2 comments/ 23693 views/ 4 favorites In The Slammer Ch. 01 By: HectorBidon I fucked up one time too many, and they threw the book at me. Four months in the slammer. I suppose you could say I had it coming. The judge went on an on about some county work program. Rehabilitation through honest labor, or some damn thing. But when the paperwork came through, it had me going to Logan rather than Potter. Logan is the Women's Facility. The deputies at the jail couldn't get it straightened out, so they just took me to Logan and let them deal with it. The warden lady raised bloody hell, but she couldn't get it straightened out either. So finally she just admitted me. Not that I gave much of a shit one way or the other. Some fat old bulldog of a matron checked me in. "Strip!" she growled. "All the way!" I doubt she even remembered what a dick was for. I thought she'd give me a jumpsuit or something, but instead she paraded me naked through the entrance area, right past the receptionist and the clerk. She left me in a waiting room for about an hour and a half. Then she paraded me back again, in case anybody wanted a second look. She led me down several corridors toward a room full of voices. It was a changing room with benches in the middle and showers along one wall. There were about twenty chicks in there, each one as naked as the day she was born. I'd never seen so much skin in my life. Tits galore. Asses, snatches, all right there to see. When they caught a glimpse of me all hell broke loose. They started hooting and calling and pointing. A few backed away and tried to cover up, but most of them gawked and squealed like it was bachelorette night at the club. Bulldog prodded me into the room. I was now pretty much surrounded by naked girls. But I was naked too, and there were twenty of them against only one of me. They weren't all good lookers, either. There were fatties with boobs halfway down to their waists, and one old bag with jugs like empty wineskins. And every single one of them was looking directly at me. Some with looks of dumb bewilderment, some with looks of raunchy glee, some with looks of feral wariness. "Shower off," growled Bulldog. I wasn't quite sure how to play it. I knew I couldn't let them see that I was scared. I also didn't think that any kind of cocky bravado would go down too well. So I put on my best rebel-without-a-cause indifference and sauntered toward the showers, ignoring the ogles and taunts as if it were just the same old type of shit I had to put up with every day of my life. It wasn't any use trying to cover anything up, my nakedness went far deeper than that. The girls parted in front of me, leaving me a shower head all to myself. Every eye was on me. I soaped up my chest and arms, then my dick and balls. Hoots and whistles. Then I turned around to rinse my back, bringing my front side back into general view. More hoots, more whistles. The towels were on the other side of the room. The girls didn't part as readily this time. Some of them leaned out to brush against me, or stood their ground so that I had to maneuver around them. I tried not to pay anyone any attention. "Hey, handsome." "Ooh, I want you right now." As I approached the towels, three girls snatched up the last of them from the pile. The leader was about twenty with jet black hair, a striking face, and tits like a movie star. She had dried off already, and she draped the fresh towel around her shoulders and arms like some kind of stole. She sashayed right up to me, brandishing her chest with each step. Her tits were spectacular. Her nipples were hard and full. Her pussy was clean shaven. She looked me up and down, lingering her gaze on my limp cock. She looked me straight in the eye, but she spoke over her shoulder. "He's a faggot, I'd say. My boyfriend woulda fucked half the girls in here by now and still been as hard as a telephone pole." Then she addressed me directly. "Hey, lover boy. Know what this is?" She spread open her vagina, showing me her pink inner lips. She took the towel and wiped herself there. Then she dropped it at my feet. My first impulse was to pick the towel up and use it, but something told me it wasn't a good idea to start my prison career smearing myself with another inmate's pussy juice. "'Preciate it," I said. I stepped around her and went over to the laundry cart where the girls had been throwing their wet towels. I didn't look back, just took out a towel that wasn't too soggy and dried off the best I could. Not a sound in the house. The other matron had droopy eyes more like a hound dog. She blew her whistle, and the girls dawdled up into two lines. Bulldog indicated with her baton a place in the middle where one girl didn't have a partner. She was about my age, and one of the better looking ones. "What the fuck is this?" she complained as I got in line beside her. She gave me a disgusted look, then turned her head away. "Do-LO-res!" called the other girls. "Oh, girl!" "Don't use him up." "Save a little for me!" We marched out of the shower room, me and twenty naked girls. The one in front of me kept stopping short so I would bump into her. She had a skinny little ass, the kind you'd never get into bed with in the first place. The one behind me kept trying to grab me from behind. My partner just pretended I wasn't there. We came into a hallway with doors along each side. There weren't any bars, just regular doors like in a dormitory, but each one had a little spy window. Each pair of girls stopped in front of one of the doors and stood in a poor imitation of attention. They were all still staring at me. Staring at my cock, to be precise. The pair right across from me were making kissy faces and giggling. This part of the building didn't seem to be heated, and it was pretty chilly. Most of the girls had their arms crossed over their chests, and I did the same thing. Hound Dog passed up and down, making sure that everyone was accounted for. Then there was a loud buzz as the doors were unlocked. My cellmate made it clear that I should go in first. The cell had a toilet and sink on one wall and a bunk bed on the other, with a small barred window on the far wall. It was cold as hell. The doors buzzed again to lock us in. My cellmate couldn't help but acknowledge me now. We were locked in together for the night. We were both naked. We didn't know each other from Adam and Eve. We stared at each other warily, like a couple of unacquainted alley cats. As far as I was concerned, we were both on the same side, us against the man. But I could see that she might not see it that way. She spoke first. "Will you just get in the damn bed?" Each bunk had a thin mattress with a kind of bolster attached for a pillow. There were two blankets on the bottom bunk, which I assumed was hers, but none on the top one, which I assumed would be mine. "Where do I get blankets?" I asked. "They only give us two blankets per cell," she replied, impatiently. "But one isn't warm enough, so we have to sleep together." She still had her arms crossed in front of her and her thighs pressed together against the cold. "You get in first. But if you try any funny business, I swear to God I'll rip your balls off with my bare teeth." I got in the bottom bunk, under the coarse blankets. "Turn on your side," she said. I turned toward her. "The other way," she commanded. I turned toward the wall. Then she got in and pressed up against me, back to back and butt to butt. The bed was narrow, but laying like that there was just room to snug the blankets down around us. The cold mattress gave me goose bumps, and I started shivering. It was only after a couple of minutes that I started to warm up. "So why'd they put you in with the girls?" she asked eventually in not-quite-so-cross a tone. "Are you really a fag?" "Nah," I replied. "It was just a mess up with the paperwork. The warden lady couldn't get it straightened out." "What are you in for, anyway." "Change of scenery." She gave a little snort of a laugh. "Well, you got that, I guess." "How about you?" "What am I in for? Being born on the wrong side of town. That's what I'm in for." I'd been all tensed up, but now that I was warmer I let myself relax a bit. Her back and her butt felt warmer now too. It wasn't every day that I found myself sharing a blanket with a naked girl, even back to back. I tried to remember what she looked like. I could picture her face---full lips, dark hair, pretty enough. I knew she had tits, nipples, all the right parts, but I couldn't picture them as clearly. I guess my eyes had been overloaded from all the flesh in the shower room. I started to get a hard on. After a bit I realized that I needed to pee. Really bad. At first I thought I could hold out until morning. But eventually I had to admit that I was going to have to do something about it. "I've got to pee," I said. "Well don't do it in the bed." I worked my way out of the blankets, and then climbed over her. The light in the ceiling was full on. I was really embarrassed to have her see me with my hard on. The toilet was across from the foot of the bed, so she had a full view of everything. I thought she'd look away, but she stared out from the blankets like she was watching the National Geographic Channel. I stood there for the longest time without being able to go. Finally I squeezed the end of my dick to deflate it a little. "Do you mind?" I asked. "You want privacy? You shoulda got yourself a different travel agent." At last I was able to get a trickle started, and then a reasonable flow. It drummed against the metal basin, pungent as an outdoor privy. It was a relief, but Christ almighty! Peeing naked in front of a chick. I'd never felt so embarrassed in my life. But what could I do? When I was done, I looked around for the handle. "How do you flush this thing?" "Can't," she said. "They'll do it in the morning." Great. So now we both had to smell my stale horse piss for the rest of the night. That made me even more embarrassed. I started back to the bed. "Wash your hands first, for Christ sake," she said. The faucet was the kind you push once and the water comes out for about a second or so. It was cold as ice. There wasn't any towel, but there was a little bit of toilet paper. "Oh no you don't," she said. "Shake them off, and they dry them on the corner of the blanket." I did. Then I had to climb back over her, hard on and everything, to get back under the blankets. "Fuck, you're cold!" she said, but she didn't pull away. I tried to do a little thinking. Not much else to do. This whole setup really sucked. Being locked up in this damn cell really sucked, although I guess I deserved that. But I didn't deserve being confined to this damn bed because it was too cold to get out. And I certainly didn't deserve having to be naked in front of all these chicks, having to pee in front of them. That really sucked. Chances are they would move me to Potter eventually. But what if they took their sweet time about it? I'd be stuck here in this damn place until then. Would they keep me naked all the time? That would kind of put me at a disadvantage. Somehow I'd have to get the lay of the land and figure out how to make the best of things. That got me thinking about my cellmate. Her back and her butt were still pressed up against me for warmth. She hadn't said boo, hadn't even moved, since I got back into bed. But, she didn't really strike me as as tough and mean as she tried to come across. That "rip your balls off" stuff was just bluster. I couldn't blame her. Locked up alone and naked with a strange guy, I would have done the same if I was her. When you got down to it, she'd actually treated me pretty square so far. She'd talked to me. She'd shared her damn bed with me. So what if she was a bit gruff and stared while I was peeing. If we were going to be penned up together, it would be a good idea to try to get along. "Is that your name?" I asked the wall. "Dolores?" "That's what they call me." "Mine's