Lance had been seventeen when accused of murdering his headmaster and causing the death of another student. In the weeks until his final court appearance he'd had plenty of time to repent. Instead, he protested his innocence and got up the noses of more people than was wise with arrogant assertions that his father would get him off. His father, whose sole contribution had been to provide a lawyer, did not even attend the sentencing of his only offspring to life imprisonment in an adult facility.
On arrival at the jail, Lance watched in anger as his personal details were taken along with his property. Almost catatonic with embarrassment he stripped and endured a medical examination. After a shower, the prison issue clothes added insult to mental anguish. He scowled at the photographer, insulted the counsellor and couldn’t think of anyone to phone. Screaming insistence that he wasn’t guilty didn’t prevent an identification badge being pinned to his chest. Exhausted and finally silent he was handed a small bundle of clothes and toiletries and escorted to a cell.
According to the Queensland Government website, almost all inmates in Queensland correctional centres are housed in single cells which contain a bed, shower and toilet, the cleanliness for which inmates are responsible. What no one had told Lance was that Queensland has a problem with overcrowding. At that time there were about 1400 more inmates in the eleven high-security prisons than there were cells to accommodate them.
Lance froze in the doorway.
The cell was narrow with off-white stuccoed concrete walls, a bed with a white pillow and green blanket against the right hand wall, a small, stainless steel wash-basin-toilet combination unit in the left corner against the window wall, a varnished set of open shelves containing a few clothes along the left hand wall and a small desk at the near end of the bed. Occupying almost all the floor space between the bed and the shelves was a narrow mattress with a white sheet and green blanket, the pillow hard up against the toilet bowl. On the main bed lay a solid looking man in his forties wearing the same uniform as Lance; arms under his head, expressionless eyes observing his new cellmate.
‘I can’t! You can’t expect me to sleep on the floor. It’s…its unhygienic! His piss will splash onto the bed.’
‘Its only until we get a bunk bed screwed up.’ The warder turned to the occupant. ‘Greg, this is Lance. I’ll leave you to show him the ropes.’ He retreated, closed the door quietly and slid the bolt home.
Wide eyed in horror Lance stared at the man with whom he would be sharing this cell for the foreseeable future. Greg smiled and Lance’s heart momentarily ceased pumping. It was the smile his father bestowed on customers. The smile of avarice, calculation, the certainty of profit. A smile Lance understood and imagined he knew how to deal with, so he didn’t smile back.
Greg noted Lance’s reaction with calm satisfaction. The scrawny kid wasn’t a fool. Not the sort to make many friends. A shifty-eyed little murderer with zero bargaining power except for…
‘Take my stuff out of the left hand shelves and put yours in.’
The pleasant, warm voice woke Lance from his stupor. He stared at the shelves.
‘Where’ll I put your gear?’
‘Just stuff it on any other shelf.’
After placing his meagre possessions on the left side, Lance sank onto his hard mattress and leaned against the wall, staring at his feet.
‘You're a bag of bones,’ Greg said conversationally. ‘Are you sick?’
‘No. It’s my metabolism.’
‘What a big word. People don’t like big words in here, they think you're trying to make them feel stupid and they’ll take you down a peg.’
‘I…I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that no matter how much I eat I don’t put on weight.’
‘Get any exercise?’
‘No.’
‘Rumour has it you put your headmaster out of his misery.’
‘I didn’t! That was a slimy queer who set me up.’
‘Yeah…everyone’s innocent in here. So you don’t like queers?’
‘I’d slowly slice every queer into small bits.’
‘You'll fit in here then…unless…’
‘Unless what?’
‘Nothing… You're young and don’t look very tough. So stay out of trouble.’
Lance was sweating profusely and desperately in need of the toilet. ‘What sort of trouble? How?’
Greg’s smile wasn’t calculated to calm.
It fuelled Lance’s fury. Never in his life had he been forced to take control of or responsibility for himself—his father had always been there to pick him up by the scruff of the neck, so to speak, and extricate him from the latest mess, in the process ensuring his son learned no tricks of survival other than abusing weaker people and throwing his father’s money at problems. He used, abused and discarded; devoid of both fear and empathy. He shot a sudden, calculating look at the older man. ‘I was told I’d be mentored. So I guess it’s your job to keep me out of trouble.’
‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’
‘I can make it worth your while.’
‘How?’
‘My father’s rich.’
‘I don’t need money.’
‘You must need something.’
Greg’s smile stirred something in Lance’s guts.
‘I need a shit. Don’t look!’
Greg rolled onto his right elbow and gazed impassively at the toilet bowl. ‘You'd better get used to doing it in front of me, not to mention guards who happen to look through the peephole.’
In agony, Lance fiddled with the unfamiliar trouser fastenings and was almost in time.
‘Fuck, that sounded sloppy and sure stinks. Better check your under daks for skid marks.’
Wiping himself was even more embarrassing than doing it, and when Lance realised he’d smeared his buttocks he sagged back onto the seat, buried his head in his lap and silently cursed Greg, the prison, the world.
Greg stood over the angry young man and looked down. ‘Your trousers are clean, better get them off.’ He removed Lance’s shoes and pulled the trousers from unresisting legs, then slipped the T-shirt over his head as if undressing a little boy.
‘Come on, into the shower with you.’ Greg pulled Lance to his feet, shoved him into the shower and turned on the taps.
