The material for this report has been gathered from many sources, from the lives of many people. The inmates who appear in the case histories are real, but their names have been changed in order to protect them for that great day when they go forth once again into a free society. The day that an inmate joins the rest of the world is important to us all. The past of imprisonment is dead. It should not encumber the future. And so the names have been changed.
The felons who have contributed to this report should not feel that they alone deserve anonymity. The names of penal authorities and other professionals have, in many instances, also been changed, as have the names of actual institutions.
Every writing effort has at its base a hope. The hope for this endeavor is that it will contribute to a better understanding ,not only of prison life, but of all the life around us.
Archived Note: The spelling errors in the following text are as found in the original pocketbook.
CHAPTER ONE
The Prison Scene
The Nation's Penal Female institutions are experiencing a rioting grow of lesbianism among the inmates. Always a festering place for sexual perversions, prisons are now the main setting for consolidated homosexuality. People have always suspected it of the male institutions. They are a little shocked that the practice of same-sex love is even more prevalent among women prisoners. It is. And it is growing and influencing new heterosexual inmates every day. Prison populations have adapted to general society's more liberal views. The stimulations of the sexual 1960s have climbed the walls of woman's prisons, resulting in hypersensitive sex, greater abnormality, unique methods of lesbian lovemaking, riots, arson, rape, murder and mayhem, and a situation that prison officials call "the overwhelming problem of sexual love among the women."
Modern women's prisons can, to some extent, be compared to the old Arabian harems. Hundreds of slaves could rarely be satisfied by the one Shiek who owned them. They turned to each other for sexual satisfaction. To discourage the practice, a "circumcison" was performed on some of the slaves, excising them of their clitoris, and, as the harem rulers thought, denying them the means of gratifying other women and being so gratified themselves. Of course, it did not always work. A circumcised female merely practiced oral sex with partners. No such surgical brutality is committed in American prisons, naturally, but the environment, like the harems, is conducive to lesbianism. In the prisons there is also a duplication of the harem techniques of lesbian love. Some inmates, emulating their harem slave sisters of former centuries, practice mutual cunnilingus exclusively. Others find their release through clitorial frictionizing. This is especially true of the women who possees a large clitoris. (In the harems this type of lesbian was known as an Es-schheekeh, and she was determined by the size of her clitoris which was sometimes two or three inches long). The harems had seducers and seductresses. So do modern prisons. And there were those who deemed to have sex in a manner that duplicated love from a man. This type of harem slave-and prison inmate-used phallic symbols, both for masturbation and for an act with another. Candles, bananas and other elongated fruit, and other instruments were used for this vaginal penetration in the harems. They are still used among prison inmates. Other types of fake-penises have been developed, too, including some that are a near-exact replica of the male organ, created out of hard rubber, leather, and other materials. There were "marriages" among some lesbian lovers in the harems. Some of this prevails in the penal institutions. Jealousies, and the conflicts resulting from them, exist in today's prisons just as they did in yesterday's harems.
The inmate population of any prison is a very special kind of society. But it takes its cues from the "outside" world. Some psychiatric authorities claim that a prison community provides a mirror-reflection of the values and practices of all people. So, as all of us experience the new temptations of a more liberal, faster orbiting world, so do the inmates of our prisons become more highly sensitized to the pace of our times. This decade belongs to sex, its experimentation, practice, and status. Inmates are not immune to the decade within which they live. They have caught the sexual fever-caught it in greater intensity because of their incarceration, and lesbian-centered sex acts are erupting with a fire of normal sexual outlet. In most other areas a The experience of imprisonment itself encourages the sexual drives of inmates. Based upon punishment for the legal offender and protection for a law-abiding society, the prison systems of this nation-and all nations-have failed, if indeed they ever intended, to withhold the natural rights of citizens from convicts. With few exceptions, many of the things that are available to citizens are also available to inmates. The major exceptions are civil rights and the pursuit od normal sexual outlet. In most other areas a prison society emulates the society from which they are restricted. Fortunately, our world has advanced to the realization that the imprisoned must eat well, have recreational facilities, and that study courses, prison jobs, and some rehabilitation factors must be provided. In prison, just as it is on the outside, there are status symbols, the affluent and the poor, the gifted and the clod, the leader and the follower. Prisons even have different "neighborhoods." Some cell-blocks are preferred over others. One might house the prison "politicians," another the clerks, the textile workers, the long-termers or the short-termers. And inmates have a basis of currency exchange. Cigarettes have become the item of money barter. A rich inmate is well stocked with cartons. A poor inmate might have to roll her own, using the cheap, state dispensed tobacco. Cigarettes will buy almost anything in prisons. Sex, very often. Favors, frequently. And even narcotics to a greater extent than the public believes.
Prison inmates have always copied the drives and desires of outside society. To some degree, they succeed in this effort. Only the means of normal sex patterns are resolutely withheld from the men and women of the nation's prisons. Abnormality is the result. Homosexuality is the norm. It has created many problems, but, according to some of the country's leading penal experts, not nearly so many as might be created if homosexuality was made the subject of vigorous crack-downs.
Prison rules forbid homosexual acts. It is one of the rules that is largely overlooked so long as the act does not cause disturbances and does not threaten the innocent. Homosexuality in prisons is a fact and is taken as that. Little is done to curb the peaceful pursuit of same-sex love. The result is that homosexuality runs rampant throughout all prison systems. It is pursued in male and female prisons alike, although psychiatric authorties agree that such an incidence is certain to be more active among female inmates. One authority claims that lesbianism is practiced by 95% of all female inmates. Another expert claims it is only 80%. Some set the figure lower. But all agree that sexual love among women in prisons is the one, major activity to which most all other energies are directed.
A nationaly known prison official, who has devoted his life to prisons and inmates, was recently interviewed. This gentleman, whom we shall call Warden Barnes, has viewed the problems of prison life from many angles. Once the warden of a large men's prison, Warden Barnes has experienced riots, murder, inmate strikes, and almost every incident that can happen in a prison society. Among the hardened male criminals at the men's prison, Warden Barnes was known as "Wild Bill," a nickname bestowed by the inmates for his personal and professional courage. Now the chief executive of a correctional instiution for short-term inmates, but which also includes a division of the facility for women serving long terms, including life, Warden Barnes' nickname still exists. No one doubts his courage. Or his desire to right the wrongs of prison life.
Warden Barnes was interviewed for this report. This is the way he viewed the problem of lesbianism as it is practiced in women's prisons:
"There is no question that a prison sentence carries a condition of sexlessness for inmates. We know, however, that sex does exist in prisons. Sex, either fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon how it is viewed, is still very personal and very difficult to control in prisons. It's even difficult to observe, let alone control. We're responsible for the confinement of thousands of inmates. We're also interested in rehabilitation where it's possible. Now, there isn't a prison in the world that has the facilities and personnel that is adequate enough to do these things plus policing the sex life of all the inmates."
"Does this mean that lesbianism in women's prisons is ignored," Warden Barnes was asked.
"Not at all," he answered. "There is a prison rule against this type of activity and we do our best to enforce all the rules. What I'm saying is that the task is almost insurmountable when considered from the viewpoint of prison budgets, ets, problems with the legislatures, and public apathy."
"Does lesbianism cause a lot of trouble in prisons?"
"It certainly does."
"In what way?"
"Well, Jovers' quarrels are one example. This is always serious. Quite often they result in violence and there is always this potential in any institution. There is also the threat of violence from one isolated incidence spreading to the whole inmate population. And we worry about the first-timer and lesbianism-that woman who is imprisoned for the first time. We don't like to think that this type of person might become fair game for the hard-core lesbians. And there's the matter of rehabilitation, too. Our prison sociologists tell us that an inmate, not previously a lesbian, who experiences lesbian affairs in prison, has a more difficult time adjusting to society when she is released from prison. We don't want inmates to have rough adjustments-we don't want them to return to prison once they are paroled. We want every inmate to make it on the outside. So, of course, we are concerned about lesbianism, just as we are other matters of prison life."
The warden was asked if masturbation is practiced to a large degree, not alone by lesbians, but by all inmates.
"I have absolutely no idea," he answered. "We assume there is some of this activity because it is a condition of any sex restricted society, but we have no idea as to how much of it goes on."
(Edmund Heintz, Ph.D., a psychologist formerly associated with the Illinois penal system, did have an idea about masturbation, individually and mutually practiced, and his comments have been drawn upon as material for other topics of this report.)
Many other prison officials feel as Warden Barnes does about the practice of institutionoriented lesbianism. There's a lot of it, it cannot be completely controlled, the novice inmate must be protected, the practice inhibits rehabilitation, and it is the cause of much drama and great conflict in most penal institutions.
And what can be done about it? Or, should anything be done about it? These questions along with others in the form of a research-query letter, were presented to several leading psychiatrists. Here are the opinions of two of these professionals whose daily work is made up of the complexities motivated by sexual problems. Albert Eisenberg, M.D., a New York City psychoanalysist: "Something should always be done about behavior that threatens either the full productivity of an individual, or one individual's threat to others. Although a prison society must, in itself, be 'abnormal'-well-adjusted people do not come into conflict with the law-it is possible for a female to be incarcerated for a certain period of time without her becoming involved in sexual affairs with other women. The incidences of this pattern are unfortunately rare. Most inmates turn to sex, even sublimate all their energies toward sex while they are in prison, and the sexual outlet, naturally, for women is lesbianism. If prison programs allowed for other types of sublimation, especially those of a creative nature, there would be less inclination among some inmates to become involved in abnormal sex patterns. And this is what should be done. Funds should be appropriated to provide greater facilities for the creative instincts of the inmates."
(Creative endeavors in prisons are encouraged, more in some institutions than others. But most prisons have some facilities for art work, literature, hobbies, reading, athletics, etc. The crux of the problem seems to be to get more inmates involved in these types of sublimation, and this can only be accomplished by professionally trained personnel, particularly in the area of psychiatric and sociological case workers, careers that find far greater callings than the rigors of prison work.) Robert Drews, M.D., A Detroit, Michigan psychiatrist, arid one of the developers of the "psycho-drama" concept of psychiatric therapy, a component of psychiatric treatment that has achieved both success and publicity:
"Until dramatic changes are made in our entire penal system, homosexuality will always prevail among men and women in the prisons. The question-'What should/can be done about lesbianism among inmates?'-calls for an answer that postulates a change in the whole theory of punishment and behavior. The following list of imperatives, as I call them, are, to my belief, steps that should be acted upon, not alone for the sake of inmate rehabilitation, but for the benefit of all society:
1. "Shorter, more realistic sentences for criminals providing hope for the hopeless in a society that uses its hopelessness as a rationalization for any kind of behavior during their incarceration.
2. "More intensive psychiatric evaluation and treatment of inmates: greater use of group-therapy, music-therapy, and psycho-drama therapy.
3. "The training of long-term inmates, such as those serving life sentences, in areas that will help other inmates. Long-termers could be trained to conduct sessions in group-therapy and other group-type treatment. Actually, longterms, if young enough, could even be given psychiatric-orientation and trained to act as case workers for their fellow-inmates. These persons have only 'time' ahead of them. What better way for it to be spent than in the behalf of the rehabilitation of others? Good art and good literature have been created in prisons. Why not good psychiatric case workers?
4. "Conjugal 'furloughs' for inmates who qualify under a rigid code of trusteeship. The vast majority of inmates in our prisons are married. Conjugal visitations by a spouse, or furloughs for the inmates, would be an incentive for inmates to obey the rules of a prison and to make genuine self-efforts toward their rehabilitation. Also, the availability of a normal partner for a normal sexual outlet will deter many men and women who might have a disposition for homosexuality."
The conjugal furlough is a favorite topic of many penal administrators. Most agree that such an arrangement has many advantages, and the penal practices of other countries are often cited as evidence of the workability of such programs. But the idea has detractors, too, and they point out valid arguments against the permissiveness of state sanctioned sex activities. Some of the arguments presented by those opposed to the conjugal furlough are: 1. Pregnancies and the birth of new babies who have a convicted felon as a father or mother; 2. A disinclincation on the part of inmates to leave a prison environment that not only cares for bodily needs but also provides for their sex life; 3. The low-threshold of reliability among inmates, making their selfmotivated return to prison after a conjugal furlough always a questionable matter; 4. The high cost of the extra personnel that would be needed to conduct such programs.
The resistance to conjugal alliances for inmates discloses a more subtle attitude of society toward its felons. Sex, its denial, far more than calendar years, is the sentence that society wants imposed upon the criminal. According to sociologist Harriette Newman, writing in a recent issue of a national penal publication, there is a natural tendency among law abiding citizens to see criminals "castrated." Imprisonment, and the sexless life to which a criminal is impliedly sentenced, is the symbolic castration that lawful society wishes for its felons.
But it doesn't work. There is little sexiessness in prison societies. Instead, perversions develop, problems multiply, the healthy are infected and the overt lesbian continues to find partners for her sexual lust.
This report concerns lesbianism in our prisons. The matter of male homosexuality in prisons will not be considered here. There is a reason for this confinement of the subject matter. More women than men inmates are returned to society. Many former inmates take up responsibilities as wives and mothers. Many produce and raise new citizens for out country. The influences of women, both the law-abiding and the former felon, are felt by future generations to a far greater psychic extent than are the influences of men. It would seem that understanding is greatly needed here.
This work seeks neither to plead the cause of convicts, or to promote the interests of the vengeful. Communication, rather than evangelism, is the hope of this report. And what gain we by the communication of professional opinions, interview transcripts, expertise data, and actual case histories? Only better understanding of others, which, after all, is a factor to self-understanding, a badly needed quality for all people as we zoom onward toward the close of this very sexual, very emotion-packed decade of the sixties.
CHAPTER TWO
Josie Radford-Prison-dyke Extraordinary
The Story op Josie Radford is presented by two methods; edited portions of interview transcripts, and a narrative development of the history as it was disclosed by the subject's recall of events and circumstances.
The Butch-Dyke, or aggressive, prison lesbian is easily identified. They are masculine in appearance and promote this impression. They wear their prison uniforms in the fashion of the male, even have the garments tailored by seamstress inmates in order to gain this manly effect. The Dykes wear their hair short. They speak in a gruff tone. They smoke like men, chuckle, cuss, and have a quick and roaming eye for any Jane who might appear. Some Butch-Dykes have been known to shave, hoping that this action will encourage the growth of a beard. Medical authorities have found that most Dykes have an overly large clitoris, that for them it represents the male penis and is used in acts of frictional contact with the clitorises of other inmates, similar in technique to intercourse as practiced by heterosexual partners. These characteristics represent the Butch-Dyke image. Anyone can recognize them. But sometimes images ar e deranged, patterns are broken, and an aggressive type lesbian will appear in the cloak of the feminine. This was true of Josie Radford. She did not seem the type for lesbianism, yet she soon built a reputation as one of the more notorious Butch-Dykes to cross the prison scene.
Josie, at twenty-three years of age, and during her third imprisonment, became the subject of intensive study by penal sociologists and psychiatrists. By this time Josie had been a hardcore Dyke for eight years. She looked the very opposite. Her hair was black and bounced around her shoulders in the fashion of seductive teenagers. Her eyes were brown and she occasionally exaggerated their darkness by careful use of eye make-up. She had a good figure, large breasts that she quite frequently sought to subdue with undersized bras, hips that insisted upon a womanly flair, and long, lean legs that seemed meant to form a cradle for men. There had been such a use of her body. She had known men, especially an uncle who made her his fellatrice when she was thirteen years old.
The uncle had been the sexual turning-point for Josie. The experience of regularly inforced fellatio was traumatic, psychiatrists believe, and they also found it significant that it was during this period of Josie's life that she discovered her clitoris and the pleasure it could give. Some of her mood at age thirteen and fourteen, and her later attitude about it, were disclosed in an interview with a prison psychologist, from which this edited presentation was taken.
INTERVIEWER: Did you like your uncle?
SUBJECT: Naw. But I guess you could say I respected him.
INTERVIEWER: For what reasons?
SUBJECT: He was real cool. Smart as hell. He had traveled around a lot and all that kind of stuff. Had nice manners too.
INTERVIEWER: He was worldy, you mean?
SUBJECT: Huh! Was he ever!
INTERVIEWER: Are you referring to sexual worldliness now?
SUBJECT: Sure. That's what you want to talk about, ain't it? About him making me go down on him all the time.
INTERVIEWER: I want to talk about whatever you care to discuss, Josie. But let me say this first. Several times now you've made references to your sex acts with your uncle and you do it as if this is the only thing that ever happened to you-as if you might be using this experience to forget, or as a kind of defense against talking about other things that concern you. Is this possible, Josie?
SUBJECT: Man, I lost you way back at the beginning.
INTERVIEWER: All right then, tell me about your uncle.
SUBJECT: Well, like I said, he was sharp. Wore good clothes. He was a salesman or something like that when I first met him. I was going on thirteen when out of nowhere he shows up at our dump. He was my father's brother and finally found where we were living and came to see us. Christ, I remember how he looked around the place as if he was going to puke.
INTERVIEWER: How long had your mother been dead at this time?
SUBJECT: Jeez, I don't know. Five, six years maybe. We didn't even knew exactly when she kicked off. A social worker came to the house and told the old man that they found her dead in this rooming house where she'd been living with some old guy.
INTERVIEWER: Your folks weren't divorced?
SUBJECT: Hell no. She just took off. But you're getting me off the track. I was telling about my uncle. Maybe he was my father's half-brother. I don't know exactly. But anyway, one day he prances up to see us, big as life. He looks around at the place and gives me that old 'come hither' look. Man, did he ever give me the eye. Then he tells the old man-I forget but he was probably drunk at the time-that the dump's no place to raise a kid like me. The old man wasn't working except to pick up beer bottles and turn 'em in for the deposit, so he just kind of stares at my uncle, almost agreeing with him. Well, few days later, good old Unks shows up again. He's brought a lot of packages, mostly clothes for me. He said I was pretty and should dress to be even prettier. Then he calls the old-man out on the porch and they talk a long time. When they come in the old-man tells me to pack-packwhat a hell of a joke that was! 'Cept for the new clothes from the uncle, I could carry everything I owned up my ... So, the old-man says I'm going to live with my uncle 'cause things had been rough and good, old Uncle Mike could do things for me. Man, how right the old-man was. Unks could do things for me, all right, all right, and he had me doing it right away.
INTERVIEWER: I presume you're referring to fellatio.
SUBJECT: If you mean suckin' him off, yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Go on with the story, Josie. SUBJECT: Uncle Mike-that guy really knew how to enjoy sex-sex for him, I mean. I don't know where he learned everything, but he always wanted things just his way. He showed me how to do it the way he liked. He wasn't even shy or tried to act cute and coax me into it. It was like he just expected it for taking care of me. He just took it for granted that I was suppose to go down on him whenever he wanted-like washin' the dinner dishes. You know-that guy had a regular-regular, oh, hell, I don't know what it's called, but he had regular steps that he had me go through.
INTERVIEWER: Did your uncle also have intercourse with you?
SUBJECT: Never. It was funny. Maybe he couldn't do it the other way. I use to think he was queer or something.
INTERVIEWER: All right, continue, please.
SUBJECT: Do you want to hear about the different steps he'd make me go through?
INTERVIEWER: If you want to tell me about it.
SUBJECT: It's liable to make you squirm out of your pants.
INTERVIEWER: Go on.
SUBJECT: Well, first he'd have me just hold his cock, move it around in a circle and wiggle the hell out of it. That was step #1. Then he'd have me hold just the head of it with my fingers and lick and chew it up and down the sides. That was good, old step #2. Right then he always started to get pretty hot. That was the idea, I guess. Each step was suppose to make him get hotter. It did, too. So, then we came to step #3, and that meant I was suppose to take just the head of it between my lips and suck a tiny bit-not too much-if I did he'd raise hell. He always said he had to save that for the last. Anyway, for step # 3 I'd just wiggle the head of it between my lips and a little bit in my mouth. On step #4, we were really startin' to swing. Then I'd go down on it about half way and make my lips real tight around it and wiggle it around some more and even go up and down a little bit. Step #5 was for me to go down as far as I could and kind of pause, then real fast move up and down. I was suppose to hold the bottom of it in my hand, you know, to kind of guide it or keep it from getting away from me. And from here on I wasn't suppose to stop-not for anything. Just go, go, go, man, right to the end. And then the last couple of steps were all mixed up. I think step #6 was when he'd come in my mouth and step #7 was when I'd keep goin' and swallow all that fuckin' stuff. Sometimes he'd add something new to the deal but usually we'd do it like I just told you.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever reject his ejaculation?
SUBJECT: You mean not swallow it?
INTERVIEWER: Well, yes.
SUBJECT: Yeah. Once I pulled back and tried just to jerk him off but he slapped the hell out of me and made me do it his way.
INTERVIEWER: Why did you pull back that time?
SUBJECT: Some of the kids in the neighborhood were talking about sucking guys off and one of them said that if you swallowed that crap, or even took it in your mouth, that your teeth would start to drop out. I didn't want that to happen. (This falsehood is a common thought among American prostitutes, who, largely, seek to avoid takiNg a man's sperm orally although they have fellated him.)
INTERVIEWER: Did you enjoy it?
SUBJECT: What?
INTERVIEWER: Taking your uncle's ejaculation.
SUBJECT: Hell no! But I put up with it, especially after I started to come.
INTERVIEWER: And how was that achieved?
SUBJECT: Uncle Mike showed me where my little clit was. Then he showed me that if I spread myself apart and wrapped my legs around one of his and moved up and down while I was sucking him off that something would happen to me. It took a little practice, but, man, once I got goin' it worked and there was no stoppin' me. I got it down so pat that I could come a couple of times before he blew his load.
It was shortly after the experience of her own orgasm that Josie Radford turned to girls as sexual partners. It was with them that she established a pattern made up of both oral and clitorial-contact forms of lesbianism. It was a pattern that Josie followed with many of her inmatelovers. A prison psychologist cited her as, "A girl who emulates a man, a husband, who varies his sex technique, sometimes performing cunnilingus and sometimes performing sexual intercourse."
