Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:50:34 -0400
From: d.a. w <daw62@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Professor's Practicum Chapter 16

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Chapter 16

The first batch of offenders had been herded through the door. Now it was
the turn of my batch. The door opened as we approached. On the other side
of the steel frame was a steel box. When we were all inside it, the door
closed behind us. We were scrunched together in order to fit. My cock
rubbed against the cuffed hands of the offender in front of me. He of
course was clutching his bag of personals, but he took advantage of the
situation to wiggle his finger on my cock. He never turned around, but I
jumped a little as he made contact."STAY STILL UNTIL ORDERED TO MOVE,
CONVICT," an amplified voice demanded from the other side of the thick
window, high up on one wall. I looked in that direction and saw two
officers, surveying the ten convicts in the box. Behind the thick glass,
they had a greenish look."Boss, sorry Boss," was my now almost automatic
response. I heard a faint snicker from in front of me. Once again I was
made aware that convicts did not stick together anything but
physically. They used the pile-on philosophy. If an officer was treating
some con like shit, the other cons joined in the abuse.A buzzer went off
and the sheet of steel in front of us opened up. We were released from one
closet- sized waiting area, only to face another one, with another door at
its end. We stood stuffed together as usual, while some mysterious checking
went on behind the window above. But when the second door opened from this
second closet, I saw sky. For a moment I was almost blinded, looking up at
that incredible blue. Then I saw a square of concrete paving, and two
vehicles parked on it. Both had "DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS" lettered on the
side, and both were obviously awaiting us.The closer one looked like a
school bus, except it was painted white and the windows were covered by a
steel mesh bolted solidly onto the side. The first gang of offenders had
been taken off the long chain and were awaiting their turn to climb up the
narrow steps into the bus. The process was going slowly, made difficult by
their leg shackles and the fact that with one's hands cuffed behind one's
back, navigating these steps was not easy. Once inside the bus, they
apparently had a much easier time. The bus was big; they had no problem
standing up in it. I could see their shadows moving down the aisle and
taking their seats. I could see the ones already seated looking curiously
out through the mesh. The bus looked almost comfortable. There was plenty
of room in it. The first con in our gang started heading toward the door,
so we could get in line to enter. The rest of us followed him across the
white concrete.Immediately two officers headed us off."HALT! Where the FUCK
do you think you're goin'?"

They didn't wait for an answer. They just administered correction to the
first man in the normal, gentle way in which guards help inmates learn to
avoid some error. He got a slap on his head. "You're goin' to the van,
shithead!"We changed direction and headed for the second vehicle. It was
short and squat, the vehicular version of a dumpster—bigger than a
dumpster, of course, but much shorter than the school bus version. Instead
of a thin steel mesh, this one was encrusted with thick steel bars. The sun
was glinting off the bars, the windows, the wheels, which must have just
been washed by convict labor."LINE UP!" an officer bawled. "FACE THE
SIDE!"Soon ten bald, sweating convicts were standing in a row, facing the
van, and awaiting further orders.

Clearly, they were going to put us into this van. And clearly, we would
have to wait a while. All we could do was stand there, listening to the
clanking of chains and the pounding of boots in the school bus next
door. The sun that heated our backs turned the windows of our own transport
vehicle into mirrors. They were narrow and set high in the side, and the
vehicle seemed higher off the ground than a normal van.

All you could see in the window facing you was a faint reflection of a bald
head crossed by bars—but you knew that the reflection was you, a convict
that was about to visit the other side of that mirror. You also knew by now
what any prisoner knows, that he is to do as told, exactly as told. If not
ordered to do something, the prisoner is to remain absolutely stationary,
and if shackled to stretch his legs as far apart as possible. I moved my
legs apart until the chain between my ankles was taut and off the ground.

I was staring at the name of my new firm, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, when I
noticed a neatly printed announcement, to the left of the door: "All
Persons Not Law Enforcement or on Official Business, Move at Least 10 Feet
from This Vehicle if Parked." And under that: "Violators May Be
Prosecuted." Clearly, once we were in the van we were not going to have any
visitors.I heard boots behind me. A voice said, "Time to lock'em in." Then
everything started happening.Down the line I heard the clank of the long
chain as the first con was detached, then the rubbery swish of the van's
door being opened, then a clumsy pounding as the convict was pulled up the
steps. After that, a pounding and hurrying from front to back inside the
vehicle. The van swayed as something heavy was dumped down, someplace
inside. Then a clash of steel, and boots stomping back toward the front--
and the process started for the second convict in line. It happened four
times. I was the fifth.

