Behind the Chicken Wire: 5 Surprising Truths About the Secret Sociology of Prison Life

 

Motel 6 and the Country Boys

My Third Prison Husband: Claiborne Parish, Part 4

by Rodney "MC Shakie" Roussell

They called it a disciplinary camp. What they meant was: you've made enough bad choices to end up here, and we want you to know we know that.

I arrived at Claiborne Parish Detention—Claiborne Parish being located in Homer, Louisiana, which is so country it's not even country like I understood country—and the first thing I noticed was the quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Ordered quiet. The kind that means everyone has already learned what happens when it gets loud.

The second thing I noticed was a white homosexual working the booking desk who looked me up and down, clocked my energy, and said:  + text +

Miss Drew, the officer at booking, looked up from her paperwork and said:  + text +

I had never been there before in my life. But a queen knows a queen, and she saw something in me that said: put her with her people. I went to A-6.

A-6 was called Motel 6. Now you know everything.

Welcome to Motel 6

Motel 6 was not like anything I had lived in since Elayn Hunt. Claiborne was orderly. When quiet time was quiet time, it was actually quiet. When they did inspection in the mornings—walking through to check beds, cleanliness, everything—people passed because they wanted to. Not because they had to. The reward was popcorn and movies, which in that context felt like winning a Grammy.

I had come from Catahoula and Richwood, both chaotic in their own ways. This felt structured. Almost civilized. And Shreveport and Monroe run compounds very differently from New Orleans—more self-policing, more honor code, less of the anything-goes energy I grew up in. It took some adjusting.

The warden was a man named Johnny Stumbling. He had a dog named Sam. And Johnny Stumbling—I need you to understand this completely—made institutional decisions based on whether Sam seemed to approve of them. If Sam perked up, the answer was yes. If Sam seemed disinterested, the answer was no.

This man was in charge of human beings.

Captain Jones ran the day-to-day. Black woman, competent, took no mess, and she dipped snuff. I had never in my life seen a woman dip before. I was fascinated and horrified in equal measure every time she spit in that cup.

Lieutenant Stephanie Glaze was her second. Also fine, also firm, also someone you wanted to be cool with rather than the alternative.

And then there was the nurse, whose name I will protect, who was the kind of person who gave you information when you needed it and asked nothing in return. Every compound has one. You thank God for them.

The Queen Economy

There was a white queen named Hotel who had been working the booking desk before me. She was from New Orleans, which made us immediately family. She taught me the lay of the land the same way older queens had taught me everywhere else—generously, without competition, because there was enough going on for everyone.

That was the thing about Claiborne that surprised me most: the girls got along. At Catahoula I had been fighting other punks. At Claiborne there was no real animosity among us. The queens in Motel 6 all kind of stuck together. We'd hang on the yard during the day, split off to our respective units at night, and keep each other up to date on everything worth knowing.

There was also Tasha. She was the older queen who ran the punk compound in the Shreveport side of the yard. She had been there a long time and she knew everybody's business. When I came in, Tasha's girl Shawn—who was from Shreveport but moved with the New Orleans energy—became one of my closest people in there. She got a job up front in education and that made her valuable in a very specific way: she could tell you when a drug test was coming.

That information was worth more than commissary. I'm just being honest.

The Country Boys from Homer and Haynesville

Claiborne had two main populations: the DOC inmates who came from all over the state, and the locals—men from Homer and Haynesville, the two main cities in Claiborne Parish. And I need you to understand what I mean when I say those are country towns.

Homer and Haynesville is the equivalent of like Thibodaux to New Orleans. Close enough to know what's going on in the city, but far enough away to be a completely different world. These boys were country in the best possible sense. Sweet. Straightforward. Built like they'd been doing manual labor since before they could legally drive.

The girls on the compound had warned me: the country boys don't go. They don't mess with queens. Don't waste your time.

I filed that information away in the same place I filed it when they told me Brandon the Muslim didn't go.

There was a boy there named Brandon—not to be confused with Catahoula Brandon—who was just fine for absolutely no reason. Big, country, the kind of build that makes you question your decision-making. He didn't go, according to everyone who knew him. But I had learned by then that  + text +  is sometimes just the warm-up.

I would meet the ones who did go through spades.

The Card Game and the Introduction

Claiborne ran on gambling. Spades was the currency of everything—who you knew, who respected you, who would eat with you. I adapted to that quickly because I have always been competitive and I have always had a memory for cards.

