I’d been in the Pen for six months when an officer unlocked my cell and took me to the visiting room. Which is actually just a storeroom with some windows on the side. You stand in front of a window and look through the glass and talk to your visitor through a phone.
On the other side of the glass I saw a young guy in a dress shirt and a baseball cap. He looked like a young executive going out for a drink with friends.
“Hey!” he said. “It’s me. Blake!”
I’d chatted with him online; I didn’t know what he looked like.
“I came to see how you’re doing. Great, I hope!”
I couldn’t believe how happy he was.
“Definitely,” I said, expecting that he’d catch the irony.
“I thought so! You know, I really wanted to see this place. It’s all, like, bars and fences. And towers—lots of guard towers. I bet they’re keeping you on your toes!”
“You know, you look amazing in that uniform! It really makes you look like . . . . ”
“That’s right! A bellboy in some old hotel . . . . ‘Boy!’ ‘Here, sir. I’ll carry your bags, sir.’ Ya gotta love it--that outfit really shows you your place! Only your kind of bellboy is kept in a cage. How large is your cage, dude?”
“Awesome! My bathroom is lots bigger than that. You’re living in my bathroom! Adjusting well?”
“Don’t have much choice.”
“How true. Last time you had a choice was that night when . . . ”
“You convinced me to come to this place.”
“Right! I’m responsible! You should thank me!”
“Thank you, Blake. I owe it all to you. But there’s one thing I want to mention. The night before I . . . checked in here, I tried to contact you. I thought you’d be interested. But you weren’t online.”
“Yeah? Sorry, dude. I must have been chattin with some other guy. But hey, it’s gettin late, and one of these guards said he’d show me some of the security features they use out here. Like, you know, the perimeter fences, and the gate checks, and the restraints they put on you . . . . So, hang in there, dude. You’re lookin SO good. Later man.”
He left the window. The officer took me back to my cell.
I was lonely in the Pen. I hated everything. I hated everybody. And Blake looked incredibly hot. Which made everything worse.
Note: All stories by prisonprocess are purely fictional and have no relation to real persons or institutions.