Hector." No reply. "Do they leave the light on all night?" I asked. "Christ. You've never been in before, have you?" "First time for everything, I guess." "They'll turn it off in an hour or so. This is supposed to be our 'reflection time.'" "Reflect on our lives of crime?" "Whatever." "They said that this is supposed to be some kind of work camp. What kind of stuff do they make us do?" "Busy work when its cold like this. When it warms up they'll make us go chop shit in the fields." "Do they keep us naked all the time?" "Only at night. They give us work clothes during the day. Saves the county money that way somehow, I guess. " "County's saving a shit load on heating bills too I'd say." She gave her little snort of a laugh. "Who's the towel girl?" "That's Rachel Ramirez. Her boy friend is a big gang banger or something." Neither of us said anything for a while. As far as I was concerned, it had been a pleasant conversation. I didn't want to make too much of a nuisance of myself. My hard on finally grew bored that nobody was paying it any attention. Eventually the lights clicked off. "Good night, then," I said. "Yeah," she mumbled. "Night." I'd never slept in the same bed with a girl before. Sometime in the night I woke up. I could hear her breathing softly beside me. I was uncomfortable from sleeping on my side for so long, so I gently turned over on my back. My arm was on the bed between us, pressed up against her back. I could have touched her thigh if I'd dared. In The Slammer Ch. 02 The next morning we were blasted awake by a klaxon that was louder than a police siren. Dolores got up sleepily and sat on the toilet. I wasn't yet used to sharing a bed with a naked girl. Her tits were trim and sporty, with just the slightest bit of bounce. Her short brown hair would have been sassy if it wasn't so tousled. Her lips were puffy from sleep. I could hear the tinkle of her pee, then a small plop. She took a piece of toilet paper and used it to wipe herself in the front. She used the same piece in the back, making it last for two or three careful wipes. Then she washed her hands in the sink. There was a big red circle around her ass from the cold seat. "Move over," she grumbled, as she got back into bed. She pulled the blanket up tightly around her shoulder. "What comes next?" I asked. "They'll roust us out in ten minutes or so. Better use the toilet if you have to." I didn't have to poop, but I did have to pee again. She had left a small brown log in the bowl, and my pee played over it. The morning drill was the opposite of the evening one. The doors buzzed open, the girls dragged themselves out into the corridor, hugging themselves against the cold. They perked up when they remembered they had a new tenant. Everyone eyed the two of us with real curiosity. They each seemed to have their own idea about how things might have gone between us during the night. They looked for some corroboratory evidence in our appearance or body language. I couldn't figure out which made me look more ridiculous, putting my hands over my crotch or leaving them at my side. Dolores didn't pay any attention to the other girls or to me. Hound Dog counted us up, then blew her whistle and marched us to the changing room. We stood in line, and a large black woman behind the counter handed out a little pile of clothes to each one. When my turn came, she looked me up and down. "Sugar," she pronounced, "I hate to be the one to tell you, but you in the wrong institution." "Seems to be a matter of debate," I replied. "Well, while they debatin', we can't have you walking around like that." She handed me some clothes. "You're a large for sure. What's your shoe size, sugar? " "Ten and a half." "That's about twelve and a half, women's." She went to a shelf and brought me a pair of used sneakers. "You guard these with your life, hear? The girls will show you where to store them. Now you go put these on before you give an old woman palpitations." Dolores was at a bench with two other girls, so I went over there. One was a mousy thing who had tried to cover herself up the night before in the showers. Now she looked at me with a combination of embarrassment and fear, getting dressed as fast as she could. The other was a big black girl who stepped between me and Dolores. "How are you doing this morning, Dolores?" she asked, glaring at me with a stern expression, no more concerned about the fact that she was naked than a panther would have been. "All right," Dolores said, noncommittally. The black girl backed off, but remained vigilant. I figured she must be a friend of Dolores's. But it didn't seem the right thing to do to try to introduce myself with my dick hanging out. So I opened my packet. It consisted of a pair of plain white panties, a sports bra, sweat socks, a pair of baggy pants, and a baggy shirt. I decided I could do without the panties and the bra. The pants had a string that tied around the waist. I left the shirt untucked, like everybody else. The shoes fit well enough. Once I was dressed, I didn't feel nearly as vulnerable. I was just one more inmate. The black girl was dressed now too. "I'm Hector," I said. "Annie," she replied, making it clear that she was still keeping her eye on me. "That's Misha," indicating the mousy girl. After we were dressed, they marched us down to the dining hall. I fell into line after Dolores and Annie and got my bowl of oatmeal. But there wasn't any more room at their table, which left me standing alone like the unpopular kid at school. Annie indicated that I could sit at the next table over. "That's Black Betty," she said. It was the older woman with the leathery jugs. She wasn't black, just kind of naturally grimy. "I'm in with Annie," she grinned. "You're in with Dolores. How come they put you in with her?" "Mix up with the paperwork." "Wish they'd 'a mixed you up with me," she said, digging into her oatmeal. "I ain't got all my teeth." She grinned, showing me what she meant. "Give pretty good blow jobs. Least I ain't never had any complaints." Misha sat down next to Black Betty. "Be like being in prison with your old man," Black Betty opined. "Have its pluses and its minuses. You ever had a old man?" Misha shook her head. "Can't live with 'em and can't live without 'em," Black Betty philosophized. "Better eat up." Rachel Ramirez sashayed between the tables, carrying her tray. "Morning, lover boy," she said. "My, my! Don't you dress up nice! Angels sing you to sleep last night?" Her two lieutenants followed a step behind, leering like hyenas. I gave them all a curt nod. They had the girls divided up into work groups. After breakfast they put me in the same group as Misha and Black Betty. They marched us over to rehabilitate ourselves by sweeping an empty warehouse. ----- By that evening the girls were already starting to get more used to me. In the day room, after supper, I wasn't the sole focus of attention. The girls would drift over in my direction and chatter and act silly so that I would notice them, but then they would drift back to whatever else it was they were doing. Dolores sat by herself reading a tattered copy of People magazine. Rachel Ramirez held court at one of the tables, listening to her lieutenants' reports. One of them had been in my work group. She'd given me all kinds of little chores to do until I figured out that she didn't have any real authority. Rachel kept glancing over in my direction with an amused look in her eye. Finally they rounded us up for our shower. The girls seemed to find it thrilling that they had no choice but to undress in front of me. They went about it deliberately and dramatically, pretending not to pay any special attention to the fact that I was among them, but striking little poses as each new item of clothing came off. They also pretended not to take any special notice of the fact that I was getting undressed too. But every one of them held her breath as I lowered my pants. I felt like a shy kid on the first day of gym class. This was the way things were going to be, and I would just have to get used to it. I was just another inmate, whether I had clothes on or not. I no longer even seemed to stand out that much. We all had two arms and two legs. We all had a crack in our ass. We all had two nipples in front, and even though my chest was toward the flatter end of the spectrum, there were at least a couple girls with chests almost as flat as mine. Most of us had a tuft of hair between our legs. Most of the girls were innies, but one was bursting out like an overstuffed turkey sandwich, and another one had what looked for all the world like a snubby, swirly little cock head sticking right out for all to see. Next to them my own outie didn't really seem all that far out of the ordinary. They didn't appear to be self conscious about theirs, why should I be self conscious about mine? This time I had to jockey for a spot under the shower head. I had to wait for the soap until one girl was finished with it, and I had to pass it on to another girl when I was finished with it myself. I made a point to grab a towel before they ran out. After I dried off I kept it tied around my waist until the last possible minute. Rachel Ramirez was standing by the laundry cart. "My towel's all wet," she said, innocently. "Can I borrow yours?" She dropped her towel into the cart, revealing her shaven pussy and movie-star tits. She took mine. She brought it up to her face, and gently touched it to her cheeks, looking sweetly into my eyes. Then she lifted each breast and carefully wiped the under crease. Then she wiped between her legs. She was essentially doing what I'd been afraid to do the day before, rubbing herself all over with my used towel. She was just horsing around, but it completely dispelled any notion that our anatomical differences were merely superficial. I could feel myself starting to respond. I fled back into the relative safety of the crowd. My dick was accordioned out about as far as it could go without actually starting to get stiff. I was grateful when the Hound Dog blew her whistle. There were enough distractions getting into line and parading back to the cell block to keep things under control. Dolores hadn't paid the slightest bit of attention to me the whole day. But as soon as they buzzed the two of us into our cell for the night, my dick sprang up like a noisemaker on New Year's Eve. Right in front of her. She didn't say anything, and I was too embarrassed to say anything either. I just got under the icy blankets. She got in behind me, back to back and butt to butt. I'd been thinking that things would be better when I got to the Men's Facility. But now I began to wonder. What if I had to share a bed with a guy? What if they made us sleep naked there too? It was bad enough that I was always getting a hard on in front of Dolores. But at least with her it was clear where it came from. "Can I ask you a question?" I asked the wall. "Do you know anything about Potter?" "Where you're supposed to be?" "Yeah. Do they make the guys there sleep naked too?" "If they do it here, they probably do it there too." "I just can't imagine guys sleeping together naked in the same bunk." "If they get cold enough." "Most guys would rather freeze to death." "Well, I guess they gotta do what they gotta do." "If it was a girl in here with you, would you be sleeping with her?" "I was until you came along." "Didn't it creep you out?" "Things usually don't turn out as bad as you think they will." ----- After supper on Thursdays we had hygiene class instead of day room. The teacher was Mrs. Carlsen. She was in her mid thirties, short brown hair, average height, very nicely built. She was always sharply dressed, her hair in perfect order, her features brought out by just the slightest touch of makeup. Not that it's that hard to look stunning in front of a roomful of washed out inmates. But she wasn't trying to show off, just to set an example. She was surprised to find a boy in her class. I had to explain about the mix up. "I think we're very fortunate to have Hector here with us," she told the class. "Men and women need to know about each other as well as about themselves. Now we'll have an added incentive to consider the male perspective." The topic for the class was douching, how you're not supposed to do it because it upsets the flora in your vagina. I'll admit I didn't know too much about the topic and I learned a thing or two. Mrs. Carlsen promised that future classes would try to strike a better balance between girl issues and boy issues. She had a few words with me after class. "Do they have you sharing a cell with one of the girls?" "Yes, ma'am." "I don't suppose they've thought to provide you with any kind of protection?" "No, ma'am." "I'll see what I can do. But in the meantime, promise me you'll be careful." "Yes, ma'am, I will." ----- "Fuck!" It was Dolores. I'd been dreaming something really nice, but I couldn't quite remember what it was. "Fuck!" She was out of the bed, yanking off the blankets. My thigh was wet. I realized that I must have had a wet dream, and that it must have shot all over her. I must have turned around in my sleep. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She had thrown one of the blankets on the upper bunk and was using the other one to wipe the backs of her thighs. She kept turning the blanket to find a dry spot. When she was done she threw the used blanket at me. "Asshole!" She climbed up into the top bunk and bounced around furiously as she tried to arrange the other blanket over herself. I was still half asleep. Surely she must understand what had happened. She must know how it worked. But it was too complicated, too late at night, to try to explain. "Sorry," I mumbled. I turned the blanket this way and that trying to avoid the wet spots. I tried to get back to my pleasant dream, but it was long gone. I had trouble getting to sleep at all. It was a long, cold night. As soon as the lights came on in the morning I got up and tried to wash the blanket out. I could see the wet spots, and I used water from the sink, a little soap, a little more water. I tried not to get the blanket any wetter than I had to, and then wrung out each spot as hard as I could. Dolores climbed down to use the toilet. She looked like she'd had a rough night too. She was still pissed as hell. I moved aside to let her wash her hands, then kept on at my chore. No sense even trying to talk to her. She climbed back up on the top bunk and wrapped herself in her blanket. I tucked the edge of my blanket under the upper mattress and let it hang down to dry. I paced back and forth to keep warm. It took forever for the doors to buzz open. ----- That evening, all the girls were aware that Dolores wasn't talking to me, but no one knew why. They strained their necks watching us go into our cell. Dolores climbed up on the upper bunk, wrapped herself in her blanket, and stared out the window. The other blanket had dried out pretty well, but it was still a little damp. I went to the toilet, but instead of peeing I started to stroke my dick. It soon got hard, and I kept stroking it pretty forcefully. I couldn't tell if she was watching me, or not, but I was red as a beet. As if having to pee in front of her wasn't enough, now this. I finally came into the toilet bowl. I squeezed the last gobs of cum from my dick and washed my hands. "It was an accident you know," I said, shaking the water off my hands. No response. "It happens to guys sometimes you know. They have a sexy dream, and they come in their sleep. I didn't do it on purpose." No response. "It won't happen again. It only happens if you let things build up. From now on I'll take care of things so that they don't build up." No response. I got into bed and curled up under the blanket. It was another chilly night. The blanket was damp and practically worthless. What a crock of crap. It wasn't bad enough that they locked you up, but they made you shower with girls, pee with girls, even sleep with girls, and then when your body did what bodies naturally do, somehow it was all your fault. "Look, I'm really sorry. I promise it won't happen again. You can come back down if you want." No response. Five minutes later, though, she did come down. She still didn't say anything, but she helped me arrange the blankets. We got back in bed, back to back and butt to butt. ----- Rachel Ramirez's lieutenant, the one in my work group, was named Porsche, "like the car." She carried herself as if she was in Rachel's league, but in reality she was only a cheep knock-off. Her stitching was a bit off, her paint a bit prone to chip. She was always trying to lord it over the rest of us. She always acted as if she were a supervisor and never lifted a finger to do any actual work. She always took an extra sandwich at lunch, even when that didn't leave enough to go around. She had it in for me because I didn't fawn over her the way she thought I should. She took it out on Misha. She was always finding fault with her, always trying to make her redo her work. I tried to steer clear of her as much as possible, but I always found myself having to stand up for Misha. One day Porsche tripped Misha in the showers. She wouldn't normally have done something so blatant, but it was kind of a perfect opportunity, and not even Misha was sure exactly what had happened. Misha landed hard on her butt, and a lot of the girls laughed, Rachel among them. Annie was right there and helped her up. She hadn't seen what Porsche had done. But Rachel had. ----- That evening for some reason I was as antsy as antsy could be. I couldn't lay still. I couldn't stop fidgeting. I finally crawled over Dolores and started pacing back and forth in the cell. "How can you stand this place?" Four paces to the wall, four paces back. "Having to stay in bed all evening!" Four paces to the wall, four paces back. "Having to sweep the same empty warehouse every other goddamn day!" Four paces to the wall, four paces back. "Not a single goddamn laundry basket in the whole goddamn laundry!" It was so cold that it looked like I was wearing a dandelion salad with a cherry tomato in the center. Dolores was watching from the bed. She wasn't sure if it was the National Geographic Channel or Survivor, but it was the only thing on. "Things would be a lot different around here if I was in charge." Pushup, two, three, four. "You better believe they would." Deep knee bend. Deep knee bend. "At least I'd make sure there were enough goddamn blankets." Pushup, two, three, four. "At least I'd be able to tell the difference between the boys and the girls." Deep knee bend. Deep knee bend. I climbed back over her, got under the edge of the blankets, trying not to disturb her pocket of warmth, facing the wall. "Don't they know that sleeping on the same side every night gives you scoliosis? Something-osis, anyway." "So turn over," Dolores said. "It's a free country." "Free country!" I turned over. I was facing her now, facing her back, hunched away not to intrude on her space. "Free country!" I propped myself up on my elbow. "I guess that's why they leave the door unlocked at night. I guess that's why they leave the refrigerator all stocked up." She turned over onto her back and looked up at me, half amused. "Look," I said. "This place is driving me crazy. I'm going to break out. You going to come with me?" She took it as a rhetorical question. "All we need is one of those things that girls wear in their hair. Bobby pins. You probably still got a couple up there if you look hard enough. We'll use them to saw through the bars. We'll tie the blankets together." She was lying right there beside me. I could so easily have slipped my arm around her. "I'm not saying it will be easy. It might take a couple years." "We'll be out by then," she reminded me. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shoot down the only good idea I ever had." I slipped back out from under the blankets and arched myself over her to get out of bed again. Always before it had been like crossing in front of someone in the movie theater, you not looking at them, they not looking at you. But this time she was on her back and I straddled her face to face. Within kissing distance. Four paces to the wall. Four paces back. Deep knee bend. Touch my toes. My dick bobbed around like a bobble-headed dachshund. I lay down on the cold floor. I scooted myself under the bed. I strained and strained, but I couldn't lift it an inch. I was cold as an iceberg. I got up. I dusted myself off. I crawled back over her. I slipped under the blankets. Facing the wall. Trying not to disturb her pocket of warmth. She turned back over on her side. She adjusted the blankets over her shoulder. She gently settled herself back against me. Back to back. Butt to butt. Warmth to cold. Skin to skin. ----- On Sunday, they let us sleep in until 10 o'clock. Dolores could have slept until noon without any trouble, but I woke up early and got pretty bored staring at the wall. They didn't give us any breakfast, but they gave us postum with our usual sandwich at noon and called it brunch. We went outside to the yard for a couple of hours, then spent the rest of the afternoon in the day room. In The Slammer Ch. 02 After supper, they took us for showers in groups of six. They gave the girls disposable razors to shave their legs. I took one too to see what I could do about the stubble on my face. Hound Dog arranged us two per shower head and kept a pretty close watch. I guess she wanted to make sure that nobody tried to slit anybody's throat with their disposable razor. The two girls from across the hall, the silly ones who were always bumping into me in line, were in our group. Their names were Hankie and Patty, but everyone called them Hank and Pank. As we were coming in, Hank ran up to me and yanked on my cock. Then she dashed over to her shower head, giggling with Pank as if it had been the funniest thing in the world. I was getting a bit fed up with the two of them. So I hitched up my chest and stomped over to their shower head. They were surprised to see me coming. I plodded straight through the falling water, only stopping a half step short of mashing Hank into the wall. My face was glaring, my chest steaming, my balls dripping. It seemed to make an impression. She wasn't giggling now. I could have played it tough, but there really wasn't any need. She looked like somebody's skinny little sister. "Look," I said, glaring down at her. "I don't think you'd like it if I did that kind of stuff to you, and I don't like it when you do it to me. So I'm asking you to stop." I waited for some kind of response, but she was too scared to move. "OK?" I bellowed. "OK," she mewed. "OK then." I went back to the other shower head. There wasn't any shaving cream of course, only soap. And there wasn't any mirror. I had to shave by memory and then feel around to see if I'd missed anything. Dolores was shaving her legs. She held her pussy out of the way to reach the tops of her thighs. Then she bent over to do her shins and calves. Her buns were smooth and tight, her legs trim and shapely. Everybody thought I was banging her. They saw the two of us go into our cell together every night, and they couldn't imagine any other scenario. The fact that she never said anything one way or the other only served to confirm it in their minds. If it had been up to me, we probably would have been. The Department of Corrections doesn't give you much, the least you can do is take advantage when they do. If two people in our situation were able to come to some mutual understanding about scratching each other's backs, more power to them. But Dolores didn't seem to see it that way. As far as she was concerned, we were just roommates. We owed each other a little basic courtesy, but that was it. If we'd been on the outside, just being apartment mates wouldn't have entitled us to any special benefits. Why should things