My belly chain suddenly pulled tight around my waist. A hand gripped the
lock that attached me to the long chain, opened it, and let the end clang
onto the concrete. I felt my cuffed hands being grabbed from behind. "Don't
drop your personals, SIR," a voice said, sneery. "We'll handle the rest of
the baggage." I heard several laughs from the officers behind me. The
baggage, of course, was me.

As I was hustled to the door I remembered all those airport vans that I
thought were so uncomfortable to ride in, whenever I was going to or from
one of those places where I liked to vacation—New York, San Francisco,
Paris . . . . It always seemed that the ride didn't need to be so
crude. But now all I wanted was to be able to clamber up those narrow steel
steps without breaking my neck. The officers, of course, were happy to
help. Looking up, I saw a big gym rat in an officer uniform standing at the
top of the stairs. The one in back pushed me forward, and the one above
reached down and pulled me up by my belly chain. I heard myself making the
same confused poundings that the first four of my "friends" had made. The
officers were wasting no time with me. I hurtled up the four steps, into
the van.

What I saw as I turned made me pause momentarily . . . which got me a swift
smack on the butt to get me moving into my new mobile prison.

Directly in front of me as I reached the top of the stairs was a barred
wall, but the door was open to welcome me into the main part of the
van. The main cage, I should say, because what you saw in there was yet
more bars--lines of bars, vertical and horizontal, and cages made from
bars. Each side of the aisle was grilled with steel; and on the left and
right, separate cages were grilled off, one after the other, five on each
side. The four cages farthest in the back were shut--bars flush with the
aisle, and a steel lock hanging from each of them like a giant insect. But
the cages weren't just shut; there was things shut inside them, things that
were bulky and orange, like piles of used clothing, or those orange trash
bags you see alongside the freeway. I gulped—those bags of trash were
convicts like me.

The other six doors were open, awaiting our arrival. There was one with a
"5" painted over it, and that was for me. The officers quickly stuffed me
into it.There was nothing in the cage except a narrow steel shelf, bolted
to the back grille. They sat me on that.

Then one officer held me stationary while the other moved down and locked
my shackle chain into the steel clamp on the floor. Looking down, I noted
that the floor was solid steel plate. There was no talking your way out of
that. Then my hands were uncuffed from behind me and cuffed individually to
my belly chain. That was a relief, but not for long. Right away, my arms
were pulled backwards and I felt a chain going between them. I felt and
heard the chain being locked into place. I could now move my legs only
inches, and the same with my hands. Finally a thick leather seatbelt was
brought across my waist and locked into place. It was industrial strength,
and I don't know how I could have gotten it off, even if it hadn't been
locked onto me."Comfy SIR?" the officer mocked me.I momentarily thought of
mocking him by saying, "Yes, thank you. I would like a cappuccino," but
immediately decided that silence was my best option.WRONG!I received a
bitch slap across my face. "When an officer asks an offender a question," I
was told, "the offender will answer." Then I got the reverse slap, so that
both sides of my face were now smarting.Having received this gentle
reminder, I answered, "SIR yes SIR. Thank you SIR." But he wasn't
done."That's better, shithead," he said. "And you better mean it. There are
plenty of ways of dealing with smartasses. Don't forget that you're shit
and your officers are gods.""SIR yes SIR. This dumb convict will remember
that instruction SIR."He gave me one of those looks that meant, "Are you
for real?" Then he must have decided that even if I wasn't, the humiliation
was good enough. The cage door slammed; the lock was put in place; I was
left inside, chained to the shelf, while the officers stomped off down the
aisle to get inmate number 6. Now I was one more heap of orange trash,
locked in a monkey cage.I was facing forward, with my little bag of
personals nesting in my lap like a weird plastic cock, and the plastic
envelope hanging against my chest, containing all the papers necessary to
document my life. I pictured myself as I would look to any camera that
might be recording this, as I would look on some reality TV show,
perhaps. I would be the example of the lowest grade of human being . . . a
subspecies . .