Josie took much of what she had learned from her uncle to the lesbian act. It happened first when she was fifteen. She had joined a girl friend who was acting as baby-sitter for a family in the neighborhood. The girls were alone. The children were sleeping. Josie started a discussion that centered on sex and asked her girl friend if she had yet been made "to feel good." The friend, who was also fifteen, and apparently trying to act as sexually sophisticated as Josie, replied that boys had touched her and that she had liked it. Josie told her that wasn't anything that she bet she could make her feel "really good." The friend was curious. So was Josie.
Soon the girls had undressed. They giggled when their bodies touched and they invented a game of pressing their breasts together, each of them trying to bury the nipples of the other. Josie had reported that this kind of play stimulated her in a way that she had never experienced with her uncle.
Both of the girls were perspiring when Josie instructed her friend to recline on the floor. Josie joined her. Then, without the slightest bit of embarrassment, Josie spread the girl's thighs apart and pointed out the location of her clitoris, still small and hiding.
"That's what does it," Josie explained.
"But how?" asked the girl.
"Like this," said Josie.
Stretching over her friends thighs, Josie used her hands to keep the girl open, then pressed her mouth against the clitoris. She tongued it feverishly. It grew. She spanked it harder with her tongue, alternating this action with little bites and nips and sucking motions, imitating the methods used to fellate her uncle. And soon Josie's friend was squirming on the floor, thrusting with her hips and clawing at Josie's bare back. And Josie was inspired to tease, would slow her action, even pause until the girl begged for her to continue. Then she would move at a frantic pitch, pause again, then go hard and fast until at last the girl achieved an orgasm.
The lesbian experience chained the girl friend to Josie. Josie has stated that it made her feel "good and strong, like I was really somebody."
A few weeks after this first lesbian act, Josie was moved to further experimentation with her girl friend. Naked and alone, the girls began the love-play action of slapping their breasts together. When they were finally lying together, Josie suggested that they try something different.
"But what?" asked the friend.
"Like doing it the way guys and girls do."
It seemed a reasonable suggestion. Josie placed her friend flat, braced her legs up, spread the knees, then, on her own knees, moved close. It was a little cumbersome at the beginning. Four hands worked excitedly to make a successful joining of their clitorises. At last, it was achieved. They locked together and stayed that way during all the passionate movements of their bodies that took them both to a unified and dramatic climax.
As their passions cooled, the girls talked about the experience and compared their anatomy. It was then that they discovered that Josie's clitoris was much longer, that it actually protruded like a miniature penis. (This was born out by medical examination. Josie's clitoris was larger than what is considered "normal." Clitorises do vary in size. They also vary as to the extent they will elongate.)
Almost from the beginning of her lesbian experiences Josie began to reject her uncle. She also began to display anti-social behavior, becoming a truant from school and a juvenile delinquent. Eventually, she was brought to the attention of social workers. Psychiatric counseling was suggested and an appointment at a child guidance clinic was set. Josie never kept the appointment. In the company of two boys and another girl, she aided in the robbery of a beer store. Josie was not imprisoned for this offense. Instead, she was taken from her uncle and under the authority of a juvenile court, was placed in a foster home. Josie stayed exactly three weeks, then ran away, ran out of funds, too, and quickly robbed an elderly woman, also inflicting a beating when the victim tried to resist the larceny. This crime placed Josie in a girl's reformatory for a period of two years, during which she practiced lesbianism at a pitch that authorities termed, "Erratic, and dangerous to others." Josie herself has stated that she had an overwhelming number of affairs in the reformatory, once saying, "It was as if I was trying to make a record, or something, like I was trying to see how many times I could do it."
Upon her release from the reformatory at eighteen years of age, Josie found employment as a waitress. She was still entirely contrary to the Butch-Dyke prototype, and became the subject of many sexual propositions from men, all of whom she rejected, sometimes with a hostility that seemed a kin of insanity. Josie, from this point, was never to sexually commingle with men again. Nor was she to know much freedom. Within three months of her reformatory release she became involved in the armed robbery of a candy store and, with her accomplices, was sentenced to three years at a women's prison.
Josie was very soon known as one of the most aggressive "wolves" in the prison. Few girls were safe from her. Until the latter part of this prison term Josie believed in variety, and maintained herself as a free-lance lover. Nothing could keep her from a seduction she meant to make. Even the lesbian "mates" of other inmates were not safe from Josie Radford. She seemed not to form strong emotional ties with any of her girl sex partners. But when she was six months away from parole, she met Darlene. Then Josie's pattern changed.
Darlene could have been Josie's sister. They were alike in build, coloring, and to some extent, disposition. Darlene was a rebel by nature, and although she was serving her first prison sentence, she boasted of many, major criminal capers prior to her arrest and conviction. From evidence furnished by Josie-but without benefit of data from Darlene herself-it would appear that the new inmate was bisexual. She had lived with men on the outside, usually those who became her "rap-partners" in crimes. Darlene told of many love affairs. But she also spoke of "making out" with Dykes. When Josie inticed her into an affair, however, the girl, according to Josie, proved horribly inexperienced at lesbian love. That suited Josie just fine. She could teach her anything about it that was worth knowing.
Prison sociologists could not pinpoint the reasons for Josie's great love for Darlene.
"It could have been anything," said one sociologist. "Perhaps it was as simple as needing someone to love. What do any of us really know about the uncertainties of falling in love. Very little. Maybe it was because the new girl hated the same things Josie hated. Or, perhaps it came about because of their remarkable resemblance, giving Josie a kind of 'self-extension' or herself as both the aggressive and the passive partner to the sex act. We just do not know what caused this strong, love attachment."
It was strong. And it was also the cause of a lot of disturbances. Josie's prison record indicated the trouble she got into because of Darlene: 1. A fight with another inmate because Josie suspected her of stealing Darlene's cigarettes; 2. Smuggled contraband sheets from the hospital for Darlene's prison cot; 3. Impudence to prison personnel when Darlene was accused of disobeying prison rules; 4. Assault upon another inmate who had been paying attention to Darlene.
These capers, and others, caused Josie to be "flopped" by the parole board, denying her parole for another year. Josie didn't mind. Her lover had another year to serve anyway. Now, they would have this much more time to share together. Prison authorities did not see it that way, however, and Darlene was transferred to another institution. Josie had lost her great love.
In two months she found another. The girl's name was Lisa. Quiet and introspective, Lisa, prison records indicated, had an exceptional I.Q. and a good deal of artistic talent. But she did not use these gifts. In the outside world she prostituted and was, prior to her self-committment at a Federal hospital, some two years prior to meeting Josie, a serious drug addict. Although this was her first prison term she had been in jail before on misdemeanor charges. Lisa was bisexual, had as a prostitute sold herself to both male and female customers. She was Artically frigid. At twenty-four years of age she had never known an orgasm. Then she met Josie.
Medical and psychiatric authorities alike agree that when a formerly frigid woman finally experiences lovemaking that brings her a climax, she will often become emotionally bound to the partner who brought her this success. This is the way it was for Lisa. Josie showed her the course to a climax. Lisa became enslaved to her. And s experience did something special to Josie, too. It made her Dyke-hood supreme. She considered herself the best, much in the manner of men who feel they are the world's greatest lovers. Josie bragged about her sex ability a great deal, and she would recite the circumstances of bringing Lisa to a climax for the first time whenever any conversation turned to sex. She once went through every detail of the event for a prison sociologist. During an interview for the purpose of determining new disciplinary measures against Josie for trouble she had been causing, she gave signs of feeling abused, put upon, perhaps having her ego reduced. Quite unprovoked, she began talking of her sexual success with Lisa. The sociologist let her talk and has stated that Josie, as she talked, seemed to "regain confidence and her haughty, rebellious manner."
Josie met Lisa soon after the girl left the quarantine block, a place where each new inmate is isolated from other inmates for a period of thirty days, during which they are tested, given physical examinations, classified for rehabilitation programs and prison jobs, tested for aptitudes, and given immunization shots. The experience of leaving quarantine is always a gratifying one for inmates. Once admitted to the general prison population, they have a great deal more freedom, can use recreation facilities, walk in the prison yard, and socialize with other inmates as they cannot during quarantine.
Josie had made it a practice to view the "new fish" as they came into the recreation yard for the first time. She spotted Lisa at once. She talked to her and left no doubt of her sexual interest. Josie offered her a carton of cigarettes, candy, volunteered to have Lisa's prison uniform form-fitted for her, did all these things that are the mark of the wolf in both male and female institutions. Lisa accepted Josie's gifts. It was obvious that she knew they carried an implied condition of sex. They did. The next day Josie asked for a date. Lisa accepted.
Settings for lesbian love are plentiful in most large institutions. Josie and Lisa met back stage of the prison theatre, a seldom used area which, according to inmates, had "been taken over by the queers."
Josie walked Lisa directly to a portion of the stage where athletic tumbling mats were stored. She immediately grabbed Lisa to her and kissed her hard. Their thighs clashed at the same moment that their tongues met and spun in a mad whirl of sensation. Josie has crudely described the moment, saying, "I felt like I was going to come from just holding her close." Lisa, it appears, had no similar hypersensitivity at this time.
When Josie and Lisa had undressed, they lowered to the tumbling mats. The mats were dirty and smelled of dust and feet. The dust mixed with the girls' sweating bodies.
For a long time they remained wrapped in each other's arms, stretched full length on the mats. They kissed madly. Josie's hands ran over Lisa arid finally thrusted between her thighs. Her forefinger teased. She made small, very rapid, penetrations, conveying a hint of intercourse. Then Josie groaned, gripped Lisa's tongue with her lips, drew madly, and at the same time raised her hand higher on Lisa, finally touching the girl's clitoris. Lisa issued an erotic moan. Josie once had something to say about this moment too.
"It made me feel so damn good to hear her moan. When I touched it I wanted to laugh. She was only about half the size of me. But she liked it a lot. So did I."
Josie spent a long time manipulating Lisa's clitoris. Once, Lisa reached out to do the same for Josie. Josie rejected her offer, later explaining the incident by saying, "I didn't need any coaxing-it'd make me go off too soon."
At last, after much manual manipulation, and after Josie had kissed all of Lisa's body, using her tongue as a brief replacement for her manual penetrations, Lisa was placed on her back. Josie assumed a position above her. She adjusted Lisa's posture for better receiving. Josie, moving very slowly, was careful to bring her own extended clitoris against Lisa's smaller one. The very first contact in this manner called forth more moans from Lisa. Then, very slowly, Josie moved forward, pressed hard, then paused. Soon, she drew her hips backward, doing it in a manner that lessened the pressure of their clitorises while not losing the full measure of their contact. Lisa's moaning increased and soon there came a hike from her hips that seemed spontaneous, was no longer the twisting, bounding fraud of a prostitute beneath a man.
Josie has said that she and Lisa stayed locked together a good half hour before their interlude ended. According to her frequent discourse on the subject, Josie acted the perfect aggressive and leading lover. She would move fast, taking Lisa to the very brink of orgasm, only to pause, halt, then move hard again. Lisa blubbered words that begged Josie to "give it to me." But Josie restained herself. She gave only physical promises of the great climactic moment that was still to come.
Eventually, Josie herself could not endure further waiting. Starting slowly, she gradually increased the pressure of their bodies, moved harder and faster, causing greater friction between their clitorises, finally reaching a hard, pressing pace that was meant to unlock Lisa's frigidity.
Lisa cried out as her climax began. Her arms hooked around Josie's back and her fingernails clawed there, gouging the skin and drawing blood, hurting, even as she received the most exquisite sensation she had ever known. And Josie loved the pain of Lisa's ripping fingernails because she, too, was involved in fabulous sensations, among the best she had known during her years of Dyke-hood.
It took a long time for the girls to catch their breath. Their sweaty bodies were filled with the grit of the tumbling mats. Their bodies were sated. And Lisa clung to Josie in a way that told of her emotional enslavement to this hard-core
Dyke who was the first to bring her sexual gratification.
We do not know if the love affair with Lisa had a sobering effect upon Josie. She did, however, develop a new pattern and soon ceased to make trouble for the authorities. Soon, she was paroled.
Josie's period of freedom this time lasted just short of a year. At that time she and criminal friends committed an armed robbery. A savage beating of a storeowner was involved. The trio was apprehended, jailed, brought to trial, and given long prison sentences. Josie is still incarcerated at a women's penal institution in the midwest. She has many years to serve. She is, there is little doubt, pursuing lesbian sex with new partners. The prognosis for her eventual rehabilitation is quite negative. Josie, most authorities agree, is destined to spend most of her life in prison for criminal acts she cannot refrain from committing.
"There are many inmates like Josie," a prison psychologist reported recently. "Actually, her homosexuality has a lot to do with her frequent, and inevitable, incarerations. Prison does not offend Josie. If anything, it provides her with sex partners in a greater abundance than she could possibly find in the outside world. This seems her rather singular objective. It appears that Josie wants to get caught, wants to return to the prison environment. Only in prison does Josie appear to be at all functional-and she isn't always that, but at least from the viewpoint of her distortions, she is functional. Unfortunately, prison is about the only society where Josie feels at all at ease. It is very sad."
CHAPTER THREE
The Prison Theater-Ideal Setting for Sex
When the Motion Picture theater was brought to the prisons of America it was hailed by penal authorities as the greatest contribution to inmate recreational facilities that had ever been made. The theater was hailed as a rehabilitative factor too. Here, inmates could view the celluloid expression of life as it was in the outside world, hopefully exciting them to self efforts that would return them to society. The motion pictures could offer incentives for inmates to lead a better life, even as it provided entertainment. And it could also offer a new form of sublimation that would lessen the incidence of riots, fights, regulation violations, and homosexual activities. The prison motion picture theater has made contributions, to some extent, in these areas. But it has done something else too. It has provided one of the most ideal settings for sexual love among the prisoners, particularly among the women's penal institutions which have provided the case history that appears in this chapter. But first, let us look at the inmate theater as it might be viewed by a visitor at an average female institution in the United States.
Prison theaters are large, holding anywhere from five hundred to fifteen hundred inmates during a motion picture presentation. It is structured much the same as any small or medium sized theater that might be found in the neighborhoods of middle-class America. Usually, it is a single building within the prison compound, although in some institutions it is combined with a gymnasium or arts and crafts shop. The theater seats are set in tiers, rising gradually to the back. There are two aisles, one on the right and one on the left, separating the two smaller sections of seats from the larger, main section. At the back, a flight of stairs higher than the seats, there is a projection booth. It is square, and with its small windows looking out over the inmate audience it resembles a prison pill box that houses guards, and guns, and ammunition. But the setting overshadows the mood of incarceration. It is a theater, established for fun and relaxation, and, for awhile, an emotional freedom from imprisonment.
Inmates attend the theater in shifts, some groups attending as early as 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. It is not difficult for friends-or lesbian lovers-to arrange to attend a performance at the same time, however. Most prison executives feel that it is best for inmates to attend the theater in the company of those whom are desired.
Inmates attending the theater proceed to the building in lines, much the same as they go to meals, work, and other areas of the prison compound. There is a mood of frivolity as inmates hurry forth to the show. It is not unusual to see female inmates holding hands or cuddling to each other, much in the fashion of teen-agers attending a Friday night movie. For many of them, it is their single opportunity during the week for lovemaking.
But how can lesbians make love in theater seats? It isn't always easy. Sometimes it takes superior agility. But sex acts between lesbian inmates during the weekly show are accomplished. Sometimes the act is merely one of mutual masturbation, an event that is made easy by the darkened setting, a collection of clothing over the laps of the participants, and the ability to look straight ahead at the screen even as hands trade vaginal penetrations and caresses. Cunnilingual activities present somewhat of a problem for prison lesbians. For this type of lovemaking one of the partners usually scoots to the floor, kneeling at the feet of her loved one so that she can easily provide all the oral attention that is needed to satisfy. These orally oriented inmates usually take turns during the movie. The narrow aisle between seats is also a place of sexual activity during a prison movie. Here the lesbians who copulate in the style of heterosexual lovers, roll and lurch and pant and strain between the theater seats, indifferent to the other inmates around them, indifferent, too, to the matrons who patrol the theater aisles during a show. These situations invariably call for a "jigger," a cooperative inmate who will act as lookout for the lovers, either for a fee, usually cigarettes, or for inclusion in lesbian sex activities.
The prison theater is a perfect setting for lesbian acts among inmates. Some inmates, a few of whom are presented in the following case histories, use the theater exclusively as a place where they may follow their pattern of lesbian love.
CASE HISTORY
Maxine Horton spent twenty-seven months in a women's prison located in the southeast. Her felony conviction derived from being a member of a forgery ring. Maxine-Maxie, as she was soon tagged by fellow-inmates-had been a successful criminal for three years before being arrested. Only twenty-four years old, pretty, and with blond hair and innocent blue eyes, it had been easy for Maxie to pose as a housewife in the local supermarket where she systematically passed phony payroll checks. Supermarket checkers, assistant managers, managers-all the personnel, it seemed-were always anxious to accommodate Maxie. She cashed bogus checks by the score until at last she was apprehended and convicted.
Prior to her imprisonment Maxie had only dabbled in lesbianism. Usually, she lived with one of the male members of the check cashing ring. She did on occasion, however, have a lesbian affair. Almost always it was prompted by Maxie's restless desire to try "new kicks." At first, lesbianism wasn't the kick she had expected. As the passive partner in the act she only rarely achieved an orgasm equal to the climactic results she accomplished with men. But then she was incarcerated and soon learned that in lesbianism she was deemed to be the aggressive partner, that with her clitoris clamped tight to that of another woman she could rise to the highest peak of sexual excitement. Prison provided her with an abundance of sex partners. Maxie, unlike many inmates, remained free of actual love entanglements during her prison stay, preferring to "play the field" and have as many different experiences as time and opportunity allowed. She once commented on this and her enunciations were significant to those cases of women who practice lesbianism in prison to a far greater degree than in an environment offering heterosexual relationships. This is the way Maxie put it:
"I dig it while I'm in the joint. On the outside, it's just an occasional kick-something to do to break the monotony of all the studs I ball. But in the joint a gal doesn't have any choice-not if she wants to swing and get it off from time to time. So, I swing with the Jills. I don't hang-up on any particular one of them. After all, I'm just putting in time, and ballin' them is something to help pass the time away."
Maxie was a very regulation-abiding inmate. She was anxious for parole and knew that prison capers would mean more time for her to serve. Maxie's sentence of 3 to 14 years provided the parole board with a lot of leverage. Maxie knew it. She was careful about all the rules. But she would always take a chance for a sexual interlude with another girl. But Maxie was careful in this respect too. The setting had to be one that offered the maximum of security. She settled on the inmate theater as the safest place to have a sexual fling. She did not deviate from this setting during her twenty-seven months in prison. Her pattern was almost always the same, although her partners varied weekly. Following her release from prison, Maxie elaborated upon what she called her "modius operandi for sex." It was successful. It provided her with the sex she felt she needed. According to Maxie, this is the way it worked.
Saturday evening was show day for Maxie's section of the prison cellblocks. In order to keep chances to a minimum, Maxie did not bother arranging for special partners to attend the theater with her. Usually, she arranged a sexual laison with someone from her own cellblock. It was best if arrangements were made before hand, a procedure that developed any one of three ways. Maxie would approach a known prison "whore" and arrange a price-a certain number of cigarette cartons, called "boxes" among the inmates-for the lesbian's sexual services during the movie performance. Once the barter was established, the whore would either meet Maxie at a certain designated section of the theater, or even accompany her to the show. Then there would be the matter of paying cigarettes to a "jigger," assuring further safety as Maxie vented her passion between the seats on the floor of the inmate theater. Sometimes Maxie did not buy a whore for sex. Sometimes an arrangement was made with another inmate who merely "dug" Maxie or wanted sex at that particular time. Then the only expense involved was the purchase of a jigger's services. And quite frequently Maxie merely "played the house," would attend the theater without prior sexual arrangements and take the chance of making a deal after she was seated in the theater. This could be risky, could mean sexual unfulfillment, except for a situation that was known throughout all the prison. The lesbians always sat together at the theater. As if it were the reserved orchestra section of the best legitimate theater in the outside world, the first twelve rows of the right section were always self-reserved by the Dykes and their Jills. It provided free-lance partners. It created no problem in the securing of a jigger's services. And it also served to keep the non-lesbian inmates from intruding. The first twelve rows were much too close to the screen to view the motion picture with comfort. But Maxie and her friends didn't care. They rarely saw the show anyway.
Maxie always felt a little excited on show day. Saturday, at her prsion, was a day of relaxation for the inmates. Monday through Friday Maxie worked in the prison laundry. It was not an especially grueling task, instead, resembling the type of unskilled labor job followed by tens of thousands of people in the outside world. But any job that required regular attendance was difficult for Maxie. She lacked discipline, and it was this lack, it was once pointed out by a prison social worker-that caused Maxie to enter crime in her early teens. But Saturday was loved by Maxie. She napped, walked in the prison yard during free periods, and at meal time if she felt like it, or did not, choosing instead to munch on her supply of fruit and candy bars she always kept in her cell locker. Saturdays were great. And Saturday nights were always planned for lesbian sex. Maxie anticipated it all during the day.
The Saturday night show was scheduled for 6:30 p.m. The cell doors in Maxie's section started opening at 6:00. Residing on the third floor tier of cells, Maxie always stood by the cell door as the clang of the cells on the first floor announced show time. When the electronic lock on her cell clicked open, Maxie swung the door wide and walked out onto the catwalk, turned left, then followed those in front of her to the first floor area where all the inmates gathered in lines, waiting to be led to the inmate theater.
(It should be pointed out that many female felons are imprisoned in camps and dormitory-type branches of the main institution administrative buildings and cellblocks. This is a preferred setting, prison authorities usually assert, for female prisoners, like Maxie, serving short terms. But Maxie, as a result of her inter-state check passing activities, was wanted by another state who had posted a detainer warrant for her. This placed the responsibility of delivering her over to the detaining state immediately upon her release, by stint of full service of her sentence or by parole. Thus it was a hard-fast prison rule that inmates upon whom a detainer had been placed must necessarily be housed in a main, near-maximum security type of cellblock. So, Maxie resided with murderers, dope addicts, manslaughter convicted inmates, habitual prostitutes and other criminals of a hardened variety).
