Terry - Part 1

Although I was born in Texas, I had lived in Kansas for the two years before we moved to Fort Worth where I met Terry. I was fourteen years old. He was thirteen days older. Before we were seventeen our lives had been irrevocably altered.

I think that I loved Terry from the first time I saw him. His thick brown hair, standing straight up from his head and cut flat on top, grew low on his forehead. The hair at his temples almost touching his eyebrows, distinguished him from others, but rather than thinking that he was different, I thought that he was the model for how all boys should look. He was the ideal; the rest of us were somehow lacking. The color of his eyes matched his hair. About an inch shorter than I, he was better built-more athletic. I was tall-skinny-not good at sports, but Terry did everything well. He was an “A” student and played most sports. He was popular-the class president. Determined, I set out to become his friend.

We were ninth graders at a small high school on the east side of Fort Worth. He was in my algebra class. My family had moved into a small house next to the school, our back yard separated from the school grounds by the school yard fence. Terry lived about a half mile from the school. I walked home with him every day after school, using the pretense that I was going to my cousin’s house which was about a half mile beyond his. My cousin was three years younger than I and better friends with my sister than with me, but I walked the two miles to and from my cousin’s house each day for the rest of that school year so I could walk home with Terry.

Although my parents never went to church, my sisters and I had to go every Sunday. For once, I didn’t mind. Terry went to the same church and was in my Sunday School class. After church, since it was football season, I started going over to Terry’s house. He, his dad, and brother always watched the Sunday football games, so I invited myself to watch with them. I probably watched more football that year than I ever have, either before or since I met Terry. Of course, since I was there when they ate Sunday dinner, I was invited. I never got the feeling that his dad liked me much, but his mother did. She eventually referred to me as her third son, possibly because I was always there, but I could always charm mothers.

Whether Terry liked me at first, I don’t know-probably not-but he became accustomed to having me around. I either went to his house or searched until I found him. I became friends with his friends, not because I wanted them as friends, but because they were his friends-because being friends with them gave me another excuse to be where he was.

During the summer following that school year when Terry and I were both fifteen years old, we both worked, he for his uncle who drilled water wells and I for a construction company. I didn’t see him often; I worked ten hours a day, six days a week and my family had moved so that I no longer lived within walking distance of his house, but I continued to go to the same church as Terry, so I saw him there every Sunday. At the end of the summer we both bought cars.

During registration for classes before school started, I followed Terry so that I could sign up for the same classes that he did. I was in every one of his classes. I even went out for football because he had, which was a mistake, because it exposed the vast difference in our abilities. Even as a sophomore, he showed that he would one day be a starting half back, while I would be a bench warmer-one, who, at the end of football season in his senior year, would be given a school letter just because he stuck with football for three years. I didn’t stick around, however. A foot injury gave me the excuse I needed to quit.

Then Terry went somewhere I couldn’t go; he got a girlfriend. There was no longer time for me; he spent it all with her . After football season, he went out for the basketball team. Playing that even worse than I did football, I didn’t attempt to follow him. Any longer, the only time I saw him was in class or at Sunday School. I had to make other friends.

My new friends and I were among the second tier of boys in popularity at my high school. In the first were the athletes, who had their choice of girls and were favorites of both teachers and students. Although we were liked by the students, the teachers cared little for me or my friends. We were the pranksters, the troublemakers, the ones who questioned the rules, the ones who talked back to the teachers. Wild-was what they called us.

That’s what distinguished us-wild. It set us apart-made everyone notice. We weren’t athletes-could never excel at that, and, although intelligent, scholastic achievement wasn’t an avenue to popularity, so we devised innovative ways to disrupt or cut our classes. Wild, though, had its drawbacks. One could never rest on his laurels; he had to escalate-become more wild-to continue to attract notice.

Escalate, we did. A group of boys in the class ahead of ours-others, popular but wild-had begun rolling queers. It sounded like fun, and surely the police-this was Fort Worth, Texas, after all-would do nothing even if we were caught; we were only sixteen years-old.

Volunteering, I was the patsy-the bait. The plan was for me to stand on a street corner in downtown Fort Worth until some queer, cruising in his car, stopped to ask me if I needed a ride. Then, when he propositioned me, I was to have him take me out to a secluded place that I knew at Lake Arlington where my buddies would be waiting.