. a convict . . . . I kept waiting for the camera to focus on my face so I
could relate my thoughts, the way the camera always does on reality TV. But
who would want to know what a sack of garbage thought?  I was thinking this
over as the rest of my fellow inmates were brought up one by one and locked
into position, until all ten of us were sitting on our shelves, safely
barred off from any contact with human beings—ten orange bags of
convict, each of us inserted in its own container. Thinking of comedy shows
that I enjoyed, I said to myself. "Now don't we feel special?" I smiled
inwardly. I had learned that part of convict behavior. You did not
smile. If a guard caught a convict smiling, he would conclude that the con
was planning to do something against the rules, because breaking the rules
is the only thing that makes a convict happy. With that conclusion the
convict would be marked for further "education."I remembered that when the
corporal punishment authorization bill was being debated in the
legislature, the assurance from prison administrators and the prison
guards' association was that only in extreme cases would corporal
punishment be used, and then with strict guidelines. Well, there may indeed
be strict guidelines, but they are for show only. My sore butt knew that
the strokes applied to me were more than gentle reminders. They were blows
against my body that would cause pain, suffering, bruises, and
humiliation. I was at the legislative hearing when they testified, and I
knew they were lying.

Now I could prove it . . . . But no, I couldn't. I was an offender, and my
word was worthless—and worse, would go unheard. Who could hear my plea
from inside this cage, inside a prison van?I wondered why I would be
treated this way. After all, I was only supposed to be imprisoned for six
months. I thought it over, yet again, and decided that Jim maybe just
wanted me to have that supreme convict experience. I thought to myself that
perhaps I would write him and tell him that I would like to dial it back a
little bit from the ultimate. But the ultimate was so real, I couldn't tell
how you could dial it back.It was a long wait, till all the convicts were
loaded, so I had a long time to toss that around. I tossed it until it
exhausted me.Finally, two officers got into the front of the van and locked
the barred door to our set of cages. The big white "school bus" was
starting up and moving past us. Then we also started up, and moved in
behind the bus. We drove slowly past a parking lot which I guessed was the
lot that I myself and a few others had entered only a few days ago. Then, I
didn't know what to expect. Now, as a shaven, chained, orange-clad,
caged-up convict, I knew a lot more. And I realized just how little those
in free society really knew about the life of a prisoner. Legislators talk
about keeping society safe, and use terms like "correcting," "reforming,"
"rehabilitating," and even "helping." Now I knew how outrageous those lies
actually were.

The DOC was following what the legislators and the people who elected them
wanted it to do. They wanted people who are convicted of a crime to PAY for
it, and to pay HARD. Secretly, and perhaps not too secretly, the citizens
wanted me and every other offender to suffer. They didn't want us to be
comfortable. They didn't want us to be "well treated." They wholeheartedly
supported reinstating corporal punishment on us. They wanted prisons to be
places where those who broke the rules, no matter what the reason, would
pay hard for their violations. A paddle on a prisoner's ass was only a
beginning. I knew how much Jim Cox had already paid for his crime, and I
was sure Cox was going to pay more---much more. As we passed the parking
lot from which I entered this hell, we were entering the road that led to
another one.

I hadn't noticed that there were speed bumps in the road, but now there
were, definitely. Every time we went over one of them, we were thrown up
and down, with a general clanking of our chains. Damn, I thought—don't
they have any shocks on this thing? Then I thought back to the night after
my friend had proposed that I take Jim Cox's place. That night--when I
still held the key—I locked my personal set of leg shackles onto my
ankles and walked around in them. I remember thinking that the clanking of
the chains was a sort of happy little sound. I thought of a babbling
brook. That was not the sound I was hearing now. What I heard now was the
sound of domination, subjugation, and helplessness. There was no similarity
between being in my bedroom, where I controlled the keys, and being in this
place, where I was held completely by others' will.We clanked over three
bumps, and each time I realized that being chained on a steel seat allowed
me to remember my butt's encounter with the paddle. I was one unhappy
convict. I also knew that if the guards found out how completely I had
screwed myself by volunteering for this treatment, they would only
laugh. It would only prove to them that I deserved to be here, because only
one dumb asshole, who deep down knew that he had done wrong, would ever
volunteer for the convict reality show.

