we all have our dirty, alternate persona that escapes.
thank you emily for these dirty pics.

in the meantime, i will work on some new facial art that will complement your photography once again.

photo courtesy of Emily Allen

beautiful music, beautiful band.
this song has kept me rapt.

look for it in the future. i have to use it somehwhere.

B.

Every evening B. gets dressed in his nicest clothes before he leaves for jail.

B. works as a landscaper during the day. For this reason, he showers every evening. He is particular about washing the mud from beneath his nails and along his cuticles. Almost every evening there are splinters lodged beneath the skin on his palms. Next to the sink he leaves a pair of tweezers that he can use to pull them out. It’s easier to take the slivers out in the shower when his palms are moist.

After he showers, he pulls his shirt on and buttons it from top to bottom. He is methodical with the buttons. Every hole, including those on his pockets, is buttoned. Next, he checks the shirt for loose threads and lint. If he finds a thread, unraveling from the stitching on the collar or the seams across the bottom, he takes the scissors next to his dresser and cuts it near the stitch. There are good reasons for never pulling on a thread. For these reasons he always cuts them with scissors.

The collar must be crisp and freshly ironed. B. knows that this may add another twenty to twenty-five minutes to the evening process. If the iron takes longer to heat up, or if the creases along the upper backside of the collar take longer to press out, B. knows he will be rushed when the deputy arrives.

He stands in front of the mirror.
In less than an hour, B. will remove these clothes and put on an orange uniform.

When the deputy arrives to pick him up, B. is usually sitting outside in a wooden chair smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. The deputy pulls into the driveway and B. steps along the gravel and into the passenger side of the car. He doesn’t have to ride in the backseat any longer. The deputy asks him how his school is going. B. is in his last semester and getting a degree specializing in urban landscape. The projects for his classes require two hours of studying for every hour of class.

School is going well, B. says, lots of time in the library.

How’s work? B. asks.

The deputy takes a deep breath and relaxes making a leather-on-leather sound from his jacket and the seat. There’s plenty of paper work. A man was arrested for urinating next to an elementary school. He was drunk, homeless. There was a domestic dispute on 2nd just off of Main Street.

Not as bad as the first time, the Deputy says, but you never know.

B. sips his coffee and listens to the radio, a country song. Maybe Dwight Yokam, B. thinks. It’s getting colder at this elevation. The steam from his cup has fogged the passenger side window. B. tells a joke he heard about a mongoose and a gecko. The deputy laughs and pulls on to the highway. He drives slowly. Neither of them is in any hurry.

The city jail is located across the street from the city dump and adjacent from the city water processing plant. B. tells me it’s the section of the city where things are filtered or thrown out.

When they arrive, they step through two sets of bulletproof doors. The deputy nods to the woman behind the glass. She is always on the phone. She presses the release button and B. hears the long beep again. The door electronically unlocks and the deputy follows B. down the hallway. B.’s cowboy boots click against the laminate of the hallway. The sound has already become familiar.

They enter a room on the right side of the hallway and B. begins to take off his clothes. The deputy sits in a chair near a table and writes notes on some paper in a manila folder. B. folds his clothes as he takes them off; his shoes, his socks pulled together in a bundle, his pants folded in thirds and his button up shirt folded and lain so that it won’t wrinkle. Finally, when the deputy is ready, he removes his underwear.

Lift up, the deputy says.

B. holds his testicles and penis is his hands and lifts them to the deputy. The deputy looks between his legs and along his perineum. He has nothing hidden.

Good. Turn around, the deputy says.

B. turns around and pulls at either side of his buttocks for the deputy. Again, nothing is hidden.

B. used to lighten the uncomfortable silence at this point.
Now are you going to buy me a drink? B. would jokingly ask. The deputy would hold back a smile and continue writing.
B. doesn’t make jokes any more. This routine has become rote and they are both tired.

B. tells me that the inside of the cells are not like what he thought they would be.

Where I am, he says, in I-Block, it’s just one big room with bunks.

The building is shaped like a polygon. I-Block is a section of a wedge. The cell is an open space. The walls are cinder block painted white. The floor is a finished concrete.

The bunks are painted battleship gray, B. says, and the beds are a shoulder-width section of foam.
There are several tables around the room. No books are allowed in facility, so there is a library that consists of four shelves of books. B. just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver. Most every Friday, when their block is clean, they watch a movie. Last week it was Fifth Element with Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich. I told him it looks like she is wearing packing tape in that entire movie.
It’s hot, he says. I agree and we laugh.

People like B. are put in I-Block. This means that everyone is on best behavior. If something goes wrong, they are revoked their daily work release. Everyone there is more or less the same age, twenties and thirties. Their sentence has granted them the ability to work during the day and return every night.

