Developments After Dinner

  After dinner we were admitted to a larger “common room” where we were allowed “free time” for an hour before bed. This room was a large space lined on one side with our cells and on the other with bars separating us from a hallway running the length for the guards to pass along. There were a few long tables, at which various groups of prisoners sat playing games or talking, and there was a single television which was permanently tuned to The Cartoon Network and several cons sat watching "Thomas The Trunk Engine" intently. At the far end of the room, near to the entrance to the showers I noticed one of the two men who had participated in the pharmaceutical clinical research earlier today. He had removed all of his clothing and stood naked, rocking back and forth, facing the wall, showing obvious signs of permanent brain injury.

The Effects of Pharmaceutical Brain Injury

    I was beginning to feel depressed. Until now I had run the gamut of emotions including surprise, confusion, denial, fear, even anger; having been duped out of both my promised university education AND my insurance policy; only to be stuck in a private psychiatric hospital within the prison, and to be submitted to the doctor’s perverted brand of psychiatry which consisted of pharmaceutical experimentation that consisted of massive, forced doses of female viagra under the guise of clinical research. He had stolen the money from my insurance policy to fund his nefarious acts and tried to conceal his true identity with extensive plastic surgery, and I had seen through his thin disguise, but there was nothing I could do to stop him. And now, since my insurance policy had been cashed in, I wasn’t even covered for wrongful death, which seemed, most likely, was what was to become my fate.

  I was really feeling hopeless now. Absolutely down in the dumps. So when Mickey the Rat approached me and invited me to join him and his friends at their table I readily complied. I really didn’t want to feel so alone anymore, so, despite my misgivings, I decided to join in, and found that I was welcomed with kind faces and open arms.

Bright Shining Faces

   Wolf broke the ice and immediately took me under his wing. “Glad to see ya, brother! Welcome! Have a seat beside me.” He said, patting the open space on the bench beside him. “Don’t you look so glum, chum! You’re family now. Join us!”

  I reluctantly took the seat offered, nodded briefly at the faces around me, and demurred silence. I didn’t know what to say to these guys, they were obviously some sort of gang; but the nature of their club I knew nothing of. As if he could read my mind, Wolf started to explain; “We here are just like you, see?” he began, “and in here, we have to stick together. You do know what I mean, don’t you?”

  I didn’t actually, but I tried to pretend like I did. He continued anyway; “In here, it’s us against them.” The other guys all nodded in agreement. Wolf was starting to proselytize. “It’s them that’s caused all our problems in the first place! Them what's put us in here, them what's takes what’s rightfully ours!” The other guys were nodding angrily, some saying “fuckin’ rights!” and “Amen Brother!” They were getting more and more riled up with his every word.

  “It makes me sick what this great nation has become, good honest God-fearing white men such as ourselves, locked up and stripped of our rights, while they take our jobs, fuck our women, turn our own children against us!” He’s almost shouting now. “It’s all because of THEM!” he turns and looks over his shoulder, then looks me right in the eye; dead serious. “Lawyers!”

  As the word leaves his lips all the other guys spit on the floor. White Mike slams his fist on the table, and Little Dick screws his face up with hatred and hisses “Fuckin’ lawyers!” Every one of them looks so angry they might tear their hair out, if they had any hair, that is.

  “I can’t freakin stand ‘em!” Wolf reiterates, “Sub-human scum!” Then, gaining his composure a little, he goes on to explain further. “It’s bad enough that we got to be in here with them, eat meals with them, and breath the same air as them… but some of them even work here!” I’m staring at his enraged face as his vitriolic diatribe assails me, “That’s right brother! Even some of the screws is lawyers! Can you believe it?”

  As soon as he has said this, as if on cue, bright happy singing peals out across the room. All of the men at my table sink deeper into their hatred and disgust, boiling with resentment, and as I look up I see a jovial, pleasant-looking guard enter the room, dancing gaily and singing happy songs from the vaudeville era. It’s the head screw on this ward. A one ‘Smiling’ Jack McAllister. 

"Smiling" Jack McAllister

    I don’t know how these guys couldn’t like old Smiling Jack; he’s the one ray of sunshine in this entire darkened nightmare we live in. A real man of the people, Smiling Jack always has a song on this lips, and a sympathetic ear to lend. The convict’s friend; he’s dancing about and serenading some inmates a couple tables away, stopping to inquire about so-and-so’s ailing mother, and jovially patting others on the back. This guy’s a real treat, I don’t get it.

A "Man of The People"

    Wolf sees the look on my face, the confusion and disbelief. He leans in on me. “Don’t be fooled by the old song and dance routine my friend. Smiling Jack is one of them! He’s a fully accredited member of the bar, one of the top prosecuting attorneys; a real scumbag!” He gives a conspiratorial glare at the others around us. “He put half of us in here!” They all look at me and nod in agreement. “Then one day he gets all high and mighty and thinks that locking us up isn’t good enough! He figures he’s gonna be a real humanitarian and come and be turn-key down here, help out the little guy.” The one called Little Dick slams his fist into his open palm, “What a crock! He just wants to be in our faces and gloat! I ought to go up there right now and shank him!”

  Wolf takes charge here, “Now, now Dickie old boy, you just hold your horses. Now is not the right time! You just be patient, we’re gonna get ours soon enough, brother.” And again Wolf flashes that sinister grin at me. “Our day is gonna come!”

  I’m struck dumb by this development, to be sure. All I can think is how lucky it is that I didn’t mention anything about my own desires to attend university in hopes of attaining a law degree and become a lawyer myself! I think keeping that one under my hat would be a pretty good insurance policy for the time being. It still didn’t answer any of my questions about the doctor, or Wrongful Death Rowan (an attorney himself), their brain injury inducing take on psychiatry, or the pharmaceutical clinical research they were conducting in their own private psychiatric hospital in here. I would just keep my mouth shut though, because these boys were mean, and if they got wind of my intentions, for sure they would give me a little taste of their own special jail-house plastic surgery, if you catch my drift. All of them, that is, except the two skinheads who were necking in the mess hall earlier.  They had continued throughout this conversation, in their loving embrace, ignoring us all along. I guess they both had had a little too much female viagra!

Jail-House Romance