Just leaving this place took forever. When the fences came in sight, we
slowed to a crawl, then inched over the concrete trench where the bottom of
the bus and the van were solemnly inspected. Then we inched though the
several gates that separated prison from free society--a society, I was
sure, that was very glad we traveled in a mobile version of the prison we
were leaving. When the last gate opened for us, we were no longer within
walls and behind razor wire, but we were just as securely separated from
society, and just as surely being punished. We turned into the public
highway, chained up, and locked behind bars.

The windows in our cages were barred and small, but you could still see
out, if you really wanted to. It's strange how you adjust your
expectations. If this had been my private car, I would have said I couldn't
see a thing. Now I was enjoying the view, happy to be able to look at
scenery that was not walls and bars, at trees and grass and all the other
things you can't see when you're in an R & D holding cell. I no longer felt
contempt for the people freely driving wherever they wanted to go, the way
I had on my normal commute. Then, they were so many obstacles in my
way. Today, they were life as people lived it.

I imagined myself in one of those cars, wearing a carefully selected shirt
and tie, with my suit coat draped carefully across the back seat, thinking
over my presentation for the meeting I would soon be attending. If I saw a
Department of Corrections vehicle, it might or might not occur to me that
there were men caged inside, men like me, but going to their permanent
place of punishment. I knew I didn't realize that a pair of eyes was
looking back at me from each of the little barred windows, eyes that might
be exactly like my own, except that they were attached to a convict body in
an orange trash bag, on its way to the DOC dumpster, up the road. Even if
I'd known that, I wouldn't have worried about it for more than a second or
so. My dick would stiffen, but that would be the end of the thought. And
that was what put me on this side of the bars, to begin with.

I thought about that, and now I was unhappy. More than unhappy. I was ready
to scream, to protest, to demand to see a lawyer, to demand to see my
contact in law enforcement. It was panic. Fortunately, when you're locked
in a cage, with your hands and feet wearing irons and a belt securing you
to your appointed shelf, it doesn't make any difference if you panic. You
can scream if you want to, and get the paddle. So I didn't scream. Now we
were passing the glass towers on the outskirts of the city—towers of
beautiful offices, constructed for the important and prosperous. Out there,
behind every window, there was a doctor or a lawyer, making hundreds of
thousands a year, holding meetings, making appointments, writing
documents. In here, there were ten convicts, on their way to a new set of
prison walls. I truly regretted my crime--not just Jim Cox's but my own,
Andy's: ignorance, stupidity, a libido that overwhelmed my reason.I noticed
then that we were leaving the superhighway and starting along a four-lane
major street. I also noticed that the school bus must have continued on the
superhighway. It was going somewhere else, to some other facility—and if
the comparison between the school bus and the van meant anything, it would
be a place that was paradise compared to the place where I was going.

Looking down through my barred window, I could see passengers in cars
looking up at us. At stoplights the drivers craned their necks up too. What
were they thinking? Did they understand what it meant to be shipped from
one meat locker to another? I remembered that when I was a kid, I had seen
these strange-looking buses on the streets. I didn't know what they
were. My father told me, "Oh those are convicts." He didn't explain. Later
on I discovered how erotic it was to picture somebody being locked up and
shipped out to prison. Only I didn't understand the specifics.All around
us, the convicts, was normal society, and inside the van was the convict's
own normal life. Cuffed, shackled, chained behind bars, dressed in a
glaring orange suit, white tee, and clumsy clodhopper shoes, we traveled
across free society in our own prison on wheels.

After a while the city gave way to fields—long, low, nondescript, as if
even they understood that they were leading to nothing good. Fuck! Now I
realized that I knew our destination. We weren't headed to any minimum
security facility. We were headed to a state prison, one of the two maximum
security institutions in the state. It was the penitentiary, the pen, the
Big House.

