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Green River by Tim Willows Jake never felt his first misgivings about transferring to Green River until the very moment when the needle entered his arm and the world dissolved into a vague cloud of grey. Before then, the transfer seemed like the only option-more than that: a godsend. He couldn't handle life in the general prison population. There was no other word for it: the other prisoners were animals. There wasn't a trace of racism in Jake's mind when he thought of them all as animals-he knew it had nothing to do with their being black or Hispanic or Asian or white. Hell, the white guys were the worst. It had something to do with their pasts, their upbringing... the horrible state of the world. Something had turned these men into ferocious, completely amoral creatures driven by nothing by cruelty and violence, and to Jake, race hardly seemed like a powerful enough factor. Something mysterious was at work here: the inmates in that first prison seemed to have come from another world entirely, one that Jake, with his privileged upbringing and a life spent in gated communities, office buildings and comfortable restaurants had never been exposed to. It had made those other men hard, cunning, inhumanly resourceful, quick to violence, powerful not just in their bodies but in their willingness to press their advantage against everybody weaker than they were. Jake didn't have a chance. Drunk driving. In Jake's world, it was a negligible offence-a little bit of bad boy behaviour. You could laugh over the water cooler about the way you smiled and convinced the cop who pulled you over to let you off with a warning. Vehicular manslaughter, on the other hand... well, just try taking that into the court with you, just try convincing the judge with a smile that you should be let off with a warning, a fine, a slap on the wrist and see how far that gets you. Ten-year sentence. Jake had seen TV shows where prisoners escape punishment by giving up a crook bigger than they were, but Jake didn't know any criminals at all. He knew Tom in accounting, who sometimes parked in the handicapped zone and Brad in personnel, who sometimes rode the subway without putting a token into the slot. The first night he spent in prison after his sentence, he shared a cell with a man who found his girlfriend sleeping with his brother and tried to saw off her head with a bread knife. The next night, he had the pleasure of meeting a guy who'd been found guilty of 23 counts of rape and who confessed to Jake that there were 46 more the cops didn't even know about. And so, when Jake's lawyer came to him with the idea of applying for a transfer to Green River, Jake leapt at the chance. Anything to get away! He had a horrible fear of needles and hospital rooms, but as they wheeled him into the infirmary on the gurney the only thought in Jake's mind was, "Why doesn't this thing go faster?" It was only when the needle went into his arm and he felt the weird sensation of his skin tightening and an odd, roiling sensation down in his genitals, that images of his wife and his 16-year-old daughter and-Jesus!- everybody at work, everybody at the firm and fears of what he was allowing to be done to himself entered his brain, and his stomach did a flip-flop and he clawed at the gurney and begged the doctors to take him back to his cell. But the sedative in the shot had already taken effect; all that emerged from his mouth was a sloppy moan before he went unconscious. *** Jake struggled to keep up with the warden as he walked down the corridor that led to Green River Penitentiary: the building that would be his home for the next three years. ("Cling to that," Jake told himself. "Reduced sentence. Reduced sentence. You're home in three.") He clasped the bundle of clothes they'd assigned him at the dispensary to his chest and did the best he could to make it appear as though he were paying attention. "...state-of-the-art in correctional facilities," the warden was saying in a bored, distracted tone of voice. "...radical approach... lowest recidivism rate in the state... peaceful institutional community..." It was the usual Green River boilerplate, and Jake tuned in and out of it. It was impossible to pay attention, especially with so many new distractions there to plague him. Jake tugged at the orange prison jumpsuit that had been issued him; it was a little big on him, but it was the smallest size they had available. "...hope that you can integrate yourself into the population... unique advantage to start anew... squander this rare opportunity... psychiatrists on staff..." They had arrived at an immense metal door, and Jake watched as the guards on duty, both of them shielded behind a thick wall of Plexiglas, nodded at him as he motioned for them to unlock it. One of them smiled at Jake with a look of such condescension that Jake felt sick. "Fuck you," he said, and hurled