I remember the first one. He was tall, but thin. His car, a Pontiac, about ten years old, needed painting. Rust showed through the metallic gray paint. He circled the block, leaning over to look at me through the passenger’s side window. I stared back at him, but made no gesture-nor did I smile. The second time by, he slowed even more, but didn’t stop. When I didn’t see him for longer than it would have taken him to round the block again, I began to think he wasn’t coming back, that perhaps he didn’t find me attractive-wondering if any of them would.

Watching the passing cars, I didn’t see him approach. “Hi,” he said.

Startled, I turned to see him standing beside me. He had parked his car to walk to where I was standing. “Hi,” I answered.

Appraisingly, he looked at me, glancing-I thought-at my crotch. “Do you need a ride?”

“Yeah.”

“Where do you live?”

“Eastside-Handley. Can you give me a ride that far?”

“Sure,” he answered, smiling. “Come on. My car is parked down the block.”

I followed him, my heart pounding-not from fear, I don’t think, but from excitement, anticipation, the thrill of doing something risky for the first time. His car wasn’t far. He may have parked where he could watch me for a while.

When we reached his car, he unlocked the passenger side door, holding it open for me while I entered, then walked around to his side, unlocked the door, and slid beneath the steering wheel. My door had squealed when he had opened it. Somehow that sound has stayed with me these several years. I can recall it at will-but then, there are many things that I recall-things that I wish to God I could forget.

Heading out East Lancaster Avenue, we drove toward Handley. At some time during the drive he asked, “You want to go somewhere to park for a while and talk?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Do you know a good place?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “There’s a place out at the lake-Arlington Lake-where we could go. No one will bother us there.”

Following my directions, he drove to the lake, pulling off the road at a driveway I had indicated. The property was vacant. The house on it had burned some years past and had never been rebuilt.

He stopped the car, turning off the engine, then turned to look at me. At that moment, my friends, in Gerald’s car, from where it had been parked behind some trees, raced toward us in the car, heading for his door, the lights of Gerald’s car illuminating the queer’s face. Frozen like a rabbit in the glare of the headlights, he hesitated-for a moment-long enough for me to grab his car keys. His hand, groping at the ignition, encountered only an empty key hole. Surprised, he didn’t even think to lock his door-not that it would have helped. I slid over next to him, punching him while Gerald and C.W. pulled him from the car.

We took turns punching him, the five of us, Gerald, C.W., Charles, Willie, and me. “Give us your money, you God damned queer,” we said.

“I’m not a queer,” he protested.

“Sure, you just picked me up to be nice. You just wanted to talk” He hadn’t had time to actually make a move on me, and it was my first encounter with a queer, but I had no doubts. I knew from the way he looked at me what he was-what he wanted. “You fucking jerk. I’m only sixteen years-old. How many other kids have you picked up?”

We took what money he had-it wasn’t much. As far as robberies go, it was a failure, but we were after excitement, the prospect of monetary gain only enhanced that excitement.

Then we let him go, standing around afterward, talking and laughing about it-the first queer that any of us had rolled. We were in no hurry. There was nothing to fear. We were kids. He was a queer-a queer who had tried to sexually molest me-a sixteen year-old kid. If he went to the cops, he’s the one who would have been in trouble.

The next Saturday night, I was back downtown, on the street corner. It wasn’t long before a car stopped in front of me. “Do you want a ride?” the driver asked.

Sam, he told me was his name. He was small-smaller than I-and would, I knew, pose no problem. Alone, I could take him. As it happened, I was to be alone. Instead of taking me to the lake where my friends were waiting, he took me to his home.

His house, small, with one bedroom, was set at the rear of the backyard of a larger house like a guest house. Pulling open a screen door, he unlocked the front door, inviting me inside. It wasn’t going as we’d planned, but I wasn’t afraid of Sam. I was several inches taller than he, and skinny though I was, probably outweighed him. I followed him inside.

We entered a small living room in which were a couch, a couple of chairs and a coffee table. The dining area and the kitchen to the right of the living room were differentiated from the living room only by the linoleum floor covering; the living room floor was carpeted. On the opposite side of the kitchen was a darkened doorway. He led me toward it.

