“It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.”

                                              –Dan Quayle

As a celebration heading into the New Year and as a look forward to a new administration in Washington, (not to mention the responsive representatives in SoHo and Greenwich Village) with all of our good wishes and expectations of success in a happy America — I’ve included a few paragraphs from one of my books about mental health and sex in prison — as we all search for nirvana — where I was fortunate enough to have spent nearly five years at no extra charge. I felt like Randle Patrick McMurphy as I continue to thank the politicians in Southampton and in lower Manhattan for standing up for my Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. Here’s an outtake from one of my True Crime volumes. This is what prison life is really like in New York State.

Do not read on if you are among the faint-hearted.

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“After 30 years in the system, Montgomery, known also as Monte, knew the ropes. The fact that he’d reportedly been trading sexual favors for being bumped up on the call-out sheets — so that they could visit him in the Law Library and get legal work done — was not his problem. 

His Parole was history.

Sex, in and of itself, was illegal in prison whether it was between inmates, between inmates and COs, and even between an inmate and himself. It was not, theoretically, a denial of pleasure. It was, ostensibly, to protect State property. Whether that was to keep a towel clean or prevent excessive use of toilet paper, was not clear. Given the nature of the prison, it was unlikely to be, as Jack D. Ripper called it, a “Communist conspiracy to sap and purify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

However, you could be reported for “self-pleasuring.”

         What was described as going on in one of the dorms, however, was entirely different in another depending upon who the cop was on duty. 

          In some dorms it was a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah. 

“Yeah,” said one CO, “you’ve got guys sneaking around with their heads down below the line of sight of the night CO — and slipping in to other cubes.”

“You mean in the dorm that Montgomery was in?”

“Sure, that place is known all over the prison.” 

“How do they deal with it?”

“Well, they don’t,” he said.  “Listen, some homo wants to get into someone’s pants, that’s his problem. The CO probably is sleeping. I mean, gay marriage is legal, what’re they going to do?”

“But, what about forcing the situation?”

“Forcing what situation? These guys are all horny and can’t wait for a blowjob.”

No one spoke. Most remembered an inmate going to the Box just for watching a CO get a blowjob from a female cop. The rules were blurred, the situation was blurred, and as far as I was concerned my mind was blurred.

Having decided to play the psychiatric card in defense of a charge for trading legal work for sexual favors, Montgomery had thrown himself into the abyss. 

From the Box he was transferred to Clinton Psyche, a medical/psychiatric facility that made ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ seem like a remake of ‘Toy Story.’ Clinton’s mental health clinic is a Max facility where “Psych” inmates are stripped, wrapped in cushions and and highly medicated. 

Like Senior Prom for lunatics, I thought.

Stripping psychiatric inmates was the favorite way of dealing with emotional problems — whether it be suicide watch or depression.

The real problem was that no one could ever say anything as simple as, “you know I feel like shit, I can’t take it anymore, and I’m really fucked up.”

Saying that to another inmate was likely not a problem – unless they decided to drop a slip. Saying that to a counselor, however, might get an escort of a few cops and a Sergeant to the Infirmary — naked — with a mattress, gown and a pair of handcuffs on.

Showtime. 

Mental Health was a different kind of social problem in prison. Everyone was depressed – so that was actually normal. If an inmate wasn’t depressed he had to be crazy. Psychopathic, in fact. But admitting to feeling crazy while in an institution that punished mental illness was a sure sign of a serious psychiatric problem. It was Catch-22 with Alice instead of Yossarian as the main character.

Once an inmate attempted to provide a “psych” explanation for ANY kind of behavior in an effort to receive lenient treatment, he’d essentially written himself off and consigned himself to the garbage heap of lifetime supervision. Parole, even IF it were awarded, was often at another facility where treatment for mental problems was offered — and no inmate could escape from whatever “treatment plan” was decided upon.“

Happy Holiday!