The Life of Lol

by Andrew Birch

  Introduction

  It’s not the most comfortable of surroundings, although as I think about it, it’s better than some of the places I’ve been over the years. The prison bunk is too small for my slightly tall frame, and my feet push against the dark grey cell wall. You’d think that over the years, I’d grown used to seeing that locked cell door in front of me, but even now, it fills me with a feeling of frustration, of being caged in like a wild animal. Though I’m not quite as wild as I used to be.

  My name’s Taylor and this is kind of my story. I’m sixty two now. Someone once said to me that they thought I’d lived an interesting life. I don’t know about that, as I look around at the grey walls of this familiar cell, I reflect that the last twenty were perhaps less exciting than the first forty or so. But when they said they thought I was interesting, it gave me the idea to maybe someday write it all down, if I lived long enough. And so here it is. My life story and how I’ve ended up here.

  Chapter One. Bottom of the pile

  Wham

  The fat dyke hit me again, hard in the stomach this time, and I winced from the sudden sharp pain. I wasn’t a crier, or a screamer, so I just kept quiet. That made the nasty bitches madder. I squirmed in the grip of the other big woman that was holding me, but I was small and skinny and couldn’t move. She had a grip of my blonde ponytail and no matter how I twisted I couldn’t get free.

  Wham. Into the ribs this time, and I heard my body complain at the treatment.

  My name is Lol. This is a story all about me. A week before my beating, I’d been convicted of running several cons and drug deals, and sentenced to serve ten years in the women’s prison. Which is where I was now. In the prison shower room. Having the living shit kicked out of me.

  The smaller woman, Diane, hadn’t touched me, but now she smacked me across the face with her fist. My jaw ached with the force of her hit,

  “That’s what happens when you treat people without respect”, she said menacingly.

  Treated without respect. That phrase meant nothing to me. I was in my mid-twenties, street wise and street smart, unless you had something I could take from you, I had no respect for you and didn’t want to know you. I’d better describe myself, I guess. I was taller than average for a woman, stick thin, I mean, not healthy thin, just malnourished thin, with long blonde hair. Not nice blonde hair, it was more a dirty blonde that hung in lifeless curtains about me. People said I had nice eyes, they were bright green like a cat, but I had this weird smile that freaked people out. It was that same smile that had pissed this Diane bitch off. Diane was top dog here so I found out, and the whole absurdity of the situation in here amused me. Like, on the outside, this piece of shit Diane wouldn’t even have gotten a look in, the things me and my friends were doing would have made her head spin. But here, she was top dog. Fuck knows why, probably the dyke bitches she kept close to her seemed real good at squashing skinny girls, no matter how mean and ornery we were. . And so the whole situation made me smile. Like I said, I have this weird smile. I guess I don’t even know I’m doing it. Some guy once said to me that it was like looking into a tigers eyes and watching it grin just before it took a chunk out of your face. Not that I was a tiger. More like a skanky mongrel alley cat. I’d grown up on the streets, and had some pretty hard times, and some tough shit done to me over the years. So in a way, coming to prison was gonna be like living in the fucking Ritz. I wasn’t scared of anyone, cos I’d figured it out. All you gotta be afraid of is dying. And I’ve never been afraid of that. I’ve never had anything tangible to lose by dying, so what the fuck have I to fear? So go on bitch, kick the crap out of me, and if I die in this bathroom, lucky fucking you. If I don’t die, then watch out for a two by four planted in your fucking skull or a shiv between the ribs by tea time.

  Diane laughed at my struggling, and then as I watched, unbuttoned my orange regulation jumpsuit to the waist. I squirmed again, but the other bitch held my ponytail firmly and nearly tore my hair out at the roots.

  “You like this” Diane said amused?

  She slipped a hand inside my knickers and began to touch my sex, wearing an animal grin, her face close to mine. What can I say, it had been a while, I guess my body betrayed me a little, and despite not being that way inclined, I stopped struggling a little.

  She suddenly withdrew her hand and the big bitch hit me again, a hard one in the gut.

  “You dirty little slut”, screamed Diane, “You think I’d ever touch you?”

  “Skank’s enjoying it”, remarked Diane’s Gorilla.