The particular Saturday night attendance at the theater that Maxie chose to describe for this report, was like many that had preceded it, and was representative of many that followed the described event.
There was a lot of jabber among the girls as they walked the 60 yards to the theater. Some walked hand-in-hand. Others had a roaming eye to establish a date for the next few hours. Maxie, this night, had a girl waiting for her. It had been previously arranged. Also, it was a girl Maxie had yet not known. Her name was Lucy and she had only recently entered the ranks of the known lesbians in the prison. She was small, barely over five feet tall and less than a hundred pounds. But she had the thin kind of body Maxie had learned to enjoy best. It promised a closeness of vaginal contact not offered by the heavier lesbians. Maxie knew from experience. She looked forward to having Lucy. Maxie had had her eye on the girl for months, but had only the day before successful in arranging a date. She was quite excited.
Maxie found Lucy smiling and waiting for her in the third-from-the-front row of seats situated far on the right side of the section. Lucy was saving Maxie a seat next to her. She had also placed clothes on the two seats nearest to them in an attempt to keep them reserved. Hopefully, they would go unoccupied, offering greater privacy and a greater freedom of movement for sex. Maxie had suggested the arrangement to Lucy whose cellblock would be the first to arrive at the theater. It was standard procedure among most of the lesbians. But it was always first come, first served. The absence of non-lesbians in the section of seats usually provided empty spaces between the earliest arrivals, however. This is the way it was for Maxie this Saturday night of her first sexual interlude with the girl named Lucy.
Maxie scrambled into the seat next to Lucy. For a few moments they chattered and looked around. They locked hands and Maxie has said that it made her "hot and anxious to get going." There was the matter of a jigger, however. Although prison matrons patroled the aisles of the theater, they seldom interfered with sex activities. They could, however. Maxie never took a chance. She wanted to make parole, was determined to avoid a bad prison record, and therefore always gave herself and her partner the security of a lookout.
Just before the theater lights dimmed, Maxie spotted a girl who worked with her in the laundry. She was older than the others, and although she participated in lesbian affairs she was unattached this night. Maxie signaled to her and the girl came close to Maxie. Their conversation went something like this:
"You busy tonight?" Maxie asked.
"Naw," the girl replied. "The Jane I want ain't here."
"Good. Wantta jigger for me?" asked Maxie. "How much?" inquired the girl. "A box," Maxie suggested. (A carton of cigarettes) .
"Aw, hell no, man," said the girl. "It's a good flick and I'm not going to see it if I'm jiggering for you and the doll here."
"You'll see enough of it if you don't get too damned interested in what we're doing," Maxie advised.
"Well...."
"A box and a half and that's it-take it or leave it."
"Okay, you're on," said the girl.
"Good. Come by my house (cell) in the morning and I'll pay off."
The girl took the seat next to Maxie and Lucy. As Jigger for the evening her duties were to keep Maxie and Lucy safe from discovery should a matron take it in her mind to disturb the love action. Immediately, much as if she did not exist, Maxie and Lucy ignored the Jigger. They held hands, winding their fingers together and creating little pressures that told each that they would soon be together. Soon, the theater lights clicked off. It was black. Wild shouts and shrieks and applause greeted first the darkness then the illumination of the screen as the inmate audience settled down to their weekly show. Or to lovemaking.
Maxie wound her arm around Lucy's waist, keeping it beneath the seat and out of view. She fingered up the girl's side, thinking about the slimness of her evening's mate. Then Maxie clutched Lucy's breast, cuddling her hand beneath the girl's forearm, which, in a sexual movement, also cuddled. Maxie gently kneaded at Lucy's breast. In a moment she felt her nipple erect. This always excited her, Maxie has explained. It did this night too. Maxie turned a bit sideways and caressed at Lucy's thighs with her other hand. Both of the girls wore skirts, optional attire among the inmates. Slacks were also issued. But for the show most of the girls who planned on sex wore skirts. It made things so much easier.
As the short subjects ended on the screen and the feature attraction began, Maxie and Lucy slid a little lower in their seats. They turned their mouths toward each other. Maxie kissed the girl hard, bruising the lips for a moment before their mouths softened to allow room for their tongues to play. And as they played Maxie's hand slid up Lucy's naked thighs, paused, waited as Lucy spread her legs apart, then pointed inward, making a touch in her moist vagina. Lucy sighed. Maxie, excited and pleased by the pantyless offering, pointed her forefinger then penetrated the flesh. Lucy sighed again, more erotically this time, and then again with more passion as Maxie began a light in-and-out jabbing.
Maxie has said that she was always "turned on" when she could excite her sex partner through love play. She considered herself quite an expert at lesbian love, particuarly in the area of properly preparing her lover for a full act. So Maxie jabbed deeply and slowly into Lucy, sometimes pausing to circle her finger within the girl's moistness. Maxie could tell as Lucy became more prepared, for the girl's juices flowed and her clitoris extended in a way that allowed Maxie, when she chose, to penetrate her finger inward, at the same time nicking Lucy's clitoris with the base of her hand. Lucy gave little jolts upward and breathed heavily, but hidden in the darkened theater the action went either unobserve or ignored, evn as Maxie's jigger sat in the next seat and kept a sharp eye out for interruptions.
Maxie has explained that her type of sexual satisfaction with another woman was centered in the sensitivity of the clitoris, both her own and that of her partner. It was the same area that created thrill for her when making love to a man. Maxie once offered some insights to her own lesbian attitudes, explaining them this way.
"There's not a hell of a lot of difference, you know. I can come with a man or a woman or by myself if I want to pound it off. The clit's the answer for me. When I move it against a Jane, I get my rocks off. When a stud's inside me and moving in and out, the same thing happens. I come. And after all, that's what we're all trying to get, so it doesn't matter to me whether my playmate's got a cock or not-it's just as good one way as another."
As Maxie played with Lucy she became more and more excited. Soon, she would have to copulate. She knew her timing, knew her need, so after some thirty minutes of love play she withdrew her hand from beneath Lucy's skirt. Then she took the girl's hand and placed it between her own thighs. Lucy responded. She slipped her hand beneath Maxie's skirt and immediately ran her finger up the length of the vagina until she found the hard, extended clitoris. She circled it. Maxie uttered a little groan and reached over to Lucy to convey the same touch. For awhile, they played with each other, working their passions high, approaching, but purposely not realizing, a climax. And then they could go no further.
"Come on, let's get with it," Maxie whispered to Lucy.
"Oh, yes, let's, right now," Lucy responded.
Maxie leaned across Lucy and spoke to the jigger. "We're going below," she said. "Keep awake."
The jigger smiled and nodded.
Maxie took the pile of extra clothing she had brought with her to the theater. She bent forward and spread the clothes out on the cement floor immediately in front of their seats. She puffed it into a land of bed. Then she nudged Lucy.
Lucy looked around, then slid low in her seat, paused a moment, then continued downward to the floor. She settled on her back, concealed from view by the theater seats. She arched upward a bit and adjusted her skirt, then pulled it high around her waist. Maxie looked at her and waited. Then she made a quick glance around the theatre, saw hundreds of faces turned toward the movie screen, then also lowered to the floor.
Lesbians always dressed for the theater. Their attire was always the same; skirt or inmate dress, and an absence of undergarments. Sex-on-the-run held no lot for cumbersome clothing. Maxie and Lucy were no exception. As Maxie scrambled to the floor, Lucy hoisted her body again, showing a blur of flesh as it was reflected by the projection light that stretched across the theater to the screen. The flash of flesh excited Maxie all the more. She stretched full length upon her girl lover and crashed her mouth hard upon her lips. Immediately their tongues played as their arms entwined. The jumble of clothing did not keep the cool of the cement floor from touching their bodies, but it was not uncomfortable. Their bodies were hot. They were oblivious to all things except their own heat and need.
They embraced a long time, during which period they shifted their bodies in different erotic poses, offering each other new excitement. Their breasts crashed together, flattened, and made four nipples fasten together like cherries in a pod. And their legs entwined, rubbed, occasionally touched at each other's vagina where there was ready moistness and heat. But soon-while the jigger remained alert; while the major portion of the audience viewed the Saturday night movie-Maxie had to know her lesbian partner in the fullest possible way.
Maxie brought her mouth from Lucy's. She pushed back and rested on her knees. Her head was above the theater seats now and she took a quick look around. Faces stared straight ahead and Maxie has said that she always felt at such times as if the audience's attention was fastened upon her instead of the motion picture. She didn't mind. In the theater she felt safe. She lowered over Lucy who immediately spread her thighs wide. Then Maxie deftly parted the girl's vulva, sneaked a finger upward to touch at the clitoris, then continued the touch as she brought herself closer. When her own clitoris made contact with Lucy's, Maxie brought her hand away and locked it with its mate around Lucy's waist. Then she moved. Lucy made a slight moan. Then the sound increased as Maxie drew back and pressed forward again, doing it slowly and gently in a way that allowed their bodies to become accustomed to each other. The small appendeges clicked together, increasing their mutual excitement and moving Maxie to improvisions. She began slight circling motions that sent Lucy into new low moans of pleasure. Maxie felt like moaning, too, but controlled the impulse and merely continued to breath hard as she moved forward and back, forward, back, creating a little more pressure upon each downward stroke, clashing her clitoris with Lucy's in a way that brought them both a greater erection, a more intensified feeling of mounting passion.
Lucy has said that on this particular night she could not estimate how long it was that she and Lucy worked together before reaching a climax. But she does remember that moment and has described it in this manner.
"I felt a if I was swelling up so much that I'd soon burst. I always felt that way when I was makin' it, but this night it seemed different. Probably because I really dug this kid, Lucy. Anyway, I felt my clit getting as big as if it was a prick-it really felt like that, I even had the notion that it was really a cock-but I didn't want to go inside her. I never liked it much like that, besides it's hard for the Jane to get her rocks off that way and I really need that to have a good bang for myself. So I kept rubbing mine against hers and man, I'll tell you, hers was stickin' up there where it didn't miss a stroke for me, right up like a goddamn little flag, all swollen and hard and hot as a sonovabitch and all the time making me wonder how much longer I could hold out without coming. I didn't want to come until the kid did. But then I could tell she was ready. She was moaning so much I had to reach forward and put my hand over her mouth. I guess she liked that because she grabbed my hand with her teeth and bit into me. I didn't mind. It hurt, but like they say, it hurt so goddamn nice. I had a real spookey feeling while I was fuckin' her too because of the place being dark and the voices from the movie going on and on and the idea that all the babes were sitting around and staring up at that screen, right over where we were doing it. Man, I was hot. And then all of a sudden Lucy arches herself way up at me and when I press down on her the next time I feel this shudder go through her body and it was like it was contagious or something because I started to come right then. Christ, it was like my body was being torn apart. It started right with my clit hitting Lucy's but then it went on and shot through my legs and arms and thighs and even right up my ass. I started to come and it wasn't fast like it usually was with me. It was slow and creepy but got stronger all the time. And Lucy was lurching harder against me so I just stayed up close, my clit tight against hers and pressing and rubbing and spinning. I had to lean forward and bite into her shoulder because I was afraid I'd scream. Lucy was making funny noises too and chewing on my hand to beat all hell, biting right through my flesh until I finally noticed the blood, but I couldn't really tell where the blood came from-it was all mixed up for me, 'cause I was biting into her shoulder as hard as she was biting me. Then we both kind of relaxed. It was over. We were all wet and mixed up together but I went real soft on top of her and she held me real close and let loose of my hand and started kissing me on the neck. It was just great, the very greatest, I tell you, man, the greatest-one of the best goddamn comes I'd ever had."
Maxie met with Lucy many more times during her imprisonment. She met with others too. She was never discovered, never received any bad marks during her prison stay, yet she utilized the inmate theater weekly for finding sexual release with other lesbians. The setting was safe, and ideal.
* * *
Prisons offer a variety of settings for homosexual lovemaking. The inmate population is heavy, the prison personnel light, and the drive for sexual release is great enough to prompt inmates to utilize the slightest setting in order to have a sexual interlude.
Most prison executives acknowledge the use of the inmate theater, and other prison facilities, as offering opportunities for homosexual activities. Most of them agree, too, that it is best to overlook these activities, that the advantages favor overlooking such activities rather than discovering or punishing them. One Deputy Warden at a women's prison explained it this way for this report.
"We know these things go on. We also know it's best for everyone, for the state, for the guards, and for the inmates themselves, if we kind of overlook all this. So, unless these things threaten other inmates or present the problem of a possible riot, we just let it go. We know how the prison theater is used. We know how other areas of the prison are used too. But we can't be every place at once and we wouldn't want to, anyway. Good prison administration calls for overlooking as much as is discovered. It makes it more peaceful for everyone concerned."
Certainly, prison theaters should not be banned because of the incidence of homosexuality that goes on inside them. Nor will they be banned, for the official inclination is to provide more recreational facilities for inmates in order to contribute to their eventual rehabilitation.
This report-and this case history-does not argue with this proposition. Instead, it is suggested that homosexuality will continue in all prisons until a new, aggressive, more realistic approach is offered for the whole problem of sex denial among inmates in all of the nation's prisons. Perhaps in the future a very real and honest program will be instituted in order to alleviate the one major problem of all penal institutions-the problem of inforced sexual abstinence.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Hard Core Lesbian Inmate
Sociologists Believe that Some lesbians find a home in prison that is far preferrable to them to any they could establish within a normal society. This seems especially true among those women who are either hard core lesbians at the time of their incarceration, or are strongly motivated toward love and desire for their own sex. To this type of individual, prison soon becomes ideal There is the security of bread and board. There is a certain "safety" from making decisions about life: There is little need for individually derived decisions in a penal institution. And, more than anything, there is an abundance of women in like circumstances ,containing the same needs, and with the same lesbian hunger.
Emerick Phizer is the fictitious name of a sociologist currently employed by a midwestern state of Chief of Individual Treatment at a women's penal instiution where all the inmates are felons, serving sentences from one year to life. Dr. Phizer has pursued individual studies within the realm of lesbian activties in prison, and besides contributing to the case history material of this report has also offered there insights to the hard core lesbian inmate.
"Prisons become the ideal environment for many lesbians," Dr. Phizer has stated. "Very real physical and emotional needs are satisfied for some inmates only by imprisonment. Their lives-their background and psychosis and all the things about them, even from an early age, point toward antisocial behavior with a prison sentence as the end result. Why? We don't know all the answers, but we have observed some patterns of the hard core lesbian inmates that can serve as guidelines or warnings for young women who may be headed in this direction."
Four elements seem ever present in the background of hard core lesbian inmates, according to Dr. Phizer's observations. They are presented here, not as indications that the same elements will turn all women to eventual incarceration and lesbianism, but as a mere observation of one sociologist, and as a matter of fulfilling the responsibility of information to readers. Most hard core lesbian inmates within the prisons of the United States appear to have in common these elements:
1. A background of poverty.
2. A history of parental disputes, frequent violence, little love between the parent-partners, frequent drinking, and a lack of responsibility in areas of employment, economics, and paternal decisions.
3. Permissiveness on the part of either one or both parents.
4. An early misorientation as to the place of sex in a healthy heterosexual relationship as enunciated and/or demonstrated by the parents.
The following case histories reveal the presence of some of these elements within females who became prison inmates who either furthered their pre-prison lesbianism or developed it to a hard core status during their incarceration.
CASE HISTORY
Lydia Latham went through the usual stages of tom-boyhood and great femininity during the years that preceded and followed puberty. When she turned fourteen she experienced a dramatic change in her patterns, however. She encountered a man, ruthlessness, his rape, and the trauma that has been said to be the motivating force in both her antisocial behavior and her overt lesbianism.
The child of poverty stricken parents, the second oldest of five children, and the product of a home where unemployment, bitterness, hunger and irresponsibility were the mainstay of family life, Lydia, at fourteen years of age, felt rebellion in her hert while at the same time presenting the image of innocence and virginity. She was a virgin. But only until between nine and ten o'clock one summer evening when, for reasons never adequately understood by herself or presented to prison psychiatric case workers to an extent that made their understanding absolute, Lydia decided to walk in the city park that was only a few blocks away from her urban city, slum oriented home. Lydia has never forgotten the moment of her devirginization, and has described it on two occasions; initially for a prison psychiatric case worker, and later for a psychiatrist in private practice who shared her story for the benefit of this report.
There had been hasseling between Lydia's father and mother from late afternoon until evening when Lydia felt she couldn't stand it another moment. The arguments she heard were a rerun of as many years as she could remember. Her mother shouted that Lydia's father was a failure, couldn't hold a job, was always drunk, was a brute who beat her, and, worse, was a man who had impregnated her five times when she had been explicit about not wanting even one child. Lydia's father called his wife a slut, a whore, a woman who had belittled him and reduced him to the drunk he admitted to be, the man who no longer felt the spark of initiative necessary to raise his family from the locked-in poverty that was their lot.
Lydia Latham listened and reacted to the arguments until the summer evening shades had begun to darken. Then she bolted her house, a sweater in her hand to warm her when the chill of the night struck the city. The sweater would be needed this night, there was little doubt, for Lydia was dressed scantily. She wore only tight shorts and a peasant blouse, with sandles on her bare feet The attire accentuated her young body, framing breasts that were young yet large, a flat, smooth stomach, hips that curved and buttocks that were round and split down the middle by the deep line of her shorts. Her hair was dark and bounced around her shoulders, acting mischievous but not sufficiently to reduce the somberness and sadness of her dark brown eyes. Lydia, running from her home and the unhappiness there, was a fleeting beauty as she hurried down the street and headed toward the city park.
She roamed for an hour or so, stopping occasionally at the various park ponds where swans and ducks lived. She liked the smoothness with which they cut the water. She has said that it gave her a sense of "being graceful and beautiful."
Usually, Lydia encountered friends at the park. This evening none appeared. Lydia was just as glad. She was introspective and unhappy. Aloneness seemed right for her mood. It prevailed until she entered a wooded area of the park at a time when the sun had dipped from sight. Then she looked behind her and saw the man following her along the path. Aloneness was over. She knew that something dramatic was about to happen to her.
The middle-aged man accosted Lydia at a bend in the path that kept them from sight of others who lingered in the park. Five minutes after approaching her, Lydia was on the ground, fighting for what she thought was her life but which proved to be a struggle against the loss of her maidenhead. Lydia has described her rape in this manner:
"I knew he wanted to fuck me but I had the feeling that it would kill me-not especially that he was the kind who would kill me but that just his fucking me would kill me. I was scared. He had a nice smile and that scared the hell out of me too. It seemed like a cover for something terrible. Then, soon as he laid a hand on me, I knew he was going to be bad. He was too. He tore my peasant blouse off me then before I could scream or anything he ripped off my bra. I remember how cold my breasts felt and I remember how I was aware of my nipples being real hard the way they used to get when I'd take a bath and we didn't have enough hot water: We never had enough hot water, it seemed. So there I was, my nipples sticking out real hard and this old stud going after me. He wrestled me to the ground and I really tried to fight. I don't think I screamed even though I thought that was what I should do. But I didn't. I was like embarrassed or something. So I didn't. Then the next thing I knew I was on the ground and in the bushes and he had his cock out, sticking real hard at me and kind of waving from side to side while he panted real hard and. tore off my shorts. I remember the cold air hitting me there, too, but then I forgot it because all of a sudden while I was trying to keep my legs closed together he kicks with his knee real hard between my legs, right around where my knees were. I groaned. My body relaxed a little then he kicked again. Oh, Christ, how he kicked me, right on the point of my pussy and I went wide open to him. Then he tore right to me, took that big cock of his in one hand and kind of aimed it then jerked all the way into me, not even stopping when he couldn't get in, just jerking and then squirming inside me until I thought he was going to come out the rear end of me. Of course, he didn't. He just came, period, real fast, like in less than a minute and it scared the hell out of me again because he groaned something awful and I had a kind of half-feeling that he was dying-that somebody would find us there with him dead on top of me and still stuck inside of me. He didn't die though. He just pulled out of me and looked around real scared like, then looked at me and reached down and hit me real hard across the face a couple of times while he mumbled something to me about never telling. Then he jerked up and ran away. I looked at myself and there was blood on the insides of my legs. I started to bawl then and I grabbed my sweater and stuffed it between my legs. I went home like that and told the folks what had happened. My mother was upset. My old man was drunk and took a look at me then beat the hell out of me for what he called 'whoring around.'"
Lydia's antisocial behavior started soon after this experience. She became a truant at school and started giving herself sexually to nearly any boy who asked. She received no satisfaction from her numerous affairs, however, and did not know the meaning of gratification until she and a girl friend began a regular practice of mutual masturbation. Then Lydia experienced the most intense kinds of orgasms. It was then-she was about fifteen at the time-that Lydia stopped dating boys and found her sole sexual satisfaction with girls, going from masturbation to both clitorially oriented and vaginally penetrated sex activities.
Lydia Latham's first experience with prisons was in a girls' school where she was sent as a result of truancy, shoplifting, and a behavior pattern that social workers termed "unmanagable and from an environment that precludes chances for change of the self-discipline that is necessary before the subject adjusts to the society in which she lives."
The girls' school was a happy place for Lydia. She was well fed, she soon learned to avoid trouble with the authorities and she partook of many lesbian affairs with girls both older and younger than herself. One of them, a girl of eighteen, once pointed out to Lydia that she was endowed with an overly large clitoris and that this fact made her especially desirable as a sex partner, particularly with girls who preferred to play the passive role. Lydia was not passive. She was anything but that, and pursued experiences that found her looking manish and following the aggressive role in sex acts with other girls. Her procedure, it has been pointed out, was to either penetrate another girl's vagina or to use her own clitoris in a manner of friction contact to the extent that it would always result in climax for herself, and quite frequently for her partner of the moment.
Lydia was returned to her home when she was discharged from the girls' school. Conditions at home were the same. Lydia, now sixteen and a half, promptly ran away, disregarded weekly appointments that had been set up for her with a social worker, and was soon returned to the girls school where she remained until she was eighteen.
