did doze off for
a few seconds until my nodding head would stretch that chain to its limits
and I'd be as sharply wakened as I might have been by a kick to my body.

I passed time by worrying all the goddman time. What if cramps set in? What
if I fell asleep? Would I strangle myself? Would my wrists and ankles and
neck toughen up so that the angry red sores caused by the metal would fade
and cease to irritate? I was so concerned with all the little details of my
bondage that I forgot why I hadn't been linked up to the others and marched
outside for the 'hard labour' part of my sentence.

Until a guard I hadn't yet seen entered the room. I don't think he was very
tall, below average I'd say but you don't get a full sense of how tall
someone is when you are held at that level. I'd say the top of my head came
up to his waist. But what he may have lacked in height he made up for in
bulk. Broad shouldered, stocky, muscular - these may have made him appear
smaller, as did the peaked cap pulled almost ludicrously low over his
eyes. It was one of those where the peak descends really in a straight line
down the forehead, forcing the wearer to raise his head to see where he is
going. And increasing the sense of arrogance, somehow. The uniform's
guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine - black, with gleaming, high
boots, almost Nazi. They know what it looks like and the effect it's going
to have on a slave.

This duly had its effect on me in the seconds that my eyes registered his
arrival. I knew better than to stare at him. I hadn't been told that this
was a general rule but, believe me, this was one of those situations where
you just know that my eyes meeting his would lead to punishment, and with
me on so short a chain I didn't think I'd come out of any encounter any too
well.

I shifted uneasily, now reminded of what I was there for. This man exuded
brutality in every step, in every movement and I braced thinking that the
nailed boots which now rang on the stone floor would probably soon be
kicking me.

I was trembling, so afraid of what might be about to happen to me, ready to
cry and scream and plead and shed any dignity I might have had left. He was
whistling softly - some awful redneck country number, the kind that's
always about heartbreak in lovin' families - and this frightened me more. I
just knew that, for a man like that, knocking a chained slave about would
be part of his day's pleasure. He'd feel unfulfilled without it. The type
that just exists to dominate and punish.

I waited for blows - they didn't come. I was looking at the ground but he
was so close to me I could see his spades of hands fumbling with the
buttons of his fly and pulling out his dick. I could smell the damn thing,
cheesy and unclean. I waited for the punch that would make me look up,
waited for the hand forcing my mouth open - for what? To suck his cock? Or
just to drink his piss? It didn't happen. He didn't touch me, didn't spit
in my mouth, didn't lay a finger on me. This guy simply kept on whistling
and pissed over my head, didn't bother aiming for my mouth. I had been
pissed on by fat Bob. This was no worse. As I had received no order I did
nothing. I didn't open my mouth like I had to with Bob. Warm, acrid piss
gushed over me as I kneeled with bowed head in front of him.

He left. I started to laugh, at first a snigger, then chuckling, then great
waves of laughter welled up from inside me and came pouring out - mad,
hysterical laughter. I thought it was just relief at not having been
punished in any way, not having been beaten as I had been last night or
kicked as I had been that morning. But as my laughter changed to sobs I
knew why hysteria had not been far from the surface. I suddenly knew why I
felt sick to my stomach. It wasn't the piss, the smell of it, the sight of
it streaming down my face and chest.

It was as if I wasn't there, didn't exist. But that was not quite true
either - I knew that I was there and he knew it too, he had walked directly
to me. But it meant nothing to him. I wasn't a man, a thinking, rational
creature. I wasn't even as high in the scale as an animal. I was a thing,
inanimate, an object, a receptacle, a urinal.

That was my lowest point in all the time I spent there. Oh, I would face
what normal people would think was worse than this. I would feel
steelcapped boots kicking me, I would feel the lash on my back, the lash on
my chest and, worst of all, the lash on my groin. But I learned to get
through these things, just like I found a way through the punishment cells
and the Pit, too. I found a space in myself where I could float away and
believe it wasn't happening to me but to someone else. Yes, part of me even
came to love the physical punishment. This was easier because I knew that
in some way I was connected to the man who was whipping me - I could feel
him through the whip and so I knew he existed and he knew I did. But this
guard who had just pissed on me with such indifference took me to despair
because he took away all sense of my humanity. But by the end of the day I
knew I was lucky.

I was lucky - because it was Independence Day and most of the guards were
on holiday. So it was a quiet day where I had only the occasional toilet
duty to take care of and could be left with my mind. And my mind helped me
to come to terms with the desperate straits I found myself in, helped me
plan a way forward, a way to deal with all the abuse and degradation that
would continue to be heaped on me.

I was lucky - because that mad old judge who had sentenced me to this hell
hole less than twenty-four hours previously did exactly the same to two
punk kids - brothers - who were sent by God to replace me in this toilet
duty and the first of them did so the following morning.

I was lucky - to reach the lowest point of my experience on my very first
day! I was around to see others going round for days, weeks, in some cases
months, bewildered by what was happening to them. Unable to comprehend that
they mattered as much as flies on shit. In despair for all that time,
crying themselves to sleep, always attracting attention to themselves with
their sniveling and whining - just like I had been a day before.  And for
some who couldn't settle to it even after months, just couldn't adapt to
their situation, well then the only way out was madness.

But I was different from those poor slaves. I was going to stay out of
trouble as much as possible, I'd go along with anything asked of me, no
matter how low and vile and degraded because I was going to survive.

To be continued...