My sparring partner was a man I'll call Sir Michael, from Shreveport. We had chemistry but no attraction—the best kind of relationship, honestly. He was big, he was funny, he did not go, and we played spades like we'd been doing it since childhood. Together we entered tournaments and rarely embarrassed ourselves.

It was through those tournaments that I met JD and Raymond.

JD: brown-skinned, flat stomach, perfect build, big energy. The kind of man who walks into a room and makes it smaller just by taking up space in the right way. Twenty-something, from Haynesville, and immediately on my radar.

Raymond: chocolate brown, bigger frame, football player build. Warm. Attentive. The kind of man who asked if you needed something and then actually went and got it.

They were both at the same table, playing spades against me and Sir Michael, and the whole game I was losing on purpose just to stay in their presence longer. I'm not above admitting that.

We lost Jamaica's money that night. I felt no regret.

JD—Suck His Dick Material

Let me be clear about something, because this story requires clarity.

JD was fine. JD was everything. JD was the kind of person who could make you forget your own name for a moment just by existing near you.

JD was not boyfriend material.

He was childish in a specific way that I recognized immediately. He ran around like his presence alone was enough. He thought being fine was a personality. He was a diva in a way that was charming for exactly as long as you had no expectations of him, which is to say: not long.

Raymond, on the other hand, was considerate. He was consistent. He came around, he checked on you, he rubbed your back without being asked. He treated you like you were worth the effort.

In my mind, the distinction was clear: JD was suck his dick material. Raymond was boyfriend material. These are not insults. These are categories. Both are valid. The key is knowing which is which and not confusing them.

I chose Raymond.

But JD and I had a conversation in the bathroom first. A conversation that confirmed everything I had suspected about what was behind those jeans. He had one nut—which I discovered up close and made peace with immediately, because one was doing an extraordinary job of carrying the assignment. What they feed people in Haynesville is a mystery I may never solve.

Raymond—The Third Husband

Raymond became my third prison husband, and I want you to understand that he was genuinely good to me.

He would come rub my back when I asked. He brought me things. He checked on me. He was that  + text +  type of man, which in prison is rarer than you think. You can count on one hand the number of people in any facility who actually do what they say they're going to do.

He also had flaws, because that's what people have.

Raymond was a gambler. And I mean a gambler in the way that ends with him losing his entire locker and then coming to find me for a pack of cigarettes. I didn't smoke—I ran a little cigarette hustle on the side, buying packs and lending them out for a cut—so Raymond gambling away his belongings meant he was coming to me for product and for mercy.

One night he actually took the locker key off my chain while I was wearing it, went to my locker, got a pack of cigarettes, went back to the game, and lost those too.

Baby. I was building a case.

Doll Face and the Drug Test Situation

While Raymond was still in the hole after picking the wrong fight with the wrong person, I got out first and met someone.

His name was Doll Face. He was from New Iberia. He was in the boxing program, which you could tell just by looking at him—that body was not built for sitting down. His face was regular, but his body was the kind that makes you forget about faces entirely.

I started spending time with him. He started falling for me. I started falling for him a little bit too, which was a problem because Raymond existed and I had claimed that man.

Shawn came to me one morning and said:  + text +

I thanked her for the information. And then I went and found some weed.

I need you to understand that what I did next was wrong. I know it was wrong. I am telling you it was wrong because I'm not going to stand here and let you think I was the good person in this moment.

I invited Doll Face to smoke with me the night before the drug test. We smoked together in his bunk. He had no idea what was coming in the morning.

The next morning, clockwork: drug test. Everyone lined up. Doll Face pissed dirty. He went to the hole for thirty days.

I pissed clean. Because I had been warned. Because I made a calculated decision about who was going to take the fall for our night together.

I'm not proud of it. That man did thirty days in a hole for something I could have warned him about and chose not to, because I needed him out of the way before Raymond came back and things got complicated. That was wrong. I've sat with that.

The Booking Job and Diamond on My Man

Eventually I got a new opportunity: a job working the booking desk.

Miss Drew was in charge of booking, and when the girl who had the job before me was leaving, they recommended me. I went to interview for it, got approved, and moved to the trustee dorm. More order, more access, and the best front-row seat to everyone coming in and out of the facility.

The best part of booking was seeing who came in. Every new inmate had to be processed. Every. Single. One. I will say only this: I had the most comprehensive view of the male population of Claiborne Parish that has ever existed, and I used that information responsibly.

The second-best part was the spray. They sprayed every new inmate with some kind of de-licing situation before they entered. Which meant everyone stood right in front of me in a very particular state. I'm just telling you about my job.

But here is what happened that was not the best part.

