THE FIR S T DA Y: STATE PRISON ByAl Israel Rose Illustration by Carel Moiseiwitsch I wasinprisonfor thecrimeof custodial interference, afelonycrime insomestates, though others, including NewYork, treat it as amisdemeanor. Within atime span of hours, I was propelledfromaworldwhereIwastying ribbons inmychild'shair intoaworldwhereaman’s eyeball can be popped out of its socket. Inany prison/jail one only survives BYBRUTEFORCE. There is no question that-prisons mass-producemoreviolent criminals than society does asawhole. Therearemountains of books that confirmand reaffirmthis sociological insanity. Everyprisoner I havehad contact withhasexpressedtomethedesireto “randomlyKILLpeople” upon release. Official prison records produce irrefutable documentation that some released prisoners do just that: kill. They did not enter prison killers'. The only remaining question: howmuch longer will this insanitylast?Meaning-will theprisonsystemdestroysocietybeforesocietydestroys itself? Dhear the sounds of men hacking, coughing, sp it ting—to ile t bowls flushing. A bell rings. Our march begins. We walk to where the dawn’s light meets the darkness of the night. Rain. We walk through rain. Men appear and disappear in fog—thick fog. It hides everything around us. The only reality is of the moment—and moments know nothing about guilt or innocence. A guard takes me to a room. (In the background I hear the Monday night football game coming from a TV.) A man behind a desk asks me, “ If you were going to do it—tell me—and you can trust me, how would you do it? In here?” “ I once saw a man walk to the far end of । a room. Then he ran as fast as he could. He rammed his head into a wall.” The man behind the desk tells the guards standing alongside me something in a code number. They grab me; take me to an isolation cell; hold me down on a table-like iron bed; pull off all my clothes. I am nude. The guard at my left foot puts a lock in a chain, locking my foot to the frame of the bed. Right foot. Left hand. Right hand. I cannot move. I am locked down with four locks, spread-eagled atop a special made bed. 1 “What is this? This is medieval torture. What are you doing to me? And why?" i No answer. Laughter. The guards laugh at my helpless condition. A nurse pushes her way past the guards. She takes hold of my feet with her hands. Then she holds each of my hands locked to the sides of the bed. Her : touch is the touch of a knowing woman: she is gentle—ever so gentle; her hands ; close around my fingers slowly, and with : great feeling. It is a contrast: the guards dragged, pushed, slammed me down; yanked off all my clothes—then, this gen- j tie creature comes with her gentle touch, and touches me. “What is this?” I ask her. “Why this torture rack treatment of a new prisoner? I just walked in here. I’ve only been here a few minutes. What have I done to have th is done to me? This is medieval torture.” “Oh. They do this to everyone who is new here. This is medieval. But what can I say?” She disappears behind the 36 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring guards’ bodies surrounding the bed. The guards leave the tiny cell. The iron door clangs shut. I remember when I was a child, how I would catch butterflies and pin them to a board. Now, I am pinned to a torture rack like bed. I remember watching pinned butterflies, their thumping bodies tearing their wings apart, trying to escape. I try to escape. I try to tear my pinned body apart. But no: this system has been too well thought out. Helplessness only confirms total and comp le te he lp lessness . To s trugg le is useless. Nevertheless, I continue to struggle as hard as I can. My body wants to fight, though my mind tells my body to fight no more. Why is this happening? I have never been a violent person in my entire life. When I try to move, the real becomes unreal. In the year of 1985, in a western state, I am chained nude spread eagled; unable to move—and I do not know why. I get a holding back sensation between my legs. I have to piss. But where? I scream “ bathroom.” I wait. No one comes. I scream again—this time as loud as I can. Silence. The iron door does not open. The sensation between my legs grows. I scream; I whimper; I weep; I cry out. Then I feel it. When I move from side to side a soft squishing sound: a puddle forms beneath my ass. I am chained nude spread eagled; I am lying in my body wastes. I stare at the iron wall as if suddenly by some strange unknown magic a secret door will fling open. The Christ of all Christs enters. He unchains my pinioned body; He wipes the urine, the shit, off my backside; He takes my hand and leads me through an opening in the wall. Free. I am free. He kisses me on the cheek with a god-like tenderness—a tenderness known only to god-like people. We walk together through the iron door. “Jesus,” I ask, “why do you let all this suffering go on and on for thousands and thousands of years? And all of this, in your name. You can’t be a god. You have to be some sort of a sadist. You must enjoy all this suffering, or else you would stop it. Why do you let it go on? Why don’t The guards grab me; takeme to an isolation cell; pull oft all my clothes. I amnude. I amlocked down with