a thick gob of spit at the Plexiglas wall-only to get a quick, surprisingly painful clap on the back of the head from the warden. "Anymore of that," he said, crouching slightly so as to look Jake straight in the eye, "and you're heading back up the fucking shitstream I plucked you out of. And if you think you had a shit-lapping time of it there, you've never dreamed what they do to little cunts like you where I'm planning on hurling you. Understood?" The sudden transformation from Green River PR man to the flinty sadist now looming before him was so swift and stunning that Jake found himself momentarily unable to speak. "Understand, you little pussy?" "I understand," said Jake weakly, hating how small and useless his voice sounded. The warden nodded, and returned to his previous persona so quickly Jake wondered momentarily if he had imagined it. "Wonderful!" he chirped as the door opened and Jake got his first look at the prisoners of Green River Penitentiary. He and the warden were standing on a circular walkway about a floor and a half above the communal area of the prison block, and as Jake took in the sight of the Green River population going about its aimless daily business, it struck him that he had never seen a more surreal sight in his life. The room was filled with young girls-ages 10, 11, 12-all of them, even Jake had to admit, as cute as a button. Some were wearing the same orange jumpsuits that Jake had on; other wore prison-issue jeans and white T-shirts that exposed their thin young arms and flat chests. Most had white running shoes on their feet, but some sported cheap sandals. A group of young black girls were in one area of the room, using the weights-a couple were doing curls with tiny dumbbells while a third was spotting a fourth little girl as she strained to do another 10 reps with a miniature barbell. Around a table in another part of the room sat five or six white girls, their long blonde hair tied into braids and ponytails, idly talking as they shared a pack of cigarettes. A group of dainty- looking Asian girls watched as one of their friends wrapped her hands and set to work on a punching bag. A group of Latino girls sat playing dominoes. A black girl with a do-rag on her head and no shirt was getting into a shouting match with a pale, white, tall-for-her-age red-headed girl with freckles, but before anything could develop, a guard stepped in, easily separated them, and gestured to the black girl to cover herself up. Meekly, the girl obeyed. It was like a bizarre parody of prison life-all the inmates had the closed-in posture, the defensive, hard-eyed stare and the air of simmering danger that radiates from all career criminals and long-term prison inmates in waves. But this hard-case attitude was coming from a roomful of little girls that, Jake said to himself, looked more like members of the Baby-Sitters' Club than the Bloods or the Crips. "See how easily that incident was quelled?" remarked the warden, gesturing toward the black trouble-maker, who had slipped her T-shirt back on and was ambling peacefully back to her cell. "When that prisoner was back in the general population, he was a terror-he put three well-trained guards in the hospital. Now he's practically a model prisoner." Jake looked down at the roomful of girls and rubbed his now-delicate cheek with a small hand. They did seem peaceful, and even the biggest one, the red- headed girl, seemed like someone he could hold his own with in a fight, if things ever came to that. Then, he turned and regarded the six-and-a-half-foot- tall warden from his new four-foot-four height and realized that, well, he had been assessing his situation on a sliding scale. "A model prisoner," the warden said, leading Jake to his new cell. "Now, there are two kinds of prisoners in Green River: good little girls and bad little girls. Which kind can I expect you to be?" Jake didn't answer. Down below, the other prisoners had noticed a new inmate had arrived and they were busy sizing her up. One of them, a tough- looking blonde who had shaved her very curly hair into a brushcut, made an obscene gesture to Jake with her tongue." "PRISONER!" the warden thundered, shocking Jake into attention once more. "Which kind of inmate can I expect you to be?!" They were at the entrance to Jake's cell. Jake peered inside, and within the shadows he could just make out a tiny figure sitting up on the bunk. "A good little girl," Jake said meekly. "A good little girl." The warden squatted in front of Jake, once again looking him straight in the eye. "Give me your hand." "Sir?" "Is there a problem with your hearing, you naughty little girl? Give me your hand!" Reluctantly, Jake complied. His slim, small hand looked even tinier in comparison to the warden's gigantic mitt. "Do you see that?" Jake nodded. "Just remember that, shitheel, every time you think about forgetting your place." *** Jake sat on the lower bunk and watched