be different on the inside? The fact that we had to sleep together naked was beside the point. If one's sense of propriety wasn't strong enough to hold up against something like that, then it wasn't very strong at all. She never said any of this in so many words, but this is the sense I got. I couldn't really argue with it. They took us back to our cell. We had an extra hour before lights out. We got into the bunk. We played twenty questions for a while. We talked about stuff we used to do when we were kids. We stared at our respective walls. We played another round of twenty questions. Things cellmates do to pass time in the slammer. ----- A couple evenings later it was so cold you could see your breath in the hallway. By the time they buzzed the doors open everyone was shivering. Dolores and I got straight in under the blankets. But it was too cold to sleep back to back. I turned around and spooned against her icy body. Then she turned around too, and we hugged each other for warmth. I put my arm around her back and pulled her close up against me so there wouldn't be even a chink in the blankets. Her breasts were jammed against my chest. Her leg was wedged in between mine. After a while we stopped shivering. The blankets warmed up. Things got more comfortable. You know how it is when you're lying in front of the fire, and everything has gotten all snug and cozy, and you're sort of paralyzed by the delicious equilibrium. Neither of us made any effort to disentangle ourselves. When my dick started to stiffen, I rolled my hips back slightly to lift it away from her thigh. She put her head up onto the pillow so that her breasts were no longer touching my chest. But we didn't really release our embrace. Our legs were still intertwined. Our equilibrium remained intact. I found myself looking at her eyes looking back at mine. It struck me that even though there wasn't a single sound or movement in the room, the inside of her head was just as alive with thoughts and feelings as mine was. There was a whole world in there, as vivid to her as mine was to me. What was it like, behind those eyes? The two of us were like two iron-plated bathyscaphes who had clunked into each other at the bottom of the ocean. I could vaguely make her out through the thick, silent glass, but I could never really know what it was like to be her, all warm and alive there inside her comfy cabin on the other side of that thick iron hull. But that got me to wondering. All those thoughts and feelings inside our heads are conducted by electrical impulses, right? And those impulses must send off waves of one sort or another. And those waves must radiate out, at least to some extent. And so if we were lying close enough together, wouldn't our waves overlap? And don't waves that overlap tend to pull on each other and synchronize with each other? In fact, wouldn't they necessarily merge into a single wave? But if there was only a single wave, wouldn't that mean that the two of us would be feeling exactly the same thing? In fact, you couldn't even talk about two separate feelings any more. There would just be one single feeling that the two of us would be sharing. One milkshake, two straws. I felt as sure as I've ever felt about anything in my life that the exact same feeling of cozy togetherness that was washing over me was washing over both of us. One single shared feeling resonating back and forth between us, allowing us, for at least a moment, to experience directly what the other was experiencing. Allowing us to visit a while inside each other's bathyscaphes. To warm ourselves at the same fire, to cuddle together on the same davenport, wrapped in the same afghan, safe inside the same iron hull. In The Slammer Ch. 03 "I don't believe it," I said. "I saw it with my own eyes," said Dolores. It was still an hour until lights out. It was a warm evening, and one of us could have gone up to the upper bunk. But we'd gotten kind of used to sharing the lower one. It would get colder later, anyway. "Every falling star I ever saw just left a narrow streak. And it only lasted a second," I said. "Those are shooting stars," she said. "Falling stars are really rare. This one zoomed down from outer space shooting off sparks and flames. I swear to God. It left a trail like a comet across the sky." It was more than two weeks since I'd been admitted. I no longer held out much hope that I'd ever get transferred to the Men's Facility. According to Dolores, I was in the computer, and once you're in the computer there isn't much anyone can do. "I never heard of such a thing," I said. "It was in the paper. A lot of people saw it. A big ball of fire, just like I said." "Really?" "They even figured out where it landed. They went out to look for pieces." "So how come I never heard of it?" "So maybe you didn't read the paper that day." "So how come I never heard that there was any difference between falling stars and shooting stars?" "So maybe you don't know everything about astrology there is to know." "Astronomy." "Astronomy. And maybe you should believe people when they tell you what they've seen with their own eyes." "Yeah, maybe I should." "Yeah, maybe you should." - In the next Hygiene class, Mrs. Carlsen laid out in numbing detail all the arduous realities of childbirth: the morning sickness, the labor pains, the sleepless nights, the endless diapers. She had a little boy and girl of her own, and you could tell that she was crazy about them. But she was trying to get us to realize that having babies-and by implication making them-is serious business. One of the things she mentioned was that she and her husband had decided not to have their son circumcised. They weren't particularly religious, and there's no real reason for it, hygiene-wise. She gave a little lesson on what every mother should know about caring for the uncircumcised penis. In the showers that evening the girls all crowded around. They'd been seeing my cock every day now for the past three weeks, and it was no longer quite the potent, forbidding totem some of them had originally thought. They were curious to examine it more closely. "Do you mind?" asked Helen. She was one of the fatties, but in a pretty, motherly kind of way. She took it and gingerly rolled it around with her fingers. Hank and Pank's eyes were as big as saucers. Even Dolores was looking on from the fringes. Helen traced a faint jagged line that ran around the shaft slightly beneath the head. "That must be the scar," she said. To tell the truth, I'd never really noticed it myself. "Can you feel it?" they asked. "Does it hurt?" "Oh, poor Hector!" "Does it feel lonely?" "Does it get cold, all naked like that." My cock had never gotten so much attention. "Does a guy who is feel different from a guy who isn't?" someone wondered. The question might have been intended for Dolores, but it was fielded by Black Betty. "A dick's a dick," she said. "Never made much difference to me." - Mrs. Carlsen had stopped me again on my way out of class. She waited until all the girls had gone and then gave me a little packet of condoms. For some reason I felt compelled to tell her the truth-that I didn't really need them at the present time. I felt embarrassed to say it, like I wasn't living up to expectations. "Why don't you take them anyway," she said, "Just in case." There was a little shelf in our cell for personal items. Dolores didn't have anything on it, and now I had this packet of condoms. We both knew that everybody thought we were doing it, but it was a subject we didn't talk about. The presence of the condoms didn't make the subject any easier to ignore. The fact that everyone thought we were doing it had given Dolores a certain status among the girls. They envied and admired her. She was kind of a symbol that even in this dysfunctional mess of a women's prison it was still possible to be a real woman. It hadn't hurt my reputation either. And it diffused a lot of the tension. The fact that the other girls thought I was spoken for made it easier for them to treat me like just another guy, instead of feeling that they had to treat me like the last man on Earth. If they ever found out that Dolores and I weren't really doing it, they would probably have felt that we were letting them down. But even if we weren't doing it the way they imagined, Dolores and I had developed a relationship of a sort. We shared a room. We shared a bed. We stretched out alongside each other and talked about things. We felt the comfort of each other's presence. We'd taken to lying face-to-face during reflection time. Sometimes we slept that way too. We'd gotten used to the touch of each other's skin. We were like a couple of kids who'd been forced to share a bedroom and had made the most of it. Sort of. My cock wasn't quite as innocent a nudist as I tried to be. He was always sniffing around, trying to stir something up. Dolores didn't pay him much attention, but he never gave up hope. It wasn't that she was gay. It wasn't that she had a boyfriend waiting on the outside. It wasn't so much anything about me in particular. As far as I could tell, it was just her sense of propriety. The Department of Corrections might tell her who she had to bunk with, but she'd be damned if she'd let them tell her who she had to sleep with. I can't say I blamed her. She had her back to me. We hadn't talked about the condoms, or the fact that people thought we were doing it, or the fact that we weren't. Neither of us had said a word all evening. It was almost time for lights out. Maybe I was blowing things out of proportion. Maybe she wasn't really concerned at all. Maybe she was thinking about something else entirely. But on the off chance that she was concerned, I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her the lightest possible hug. "Fuck 'em," I said. "It's none of their damn business." Then I turned toward the wall to give her her space. - A couple days later it seemed like everybody's emotions were on edge. Everyone was snitty in the day room. Nobody said much in the shower. After the shower, they handed out sanitary pads. They were awkward things, more like diapers than anything else. I'd seen one or two of the girls wearing them before, but now it seemed like everybody had one on. Even Rachel Ramirez's pretty little pussy and pretty little bottom were covered up in blue cotton. I guess it's true what they say about women living together. In line, Hank and Pank were ready to rip each other's throats out. Dolores was fuming too. When we got into the cell, she paced up and down in her silly diaper with her breasts flapping and her hands out to the side as if she had just touched something nasty. "Come on to bed," I said. "I'll sleep on the top bunk." "I don't think it's contagious." "Just shut up, OK?" She finally did get in, but with her back to me. I tried to put my arm around her to warm her up but she shrugged it off. Mrs. Carlsen hadn't talked much about periods yet. I wasn't sure what to do. "Can I ask you a question?" No response. "Can you tell me what's it like, having your period?" She didn't say anything for the longest time. But finally she did. "It's kind of like when you've got diarrhea. You feel like shit, and all you want to do is stay at home in bed. But you can't. You've got to get up and go to school or whatever. So you go around all day, feeling like shit and trying to keep your butt sucked up so that nothing drips out. But there's nothing you can do to stop it. "And sometimes it doesn't just drip, it gushes. You can feel it rushing down. And so you've got to plug it up with a tampon. But they don't give out tampons, they only give out these crappy napkins that don't fit right and are always leaking. So you're always worried that it's leaking down your leg and staining your pants and everybody can see it. "And it doesn't just happen when you're sick, it happens every month of your life until you're too old to know the difference. That's what having