four locks, spread-eagled atop aspecial made bed. you stop it? Why do you let innocent men lay chained down in shit and piss? What kind of a man are you? Tell me.” But Jesus tells me nothing. Not one word does he utter. Laughter. A big bloodshot blue eyeball appears in the peekhole in the door. Then a dark squinting eyeball appears. The guards are taking turns looking at me. More laughter. The door opens. A guard walks in. “Clean me up. Take it away,” I tell him. “ DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE? YOU—YOU ARE SHIT\ HERE, I ’ LL CLEAN YOU UP.” He takes a handful from under my body—places it on my chest; makes a little mound atop my chest. It sticks to my chest hairs. . “ YOU MOTHERFUCKER. MOTHERFUCKER,” I scream. The door slams shut. Alone. I am alone. I SCREAM. NO, I tell myself, my march to the gas chambers will not be done with historical silence. I scream so loud my entire body has spasms of nervous twitching. To all of this there is nothing. No answer. No one comes. To scream in here only confirms you are in no need for help. Silence onto silence—I wait. I wait for the hissing sound to come out of the air vents: my Jewish hang up? I ask you: did the Nazis initially chain their new prisoners down nude spread eagled and force them to lay in their body wastes? No. They did not. There was no need to. Then why here? I am cold. The cell is cold. I tremble; I shake; I quiver in the coldness of the cell. Then, trying to forget my coldness, I remember a freezing experiment: they freeze a subject almost to the point of death. Then they have a nude woman lay atop the subject (a man). The woman’s body heat and her gentle hugging of the almost frozen body is suppose to instill within the freezing body of the dying man, the desire to fight off oncoming death—and live. It works. Their body temperatures return to normal. I shut my eyes. She comes. A nude woman climbs atop my naked cold body. Soft warm breasts—I feel—pressing against my skin. Her nipples become erect on my chest. I reach up to her; she reaches down to me; I reach up—NO—I cannot reach up to her. Cold. Dam still cold. I feel the coldness of the cell getting colder. There is no heat anywhere in the cell—imaginary or real. Hours pass. The big sliding iron door does not open. Just when I think the door will never open—it opens. A guard walks in carrying a round paper tray. “ Food,” he tells me. He puts the tray alongside my bed on the floor. “You can have one hand free. The right one, or the left one?” The question is utterly absurd. I do not answer. This irritates him. He leans over my body and unlocks my right wrist. I look at the food on the floor. I think: if I eat it—then what? What if I have to have another bowel movement? Will I be forced to lay in it? I stare at the two pieces of bread on the tray. I pick up a piece of bread and pat the puddle under my ass with it. The soft bread soaks up most of the urine. I throw a wet piece back onto the plate and pick up the remaining piece of bread. I pat the last of the puddle up with it. There! I did it: the puddle is gone and gone is the faint squishing sound. I fall back onto the bed. I look at the food tray. Wedged between two urine soaked pieces of bread is an orange. A bright deep orange colored orange, with light yellow highlights and a roundness made more round by a direct overhead single light. The color of the orange against the background of the dull drab cell is rich—it looks like a small glowing sun. I stare at the orange: env ironmen ta l dep riva tion works—an orange becomes a sun and a life-giving force just by being there. I start screaming again without really hearing my screams. I just scream to be screaming— not knowing why. With my one free hand I do it: up down—down up—up down, jerkingly. Fast and hard—hard and fast. For a few fleeting seconds the warmth of the semen feels good dripping down my legs. I look at my hand. It has blood on it. I look at my bleeding penis. The guards do not see me doing my act. For sure it would have been written down on my daily report. I can see the psychiatrist reading it: “ . . .he masturbated instead of eating h is - f o o d . . . i n a p p r o p r i a t e arousal. . .classical. . acting out. . . sexual. . .deviant fantasies.” I hear a loud scream. Someone is screaming again. Then I realize. . .the someone is me. The guard comes in; locks my free hand to the bed frame. He picks up the paper tray. “Could you leave the orange here?” “Why? You’ re not going to be able to eat it. The way you are.” “ I like to look at it.” The guard looks at me as if I said some- thing crazy that only confirmed my craziness to him. He takes the orange with him as he leaves the cell. Gone. Van Gogh’s sun. Gone. A hint of color in a colorless cell. Gone. The feeling of sunlight in a sealed off iron cell where sunlight cannot enter. I look around the room. Where is my Psych 101 ‘cloth monkey’? Will the guards leave me something my mind can cling to, something to find some comfort in? No. They do not. Their intent appears to be only in breaking the human spirit to the point of no return. Why all this horror? What therapeutic value does horror
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