The place was old. It had been built in 1920. I had been there; I had
visited prisoners in it. It had the 1920 cell blocks, and also structures
from every later era of prison building, all the way up to the most recent
buildings, which had been added about ten years ago. I'd often pictured
that prison as something scientific, geological—a sample of all the
strata of corrections of the past century. But I hadn't understood what
that meant—that the convicts inside weren't actually living anymore,
that they were exhibits, fossilized animals locked in the strata of their
sentences, turned to stone.I remembered being frisked and patted
down—lightly, respectfully--as I entered the visiting room. I also
remembered my glimpse of the little closet where an inmate who had a visit
was stripped and searched before and after. I once asked why it was that I
had to remain in the visiting room for several minutes after the visit was
over. The CO looked at me as if I were a bit dense and said, "You need to
be here until the inmate clears his exit strip search." I remembered that
when he said that, I had a fleeting fear of being locked up and helpless. I
was afraid and also stimulated. I remember that I moved so that the CO
would not see that the idea of being locked away caused my cock to stiffen
up. Well, now I would be arriving as a prisoner, and I would not be
leaving.Rearing up as close to the window as I could get, I peered into the
distance. Yes, there it was—the tall tower of the Administration
Building, the creation of a famous architect who had wanted to imitate
something Renaissance and Spanish. He ended up with a brick pillar out of
which four pairs of windows seemed to peer, a pair on each side, looking
out like the eyes of prison guards. The rest of the building was flat brown
brick—brown as the fields around it, brown as a convict uniform.

That was the Administration Building; then there were the wings—five
floors of steel barred windows, with fat stone buttresses between them. As
an important visitor, I had entered at the Administration steps. Now I was
going to see where the convicts were taken. We didn't stop at the
front. Instead, after a real crescendo of our chains, passing over a double
set of railroad tracks, we moved around the side of the tall brown walls. I
had never been on that side of the prison. It was startling, how long those
walls really were. At one point, a lighter section of wall pushed out from
the old brown cliffs. This was evidently a newer part of the institution,
but with prisons, as I'd noticed, every new part looks old right away. That
was true about the "new" stone wall that now filled my view. Its surface
was already streaked and weathering. That, and the guard stations rearing
out of it, made it look like it was a thousand years old.  The road turned
and pointed to a gate—a pair of doors that must be the
entrance. Remembering that it was only about 45 minutes from this place to
my downtown office, I thought, "Well at least I'll be close to home." Then
I remembered the sorry truth: "What am I thinking? My home is here. I am
home right now." Someplace in that enormous pile of brick and stone rising
up behind the wall was my new place of residence.

"Home" was a bigger spread than people like me are able to buy. The doors
alone must have been 25 feet high. The man looking down from the guard
tower only bothered to open one of them. We squeezed through, only to find
ourselves facing two 20-foot fences, with razor wire on top—duplicates
of each other, six feet apart. I mused to myself about this massive
enthusiasm for security. Had there ever been an instance of somebody trying
to get escape from inside the prison in a vehicle moving through this
series of steel-mesh walls? I couldn't imagine it. No matter: our van was
checked twice— visually, on the outside, and by mirrors on the
underside. Finally we passed through the last gate. We were now on the
inside of a 30-foot wall and two razor wire emplacements that would have
stopped an army. Inserted into the dimensions of the penitentiary, we and
our van were nothing. We were a box of identical toys, ready for insertion
into this model prison--a model that was far out of scale for us.

My pits and my chest were wet; the sweat was breaking out again. Chained up
the way I was, there was nothing I could do about it. The van paused, then
turned toward a building that obviously was not very old. The bricks were
an off color, orange, like nobody wanted to spend any money matching the
original.

Then we stopped. We were there.

The driver got out, went to a side door, and entered. The door had a glass
window, and it must have been unlocked for him before he reached it. He
just did the normal grabbing of the handle and went inside. I saw this and
realized that it was the only time I had seen a person entering or exiting
any place I had been inside, for the past week, by just opening a door. WOW
what an idea. What I had accepted for all the years of my life until the
last week was now a noteworthy, unusual experience.

But soon he returned, and four more with him--also in uniform, but a
different uniform from his. While the new ones stood outside, he returned
to the van. His assistant opened the bars at the front. Then the driver and
the assistant started opening our cages. One by one, the orange bags of
trash were extracted and hauled away. Eventually they got to me. They
unlocked my cage. They unlocked my seat belt. Then they reached behind me,
and I felt the chain holding my arms being unlocked and falling. My
shackles were released from the floor clamp. Now I could actually move a
little. I thought of the old saying, "I was really depressed, until my
friend said, `Cheer up. Things could get worse!' So I cheered up--and
things got worse." In this case, I cheered up, and things seemed to be
getting better, but I also knew that once we were inside the building in
front of us, I might very well be worse.

