"Why the extra plate?" Mom asked.
`Because one's for you," I whispered.
The next morning I stepped out of 10 Building and into the sunshine. The weather was clear and sunny, and for the first time since I was attacked the day before, I felt my spirits lift. I loved the first warm days of the year and the air that's filled with the fragrance of spring. Riverside was in the country, so the outdoor air smelled fresh.
It took only a moment for the sounds of the yard and the pain in my rectum to smack my senses with the brutal reality of my surroundings. Basketballs were bouncing. Men were laughing. Radios blared from everywhere. I could hear steel hitting concrete in the weight pit off in the distance.
"That's Slide Step's kid," someone said, among a group of men standing at the foot of the stairs. He pointed at me. I smelled the pot from the joint they were passing. I lowered my eyes and hurried past, but one of them stepped from the crowd and blocked my way. "How you doing," he asked in a seductive voice.
"OK," I said, stepping around him.
They laughed as I raced off.
I decided to stroll the patchy green and filth-ridden yard. It had been exactly fifty days since I was last outside and free to walk on my own. I missed the isolation of being locked up alone in my cell in Quarantine. It seemed hard to believe that I had only been in general population for two days. So far, I'd gotten drunk, drugged, almost sliced to pieces by a jealous boyfriend, and sold-or rather won, in a coin toss. I wondered what day three would be like.
The thought of having been won in a coin toss was too much for me to take in. So whenever the memory of it would occur to me-I'd literally shake it out of my head. It was too devastating to comprehend-and since no one would ever know about it outside of here-I struggled to pretend like it had never happened.
I wanted to stay in bed all day, but I couldn't sleep. The guys in my dorm were rowdy, and then a guard came around and kicked us out. He said if we didn't have job assignments, we had to go into the day room or out in the yard until the afternoon count.
I thought about reporting the rapes, but my brother's voice rang inside my head: Punks are fucked, but Snitches get killed.
The twisted path that encircled the yard was made of blacktop. I wished I could walk out of there and somehow walk off what had happened to me the day before. I wanted to shake this dreadful, Oh my God, what has happened to me? feeling that haunted my every step. But it was too late. Everyone knew what had happened, and now everyone knew what I was-a fag. There was no going back.
"God damn!" said a black inmate, as he passed me. "That's a fine motherfucker right there."
"Mmm, Mmm," said another. "Slide Step's holdin' all the cards in this game!"
I couldn't stop replaying in my head what I could have done differently. Why did I drink? I know what happens to me when I get drunk. Hadn't Rick told me this was what happened to fish ? The intake psychologist had told me point blank that I'd get fucked. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened, even if I hadn't been drinking. Still, I hated myself for falling into their trap so stupidly.
They must have known I was gay from the moment I walked on the floor-even if I wasn't sure about it myself. What if I had just said yes, when Chet first asked? Would it have turned out differently? Red must have been in on it from the very beginning, and once it started, I couldn't do anything to stop it.
Thank God Slide Step stepped in when he did. He seemed different from the others. It would have been worse if he hadn't stopped it when he did. I asked if I would have to do something for him as well, but he told me not to worry about it for now. "When you're ready," he said. "I'm willing to wait."
I was relieved, because I was sore, and there was blood when I went to the bathroom. I was afraid to ask the guards to see a doctor, because I would have to explain what had happened.
I walked past 23 Building and looked up at the Segregation unit. I could go there for protection, but I'd have to tell them why, and then I'd be locked down twenty-four hours a day. Even with special good time, I had twentytwo and half months left to go. Six hundred and eighty-four days. I'd probably go mad and kill myself. It wasn't much of an option. Nor was getting my throat slit, like that asshole psychologist had said. You either fight or submit. At least I was still alive.
It was my failure to resist being attacked that haunted me most. Why didn't I? Or scream? Or even try to say No to Red? Why did I have to be such a fucking coward? Sure I wasn't just a kid but even kids my age are known to fight back.
"But Timmy's a sissy," one of my friends