His turning on the light revealed a small bedroom, barely large enough to hold a double bed and a dresser. Watching me-as if judging my reaction-he began undressing. To this day, I don’t know what I was thinking. Other than beating off in front of Bobby, a twelve year old neighbor kid when I was fourteen, and having another kid, Bill, also twelve, but through puberty, demonstrate his parent’s vibrator on my cock causing me to ejaculate, I was completely lacking in sexual experience with another person, male or female. I had never even seen another boy ejaculate. Bobby couldn’t, although we both tried on his little cock, and Bill, after making me come, hadn’t choosen to himself.

Sam stood there completely naked-his cock erect. Still clothed, I could feel my hard cock pressing against my jeans. Other than mine, Sam’s was the first erect post pubescent cock that I had ever seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

Stepping over to me, he unbuttoned my jeans, dropping them to the floor, then pulled down my briefs. As he did, my cock sprang free, rebounding against my abdomen. Stepping out of my jeans and briefs, I raised my arms, letting him pull my shirt over my head. He climbed onto the bed, pulling me, now as naked as he, onto it after him. I hadn’t said a word.

I lay on the bed-on my back. Sam asked, “I want to get on top of you. Is it all right?”

I didn’t say yes-but I didn’t say no, either. He climbed on top of me, the top of his head along side my ear, and began rubbing his cock against mine. After a few minutes, he slid down, taking my cock into his mouth. It wasn’t long before I came, pumping my come for the first time into an orifice in another person’s body. After my orgasm, came my first remembered thoughts. I had liked it. It was much better than beating off-and surely liking it didn’t make me queer. He had sucked my cock. I had done nothing. I felt a little guilty about letting him climb on top of me, about letting him use my body for his enjoyment-but, still, I hadn’t even touched his body with my hands, much less his cock. I told him I had to go to the bathroom.

He led me out of the bedroom, both of us still naked, into the kitchen toward the bathroom. We never got there. I hit him while we were in the kitchen. Sam fell to the floor, either from the force of the blow or from the shock of receiving it. He had never seen it coming-certainly had not expected it. Picking up an ash tray off a chest in the kitchen (the bedroom was too small to contain the chest) I held it in my hand, threatening him with it. “I want some money,” I said.

Sam wrote me out a check for $15-then drove me home, dropping me off a few blocks from my house. When questioned by my friends, who had waited for me at the lake, I told them that he had taken me to his house. I showed them the check, told them about how I had hit him, but said nothing about what else had happened. I told no one about the blow job.

The next weekend we were hanging out at a drive-in where most of the kids in our school went. We were in C.W.’s car. I had burned out the clutch in mine. There was just three of us, Willie, C.W., and me. I was surprised to see Terry drive up-at least to see him drive up without Myrna, his girl friend.

Coming over to our car, he leaned against it, his folded arms on the door at the open window on the passenger side, where I was sitting. “Are ya’ll going rolling queers tonight?” he asked. Of course, he knew that we had been. I guess most of the school knew. It does no good to be wild-if no one knows. “I guess that nothing would happen, even if you got caught. The cops aren’t going to stick up for a queer. Can I go?”

I was shocked-Terry, the class president, the most popular boy in school, wanting to go with us-to roll queers, but it pleased me greatly. After all this time of seeing him only at school and at Sunday school, he wanted to go somewhere with me-to do something with me.

Going with him in his car, he and I drove to his house, where I convinced his mother to let him spend the night with me. Then returning to the drive-in, we had C.W. and Willie follow us in C.W.’s car to my house, where we left Terry’s car. Before long, I was once again standing on the street corner downtown. This time, the others parked where they could watch me, to follow me when I was picked up to prevent a reoccurrence of what had happened with Sam.

Rick-that was his name. Sam had given me a blow job-had written me a check. I knew his name. If I had known the first guy’s name, I’d long since forgotten it, but Rick’s name, I could never forget. I was to be reminded of it every day for months to come.

He drove me to the lake, but pulled off the road just a little ways at a place not of my choosing. When the others arrived, he managed to start the car and pull onto the road before I managed to turn off the ignition and wrestle the keys from him.

We all hit him, I guess, but mostly Terry and me. He had a nice watch which I took. Being the patsy, I got my first choice of the swag. The rest split his money. C.W. took his spare tire which would fit his car.

Rick yelled threats at us as he drove off, but none of us were worried. He was a queer. What could he do?