Released to society at an age that was considered majority in her state, Lydia secured a job as a waitress. She continued to scorn men, had her hair cut even shorter, and despite an unusual beauty did everything possible, it seemed, to subtract from that beauty. And she was not happy away from the life, work, people-everything, it appeared-and had a continual fear of not being able to feed herself, make a living, or care for herself in the simplest matters. She dreamed a lot during this period and the dreams were always associated with her incarceration and a good feeling she had about it. A sociologist has suggested that it was this need for security that caused Lydia to again break the law, this time at nineteen years of age for her involvement with a car theft committed by another girl and a boy. Lydia's bad record sent her to a female penal institution where she became what is termed a hard core lesbian. Her homosexual practice seldom varied from this account Lydia has committed to the prison records and this report. It represents only one experience but is, authorities agree, the pattern of a thoroughly oriented lesbian who has found life in prison more comfortable than the challenge and troubles and satisfactions of the civilian world.
Lydia always paced the inmate recreation area, or "yard" as it is called, vigorously during the periods allowed for that activity. She used the period for reflections, usually preferring to walk alone instead of with a friend as most inmates did. Lydia's thoughts during these periods, she has stated, usually centered on her life-her prison life. She considered her feelings, actually thought about different emotions she had felt in the past and those she had at the very moment. When she finished such a period of introspection, Lydia always felt good, elated, blown up a bit. Once she stated, "Man, when I finished thinking about the world I knew that I wasn't so bad off. The other cons were all the time thinking about when they were going to get out, what they were going to do when they were parolled-all that crap. Not me. I just kept thinking how good things were for me at the moment, like kind of looking forward to my meals-meals I didn't have to worry about making or earning, or looking forward to a whirl with a new Jane."
One day as the recreation period neared its end, Lydia's attention was directed to a very shapely inmate who, though she appeared to be a seasoned inmate, was new to the scene. Lydia was curious. She walked over to the new girl who was about Lydia's age of twenty-two. Their initial conversation went something like this.
"Hi," Lydia said. "Are you a fish?"
"Do I look like one?" the girl answered sharply.
"Hell no," Lydia told her. "So-how come I ain't seen you around before."
"Cause I just got out of quarantine."
"Then you are fish, eh?"
"Christ, no," the girl said. "They transferred me down here from upstate. I was at Manning." (A top security prison for women of the same state penal system).
Lydia was impressed. "No kidding? Man, you must have been a trouble-maker. How come they let you come down here?"
"Because I've reformed." The girl laughed hard as if reform was the furthest thing from her mind.
Lydia laughed too. Together, the girls circled the recreation area, each learning a little about the other, each sparring a bit until they found a common ground of undersranding and trust. They found it quickly just before the period ended. They found it in their mutual lesbianism. They were both very blunt about what they were.
"Hey, how's the fucking up there at Manning?" Lydia suddenly asked.
The girl shot her a look then said, "Good as any place."
Lydia grinned. "It's pretty good here toopretty good because I'm operating."
The girl gave a short laugh, glanced at Lydia, then said, "Man, are you modest."
"Just honest," Lydia said. She purposely bumped against the new girl, then added, "Why don't you try me?"
"Maybe I will. Hell, you don't look like a Dyke."
"That's what confuses everybody," Lydia explained. "And it's why I'm able to get so damn much tail."
The recreation period ended. The girls walked into the cellblock together, then separated to go to their respective cells.
"Hey, what the hell's your name?" Lydia asked.
"Tess," the girl answered. "It rhymes with stress."
"Mine's Lydia-see you around."
A week later a sexual rendevous had been planned by Lydia and agreed upon by Tess. Prison sex activities are arranged quickly and simply. Once it is established that the two partners involved are homosexually atuned, it is merely a matter of arranging the time and the place. (Unless, of course, sex is the product of prison prostitution, a result of force, either real or subtle, or falls into the category of something other than an arrangement between two willing inmates).
Lydia and Tess agreed that they would meet in the large boiler room of the prison laundry. It was a favorite spot for lesbian activities among the inmates. The area was large with many nooks and crannies available for privacy. Also, the area was known as a sex setting by prison authorities and guards, and, though homosexuality was not condoned by officials, it was largely overlooked at this prison unless it imposed injustices upon innocent inmates or posed the threat of discord and trouble for the entire inmate population.
Passes for evening activities are easily obtained, allowing inmates to pursue their hobbies or education at the inmate school during the hours of 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Lydia secured a pass for the alleged purpose of working in the leather craft shop. Tess got her pass for the inmate library. Neither went to the approved destinations. Instead, each following a course from their separate cellblocks, they met in the boiler room.
Lydia was the first to arrive. She walked in a side door, immediately feeling the vapors and heat that were always present in the laundry area. It cleared her sinuses. She moved along an aisle that separated large machines. There was the hum of equipment working. Lydia liked it. It seemed a secure cover for sex.
When she reached the end of the aisle, Lydia paused and looked around. She saw a burly matron at her station at the front of the room. Lydia scooted past the matron's line of view and headed for the receiving room. She reached it and found Tess waiting for her, already sprawled in the middle of a huge bundle of dirty sheets that had been dropped for cleaning when the laundry detail resumed work in the morning.
Tess was very pretty-she looked very, very good to Lydia.
The girls exchanged only a few words of greeting, then embraced, Lydia grabbing the girl to her, kissing her hard, then bending her back to a reclining position that allowed the play of tongue and Lydia's knee pressing between Tess's open thighs. Almost immediately, Lydia felt very heated. Perspiration beads suddenly sprouted over all her body. It was a sign she had learned years earlier. It was a first sympton of her passion and need and the anticipation of satisfying it.
Lydia started to draw her mouth away from Tess's, but the girl objected.
"No, just a little longer," she whispered.
Lydia rushed her mouth back on Tess's lips, felt them open, then shot her tongue deep once more. Tess circled it with her lips and drew heavily, moving her head from side to side as she drew upon it in a fashion of a child hungrily supping the best kind of ice cream soda through a straw. It turned Lydia on. She moaned and began to move her own head in an abrasive movement against the pull Tess invoked upon Lydia's tongue. And her hands parted Tess's prison uniform, exposing her breasts. Both of Lydia's hands grabbed the breasts. She kneaded them roughly. Tess moaned and wound her arms tight around Lydia's neck, moaning but not relinquishing the tongue she continued to draw upon. Nor did she give it up until Lydia forcefully pulled away.
"Oh, Jeezus, don't stop," Tess cried.
Lydia looked at her half-closed eyes for a moment, then lowered and took as much of the girl's right breast as it was possible to jam into her mouth. Lydia bit and pulled upon it, gave the fullness of it up for a moment while she twisted the hard, brown nipple between her lips. Then she moved to the other breast and repeated the action as Tess began to pant as if she were in labor.
Very quickly both the girls reached a peak of fashion that prohibited further love play. Now they had to consummate all the heat and passion they had wrested from each other.
Lydia pushed back and rested on her knees before Tess, who immediately pulled her skirt high around her waist and parted her thighs. Lydia noticed an exciting undulation at Tess's vagina, one that found the lips opening and closing a bit as the heavy pubic hair parted down the middle as if it were being blown apart. It excited Lydia more than anything she had ever experienced, she has reported. And she responded to it. She hiked her skirt and quickly tied it in a knot around her wrist. She looked down at her front, noticed the moisture that bubbled on her inner thighs then saw her own clitoris as it protruded. It was little finger length but thin. Lydia has said that it "ached, felt all bloated and hot and just dying to get inside that hot bitch."
Lydia wasted little time. She knee-walked between Tess's thighs, spread them a little wider apart, then moved closer as Tess arched to meet her. Upon her first thrust Lydia merely jammed her vagina against Tess's. Then she drew back, raised her hips high and jerked forward again. This time her extended clitoris made a slight penetration, exciting both the girls to husky moans, and inspiring Lydia to trip hammer speed as she repetively slicked her clitoris into Tess's moist vagina. Their hands clutched each other; Lydia's on Tess's buttocks, Tess's hands around the small of Lydia's back, pressing her hot and close between the quivering thighs. Now Lydia did not withdraw and enter. Now she remained tight, with her clitoris within Tess's wet vagina. Together they began a hot circling action that brought Tess upward, straining, circling to Lydia's swinging hips, tight and hard in an arch that made her seem like an Indian bow. They strained mightily, then even harder as Lydia's hard pelvis bone crushed against Tess's clitoris even as the clitorial penetration continued and intensified because of the circling motion and the greater vaginal area that met its friction.
Suddenly, neither of them could delay their climax. And they cooperated to intensify feelings for themselves. Lydia drew back. For a moment she glanced around the room as if caution were more necessary now that their act had nearly ended. Then she brought her hands free of Tess. She brought them to her own vagina, spread the lips wide and began to press forward again. At the same time, Tess duplicated the action, gripped her own vaginal lips and opened them to meet the smack of Lydia's downward swoop.
"Oh, Jessus, yes!" Tess cried, squirming upward again, and locking her vagina to Lydia's.
"COME, goddamn it," Lydia said huskily. "Come right now-come with me, goddamn it, come, come, come...."
Her words sent Tess to blubbering as she twisted in an agonizing expression of sexual climax-as she thrusted and turned, bounced her buttocks on the pile of sheets then shot upward to bring fiercely against her lesbian lover. And for Lydia it was the same. She felt Tess's heat, made it her own, merged with it then went dizzy as her body was rocked with the pleasure-pain of a trillion genes breaking loose inside her. She panted. Spit dribbled from the corners of her mouth then smeared as she leaned forward and bit hard into Tess's shoulder, tore at the flesh and felt dribbles of blood invade her mouth. And then they went limp and remained wrapped together as their harsh breathing quieted. Their bodies softened. The pile of sheets beneath them comforted them as they returned to normal, satisfied and safe from discovery.
Lydia was never in any hurry to be paroled from prison. Her needs were satisfied in the prison environment, probably from a basic need for a security that was lacking in her early life. When Lydia was paroled, only a short time passed before she was returned to prison for some new crime or for parole violation. In and out of prison she followed the patterns of a hard core lesbian, but always she found the life that best suited her within prison walls. Commenting on Lydia, a prison sociologist who came to know her well, said, "It's very unfortunate but Lydia, like many other inmates who are also lesbians, had such a basic need for a prison environment that rehabilitation was impossible and it was inevitible that she would be returned to prison again and again, spending most of her years as a ward of the state."
CASE HISTORY
Sandy James was an irrevocable lesbian by the time she was twenty-seven years old. By this age she had practiced sex exclusively with women for ten years and had had intercourse with only three men previous to her attraction to same-sex love. One of the men had been her father, another had been her maternal uncle, and the third and last man of her life had been her brother. From this incestuous background, Sandy turned to girls, took on the mannerisms of a male, and followed a course of gross lesbian activity until she was committed to a women's prison for her part in a felonious assault. Lesbianism halted for Lydia when she entered prison. But only for thirty days. Then her quarantine period ended and she was turned loose to live among the general inmate population. It took her less than twenty-four hours to seduce an eighteen-year-old-inmate who allegedly had never had a previous lesbian experience. Lydia has remembered the incident well through the years and has detailed it for sociologists and psychiatrists many times during the past five years. Here, in a fascimile of Lydia's own words, is one account of the seduction.
"I was so goddamn hot by the time I got out of 7-Block (the quarantine section of the prison where all new inmates must remain a minimum of thirty days) that I was ready to screw a hole through the walls. I was itching and my skin had started to break out and my clit was jabbing out all the time. I hadn't gotten any in the country jail the ninety days I spent there before being sent to the joint, and, baby, I'll tell you I was roaring to go. So I got out of 7-Block and started looking around. Then in about an hour's time I spot this innocent looking kid. She was real young and smooth looking. And she had tits that were a knockout. I dig that, so I cozied up to her in the messhall and started getting my pitch in. But she's not buying, says she ain't a queer, and I tell her she will be before long so she might as well start with the best Dyke in the Joint, namely, me. It didn't impress her. Then I Med to bribe her with boxes of fags and candy. Still no dice. She's only in for a 1 to 2 on a cruddy check charge her boyfriend stuck her with so she ain't having any panky with Dykes. She just wants to get out and get fucked good by a man, she keeps telling me. Well, I don't give up easy, so I wait until the night rec period and I keep my eye on her and see that she's headed for the gymnasium-something doing about a basket ball game, or something. I followed her. There was a lot of activity at one end of the gym but not much at the other end where all the side rooms run off the main one. I see this kid head for one of the small rooms. It was filled with mats. Nobody was in it but her when I followed her in. She was bending over tugging on a corner of one of the tumbling mats when I came up Behind her. She jumped about a foot when she saw me. Seemed kind of scared too. Then she said something about she was going to do a little tumbling and exercises until she could get in the next basket ball game. I was so hot I wasn't having any more of that or any more waiting, either. I twisted the kid around to face me and Jerked Her to me before she could say; anything. And then the goddamndest thing happened. I'll never forget it. All of a sudden she stopped resisting and opened up to me as if I was her one-arid-only. She turned toward me and melted into my arms when I kissed her. And her tongue was the hot one and was doing the shooting inside my mouth and she was pressing up against me. I couldn't believe it. She was the kid that didn't dig queersville, but man, you'd never have known it. Just before I kissed her she mumbled something about being so alone and needing somebody. Then she jerked her little pussy up against me so hard I thought she'd split me in two. we separated long enough to close the door and lock it; a nice little convenience that the screws must have forgotten about when they built the goddamn place-and then we were back on the mats, both of us rolled together, kissing and squirming and touching and our legs and knees fighting to get inside each other's. It was fantastic. I was crazy to have her."
It was only a matter of a few minutes before Sandy got her wish. When they unwound from each other's arms and legs, they both tore at their clothing. Desire, it would seem, was stronger than caution-stronger than the threat of thirty days in the "hole" if the inmates were discovered in a homosexual affair. Sandy didn't care. Neither did her new found-and unexpected-lover. They stripped off their inmate uniforms and faced each other, both naked and aching for contact.
"She seemed as anxious as I was," Sandy has reported. "And she did crazy things with those boobs of hers. Real crazy. She said she had never done the queerie bit before but believe me, she was either lying or learning awful goddamn fast. She got down on her knees and pulled me next to her. Then she stuck those tits outthey were big and the nipples stuck out better than my thumbs. Now me, I dig getting it all at once and fast, right up there tight against a cunt, but this kid had some hang-up on playing around first. Maybe she never had done it before, 'cause she had me play with her like she was some lovesick kid with a boyfriend. Anyway, there we both were, on our knees and swinging our boobs against each other. Christ how she struck out at me. She hit my nipples with hers and even if I wasn't much for playing around I got hotter and hotter until I couldn't stand it anymore. I sprang against her and knocked her flat on her back. Then I started to make my mark, started to wiggle right between those goddamn good thighs of hers. But before I could do it, she had swung around and was pressing her mouth at my cunt. Usually, I don't go for the goin'-down bit, but I just couldn't put this kid off, especially when she looks up at me and real cute like, says, 'Let's eat each other for awhile, eh.' I had to laugh, and did, then I said, 'Thought you didn't dig this jazz.' 'I don't,' she said, then admits, 'I've thought about it a lot since I got locked up though.' Well, I told her to think about it no more, that she was goin' get a real taste of it and when I said that she laughed like hell, then wiggled even closer to me. Her mouth was open and she was aiming right for my cunt. That was all right with me. I twisted around and headed for hers until we were in the best damn 69 you ever saw."
Sandy, although opposed to preliminary love play, accommodated her young friend. And was accommodated in like fashion. Sandy recalls that:
"That kid could do more damn things with her tongue inside my pussy and on the outside of it too, you know, high where my clit was sticking out real hard. Well this little doll could make her tongue so damn sharp and she kept spanking it across my clit until I thought I'd bust, and every time when I was nearly ready to come she seemed to sense it and backed off, kind of making it last for me. Then she'd just swab me out on the inside with her tongue and keep doing that until I was ready to blow my cork-but then she'd stop that just in time too and go back to working on my clit until I was climbing again. I was doing the same thing to her but I wasn't nearly as good at it as she was. But she was getting her bangs. I could tell. Her stomach muscles were quivering just like mine and pretty soon she locked her legs around my neck. I couldn't see a thing-one of the goddamn screws could have come in right then and I wouldn't have noticed. Or cared, because all of a sudden I started to come and the kid was going to take me all the way, and in between all her slobbering she started to moan because she was coming tooreally coming because her body started to shake as if she was having a fit. Then I forgot all about her cause I had made it, was bursting wide open and could hardly believe it because I never thought I liked all that mouth jazz better than the actual fuckin', but I did, man, how I did with that little Jane. When we were finished all we could do was just lay there-pooped-so pooped and contented we couldn't have cared less if a matron had come bursting through the door."
Sandy made many sexual conquests during her various prison sentences. She lived unsuccessfully on the outside and always ran afoul of the law and was returned to prison, the setting that she found most emotionally comfortable when considered in the fight of a hard core lesbianism she could not give up.
* * *
Many factors are involved in hard core lesbianism. Many experiences and events of an early life can point a girl toward a compulsion for love partners of her own sex. Some of them, like the subjects of the previous case histories, go to prison, an environment that only intensifies the lesbianism that had already found its roots in the civilian world. Other inmates soon discover that incarceration itself is the final element necessary to set off the overt patterns of the lesbian. Psychiatric authorities find the motivations of a lesbian as variable as the personality itself. But they all agree that imprisonment itself, for many, is the one most important experience in the background of the hard core inmate lesbians.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fresh Fish-The Dykes Meat
The call "fresh fish" is known throughout every prison in the United States. The term identifies the new arrivals to prison and is first heard when the new inmates march into the quarantine cellblock where they will remain for thirty days. The term is shouted by the older inmates. It is a source of concern for those who are entering prison for the first time. Originally, fresh fish meant a true newcomer. Today it includes all who are entering prison, both the first offenders and the hardened criminals who are about to serve new sentences.
Fresh fish, by connotation, means many things. It means that during a thirty day quarantine period inmates will receive innoculation shots, will be tested, mentally and physically, and will be under a stricter discipline than at any time during their incarceration. Most prisons require that silence is the rule for inmates during quarantine-there is no talking among inmates while in their cellblocks or marching in lines to and from different sections of the prison compound. Fresh fish also means that there will be a thirty day period of special despondency as new inmates begin their sentence and contemplate the life on the outside that they left behind. And in female institutions when the term "fresh fish" is issued to new inmates, it means that the fresh meat is being reviewed by seasoned lesbians who have a special inclination for the seduction of novice members of the prison society.
Many first offenders have heard the harassing call upon arrival at prison, then lived to learn all of the sexual implications it carried. The stories of a few are presented herewith in two parts: edited portions of interview transcripts, and a narrative development of the case history from material supplied by the subjects themselves.
CASE HISTORY
Subject: Pam Erskine, 19 years old, sentenced 18 months to 4 years at a midwestern prison for Uttering and Publishing.
Interviewer: Previous to your imprisonment had you ever had a lesbian experience?
Subject: No. An older girl tried it on me once when I was in school but I didn't go for it, so you can't really say I ever had anything to do with another girl until I got sent to the joint.
Interviewer: Prison was the place where you started lesbian affairs then, is that right?
Subject: Yes. Except there was a lot of it going on in the county jail while I was waiting to be sentenced. It was wild-Dykes and their dolls balling all the time. Some nights I couldn't sleep because of the noise they made balling it up.
Interviewer: It would seem this is difficult to do in the close quarters of a county jail.
Subject: Naw, it wasn't hard for them at all. They used the showers. Cripes, those showers were going all the time.
Interviewer: Showers? How did that work?
Subject: They'd wait until lights out-not always, but most of the time-then they'd go into the shower room, a whole lot of them at one time and they'd ball like hell. They'd keep the showers going to cover up some of the damn noise. Hell, they didn't have to worry about anybody caring because none of us straight ones would go near the place. Besides, they took turns jiggering for each other.
Interviewer: But you didn't become involved this way until you arrived at prison, you say.
Now, can you tell me why this appealed more to you after you were sentenced? Subject: Well, there were a lot of reasons. For one thing, the joint is so fuckin' permanent. You go into that place and all at once that steel door locks behind you and, baby, you know you're there to stay. You're all alone. You've got nobody. And it's more than sex that causes a gal to turn les-it's a hell of a lot more. It's being lonely and feeling like you're the worst bitch in the world for getting locked up in the first place. Lots of things causes it. Like not having anybody in the outside world give a good goddamn about what's happening to you. Christ, once a gal gets locked up you'd be surprised how fast friends and her family drop her. Thud-like you were a fuckin' hot coal.
Interviewer: And is there also pressure from the older lesbians in prison?
Subject: You'd better believe it, baby. That's what finally got to me. Hell, I was doing short time compared to the rest of them and I probably would have stayed straight, but there was this one Butch who kept after me and after me and finally I gave in just to keep her from bugging me. After that, of course, I kind of got hooked. You know, it got so that swinging with a Dyke was the 'natural' thing to do. And, hell, why wouldn't a gal feel that way without a guy around, with nothing but other gals and about half of them as queer as hell.
Interviewer: Then you believe the pressure on a new inmate is severe? Subject: It sure as hell is. It's like something you couldn't believe unless you were going through it. I'll give you a little example of what I mean.
* * *
Pam shuddered as she marched in a line through the main hall of the prison. All around her there were cellblocks and inmates. It was the worst possible time of day for her to begin prison life. The initial physical examinations had taken hours. It was 5:00 p.m. and dinner was soon to be served. The older inmates were in their cells, all standing at the bars, it seemed, and shouting "fresh fish" to the new arrivals. It made Pam feel creepy. The vastness of the prison frightened her; the aloneness of her life was now apparent, and the immediate future was awesome. Even the anticipation of dinner-prison fare that far exceeded the meals of a county jail-did not lighten the depression of ier spirits. When her cell door clanged shut behind her, Pam felt completely isolated from the rest of the world.
Pam was in her cell less than five minutes when she heard a call from the cell next to her.
"Hey, Fish, cheer up, you're going to eat in a half hour."
Pam turned the voice but did not answer. Rules of conduct during the quarantine period prohibited conversation between inmates.
"Come on, kid, speak up," the voice called again.
Whispering, Pam said, "We're not suppose to talk."
