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

 

The Miscorrection of MC Shakie

My Second Prison Husband: Part 3

by Rodney "MC Shakie" Roussell

By the time they transferred me out of Elayn Hunt, I thought I understood prison. I knew the rules—spoken and unspoken. I knew how to carry myself, how to read a room, how to survive. Elayn Hunt had made me literate in a whole other language.

Catahoula laughed at all of that.

The Catahoula Correctional Center was a private prison—private meaning it was run by a company, not the state, which meant it had a fraction of the funding, a fraction of the programming, and a whole lot of improvising. It sat near Alexandria, Louisiana, halfway between the New Orleans world I knew and the deep country I was about to learn. They sent me there because I was non-violent. Because the state was moving people around to cut costs. Because some office somewhere looked at my file and checked a box.

I got there and immediately knew I was not in Kansas anymore.

Eight Dorms and a New Education

Catahoula had eight dorms—A, B, E, and F on one side; C and D on the other; I and J tucked in the back. The units were kept separate. You didn't wander. There was no education building to walk to, no yard to circle for hours. You stayed where they put you and figured out how to make that square of world livable.

At Elayn Hunt, there was a whole culture built around relationships. You didn't just hook up with someone. You married them. You had a family. There was structure, there was respect, and everybody understood what the roles meant.

Catahoula was something else entirely.

The first night, I'm laying in my bunk trying to process my new circumstances, and I notice a boy walk up to the white boy sleeping nearby and just—get handled. Right there. No conversation, no relationship, no introduction. Just business. And when that one finished, another one came.

Chile.

I'm coming from a world where that kind of walk-up transaction would have been scandalous. Where you had a name, a husband, a reputation. Where the intimacy meant something. Here it was like the commissary window was open and the sign said WALK-UPS WELCOME.

I was not about to be a walk-up window. I had standards.

The Front Bunk Situation

The staff figured out fairly quickly that I was gay—I wasn't exactly hiding—and their solution was to move me to a bunk right up front, directly facing the guard station window.

They did this because, as the reason came back to me, “y”all gonna be doing stuff all night.

Now let me tell you what I know to be true: the white boy in the very back of that unit, the one in the dark row outside the camera range, the one who had been receiving visitors like he had a drive-through window? Was still back there. Every night. Doing exactly that.

But I, Shakie, fully clothed, simply existing as a gay person, needed to be supervised.

The irony was not lost on me. But in a place like Catahoula, you adapted. I made that front bunk home. And it was there, near the guard station and all its contradictions, that I started learning how to navigate a different kind of game.

Miss Rose and the Hierarchy

The first real ally I found was Miss Rose. She was an older queen—a hood queen from the old school—and she had been through enough satellite camps to know how all of them worked.

She found me on the yard and did what older queens do: she put me on game.

“This is not like what you're used to,” she told me. Then she explained the hierarchy: even among the queens, there was a top. A big woman from Alexandria named Bernice who had been running the compound for a while. Bernice had notches. Bernice had a reputation. And word had already started traveling that I had arrived.

I filed that information away. I wasn't looking for trouble.

I was looking for a situation.

Kevin Boston—The Second Husband

His name was Kevin Boston.

Brown-skinned, a little rough around the edges, but he had something going for him, his pretty eyes. Miss Rose introduced us—meaning she told me to go over there and meet him, and I did. We clicked almost immediately. He had that energy. That “I see you” energy that you notice in a person before they even say much.

He told me he'd be my old man. I told him he'd have to do more than claim the title to earn it. He smiled like he was up for the challenge.

We made it official not long after that. The logistics were complicated because we weren’t in the same unit, which meant any real time together required cover. He'd come get a haircut. I had the clippers. We worked it out. You do what you have to do.

Kevin was good to me. I'm not going to revise that history. He was considerate when he was on. We had something real, or as real as two people can have when they're both incarcerated and trying to find warmth inside a cold situation.

But Kevin had some childish in him. And childish always finds a way to surface at exactly the wrong moment.

Brandon and the Contradiction

While Kevin and I were building our thing, somebody new moved in on top of me—bunkmate on top, to be very clear. His name was Brandon. From Shreveport. Young, very smart, and he was a Muslim.

Now: Muslims don't go with homosexuals. That's the rule. Brandon knew the rule. Brandon was very clear about the rule whenever it came up in conversation.

I am telling you this man was fine. And brilliant—we used to talk about world events, politics, everything happening out there. Real conversation, no performance. I had not expected that.

I told my homeboy: “I'm gonna get him.”

My homeboy looked at me like I had lost my mind. “That's a Muslim. You cannot get that man.”

I said: “Watch.”

I'm not going to detail exactly how that unfolded. I will simply say that the Muslim community on the compound eventually found out that Brandon's commitment to the no-homosexuals rule was more flexible than he had presented. They cut him off. And the first thing he did when he was free from that social pressure was come find me.

I don't know what they're feeding people in Shreveport. But I'm not complaining.

Blue Bell Birthday Cake—The Ice Cream Incident

This is the part I need you to really understand before I tell you what happened.

My favorite ice cream from the prison store was Blue Bell birthday cake. The one with confetti in it. Soft, sweet, vanilla with those little colored flecks that made you feel, just for a moment, like life was a celebration.

Kevin knew this. I had told him. It was one of those small intimacies that becomes significant in a place where small things are all you have.

So one afternoon I'm coming back from the store. I have my bag. I'm minding my business. I look up and see Kevin coming toward me carrying two ice creams.

I felt my whole face open up. I thought: this man remembered. This man knows exactly what I like. This is the person I chose.

He walked straight past me.

He walked past me, went to another girl on the compound—let's call her Dee Dee—and handed her both ice creams. Then he sat down beside her and spoon-fed her the one that happened to be my favorite flavor.