Lance roused himself enough to adjust the temperature and had just finished washing his underpants and soaping and rinsing himself when he felt something behind him. He froze as a pair of muscled arms wrapped around his chest, trapping his arms.
‘If that's what you want, tough luck,’ Lance sneered, vainly attempting to extricate himself from a naked and immensely strong Greg. This needed careful thought.
‘I have no intention of hurting you, or doing anything you don’t want.’
‘Then let me go.’
Greg released his captive and turned off the taps. ‘You're a sensible bloke; I saw it the minute you walked in, so let’s do a deal. I’ll show you the ropes, stop people spitting in your food and knocking you around, get you fit and strong enough to take on all comers, and introduce you to useful people. In exchange…’
‘You want to fuck me.’
‘I’ve been here fifteen years with nothing but my hand for relief. Yeah, I want a body in my bed to screw, but only a willing one.’
‘I’m not willing and I'm not queer.’
‘Neither am I. Having sex with another man isn't queer—it’s just sex—no more and no less. It’s what men without women have done since the beginning of time. Queer is thinking and acting like a woman, or having sex with someone who behaves like that. If I thought you were queer I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole. I'm a man and proud of it and assumed you were too. Seems I misjudged.’
‘Oh very funny. And how often do you want to shove your non-queer fat cock up my arse?’
‘As often as I feel like. Think of it as a business proposition. You'll be protected, won’t have to sleep on the floor at risk of being pissed on, you'll be under the guidance of an experienced fitness trainer who’s respected…and in return all you have to do is willingly offer your scrawny body. Think about it.’ He turned the hot tap on full, dried and dressed and left the cell to join his mates in the yard.
Lance narrowly avoided being scalded, dressed, sat on his mattress and thought about his last year at school when he’d got Mandy and another girl to prostitute themselves for drugs. He’d told them it was just sex and didn’t mean anything. Nor did it mean anything when he had fucked them—although he’d enjoyed it more when his mates were watching—made him feel powerful. And, he admitted with a slight internal blush, he’d quite liked the feel of being held by Greg in the shower. It was the first time since…he couldn’t remember how long, that he’d felt safe. Perhaps…. No rush. He’d see what happened.
The exercise yard was the size of a small tennis court and precious little exercise was going on. He stood pressed against a wall watching Greg shooting goals through a sagging hoop with half a dozen tattooed, muscled, shirtless men. A variety of others were standing around, talking, doing nothing, squatting against the wall muttering, looking as depressed as he felt. It wasn’t a pleasant atmosphere. Above, guards were silhouetted in their stations. The basketball suddenly slammed into his head and knocked him to the ground. He looked across and Greg was laughing with the others. At dinner he was jostled in the queue so lost most of his food onto the floor. What was left disappeared when he turned to see who was pushing him. When he went for more they’d run out. Greg was sitting with the men who’d caused him to go hungry.
Locked in their cell that night, Lance sat on his hard mattress in his underpants and stared up at Greg who was reading. ‘Ok,’ he said quietly.
‘Ok what?’
‘I’ll do what you want.’
‘You haven't understood, Lance, it isn't what I want. I’m perfectly happy as I am, apart from one small thing—it’s what you want.’
‘You can fuck me.’
‘You're a disgusting whore and have understood nothing.’ Greg turned on his side away from Lance and turned a page.
Wisely controlling an urge to hit the older man, Lance swallowed and said words he could never have imagined uttering only hours before. ‘Greg, I want to sleep in your bed so you can have sex with me.’
‘You want me to fuck you up the arse?’
‘Yes…please.’
‘Mmm…Ok, on condition that if you ever give anyone, anywhere, in or out of this place the slightest indication that we’re more than normal cellmates, then you'll wish you’d never been born.’
‘What about condoms?’
‘Queensland doesn't issue them in case they encourage sodomy. But I’m as clean as a whistle, according to every medical report. What about you?’
Lance shook his head. ‘I'm healthy, never had an STD, always wore condoms.’
Greg nodded and raised the sheet, exposing an impressive erection.
Lance stripped and slid nervously in beside him.
Greg took care to prepare his bedmate properly, so it hurt much less than Lance expected, and then only for a short while.
Two days later a bunk bed was screwed above Greg’s, which was useful for storing things, and left the floor free for press-ups and other fitness exercises that Lance hoped would turn him into someone to be feared.
Their contract was never spoken of, and never broken—both intuitively appreciating the mental/spiritual strength to be gained from having regular intimate contact with another human. Lance never found the act itself pleasant, but he did enjoy sharing his bed and body with no complications. Neither asked themselves whether they liked or disliked each other, the question was irrelevant. They’d discovered a mutually beneficial way to share a tiny cell without fighting, and that was all that mattered.
Thanks to Greg’s training Lance became lean instead of scrawny, visibly strong, lethally adept at irregular fighting, and utterly ruthless. The poverty of the other inmates caused by criminally low benefits and increasing cost of prison provender, enabled him to use his relative wealth to make several potentially useful contacts, as well as three cringing dependents prepared to do literally anything for a handout.
The week after their second anniversary Greg was transferred to another prison. Neither man shed any tears. Lance was allocated a single cell, and his father made his first visit, bringing news of an appeal the lawyer was convinced would succeed. Despite being visibly proud of Lance's obvious fitness, health and mental adjustment, Mr. Osbairne left in some disquiet at the transformation of his gormless son into a hard, sharp, cunning cold and self-contained individual who never let his guard down. Perhaps, he thought traitorously as he drove away, it might be better if he remains in prison.