the metallic door slam shut once more behind the warden as he exited the cell block. He kicked off his sneakers and broodingly considered his small feet-which barely touched the floor-and those impossibly small toenails. He shook his head from side to side, still getting used to the feel of the long, black hair that now reached halfway down his back. There was a mirror at the far end of the cell, and Jake stood up and walked toward it, taking in the body he would wear for the next three years of his life. He looked to be about 10 years old. And he was undoubtedly a girl-wide blue eyes, sweetly dimpled cheeks, and long dark hair that partly hid a pair of delicate, shell-like ears. Jake walked closer to the mirror and inspected his faintly freckled skin, which was soft and completely free of blemishes. His teeth were perfectly white and straight. He paused, and then, a wave of curiosity and horror washed over him and he unbuttoned his jumpsuit, shrugging it off his small shoulders and stepping out of it as it fell around his feet. He was now wearing nothing but a thin cotton T-shirt and a pair of white cotton panties. He turned to the side and regarded his new physique, with a pair of tiny bumps pushing against the T-shirt on his chest and his slightly rounded bottom. He had once been a very hairy man, with a thick layer of brownish fur coating his chest, arms and legs, and Jake looked in amazement at the utter hairlessness of new newly feminized body. Without warning, Jake suddenly felt a pair of arms wrapped around him and someone kissing him on the neck. "Hey, roomie," said a childlike voice. "How 'bout slipping us a little of that sweet young snatch, hmmm?" Jake, alarmed, wriggled free of the stranger's grasp. He wheeled around, and found himself facing a blonde 12-year-old girl wearing black track pants and no top, giggling uncontrollably. "Heeey, heeey, calm down," she said. "Saw you checking out the goods and shit, and I mean, I couldn't help myself. I mean, lookit those little titties just sittin' there, right? I mean, shit, girly, what's a little girl to do?" "I'm-fuck, what am I? Eleven?" Jake replied. "Keep your fucking hands off me." "Oh, come on, girl. Don't pay it no mind. Green River, we all have a little girlygirl action in here. We all indulge in a little Love's Baby Soft, right? Come on, show me that li'l powderpuff of yours." "Fuck you." Jake tensed up, ready for a fight. He felt a little ridiculous doing so in his T-shirt and panties, but he knew if he didn't stand his ground right off the bat, he'd be doomed. To his amazement, though, his adversary simply giggled some more. "Shit, put down your dukes, girl. Sit here. Tell me about yourself." The girl flopped onto the lower bunk and indicated that Jake should join her. After a few moments' hesitation, Jake did as he was asked. "Shit, you're a small one, ain't you? Well, I've seen worse. One guy, come in here, this Asian motherfucker? Fucking chemicals must've made him, like eight years old, from the looks of him. Fucking drug-runner, murderer, fucking cried himself to sleep for a fucking month. Shit. Gosh, but your hair's pretty. You're so lucky-mine just hangs." Bewildered by the sudden switch in conversational topics, all Jake could do was nod. "Uh, thanks," he said. "Uh... so... what are you in for?" "Murder!" the girl said cheerfully. "With my bare hands!" She displayed her hands for Jake's inspection, and it was hard to imagine those tiny instruments killing anybody. "Fucking hard to imagine, huh? Well, it's fucking true. Killed a guy in back of a bar back in '07. Here, let me show you..." With a surprisingly degree of limberness, the girl spun around, reached underneath the bunk and pulled out a scrapbook. She opened the book and pointed to a photo of a mean-looking redneck with a wide mustache and enormous, muscular arms covered with tattoos. "That was you?" Jake asked. "Fuckin' A," the girl said. "Cross fuckin' Hank Reardon and he'll take your fucking head off." She laughed. "'Course, that was a few years ago. Had a lot of demons in me back then. You know. Had a drinking problem. Had what you call a violent temper." Another laugh. "Had a fuckin' dick between my legs. Had a lot of problems." "The dick was a problem?" Jake asked skeptically. "Aaaah, fuck, not the dick," said Hank. "But, you know, a lot of problems that come with the territory, you know? Fuckin' rage, fuckin' anger. Fuck, I look at the fucking guy in this fucking picture and it's like some guy I don't even fucking remember anymore. You know, some fucking asshole I met at a party once, you know?" Hank sat next to Jake on the bunk and put his arm around Jake's shoulder. "Listen-what the fuck's your name, motherfucker?" There was an unexpected tenderness in Hank's voice, even with all the swearing and Jake realized he was opening up to him. "Uh... Jake." "Listen, Jake, you motherfucker, let me tell you something. When they threw