C.W. and Willie dropped Terry and me off at my house. My parents were already in bed. I had two twin beds in my room. I got into mine; Terry got into the other. As I lay there in the dark, knowing that Terry was sleeping in the same room-in the other bed, I realized that I would suck Terry’s cock. I had never thought about being gay-had never thought about sucking anyone’s cock, but now I did. I would suck Terry’s cock. Hell, I wanted to suck his cock. I fell asleep thinking about it.

My Dad woke me up. I hadn’t been asleep long. “Where’s the watch?” he asked. “The cops are here. They want the watch.”

Getting up, taking the watch from the chest where I had placed it, I handed it to my dad. “You’d better get dressed,” he said. “The cops want to talk to you.”

Noticing that Terry was awake, I told him to stay in bed-that the cops were here, intending to attempt to keep him out of it. When I walked out to the living room, however, the cop there asked, “Is there another kid, Terry, here?

My dad asked, “Was Terry involved?” Not being able to lie to him, I admitted that he was, then went back into my room to tell Terry that he would have to come along. Terry said nothing throughout it all.

We were placed under arrest, handcuffed, and led outside. There were two cop cars. C.W. and Willie were seated in the back of one. Terry and I were placed in the other. “What are the charges?” I asked as I climbed into the patrol car.

“Robbery by assault,” replied the cop in the driver’s seat.

“But, don’t you know what he was?” I asked. He was a queer.” The cop made no reply.

The four of us were booked at the Fort Worth city jail-fingerprinted, photographed, and lodged in an all metal cell with several adults. Everything in the cell except for the floor was steel, the walls, the bunks, the bars, the ceiling. There were no mattresses on the bunks.

Terry and Willie, sitting on one of the bunks, never said a word. Neither did any of the adults, not to us, or to each other. C.W. and I, however, joked around about the cell, about being there, poking our hands through the bars, saying, “At least our hands are free.”

We kept it up until we ran out of steam-out of things to say, then sat down on the bunk with Terry and Willie. I don’t think that either of them ever said anything. The cops came for us the next day. One at a time, they called us from the room.

C.W. had already told me how we’d been caught. Instead of going home, he and Willie had driven around town. Rick had given the cops a description of his car. Blue, with a trunk painted in black primer, it was easily spotted. Rick’s spare tire was in the trunk. C.W. told them nothing, but Willie did. He told them everything-about me and about Terry. They cops took Willie first. I was the last.

I was interrogated by two detectives. Since I had been the bait, they accused me of being the ringleader. When I protested that we were just rolling queers-that Rick had picked me up, attempting to seduce me, they asked me if I was queer. If I had been asked that before the previous night-that night when I had lain in bed wanting to suck Terry’s cock-it would have been an unequivocal “no,” but although I said no, in my mind, I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t ask for a lawyer. I knew that Willie, and from what the detectives said, the others as well, had told them everything. I still wasn’t really worried. We were kids-and Rick was a queer.

Rick might have been queer, but his father was an influential minister-and there was no proof that Rick had ever attempted to seduce me. According to him, he was just giving me a ride home-trying to help a kid that he thought was in a dangerous part of town. There wasn’t even any evidence that he had pulled off the road to park with me. When we attacked him, his car was back on the road. People in passing cars had seen us hitting him.

Willie and C.W., because they were the first ones picked up-because Willie had led them to me and to Terry-were given a deal. I was the one that Rick wanted to see punished. In his mind, I think that he thought I had betrayed him-had deceived him. He wanted revenge. Besides, since I had been the patsy, the cops figured I was the ringleader. Terry, because he’d spent the night with me, because the cops associated him with me, was sentenced along with me. Willie and C.W. were sentenced to a juvenile facility until they were eighteen-just two years. Terry and I got seventy months in prison. Seventy months-mandatory, with no time off for good behavior. That’s two months short of six years. We would both be twenty-two before we’d get out. It was no longer a joke-no longer funny.

Except for court appearances, I hadn’t seen much of Terry. He had been out on bail. His parents had put up their house as security. My parents, however, rented, and couldn’t afford bail for me. I had spent the time awaiting sentencing in the city jail. C.W. and Willie, since they were being treated as juveniles, were allowed to go home until their sentencing. Since we were the only kids on the bus to Huntsville, however, we were chained together. I don’t think that he said a word the entire trip. When I said, “I’m sorry that I got you into this, Terry,” I saw tears gather at the corner of his eyes.