  They threw me to the floor

  Diane kicked me hard in the same place as she had just fingered me intimately and I vomited with the pain. The plastic slippers we all wore meant that the blow didn’t hurt as much as it could have, but it still wasn’t something I wanted.

  “Eyes to the floor”, said Diane, standing over me, “I don’t like little skanks looking at me.”

  I watched her intently, I had this sudden fear she was gonna kill me, My face must’ve been a mask though, cos she thought she had that look from me again, the cat like look. I really don’t know I’m doing it sometimes.

  “She’s doing it again, Di”, said the big bitch who was holding me, still kneeling on my bruised body.

  “Alicia, leave her”, Diane shouted, “give her time to think. Same thing tomorrow if she doesn’t play by the rules.”

  “Fuck that”, said Alicia feeling in her pocket, “she ain’t gonna be using those big green eyes again.”

  “What the fuck”, I shouted, fearing what was coming. I struggled, but she was about eighteen stone and sat hard on top of me, and I couldn’t budge. Diane and the dyke tried to get Alice off of me, but they couldn’t. Alicia’s giant left paw cupped my chin, holding my face down, and her right hand pulled a sharpened pencil out of her pocket

  “I’m digging her fucking eyes out”, she shouted and she moved the pencil to my face.

  I panicked and tried to move my face away, but I couldn’t, so I put my hands over my face. I could feel the pencil on my cheek. The dyke was trying to pull Alicia off, but she was too strong. I felt the pencil dig around near my cheek as Alicia tried to lever the sharpened point under my hand towards my closed eye. The probing succeeded, and with a panic I felt the point of the pencil press hard onto my closed eyelid. I squirmed with the pain as Alicia pressed harder with the pencil on my closed eye.

  Then there was a blow, and the pain on my eye was gone. Diane had hit her hard with a bar of soap, and the huge gorilla had turned.

  “Don’t disobey me”, screamed Diane, “you answer to me. Nobody else.”

  Alicia grunted in annoyance, but got up off me, though giving me a menacing glare.

  Diane helped me to my feet,

  “Remember”, she said patting me on the back, “Your eyes better be combing the floor from now on, otherwise I’ll be holding your pretty eyes open while she does her thing with that pencil. She kissed me hard on the lips, and the three were gone.

  I breathed for a moment, before staggering onto one of the stalls. I barely undid myself in time, barely making the seat before my bowels gave me away in a sudden explosion. Not afraid of dying? Maybe not, but these bitches were worse than that. I don’t mind admitting I was terrified. Probably why I’d nearly crapped myself. I sat there for a while longer while my body emptied itself, and I tried to stop from shaking,

  Like I said, I’d been here a week. I’d arrived here on a bus, from the courtroom, wearing the orange jumpsuit and shackles that they made us all wear. Then, some middle aged prune-faced old bitch put her hand up my ass to make sure I wasn’t carrying any drugs. That wasn’t a problem for me. Sure, I liked a line of coke as much as the next girl, but |I never felt dependent on it. As long as
I could get cigarettes I would be ok. As a relatively young girl, I was in a cell with an older woman, her name was Dorothy. She’d been in here for nearly twenty years, vehicular manslaughter so she said. She told me about all the interesting characters and the goings on. Diane was indeed the top dog here, with her two bitches Big D and Alicia making sure we all toed the line. Big D was one of the lesbians, so Diane had them on board too. Alicia was the heaviest and nastiest of the black women, so they were on board with Diane’s regime as well. Apparently, Diane sucked off a couple of guards, so they turned a blind eye to whatever the hell she was doing. The work we were offered was in a call centre selling insurance to shmucks on the phone. This earned us $4.50 a week. Diane took fifty cents of that in what she called tax, and as a result, only had to work one day herself, and yet she could afford all kinds of fancy stuff for her cell. Plus, she got plenty time to work out some scams of her own, as she had a trustees job on the land outside. So she got packages coming in whenever the fuck she wanted. We weren’t maximum security here, and during the day when we weren’t working, we could either hang out in the exercise yard, or if we were trustees, on the land in the precious open air. For those that wanted to book smart, there was the reading area and library. Once ever few weeks, we had a beautician to do our hair and nails, if we could afford it. There was a little prisoners shop, run by a warden and a trustee that sold sweets, chocolate, cheap toiletries, female hygiene stuff, and phone cards. That’s where most of our money went, according to Dorothy. Unless you paid it to Diane for drugs. Dorothy didn’t approve of drugs, or so I suspected.