a period is like." Not a whole lot I could say to that. - I was still jacking off every couple of days in order to avoid another nocturnal accident. I would stand at the toilet with my back to Dolores-about as much privacy as you can get in a prison cell. She never seemed to pay much attention. But one day, after I'd finished up, she asked shyly, "Was it nice?" "What do you mean?" "I thought that's why guys did it." "It wasn't like that. It was just routine maintenance." She was puzzled. "What's the difference?" "With routine maintenance you just try to get it over with. If you want it to feel nice you have to take your time. You know, work up a fantasy, pay attention to how it feels. Isn't it the same for girls?" "But why do you have to just get it over with? If you're going to do it, why not pay attention?" "They're two completely different things. I was just releasing pressure. What you're talking about is fooling around. That isn't something you'd ever do in front of anybody." She was studying my face, trying to understand. "It wouldn't be polite." How to explain it? "It would be like eating a piece of chocolate cake in front of someone when you had one and they didn't." She seriously considered this. "What if they didn't mind?" "It just wouldn't be right." I didn't know how else to say it. - It turned out that there was a closet full of books at the back of Mrs. Carlsen's classroom. It was a little library that inmates were allowed to borrow from, although nobody ever did. I started checking out books, and Dolores and I would read them to each other during reflection time. As the days got longer, we could even read a little longer after lights out. Then we'd lay in bed and talk about what we'd read, trying to figure out who we liked and who we didn't, and why the characters did what they did, and whether we would have done the same. Annie heard about this and got incredibly jealous. She wanted really badly to have someone read to her. Finally we worked it out. One evening, just as they were buzzing us in, Misha pretended to slip and fall down, and when the Bulldog went to check it out, I slipped across the hall into Annie's cell, and Black Betty slipped in with Dolores. It was funny being in her cell. Everything was the same, but different. The bed and the toilet were on the opposite sides of the cell, the stains and chipped-off paint made different patterns on the wall. It was also strange to be alone and naked with somebody besides Dolores. I'd always felt a little spark between myself and Annie. I wouldn't say she was beautiful, but she was pretty enough, and I'd always thought that her brown skin was richer and more attractive than the pasty skin of most of the white girls. It was like she was wearing something even when she wasn't. Like a panther, you might say. She had borrowed a book of fairy stories-knights and dragons and princesses and all that. We climbed up on the top bunk. I did my best to read with feeling and to use different voices for the different characters. She was stretched out beside me staring off into space, lost in the world of make believe. I've never had such an appreciative audience. I found my eyes drifting over to her breasts, which were slowly rising and falling as she breathed. They were bigger than Dolores's, the nipples darker and puffier. It was another case of the same but different. When it got too dark to see the words, she just lay there for the longest time. Still listening, I guess, to the fading echos. It had started to get a little chilly, so I pulled up the blanket. She turned toward me. "Thanks for reading to me, Hector." "It was a nice story." Now that the echos had faded it was just the two of us, alone in bed together, naked. "I'm glad that you and Dolores found each other," she said. "It's funny the way things happen. Here she is the women's prison, and you just fall out of the sky right into her cell. If that isn't the hand of something, I don't know what is." I had a bit of a hard on from being in bed with her. It was the first time I'd gotten hard in front of someone besides Dolores. I didn't think she'd noticed, but she reached across under the blankets and caressed me gently. Just for a second, then she let go. "You know," she said, "sometimes it's hard to say which is worse: in here or out there. But I guess if you gotta be somewhere, it might as well be out there. There's a few things I really miss." She yawned, sleepily. "One of them is cuddling. Do you think it would be all right if we cuddled a little?" In the Slammer Ch. 04 Rachel Ramirez was not only good looking, she was smart as a whip. She knew every answer in Hygiene class before Mrs. Carlsen even asked it. She never raised her hand, though. There wasn't anybody in our class she was even halfway interested in impressing. Mrs. Carlsen had assigned the two of us to do a little project. But Rachel never wanted to work on it. I went over to her one evening in the day room. "It's due the day after tomorrow," I reminded her. "What's she going to do? Throw us in jail?" "Come on. Why don't we just work on it?" "I'll tell you what. You want to work on it so much, how about you do something for me first?" "What's that?" "How about you rip my clothes off, throw me down across this table, and fuck me like you mean it. I mean, if it's not too much trouble." "Rachel!" "You want to, don't you?" "Right here in the day room? In front of everybody?" "It's as good a place as any." "What about the matrons?" "They'll just have to wait their turn." "What about your boyfriend?" "He's done time. He knows how it is." "Come on, Rachel." She looked at me and yawned. "OK, Lover Boy. You wore me down. You talked me into it. Let's work on the dumb project. Let's shoot for the goddamn Nobel prize. Work now, fuck later. That's my motto." --- The weather had warmed up quite a bit, and they finally started sending us out to pick up trash and clear brush along the county roads and open spaces. Everybody was happy to be out in the sunshine and fresh air. I even caught old Bulldog cracking a smile. One evening, Dolores and I were lying on the top bunk. The sky outside our little window was clear and blue. We'd scooted down to put our feet up on the railing. "You know what I saw today?" she asked. "It was on a bush. At first I thought it was a piece of tissue that had gotten caught there. But it was thicker, like maybe a napkin had gotten wet and then dried again. But it was kind of cobwebby, too, and when you looked closer you could see that it was attached to the branches, not just stuck there. It kind of looked like somebody had wrapped a napkin around their thumb to make a mummy, then tied it to the bush. But it was torn open, like the mummy had slit his way out." "A cocoon!" "It must have been, don't you think? And right after, I saw a butterfly! A yellow one, with a black border around its wings. It could have been the very one that hatched from that cocoon. Not hatched, but what-do-you-call-it-ed." "That's pretty cool. I never saw a cocoon before." "Neither did I, until this one." --- One of the perks that Rachel had managed to secure for herself was to be in charge of the weekly inventory of the storeroom. Nobody really knew what went on in there except for Rachel and her lieutenants. But by the time that Tuesday rolled around, word had gotten out that I was to be her new assistant. The girls weren't so sure how they felt about this. It upset the equilibrium. They didn't mind Rachel flirting with me as long as everybody knew I really belonged with Dolores. But now Rachel and I would be alone together in the storage room, beyond public scrutiny, for an hour and a half every Tuesday afternoon. I too figured she must have something up her sleeve. But once we were in the storage room she was all business. There was a lot to be inventoried. The place was considerably more extensive than I had thought. There was all kinds of county stuff in there, not just for the Women's Facility. Rachel had me counting traffic cones, toner cartridges. One of the things I came across was a whole stack of blankets, new ones, enough that none of us would have had to double up. It made me pretty angry. "Ah, little grasshopper," said Rachel, "who are we to second guess the beneficence of the county. Though it may flow through many channels, it all flows to the same ocean." There was also was a big, half empty box of condoms. I couldn't understand what they were doing in the Women's Facility. Rachel explained it to me. "The maleficence of the county flows through many dicks, little grasshopper, and they're all pointed at somebody's twat. This is what the county gives you when they put you back out on the street. A twenty dollar bill and a packet of rubbers." She kept track of everything on her clipboard, checking boxes and filling in numbers. When it was time to knock off, we hadn't quite finished, but she said it was enough for this week. "We got a lot done," she smiled. She hung the clipboard on the wall. Then she came over to me. "Hector," she said, coyly, "remember our project about the food pyramid? Remember how hard I worked on it and how proud Mrs. Carlsen was of the two of us? Wasn't there something you were going to do for me in return? Didn't we have a little deal?" Here it comes, I thought. She took hold of the drawstrings of my pants. "You didn't want to do it in front of everybody, so I arranged for us to have a little time by ourselves." She played with the drawstrings. "I know you're worried about Dolores finding out. But you know that the rules here are different than on the outside. We've all got to bend a little just to get by. We've got to cut each other a little slack. My boyfriend knows how it is. I'm sure Dolores does too. Deep down she knows it isn't fair for her to keep you all to herself." She took a step closer. "We don't have enough time to fuck now, I'm afraid. But could you at least hold me in your arms for a bit?" Her breasts brushed against my chest. "I was hoping you'd fuck me, though," she whispered. "I didn't wear any underwear today, just in case." She was in my arms. She looked into my eyes. Our lips came together in a tender kiss. I tightened my embrace, pressing her movie-star breasts even more closely against my chest. "Umm," she murmured. But it was time for us to get back to our work groups. --- All that week, whenever I closed my eyes I could still feel the soft insistence of Rachel's kiss. It had been so much more tender, so much less wet, than I would have imagined. Her whole behavior had surprised me. I'd had her pegged as a spoiled vixen, used to getting whatever she wanted. I'd thought the only reason she had anything to do with me was because there weren't any other guys around. But she hadn't really been like that at all. She'd been a lot of fun to josh around with. She'd actually been kind of sweet when we kissed. This image of her didn't quite jive with other images I had of her being mean and even cruel. But who was I to judge? By the time that Tuesday rolled around again, I still wasn't sure how I felt about her. But I'd availed myself of every opportunity in the showers and the changing room to ogle her luscious tits and her beckoning slit. She was beautiful, classy, and smart. None of the other girls even held a candle to her. And none of the other girls had arranged to be alone with me for an hour and a half in the storage room. And so, that afternoon, as she walked past me on her way to the traffic cones with her pencil and her clipboard, I wasn't really all that surprised to find myself holding my arm out and catching her up in my embrace. Nor was I surprised that she let herself be caught. I slipped one hand down inside her baggy work pants. No panties, just the silky smooth skin of her bottom. I slid the other hand up inside her top. No bra, just the flawless, uninterrupted skin of her back. I was embracing her naked body inside her clothes. I lifted up her top and she raised