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By Root 1221 0

the orphanage the boys had been watched very carefully to see that they did not indulge in any “obscene practices,” but naturally the boys managed, as they always do, furtively, quickly, and in darkness. The few homosexual episodes Jack remembered from the orphanage were all of the brutal sort, in which a small or weak and generally unpopular boy was forced by a ring of grim youths to submit himself to rape. The emotional climate of the orphanage did not seem to encourage crushes or pairings of any sort; only gang activity. Any boy caught masturbating, Jack remembered, was subjected to incessant and cruel joking from the other boys, and public humiliation from the administration. But it was clearly understood among the boys that all this was merely “something to do” and that Sex meant Women. In a way, Women meant growing-up-and-getting-out-of-here, and one of the first things Jack did after running away was to visit a whorehouse. Although he had taken part, often as a leader, in the rapes and circle-jerks, he dropped all that sort of thing on the outside, and like most boys of high-school age, resorted to masturbation only when he had to, and even then felt angry and shabby about it afterward.

At the reform school there had been precious few effeminate boys, and again sex life in the cottages was a group affair, the strong taking from the weak; but Jack didn’t join in much because he spent most of his time in the hole. There, of course, he could masturbate all he wanted, but he didn’t. It just made things worse.

Of the three alternatives, abstinence was the one he knew best, and he hoped that in San Quentin he would be able to forget about sex. He did not see how, with two men to a cell, you could get away with masturbating. These were all grown men. Masturbating was a kid trick, he thought, and only a childish man would resort to it. He learned very quickly that men in prison were treated like children and expected to act like children, even in, one might say especially in, the matter of sex. But he still did not see how he could get away with it.

But one ceaseless night he got to thinking about Mona, and from her his thoughts went without volition to vague erotic images of other women he had known, their flesh glowing before his eyes. He tried to think of other things, but it didn’t work. A breast, a nipple, a smooth flank would interrupt the flow of thought and he could feel his penis thickening and hardening, beyond his control. It should have been no problem at all, just jack off and forget about it. It had to happen once in a while. Either that or cut it off. It was infuriating to think that one organ could be in charge like that, turn his mind, make his whole body tremble; it was disgusting. But not two feet above his head Billy Lancing was asleep, or perhaps even not asleep, and he might hear Jack’s movements and lean his head over and ask him what he was doing. Or he might even know, understand, and say nothing. In the morning he would look amused. Jack had never heard Billy making any such noises, and often Jack did not get to sleep until long after midnight. Therefore, Billy did not masturbate. He had conquered his sexual desires. If Jack gave in, he would be the only one in the cell to give in. Furiously he threw himself over on his stomach and waited for the erection to subside. He thought about how funny it all was. He thought bitterly how funny it would seem to somebody not going through it. Like a bad hangover; a subject of much snickering. He wanted to ask Billy about it, but he did not dare. It was too personal.

What made it worse was that most of the men talked about sex incessantly, or so it seemed. To hear them tell it, the most virile men in America were here gathered, temporarily cutting womanhood off from their prowess. Yet you could not be in prison long without hearing about the love affairs that were going on right there, between the men themselves. Now that Jack seemed to have sex on the brain, he seemed to hear about nothing else. It was a commonplace to hear a man bragging about all the