  It was an interesting place. A structure set in stone. An organisation with a rigid adherence to rules and set ways. Sometimes, the outside world was a little too chaotic, sure there were chances for cunning little bitches like me to make money, but it was hard. Y’all had to have eyes everywhere. But here it was different. It’s much easier to exploit a rigid structure than a fluid one. Like stealing a car or burgling a house. Say you have two guys; one goes to work shifts, sometimes he goes at 0630 in the morning and comes back at 11.00, some days he goes at 08.30 and comes back at 10.45. It’s fluid, unpredictable, like the outside world. Prison was like the other guy, he goes off at 08.30 every morning, and he isn’t back to 5.30 at night. That’s every fucking day the same. Rigid, you know what I mean? You can go have a party in his house, and shit in his pot plant before robbing the place and stealing all his money. Take your time doing it too. That was how I saw prison. A rigid predictable structure that I could probably exploit. My way of thinking was this, the judge said that, if I was a good girl, I’d get a few years off my ten year sentence, maybe serve six and a half, seven. Now, I could serve the seven being a soft little bitch and sitting under Diane’s boot heels for the whole of the time, or I could sit on top of the pile like a fairy fucking princess. I had to make a plan to get on top. Considering what I’d both learned and done in my life so far, that wouldn’t be too hard. Of course, I still had to deal with Diane.

  But there were other things I’d taken in during my week. One or two of the guards were proper hard asses, like the kind of guys that say “it’s more than my jobs worth”, and they won’t bend from their structure to help you out, while a couple were ok, and kind of sympathetic. In my head, these sympathetic guards couldn’t be trusted either. When the chips were down and asses were against the wall, they would always side with their own kind, and not us. That was the divide in operation. While they were sympathetic to us and our plight, the fear of becoming one of us themselves and crossing the divide would stop them siding with us when the shit hit the fan.

  Anyway, of the two guards I’d already met, the young guy was probably the best, the one with the crew-cut. He got bored easily, and always fiddled with the shit in his pockets, and watched the clock for quitting time. I stored that information away. The tall black guy, he was ok too, but he was all “go team” and trying to make us all pull together and fly right, so to me he blended into the wall as someone to either be simply tolerated or ignored. Then there was Bruce. Only trustees got to work with Bruce. I wasn’t a trustee, but in my orientation I’d met him. He was the delivery guy, and came every few days with stuff for the shop, or mail packages for the inmates if there were any. Sometimes he’d do repair jobs. When I met him, I think he was a bit simple, like the sort of thing that happens when a brother decides it’s a cold night and decides to get all warm and sticky with his sister, ya know? He was a nice enough guy, but y’all got the Impression that there was a cog missing in his head or something. He was a good enough fella though. He only met with me once, and he called me beautiful and sophisticated. Ha! I smiled at that one. Guess he doesn’t know the difference between a sophisticated lady and a junkyard alley cat. I knew guys like him on the outside though. They’d do anything for a smile, or a quick touch of the arm. Ask them to do something really dangerous and the reward was a kiss on the cheek. Slave for life. This was gonna be easier than I thought. Then there was the governor. He was just an asshat, pure and simple. When we had our interview with him, he just read it all off a screen, never looked us in the eye. It was all about structures and insurance, and not rocking the boat. Hell, boat rocking was one of the things I seemed to do best.

  I didn’t really pay too much attention to anybody else. If they weren’t either useful to me, or gonna hamper me, then they weren’t even on my radar. Ten years of this. Not that I would serve anywhere near that, but far better to spend ten years in charge, than ten years under someone’s boot heel. At least that’s what I thought back then.

  Chapter 2. A change in management.

  I lay on my bunk, gingerly as my sides were still all bruised and sore. Trying to figure out a way to stop being Diane’s punching practice dummy again. As if she could read my mind, Dorothy leaned over from the top bunk,

  “They see you as a threat, honey” she said softly, “just keep your head down, keep out of trouble, prove to them you’re not a threat and they’ll leave you alone.”