I was scared, too, but I had already been locked up for six months-which meant that I would get out six months before Terry, being credited with time served. I didn’t think that being locked up in Huntsville would be that much different. I couldn’t see how anything could be worse than the Fort Worth city jail. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Fort Worth jail is all in one building. Although we had initially been thrown in the tank-a common cell where new arrestees were placed, when it had been determined that I would be there for a while, I had been given a small cell to myself. I even had a mattress, a pillow and a sheet. The food though...had been terrible. As skinny as I had been when I entered the jail, I had still lost weight. Breakfast had been a rubbery egg and two pieces of almost raw bacon sandwiched between two pieces of white bread, lunch had been a bologna sandwich, and dinner, although more varied, hadn’t been much better. Worse than the food had been the boredom.

Locked for twenty-four hours a day in an 8’ by 10’ cell except for the two days a week when I was taken from the cell for a shower along with other inmates, I had seen only the guards and other prisoners when I showered with them. Not that I would have wanted to be lodged with another prisoner. I had seen the looks that they had given me when we had been naked in the shower room. I had heard their whispered comments. Still-there had been one, a good looking guy, probably in his early twenties, with whom I would have shared my cell, but he had never even glanced my way.

There had been nothing to do, except to read, and although, unlike many boys my age, I liked to read, one can read only so many hours a day. The other hours I had spent pacing my cell-and thinking. So much time I had spent thinking-about what had happened to me-to Terry. Then I’d learned my sentence...six years-that was more than a third of the time that I had been alive. Six years earlier I had only been ten years-old; that seemed a life time ago. I couldn’t even imagine six years in prison. I would be twenty-two when I got out. I would grow up in prison-become a man...in prison. I realized that what we had done had been wrong, but we hadn’t really hurt anyone. Sure we’d punched them a few times-and had taken a few dollars, but I’d been punched harder in fights at school. I heard talk about it being a hate crime, but it hadn’t been about hate. Sure-we had professed to hate queers, but we had picked queers because they had been easy targets-because we hadn’t thought that anyone would have cared about what we did to them. It had been about excitement; we had been seeking thrills, nothing else. It had been a lapse in judgment, but we were sixteen years-old. Has no one else ever done something stupid at sixteen?

After about four hours on the bus we arrived in Huntsville where I had my first sight of a Texas prison. We were to be processed at the Walls Unit. Built in 1848, it was one of the oldest prisons in the state and the home of the Texas death chamber. Terry was sitting next to the window, all scrunched up against it as if he were trying to get as far away from me as he could. He had rebuffed, by his silence, by his refusal to look at me, every attempt I had made to start a conversation. I looked past him through the window at The Walls, called that because of the high red brick walls which surrounded it. I shuddered as though struck by a sudden chill although, being summer, it was hot-and the bus wasn’t air conditioned. Until now, it had been like a dream-but here was reality. The Walls was reality. I shuddered again-began shivering. It was as if someone had poured ice water over me. I wanted to touch Terry, to have him turn to look at me, to smile at me, to tell me that he forgave me. I was frightened as I never had been-more than I knew that I could be-but he continued to stare out the window, pressed tight against it. I didn’t have the courage to reach out to him, to touch him, to beg for his forgiveness. I wanted his touch, not in any sexual sense; I wanted the touch of friend-the comfort of a friend. I was lost, about to enter an alien world-a world of the unknown. I needed a friend.

The bus pulled up to a gate. With the whir of an electric motor, it slid open. We drove in until we were stopped by a second gate. The first gate closed behind us; then we drove into a fenced in area. On the other side of it, convicts were milling around in a large exercise yard. As we filed off the bus they began to call to us. “Fish, new fish,” they called. When Terry and I stepped off the bus, there was first a hush, then the sound, the yelling, the whistles, creshendoed. It was difficult to distinguish words, but I heard someone say, “Hey, boy-you gonna be my bitch.” The comment caused laughter and more whistles. I had no doubt that it was directed toward Terry.

I was surprised to feel something touch my shoulder. Glancing to my right, I saw that Terry had moved closer to me, his shoulder pressed against mine. It was the first time that he had allowed himself to touch me since he had inadvertently brushed against me when we had boarded the bus back in Fort Worth, and chained as we were together, that had taken some effort. He was staring at the convicts in the yard on the other side of the fence, the same desperation-the same fear-in his eyes that I was feeling. I pressed my shoulder into his-finding some comfort in his touch. He didn’t pull away.