her arms to let me take it off. How many times had I seen those luscious breasts in the showers, and now they were all mine. It took both hands to caress each one fully, to feel its heft and its three-dimensionality. Her nipples were as firm and plump as dark red cherries. I licked one and kissed the other and then went back to the first one to savor it more thoroughly. I put both hands down her pants, running them down her taut butt cheeks then back up her hips. I slipped the pants down and she wriggled out of them, sitting back on the stack of blankets. I knelt down and pulled off her shoes and socks so that she was completely nude. Her legs were long and smooth, and she had them slightly opened with her pussy right there in front of my face. There was not a hair to be seen. The outer lips were drawn slightly apart, and the inner ones were peeking out, pink and frilly. I ran my tongue along them. I tried to angle down to the very nadir of her slit and to stick my tongue as far up into her vagina as it would go. She gently took my head between her hands and guided me back north, up to the top. "Try it up here, baby." She tasted slick and pink. I kissed and licked the inner folds, trying to sort them out with my tongue, trying to get my tongue up into the very crease of every little pocket, trying to lick out every last speck of frosting. "Right there, baby," she murmured. "Right there." She clamped my head between her thighs and gently rocked her cunt against my mouth. I painted her with kisses, tongue flicks, broad licks, slurps, playful nibbles. Her breathing became heavier, almost panting. She clamped her thighs even harder and wove her fingers through my hair. She spasmed and writhed, stretching her legs out against my shoulders with my face still tangled up in her crotch. She sat up a bit and reached down to pull off my shirt. She tugged me up so she could slide my pants down. My cock was as hard as a telephone pole. She ran her hands over it, then held it and licked it like a banana pop. She got up and maneuvered me around so that I was sitting on the pile of blankets. She knelt down, straddling my lap, and brought her slit up alongside my cock. She flexed her crotch up and down as if the lips of her cunt were a chamois and she was polishing my hood ornament. I started flexing too, sawing my cock up and down against her like I was trying to start a little fire right there on our laps. Her pretty face was only two inches from mine. We were both looking down at the action, but then she looked across at me and gave me a sweet, playful grin. She stood up, went to a shelf, and brought back one of the condoms. "Courtesy of the county," she said. She unrolled it over my cock and then squatted back down on my lap. This time she raised herself up higher and bobbed her opening up and down over the head of my cock like a ring toss game at the fair. Finally she found the target and wriggled herself down until she was sitting on my lap, pegged so close that our belly buttons touched. She flashed her smile again, like the two of us were secret co-conspirators in the most fun game ever. She started jousting me with her tits, twisting her torso to brush our nipples together, first on one side, then on the other, pivoting back and forth around the linchpin of my cock. I twisted and jousted back in counterphase. I put one hand under her butt and one arm around her back and lifted her up, still coupled, and hobbled us around so that she was lying on the blankets again, her bent legs up in the air, and me on top, my cock pumping its way in and out between them. She closed her eyes, and her mouth relaxed into an open "Ahhh." She was not only naked, but every last bit of hardness and attitude and meanness had been completely stripped away as well, leaving only the yearning, trembling, vulnerable, unfiltered girl underneath. It was too much for me. It sent me over the top. She embraced me tightly and ground her pussy up into my crotch and held it there long after I had finished spoutng. And then slowly she relaxed, and my cock slipped out, and she scooted a bit to let me lay down beside her, and we cuddled together, as best we could, on that little pile of folded blankets. "What about the inventory?" I asked, finally. "Ah, little grasshopper," she sighed. "I'm afraid I may have led you on a bit last week." She stood up, still nude, took up the clipboard and started to fill it in. "The truth is that nothing in here ever changes. Nothing ever comes in, nothing ever goes out. The county seems to have forgotten that this place even exists. There's a metaphor here, little grasshopper, a koan, about justice and rehabilitation and honest labor. Every week I write the same little haiku about traffic cones and toner cartridges and the shining intended beneficence of the county, and every week it gets filed away somewhere without ever getting read. "But who are we to try to set anything straight? Our job is to scriven, and that's what we do." She made a final mark. "There. Scrivened." She hung up the clipboard. "Our little secret, OK?" --- I couldn't think about anything but Rachel. I could still smell the musky scent of her cunt when I flexed my upper lip. I could still taste the tangy flavor of her cum on my finger. I could still feel the exact caliber and texture of her nipples against my tongue. I could still feel the frank heft of her body on my lap, the smooth pliability of her buttocks, the pulsing ripples of her orgasm. How could I think of anything else? Dolores and I were on the lower bunk, lying side by side on top of the blankets. Me with three quarters of a hard on from thinking about Rachel. Dolores got up. She seemed upset about something. What I loved most of all was the way that Rachel had gotten when we were lying together afterwards. She'd become a whole different person---sympathetic, vulnerable, even a little shy. No chip on her shoulder, just happy to be there with me, happy to be lying in my arms. Dolores was glaring at me. "What?" I asked. She was angry. She had her hands on her hips. She looked over at our little shelf and the packet of condoms that Mrs. Carlsen had given me."Why didn't you use them?" she barked. I remembered the way that Rachel had playfully rolled the condom down over over my turgid cock. "Courtesy of the county," she'd said. "What are you talking about?" I asked Dolores. She was furious. "An hour and a half in the storeroom with Rachel Ramirez! That's what I'm talking about! Do you think there's anybody who doesn't know you're fucking her? You've got those things there, why don't you use them? Haven't you heard a single word that Mrs. Carlsen has been saying?" I could feel my ears burning. I should have known that it would be impossible to keep any kind of secret in this place. It was no use trying to deny it. But what business was it of hers, anyway? "Rachel has a supply of them in the storage room," I said. "A supply!" This conversation was getting irritating. "And what business is it of yours, anyway?" "She's got you wrapped around her little finger, just like everybody else." "She hasn't got me wrapped around her little finger." "She's got you wrapped around her little something." "So what if she does?" "Just like everybody else!" "You don't know a thing about her." "I know enough!" "Maybe she's not the person she seems to be." "You've got that right!" "What do you care, anyway?" "I thought you were different." "Different from what?" "From everybody else. But you're just the same. All you want is a place to stick your dick." "Well I sure as hell never found one around here!" --- It was a loutish thing to say, and I was sorry as soon as I'd said it. She was on the verge of tears. Still furious, she was now enraged, as if I'd slapped her in the face. Too enraged to speak. Naked, panting, a fierce scowl on her face, tears of fury welling in her eyes. And that's when I saw it. I don't know how I'd missed it all this time. It was so clear. Those welling tears were the tears of a little girl. That rising and falling chest, that defiant, angry stance, those clenched fists---they were the rage of a little girl. How could I have been so blind? "You're still a virgin, aren't you?" It was as clear as day. The girl that I'd been showering with, and lying beside, and sleeping together naked with for the past eight weeks, the one whom everyone thought I was banging, was still a virgin. I felt a wave of white-hot anger at the judge and the warden lady and the goddamn computer who sat up there in their ivory dockets babbling on about honest labor and debts to society and then when five o'clock came went home to their mansions in the suburbs to drink their cocktails not even aware that the little girls they'd just banged their gavels down on had gotten thrown, naked and alone, into rusty, unheated jail cells with random guys who might very well have been real criminals, rapists, murderers. And at the same time I couldn't help but feel a surge of empathy and admiration for Dolores, still standing there, still glaring at me, the streetwise scrapper who'd been thrown into that rusty cell with that random guy, and who, by hook and by crook and by dogged insistence on a certain basic level of common propriety, had managed to fend him off and to maintain not only her virtue but her integrity as well. I could only imagine how ashamed she must now feel, having been found out. She'd kept up a good front. None of the girls had suspected. They probably thought we were doing it even now. I got up out of the bed. I wanted to put my arm around her, to let her know that everything was all right, that her secret was safe with me. But now, even though we'd been sharing a bunk together for the past eight weeks like two innocent children of nature, now the balance of our innocence had been thrown all out of whack. I was hyper aware of the proximity between her virgin maidenhood and my unsheathed cock. It just didn't seem right that I should be touching her. That she should have to put up with that. "Look," I said, stopping short. "It's OK. Mrs. Carlsen says a lot of girls wait. She says she waited herself, and she was glad she did." But this made Dolores even more furious than before. She couldn't even begin to articulate her rage. "Fuck you!" she snarled. I backed off, afraid she was going to start swinging. There suddenly wasn't enough room in the little cell for the two of us. She ripped one of the blankets off the lower bunk and stormed up to the top one. Now I was the one who felt stung. I sat back down on the lower bunk, trying to figure out why was she still so pissed. Was she that embarrassed? Didn't she realize that I didn't hold it against her? It wasn't until after lights out that it finally came to me. I'd thought she was ashamed to have been found out a virgin. But, in fact, she didn't care about that at all. It didn't enter into her calculation of self worth one bit. It was only in my mind that it made any difference. She was still the same scrappy, self-sufficient, rip-your-balls-off, street tough, natural philosopher she'd always been. The only thing that had changed had been my perception of her. I could sort of picture the type of guy who would pat someone on the back and reassure them that it was OK that they were still a virgin. I could definitely picture the type of guy who would take it for granted that someone who was forced to share a room with him ought to provide him a place to stick his dick. I didn't much care for either of those guys. I could see why she didn't either. --- One thing about being in the slammer, it does give you time to reflect. Not only during the hour before lights out, but in the laundry, out in the fields, even amidst the yackety-yack of the day room. You find yourself thinking about things. I never wasted much time reflecting on my life of crime. I hadn't ever done anything to hurt anybody, and four months in the slammer seemed like more than enough to pay for what