Every once in a while I get a bit constipated and the roids flare up for a few days. I bleed for a while, but usually its no big deal.
However, once when I was in prison I managed to tear myself open “down there.” Unfortunately, the working assumption regarding any kind of health complaint in prison is that you are just faking it. But, when the bleeding didn’t stop after a couple of days, I thought I better go to the nurse to see if I could get a note to stay in bed. I knew there was nothing she could really do about the bleeding but I was starting to feel light headed and I just wanted to lay down. Also, didn’t want to get stuck at bleeding at work and have to explain a pair of bloody boxer shorts when they strip search everybody on the way back.
If an officer sees blood on a towel or on the floor, he either freaks out and they lock everyone down, have everybody strip down to their shorts and the guards check everybody’s knuckles for fresh scabs. Or, they just shrug and think to themselves, “Oh the inmates are just killing each other again.” But bloody butts arouse a whole ‘nuther galaxy of concerns. And, of course, the last thing you want to do is turn up with a bloody butt in front of 20 your least-best buddies. Especially, if some of them already know you are gay. So, I decided to head things off and go see the nurse.
Normally it takes several days for them to process your medical complaint and send you a “ducat” (a kind of hall pass) to go see Mainline Medical. But, if you’re bleeding from the butt, for some reason, they waive you right on through. You would be surprised at the amount of stuff that ostensibly straight guys will pound into their butts just so they can have a little something to smoke. Naturally, even the best of plans sometimes go awry. So, on my way over I had to go through a strip search, since one of the main ways that contraband gets into the mainline is guys from the minimum security ranch where I was packing it in via keister.
Mainline Medical is always a madhouse. They keep us in a holding pen waiting for our turn to see one of the four nurses, who check your vital signs and take down your medical complaint as if this were the very first time you’ve encountered the White Man’s Medicine, or spoken to anyone about what ails you. About 4 times out of 7 they lose your original medical complaint forgot why they’ve sent for you. After they have misplaced and found your paperwork a couple of times, it usually takes them another half hour to 45 minutes to find your chart and figure out what to do next.
Fortunately, my situation wasn’t complicated. “I’m bleeding,” I told her. “Is it bad?” she asks? “Well, I dunno, it seemed bad enough to the nurse I talked to before.” “Okay, just a minute.” One of the doctors had wandered into the room and my nurse calls out to her across the room, “Hey, I got a guy here who says he is bleeding,” making it very clear that she’s gotten the memo that says you must never believe anything an inmate tells you. So the doctor hollers back to me, “So you’re bleeding?” “Yes” I say, with sad puppy dog eyes with all the earnestness I can muster. “From where?” she asks. ”Anally” I mumble. “From WHERE?” “From my ass.” “Can you show me?” By now, everyone in the room—four nurses, three inmates, two doctors and four guards are all looking at me intently waiting for my reply. “No, but by now blood has soaked through my pants.” “Okay,” she says, “send him back.”
I remember thinking to myself, “Man, if this is your drug-free America, I don’t want any part of it.”
It takes about an hour to get examined because there’s a guy with a broken arm guy with a stab wound, and a guy with alarmingly low blood pressure ahead of me. The fakers. Eventually, they have me get up on a metal table and I notice there are about four female not-quite-nurses medical staff hovering around looking busy but not doing anything in particular. I feel sort of like an old car that some neighborhood teenagers have jacked up on milk crates while they all stand around staring under the hood like they know what they are doing. I tell them, “I’m flattered by all the attention, but don’t you ladies have something else to do?” The doctor tells me to roll over on my side, and I realize that we are now coming to their favorite part—the main attraction, so to speak. They want to see my face when she slides her finger up my ass. I try not to look like I am enjoying it too much which, under the circumstances, isn’t too difficult.
“Yep,” she says matter-of-factly, “you’ve got some swelling going on down there. I’m going to give you some suppositories to help you out.” “Could I have some Metamucil too?” The real reason I wanted it, apart from the obvious, is that the jars make great waterproof containers for storing things like pencils and glasses. I had one before until it was declared “contraband” and confiscated. It seems that there is a rule against having things in containers other than their original contents. Its just one of thousands of bullshit rules they only seem to enforce when they want to be a dickhead for some reason.
It turns out that Metamucil is far too expensive to give out to prisoners nowadays, so they gave me some stool softener gel caps instead. She also gave me a two-week’s supply of suppositories, which is unheard of service. The usual way drugs are dispensed in prison is that the doctor sends the prescription to the pharmacy who, if they don’t lose it, sends it your way a couple of days later, and somebody gives it to you when they get around to it, when they’re in the mood.
Fortunately, they only pat me down on the way out. But, when I get back to the ranch I have to be strip searched on the way back in. Luckily, it is just me and a couple of guards. They grill me on where I’ve been and then they find my suppositories. “What are these?” “Blasting caps?” “What?” “Suppositories.” “What are those?” “They’re like little dildos; you stick em up your ass? Want me to show you? Drop your pants.” “Naw, thanks, I’m good.” We banter and pretend to flirt for a while then they send me on my way.
Finally! A chance to start those suppositories and get things “squared away,” if that makes any sense. I’ve been gone since 10 AM that morning and it is not around 5 PM, and I am really tired. I am also quite a mess down below. I discover its not so easy to peel the foil off a suppository when you are wearing rubber gloves. Plus, there are a bunch of guys taking a keen interest in what I’m doing. “What’s goin’ on there? What’d ya bring me? Is that the keister bunny I see?” “No, no. Nothing to see here, move along folks. Just some hemorrhoids.
Just then, this big greasy biker named “Sinner” (I kid you not) turns to me and says in a long thoughtful tooth-sucking drawl that reminds me of Abraham Lincoln, “You know, I’ve always found that hemorrhoids are a lot like little puppies. Sometimes you have to pet them a while before they want to come inside.”
Such are the strange intimacies of men in prison.
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