Conjugal Visits 2

Conjugal Visits

By Liza Sharpe

Copyright 2022, A Likely Story Publishing. All rights reserved.

All characters in this work of fiction over the age of 18 and are products of the author's dirty imagination.

Two Counts of Libel: Gazette Reporter Sentenced to 24 Months!

the headline of the Times screamed. I tossed the newspaper aside and shook my head. Yesterday's whirlwind of sentencing, processing and an immediate bus to a federal holding facility made me forget that people might be interested in finding out my fate. I was surprised a copy of the paper was available to me here.

I'm Roland Brennan. Yes, that Roland Brennan. The Gazette Reporter - well, former Gazette Reporter now - of said headline. I was taken into custody after yesterday's sentencing, having been out on bond making arrangements for my incarceration after the surprise criminal conviction a month earlier; libel is typically a civil offense, unless you really piss off highly-placed individuals like I had. I woke this morning in a one-man inprocessing cell after being up late last night, taking notes of my experience while it was still fresh in my mind.

If you don't know, I'm the reporter who slipped up. I admit it. It was absolutely my fault. I knew better than to run the story when I did; I hadn't done enough vetting of my source, and I hadn't researched the allegations enough to corroborate the reports on Senators... well, you know which ones they are.

I knew better, but I was under a lot of pressure to produce. I made a judgement call, and it bit me right on the ass! I'd decided that, rather than wasting time on an appeal that wouldn't be settled until after I was released, I'd do my time and make the most of it; as a bit of a 'celebrity' convict, I hoped I could make some money by writing a book about my experiences in the legal system. It might at least keep my writing skills sharp; not that I'd need them for reporting. After this, I'd have to find a new career.

So now I got to experience first-hand the American justice system. After breakfast, I was put in yet another van, which took me on a four-hour ride to a medium security federal penitentiary. Inprocessing was as impersonal as I'd expected, yet far more efficient than I'd hoped from the U.S. Government. My permanent cell assignment, detail job, and initial medical and dental evaluations flew by. Given my profession, I was assigned to work in the library. I sat down with an 'inmate wellness counselor', who covered availability of religious services, recreation, what I could purchase and have sent in, and visitation. I had looked into visits already; this prison did allow conjugal visits, which made my girlfriend and I very happy. Two a month; not the frequency I was used to, but I was being punished, I reminded myself with a chuckle. I was also allowed to have a second, non-conjugal visitor on a weekly basis; it was recommended this be a family member.

The limit on number of visitors, I was informed, was due to the recent pandemic; they said with the length of my sentence, the restriction would likely not change while I was in. My family and I had discussed this. Mom and dad were approaching retirement age; besides living about 2,000 miles away, neither of them cared to travel that much. My older sister Cathy was only a two-hour drive away, and said she'd be happy to make the trip each week. Like me, she had never married, though she had been involved with the same guy for several years. They didn't live together, and Cathy said he'd 'just have to deal' with her absence when she traveled to see me. She wanted to look out for the welfare of her 'baby brother'. Never mind baby brother would celebrate his 40

th

birthday behind bars; to Cathy, I was someone to watch over and care for.

There was a barrage of paperwork to be filled out, including the visitation forms. The necessary background checks would take about a month; visits could take place immediately once the visitor was approved. Changes to the visitor roster could only be made after one year, they cautioned. Be sure your visitor is someone you believe will stay in your life. I guess a lot of inmates' friends and girlfriends don't stay around long. Out of sight, out of mind.

I didn't see any reason to make any changes; if Beth decided to break up with me, I didn't have a backup fuck-buddy roster. I'd just have to forego conjugal visits.

I sent the visitation forms out for the morning mail, then set about getting used to my new life.

About five weeks later, I was on the weight pile when they called me over the loudspeaker.

"Offender Brennan, 482928743, report to visiting. Offender Brennan, report to visiting."

I looked over at my cellmate and shrugged.

"Shit, bro, that's a good thing. Get your skinny white ass going. You finally got people coming."

I was suddenly nervous, butterflies in my stomach. I hadn't seen anyone for a month. Heck, I hadn't even received notice that my visitors were approved.

"What day's this, J?"

"It's Thursday, bro." Johnny Deaver (call me J-Dogg) shrugged. "Could be family or conjugal."

I quickly headed back to the housing unit to change my clothes. After splashing myself with water from the sink, I added a shot of the cheap aftershave they sold in the commissary, thinking it could be Beth, and I was going to get laid. Fifteen minutes later, a Corporal escorted me through a back door in the visiting room, having informed me mine was a conjugal visit. My cock started swelling immediately. A month with nothing but my hand had me on edge. I was primed!

"This is the way to the fuck trailers," she said, using the unofficial name for the conjugal quarters as she led me through a tunnel that dipped steeply down, going underground. "Technically, they're not part of the prison proper. The tunnel was dug so inmates don't have to be shackled during transport. As long as you don't do anything stupid, Brennan, we don't need to put that jewelry on you, understood?"

"Understood."

