Contrary to popular belief, there are some upsides to prison life. A prisoner receives three meals a day; an improvement for some who came from households where the idea of a formal meal was just something that they saw on TV. Prisoners have access to education and vocational training; an education that often times grooms them for specific jobs, very much unlike the public education they are likely to have received that sought to establish esoteric intellectual standards. They also had plenty of time for self reflection and study. The characterization of this self reflection will definitely vary from prisoner to prisoner, but Dae thought that the self reflective nature of incarceration was the best part of the entire experience. He had as much time as he could ever need to think back on the life that he had lived and the man that he was, but since his realization that he wanted to be a new person, Dae had used self reflection as an opportunity to build a new self. In order to build this new self, Dae opened himself up to ideas that he had turned his nose up at in the past. He reads a lot and it is an escape from the horrors of incarceration when he is able to lose himself in a narrative, but Dae is hoping to find himself in the books that the reads.
Dae thoroughly enjoyed reading and rereading The Count of Monte Cristo and he realizes why he could never connect to the novel in his youth. Even though he had been reinventing himself his entire life, it was an invention that he used to propel himself to manhood. The count inhabited reinvention after time in prison and after his escape in order to right a wrong perpetrated against him. It was a beautiful fantasy for Dae to think about the possibility of escape and truly becoming a new man on the outside, but he couldn’t even begin to plot a plan for escape. The walls of his prison are thick and his time there had eroded his optimism that he could ever be free.
Sitting in his cell before Truck comes in to punch him, Dae eyes the book rising and falling on his stomach. He’d planned to read it for the fifth time, to see the count reclaim the love and life that was stolen from him, but Dae can’t move his arms to open it. The fantasy was impossible to resist before, but since that time, Dae had been beaten so much that he hardly recognized himself in the mirror. And he was hardly a man any more, his masculinity had been beaten out of him; Truck made sure of that.
Dae nudges the book with his arm until it falls on the floor and just as it hits the ground, Truck enters the cell. Dae doesn’t move. His new self only responds when prompted to. Truck notices the book and picks it up.
“Here,” he says, offering it to Dae who jumps to sit up straight on his bottom bunk.
“Thank you,” Dae says. You know how to torture me, he thinks.
“You been reading that book forever. You ain’t finished yet?” Truck leans against the metal of the bed frame. Dae is nervous. In all the time the two have been interacting, these are the longest two sentences that Truck has said to him.
“I just like it,” Dae stumbles over the words, struggling to contain his nerves. Truck could be mercurial, at times prone to flights of rage that to Dae seemed unprovoked.
“So you finished it? It’s good?”
Dae nods.
“Read it to me.” Truck says and then jumps up to his top bunk.
Dae takes a deep breath and lays back on the bed. It seems that he will avoid sex tonight. Dae opens the book and reads aloud.
Over the course of a few weeks, Dae reads to Truck every night and the man seems content enough that he never assaults Dae for sex. Truck enjoys the story and Dae enjoys explaining the meaning of words or situations that Truck doesn’t understand. The two become similar to friends and Truck even let’s him talk in mixed company.
When they are outside in the yard with Truck’s gang member friends, he tells them about the story of the count and then he tells Dae to tell everyone the story. It feels good for Dae to have something that he knows his peers respect and he has conversations with men who would not look him in the eye the day before.
After time in the yard, Dae goes to his job pressing license plates and he is feeling more talkative than usual. His coworker is a Latino man that Dae knows is a member of the rival Latin gang to the black gang that Dae is most closely associated, but his tiny triumph had him giddy.
“How are you today?” Dae asks the man named Rodolfo.
Rodolfo glares at him.
“It’s nice outside. I wish we could go out more.” Dae returns to his work operating the machine and he talks absentmindedly. He had forgotten what that felt like. He hadn’t felt safe enough to say much at all to anyone. “I like this job, it’s easy…” he says as he lowers the top of the press and when he lifts it, he notices that Rodolfo is standing very close to him. Before Dae can say anything, Rodolfo pinches him in the face. Dae falls to the ground moaning and holding his face. And Rodolfo continues beating him with his fists, kicking him with his feet, until a guard notices and breaks them up.
Dae is escorted to the prison infirmary by the female guard who broke up the fight. She is taller than Dae and appears to be much stronger than him. She had beaten Rodolfo back with her nightstick and drug Dae away from the conflict.
“Thank you.” Dae managers through swollen lips.
“You should be ashamed.” The guard says. She guides him from behind with a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t fight for yourself?”
“No,” Dae says. “I’m not a fighter.”
“You don’t get to decide what you are in here. Everybody else make that decision for you. And they don’t take ‘I ain’t no fighter’ as a answer.”
When they make it to the infirmary, Dae turns to look at the woman. She is older than him, but she is attractive and Dae notices her femininities. Her hair is long but in a neat bun on her head. The slope of her cheeks make her lips look more pouty and full. She doesn’t wear perfume, but the smell of her soap is more pleasant than anything he has smelled since he arrived in prison. The sensation of looking at the security guard is like smelling a flower after losing the sense of smell for a time and then regaining it. It was like seeing the first girl that he ever liked and he remembers the curiosity of seeing that pretty girl on the playground at school and being drawn to her. He followed her around without talking to her, noting her perfect brown skin, the sheen of her slick black hair that was in a bun on the top of her head, the flower dress she wore that danced on the wind as she ran and laughed. He’d forgotten that girl over all these years. It was only about fifteen years ago that this happened, but the activity and changes of his life made it seem like a lifetime ago. He wasn’t even aware of all the things he’d forgotten over his lifetime.
“Well go in!” The guard yells and Dae startles out of his memories.
PRL Serials 