me in here, in fucking Green River, I thought I was going to go fucking out of my mind, you know? Fucking kindergarten, right? But I'll tell you, this place is the fucking best thing that's happened to me in my entire motherfucking life. When I think-fuck, you know? That it took losing my fucking cock and getting turned into a fucking ten-year-old girl to straighten me out.... I mean, fuck. How fucked up does someone have to be for that to be the cure? Get your clothes on. I'll give you the tour." *** "Hey, Hank, who's the new meat?" The catcall came from a tough-looking Hispanic girl smoking a cigarette by the punching bag. "Who the fuck wants to know?" replied Hank, giving the girl's ponytail a quick, painful tug. "Owww! Motherfucker!" "That's Juan," explained Hank casually. "Talks tough, but ever since Green River, he's a fucking pussy." Jake noticed he and Hank kept unconsciously holding each other's hand as they walked along-if this was some kind of instinctive female bonding response, he thought to himself, he'd have to keep an eye out for it. Hank indicated the group of girls doing bicep curls and other assorted weight-training exercises. "Lot of the girls here keep up with the weights," he said dismissively. "Don't know what the fuck they expect it to do for them. Think they're gonna be turn into fucking Lou Ferrigno somehow. Look." Hank indicated one girl struggling helplessly to lift a twenty-pound barbell over her head. "You ever seen anything so fucking pathetic? Now here, here's where you want to go." He led Jake into a gymnasium where a short, lithe 12-year-old black girl in a white leotard was doing a routine on the balance beam. "That's Titus," Hank said quietly. "Used to be a fucking college football player. Fucking linebacker. Now look at him-fucking amazing, isn't it? Motherfucker's neck used to be fucking thicker than his entire fucking waist." Jake marvelled at the girl's agility. She was almost as tiny a creature as he was now, about four feet six with no bumps or curves to speak of whatsoever. But even though Jake didn't know a thing about gymnastics, he could tell her skill on the beam was nothing short of outstanding as he watched her do handstands, turn cartwheels, perform 360- degree jumps and land square on the beam every single time. Finally, she did a daring backward leap off the beam that made Jake gasp involuntarily, and when she effortlessly nailed the landing, Hank clapped his hands and laughed. "Titus!" he shouted. "Motherfucker! Come here." Titus seemed to awaken from a performing trance when he heard Hank's voice, and he quickly ran to meet him-his fingers, Jake noticed with a certain discomfort, tugging girlishly at his leotard, which had ridden up his buttocks, as he did so. "Titus," Hank said, "meet Jake here. Motherfucker's sharing the cell with us now." Titus looked Jake up and down and let out a whistle of approval. "Mmm- mmmm!" he said. "You are something fine, baby! You're lucky I don't have my cock on me right now, or you would be done for, honey!" "Motherfucker!" said Hank, indicating his own body. "What you want with her skanky ass when you got this in arm's reach every motherfuckin' night?" "Get your skinny little white-trash pussy out of my face, motherfucker," said Titus, waving him disdainfully away. "White-trash pussy prob'ly taste like motherfucking Spam..." "Shit, girl, your stinkin' Kerri Strug-tasting little snatch makes this little honeypot seem like goddamned blueberry pie..." This round of mutual insults seemed to be a bit of a ritual for the two prisoners, so Jake politely waited until it was over, marvelling all over again that two girls who looked so adorable could be so foul-mouthed in every single sentence they spoke. Finally, he could take it no longer. "I don't see what's so funny about any of this," he said. "Aw, shit," said Hank. "You get over it. Stay in Green River for a couple of months and you realize: this shit is fucking hilarious." "Look at this little peach here," Titus said, indicating Hank. "I mean, Look at how adorable this little bad-ass motherfucker turned out to be." "You want hilarious?" Hank quickly replied, a smile on his lips. "Look at the scrawny assed little pixie they turned this cocksucker into. Smells like fucking strawberries all day long. Spent his days playing ball, getting pussy. Playing ball, getting pussy the only thing on the motherfucker's mind. Now look at him. Fucking princess loves it." "Fuck, man, I ain't turning girlygirl," Titus said. "What's girlygirl?" Jake asked. "Girlygirl's losing your sense of self," Titus said, suddenly turning serious. "It's surrendering to your sentence, man. It's not taking the needle back when you finally get out." Jake couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You mean, some people stay this way? They finish their time and they let them out and they stay like this?" Hank nodded. "I've heard of a couple of times." "But