My Prison Life - If You Pitch, You Can Catch!

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Oregon State Correctional Institute is known as "Gladiator School" because every felon there's under the age of 25. But the fact we were all basically just overgrown kids didn't mean there weren't plenty of lifers and guys doing big sentences rattling around inside. When I got there, I'd just been sentenced to two five-year spells that were to be served concurrently. For a guy who was still relatively young, it was a shock. I certainly didn't feel ready to become a gladiator.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival were the gun towers. I could see the screws up there in their turrets and later I'd learn that they carried automatic rifles. Down in the yard, the inmates were all wearing Converse trainers. The white logos with the stars at the ankle had been coloured in fluorescent green to give the guys up in the towers something to get a bead on if you were to make a sudden dart for the fence. The fence itself had a line painted around the inside perimeter. If you crossed it, you became a legitimate target for the guards. Each panel of the fence was also able to detect body heat. Sensors would alert the marksmen as to which panel a person was near or on. It was often set off by animals, sometimes with hilariously bloody consequences. Inside, I was in Unit Eleven, which was known as the "Animal House" after the John Belushi film of the same name. Animal House was wild and unpredictable. I saw guys stabbed, set on fire and commit suicide in there. Some mornings you’d walk by the laundry room on the landing and see all these previously white sheets dyed crimson red, because someone had gotten a "Dear John" and cut the arteries inside their thighs while in bed. You’d hear it at night, the muffled shout of someone shouting "man down, man down" behind their door because a cell mate had either tried or succeeded in killing himself. It wasn't pleasant at all in that sense. I had special reason to be worried when I turned up at OSCI. For someone as androgynous and as cute as me, and with my British accent, the fear was always gonna be that some big fucker from the 'hood was gonna try and have his wicked way with me. But when I arrived, I was stunned – there were so many transvestites. Guys who basically worked as prostitutes, or fulfilled the role of some lifer's "bitch".  You’d hear guys start singing "Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light" when they’d walk by. They could even buy makeup on the commissary list every week. Anyway, this one redneck guy named Marv used to give me a public toilet's worth of shit. He'd take special delight in calling me a "British fag". He was really making my life miserable.

He was banged up with this other long-haired, redneck metalhead, and they were always on the weight pile pumping that pig-iron in the yard, walking around like they were the ticket with the coat hanger still in the shirt. You know the kind.

Anyway, I was in the education department doing a GED to pass some of the time, which there tends to be a lot of in prison. A GED is a General Equivalency Diploma. I’d been in this English class with this old teacher called Mr Tarr, and every so often this pretty, cute and young Australian lady would come in and help out. Damn, it just made my day to see her in those little diaphanous dresses, so there was no doubt in my mind about my sexuality – it was perhaps unfortunate, given the nature of the demographic I found myself living alongside, but I was hopelessly hetero. One time, this woman officer peered into my cell. It was the afternoon and I was knocking one out.

“Mulligan!” she said. “Whatchoo doing in there?” And I just shouted back: “Ten years!” without even missing a stroke. Anyway, one day in Mr Tarr's English class we were all sat round scoffing some lovely sandwiches and donuts because this purty little Australian thing had come to the end of her time with us. Afterwards, I volunteered to stay behind and help clean up. I thought that it'd give me a chance to be near her for a little longer, I guess.

I went off to the broom cupboard to fetch a dustpan and brush. I'd never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but when I opened that broom cupboard door, who was in there? Yep, you got it – that redneck motherfucker Marv was taking it up the ass from one of the transvestites. I think her name was "Samantha".

Boy, did I call everybody in Mr Tarr’s classroom out to see that. As for Marv, well, he never could look me in the eye after that. From that point on, I had free reign to shit all over him in the same way he'd shat all over me.

You know what they say?

If you pitch, you can catch!

Photograph by Mark Rabiner Photography; concept/hair by Mick Mulligan

Harry Mulligan is currently writing McGee; A Memoir with Alan McGee. It's being published by Pan Macmillan.