September 2, 2002

• Sarah doesn’t think there was enough sex in my recent blog.  She’s right.  I’ve always known my memoirs were going to be uneven in that regard.  My life has been uneven that way–feast or famine, OD or cold turkey.  Jail, especially after I got out of isolation, had been famine indeed because without privacy I wasn’t masturbating in that dorm.  I’d have avoided going to the toilet if I could have.  The lack of privacy in prison is at least as hard to take as the lack of mobility or autonomy.

  
  

  I slept with an arm over my eyes.  The light wasn’t all bad.  I could read at night if sleep didn’t come.  But I truly hated being not just visible all the time, but actively watched.  The state paid people to watch us, to keep us from having any fun, alone or with each other.  Of course there were lapses, blind spots, intervals of relative privacy, but nobody with two brain cells to rub together wanted to attempt a sexual liaison without a lookout.  After a few months of intimate conversations window-to-window across the hallway, my neighbor trusted me enough to ask me to pin for her and her baby.

  
  

  “Pin” means lookout.  Con argot is low on syllables and virtually devoid of sibilance.  It uses short sharp terms that can be mouthed or whispered or muttered quickly out of one side of the mouth while one’s other profile is facing a guard.  My friend had to define the word for me when she asked me to do it.  Someone else had to tell me that a kite was a letter or note when she asked me to carry one to her lover in my hallway.  But once they managed to get across to me what was required, I was a willing accomplice.

  
  

  The time of day when most rendezvous occurred was the interval after breakfast when housecleaning happened.  Inmates with jobs were out of their rooms and the doors were locked.  Those of us whose jobs involved janitorial work were at work, with our rooms left open for access to clean them and so that we could shut ourselves in when our work was done.  Someone would come around to count us and lock the doors when our time was up.

  
  

  Central Control had a clear view down the three wings, so it took care and, if possible, cover for anyone to enter a room other than her own, or for two women to get together in a shower room or janitor closet.  When I was buffing the floor, I could provide a little cover or diversion for activity farther along the hall.  But getting together that way, in one of their rooms, was really the riskiest way for two women to have sex. 

  
  

  More of the sexual action went on in the beauty shop than anywhere else.  Its door was not clearly visible from Central Control, and it was near the convergence of the wings and accessible to almost everyone.  It was also (unofficially of course) the exclusive turf of a clique of inmates.  The janitor closet and the two shower rooms (two showers for more than sixty women… does that seem adequate?) were the next most popular places.  Staff tended to stay in CC when we were mopping and running floor buffers.  The doors on the janitor closet and showers were the only ones in the place without windows, and when the door to the janitor closet was open, there was room behind it for two people, leaving the room appearing empty to anyone passing. 

  
  

  This was only partial privacy, of course.  It was seclusion only in the sense that it was hidden from staff.  It worked best if the other inmates in the vicinity knew what was going on and could help cover for it.  As I said in the previous chapter of this memoir, I didn’t get in on any of that action, anyhow.  By the time Suzy and I got acquainted, I was close enough to getting out that I tempered my passion with some common sense and didn’t risk it.  Living far down two separate wings, with jobs that didn’t bring us together, we’d have had to take big chances to meet anywhere private.

  
  

  Those trips to the men’s joint on Saturday mornings made it difficult.  The place reeked of male pheromones, and it’s the scent of a man that has always turned me on the most.  Hulk didn’t make it any easier, either.  He liked to talk sexy and get me worked up.  I’d be wet and squirming in my seat sometimes, and laughing along with him.  Those visits were surely the high point of each week, but they were difficult, too.  A quick hug and a sharp word from a guard if we held it too long, then we had to sit there across a table from each other without touching.  We gossipped some, passed news back and forth, traded jokes, and eventually got down to the “I miss yous.”  From there it was a short hop to the extended and detailed descriptions of what we’d like to be doing to each other.

  
  

  When it was over, we stood, had another brief hug, this one even harder to break off than the first one, then went back to our respective cells and masturbated.  When I first got to OWCC, I was so conscious of that window in my door that I got off only in the shower for a few weeks.  After I’d been there a while, I picked up the casual attitude about such things that was common to those who had been there longer.  Everybody does it and everybody knows it.  I didn’t maintain my three or four orgasm a day pattern while I was locked up.  Without men around stirring up my hormones, once or twice a day was enough.

  
  

  

  • 12:34 pm
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