There was a laugh, then, "Forget it, Fish. They're not going to bust us for it. For Crissakes, I should know. This is my third time around at this friggin' joint."
Pam did feel like talking. The entire day had required silence. The inmate's voice, though a bit harsh, was welcomed. It made Pam feel that communication was possible despite the dismal environment.
"We're having meat tonight-probably some kind of chops," the next door cellmate offered.
"That's good," Pam answered in a low voice, then added, "How-how many years do you have to serve?"
"The rest of my last sentence-around five years. I'm here for PV."
"Parole violation, huh?" Pam said.
"Yip. But, what the hell, it ain't so bad here," the other inmate said.
Pam tried to think of something to say, but could not. Then there was the click of her cell door being unlocked by the electrical device from the main floor.
"Better grab the door, Fish, or you'll miss out on chow."
Pam pulled the door open, stepped out of the cell, then turned left to walk along the catwalk and down the stairs to the messhall. She followed the inmates in front of her, as she had been instructed. And behind her was the neighbor who had struck up a conversation. Pam stole a glance at her and saw that the woman was in her early thirties, that her hair was dark and cut short, and that she walked with a long stride. Pam also saw that the woman smiled, and that her eyes were trained on Pam's bouncing buttocks that even the ill-fitted inmate uniform could not hide.
They sat together during the meal. Pam, from whispers, and later from a full, miinhibited conversation, learned that the woman's name was Stephanie-Stevie, the other inmates called her, it was explained-and that her most recent caper had been for her involvement in an armed robbery. Just before lights went out for the night, Stevie called to Pam and told her to reach her hand out through the bars. Pam complied. Sam handed her several packages of cigarettes and several candy bars.
"That'll hold you until you get a chance to order from the inmate store," Stevie explained.
"Thanks," Pam replied. "Gee, thanks very much."
She fell asleep more quickly than she thought possible. She felt happy, and a bit relieved, that she seemed to have made a friend.
In less than a week, Pam became aware that Stevie was a lesbian. Within another few days, it also became obvious that Pam was Stevie's heart desire. The proximity of their cell locations brought them in contact frequently; walking to chow, during the outside recreation period in the inmate yard, and during the once-a-week attendance at the inmate theater. Stevie was Pam's main source of communication, much of it centered on how a new inmate could get along in prison.
"You're best bet is to get a steady lay," Stevie said one day.
Pam looked at her. "You're kidding?"
"No, I'm not. You get a Dyke who looks after you and all the others keep their hands off-at least they'd better if they don't want a shiv in their guts."
Now, it had been verbalized. Stevie was suggesting a lesbian relationship. Pam felt terribly upset.
During the remainder of her quarantine period, Pam often thought about what Stevie had said. But the reference had not been made again. And their relationship, restricted as it was during quarantine, did not permit any genuine opportunity for any relationship other than the most casual. During her days in quarantine, however, Pam accepted various gifts from Stevie: cigarettes, candy, gum, a comb, little material odds and ends that made prison life more endurable. Pam was without money in her inmate account. Stevie seemed to have an unlimited supply. Although Pam had been warned about taking gifts from other inmates, had been told in the county jail that such action always carried an implied promise of a sexual relationship, she could not deny herself the pleasure of the small luxuries. Nor could she resist the need for warmth and friendship and communication that was within her.
Pam's quarantine period ended on a warm, spring day. She was overjoyed. So was Stevie, who was to leave the quarantine block the same day. To Pam, it seemed almost like freedom. Now she could begin work at a prison job, earn a small amount of money, buy things at the store, have more recreation, mingle with the other girls and become a real member of the prison population. Her fresh fish days were over. Although she might have sensed it, then defended against the fact, Pam's release to the prison society also meant the beginning of life as a lesbian. Stevie was her first partner. Cocerion was an element in the initial seduction. This is the way Pam has explained it.
"Stevie was damn hard to refuse-damn hard.
She had been good to me during the quarantine, kind of looked after me and cued me to all the ins and outs of the damn place. You see, I couldn't help liking her because she was the only one who was nice to me. She was like a mother, or something, and believe me, when you enter the joint and you're all alone, you need somebody-something-anybody ... you just need to feel that somebody cares what happens to you. Stevie was that way with me. She kept me clear of the queers-of course she was one herself and was kind of keeping me for herself, but some of the gals had one hell of a time with the Dykesthings like rape and all that. Well, Stevie kept that from happening to me anyway, but she wasn't beyond using force if it was necessary and she let me know it. She let me know that and also that I was kind of in debt to her. It put a lot of pressure on me-an awful lot. And there was something else too. I guess maybe I really wanted to do what she wanted ... I guess I really wanted somebody to love."
Pam had been in the general population of the prison for about two weeks when Stevie, late for the yard period of recreation, suddenly appeared at Pam's side and fell into step next to her. They greeted each other, than joined the many other inmates who, in couples and groups, walked in a circle around the prison yard. Pam was already familiar with the way Stevie's body would bump against her, and the way the older woman seemed to miss no opportunity to bring her body into some sensual contact. She was used to it, already knew that Stevie was a Dyke, but was nevertheless a little stunned when a lesbian proposal was suddenly issued.
"Pam, baby, listen to me," Stevie said. "I dig you-all the way. I want you, baby, and I'm going to have you."
Pam slowed a bit, turned and glanced at Stevie, then said, "I thought we were just friends."
"We are-the best fuckin' kind," Stevie replied. "And that's what I mean-we're going to be the fuckin' kind."
Pam was silent for a few moments, during which her mind returned to sex scenes of Pam's past, all heterosexual, then returned to the moment, the proposal, and the hard, ready, Dyke who was walking at her side.
"I'm not queer," Pam finally said.
"No," Stevie agreed. "But everybody in a joint is a little queer, and if you aren't now, you will be, and it can be worse with somebody who doesn't give a damn for you."
Stevie made lesbianism sound inevitable. And when Pam continued to protest, Stevie made threats, all by innuendo but dramatically effective upon Pam.
"Well, you think about it," Stevie advised. "But don't think about it beyond tomorrow night, baby. And as you turn it over in that pretty little head of yours, just remember that I've been a good buddy of yours; a hell of a lot oetter than most of the Dykes in this place can be. And, I wouldn't be dangerous to a doll. I wouldn't beat you up and things like that. I'd look after you. If you were mine, that is. Hell, you've got no idea how rough some of these big Dykes can be-some who just make up their mind to have you, no matter what. So, go ahead, think about it;-let me know tomorrow."
With that, Stevie turned and walked away. A horrible lonely feeling swept over Pam. Then the feeling changed and became one of fright. It rocked her emotions. The first thing the following morning, Pam told Stevie that she would try and be her lesbian lover. Stevie was overjoyed. She established a place and a time. The account of their first meeting, it has been stated by psychiatric authorities, shows how the inexperienced girl can quickly learn the ways of lesbian lovemaking, and how prison is an especially fertile environment for this transition from a heterosexual life.
"What if we get caught?" was the first thing Pam said to Stevie when they met.
"We won't," Steve replied. "The screws overlook all the fuckin' that goes on in this joint."
"But it's thirty days in the hole if we do get caught," Pam protested.
"Forget it, kid," Stevie said.
Pam sighed. It was a sound of resignation for her lot. Then Stevie walked over to her and embraced her. Pam has reported that this first female sex encounter filled her with mixed emotions. She once commented on this in the following manner.
"I still felt lonely and kind of scared. Extra scared, really, because I was breaking the regulations by being with Stevie. But that added a little excitement to the whole thing too. It was almost as if I was fooling around with a queer because it was against the rules rather than because I wanted to or needed to. But I needed Stevie, too. I didn't doubt that for a minute. On the outside, I had had plenty of sex and men. I wasn't especially hot, I don't think, but I needed sex often, like I needed it to keep reminding me that I was somebody. So, in the joint, it was the same thing for me. I needed someone. Something. And sex seemed to be the only way for me to get it."
Pam was asked if she adjusted to lesbianism from the moment of her first experience with it
"I sure as hell did," she replied. "I got turned on fast by Steveie and after that I was hooked on her and a few of the other Dykes in the joint."
"Did you have an orgasm?" Pam was asked.
"You'd better believe it," she answered. "And that's something I can't say for the studs in the outside world. Stevie gave it to me but good. She kissed me so hard and held me so close I thought I was going to come before we even got together."
Stevie, holding Pam close, pressed her tongue hard against the younger girl's teeth. For a moment, they remained a tight fortress against entrance. Then they relented a little. Then her mouth opened wide and Stevie's tongue shot inside, wiggling and moving, ranning hard and salty-tasting against the underlips and feeling, Pam has stated, not much different from the violent kisses of men she had known. Only the awareness that Stevie was a woman made the difference. Even the crush of their bodies evoked feelings of being held by a man. Stevie ground her thighs against Pam's, then, amazingly, it seemed to Pam, she felt a small protrusion that was pressing against her. It was Stevie's clitoris (oversized, it has been established), pressing in the manner of a man's penis.
"Oh, come on, let's get with it," Stevie said, breathing harshly and loosening her hold on Pam.
Pam turned around. Then she looked at Stevie.
"Right here on the goddamn floor," Stevie instructed.
Pam hesitated. Then Stevie moved close again and very deftly undid the buttons of Pam's uniform. When it opened, Stevie gripped the naked breasts. She kneaded and played for only a few moments, however, then tugged at the uniform until it fell free. Pam, naked, faced her first lesbian lover.
Stevie did not undress. She seemed beseiged with impatience. She embraced Pam again, bent her backward in a hard, long kiss, then lowered her to the floor. Quickly, she took a position at her side. Pam looked at her in a quizzical way, asking with eyes alone, the rudiments of woman-to-woman love.
"I'm going to warm you up first, baby," Stevie said with a grin.
Stevie's smile faded as she bent over Pam's naked body. Then her face became hidden in Pam's warm flesh.
Pam was passive during the initial kisses upon her body. She felt the tonguing at her nipples, felt them grow hard and aching, even felt her stomach muscles contract a bit as Stevie ran her tongue in a slithery path from breasts to navel, but she did not feel the first glow of true passion until the tongue suddenly spanked between her thighs. Then Pam opened her thighs wide and gasped as Stevie burrowed deep, spanking and licking and probing and reaming in a circle that moistened and heightened and caused Pam to issue harsher, more urgent sounds of desire for a new kind of lovemaking.
Stevie raised and rested on her knees. She looked at Pam. "Are you ready, sweetheart?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. Yes, I'm ready," Pam answered.
Stevie's eyes narrowed in anticipation. Then she wiggled between Pam's thighs, tucked her own skirt high around her waist, then opened the girl with one hand as she did the same thing to her own body. She pressed forward. Their vulvas locked. Stevie moved. Pam remained very still for a few moments, but soon began a light exertion of her body in a manner that pressured them closer together. And then, remarkably, Pam thought at the time, she felt the penetration of Stevie's clitoris. It penetrated less than an inch, it has been determined, yet it was enough to send Pam into spasms of pleasure, causing her to move harder and faster and in a more demanding way, causing her to breathe heavier and began a light erotic cry that told of her growing sensations.
"Oh, it's good, good ... good," she moaned. "So good ... I didn't know ... I didn't know it could be so good."
Stevie moved harder, doing it all from the motion of her hips in order to keep her body locked to Pam's. And the pressure caused Pam's own clitoris to grow and duel with Stevie's erected appendage. The contact brought them to a rapid climax-brought them to mingled shouts of accomplishment that trascended the fear of discovery by prison matrons.
"Yes, yes, hurry, Stevie, hurry, because ... because I'm ... coming," Pam cried.
"Me, too, baby," Stevie groaned. "Me tooand right now."
Their bodies whipped and churned together until their flesh was blurred from motion, making them appear as a single body. And then they stiffened, held for a moment, and finally relaxed, bringing their bodies together in a soft roll.
Stevie and Pam remained in each others arms until their breathing quieted. Then they took leave of their secret place, Stevie already talking about a future affair, and Pam thinking about it as she recognized that she had already become hooked on lesbianism, that it would, no doubt, endure as long as her prison term was a reality.
CASE HISTORY
Subject: Charlotte Aames, 20 years old, sentenced 5-10 years for possession of narcotics. Subject was a moderate user of drugs prior to her arrest.
INTERVIEWER: Did the use of drugs have much to do with your sexual experience before you were arrested?
SUBJECT: Sure. Sometimes I prostituted in order to get money for a fix, but I was never as strung out as some of the kids I hung with.
INTERVIEWER: But you sold your sex for drugs. Did you ever do the same thing with women customers instead of men?
SUBJECT: A few times. It was no big thing though. Like I said, I was on the stuff for kicks more than like I was on it because I was really hooked or anything like that. I could get along without it. I just didn't want to sometimes and would go ahead and make a deal for some break so I could get high.
INTERVIEWER: Then lesbianism wasn't new to you when you entered prison.
SUBJECT: No. But it was a hell of a lot different in prison.
INTERVIEWER: How was it different?
SUBJECT: It was more open for one thing. It was like it was the regular thing to do instead of being real mysterious and all that. Some of the Dykes had regular gals and it was like a fella and girl going together. Some played the field and that was like the gal-guy bit too. Being queer didn't seem so odd in the joint because that was all any of us had unless we beat off. Some of us did that.
INTERVIEWER: You mean masturbate?
SUBJECT: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Did you masturbate while in prison?
SUBJECT: Sure. But then I started making out with a couple of the Dykes and I didn't do any beating off after that. I guess I didn't need too then.
INTERVIEWER: Was it difficult for you to make the transition to lesbianism?
SUBJECT: Hell, no. I liked it.
INTERVIEWER: I mean, did you have any guilt feelings or remorse-things like that-over becoming involved with lesbians?
INTERVIEWER: Maybe. But if I did it was on the inside and not enough for me to notice. You see, with it going on all around you it didn't seem so bad-I don't mean bad ... I should say it didn't seem so abnormal because every girl in the place was involved with being queer.
INTERVIEWER: Every girl?
SUBJECT: No, not every one, but enough of them so that if a gal decided to become one of them it didn't seem so queer as it would, say, as if she was on the outside living in an apartment building and every one of her neighbors was straight and she was les.
INTERVIEWER: Let's go back to the drugs for a minute. Did you use drugs in prison and was this in any way connected with your love affairs with other girls?
SUBJECT: I didn't use anything while I was in the point. I could have, too. A gal if she has connections could get something to turn her on, pot, even heavy stuff, but like I said before, I wasn't a big user. Everybody thinks because I got busted for possession that I was a big user. It's not true. And while I was locked up I didn't have any special pitch for the stuff-it was easy for me to go without it. Some of the babes would have climbed the wall if they didn't have a connection for the stuff, but not me.
INTERVIEWER: How did they get narcotics?
SUBJECT: Lots of ways. Sometimes people who worked for the prison had outside connections and made a lot of money by pushing inside the walls. That wasn't the big system, though, despite what some people want to say about the screws. Most of them are just thick, dumbheaded farmers who wouldn't know how to go about making money from dope. But the inmates had connections and some of them kept the same connections after they got locked up. Especially the girls who got sent to camps, the short termers, gals like that-those who didn't have detainers on them from other states, and so forth. In camp it was easy for a girl to pick up a drop made by a friend, or they could even pass it to each other because at the camps you could have visitors in picnic areas, even get laid by a boy friend if you knew how to go about it. But I'd say the prison hospital was the biggest source for narcotics. Gals fought to work in the hospital because it was easy to get stuff, either for themselves or for sale to other gals.
INTERVIEWER: Did some of the inmates sell their sex for narcotics?
SUBJECT: They sure as hell did.
INTERVIEWER: But you didn't do that.
SUBJECT: Nope. I keep telling you I wasn't on drugs and it was no big thing for me. I got with the les crowd because I wanted to because I wanted sex and there was no way you got it unless you had it with another girl.
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned camps-that the camps were a setting for an inmate to make love to a man if she really wanted to. Wasn't this a motivation-despite it being against regulations, wasn't this a more realistic motivation than entering lesbianism?
SUBJECT: No. In the first place, I wasn't in a camp. I was in the joint. I don't know if I would have dug making out with a stud behind some matron's back or not. I wasn't in that position. With other gals it was different. We were all in the same mess and it was as if we had something we could give each other through sex. We were prisoners, but we were still criminals too. We shared that in making out with each other. And besides, the love pitch at the camps could only happen once, maybe twice a month at the most. The les scene made it all the time. It was like always having somebody, whether you had a single Dyke or played the field.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say that the lovemaking with lesbians had some deeper note than just sexual satisfaction?
SUBJECT: If I understand you right, I'd say yes. Balling each other seemed to be more fun because it was against regulations, even though it was overlooked a lot. It's as if you just have to get away with something in order to still call yourself a free person, even if you do happen to be doing time. So, we balled. And sometimes, with some of the gals, it was real great, almost like having a family-somebody or a group of people who cared about what happened to you.
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned 'family' for a lesbian relationship. That's interesting. Do you want to elaborate on that theme a little?
SUBJECT: What I meant was that once somebody gets busted and locked up, family and friends disappear so friggin' fast it'd make your head swim. People on the inside-most of them, anyway-don't have people on the outside. So, if you're making out with a gal, it's like being married or something. And we'd have friends in the same groups-like a family thing. Hell, it was all we did have. Con gals don't cozy up to the fuzz or the screws in a joint and everybody needs somebody, even in a joint.
INTERVIEWER: And you found your 'somebody' through lesbian affairs, is that right? SUBJECT: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have genuine love feelings for any of your partners?
SUBJECT: Sure. Most of them. A few more than the others. Most of them were just for the ballin', but a few really got to me on the inside-deep, like in the heart.
INTERVIEWER: I'd like to hear about this in more detail if you'll tell me.
SUBJECT: Sure. It's no big thing. A real love affair in the joint only lasts as long as your sentence, anyway. But it doesn't keep from getting to you sometimes. My first lover really turned me on, physically, and on the inside too. She was older and the first Dyke I met in the joint.
INTERVIEWER: Many girls I've interviewed have told me that the older lesbians coerce or force, or sometimes even use threats or physical harm in order to get a new inmate-a 'fresh fish'-to have sexual relations with them. Did it happen to you that way?
SUBJECT: No. What makes you think so?
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned a lesbian lover who was the first one you met in prison. It made me think of these other situations, that's all. There seemed to be a little tie-in of the material.
SUBJECT: Well, my old man-that's what I called her sometimes, besides her name, Lounever did anything like getting tough with me like some of the Dykes do with new girls. She was just kind of sweet all the time, almost like a mother or father or brother or husband, or something. No tough stuff at all. Why, the first time I balled with her it seemed to come about more because I wanted it than she did.
* * *
Charlotte had been close to Lou before they ever became involved sexually. Lou never tried to hide the fact that she was a lesbian and had been one prior to her incarceration. Charlotte respected this. It seemed honest. And Lou seemed like the very best kind of friend for she took Charlotte under her protective wing and told her the ways of the life she would lead while in prison. Learning the ropes of prison life was very important to all fresh fish.
"If it hadn't been for Lou I might have gotten into all kinds of trouble," Charlotte once remarked.
It was a near encounter with trouble that brought Charlotte and Lou together sexually for the first time.
Charlotte had a pass that allowed her to be out of her cell until nine o'clock that night. The privilege was for attendance at classes at the inmate school, an institution that had been established at the prison for those inmates who wished to complete their high school education. Soon after leaving the quarantine block Charlotte enrolled in the school. She liked the idea of being free of her cell at night. Lou, an old timer who had long dispensed with any notion about education, did not attend the school but was usually free at night because of special arrangements that were made to accommodate her special hobbies, jewelry design and rug weaving.
This night Charlotte's class finished a half hour early. Regulations called for her to go immediately to her cellblock. She, like most of the others of the class, dallied. When she finally left the inmate school it was dark. A long walk across the inmate recreation yard was necessary for Charlotte to reach her cellblock. None of the other students housed in the same cellblock. Charlotte, alone, and in order to remain free of her cell as long as possible, slowly walked along the circular path that circled the yard. She had traversed half of it and was even with an athletic equipment shed when she became aware of a figure lurking to the side of the shed. She slowed, turned, saw that the figure was that of a heavy set inmate, then turned again and started to resume her natural pace. She traveled only a few paces before the rough looking woman was next to her.
"Hold it, punk, where are you going?" the woman, who was in her forites, asked Charlotte.
"To my house," Charlotte replied. (House? Nickname for cell).
"No you ain't," the woman said. "You're going to come into the shed with me for a minute."
Charlotte looked around. In the distance, coming up the path in her direction, there was a figure. It could represent either a friendly or a hostile personality. She did not know. But she knew better than to break and run for her cellblock, for she had been warned that most of the old timers, especially the Dykes, carried shives (knives). So, she stalled.
"I don't feel like going into that shed," she told the Dyke.
The woman gripped her forearm. Then she said, "You ain't going to have a damn thing to say about it."
The fingers tightened on Charlotte's arm, then she was being forcefully pushed toward the shed. It was exactly at this point that the approaching figure appeared next to them. It was Lou.
"What the hell's going on here?" Lou asked, looking hatefully at the big inmate.
"Nothing-nothing at all," the woman replied, releasing Charlotte's arm.
"Better not be," Lou said. "And you'd better scram-like right now."
The big inmate sneered, then, surprisingly, to Charlotte, turned and lumbered away.
Charlotte felt greatly relieved. She turned toward Lou then hugged her, and remained close as she listened to Lou explain that she had gone to the school to walk her to the cellblock, had discovered her gone, then followed, finally coming upon the scene with the threatening Dyke.
When Lou finished her explanation it was very quiet. Charlotte became very aware of their closeness. And she also became aware of a feeling within herself. Charlotte wanted desperately to let Lou know that she liked her, that she was grateful for the way she had protected her since her arrival at the prison. Charlotte knew that Lou was a lesbian. She knew, too, that Lou wanted her, yet had never made an overture in that direction. Her own sex seemed the best way to let Lou know how she felt, Charlotte decided.
Quite naturally, Charlotte and Lou walked to the athletic equipment shed, a rendevous spot for the prison inmates. It was dark inside. And, it was getting late. They had little time. Charlotte put her friend at ease at once.