I had done, even the stuff they didn't know about. I was never too concerned about the future, either. I knew I could tow the line when I wanted too, and I figured I'd get around to it sooner or later. In the Slammer Ch. 04 I had more pressing issues on my mind. When the judge had handed down his sentence, who would have thought that my biggest problem in jail would be trying to choose between the girl I was locked up with every night and the one I was banging in the storage room. How could I resist those luscious, movie-star tits that Rachel wagged so playfully in my face? How could I resist those long, lovely legs that she wrapped around me. How could I resist the way she got all soft and loving after I fucked her, as if I'd filled her up to the very brim so that there wasn't even an inch of space left for posturing or snobbery or meanness. If anybody had learned her lesson in this place, it was Rachel. She'd learned it the second she walked through the door: jail is nothing but a waste of time. I was positive that the first thing she'd do when she got out of here would be to ditch that two-bit gangster boyfriend of hers and get herself a real gangster. A legitimate one. A tycoon. A rock star. Hell, she didn't even need a boyfriend. She had enough moxie and smarts and innate meanness to make it on her own. And of course when she did she'd leave me in the dust. But for now, she and I had something going, something pretty hot, and I'd be a fool to walk away from it. And Dolores? She was rough, moody, not rock star material by any means. But if I had to be locked up with someone, I could have done a lot worse. She was fun to be with. I got a kick out of her. She was as strong and as willful as Rachel, probably as smart too, just in a different, quieter, less refined direction. I didn't really mind that she wasn't putting out. I had to admit that her being a virgin didn't really make her any less of a woman---or any more of a little girl---than anyone else in the place. But what about what Annie had said about my falling out of the sky being the hand of something? There couldn't really be anything to that, could there? Computer glitches don't happen on purpose, do they? Just to throw people into the same jail cell? People who are somehow meant for each other? Then how come I always found myself thinking about little things she said? How come the first thing I did whenever I got in from work patrol was to look around for her? How come our crummy little cell, with its barred window and ratty blankets, always felt so much like home whenever the two of us were there together? Lots of time for thinking in the slammer. Lots of time for just watching the clouds roll by. And somehow, on the long walks down from the timber line to the pickup point, amidst the brambles and the fallen branches and the drying puddles and the stalks of new grass, somehow, things had a way of sorting themselves out. In the Slammer Ch. 05 [Hector has been sentenced to four months in the slammer, but by mistake he's been sent to the Women's Facility. He shares a cell with Dolores. Like all the other inmates, they wear work uniforms during the day, but are kept naked at night. He's been trying to choose between Dolores and Rachel Ramirez, whom he's been banging in the storage room every Tuesday afternoon. ] --- Dolores and I were waiting for the cell door to open. Things had calmed down since our fight. We were still sleeping in separate bunks, but at least we were being civil to each other. "You busy tonight?" I asked her. It was a nonsensical question. Both of us knew exactly what the other would be doing every minute of the day. "I've got tickets to a play," I said. "It's supposed to be pretty good. I was kind of hoping you might like to go. Maybe we can stop off for a bite first. You like Italian?" She was looking at me, trying to figure out my angle. "I'm going to ask the warden lady if she'll let us borrow the limo." She made an exasperated face and turned away, no longer willing to waste her time. Maybe this wasn't the right approach. When Dolores tunes you out, you might as well be talking to a barn door. "Look, Dolores, I hate this not talking. I hate this you-on-your-bunk, me-on-my-bunk, ignoring each other. So I thought, maybe if we got out of this cell for a bit, you know, went out on a date, had a little fun, maybe we could get back a little toward the way we used to be." "You're asking me on a date?" "A pretend one, at least. The best I can do under the circumstances. What do you say?" "I don't go out on dates with guys who are seeing other girls." "Rachel, you mean. That's over. We broke up." "Yeah? When did that happen?" "Um, as we speak. I just haven't told her yet." "Yeah. Right." She turned away again, this time for good. --- I had meant to tell Rachel the day before. But I hadn't done it. Then I meant to tell her at breakfast. But I didn't tell her then either. Then I meant to tell her before we went into the store room. But I didn't. At least I wasn't going to fuck her in the store room. But I did. So I told her after that. While we were cuddling on the blankets. I ran my fingers down her thigh and told her that she was the hottest, most beautiful, most exciting woman I'd ever been with, but that there was somebody else. I didn't want to hurt her, I'd always remember the times we'd shared, but it would be better if we . . . "Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said, "and then I say, 'If I can't have you, neither can she,' and I pull out my gun and shoot you." She settled herself more comfortably into my arms. "No, wait. I put my hand on my bosom and say, 'If I can't have you, what's the point of living?' and I pull out my gun and shoot myself." She stroked my arm that was stroking her thigh. "I get it, OK? Far be it from me to stand in the way of true love. I've been a pretty nasty little bitch to steal you away from your sweetie pie. But put yourself in my shoes. It's not every day a guy comes swaggering into the shower room, all bare chested and handsome, with his cute little pecker all slicked back and shy like the new kid on the first day of school. What's a girl supposed to do? I couldn't help myself. It wasn't anything personal." "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said, snuggling a little closer. "Nothing personal. Just kicks. Find 'em, fuck 'em---how does it go?---feel 'em, forget 'em. That's my motto." I leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. The pile of blankets was barely long enough to get our hips and shoulders on at the same time, but somehow we managed to nestle together pretty cozily. "Listen, Sensei," I said, after a while, "can I ask you a favor? Seriously. When you get to be a high-rolling big-shot lawyer tycoon, running your corporate empire and all, if I should happen to come knocking on your door some day, with holes in my pockets and patches on my shoes, do you think you could try to find me a job in one of your factories? I'm a pretty good cone counter when it comes down to it." "Sure," she said, "cone counter, vice president, whatever you want. One thing though. Seriously. That Nobel Prize money of ours might take a while to come through. In the meantime, if you should ever need a baby sitter , , ," We were holding hands, our fingers intertwined. I gave her fingers a squeeze. "Godmothers go on speed dial. You know that." --- I didn't tell anybody. I can't imagine that Rachel did either. But by the following afternoon, everybody already sensed a rearrangement in the force. The next morning at breakfast, when Rachel walked by with her tray of oatmeal and her curt "Lover Boy," just like she always did, Dolores was watching closely, and Annie was watching Dolores, and Black Betty was watching the two of them. And I don't know what it was, some little quiver in Rachel's voice or some little hitch in my nodded reply, but Black Betty turned to Misha, and just like that everybody knew for sure. So that when the word spread around later that day that Rachel's lieutenant was back on inventory duty, it was hardly news at all. Dolores was a little shy when we got back to our cell that evening. "Look, I don't know why I got so mad." "I deserved it." "I shouldn't have gotten so angry." "It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have been such a jerk." "You weren't. I was just afraid that . . ." "I know. And I just assumed that . . ." "I know, and I understand. It's just that . . ." "I know. But what really matters is . . ." "Yeah, exactly. So do you think we could . . ." "Yeah, I think we could." "Yeah. So do I." I put my arms around her and she put her arms around me, and even though we were both naked, and even though she was a virgin, and even though we were both ostensibly criminals, I hugged her as if she were my dearest dearest dearest, and she hugged me back just the same. But only for a moment. Such a frank exchange of affection was still a little awkward for us, and we let each other go again. "Um," I said, "do you want to come down and reflect a while?" "Do you want to come up instead? It's nice out the window." So we climbed up onto the top bunk and we scooted down and put our feet on the railing, and we exchanged all the gossip and observations and rambling thoughts and speculations that we had bottled up over the last few days. We let our hips touch and our thighs touch and I put my arm around her shoulders and she rested her head on it---it was just more comfortable that way, such tight quarters and all. When our bottles had emptied we just lay there for a while watching the sky grow darker. "Do you still want to go out on that pretend date some time?" she asked. She asked in her shy voice, a voice I'd heard only once or twice before in all the time we'd been together. The pretend date had mostly just been a gambit to get us talking again, but it seemed to have struck some kind of chord with her. Maybe there was something to it. Maybe we both wanted more than just getting back to the way things used to be. Maybe she wanted to go to plays and Italian restaurants as much as I wanted to take her. Well, if there was one lesson I'd taken to heart in the slammer, it was Dolores's golden rule: do on the inside as you would do on the outside. "You busy tomorrow?" I asked. "Nobody ever asked me out on a date before." "Come on!" "I mean, I've done things with guys. But it was always more just hanging out. Not a real date." "Well then . . ." She turned on her side to face me. "Should we get dressed up?" "Absolutely." "It will have to be pretend clothes, but still . . ." I turned on my side to face her. "Easier on the budget that way, anyway." "Will it be a fancy restaurant?" "Luigi's. On East 14th. Not real fancy, but decent enough." "I know just what I'm going to wear." "They have the best eggplant parmesan." "Eggplant! I'm going to have steak." Although we were facing each other, she was looking off into tomorrow. Her eyes made little darting movements as she considered each possibility. I was lying close enough that the waves of her anticipation washed all over me, all persimmon colored and sparkly. I could feel myself falling under their sway. "I'll pick you up at seven o'clock on the dot." I could have climbed back down to the bottom bunk, but I didn't. We just slept side-by-side, sharing a blanket, the way we used to. --- "Adonis!" "Mabel!" I struck a couple of of my best beefcake poses. "Um, um! Sugar, if we could bottle that we could make ourselves a million dollars." I took my packet of clothes, leaned across the counter, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She touched her face and gave me an exaggerated look of surprise. "You can keep the money," I winked. "Just let me see your pretty smile every morning." She giggled. "You go on now!" --- That day they had us picking up litter along the highway. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. I must have picked up five bags full. It made me happy to look back and see how nice my stretch looked when I was done. At least I was rehabilitating something. That evening our cell door buzzed shut at seven o'clock on the dot. "Ready?" I asked. Dolores gave her hips a little twist, showing off her pretend outfit. She smiled shyly, awaiting my complement. We'd come to take each other's nakedness in the cell for granted. But now I couldn't help but pay a bit of extra attention to the pleasant curve of her hip, the soft roundness of her breast, made all the more alluring by the invisibility of her imaginary clothes. "A pleated skirt," she said. "Kind of an ivory, I guess you'd call it. Don't you love the way it swishes?" "Ooh la la! And the top?" She blushed, in her cheeks and in her nipples. "Cashmere," she said, in a reverent tone, as if the word itself told all that needed to be said. I reached out to touch its imaginary softness on her shoulder. "And how about you?" she asked. "Trousers. A new shirt. Um, button-down collar, um, stripes, um, gray and light blue." "Not bad," she assessed. It turned out that she'd never been to a fancy restaurant before. She'd read an article in one of her magazines about how a girl should conduct herself, but she couldn't remember it all. "Just stick with me," I assured her. I described the checkered curtains, the way the maitre d' took us to our booth, the table cloth, the silverware, the chianti bottle candles. Luigi's is just a neighborhood place, but I made it sound fancy enough. Dolores loved that I ordered a plate of cheeses and olives as an appetizer. She loved the warm, crusty bread, the sparkling water, the crisp lettuce salad. She knew to order her steak medium rare, and she sampled my eggplant parmesan. She loved it when Luigi and his cousin Tony come out of the kitchen to sing along with some of the old songs on the juke box, Then we had to hurry down to the theater. I'd gotten a book of plays from Mrs. Carlsen's library. There was a one-act comedy with only two characters: a well-intentioned dreamer of a fellow who wasn't quite as smart as he thought he was, and a girl who came across as scatter brained at first, but who managed to get him to see things her way in the end. It was funny and sweet, and the two of us were still a bit emotional after our spat and our making up. We laughed so much during the funny parts that we could barely make it through our lines. And we blushed so much during the sweet parts that it was all we could do to look at each other. When the play was over, I asked her "Why don't we go for a little walk? That's what we'd do if we were on a real date." The cell was long enough to take about three steps between the door and the toilet, then three steps back again. We'd each paced the circuit many times by ourselves, but this was the first time we'd ever done it together. It was a tight fit, but we weren't in any particular hurry. We talked about the play, about the highway, about the latest gossip, about how things might have changed on the outside. We kept on walking long after the lights clicked off. Finally we came to a stop, as if we'd arrived at her front door. We turned and faced each other. "I had a really nice time tonight," I said. "Oh, me too," she said. "It was the nicest date I've ever been on." I leaned in and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, a gentle caress of her lips, a gentle taste of her. She wasn't expecting it. For all I knew it was the first time she'd ever been kissed. It was a real kiss, though, not pretend. I didn't want everything about the date to be pretend. As we drew our lips apart she had her mouth slightly open. I caught a glimpse of the fierce impenetrability she'd armored herself with the first night we were thrown in together. But it was tempered by a bit of the spellbound consideration that came over her in the presence of cocoons and falling stars. We regarded each other for several seconds. I gently let go of her shoulders. She climbed up to the upper bunk. I lay down on the bottom one. --- Neither of us had ever dated a cellmate before. We spread our pretend dates out a bit, not having them every night, so as to keep them a little more special. One evening I took her to the ballgame. We sat right over the home team dugout, and I described every every stratagem, every look, every trajectory, every expectoration. She took me roller skating, and leaned back dreamily in my arms as we flew around the rink, centimeters from the railing, my neck straining around to chart us a clear course. On date nights we'd go home to our separate bunks because that just seemed more natural But in between we still slept together, like a couple of . . . , well, not like any couple I'd ever heard of. Like Adam and Eve, maybe, before the business with the apple. Having to date in the nude was pretty strange too. We'd dress up in pretend clothes, but we both knew we could see right through them. I tried to nudge things along, but it was kind of silly trying to pretend to uncover gradually something that was already on full display. Besides, despite her golden rule, it just didn't seem right that anyone should have to have her first time be in a rusty jail cell. So we kept it to kissing and hugging, naked kissing and naked hugging, granted, with all the bodily responses that that entailed, but we didn't go any farther than that. One evening I was standing at the toilet, ready to start my routine maintenance. I still did it every three or four days to keep myself from making a mess in bed. Always before, Dolores and I had just pretended to ignore each other when I did it. But this time she came and stood beside me. I was going to go ahead and do it anyway, but I couldn't, not with her standing there. She took a hold of my arm. "Come on," she said. "You don't have to do this anymore." I wasn't so sure. She started pulling. "Come on. I hate that you have to do this. This is the only part about us being locked up together that I don't like." "But you know what will happen." "I know I freaked out that one time. But we weren't going together then. Now we are. If it happens now and I'm beside you, it's because that's where I choose to be. OK? Don't do it this way any more. Please?" She'd never asked me anything with please before. I gave in to her pulling. "So, um . . .," she said, once we'd gotten ourselves arranged on the top bunk. It was rare for Dolores to be at a loss for words. Usually she either said what was on her mind, or she didn't say anything at all. "Um . . .," she continued. It must have been a particularly sensitive topic. Nothing to do but just wait for it to arrive. "What if somebody wanted to live her life a certain way," she said, finally, keeping her eyes directed toward the window to emphasis the hypothetical nature of her speculation, "and she made herself a promise that there would be certain things that she'd never share with anyone, unless she was truly in love with them." "I can see that." "And what if she thinks she's truly falling in love with someone. She thinks he's really nice, one of those kind-hearted guys that Mrs. Carlsen is always talking about. And she thinks he likes her. "But she's in jail, and nothing in jail is ever what it seems, and so she's not sure whether her feelings are true or not. She's afraid that maybe it's all just a mirage, and that when she gets out she'll realize that she's broken her promise." "Not everything in jail is not what it seems. Maybe she should trust her feelings more." "They're telling her two different things. They're telling her that she's in love, but they keep reminding her how important her promise is." "She should listen to both then, I guess. Are there maybe some things she doesn't mind sharing in jail? Maybe she can share things that far now, and wait for the rest until she gets out." "But what if the guy doesn't want to wait?" "He's probably not worth waiting for then." "You don't think he'll just scoff at her promise?" "Not if it means so much to her. Maybe he never made the same promise himself, not in so many words, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to live his life a certain way too." "What if he's already shared certain things with other people? What if he's gotten used to people sharing those things that way?" "Oh, I don't think he's gotten used to it. Probably his first time sharing was like in the promise anyway, the two of them thinking they were in love, wanting to be in love, actually being in love I guess, even though it turned out to be harder than they thought. And probably the second time, even if it wasn't strictly like in the promise, there was enough affection and tenderness that he hopes she'll understand." "But when they get out they may never see each other again." "That's kind of up to the two of them, isn't it?" --- A couple days later I was helping Hanky with her math worksheet in the day room when they called Dolores out for her evaluation meeting. She was supposed to be getting out in a month, about the same time as me. But when she came back from her meeting you could tell that something was wrong. She wasn't herself in the showers. Annie gave me a look during lineup to make sure I was on it. As soon as we got into the cell Dolores burst into tears. I took her in my arms. "They're going to let me out early," she cried. "That's great!" I said. "What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?" "Hey, come on. We'll figure it out." "What did I ever do to deserve this?" I rocked her gently. Her nipples were getting cold from her tears. "I'll rob a bank. Then they'll have to let me back in." "No good. They'd never put us back together. Come on. We've got to start thinking about making it on the outside." "What am I supposed to do? Go back with my fucking stepfather?" "Don't you have any friends you can stay with?" "They mostly still live at home." "OK. OK. I've got a friend. She'll put you up for a while. She'll bitch, but she'll do it." "Your old girlfriend." "She's all right." "And what about you?" "Don't worry about me. I'll be showing up on your doorstep before you even know it." "In the meantime. They'll put another girl in here with you. You'll be sleeping with her naked every night." "I'll sleep on the top bunk." "You'll fall in love with her, just like you fell in love with me." "Baby, now can you say that? I won't even look at her." "You'll look at her." "I won't fall in love with her." "You fell in love with Rachel." "I didn't. Not really. I fell in love with you." "Oh, Baby, I'm just so scared." I held her tight. I felt a heartbeat pounding in my chest, but I wasn't sure whose heart it was. In the Slammer Ch. 05 --- That was last week. They came for Dolores before we ever received a reply to my letter. I'm not even sure it went to the right address. We made a couple of fallback plans, but I'll tell you one thing. I've never felt so helpless as I do right now, sitting here behind these bars, thinking about her out there on the street with nothing but her pack of condoms and her twenty dollar bill. Rachel Ramirez moved herself in with me. She just started lining up beside me after showers. Nobody said a thing. The bulldog, the hound dog, the girls, they like to have things neatly tied up, but they don't bother to look any farther than they can see. I could tell you that Rachel and I sleep back to back. I could tell you that the outside rules don't really apply. I could tell you that it's just for kicks, that it's nothing personal, that I'd be a damn fool to do any different. But I'm not going to. I sit with Annie at breakfast now, in Dolores's old spot. "She'll be all right," she tells me. "Don't you worry about her. It's the two of you together you should be thinking about now. It's never too early to start planning for the future. That's what Mrs. Carlesn says. Things aren't so easy out there. You know that as well as I do. But if anybody's going to make it, it's you and Dolores. No doubt in my mind about that. No doubt whatsoever."