Until recently, it was an offence against prison discipline to report sick with sunburn. Nevertheless, skins were turning deep vermilion as the hottest afternoon of the year wore on to the sound of Stocken prisoners playing cricket behind the barbed white fence. Darren, recently released from his drug free penance and still alabastrine white, sheltered under the welcoming shade of an English oak. The game ended. A solitary tap spewed out welcoming ice cold water onto the raw backs of those men rash enough to have removed their shirts during play.
"I nearly fainted with the heat," Darren said as we meandered back to our wing. "It used to be very fashionable not to have a suntan. Brown skin was a sign of working the land," I replied. I began to muse about architecture when I realised that Darren wasn't listening.
"Did you hear that?" he asked sharply. We were passing the block of cells allocated to those on the dreaded basic regime. "Oi. Wayne. You fuckin' faggot!" Second time round, I heard the shout only too clearly. It echoed accusingly off the pinkish yellow brick walls and other cons were looking my way.
"You'd best do something about it Pete," Darren urged. So at his behest (we're the best of friends but he's as straight as a ruler with not one but two pretty girls presently vying for his affections), I marched over to the cell window in question to "have it out" through the bars.
Perhaps a word of explanation is needed here. I am (and have been since the age of 13 or so) bisexual. It has never been a problem-just an indubitable fact of my life. Physical-no, let us be frank about this-sexual interaction is rife behind closed doors, so in many ways, my predilections have assuaged the carceral process. The exact legal situation on homosexual activity is ambiguous depending upon whether a locked cell does or does not constitute a public place. Officially, we are breaking prison rules, but I have never heard of anybody being brought to book over it. Through the years, I have shared many intimacies with fellow inmates. Discretion has always been the keyword for successfully managing such liaisons. Screaming queens have always been given a hard ride (no pun intended) from the "straights" on the landings. For obvious reasons of survival one does not run around shouting the good news from the rooftops.
Of course not everybody is quite so circumspect. Ronald, an eccentric but kind-hearted prisoner who bears an uncanny resemblance to Steven Berkoff, is a case in point. When I first met Ronald some 12 years ago at Highpoint prison in the Gog Magog hills of rural Suffolk, the threat of Aids and resultant paranoia had not yet come to bear upon us. In those halcyon days, gays inside had rather an easier time of it. I was having a stormy and very overt relationship with a Fulham burglar that summer. Ronald, watching my activities with bemusement and a little envy (so he later said), remained in the closet.
At the beginning of this year he arrived here at Stocken, a decidedly changed man. Enter now Ronald the late convert, a regular gay evangelist with attitude. I could hardly believe it when he showed how pleased he was to see me again by embracing me in a corridor full of people. Taken aback by this display of open affection, I thought it politic to take my old friend aside to put him straight on one or two points.
Stocken is like one of those hick towns in America where, in so many films, unlucky itinerant city dwellers find themselves stranded, usually with disastrous results. Stocken is a provincial no-man's land inhabited for the most part by redneck lager louts whose knowledge of the world begins and ends on the periphery of council estates in middle England. Prisoners, it seems, have always needed a whipping boy on which to vent their frustrations. In lieu of obvious sex offenders (they are here but invisible), queers are the next best thing.
I told Ronald I thought it unwise to declare himself gay in such a homophobic place. But he was having none of it. He knew the score, he told me. I should have been ashamed of myself. I was a traitor to the cause. I remonstrated in vain. Within weeks of his arrival, Ronald had "come out" to everybody he met. Sadly, and predictably, he has since become an object of ridicule and vilification wherever he goes. Worse still, I appeared (at least from the call at the window) to have been found guilty by association.
"Listen you little fuck." It was time to get macho with my accuser. "I don't know who you think you are but just get one thing straight unless you want a broken nose. I'm not queer!" An argument broke out. I was pointing my finger, grinding my teeth, had adopted my most abrasive tone. I half expected the Jerusalem cock to crow as I carried on like the aggrieved hetero asserting my red-blooded manhood. A small crowd had gathered, and eventually, a screw arrived and ordered me away.
Later, a portentous sky darkened. As day turned to night, the storm broke with a vengeance. For two hours or more I stood at my own cell window watching and listening as the relentless deluge of rain poured down. My reputation might have been temporarily salvaged by my earlier denials. Yet I went to bed that night uneasy, naked and rather ashamed.