"I want you to make love to me," she said.
"Why, kid?" Lou asked.
"Because I like you."
"There isn't much time."
"I know," Charlotte answered.
Lou grinned. Then she began to strip and in a moment Charlotte did the same thing.
Lou proved to be a very gentle lesbian lover. Although speed was imperative, and though she was inclined toward hard, clitorial contact within her partner's vagina, Lou bestowed upon Charlotte the greatest of oral caresses, and it is this experience she most remembers and has recalled in detail during a recent interview.
"I had had guys eat me there, but it was never anything compared to the way Lou did it, harlotte has explained. "She seemed to be doing it to me because she wanted to, not just to get me hot. That was one difference. The guys always did it just to get me hot so I'd screw 'em-Lou wasn't that way. She ate me because she liked it. I liked it too, and I guess maybe because we didn't have much time, me having to be back at the cellblock and everything, she did it that way because it was the quickest way to make me come, yet still let me know that she dug me. And man, did I ever come. It was the craziest I had ever had, and it seemed to tell me other things, too, like Lou was mine and I was hers-like we were almost kin while we were in the joint, and it let me know that she and I would be doing it often and different ways. But right then, it was unselfish on Lou's part-she ate me and it was all for me."
As soon as they finished their first long embrace, Lou rolled Charlotte on her back. Then she scrambled next to her and immediately buried her face between the white, outstretched thighs. She did not delay. She pressed her mouth hard against Charlotte's vulva, then moved her head gently from side to side, forcing the lips open. For a few moments, she played with her full mouth. Then her tongue took over and she wiggled it from side to side and up and down before pausing at the high mark that was Charlotte's clitoris. Here is where she invoked great activity and the passion that derived from it.
Her tongue was hot and pointed and firm as it paddled against Charlotte's clitoris. The small hump enlarged and there was new area to be caressed by Lou. She did it dynamically. And fast: their time together was dwindling. This reality speeded their passion.
"Hurry," Charlotte suddenly cried. "Please, Lou, please hurry and make me come ... do it, baby, please, and I'll do the same for you."
There wasn't time for mutual gratification. Lou moved her tongue more rapidly and in a moment Charlotte had clasped her Dyke's head and was forcing her tighter against her spread self. And then she exploded in climax, groaning as she reached the topmost height of her orgasm than hissing a sound satisfaction as the pleasure balloon ruptured, broke, and brought her back to the reality of their place of clandestine love.
That was the beginning. Dyke, Lou, and the fresh fish, Charlotte, became lovers and remained loyal during their mutual prison terms. Charlotte was the first to be released. Lou followed her by two years. They did not meet in the outside world. But crime, a disinclination for rehabilitation, and the special fate that seems the mark of convicts, brought them together again in the same prison setting several years later. They were older, only a little wiser, and immediately picked up their lesbian affair from the point where it had been interrupted by parole.
CASE HISTORY
Subject: Alma Fountain, 22 years old, sentenced 18 months to 4 years, for child neglect, complaint issuing from the malnutrition and unsanitary environment of her two illegitimate children, ages 3 years and 16 months.
"You're going to get screwed," were the first words Alma heard from an inmate when she arrived at the prison camp where she was to serve her sentence. The words were spoken in jest, yet they carried a note of threat.
The camp system of most state penal institutions, Alma soon learned, offered more opportunity for sexual activities among the inmates. Sex was even possible with visitors to the camp. It was this advantage that resulted in Alma's involvement with lesbianism.
A slovenly girl whose life was largely sex centered, Alma was delighted when she secured visitation privileges for her most recent boy friend. She didn't know then that it was possible to arrange a clandestine meeting with him for the purpose of sex. On the day of his visit, she was happy enough to merely have a male to whom she could talk.
The visitor's area of the prison camp was operated like a picnic area. Tables were available for basket lunches and the area was surrounded by woods. Only a few matron-guards were on duty. The setting was relaxing and quite un-prison-like.
Alma's visitor, John, arrived early in the afternoon. They sat at a table and talked. But within a half hour, Alma had more to look forward to. A slight acquaintance-an inmate named Tess, whom Alma suspected of being a lesbian-approached the table where Alma sat with John and motioned for her to break away for a moment. Alma complied. Tess walked her a few paces away from the table, and out of ear-shot of the closest matron-guard.
"Listen," she said. "Do you want to get alone with the stud?"
"Sure," Alma replied. "But how'm I goin' do that?"
"I'll arrange it for you. Then, someday, maybe you can do me a favor."
Alma looked at the woman in a bewildered fashion. Then she smiled, "Sure, any time, just ask."
The Dyke nodded. "Okay, don't forget. Now listen, when I draw the screw to one side, you and your old man just hike into the woods there and have yourselves a ball. You'll have an hour. I'll fix it with the matron-you just take off and be back in an hour."
"What are you goin' do?" Alma asked.
"A little bribery for you, fish, The screw owes me a favor."
Alma went back to the table. She watched as the inmate walked over to the guard, whispered to her, then led her a discreet few feet away from the position that accorded a view of the wooded area. When their backs were both turned toward Alma, she jumped up, grasped John's hand and hurried him into the woods.
For an hour they made love in a secluded area of the woods. Then they returned. As they came from the woods back into the picnic area, the matron quickly turned her head, allowing them to return to their table. It was that easy. Alma was delighted. She began to think in terms of regular monthly, perhaps bi-monthly, meetings with John, or other boy friends for whom she could arrange visitation privileges. She mentioned it to Tess, who smiled and had an immediate comment.
"Sure, honey, I'll arrange for you and a stud to be alone anytime you want, but first there's a little something I want you to do for me."
"What's that?" asked Alma.
"Have a little roll," Tess replied. "Who knows, maybe you'll start to think of giving up the Johns."
It was arranged in that manner. Alma, in order to have a heterosexual affair once a month, committed herself to the sexual desires of Tess, who, it turned out, had considerable influence with the prison camp guards, enabling her to arrange male-female meetings for many of the camp inmates. Alma continued to avail herself of this arrangement during the minimum term she served at the camp. Once released, however, she resumed regular heterosexual affairs and, according to data on her case that has been gathered, never entered into a lesbian affair again.
Coercion, force, kindness-many things make up the inducements toward lesbian affairs that are held out to the fresh fish of the women's prisons. The Dykes know all the means of gaining fresh, young sex partners. They use them all and are seldom disappointed, for a prison setting is bewildering, frightening, and hopeless for most of the young women who are committed for the first time. The Dykes know it, and use it.
The previous case concerning Alma points up a fact of prison life that is most often overlooked. The prison camp system, because of its more relaxed discipline, often provides settings that make sex possible between inmates and visitors. Such affairs are managed only through either the carelessness or cooperation of prison personnel. The situation is one that caused the following recent comment by a prison doctor.
"You can't really blame the personnel for looking the other way when a prisoner's husband calls at a setting that provides places for sex activity. What this kind of incidence should do, is make all of us consider more seriously the eventual arrangement of conjugal visits for both male and female inmate. As far as I know, it is the only method that can reduce the homosexual activity that goes on in all of our prisons today."
CHAPTER SIX
Sandra-Prison Slave Girl
There are tens of thousnds women incarcerated in American prisons. Many of them are lesbians. Most follow a similar pattern. A few stand out as unique. One such inmate, Sandra "Sandy" Thompson, became the subject of a special study at a southeastern prison because her case, sociologists and psychiatrists felt, illustrated the "slave" aspects of imprisonment within a lesbian community, and because her case history was reminiscent of earlier civilizations within which the social structure required slave attitudes upon the part of some members of harems. This is the story of Sandy and her sexual experiences.
She was born on a farm in Ohio, the third daughter of a farm family; that was to achieve no sons. Sandy's birth occurred in the exact middle of two older sisters and two who were to follow hex. At an early age, Sandy was lively and pretty, attaining a full bloom of womanhood at age fourteen, the year of her first sexual experience other than masturbation, which she pursued from about the age of twelve. At fourteen she gave herself in intercourse to a seventeen year old neighbor boy. The event pleased her, but for reasons other than sexual gratification. This is what she recalled about her feelings at that time.
"It was like I had something on the boy for letting him do it to me. He seemed in some kind of agony when he came and it gave me a good feeling. It made me feel good the way he was rough with me too-not actually, rough, because he didn't beat me or anything, but the way him going in and out of me was kind of rough in itself."
Sandy's discourse on the event of her first coital experience disclosed some other things. She felt "imprisoned" because of the joining that was made between the boy and herself. She has also stated that she felt as if he were "whipping" her with his penis. But best of all, Sandy enjoyed the way the boy reacted when he climaxed. This, it has been authoritatively stated, accounted for many sexual affairs that followed this initial experience with intercourse. Sandy just loved the passion-tortured expressions and gyrations making love invoked upon the boys. Remarking on this, a psychiatrist recently stated, "From these early thoughts of the subject we can see that she was very early motivated toward some kind of incarceration and a 'slave' feeling about that incarceration."
It didn't begin to take an overt form until Sandy was sixteen. Then, because of a long record of juvenile delinquency culminating in a theft charge conviction, Sandy was sent to a state girls' reformatory where she was to remain until eighteen. It was her first experience with imprisonment. It was the first that she felt motivated toward a lesbian-slave relationship.
The girls of the state reformatory were rough, bitter hearted, and for the most part, desolate. Few had parents who cared that their child was imprisoned and experiencing the traumas attendant to that imprisonment. It was true of Sandy as well as the several hundred girls who served their sentences at this particular state facility. Family ties and friends from the outside world quickly disappeared when she entered the girls' school. There was no one except the other girls. There was no life except that life composed of rising early, attending classes at the school, and the constant discipline of the matrons. This dis cipline, coupled with emotional dispositions of Sandy, worked toward her slave attitude and her lesbian involvements, which started with a girl only a year older than herself. The girl's name was Randy. She enslaved Sandy emotionally from the time of their first sexual affair. It happened on a Sunday afternoon following church services and the main dinner of the day.
Sandy was not only impressed with Randy, she felt a rapport with Her that she has never been able to explain, except to say, "There was something about her-something about the way she talked and swaggered around and was so goddamn confident about everything that made me feel that I always wanted to do things for her-make her happy, if I could."
Sandy was able to make Randy happy, there was little doubt. Randy was known as a hardened lesbian, even at Her early age. She was known to have coerced many of the younger girls into affairs. Also, Randy was much feared by most of the inmate population. She carried a shiv (knife), and had on several occasions threatened to use it. She had spent a fair amount of time in solitary confinement. She was rough and ready and filled with a hostility that showed in her mannerisms, her speech, attitudes, and the attitudes that were directed at her by the school personnel. Sandy was considered dangerous. Everyone knew it.
On this Sunday that marked the day of Sandy's introduction to lesbianism and the beginning, of her slave relationship, dinner had been completed by two o'clock. Three hours of free time stretched ahead for the girls. Some had visitors, but most, like Sandy and Randy, merely roamed the area or spent time in the small library or at their hobbies, Sandy hated the restructions of the school. She spent her free time walking, being out of doors as much as possible. Randy was similarly inclined. Together they headed down a path that led through the woods and past large chunks of farm land that belonged to the state facility and was farmed by a neighboring boys' reformatory. The area seemed remote from imprisonment. Sandy, for a little while, felt very unlike a prisoner. But she did feel like a very personal prisoner-one who belonged to Randy.
"You walk funny," Randy said, glancing sideways at Sandy.
"I walk like anybody else," Sandy protested.
"No you don't. You walk kind of easy-like." Randy shot another glance at her, one that traveled over all of Sandy's body.
Suddenly, Sandy became very conscious of her body. She tried to visualize how she looked when walking. She tried to see herself as Randy saw her. She could not conjure up satisfactory images, but the process caused her to feel a little clumsy and unhappy, as if she had suddenly displeased her friend.
After leaving a path that moved away from the farm and headed for the school, Randy suggested something that seemed, at that moment, outrageously rebellious to Sandy.
"Let's take a swim," Randy suggested.
Sandy looked at her, then said, "You're out of your mind. There's no swimming around here-none that we can do, anyway."
"Who says so?" Randy protested, sneering a little.
"Who do you think? Me, naturally."
"And who the hell are you?" Randy said it with a mean tone, but she smiled indulgently at the same time, conveying, it seemed, a certain admiration for the way Sandy could stand up and argue.
"I'm myself," Sandy said. "That's all, but it's enough to know that you and I ain't going to go swimming."
"You're a smart-alex little punk, ain't you?" Randy said.
"Smart, yeah; punk, no," Sandy replied.
Randy laughed. Then she poked Sandy on the arm, doing it in a playful way, and saying, "Come on, have you got guts enough to go for a swim?"
"I've got enough," Sandy said, "But there's no place."
"It's hot as hell. Wouldn't a swim cool ya?" Randy said. Her expression was teasing.
"You know, I think you're a little crazy," Sandy said, shaking her head.
Randy laughed again. Then she jostled Sandy's body with her own hip, pushing her in the direction of the woods. "Come on, I'll show you the old swimming hole. If you've got the guts to take a chance, that is."
Sandy did not answer. But when Randy walked ahead of her and began threading her way through the woods, moving from tree to tree because there was no path, Sandy followed her. Her thoughts, she has reported, bordered on fear but were also made up of great curiosity, excitement, and that feeling of being incapable of displeasing Randy, even though they were only recently acquainted.
They moved silently through the woods. From time to time, Randy would pause and look around, getting her directions and at the same time making sure that were free of discovery. The woods area was out of bounds for inmates. Randy didn't give a damn. And Sandy's fears of discovery were lessened because of the confidence she gained from the older girl.
Soon, the trees became more scattered, thinning into flat land that had been burned out by fire. When they had moved through this new, used-looking area, the land sloped downward, was very green and filled with bushes that were unlike any they had passed during their walk. Movement became very difficult, then, suddenly, the ground flattened again and Sandy saw Randy stop a dozen paces ahead. Sandy moved to her. In front of them there was a small lake, looking smooth and placid and very refreshing.
"Jeezus, I didn't know there was a place like this around here," she said.
"I told you we could go for a swim," Randy said.
"Like hell," Sandy protested. "We'd get busted but good for going in here."
"Bull," Randy replied. "Nobody's goin' bust me, and you're lucky as hell 'cause as long as you're with me, kid, you ain't goin' get busted either."
Sandy looked at the older girl. She felt very confident, felt, she has said, that as long as she was with Randy no harm could come to her, not even by the feared matrons of the girls 'school.
"Come on, strip those damn clothes off," Rany instructed.
Sandy looked into Randy's face. Then, obediently, she loosened the buttons on her uniform blouse. Randy merely watched her, making no move to also undress. It made Sandy feel a little self-conscious. But it did not keep her from removing her blouse, stepping out of her skirt, and disbanding sox and shoes. When she raised, she wore only a bra and panties. She felt goose-pimples sweep over her body and she knew that they were caused by the steady gaze of Randy
"Ain't you going to get naked?" Sandy finally asked.
"Sure. Soon as you are."
Sandy glanced downward, then raised her eyes and without further comment frog-knifed her hands behind her and undid the hook of her bra. She pulled it from her breasts. She felt her nipples harden.
"You're built, kid," Randy commented, her eyes sweeping over the breasts and moving to the hard, flat belly.
"I'll do," she said, feeling modest and shy.
Randy continued to stare until Sandy could do nothing more than step out of her panties. Totally nude, she faced Randy again. Then, with a laugh, the older girl pulled her own clothing free of her body.
Naked, both girls stood at the edge of the small lake. Then, with another laugh, one that was filled with a tone of defiance, Randy splashed into the water. Sandy followed her. When they were waist deep, they plunged forward, submerged, broke surface, and swam outward.
They swam only a few minutes. When they returned to a shallow spot, Randy began some rough house play and soon they were wrestling. The action caused much contact of their bodies, and Sandy noticed that Randy's knee, sometimes her foot, often came into contact with her vagina. She liked the feeling. She had no doubts that when they finished with their play, lovemaking would result. She knew it would happen. Randy was a lesbian. She made no bones about it. And even if she wanted to resist the excitement of the older girl, Sandy knew that it would be impossible. She felt as if she were without a will of her own when she was with Randy.
Ending a wrestling interlude, Randy suddenly pushed Sandy toward the shore, then started chasing her. Breathlessly, they came out of the water. They stood close together, breathing hard. Then Randy slumped to the ground which was only partially made up of sand.
"Come on, sit awhile," Randy instructed.
Sandy sat down. She drew her legs up to her chest, covering her breasts. Randy peered at her, a half-grin on her face. Her eyes fastened on Sandy's body, as if she could see every inch of her body, even beyond the skin and deeply into her heart and soul.
Neither spoke as their breathing quieted. It was very quiet all around, but only for a moment. Then Randy broke the silence with an order.
"I want you to go down on me, Kid," she said.
Sandy tightened her arms around her knees and looked at the older inmate.
"I said I wanted you to go down on me," Randy repeated.
"What does, that mean?" Sandy finally replied.
"It means x want you to eat me-right now." Sandy turned away. She looked at the far snore of the lake. She felt Randy's eyes upon her and felt an imprisonment that was as great as the real one of the girls' school. It was a very good feeling, Sandy has stated. "Like I belonged to her," she once stated.
"Well, come on," Randy said. Slowly, Sandy turned and looked at Randy. Then, as if she were without control, she leaned forward and touched her right hand at Randy's thighs. Randy-in a manner that was far from subtle, even romantic-spread her legs apart and very deliberately brought the fingers of her right hand to her vulva and spread the lips.
"There it is, kid," Randy said. "Now you come on, and do it to me real good, and maybe, just maybe, I'll do the same thing for you some day."
Sandy has recounted the incident many times for sex investigators. This is how she explained this very moment.
"I felt as if I was hypnotized, or something. I couldn't have kept from doing what Randy wanted even if the warden herself was standing right next to us. I just couldn't. It was something about the way she looked at me-the way her voice sounded or maybe it was just something about myself-the way I felt about everything in the whole friggin' world. I don't know. But I had to do what Randy wanted. And right then with her legs spread open and looking real hard at me she wanted me to go down on her and even if I had never done it I knew I'd do it to please her-that no matter, regardless of what might happen, I just had to do anything Randy ever wanted me to do."
Sandy scrambled close to Randy. She crouched on her knees between Randy's open thighs. Then, without overtures, almost as if she were doing a simple duty, she placed her hands on Randy's thighs for support and lowered her face to the wet patch of pubic hair that was already pulsating in a hot kind of anticipation.
"I thought it would taste funny," Sandy has said. "It didn't though. Actually, I think I liked it. Anyway, it seemed to make me hot because I dived right forward and pushed my mouth against her cunt. She moved her fingers away from it and it seemed to open up for me. I couldn't keep from trying to get closer-to get right inside her, if I could. I just jammed my mouth right there and even though I had never done it before I seemed to know what I should do. I started licking her. I stuck my tongue out and made it real hard and wiggled my head from side to side so I could lick every part of her and then when Randy started moaning and leaned back on the beach I went even deeper, started teasing my tongue up and down her, stopping sometimes and moving faster, then slow, and faster again until she finally grabbed my head and pressed me real tight against her."
"Get the clit, kid," Randy whispered hoarsely. "Chew on my clit."
Sandy paused. But only for a moment, then the pressure of Randy's hands upon her head moved her mouth upward until she felt the hard protrusion peeking out of the smooth, wet surfaces of the vulva. She circled her lips around it and nibbled a little.
"Not so hard, goddamn it," Randy suddenly exclaimed.
Sandy paused again, merely holding the end of the small appendage in her lips.
"That's it," Randy instructed. "Chew it, but with your lips-chew it and suck on it 'till I come."
Using only her lips, Sandy began a little nibbling action on Randy's clitoris. She altered the action from time to time by sucking lightly, pulling on the length of it, but doing it deftly and with occasional improvisation, moving slowy at first, then faster, then slow again, until finally Randy shouted new instructions.
"Keep going, goddamn it," she choked. "Don't stop-don't slow down, just keep going so I can-so I can come...." Randy's hips thrusted upward, burrowing even tighter against Sandy's busy mouth.
And now, relentlessly-as if she were a trained and tried lesbian of the first order-Sandy began a new, rigorous manipulation of Randy's clitoris.
The action caused an almost immediate climax.
"Ohhhh, Jeezus!" cried Randy. "Yes, like that ... Ohhh, yeah, I'm coming...."
Sandy nuzzled deeper, her mouth still working and it did not stop until Randy had shouted again and wrapped her legs tight around her neck.
They remained locked, thighs around face, until Randy's body softened. Then they quickly dressed and returned to the reformatory compound. The event marked the moment of Sandy's emergence as a lesbian with the elements of slavehood connected with the relationship. Soon, Sandy was completely devoted to Randy, would do anything she asked, when she asked, and in the manner that was desired. This transversed the sexual. During the period of her sentence at the girls' school, Sandy stole food for Randy, arranged the purchase of contraband articles, engaged in a fight with another inmate because Randy, asserting her masterhood of the younger girl, told her to "take care of that punk," and generally obeyed Randy's every wish and desire. She also continued as Randy's sex partner, meeting with her often by the lake and at other spots that were safe-or deliberately overlooked-for meetings. Usually, her role in the sex act consisted of cunnilingus-the straight oral loving of Randy. Sometimes, however, they mouthed each other, simultaneously arriving at orgasm. Sandy, it had been determined, seemed to prefer the role of "slave" to Randy's dominance, sexually and in other areas of their restricted life. The case resulted in this explanation by one prison psychologist who had become familiar with both of the subjects:
"Prison itself-the environment which is one of restrictions and authority-sometimes pinpoints the slave attitudes of some of the inmates. This was true of Sandy. She was inclined toward complete domination. She could only feel secure in this kind of relationship. She found this kind of emotional security in prison and existed into her-a more fulfilling way while incarcerated. This, of course, is unfortunate, because it means we have a person who will always be subconsciously motivated toward crime, arrest, conviction, and new terms in prison. This pattern is the strongest motivating force in the fives of people who are like this. And, usually the patterns are so well formed that by the time the subject becomes involved in psychotherapy it is very difficult to help them."
