Prison - The Aftermath by Castor (a12807703@gmail.com)
There are a couple of things I need to say. The first is that everyone who reads this archive should provide a modest donation to support it: given all the work that goes into maintaining it, a small contribution is the least anyone can do. The second thing that I need to say is that I wasn't going to write about what followed when I left prison but a large number of people wrote to me and I suppose that if one is to understand the experience and how absolutely devastating it is then perhaps it's worth recording.
Walking out of the doors of the prison is one of the great experiences that any human being can enjoy for suddenly there is fresh air and a capacity to be your own person. The guards of course expect you to return, generally within 12 to 18 months and, unfortunately, their expectations are met in far too many cases.
There are a number of imperatives when you do get out and the most important obviously in my case was to find my family. I had deliberately taken a decision not to have Katie come to the prison because I thought it would make my time there just more difficult: it was bad enough being separated without going through the agony of a further separation every time she visited. Although the result was devastating, from a selfish point of view I think I made the right decision. It was degrading enough for Ray to be using me as a woman, and to have to hide that from Katie during visits I believe would have been just too great an emotional stretch. I couldn't really imagine sitting in the visitors centre with other couples and people sneering at me and pointing out to their visitors my shame and humiliation.
Of course eighteen months is a long time and Katie and the baby needed support not just in a financial sense but also in an emotional sense, and when I got back home and found that Katie was shacked up with another guy I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Yet I was and the blow was far more painful than even the night when Ray claimed me. Did I want to go around and throttle the guy? Of course I did. Did I? Of course not because my love for Katie and our baby was far greater than the anger and devastation I felt.
My despondency I guess was made even greater by the realities of my own existence. One reality was that I couldn't ever get that smell of prison out of my nostrils - or so it seemed. Of course the smell was in my brain and not in my olfactory capacity. Another reality was the questioning of my own sexuality. I don't care what anyone says but you can't take it up the arse (backside, bum, butt - call it what you will) without noticing when it stops. The element of coercion is easily discarded and I don't really know how many feel as I did but, in some bizarre and cruel twist, I actually missed Ray.
Now I know that everyone will scream that I should have simply walked away and forgotten what had happened: but you can't. A lot of people will say that you put it behind you and move on with your life, but again that is terribly naive: it is part of your life. I guess the simile is to say to somebody who was lost an arm or leg to get on with their lives and forget about what is missing. It is simply not possible to forget!
Please don't get me wrong: it wasn't the absence of Ray in my life that hurt but it was the absence of anyone who felt affection for me. Had I enjoyed being used and abused? If I am truthful, which I try to be, the answer is both yes and no - in reverse order. No I didn't enjoy being forced to have sex in order to simply survive but yes, after a long, long time, I did get sexual relief despite myself. I guess the issue finally became how important that was and how much a part of my psyche it had become.
I did everything in my power to prove to myself that I could put that sort of activity behind me and treat it just an experience which I didn't want to repeat. I went as far as even going to a prostitute (or three) to try and prove to myself that I was inherently heterosexual now that I was away from the coercion.
The result was not terribly satisfactory I must say. I had no problem getting an erection but I had a great deal of difficulty in achieving an orgasm and I found the lack of strength on the part of my partner to be greatly disappointing and indeed unsatisfactory. (Now before anyone comes after me for being a misogynist, please understand that strength does differ between individuals as well is sexes. I don't think the female weightlifting champion of the world lifts as much as her male counterpart and if I'm wrong I apologise. Emotionally I suspect the reverse is true.)
After about six months of trying and crying I decided to put myself to the test and I allowed myself to be picked up one night in a bar by a man who was older than I (in his early 30s) and clearly saw himself in a dominant position. This is probably not the time or the place to go into the gory details of that night, but suffice it to say that I found in that experience a lot of the things that I lacked when I tried to sleep with women.
The biggest challenge of course, even though it wasn't the most emotionally important one, was to find work. Before I went inside I had just finished my master's degree in economics, so I wasn't lacking in ability or intelligence. I attended job interviews - well prepared and well-dressed. As I said before I have this stubborn, truthful streak in my nature and so when it came to the issue on the forms of whether I had had any convictions I made it clear that I did and that I have paid the price demanded by society. 143 job interviews later I decided to give up - at least until I could demonstrate to myself and to others that I still had something to offer.
I got accepted back into University for postgraduate studies and completed my Ph.D. in almost record time. I have no pretensions about being another John Nash and earning a Nobel prize but I proved to myself that I hadn't lost my intelligence. Yet to this day I cannot get a job other than the most menial.