“Line up on the yellow line,” a guard yelled through a megaphone.

There was a yellow line painted on the asphalt next to the fence; it led to a doorway. We shuffled to it. Chained in pairs as we were, all we could do was shuffle. Terry no longer made any effort not to touch me. As we lined up, several guards, both male and female, all holding batons, lined up next to us. “All right,” said the guard with the megaphone, “all of you drop your pants-and your shorts.”

A roar went up from the convicts in the exercise yard. As they gathered at the fence, it seemed as if they were all crowding together attempting to get closest to Terry and me. I hesitated to drop my pants. All those convicts were watching. They all seemed to be staring at me and at Terry. Most, in fact, seemed to be staring past me-at Terry. Besides, several of the guards were women. I had been naked before other boys in the locker room at school; I had been naked before the guards at Fort Worth, before the other prisoners in the shower room there, but the last time I remembered being naked in front of a woman was my mother when I was little. “Get them off,” the guard yelled. “I’m not going to say it again.”

The guard closest to Terry and me, a woman, gestured, menacingly with her baton. Terry and I dropped out pants together, then, after hesitating once again, pulled down our shorts to stand naked from the waist down, along with the others. “O.K., now bend over,” the guard said.

At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant, but the prisoners in front of us bent over displaying their butts-and their assholes. Terry and I, the only ones still upright, stood there, until the woman guard whacked Terry on the butt with her baton-hard. “You heard him,” she said. “Bend over.”

Her words had almost been drowned out by the whistles and cat calls from the exercise yard, but we bent over, our faces red from embarrassment. She poked each of us in the butt with her baton, leaning over to get a better look at our assholes, to make sure we had nothing hidden there. Then we were allowed to pull up our pants, but Terry and I, from lack of experience, had dropped our pants down around our ankles, and, limited by the shackles, couldn’t reach them; we could only pull up our shorts. Having our pants around our ankles didn’t limit the size of our steps much more than the shackles on our legs, however, so we began shuffling toward the open doorway when ordered. A chained pair would enter the doorway then the line would stop and we would wait.

At least the boxer shorts that we’d been given at Fort Worth weren’t as revealing as the briefs we normally wore would have been, but, if the blush which still covered Terry’s face was an indicator, he was as embarrassed as I was to have to stand there with his pants around his ankles. Eventually-it seemed a lifetime later-we reached the doorway and were called inside.

As we stepped inside, a guard began removing our shackles. I could see the previous pair being shackled at the far door to the room, but this time not chained together. They were wearing fresh prison whites.

After we were unshackled, I bent over to pull up my pants. A guard struck me hard with his baton. “Convict, you don’t move unless I tell you to.”

“I was just going to pull up my pants,” I said, wincing from the pain of the blow

He hit me again. “You don’t talk either except to answer a question. Now, strip.”

When I hesitated to pull off my shorts, he raised his baton, so I quickly pulled them off. Both Terry and I stood there naked, again in front of male and female guards, one of whom was seated next to a small table on which was a box of latex gloves. The guard who had hit me, grabbing my arm, led me over to where she was seated. “Bend over and grab your ankles,” he said.

I gasped when she inserted her gloved finger into my ass, rotating it around, searching for hidden objects. When she was through, another guard brought Terry over and she poked his ass with the same gloved finger without changing gloves. I wondered how many other assholes that glove had entered. Because of the danger of aids, I hoped it hadn’t been many. Hopefully, she at least changed gloves for each new pair. Meanwhile the other guard had me open my mouth, which he searched for contraband.

After this invasion of our bodily orifices, we were led, still naked to a counter. A convict behind the counter without bothering to ask our sizes tossed us each a set of prison whites. “Put them on said the guard.”

Being as skinny as I was, mine were too large-and they didn’t give me a belt. I had to hold my pants up. Even my underwear was too large. When I attempted to protest, the guard said, “I told you to keep quiet.”

We were shackled again, this time separately, and told to wait in the next room where we again lined up on a yellow line with the prisoners who had preceded us. When everyone had received clothes we were led to other rooms to be photographed, fingerprinted, and logged into the prison computers at which time we were assigned a number which would follow us throughout our stay in prison.