Sandy became so needful of emotional and sexual slavery that she returned to prison many times, always committing crimes as if their only purpose was to insure her of a new prison term, a new "master" partner, and a continuation of the life she needed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lesbian Inmates And Phallic Instruments
Contraband represents one of the biggest problems for all prisons. It is virtually impossible for penal authorities to keep forbidden items out of the hands of inmates. This is true of female institutions as much as it is of male prisons. Unannounced search of cellblocks at any prison, at any time, will produce a quantity of items that make hardened prison guards shake their heads in bewilderment for the ingenuinity of inmates. Narcotics, knives, even guns, are frequently discovered. Money, too, is sometimes turned up by a rurprise shakedown of a cellblock or the individual inmates. Despite rigid regulations, party dresses have been found hidden beneath the cots or in the lockers of some female felons, and the latest style of sport jackets have been uncovered among male inmates. Prison authorities can only do their best, even as they realize that contraband will always be the lot of inmates as long as the modern day penal system exists. Commenting on this and other matters relative to lesbianism in prisons during an interview on a variety of subjects, Dr. Adnan Varol, of the Michigan Department of Mental Health, recently said, "Lesbianism in prisons is inevitable in the penal systems as we know them today. So is contraband. It would be impossible-even were it possible to provide an individual guard for each individual inmate-to keep contraband materaisl out of the hands of inmates."
There are always surprises when an unannounced shakedown, or search, of cellblocks is made. Recently, at a northern women's prison, there was not only surprise-there was genuine shock. The shakedown not only disclosed the usual number of knives, non-regulation clothing, food, some narcotics, and photographs of forbidden areas within the prison compound, but it revealed a plentiful supply of phallic instruments, most of them formed in the long, hard lines of the male penis. The leather craft hobby shop had been the source. Manufactured there, the instruments were sold to the lesbian community by an interprising inmate we shall call Dora. Here is a facsimile of the interview that took place between the inmate and a prison sociologist who had been assigned to the case by the deputy warden of the prison for the purpose of discovering the extent of the trade in phallic devices for lesbians.
* * *
SOCIOLOGIST: Are you the only one involved in this thing, or are there other inmates trading in these devices?
INMATE: I only know about me. I've been doing it for about six months now. I don't know nothing about any of the others.
SOCIOLOGIST: Why did you go into this kind of thing?
INMATE: It pays good.
SOCIOLOGIST: Money? (Contraband, and dangerous in a prison because it is one of the necessities for escape).
INMATE: Sure, money if I wanted it, but I traded in boxes of fags. And, naturally, I could get other things I wanted, special foods, dope, if I was that way-and I'm not-or almost anything I wanted except out of this fuckin' place.
SOCIOLOGIST: But why these leather penises?
INMATE: Because there was a demand for them. One of the Dykes who had been locked up in the south told all of us how this was the big trading thing down there, so I decided to try it. I did-I'm pretty good in leather-and I found out that I didn't even have to peddle the things. Hell, I had more orders than I could fill and I even was able to collect for them before I could make them. And I got damn good, even could make them to order. SOCIOLOGIST: How do you mean, 'Make them to order?'
INMATE: Customize them. Make an artificial prick exactly the size the con wanted or the thickness or shape, or whatever. Christ, I've even put special heads on the goddam things.
SOCIOLOGIST: And you did all this work while you were supposed to be working at your hobby?
INMATE: It was my hobby.
SOCIOLOGIST: And it's against regulations. You can lose your parole when you go before the board-you know that, don't you, Dora?
INMATE: They'll probably flop me anyway. I've been in capers before this one. Hell, it ain't as if I wasn't working in leather. I was. And you've got to be damn good to get those phony cocks just the way the Dyke wants it. I'll tell you, they're as fussy as hell.
SOCIOLOGIST: Are you a lesbian?
INMATE: Naw, not now. I'm too old for that jazz now, but I use to play a little when I was younger-when I was in other joints before I started this lousy sentence.
SOCIOLOGIST: How many of these have you sold in this institution, Dora? Just approximately, how many have you sold here?
INMATE: I don't keep very good records-no income tax, ya know-but I'd say that I probably sold maybe a hundred, a few less or a few more, but right around that figure.
SOCIOLOGIST: The leathercraft shop is well supervised. How did you get away with it?
INMATE: I'd just pretend to be working on something else, a purse, or something like that, and in between times, I'd work on the hard leather. I made some purses, too. Good ones. I'd put etchings on them and make them as pretty as anything. Huh-after a few of the lez gals saw my purses they wanted me to put etchings on their phony pricks. They said it made their girl friends really squirm. So, what the hell, I did it. Charged more, though. That was worth five boxes (cartons of cigarettes).
SOCIOLOGIST: Did any of the guards on duty in the leather craft shop know what was going on?
INMATE: Not as far as I know. Maybe they did get wind of it but they never discovered anything on me.
SOCIOLOGIST: How many other inmates made these sex devices? You weren't the only one, I'm told.
INMATE: Oh, about half a dozen of the gals, I guess. I was the first one, though. The best, too. Some of the gals didn't like the price and they started making their own goodies, but a lot of them still came back to me because I was a kind of specialist, I'd guess you'd say. Funny thing, too. You'd think once they had one of the dicks, they'd never need another. Like there would be no repeat sales business, but there was. A hell of a lot of it.
SOCIOLOGIST: How do you account for that?
INMATE: Well, they'd like to try something new. A bigger size, maybe, or maybe one that was a little thicker or with a bigger or smaller head on it. Hell, I even had one customer who came to me after buying a half dozen of the pricks and she said that she wanted one without the head sticking out, if you can imagine such a thing as that. She was screwy as hell.
SOCIOLOGIST: I don't understand just what you mean.
INMATE: Well, you've seen the leather dicks, ain't you?
SOCIOLOGIST: Yes, of course. When they were discovered during the last shakedown the deputy warden showed them to me so I could conduct this investigation. That's why you're here, by the way. To find out as much about this thing as we can.
INMATE: All right, so you've seen 'em and you know that each one of the hard leather jobs has a head on it, shaped like a man's cock, round, even with a slit at the end. That's the standard kind of dick I make, or anybody makes, for that matter. Well, this gal comes to me and she says she wants me to make her a new one and that I should leave the foreskin on it-that the head shouldn't be poking out. Christ, what an order that was!
SOCIOLOGIST: What did you do?
INMATE: Well, I didn't know how to go about it. And this con, she's giving me advice all the time. Then she gets the bright idea that she wants the foreskin left on the prick but that she wants it to roll back like it does when a stud gets a hard on. That's what she wanted, and I ain't kidding a bit. So, I tried and tried-really worked my ass off on the project, and I just couldn't get no where. I could make it with the foreskin over it, all right, that was no big job, but I couldn't get it to pull back-like the customer wanted. And this con, she was just crazy to get it the way she wanted it. It was like something special to her. Finally, I told her that I couldn't, that the best I could do was make one with the foreskin over the end, kind of enclosed or with a little point on it. She settled for that and said it was better than nothing.
SOCIOLOGIST: Why did she want it this particular way?
INMATE: That's what I asked her.
SOCIOLOGIST: Well, what did she say?
INMATE: Man, you wouldn't believe it but this old Dyke said she had to have a dick made that way because she didn't believe in circumcision!
SOCIOLOGIST: How long have you been trading in these instruments?
INMATE: Almost since I got out of the quarantine block-say, about a year, a little more or a little less.
SOCIOLOGIST: And are these artificial penises the only kind of instrument you would make or did you deal in other styles of contraband?
INMATE: No, I just dealt in pricks, although I'd make them in different styles, like I told you.
SOCIOLOGIST: And you always made them in the leathercraft shop to which you were assigned for your chosen hobby-a hobby, I should say, that did not include this type of product. Purses were what you claimed an interest in, I think it said on your record from the Individual Treatment office.
INMATE: Yeah, that's right. But maybe I should clear up something first. We used leather, that was best for the outside because it was kind of krinkly and everything and besides it could be greased and everythingeasier for the Dykes to put it in. But hard rubber was really the best thing to use. We got some of that and I learned how to encase it in the leather. When I couldn't get it, I'd use straight leather, but I wouldn't get as much loot for that kind.
SOCIOLOGIST: Why is that?
INMATE: Because just pure leather bends quite a bit-it would be like a kind of soft dick, only a little bit with a hard on, but the hard rubber was stiff as steel. What would have been best would have been a combination of the two but I never got around to that. I was just thinking about it when they had the shakedown and busted me for all this crap.
* * *
Phallic devices are common among lesbians of all societies. It is not unusual to consider that they are also a part of the lesbian community within female penal institutions. Only the method of attaining such devices, is unique, and when considered in terms of inmate cleverness, the time they have for elaborate planning, and the emotional need to "put something over" on the prison authorities, even this pales after the initial shock of such disclosures. The artificial penis has always been the favorite device of lesbians, although other items have been developed for erotic pleasure and use, as evidenced by a device known as the "rin-no-tama," used by Japanese women for masturbatory purposes, and worthy of mention here in an explanation offered by no less an authority than Havelock Ellis, who has written:
"Japanese women have probably carried the mechanical arts of autoeroticism to the highest degree of perfection. They used two hollow balls about the size of pigeon's eggs which are made of a very thin leaf of brass; one is empty, the other (called the little man) contains a small heavy metal ball, or else some quicksilver, and sometimes metal tongues which vibrate when set in movement; so that if the balls are held in the hand side by side there is a continuous movement. The empty one is first introduced into the vagina in contact with the uterus, then the other, the slightest movement of the pelvis or thighs, or even spontaneous movement of the organs causes the metal balls (or the quicksilver) to roll, and the resulting vibration produces a prolonged voluptuous titilation, a gentle shock as from a weak electric inductive apparatus; the balls are called rin-no-tama and are held in the vagina by a paper tampon. The women who use the balls delight to swing themselves in a hammock or rocking chair, the delicate vibration of the balls slowly producing the highest degree of sexual excitement. Joest mentions that this apparatus, though well known by name to ordinary girls, is chiefly used by the more fashionable geishas, as well as by prostitutes. Japanese women also use an artificial penis of paper or clay called 'engi.' "
No doubt there are some unique phallic devices that are used by imprisoned lesbians which are still to be discovered by authorities. Many are known in the outside world and it is conceivable to believe that lesbians, spurred by their incarceration toward greater sex urges, have already found a way of developing products for the current demand. This chapter, however, concerns a singular device-the most commonly used artificial penis. The investigation of which the previously presented interview was a part, dis closed many instances of lesbian activities with phallic instruments. One such incident follows as a narratively developed case history, and is presented for the purpose of illustrating the need some lesbians have for artificial devices, creating the thought that such a strong need makes many things possible-even the manufacture of phallic devices in the well supervised leathercraft shop of an extremely progressive and well organized prison.
CASE HISTORY
Paula Yorte was thirteen years old when her father died from an ailment derived from his acute alcoholism. She was the oldest in a family of five. The mother was a weak, ineffectual woman who from the moment of her husband's death depended more and more upon her eldest daughter. Soon, Paula was in almost total charge of the family. She bossed the younger children, told her mother what to prepare for dinner, managed the finances, all of which came from social agency aid, and generally acted as the "man" of the family. Paula did not dislike the role. She gloried in it, feeling, she has stated, powerful and in charge. Paula dropped out of high school at age sixteen. She looked for a job and could not qualify for anything but production line labor in a light manufacturing company. She worked a night shift, ran the family in the daytime, slept little, and first began to dabble in crime. She stole a car in company with a boy, was apprehended, faced a judge and was put on probation because of her importance to the poverty stricken family. The probation was of a year's duration. It required that she report weekly to her probation officer, giving him a complete account of her activities. Paula complied for three months, then became dilatory about her probation duties. She was reprimanded and given another chance. She renewed her probation requirements and was well-disciplined about them for another month before she participated in an armed robbery with a gang of two boys and two girls. She was a few months away from her eighteenth birthday, and because of her age was sentenced to three years at a women's prison instead of a youth home or girls' reformatory. It was here that she was introduced to lesbianism and became a very active Dyke on the prison scene. She did not turn to the use of phallic devices until she was twenty-three and serving a new prison sentence, however.
At twenty-three Paula wore her hair cut short, smoked endlessly and in the manner of a man, was very thin, flat-chested, talked gruffly, and was generally the prototype of the Butch-Dyke. She turned to the use of artificial penises for reasons of self-satisfaction rather than from any desire to excite her lesbian partner. This is how Paula herself has remembered her introduction to phallic devices.
"When I was a kid and used to beat off I'd use things to make myself come-you know, a cucumber or candle, stuff like that, but the funny thing about it was that just jamming it into me never seemed to do the trick-never made me come from the inside. What did that for me was the way the thing would go into me. It'd hit against my clit and that'd make me pop. Then later, when I started doing it with the girls, I found a way that pleased them but gave me my kicks too."
Paula's method of love making with a phallic device was such that the base of the instrument worked against her clitoris, providing her with an orgasm-often several-as she worked the device in and out of her partner. Her discovery of this method occurred in prison. She was twenty-three years old, a real Butch-Dyke, and with nothing to look forward to but continued years of imprisonment. Another Dyke told her of the contraband phallic trade. Paula decided to try the system at the first opportunity.
"It's the only way to ball," the other Dyke told Paula. . '
"How do I get the jazz?" Paula asked.
"Make a deal with Christie-hell, man, she'll even fit you for the trap so it'll be the right size."
Paula laughed gruffly then departed her friend.
(Paula's make-up at this time was one of uncertainities about herself. She played the role of the Butch-Dyke to the hilt, yet was unsure of her characterization in that role. She liked acceptance by the other Dykes-the Dolls, too-and it is reasonable to believe that at least part of Paula's motivation toward a phallic device at this time was incurred from this need for acceptance. If other Dykes used instruments, she would too. But, such motivations among lesbians have other factors. As a Dyke, they wish to play the male role. Masculinity requires a penis, both in the abstract, emotional make-up of the individual subject, and in the conscious level portrayal of their male role. Making love to another girl, as in the fashion of heterosexual affairs, is imperative to some Dyke types. A combination of these factors were apparently involved in Paula's early attraction to the use of artificial devices.)
Paula saw the inmate, Cristie, who worked in the leather craft shop, at the first opportunity. A deal was made, several cartons of cigarettes changed hands, and finally Paula found herself alone in her quarters, the possessor of a very real-looking, quite long (about seven inches), hard, and perpetually erected, hard leather artificial penis. She tried it on for size, bringing the rubber straps that held it in place over her naked thighs. She strutted around her darkened cell, the instrument sticking out like a vicious whip. She laughed at how it looked, even as she felt the pressure of some emotional equation that told her she had always played a man's role, that now at last she had the physique of a man. Then, strangely, Paula did something she had not felt motivated toward since she had become an active lesbian. She tried the instrument on herself, even as she visualized how it would be when she used it on a willing partner.
Paula stretched naked on her cot. She raised her legs and pulled the rubber straps down her thighs, then kicked it free from her feet. She picked it up and looked at it through the half-light that filtered into the cell. She ran her fingers up and down the device. Then she turned it around, brought it to her open thighs, and jammed it inward. Paula's vagina was moist. The instrument slipped inside her body. She paused. She withdrew the leather penis, plunged it in again, withdrew, entered it, then began a series of mad insertions and withdrawals that reached a feverish pitch. She felt excited but it came more from her fantasies than from the action of the device. Paula imagined how it would be when she was working it in and out of the body of a favorite girl friend. This was the motivation for her excitement. None came from her vaginal walls. She stopped the action and deemed to use the instrument the right way as soon as possible. And the right way was that it should be used on another. Two days later Paula had her chance.
One of the prettiest and most popular Dolls among the Dykes was a girl named Babs. She was about twenty, very dark of complexion and hair, which was worn long. Babs was, as the inmate said, "hung up on playing the free lance field." She made love with most any Dyke who wanted her. She often charged a fee. Sometimes she did it for the kicks that were personally derived from the act. But, more than anything, it seemed, Babs enjoyed her great popularity among the Dykes. She had a long list of suitors. Often the list-her "date book," she called it-was filled for weeks at a time. This was the situation when Paula approached the pretty dark haired girl.
"Hell, Paula, I'm booked up," Babs said.
"Well, get unbooked. I want you, baby, and I'm the best in the joint."
"That's what they all say," Babs laughed.
"Except I'm telling you the truth. Besides, I've got something new I want to try out."
Babs cocked her head and showed interest.
"I got myself a phony dick," Paula explained.
"Hell, they've been used on me before."
"Not the way I'm going to use it, baby," Paula said.
Babs seemed a little more impressed. Then when Paula suggested that she could do Babs certain favors to make life in prison happier, Babs decided that she'd skip her date for the night and "shack-up" with Paula. They arranged a time and place. It was Paula's introduction to the use of a phallic device and the event has become part of her interview record for this report.
The girls met in a seldom used supply room which was abundant with mattresses from prison cots. As soon as they met there was some preliminary love-play; kisses, touches, the delight of undressing together. When they were naked they embraced again, hotter this time as their breasts crushed together, as their mouths clamped and their tongues played, and as their thighs ground together. Paula was anxious, however. She broke their embrace quickly. Then she turned and picked up the leather-made penis.
"That looks vicious," Babs said.
"I ain't going to hurt ya-just love ya," Paula assured the girl.
Babs flopped on a mattress and watched as Paula pushed her legs through the rubber straps and adjusted the device in the proper position at the front. Babs eyes elongated a bit, as if in anticipation of the insertion that would soon be made.
"Be careful with that thing though," Babs said.
"I will," Paula said, dropping to her knees in front of the girl.
"Better let me put it in," Babs suggested.
"Okay. I brought some vaseline if you need it," Paula said.
"I don't. I'm hot enough without having to use any of that gook."
"That's the way it's best," Paula said.
Both of Babs' hands reached out and fondled the leather penis. Almost as if she were in the act of stimulating a man, she ran her fingers up and down the length of the device, fielding it and pinching, feeling of the substance that would soon be working within her.
"Take it easy, you're giving me a hard-on," Paula said.
Both girls laughed hard at that. Then Paula drew back a bit and made an adjustment of the device.
"What are you doing?" Paula asked. "Putting it where it feels good on me."
"Where's that?"
"Right ... here. Right against my clit."
(It was true. While being fondled by Babs, Paula discovered that the base of the device could come in contact with her own clitoris. It was a good feeling. It was also imperative to Paula's own orgasm. During her experiences as a Dyke, she followed a regular procedure of lovemaking. Always, she adjusted her body in such a way, and moved in such a way, as to bring her clitoris in contact with the clitoris of her partner, or, upon occasions, to enter her clitoris within the vagina of her partner, securing her climax in this manner. Unlike some of the prison Dykes, Paula was not possessed of an oversized clitoris. She often found contact and its resultant effects difficult because of this. The device she had purchased seemed to offer adjustment in this area, however.)
"Come on, come on," Babs said, her tone now anxious.
"Right now, baby," Paula replied.
Carefully, she thrusted forward. She stopped when the head of the artificial penis rested within Babs' vulva. Then Babs grasped it and carefully worked it in deeper.
"Ummmm, that feels good," Babs moaned softly.
"Yeah, it sure as hell does," Paula agreed. (The pressure of the inserted device caused contact with her erected clitoris.)
Paula pressed the instrument deeper into Babs. When it reached its full length, Paula paused. Then she jerked slightly forward again. The effect caused a sharp contact with her own clitoris. She groaned erotically.
"Hey, what are you doin'-coming'?" asked Babs.
"Not ... just ... yet, baby," Paula said, still moaning a bit.
Babs lurched upward a bit, excited by the full feeling within herself, and also excited by the effect their contact was having on Paula. Paula moaned again, then withdrew the device a bit, paused, and plunged forward. Both girls hissed sounds of pleasure this time. It inspired Paula. She began a steady motion of entrance and withdrawal and the artificial penis was having a double effect: it filled Bab's vagina, moved there and stimulated her sensitive walls, even as the base of the device rubbed erotically against Paula's clitoris.
"Faster, sweetie, faster," Babs suddenly pleaded, arching upward in a tight bow.
Paula complied. She thrusted forward and back like a mechanical dynamo that was inexhaustible, and each contact rose her higher and higher to the climactic peak she sought for herself. That Babs would also reach it was only secondary to Paula's mad action.
Suddenly, climax was only an instant away and taunting Paula to its culmination.
"Oh-I'm, there, baby ... I'm ... coming...." she cried.
"Me too," panted Babs. "But hurry-don't let it get away-don't, for Christ's sake, let it get away."
Paula jammed deep again, twisted her hips in a circular motion for a second, then withdrew, jammed forward again, spun a couple of times, inserted again, deep this time so that the artificial penis was buried and doing its work for both of them, sending both the lesbians to hisses and grunts and groans and whistling sounds of sexual delight.
"Again!" Babs cried. "Once more-please, once more."
Paula drew way back and whipped forward like a bow string. It took them over the hill they had climbed to attain their climaxes.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Paula chanted as her naked flesh flushed-as she felt the whiplash of thrill go from her toes to the top of her head before settling down again in the intensifying area of her vagina and clitoris.
Exhausted, the girls slumped together, the artificial penis still filling Babs. They remained this way only a moment, however. Then it became apparent that leather-made phallic devices have some disadvantages over the real thing. It remained stiff and hard inside Babs as her body returned to normal. It filled her and caused an irritation that a depleted male penis would not cause.
"Get out of me now," Babs said. "But go slow-it hurts like hell right now."
Slowly, Paula withdrew. She was as careful as if the device were indeed a part of herself.
* * *
The total emotional complexity of a lesbian forecasts whether or not she will be of the type to find satisfaction in the use of a phallic device. Paula was oriented toward such usage. And her prison environment, despite strict prison supervision, managed to provide her with the equipment necessary for both her own sexual gratification, and her performance as a pseudomale sex partner.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Riot And A Case Of Lesbian Rape
A riot is the worse thing that can happen in a prison. It is feared by authorities even more than escape. Escapees are almost always recaptured. Rioters, though maintained within the prison compound, raise havoc with the institution. Equipment is ruined, prison guards and other authorities are endangered, even taken as hostages many times, and always there is the threat of murder, mayhem, and rape among members of the inmate population itself.