One day I come back to the unit from my booking training, and there is a woman—another queen—sitting on Raymond's bunk. Close. Comfortable. Her name was Diamond.

I walked over and said, politely:  + text +

Diamond looked at me and said:  + text +

And Raymond, bless his heart, said nothing. Just sat there.

Now: I knew in my gut that Raymond was not actually messing with Diamond. Diamond was not in his league on the best day she had ever had. But that was not the point. The point was that he let her sit there, close like that, and said nothing, and I had a whole catalog of grievances already: the cigarettes, the chain, the gambling. This was the last one I needed.

I went in. Gave him everything I had stored up. Told him about the trust, the disrespect, the chain ripping off my neck, all of it. I was cold-blooded and surgical and I meant every word.

And then I told him we needed time apart. Because Diamond had just handed me the exit I had been looking for, and I was not going to waste it.

JD's Little Brother—The Complication

Let me tell you something about Raymond's gambling homeboy JD.

JD had a twin. JD had a little brother. JD had a whole family in Claiborne Parish at one point, which is the kind of thing that makes you really think about the criminal justice system in Louisiana and what it says about certain communities.

The little brother's name I'll call Reggie. He was chocolate brown, country, had that little swag about him that young boys have when they know they're cute and haven't had enough life experience yet to be humbled by it. He came in on Raymond's tier and introduced himself the way JD's people always did—easy, familiar, like we'd already met.

JD, trying to be helpful in his very JD way, had apparently mentioned to Reggie that his sister had fire. Which was JD's version of a ringing endorsement.

One day I was bent over at my locker and Reggie walked up behind me and rubbed himself against me like he was making a statement. Then he whispered something in my ear about keeping my thing in the street.

Baby.

I was in trouble.

Raymond was a good boyfriend. Raymond was real considerate, real caring, real  + text +  type energy. But Reggie? Reggie gave me that excitement I did not know I had been missing. That young, reckless, grinning energy that makes no practical sense but lands exactly where it lands.

And I kept asking myself: what kind of person would I be? I had sucked his big brother's dick. I was still technically Raymond's woman. And now Raymond's friend's little brother was rubbing up on me at my locker like he was filing paperwork.

I was a very cheap person. I knew it. I was trying not to act on it.

Reader, I was not entirely successful.

The Library. Raymond's Homeboy. His Brother.

I'll say this simply: there was a library at Claiborne. The library was considered an educational space, which meant certain staff members who valued education left it unsupervised.

I went to the library one day with JD. JD had let Raymond know something was coming and Raymond, in his wisdom, had decided to let things play out rather than fight it. Raymond had started to understand that his hold on me was loosening, and he was not entirely wrong about that.

JD was everything the rumors had suggested. Long. Pretty. Very confident about what he had going for him, which was warranted. My only thought during the whole thing was about his one nut and whether the single one was working overtime to compensate, because I could not identify any shortcomings.

There are things I will tell and things I will preserve some dignity around. What I will say is: Reggie was also there.

I had a threesome with two brothers in a prison library.

I cannot believe this was my life. I also would not trade it for anything, which tells you everything you need to know about where my head was at age twenty-something in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.

New Faces at Booking

Moving to the trustee dorm with the booking job had one unexpected benefit beyond the obvious: it separated me enough from Raymond that whatever we'd had fizzled the way things fizzle when you stop feeding them.

His homeboys had run the train on me, essentially, and he found out, and she told him, and the whole thing unraveled the way those things do. Which was probably the cleanest exit anyone has ever gotten from a relationship in the history of Claiborne Parish.

But the booking job meant I was seeing fresh faces daily. People coming in from the street, from the parish, from everywhere. Every new inmate stood in front of me and I processed their paperwork.

One night, two men came in together. Fresh from the street. I'll call them Sylvester and Mini. And walking in behind them was someone else—tall, pretty, curly hair, deep dark skin, the kind of presence that made you put the pen down slowly.

I looked up from my paperwork. He had the same last name as JD and Reggie.

The whole family was in Claiborne Parish. I put him in the unit and thought: something is about to happen.

* * *

Claiborne Parish was where I learned the difference between what I thought I wanted and what I actually needed. Raymond gave me care. JD gave me excitement. Reggie gave me chaos. And the booking desk gave me a front-row seat to every story walking through that door.

Nine years is a long time. But I'm realizing, telling it back, that it wasn't nine years of suffering. It was nine years of living at a very high intensity, inside a very small world, with people who had nothing to lose and everything to feel.

The story keeps going. It always does.