I dropped my bag.

I don't fully remember making a decision. My body made it for me. I ran on that girl.

Now she was skinny, but she held her own—I'll give her that much. But I was operating on a frequency that skinny couldn't match. I was getting licks in, she was getting licks in, Kevin was trying to pull me off of her, and I popped him too. Because how dare you touch me right now. You are the reason this is happening.

Guards came. Everybody got separated. Dee Dee went to medical. I went to the hole.

Thirty days.

Looking back, I know that ice cream wasn't really about ice cream. It was about being seen. Being chosen. Being the person he came home to. When he walked past me to give my favorite thing to someone else—in front of me, with a spoon—something in me decided that wasn't going to stand.

Was I right? Probably not. Was it prison? Absolutely. In prison, sometimes your feelings come out sideways because you don't have any other direction.

The Sister I Was Supposed to Fight

Word traveled fast. By the time I got out of the hole, my reputation had apparently grown in my absence. I was now “the one who ran on Dee Dee” which translated in compound politics into: Bernice wants to see you.

Bernice—the big queen from Alexandria, the one with the notches, the one Miss Rose had warned me about—had sent the message.

Let me be honest: that scared me. I had seen Bernice once from across the yard. She was muscle-bound in a way that communicated serious intention. I'm a fighter, but I'm also a realist.

But you cannot show fear. Not in a place like this. If I punked out, it would be done for me. My homeboys from New Orleans would never let me hear the end of it. My standing on the compound would be over.

So I kept walking like I wasn't scared.

And the strangest thing happened.

When I finally got face-to-face with Bernice—through the compound reshuffling, units moving around—it wasn't what I had prepared for.

She said: “I know you don't really want to see me. And I don't really want to see you. So let's just be sisters.”

Just like that.

Bernice became one of the most important people in my time at Catahoula. She had been through the satellite camps that I was headed toward and she walked me through what was coming like a big sister walks a little one. We ate together. We moved together. The other queens on the compound were a little intimidated by us, which we both found hilarious.

The people you were supposed to fight are sometimes the people you needed to meet. That's a lesson I'll carry forever.

The Deputy and the Day I Lost My Mind

There was a deputy at Catahoula who had a specific habit.

When a straight man walked past him in the line, he would step aside and let them through. Normal. When a gay person walked past? He would crowd in behind them. Walk up on them from behind, close, deliberate. Every time. Without fail. It was his way of saying something he couldn't say out loud, and we all understood exactly what it meant.

Every gay person who walked past. Every single time.

We all noticed. We talked about it. But in prison—real prison, satellite camp, it doesn't matter—you do not confront a deputy. You do not raise your voice. You do not question someone who has the authority to make your life significantly worse with the press of a button. The rules of power are absolute.

I knew all of this.

One morning I was walking to the chow hall with Bernice behind me. This same deputy walked up on me the way he always did. And I stopped walking.

I turned around and I said: “Why do you do that every time we walk past?”

He got confrontational. He questioned me like I had no right to ask. And something—I don't know what—came up from somewhere deep in me. Everything I had been carrying. Catahoula. Kevin and the ice cream. Thirty days in the hole. The front bunk. The years. All of it came up at once.

I ran on a deputy.

I don't mean I argued with him. I mean I came at him with everything I had.

The alarm went off. Everything locked down. And then there were a lot of them and only one of me. They took me to the hole. I was handcuffed to the bed. The next thing I remember clearly is waking up with blood on my face, not knowing what time it was or how long I had been there. They came back every shift. There was mace involved. I drifted in and out for a while.

I still have a scar from that.

After ten days in that level of isolation—no snacks, no light schedule, shifts of guards coming through to make their point—they moved me to a regular hole. I stayed there another forty-five days.

Fifty-five days total. Alone with a food “loaf”—where they mix everything together into one gray brick so you can't enjoy any single thing—and whatever was left of my thoughts.

I will not tell you I was right for what I did. I wasn't. That man had a job. And I understand now, years removed, that I could have and should have handled it differently. Prison teaches you that slowly. Sometimes it teaches you after the fact, when the lesson costs you everything.

But I want you to understand what it feels like to be humiliated the same exact way, by the same exact person, day after day, until your body makes a decision your mind didn't agree to. I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm asking for understanding. Those are different things.

The Transfer Out—Richwood, Then Claiborne

After the hole, they shipped me to Richwood. I was there two weeks while they decided what to do with me. My jacket now said “assaulted a deputy,” which meant that everywhere I arrived, I started in segregation while they assessed whether I was a threat.

The warden at Richwood looked at my file and I explained myself: I was not a violent person by nature. I had gotten into situations, but nothing random, nothing unprovoked. He was measured. He let me out onto the compound after two weeks, which I was grateful for.

Then they transferred me again. This time to Claiborne Parish.

They called Claiborne a disciplinary camp, which was the system's way of telling me exactly where my choices had landed me on the spectrum. Further from freedom. Deeper into the machinery.

But I was still standing. Still myself. Still Shakie.

Whatever Claiborne had, I was ready.

* * *

Catahoula gave me Kevin Boston—the second husband, the one who walked past me with my favorite ice cream and paid for it. It gave me Bernice, who was supposed to be my enemy and became my sister. It gave me Miss Rose, who passed on the kind of knowledge that doesn't exist in any book. And it gave me fifty-five days alone with my thoughts, which is a very long time when the thoughts decide to be honest.

I left Catahoula knowing things about myself that I hadn't known when I arrived. That's not nothing. That's actually everything.

Next stop: Claiborne Parish. The country boys from Homer and Haynesville who were not supposed to go. The card games, the gambling, and a man named Raymond who would give me something close to a real relationship inside a place that wasn't supposed to have any.