Riots are most common in male institutions. One of the most devastating prison riots of all time was staged at the State Prison for Southern Michigan. It happened during the fifties and ran wild for many days, during which the efforts of local police, prison guards, state police, and finally, the National Guard, were frustrated because hostages were held and their lives were threatened. The rioters were eventually subdued, howver, but not before millions of dollars worth of damage was done, most of it, ridiculously caused by the inmates against their own facilities. Cots were burned, plumbing equipment was ruined, even athletic and recreational facilities were wrecked. Terror reigned. When it was calm there was even a greater terror when it was considered that the destruction and the riot were caused by only a few inmate leaders. Thousands suffered because of the few. It was as if the rioting inmates, rather than fighting for reform measures they claimed was their motivation, were really demonstrating a kind of self-hate, a self-destructive pattern that they had suddenly expressed.
Homosexual rapes almost always go hand-in-hand with prison riots. The Jackson riot, and many others that have occurred in male penal institutions, have always spurred rape to a pitch that under normal prison circumstances would never be reached. The excitement, the expression of hostility, even the danger that suddenly exists, seems to work as an aphrodisiac upon the homosexual inmates. Riots raise it to a pitch. Riots almost always result in some rapes, usually directed against the younger and more innocent inmates of the prison population.
Riots are much less frequent in female penal institutions. And rape by lesbians happens less frequently too. But it does happen. One such case occurred in a southeastern women's prison a number of years ago. It accounted for an unbelievable sexual molestation of a nineteen year old inmate who had been a member of the prison scene for less than two months. This is how it happened, according to one inmate who was present at the time of the infamous event.
It was Spring, the most vulnerable time of the year as far as prison riots are concerned. There had been unrest among the women inmates. Complaints were heard by officials. Complaints are common in prisons. Usually, they amount to mere grumbling. The authorities at the prison that we shall call "Lemmon," considered the complaints as the usual run of the mill grumbling by inmates. The food was bad, there weren't enough recreational facilities, more money was needed for the work that was done in the prison compound, "scrip," (coupons issued to inmates in place of money for purchases that can be made at certain times at the inmate store) was always issued later than the announced date of issue-these were the run-of-the-mill complaints that were heard, and largely ignored, by the prison authorities at Lemmon.
Later investigations satisfied the governor of the state that most of the inmate complaints were unfounded. It was something else that had caused the riot. Perhaps it was part of a general unrest that was felt all over the world: there were many upsetting things for all of society; wars, and the threat of more fearsome combats, threats of a depression, too, an uprising of unions-unrest, discord, an ominous atmosphere throughout all the country. Somehow it all became a part of the prison scene. Somehow it caused the riot.
Among the female inmates of Lemmon the word "riot" had been passed from one to the other for many weeks. Riots are as feared by some of the inmates, especially the long-timers and old-timers, as much as they are feared by the supervisory personnel. And so the mood of riot and the rumors that flourished were not universally welcomed in the inmate community. The mere suggestion of a riot and the inconveniences it is bound to cause made many of the inmates shudder. There was a great deal of shuddering at Lemmon. The forecast of riots is usually accurate.
Among the inmates at Lemmon who had heard that a riot was imminent, there was a nineteen year old blond girl who shall be called Laura. Following a long period as a juvenile delinquent, the ward of many foster homes, most of which Laura fled, and a life that had been moulded by poverty, parental indifference and neglect, and early sexual promiscuity, Laura was imprisoned in the state institution following probation violation that had been originally established as a result of the subject's involvement with a prostitution ring. Laura, it should be stated, was considered a thoroughly heterosexual girl. She had known many men, some for a price, many as lovers of her own choice. She had been propositioned by many women. Laura had refused them all. The thought of lesbians repulsed her, she has stated. Her gratification resulted from men exclusively, and it is this-and her continued rejection of inmate Dykes-that accounted for her rape during the riot at Lemmon.
Besides Laura, there were several hundred inmates incarcerated at Lemmon at the time of the riot. Let us review a few of them who became the leaders, and the rapists, during the riot. There was:
Annie-thirty-eight years old, a Butch-Dyke who delighted in introducing the young to lesbian sex. She was serving her third prison term at Lemmon. She had been a hard-core lesbian for fifteen years. She was a big women, nearly six feet tall, and she boasted of her strength as a way of making successful seductions. Annie was known to have forced younger inmates into sex acts.
Mary Lou-twenty-five years old, unlike most of the prison lesbians because she fussed with her appearance a lot and seemed to enjoy looking feminine. It was probably a way of deceiving other inmates, for Mary Lou did not like it to be generally known that she was a lesbian. But she was. Some inmates claimed that she was the most notorious Dyke imprisoned at Lemmon. Once a narcotic user, Mary Lou had defeated the habit before entering Lemmon. After working as a prostitute for many years in order to finance her habit, Mary Lou committed herself to a Federal facility for treatment and succeeded in shaking the narcotic addiction. But then she turned to more vigorous crime, committed a number of armed robberies, breaking and enterings, thefts from a person, and finally an attempted murder that sent her to Lemmon on a sentence of 10-20 years. She was in her fifth year of the sentence at the time of the riot.
Sally-A girl structered smallish, being four feet eleven inches tall, less than a hundred pounds, with a flat chest, small bones, and a general appearance of fragility. There was nothing small about one area of Sally's anatomy, however. She was possessed of an over-sized clitoris, it was once established through medical examination. This fact, it has been medically suggested, probably accounted for an intense sexual stimulation that was nearly always present. And this directed her to lesbianism during an early date of her incarceration.
Annie, Mary Lou, and Sally, were known as the "politicians," at the prison. They lived in the same cellblock, were friends who bunched together for almost any event-even several seductions they had participated in together with willing partners. They attended the inmate theater togeher, ate together in the messhall, shared cigarettes, possessions, even hilped each other with special hobby projects that were sponsored by the prison. All three lesbians were constantly on the outlook for new sex partners. The three were Kykes, and operated much in the manner of men who are out on the town and looking for a girl. Each of them had cast a longing eye at Laura. Soon after she had entered the general inmate population, both Mary Lou and Sally had propositioned the girl. They were firmly rejected. Later, the two Dykes confided to each other that they had made a pitch for the new girl and had failed. They laughed about it then, but each thought it would only be a matter of time before they succeeded. Prison had a way of bringing newcomers around. Laura would change her mind, both Mary Lou and Sally thought. Laura had a different idea: she'd never be lured into prison lesbianism. She once explained it in this way:
"I just couldn't stand those creepy Dykes looking at me all the time. When one of them would bump up against me as we were going into the messhall or some place, I'd just get creepy all over. Goose-bumps, but not the kind I use to get from guys. I got goose-bumps from them because they gave me the willies. I just couldn't see how a girl could stand to do it with another girl. And it wasn't because I was innocent, or anything like that. What the hell, I had been a whore-lots of the hustlers who worked with me made out with each other and had a ball doing it. But it wasn't for me. Not then or not when I was put away. In my mind, I'd just sweat it out until I got paroled then have myself a real wing-dinger, but with guys, not Dykes."
Laura's plan came to an abrupt end when the prison riot started. From that moment, she has said, she feared that she would be "hurt." She was. Brutally. And the scars, though beneath the surface, are still healing.
The Lemmon riot started when disciplinary action was taken against a favorite, long-term (life sentence for murder in the first degree) inmate, who, the leaders of the riot claimed, was unjustly accused of pilfering food during a work detail in the prison kitchen.
(Disciplinary action against long-term inmates is rather rare in prison for several reasons: most long-termers either do not break violations, or have learned to get around them in a way that precludes discovery by the officials; and, there is a disinclination upon the part of prison guards to "apprehend" or punish an inmate who is already severly punished by serving a maximum sentence.
(Something else should be noted as regards the riot that took place at Lemmon. Inmates who are bent upon physical revolt will use any excuse to cause a disturbance and enlist the unrest of other inmates in a general uprising. At the Jackson, Michigan prison riots, previously mentioned, the cry that salt was in the coffee at a time when the messhall was crowded with inmates, was enough to spark the riot. At Lemmon it was the alleged injustice meted out to a long-term inmate.)
Lemmon erupted at four o'clock in the afternoon. Within an hour inmates were milling around the prison yard, fires burned at various points of the prison buildings, cellblocks had been torn unsunder; desks overturned, tables burned, toilets jammed, and the prison guards, under orders because of the threat poised against them, had taken refuge at various offices and towers of the prison that were held by the institution personnel.
Most of the inmates had little to do with the riot. Most, like Laura, merely walked around the yard, fearful of what might yet come to disturb them. Laura felt a sense of doom as she tried to stay clear of other inmates by going to a corner of the prison yard and sitting on an overturned Bleacher seat. Around her there was evidence that the riot had been an aphrodisiac for some of the inmates. Couples were openly making lesbian love. Many formed a circle, laughing, as different Dykes took turns performing cunnilingus On their chicks. Actual orgies were taking place at different sections of the prison compound, throwing together all the techniques of lesbian lovemaking in a display by groups of inmates. Sex was very much a part of the riot. Laura feared that it would come to her. And it did, in the form of a sudden appearance by Annie, Mary Lou, and Sally.
Laura saw the three Dykes approaching her. At first, she tried to ignore them, tried to act as if she did not anticipate trouble. But when the three walked directly toward her after breaking away from a group that was gathered around a fire where various assortments of stolen food were being cooked, Laura knew that nothing would work-would save her-unless the riot was suddenly brought under control by the prison authorities. She stood up. She looked to either side, much as if seeking a path of escape. When she saw that there was nothing left but to stand her ground, she stared straight ahead, trying not to look as afraid as she was.
"So, here you are, huh, kid?" Annie said to Laura.
"Yeah, we've been looking all over the joint for ya," Mary Lou added. "Hell, we're surprised you're not balling over there in the center of the ring."
This was cause for the three Dykes to laugh very hard. They seemed a little drunk to Laura, a fact that was later born out by official investigation. Some form of alcohol is illegally available, though it is contraband in all prisons. Usually, it is secured through inmates who work in the prison hospital. During a riot, however, it is merely taken wherever it is found. Annie, Mary Lou, and Sally, made a forage upon the hospital at the initial stage of the riot, securing for themselves several gallon jugs of alcohol from which they concocted various drinks. They were indeed drunk as they faced Laura.
"What are you so quiet and snotty about, kid?" Annie asked of Laura. "Don't you like all this new-found freedom we gave you?"
"It's-it's insane," Laura replied.
The three Dykes, in exaggerated fashion, looked at each other and traded comments that were meant to cause Laura even greater anxiety. It did. But then, very quickly, Annie became impatient with the game.
"What the shit, let's take her and get goin'," she declared.
Mary Lou and Sally stepped forward. One grabbed Laura's left arm, the other took her roughly by the right arm.
"What's wrong with right here?" Sally asked. "Everybody's doing it right out in the open, man, so what the shit."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and your bright ideas. We strip a good-looker like this one and we'll have fifty of them babes over here and pushing us aside."
"That's right," agreed Mary Lou.
"Well, where then?" Sally asked. "I'm hot for this little chick."
"The hospital," Annie said, turning in that direction and striding ahead of the others.
The Dykes holding Laura pushed her forward, making her follow Annie, the leader. Laura did not resist. She knew it would be useless. Nor was she, at this moment, so horribly frightened. She knew that the women intended to have sex with her, Laura has stated. She knew, too, that it would be impossible to escape them. Her only hope rested with a quick quelling of the riot, and this was un-likely because it had not yet even gained its full momentum. So, Laura walked between Mary Lou and Sally, following Annie who led her small group across the yard and toward the brick-fronted hospital.
There was a good deal of activity inside the hospital. When they entered, Laura saw that many of the beds were occupied with women making love. It made her shudder a little. There were other things going on too: drinking, laughter, some destruction of hospital property, and scattered fights among some of the inmate rioters.
Annie led the way toward a far wing of the hospital, quite obviously a place she knew well. As they moved along, they were often stopped by individual inmates and those clustered in groups. Always the interrupters had lurid remarks about the presence of the innocent-looking Laura. Always, the remarks were followed by laughter.
When Annie came to a small room, she stopped at the door and waited for the others to come even with her. She grinned.
"Not many of the cons know about this place," she said to her friends as her eyes glanced over all of Laura's body.
"Hope it's big enough for a group bang," Sally said.
"It is," Annie said. "Besides, we don't need much room anyway."
Annie pushed open the door. The room, which was unmarked on the door as in the manner of the other hospital rooms, was small and contained a single narrow bed and a plain white dresser. It had an antispectic odor to it. The bed was neatly made, evidence that the room had not yet been discovered, at least for sexual use during the riot, by the other inmates.
Sally pushed Laura toward the bed. She caught herself just before sprawling across it. It was then that she made her only plea for freedom.
"Please let me go," she said. "Let me go and I'll do anything you want."
"Listen to her, now," said Mary Lou. "She'll do anything we want if we'll let her go."
"Yeah," said Sally. "Trouble is, what we want calls for her being here."
Annie grunted a sound. Then she walked over to Laura as the other two inmates stepped a pace away.
"You're not going any place until we want you to," she said to Laura. "And right now I don't even want any more jabber, so come here to me and we'll see if you're really as hard to make as you've been acting."
As Mary Lou and Sally laughed, Annie wound her arms around Laura's waist and brought her open mouth down on Laura's lips. She shot her tongue deep within Laura's mouth, then wiggled it from side-to-side, doing it in a motion that seemed intended to arouse her own senses rather than those of her victim.
"Hey, don't hog her all to yourself," Sally exclaimed.
"Give us some of the goodies," Mary Lou added.
Annie merely grunted as she continued to kiss Laura, who, though repulsed, did not attempt to turn her mouth away, only stood there, being kissed and crushed in Annie's strong arms.
After what seemed a very long time, Annie, now breathing hard, broke the embrace. Laura stepped back. The other two inmates bolted forward.
"Hold it you two," Annie commanded. "I'm first-at least I'm starting with her."
Mary Lou and Sally stood silently at the edge of the bed, to one side of Laura.
"Okay, kid, now you get bare," Annie said.
She raised her hand to Laura's blouse, pressed outward by her large breasts. Annie wound the garment into a knot in her rough hand. Then she jerked downward. The blouse ripped, then parted when Annie released her hold on the material. The bra beneath the blouse had been torn in half. Laura's breasts, round and full and high, with the nipples erected, not by passion but by anxiety, loomed before the three Dykes.
"In spades," Annie agreed. "In spades, and I bet the rest of her is just as good."
With that, Annie's hand shot forward and grabbed the waistband of Laura's skirt. She ripped it downward, then did not pause until she had also ripped the panties and half-slip away. Amid exclamations and lurid remarks, the other two inmates waited no longer but immediately devested Laura of her stockings and shoes.
Nude, Laura straightened, attaining her full height in a kind of effort to gain authority. She could not. The pose only excited the three lesbians all the more. Hurriedly, and still passing remarks between them, they undressed.
Laura remembers that Annie looked "fat and awful" when she pushed her down on the bed. She also remembers that Mary Lou and Sally were at the edge of the bed, watching, one of them-Laura does not recall which one-was in a half-posed position of springing, one knee on the bed, the other leg straight behind. Then she lost them from view as Annie, stinking of sweat and sexual excitement, plopped upon the bed.
For a few moments Laura thought something had happened to spare her. There was no contact from Annie. But then it came and it was not as Laura had expected. Annie did not encompass Laura's body, except with hands that spread her thighs apart in order to make room for her hungry mouth.
"Hey, that's the way to go," shouted Sally. "Eat her all to hell."
"Yeah," Sally chimed in. "You eat her-that'll warm her up for us."
Annie merely muttered. Her mouth was busy licking at Laura's vagina, running up and down her crevice, sometimes pausing to allow her tongue to shoot in and out in a mad sharp pace. Laura felt nothing but revulsion and fear. She was not inticed to sexual feelings by Annie's hot mouth. She did not fight or resist. She merely lay on the bed, her legs open, as the fat woman busied herself between the smooth thighs.
"You ain't doing anything for her," Sally said. "Why don't you let us try?"
Annie continued the action for another moment, then rose and turned toward her friends.
"I wasn't trying to do anything for that little bitch," she explained. "That was just to get myself hot."
"And now we get a lick," Mary Lou said.
"No, now she does," Annie said.
The words were strange to Laura. Rather, she has said, the "tone" of the words were strange. But Annie's action left no doubt as to what was expected of their hostage.
Annie rolled over on her back and quickly attained a position similar to the one Laura had been forced to make: her feet planted firm in the bed, knees and thighs open, revealing the fat woman's open, almost raw-looking vagina.
"You eat me, kid," Annie said.
"No," Laura protested.
"Do it if you know what's good for you," Sally advised.
"And right now, goddman it," Annie shouted.
Slowly, Laura raised. She half-crawled the few inches across the bed to where Annie lay sprawled. She looked down and felt like vomiting. Then there was a push at her back from behind her and Laura sprawled forward, her head striking at Annie's soft belly.
"Eat!" Annie exclaimed.
Laura lowered, then paused as the strong odor of Annie's genitals came up at her. The pause made Annie very angry.
"All right, goddamn it," she cried out. "Put her to it, kids, put her to it and do any damn thing you want while she's taking care of me.
There were assorted yelps from Mary Lou and Sally. They were on Laura at once. A hard hand forced her face into the massive pubic area of Annie. A pair of hands roughly gripped Laura's breasts and began to knead them. Another hand-from which of the lesbians Laura still does not remember-jammed between her thighs and rammed upward with two strong fingers.
Soon, even with Laura now buried into Annie's vagina, the positions became untenable.
"Let's move," Annie called out, her voice already excited as if she were approaching orgasm.
"Yeah," said Sally, also breathing hard. "There's nothing for us but feeling this way."
The three lesbians pulled back from their vie-. tim. They rearranged their positions-did it as if they were well-practiced as lover partners. Annie pushed upward, forced Laura on her back, then spread her legs wide and moved until her spread thighs were directly above Laura's mouth. At the same time, Sally had spread Laura's legs wide apart. She moved between them, roughly spread Laura's vagina, then made a remarkable insertion of her clitoris. For a few moments, only Annie and Sally moved; the one pressing down and up upon Laura's face, the other pressing m and out in the manner of meterosexual intercourse. And in a moment, Mary Lou joined the trio. She gripped one of Laura's breasts in her mouth and savagely chewed upon it, at the same time taking the girl's hand and bringing it between the thighs she opened for contact. She grunted a demand to "beat me off," and in a moment the four of them were moving; three with desire, the fourth as the helpless victim who could not do other than comply.
The finish of the first multiple attack upon her left Laura sobbing hysterically. Her body was red, spotched with blue, from the molestation committed upon her. Teeth marks circled perfectly on her right breast. Blood dripped from it. And the nipple in the center hung limply, half severed from the sharp, anxious teeth of a lesbian Dyke. Laura's thighs were raw. But worse than anything, there was the sobbing from within her that would not quit, and did not until the riot had been stopped two days later. Then she was taken by the medical officer of the prison and sent to a state mental facility. During Laura's two days of imprisonment by the lesbians, she had been turned over to other Dykes, by whom she was grossly abused. One inflicted a severe anal wound because Laura had not complied with a command. Wooden tongue depressers had been jammed far up her anus. Another had filled her vagina with a cleaning fluid used on hospital floors, the composition of which contained strong acid compounds.
The prison riot and the rapes that had happened during it were barely a memory when Laura was still in the mental hospital, healed of body but still broken mentally because of the assault she had been made to endure. Although Annie, Mary Lou, Sally, and many others were placed under the strictest disciplinary action, it was not enough to give Laura solace, even if she had been able to understand that she had, in a way, been revenged.
SUMMARY
The Conclusion of Any report concering the sexual behavior of any type members of society presents many questions, some to be answered, some to remain forever unanswered because of their complexity, the inadequacy of information, and because more time is needed for study and reform. In summation, it might be profitable to anticipate questions and offer answers that might fit.
"What can be said about prisons and the homosexuality that nourishes there?"
It will continue as long as a prison sentence for both men and women mean a total denial of more acceptable sexual activity. Conjugal visits might be one way to lessen the incidence of homosexuality among prison inmates. Shorter, more realistic sentences might also reduce homosexual activity. But, more than anything, a more vigorous program of psychotherapy within prisons themselves is needed.
"Will such a program ever be a reality in American prisons?"
Hopefully, yes. But not until the taxpayer makes his wishes known among the legislators of each state-not until reform and interest are the true motivations of the individuals who pay taxes, live law abiding lives, and vote.
"Is there no rehabilitation hope for any of the lesbians who reside in American prisons today?"
There is always hope. And there are some success stories, many more than one might suspect.
"Then why were they not presented in this report on lesbianism in American prisons?"
Because the purpose of this report was to present the worst aspects of prisons and the inmates who are incarcerated there. Reform is necessary, yes. There are prison successes through rehabilitation facilities as they are conducted today, yes. Prison officials do their best, yes. Professionals of many fields are employed in American prisons today, yes. And, conditions are indeed better than they were two, three, even one decade ago. But before reform can be instituted in any area of fife, there must first be communication, and that has been the purpose of this report-to communicate the horrible tragedies of human lives that have occurred within our prison system.
Finally, in closing, it seems reasonable to suspect that there will always be some lesbianism practiced in American prisons, regardless of reform measures, new programs, or the interest and professionalism of penal personnel. Many inmates learn about lesbianism in prison. Many more already have the seeds of perversity solidly planted within their emotional make-ups, and prison is merely the instrument that brings this perversity from its latency to overt expression. Probably, this is more often the rule than the exception, for, after all, isn't there a bit of the abnormal in any person who behaves in such a manner as to become a member of a prison society? And, even if by some abstraction, doesn't it follow that a prison society takes its cues from the outside world, that if the general, law abidng society of the United States has new interest in sex and its deviations, a prison society will entertain the same impulses and that they will be intensified many times because of the experience of imprisonment with only others of the same sex? It's a reasonable thought. It's worth considering. It's worth a new look at our total, sexual behavior during this decade.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Report of the President's Commission on Crime in the District of Columbia, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1966
Report of the Governor's Study Commission on the Deviated Criminal Sex Offender, State of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan, 1951.