  I kind of understood, but my pain made me sulky and belligerent.

  “How the fuck am I a threat?” I snapped, “I’m barely 22 and know fuck about being in jail?”

  “You’re young, honey, they can see that”, she explained smiling, “And you’re in here for quite a while. Plus, you’re pretty and obviously smart. Diane’s afraid of you”

  “Yeah”, I snorted, “funny way to show fear, to beat the living shit out of me.”

  Dorothy lay back in her bunk. She’d had enough of the moody kid who wouldn’t be told. Privately, she worried about her young cell mate. She’d seen that look in the blonde’s eye as she walked in here. Most kids her age would have been full of fear walking into a jail for the first time. Not this one though. The look of a predator, looking to see how the situation could be taken advantage of. She hoped the kid would learn to keep her head down, and then maybe Diana and her cronies would leave her alone. I spoke up again,

  “What day are we allowed to go see that hairdresser woman?” I asked from her bunk, distracted with my thoughts.

  Dorothy’s stomach churned. The predator was planning something, she could just feel it.

  “Thursday, honey”, she said, why, you planning to come. You got enough money?”

  “Just about”, I replied, “I’ll head down there then.

  “That’s the spirit”, said Dorothy, “go make yourself pretty. Forget about Diane and her goons.”

  “Hmm”, I murmured.

  “Just remember”, said Dorothy, “nothing too short or above the ears or you’ll attract attention…if you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t want anybody touching me” I said sullenly.

  “Well then just be careful what you get done”, said Dorothy.

  I had to think. This blonde swishing about behind me was a problem in a fight, and had already proven that. That’s why I planned to get the lot hacked off on Thursday. Then, when Diane and I met, there would be a bit less of me to grab hold of. C
ourse there was a problem with the lesbians. This was a closed society, as I’ve said before. Little groups. The blacks, the Chinese, the lesbians, the whites, the peaceful old ones. I knew that after Thursday and my appointment with the prison hairdresser the dyke bitches would think I was one of them. That was the signal, or so it seemed. Most of them looked less like women and more like men to my young eyes anyway. I hated the thought of looking like one of them, or even them thinking I was one. Not that I was against them, but you gotta remember I grew up with a whole heap of traditional thinking people. I didn’t mind them, as long as they didn’t go around touching me up.

  Fuck them, I thought, in my usual self destructive way. The prison hairdresser was four dollars. I had four twenty five left. That wouldn’t leave me much till next pay day, but if my plan worked, I wouldn’t have a problem with money again. And if it didn’t work, then Diane’s fat bitch friend would likely either kill me, blind me with that fucking pencil or make sure I was drinking my food through a straw for the next year anyway, so money wouldn’t matter either way. See. There I go again. In my eyes, that was a fool proof plan.

  I began to sort of enjoy prison, in my own way. Sure, I still hated that door, and talked to hardly anyone, but at home or with the guys in the squat, I had nobody in the world. At least here I had Dorothy, and I could make plans. Like I said before, the world is a hard place, so big and hard for one little person to make a mark, the rules are always changing where ever you go. Not here. Here there was a set structure, set in concrete. That helped people like me, a set structure I could work around, I can always work with something that never changes, it’s the unpredictable stuff that turns around and takes a chunk out of your ass. That was why I was here in the first place.

  The second part of my plan only occurred to me when I was working. I was good at my job on the phone, my broad southern accent and way with words used to get me a lot of clients signing up for the offer. And I guess this was one thing that taught me how to talk to people to get what I wanted. Anyway, under the watchful eye of the guard, we were all dutifully working in our little call centre, and I began to idly play with the ring binder that held the written records we had to file away. Pens were signed in and out, as they could have been used as sharp weapons, something like that would have been noticed straight away. The ring binder, a battered thing covered with green vinyl, had a piece of round cylindrical metal tubing down the inside of its spine, to keep the metal binder together, I imagined. Due to its age, the metal slots holding it in were working loose and beginning to rust. I checked that Blessing, working at the side of me, was engrossed in her work, and began to play with the metal tube with my fingers as my thick accented voice droned on. But I wasn’t concentrating on the work anymore; I just wanted the metal loose.