why? Who'd want to stay like this?" "Old-timers, a lot of them," Titus said. "They figure they'll try starting over, losing a cock's a small price to pay for another fifty years." "And some of them just get used to it," Hank said softly. "Some of these motherfuckers, you've got to understand, come out of chaos. Some of them got fucking monsters chasing them ever since they were babies, you know what I'm saying? Shit. For some of them, spending a couple of years as a 12-year-old girl's the first peaceful time they've ever had in their whole motherfucking lives. They know what going back to themselves means. They'll take what's behind the unknown door instead." He paused, and Jake and Titus kept quiet, honouring the silence. Finally, Hank returned to his usual self. "Fuck, Titus, you ought to stay the way you are." "Fuck no." "Why the fuck not? Your fucking football career's shit. But stay Tyra or Tae-Bo or Titties or whatever the fuck you call yourself that's the female version of your stupid motherfucking name, and you've got a future, man. You could go to the motherfucking Olympic games." "No fucking way." "Yes fucking way." Hank turned to Jake. "Titus is in here nearly every fucking day," Hank said, a note of admiration creeping into his voice. "Well, shit, motherfucker," Titus replied. "Got to stay limber." "Show him," Hank said. "Show him that thing." After a couple of minutes' persuading, Titus lay face down on the floor, then curled his legs backward until the soles of his feet were planted against the back of his head. Jake stared in amazement. *** "They do this to control us," said the black girl who Hank had introduced to Jake as Elijah. Her hair was in dreadlocks, and her dark, lustrous skin gleamed under the flourescent lighting, a sharp contrast to the bright orange of her immaculate prison jumpsuit. She went barefoot, and she wiggled her toes idly as she sat, curled up in one of the giant-seeming chairs set up in the communal area. Elijah considered herself a political prisoner-as a man, she had shot and killed a policeman in the middle of a bank robbery that was intended to fund a radical enclave she had helped to found aimed at sabotaging the "racist police force" of New York City. The female Elijah was the person everyone brought newcomers to in order to give them the lowdown on the way the prison operated. "It's the ultimate indignity to the black man," she said. "Lowering him, emasculating him to the status of a prepubescent child in order to make him more tractable, more compliant. They say prison violence is lower in Green River than in any other prison. I do not doubt it. They say incidences of rape are lower in Green River than in any other prison. I do not doubt it. But what they do not say, and what I also do not doubt, is that damage done to the spirit of the black man is higher in Green River than anywhere else on earth. That's why you must remain strong, my brothers. And you are my brothers-I don't care what you look like, what sorry state this sorry State has brought you to. I don't care what is or is not between your legs, I do not care how sisterly your faces and your physiques may be, you are not my sisters!" "Amen," someone murmurred. "You are not my sisters!" Elijah repeated. "You are my brothers. And so you must remain strong as brothers, my friends. You must remain strong as brothers. You must not go girlygirl on any of us. You must be prepared to walk out of this prison, this cage for the spirit, as strong and masculine and proud as you were when you walked in here!" Jake listened avidly to Elijah's words, but something seemed hollow about them. He saw the solemn look on Hank's face, for instance, when Elijah talked about the overarching importance of not giving into you feminine side, and then he looked at the crowd listening to him with such rapt attention, this crowd of little girls dressed up in their ridiculously tough-looking prison outfits, scowling and hoping they looked fearsome but only looking cute, all of them short and delicate and completely incapable of inflicting any kind of real violence on anybody, and suddenly Elijah's entire message seemed to fall apart. He remembered the warden comparing his giant hand to Jake's tiny one. They were little girls, Jake said to himself. It seemed ridiculous to deny it. And to insist that any of the comforts that their new bodies provided them-Hank's newfound sense of peace, Titus's regained ability to take pleasure in the accomplishments of his body-seemed like a crime in itself. Jake wandered away from the crowd. A couple of Elijah's most obviously ardent admirers scowled at him, but he ignored them. Jake wandered down a corridor that ended in a barred window, through which a gentle breeze was blowing and he silently smoked a cigarette and looked out at the cars moving through the city as he felt the wind blowing his long, beautiful hair. And it was beautiful, Jake decided. He was a