Prison Stories
Chinese Laundry
Most relationships in prison are transactional and Sing Sing is full of guys with swagger and street smarts
It’s almost six in the morning. I know this because the corrections officer bangs his clipboard on my bars to do his live count. I’m still groggy, so I mumble some shit so he knows I’m alive to make him go away. When the C.O. leaves, the quiet returns.
Shh. Shh. Shh. I hear a low shuffling of feet and a periodic rustling of a plastic bag. I know what that sound means. It’s Wednesday. Rey — a slim, muscular, Cantonese man in his early forties — is collecting our laundry bags. Every three days, he washes our clothes. Last week, he told me that my small net bag is not wide enough to fit a stack of neatly folded pants and shirts, so I put them in a larger bag today.
It’s the crack of dawn here in Sing Sing, and Rey is already styling. His hair is gelled, and he’s sporting a Calvin Klein T-shirt with Under Armour shorts and a jade Buddha pendant swinging from an 18-karat gold chain. He doesn’t look the part of the jailhouse laundry porter.
Most relationships in prison are transactional. Quid pro quo. Sing Sing is full of guys with swagger and street…