I hardly had time to grab my personals with one of those hands that were
still attached to my belly chain when they pulled me up the aisle and
pushed me down the steps. As soon as I got to the bottom and put my feet on
the pavement, my hands were grasped roughly by one of the new officers and
I was pushed into my place beside my fellow convicts. I realized that once
again I was going to be part of a chain gang.

We were ordered not to move. I did not acknowledge the order, but I also
did as I was told. I had been trained by my previous place of incarceration
that a prisoner did as ordered, but did not speak unless asked a direct
question. Obedience was expected. Soon a lock went onto my belly chain,
attaching me to the long chain and all nine of my fellow prisoners.

As we stood in the open, I for one enjoyed being able to see the sun and
sky--a normal pleasure, which inmates don't always get to have. The problem
was that I kept thinking how good it would be to walk off by myself and
find a tree or a brook or at least a piece of grass to look at. But even if
I had been free, I would have had to walk a long way to find those
things. There was nothing like that here. We were standing next to the van
on the slab of concrete that was its parking lot. The slab was brown and
weathered, like almost everything else in this place, and a jagged crack
had opened up in it, with brown weeds poking out. Beside the slab was a
place where in normal life somebody would have planted grass, but all you
could see was some dirt full of short brown weeds. A breeze came up,
sweeping dust into the faces of the offenders waiting in the sun.

I saw a batch of paperwork being exchanged. It was exactly like when I took
delivery of some new furniture. There was always the paperwork ensuring
that the items I had purchased were received by me and were in good
condition. Now the ten of us were the items. We were checked by the
accepting guards, and signed for.

After that, the guards stood around for a while, chatting. Then the ones
who brought us here strode back to the van. The motor coughed and came to
life; the van turned and began to retrace its course.

Watching it go was like watching the last lifeboat departing, without me on
it. The van was going through the first line of razor wire when one of the
new guards stepped to the front, and we had to turn our heads toward him,
and our new home.

This officer was obviously the chief. He looked at us with the normal
boredom. "All right, offenders," he said. "You can come to attention." We
came to attention. "I guess you know why you're here," he went on. "We're
gonna take you from OUT HERE" (nodding toward the dirt, the weeds, and the
sunlight glaring on the concrete) "and process you INTO THERE" (nodding
toward the tall piles of bars and bricks, over in the background where none
of us wanted to look). "You will follow THIS officer" (pointing at a young
man in an officer suit, standing at the end of the line of young men in
officer suits), "through THAT DOOR"--indicating a different door from the
one that the officers had walked through themselves.

This second door was a black rectangle set in the orange wall—blank,
windowless, lined with rivets.

"Once inside THAT DOOR, you will stop in the Receiving Room and await your
release from the chain.

Immediately upon release you will proceed to one of the squares painted on
the floor in front of you.

You will step into the next open square, and you will NOT move until
ordered."

Nothing new here. I was surprised how quickly I was becoming an experienced
prisoner.

The indicated officer came forward. "Right face!" he yelled. Then he
smiled, watching some of us turn right and some of us trying to turn
left. He smiled like you do when you find out you were right about
something for the thousandth time. Offenders were always so stupid that
they couldn't even tell their right from their left.

Eventually we straightened ourselves out. Ahead of me was a black door,
with a line of orange backs pointed toward it. DANGER-DANGER-DANGER-DANGER
said the big black letters on the line of backs. I wondered whether that
was true. I wondered what was going on inside those four bald skulls in
front of me, and those five bald skulls behind me. DANGER was on my own
back too, but if you'd asked me what was going on inside my skull, I
couldn't have told you.The smiling officer reached down to his belt and
pulled out an enormous key. When he turned it, you could hear the lock
echoing inside the black steel door. When he grabbed the handle, you could
see his back muscles flexing inside his shirt. That door must have weighed
a ton. I was praying that it wouldn't open. But it did. "March!" he
ordered. So we marched—cuffed, shackled, chained, and clanking
together--into our new place of punishment.