girl. Things about him could be beautiful. He smiled. Three years. He could manage this. It wouldn't be difficult at all. And then a couple of guards waylaid him, dragged him into the laundry room, stripped him naked and forced him to suck their cocks. It was impossible to fight back-Jake had never felt so powerless. By the time Jake had gathered himself together enough to head back into the cell block, it was time for lockdown. Titus and Hank asked him where he had been, but he ignored their questions. He climbed silently into the upper bunk and lay awake as his two cellmates got into bed together and kissed and caressed each other's small, lovely bodies until they both dropped off to sleep. *** Jake didn't know why he expected the morning shower would make things any different-he still felt as filthy as he had the night before. He stood with his back to as many of his fellow inmates as possible, soaped himself up and rinsed himself off with a minimum of fuss. Most of the other girls had no such embarrassment-they strutted around the shower room buck naked, trash-talking each other and shaking their flat chests in each others' faces with a weirdly supreme level of self-confidence. A couple of black girls came up to him, tongues lolling, grabbing their crotches, but Hank glared at them and they moved on. Even then, Jake wouldn't tell Hank what the problem was. When he stepped out of the shower and a guard walked up to Jake, he found himself flinching at the sight of him. It was a completely different guard, but that didn't seem to make a difference and once again Jake cursed this pathetic new body of his. "Visitor," the guard said. Jake cringed. There was only one person it could be-there was only one person who ever visited him. Ruth, his wife. Their marriage had not been going well even before Jake was arrested; no fights, at least, not knock-down, drag- out ones, but a slow, steady dropping-off of interest and a growing, poisonous kind of impatience with absolutely everything the other person had to say. They had tried to keep their increasing dislike of each other hidden from their 16- year-old daughter, Lana, but they both knew their efforts weren't doing any good. And Lana was only growing more and more sullen toward them with each passing day. Then came the accident. Ruth dutifully attended every day of the trial, but Jake secretly suspected that the sight of her sitting behind him, so rigid, so absent of any sympathy for everything her husband had done, may have done him more harm than good with the jury. Lana had come for opening arguments and never returned-not even for the verdict. He hadn't seen her since. Jake imagined that his despair over the state of his marriage and his relationship with Lana had probably helped fuel his decision to transfer to Green River-he wanted to get as far away from his old self as possible, to leave that failure he used to be rotting in a cell at the state penitentiary while his soul was reborn in a fresh new body. He hadn't actually articulated it to himself, of course, but he knew that was probably part of what he was thinking. It was certainly part of why he didn't even consult Ruth or Lana before applying for the Green River program. "Fuck them," the thought may have streaked across his brain. "Let me just disappear." But of course, he couldn't disappear. They would find out eventually, he knew, and now they had. Jake's hair was still wet from the shower as he walked to the visiting room. He wore the standard prison uniform: a denim shirt, dark, stiff jeans, white socks and white sneakers. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection on a window as he walked on-barely coming up midway to the chest of the guard who was accompanying him, Jake's sweet face looking grim and serious, his thin legs wobbling slightly as he prepared to show the two closest people in his life the humiliating thing he had done to himself. The moment Ruth caught sight of Jake, her face froze into a mask that expressed equal parts horror, amazement and contempt as she watched her small, feminized husband climb awkwardly into the chair opposite her. There was no window dividing them, but when Jake tried to hold her hand, Ruth recoiled instantly. "Jake...," she finally said. "What... what have you done?" Jake could only offer a shrug as he turned his attention to Lana, who was looking at him with more interest and curiosity than she had shown him in the last five years. "Daddy?" she said. "Is that really you in there?" "Yes, sweetheart," Jake said, more than a little embarrassed to see his daughter's already well-developed figure and statuesque physique, which made him seem even tinier and more insignificant and powerless. "It's me. Can you forgive me?" Lana squealed and walked over to Jake's chair. "Oh my God," she said breathlessly. "Look at you. You'd never know." She stroked Jake's cheek and examined his hands and his hair-Jake winced