At night in I-block, before Lights Out, the guys sit around and play cards. B. is learning how to play the game, which is similar to Hearts.
It’s a lot like sex, B. tells me, …if you don’t have a good partner you better have a good hand.

One night during the game, an inmate had just got off of work and entered the cell. He was catering a wedding. B. asked him how the wedding went.

Fine, he said looking over his shoulder at what cards B. was holding.

There was a long silence. Everyone around the table was waiting for B. to throw down his card. B. waited a long time. He looked at what had been played, then back at his hand. He looked at the other players, then back at his hand. He tapped his fingers along the table; he pulled at the whiskers along his sideburns. Finally, he threw down his card.

You knew you had to throw that one down! Why didn’t you just do it? The inmate who had come from the wedding yelled.

I was just making them think, making them wait. Fool, B. says.

You’re a fucking lame, the man from the wedding says as he climbed in his bunk.

Apparently, B. tells me, Lame is one of the most offensive things to say to someone while you’re in jail. It’s similar to calling a homosexual a faggot, or a Negro, a nigger.

Everyone at the card table grew silent. The man from the wedding lay in his bunk yelling at B. The room was clenched and tight, waiting.

It’s one of those moments, B. says, when you know… if the other guy is angry enough to clock me in the face, I just have to sit in my seat and take it. I’m going to have to let this guy just beat the snot out of me, because I don’t want to lose my privileges. I want to work and go to school.

I listen to him and try to physically imagine what this would feel like.
B. tells me nothing happened and the room eventually relaxed. Everyone is on best behavior.

A week ago, more inmates folded into I-block. While B. was walking through school, a friend of B.’s approached him on the sidewalk. He told B. that he knew someone going in and wondered if B. would look out for him.
His name is N., he told him.

B. agreed to do this. Someone did this for him when he first went in. Besides, the new guy is in for the same reasons.

When you first get there, and you have no money or means, the facility gives you an Indigent Pack. It is filled with items to get you started. The toothbrush is about three inches long; the cup for water holds roughly six ounces of fluid. There is a pile of folded bedding handed to you. The bedding is donated from the city hospital.

When he walked in, he was white and scared, B. says, I asked him if he was N. and he said yes. I said I’m a friend of so-and-so. You could just see fear the fall from his face. Like everything was going to be okay.
B. gave him a regular toothbrush, a bigger drinking cup and some Top Ramen. He showed N. how to make the bed so it’s easier to sleep with the bedding. He told him where to order food and the little things he will need from the in-house commissary.

It’s like I’m an elder, B. says to me and laughs, I just hook them up with little things.

I asked B. why he gets dressed every night. He tells me, to remind him.
The other night, a guy came in, B. tells me. He was drunk or had been drinking. We all knew it. He was being belligerent and loud. We could smell it on him. The guards took him into another room to give him a Breathalyzer, but the machine was broken. The guy was yelling at the cops about proving he was drunk. He was just fucking himself. I knew when I looked at him, that I wasn’t like him. He couldn’t do this, but I can.
When I get dressed, B. says, it separates me from what I’m doing. I’m different. When I say it like that it sounds pointless, but I still do it.
It doesn’t, I tell him, it sounds smart.
It’s also comforting to put on nice, clean clothes in the morning, B. says.

At first it was a new experience, something B. had never done before. But now, the novelty has worn off and he is half way through his sentence. He will be out for Christmas, but not for Thanksgiving. During finals, he will be serving his last week.

At night, B. sleeps with earplugs. He bought them at the in-house commissary. It’s hard to get to sleep most of the time. Most of the inmates are still up and talking. The earplugs don’t always help. He listens to the muffled drone of conversations that filters through the foam. When the fluorescent lights go out, they are replaced by a red light. He listens to the high-pitch tone of electric current that goes through wires and the bulb. It fills the room red.

In the morning, the deputy escorts B. out of the facility.

He enters a room on down the hallway and on the left side, and takes his time getting dressed. His socks first pulled up to the mid-section of his calves, then his pants. He puts his shirt on and buttons every hole. Finally he tucks the bottom of the shirt into his pants and then smoothes the creases out around his waist with his hand. The belt he picked up at a thrift store last year still fits nicely even though he feels he has has lost weight.

On the way out B. tells the deputy another joke.
Deputy, what’s the difference between a stagecoach driver and a deputy? B. asks.
The deputy shrugs.
A stagecoach driver only has to look at six assholes a day.
You just brightened my day, he tells B. and laughs.

They walk to the car and smell the odor blowing in from the neighboring buildings. The mornings are cold before the sun comes over the hills.