Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison by T. Parsell (ready to read books TXT) 📕

forced to have sex with him-I would pretend lie was somebody else. Anyone, it didn't matter who. I'd come to despise him that much. Afterward, he would talk about girls and pussy and anything else lie could think of to emphasize his masculinity. And then he'd say something stupid like, "Why don't you go off and swing on a dick somewhere."

The only time Rock ever looked me in the eyes was when he was probing for something he could fuck with me about later. Once he found something, he'd get a smirk on his face like he couldn't wait to go back and tell his friends. I tried not to give him the satisfaction, so I'd laugh it off, like I thought it was funny, but he always seemed to see right through me. Right before he was released, he traded me to a black guy for a carton of cigarettes.

The school and the library became my sanctuaries. The Department of Corrections announced that at the end of the year, they were phasing out regular high school, so starting in January; inmates could take only a GED (General Equivalency Diploma). I kicked into gear and completed all the modules I needed to graduate and finished my senior year with As in all subjects. I graduated first in my class (of one).

I'm sure the program was watered down for inmates, but I took advantage of classes and finished high school the same year I would have back home. Hill Top High School, Class of '78. It was named for the school at the Michigan Reformatory, which sat on top of a hill.

I gave up thinking about family and home and memories of happier times. It wasn't working any more, so instead I thought more and more about what it would be like when I got out. In the library, I read magazines and dreamed about my future. Time magazine ran an article about the discotheques in New York City, where I'd never been. There was a picture of a gay bar that had hundreds of men, and I got excited. It seems hard to believe now, but that was the first glimpse I had of the possibilities for gay men outside of a prison.

By and large, the men at MTU were young and sexy. All the good-looking bad boys in the state of Michigan had ended up there it seemed. But however sexy they may have been, I wasn't enjoying any of it. Sex was an unpleasant task, and I would have to slip outside of myself whenever I was forced to have it. After a while, it was a constant struggle to stay present at all. Yet I needed to stay alert to the constant threats. In my mind, I was always racing aheadcalculating the possibility for danger-looking for an out or an exit. Or I was going backward-replaying conversations and scenarios, scanning for something I might have missed that could come back and hurt me.

It was ironic that while I was at Riverside, I wished I could be among younger men. Now that I was, I wanted to get back to the other side. I didn't have many friends to begin with, so when Rock traded me to a black guy, it made matters worse. Now none of the white guys would have anything to do with me. But I got good at pretending I didn't notice their hostility toward me. Though there were one or two guys with whom I'd occasionally share a prolonged stare-and then we'd slip off and meet in an empty bathroom. The sex helped bring me into the present, but it was never a mutual transaction, and it rarely lasted long. Then I'd retreat back inside myself to hide in that place where no one in there would ever see my true feelings-all the fear and insecurities that I always carried with me.

The black guy that Rock had sold me to was named Moseley. He was the inmate from the bullpen at the county jail, who had been annoyed that I'd never seen a cockroach before. The first time I saw him at MTU, I was horrified. He was standing back from the urinal, with his hand on his hip, staring at me coldly, as he took a piss. His dick, which was soft at that moment, was larger than any I had ever seen. It looked like a small elephant trunk-and he wasn't shy about showing it off. I walked out of the bathroom thinking, he'll never get that barrel near me.

Moseley met Rock in the weight pit, where he and others spent their time bulking up. When Moseley had first appeared at my room, to tell me that he was now my man, he nearly filled the frame of the doorway. He had broad shoulders and a thick neck, but his legs and waist were smaller, and out of proportion with the rest of his body. He once showed me his ID, which included a photo taken when he first came to prison; he looked almost as thin as me. "No one is as skinny as your bony ass," he said. And he was probably right. Far from bulking up, I'd lost weight since coming there. When my street clothes arrived, they hung loosely on me.

Sharon had finally sent my clothes-at least the ones that were left after her sons raided my closets. I felt self-conscious when an inmate commented on how "cocky" I was acting now that I was wearing street clothes. There was something depressing about wearing state blues-and I wasn't the only one whose spirits lifted a little after putting on his street clothes.

Moseley was heartless when it came to sex. He didn't care the slightest that his dick was agony for me. And the only saving grace I had was that he was leaving in a few weeks to go to the Corrections Center.

In a strange twist of irony, the way Moseley had ripped open nay rectum,