inwardly at her merciless inspection of his reduced status, but at the same time, he welcomed anything that helped bridge the gap between himself and Lana. He looked over Lana's shoulder and tried to explain himself to Ruth. "Ruth," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about this. It was just... The way things were between us, I thought..." He sighed. "I couldn't take prison. It was hell. I mean, Ruth, it was literally hell. I knew I couldn't last. I'd wind up killed, or I'd kill myself. Literally, I would literally spend my days and nights wondering if I could last another hour without giving in and killing myself. And then my lawyer approached me with news of this procedure. An experimental cell block. I was out of my head-I was drowning, I was grasping at anything that looked like a lifeline." He could feel a tear trickling down his cheek; he quickly wiped it away, disgusted by the show of little-girl emotional weakness. And yet, he did feel weak. Another tear leaked out of the other eye. He watched Ruth sitting there across the table from him. The weakness of the thought disgusted him-why was she just sitting there? He thought of the pair of guards, laughing as they violated him and now the tears started falling in a flood. Why wasn't she moving? He wanted so badly for her to... to... he could barely bring himself to say it to himself: he wanted her to give him a hug and say everything would be all right. And then, suddenly, someone was hugging him, but it wasn't Ruth, who sat there as stone-faced and disgusted with him as ever. To his amazement, it was Lana. "Oh... Daddy," she said with a sudden burst of emotion. "Daddy... it's all right... Ssshhh... ssshhh..." He remembered how he had cradled Lana in his arms all those years ago whenever she had had a bad dream, and he felt a great wave of love wash over him as he realized that she was now returning the favour- helping the bad dream of everything that had happened to him in prison go away. They sat there, holding each other in their arms, for a few more minutes in silence until his tears abated. Ruth had left-she announced in an emotionless voice that she would wait for Lana in the corridor outside. Jake hardly cared-he was too astonished that all those years of bitterness and rancour that had divided him and his daughter seemed, largely, to have vanished. "And all it took was something as simple as radical sex-reassignment surgery," Jake thought sarcastically to himself. Hell, he didn't care how difficult it was right now-he was too busy basking in the familial feelings Lana now had for him. She told him about her new boyfriend. She told him about her fears about what she would do with herself after getting out of high school. She told him things as a 10-year- old girl she never would have shared with a 40-year-old father, not in a million years. She played the big sister to him-after all, Jake reasoned, that's what she was to him now. He was two heads shorter than she was, after all; when she playfull let him try on her platform sandals, he looked ridiculous, like a girl playing dress-up. But rather than depressing him, Jake found himself laughing for the first time since that terrible day when the judge had delivered his sentence-that day when Lana had refused to show up for him. When Lana's visit was over, Jake felt better than he had in years. *** When Titus and Hank returned to their cell, both still in their leotards after a long gymnastics workout, Jake was already there, sitting on the bunk. Hank leaned over to give Jake a kiss, just to see how he'd respond, and was surprised to discover Jake's cheeks were wet. "Shit, girl," he said. "You been crying? You ain't turning girlygirl your second day in the joint, are you?" "No, I'm not crying," said Jake. "Okay, maybe I am crying. But not like that." He sighed. "I just had my first visit with my wife since..." Titus, who was wriggling out of her leotard, gave a low whistle. "That's a motherfucker, man. My old lady never came back after getting a look at this sweet new little pussy of mine." "How'd it go?" Hank asked softly. "I'm getting a divorce," Jake said. "Shit." "No, no," Jake replied. "Shit, we were heading there anyway. No, listen. I can do this. For the first time, I think I can do this time." Hank and Titus looked at each other with such an expression of confused happiness on their faces that Jake couldn't help but laugh. And not just laugh-giggle. He didn't care if he was turning girlygirl. He was in a whole cellful of girlygirls-and, he suspected, an entire cellblock. And unlike most of them, he hadn't-how had Elijah put it?-lost his sense of self. He felt strangely like a man again. "What are you two motherfuckers gawping at?" he said with a smile. "Titus, get some motherfucking clothes on-no one in this cell wants to see any more of your skinny ass than we do already. Hank, give me a smoke before I whup your jailbait ass." The End