NOW THAT I’M IN CREEDMOOR, Clu grows sick of my touting the kindness and compassion of Gaia Sapros, the ward social worker. “She’s sweet, Clu. Gives me paper to draw, pencils, watercolor paints.”
“And don’t I give you that?”
“Uh, yeah, you do. I’m just saying she’s really nice to me. And really kind, for this place.”
“Well, seeing as you’ve found someone else to take care of you, I guess you don’t need me anymore.”
Following a jealousy-tinged rant directed at Gaia, Clu stops visiting, refuses my calls, and disappears from my life. This leaves me sad, alone, and vulnerable, with no outlet for affection and intimacy.
For three years, from King’s County Hospital, to Rikers, to Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center, and now finally Creedmoor, Clu took me warts and all. She knew of my transgression and the guilt I felt but never judged me. Clu showed me that I could formulate and maintain a meaningful relationship with a woman in this locked down environment. It was challenging but we hung in there. I feel bad that I said the wrong things, hurt her feelings, and lost her forever.
I wish to hook up with someone again but how do I explain the total absence of family, what’s kept me in all these years, and other sure-to-be-asked questions? I don’t want to begin a new relationship on a foundation of lies, half-truths, and sins of omission. Clu’s friendship and willing sexual attention was a welcome diversion and relaxant, in addition to earning me respect and protecting me from the criminal-minded booty bandits and down-low brothers found in institutions. Now, in this den of insanity, once these characters recognize that Clu is no longer in my life, they see an opening they can hopefully slide up into.
For the most part homosexuality in Creedmoor is not as violent as it is in jail, with the rape-you-for-your-commissary-and-protection dynamic. The guys here tend to horseplay during the day, running up and down the halls, expending all of their manic energies, until the evening, when they pair up, make love, and then spoon, childlike, on beds in the dorm. However, Darrell would annoy even the most open-minded libertarian. He makes it a point to haunt the shower room, pulling back the flimsy vinyl curtain just when I’m scrubbing my balls to inquire sincerely, “Do you need any help?” That he’s a psychotic, burly six-footer known to punch out doctors keeps my tone measured and even friendly. I often answer, “No thanks, Darrell, I got this.”
An absurd exchange would follow to keep him calm and keep me safe, him reiterating, “You sure now?”
“Nah, man. Maybe next time.”
Don, a fellow insanity plea patient and real ornery dude, puts up the front of I-don’t-take-no-mess. But I get to see his level of desperation when I take a call for him on the ward payphone and open his door without knocking. “Close the fuckin’ door!” he screams, dick deep in Roger, another surly tough guy. Roger winces, drawing gusts of air through gritted teeth, but takes it like a champ.
Then there is Lloyd, who is tormented by his homosexuality. He’s known to go on screaming rampages that can be heard throughout the ward, taking on the voices of his community, his family, his mother. “Sissy!” “Homo!” “Faggot!” “Cocksucker!”
Rushing into the bathroom to use the commode and running into interference, then a full-on bottleneck, I find myself doing the I-gotta-pee two-step as the entire ward is huddled around the center stall. Pushing my way through, assuming it is Bayou finishing a few particularly potent crumbs of crack, I discover two men in there putting on an inspired floor show. While Eli sits on the toilet engaged in spirited fellatio, Lloyd stands before him, his eyes shut tight. With fingers in his ears he is struggling to keep the internal inquisition from attacking at this vulnerable time, with him in the midst of this damning episode.
With all the rampant gay play going on in the lavatory and dorms it is inevitable that I succumb. In the bed next to mine, for the third night in a row, Lowell is working Timiteo fervently from behind. But due to Lowell’s penchant for habitual masturbation, and the sexual dysfunction of the meds, these hours-long stroke sessions yield only frustration, fraught with hissed curses, at Tim and himself, bearing no fruit. With a magnanimous gesture that speaks more for my wanting the sex to stop, I call over to Lowell and Timiteo, “Do you need a stiff dick?”
I can feel Lowell deflate in the darkness. Timiteo shouts, “Yeah!”
The blowjob I receive makes me feel dirty, even though it was of my own volition. Yes, Lowell was so shamed and intimidated that he never returned to fuck Timiteo, and yes, Timiteo begged me for another go ’round. But I decline his repeated offers and even confess to Gaia, who promptly has me moved out of the dorms and into one of the doubles down the hall, closer to her office.