In the circumstances, while at University, there were few options available to me regarding living costs. If no one wants to pay you for your intelligence and your ability, where do you turn? Of course the dole provides some support but not enough in one of the most expensive societies on earth. So if your intelligence and your ability intellectually is valueless, I asked myself quite bluntly what other assets I had. The answer was pretty obvious: I was physically fit and strong, I was thought to be good looking (which just goes to demonstrate the flaws in other people's judgements or values) and, from my experience with the man who picked me up, apparently had an attractive arse.
Did I enjoy resorting to such base means? Bloody hell no! But needs must and I can tell you there are far too many young people out there, of both sexes, who have no real options.
So while I survived I useg the time I could afford to reach out and to see just how many people with abilities such as mine were in much the same position. Now this I know is sounds as if I'm denigrating others who took the same action as me to survive, but I'm not - I definitely am not! (You will see below why I can be so definitive on this point.) What I'm trying to identify is that I had been given abilities and opportunities above the norm and I wanted to know if others in a similar position wanted to communicate.
I had to experiment quite a bit in order to find ways of communicating my needs and my interests and that was quite a challenge. It is said that the bulk of the use of the Internet is for pornography and I suppose my experience shows me that that's probably the case. When I reached out in certain directions what came back was not a genuine interest about communicating feelings but rather a lascivious desire for graphic detail.
One day when I was exploring options through academic sites I had the most bizarre encounter of all.
A person replied expressing an interest in trying to work out how shared experiences might possibly lead to a way of making a living. The individual was of Swedish origin and the bizarre thing about it was not that he was in sync with my thinking but that he was less than 300 m away in the university library. We met and spent countless hours talking about experiences and emotions, as well is our own desperation. He had not been imprisoned so didn't have that stigma but he had been abused, most terribly, as a teenager, and that weighed on him just as much as my own experience did. Perhaps even more so.
We connected at an emotional level and we did our best to try and relieve one another's burdens, but I think we both realised that there was a need beyond talking, although at the time we didn't know where to turn.
Over the following ten months or so our duet became a quartet as we connected with two other people who were in the same emotional and economic limbo as us. It took a long while and an awful lot of emails before we all had the confidence to meet but we did. If you thought my self-effacing comment regarding my appearance and other people's judgement of it was tongue in cheek then you should meet the German member of our clan who I think we all agree is probably the most handsome man on the planet. Now that may also be an exaggeration but we have yet, any of us, to find somebody who can compare.
But the beginning we were somewhat awkward in each other's company because there are so many triggers which can cause emotional stress and we didn't know whose triggers were where. Finally we had to confront the situation and in a fit of inspired bonding we got naked and held one another and agreed that if we touched the wrong button we would all accept that he was by accident and we would talk through the issue. From that moment on we could be together and we could touch without feeling threatened or demeaned: we were four people whose lives together they were just starting.
We talked for ages. We had set ourselves three days to be together and to work out what it was we could do to earn an income by using our abilities as well is our experiences. What came out of that was Castor - a collective of people who share emotions and experiences to give reality to words that we hope have some value. Harking back to the observation about the Internet, the easiest way obviously to earn a quid was to cater to the huge number of people who search out pornography. I know some people say this is terrible and that the sky is falling and that this is the end of civilisation - crap! Pornography is indeed one of the oldest forms of communication and also a very healthy outlet for the sexual frustrations of millions of people. Far better for people to get their jollies by reading rather than doing in many cases!
We resolved over those three days that two of us with the strongest command of English would concentrate on the prose and all would contribute in a critical sense to the description and circumstances, feelings, emotions and the like. Unfortunately we set the bar too high by agreeing that we would not write about anything which we had not experienced in one shape or another. When some people started to write and ask for stories with specific scenarios we found that some were beyond our range of collective experiences and so, initially with trepidation but now with more a sense of humour, one or more of us would set out to experience what our patron wanted described or covered in the story. I can tell you that that has led some of us, indeed all of us I guess, into some very bizarre and kinky situations. But we are true to our word - not only to each other but also to our clients.
What we do is clearly cathartic because all of us in one way or another have to confront our own demons but it also allows us to grow as human beings. Experiencing new things which some of our clients imagine is part of a growing process in way: we just make sure every situation for each of us is safe and sane.
We don't make enough money to get us off the dole but we do make enough to cover our expenses and also to provide some support to the vast number of boys and girls who we would like to see have a better future than they do at the moment. We counsel some of those who are in danger of walking down the path is that we have already traversed - much to our own cost. Perhaps we don't make a big impression on a huge problem. We accept that. Where only four people in a world of 8 billion - but at least we try. Quite frankly I think if our patrons give us enough to even save one person from what we have experienced, that will be sufficient.
- Castor (a12807703@gmail.com)
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