At the end of the tunnel there was a door. She knocked on it and a pimply-faced corrections officer opened it. "Brennan, for conjugal," the corporal told him, then left without another word. The officer checked a clipboard.

"You're in trailer 3, Brennan. Second door on the right. You get 6 hours." He then turned away, his interest in me gone.

I quickly walked down a wide, concrete-floored hallway. I passed two doors, left and right. There were steep steps leading up to what appeared to be a double-wide trailer door. I climbed the steps to the door simply marked "3" and turned the handle.

"I am so glad to see you, baby," I said as I swung open the door.

My visitor sat on one of the two steel and molded plastic chairs in a single room with a bed, a sink, a TV and vending machines for food and soft drinks. There were two other doors: one marked 'No Inmates Beyond This Point' and another with both male and female symbols - a bathroom.

"Well, I'm glad to see you too, Roland, but since when do you call me baby?" my sister grinned as she stood to hug me. I stood there, shocked into silence as Cathy wrapped her arms around me.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she said when I didn't hug her back.

"There's got to be some kind of mistake, Cathy." I said. "This room is used for conjugal visits, not for family visits."

"What?" she asked with a laugh. "Are you kidding?"

"No, I'm not. Let me go talk to the guard." I turned and walked out to the sound of my sister chuckling behind me.

Ten minutes of frustration later, the guard accessed digital copies of my visitation forms. It was my fault; I had to admit. I'd put the wrong form in each of the envelopes I'd mailed. Beth had gotten the weekly family visits form, and Cathy... well, here we were.

"Well, can we just get them changed?" I asked. "I mean, you can see they've been approved; just for the wrong types of visits."

"Look, Brennan, that's not my job. You can talk to Admin about that. Now, do you want your visit or not?"

I returned to the trailer and explained what happened. Cathy had a good laugh over it; not much phased her. Cathy had served as a Marine Corps Corpsman during the first Gulf War, and had seen, as she described it, "more disturbing shit" than most people could imagine. After her service, she went to college, became an RN, and worked as a trauma nurse in a large hospital in a metropolitan city. She saw at least two people die every day, many by violence. She wasn't one to let a paper SNAFU take up space in her head.

"You'll get it worked out, Rol," she said. "I did wonder WTF when I saw the bed in here. At least it'll be a funny anecdote for your book."

"I hope they get it fixed," I said. "Beth won't be too happy if they don't."

"So she gets the weekly visits, but no benefits? Yeah, she wouldn't like that anymore than you would."

The time with my sister passed quickly. Like a lot of adult siblings, we'd gone our separate ways after we'd graduated high school. Three years younger than my sister, she'd missed the last of my developmental years. She said she remembered being shocked when I went for a journalism degree; she expected me to do something more active, given my love of sports and the outdoors.

Neither of us had kept up regular communication, so this was a chance to get to know each other again. We reminisced about our childhood, and she prompted my memory with names of people I hadn't thought about for years. We commiserated over the pressure from our parents to give them grandchildren. I was on the move all over the world for work and had no interest in bringing kids into the world. Cathy simply said she wouldn't have children either but didn't elaborate.

After a couple of hours, the chairs were very uncomfortable. Cathy said she imagined most people who used these trailers stayed in bed most of the time. We moved to the bed, sitting up against the wall as we ate junk food and talked.

Toward the end of the time, we both jumped when a loud pounding rattled the door. "Five minutes, Brennan! Five minutes remaining!"

"Holy crap," Cathy said. "Did you expect that?"

"No. They didn't say anything about that. It sure would interrupt things if this were a real conjugal visit, wouldn't it?" We both had a laugh at that one.

"Let me know when they get things straightened out," she said before leaving. I told her I'd call her. We hugged before leaving through our respective doors.

"Look at this happy mo'fucker!" my cellmate crowed when I came back. I shook my head and explained the situation.

"Well, ain't that some shit! You gotta be the only sumbitch cain't get laid in a fuck trailer!" he said. J-Dogg was a character. He talked like he'd grown up in the 'hood but had actually been an investment banker who had mismanaged, and possibly misappropriated, clients' funds to the tune of 8 figures. He hadn't offered the info, and I hadn't asked. I thought his prison persona was a way for him to deal with the boredom of prison life. He made me grin; I could've gotten a much worse cellmate - a celly, as he called it.

The next day, I sent a request to meet with my wellness counselor. It would be a week and a half before my meeting, I was told. I shook my head at that news. Things tended to move at the speed of corrections here.

I had purchased a tablet that was available to inmates. It didn't have internet access, but it could be used for downloading music and sending messages similar to e-mails through the approved provider, as well as making phone calls. I phoned Beth and told her what had happened. She didn't take it well, but said she had just gotten the notice that she was approved to visit and would see me sometime next week.

Time in prison creeps by. You're disconnected from the outside world to a large extent. It's essential to develop a routine to maintain your mental health. J-Dogg got me out on the weight pile five days a week, which kicked my butt at first. My busy job in the real world had led me to a pretty sedentary life; the days of high school were long behind me, and it took a long time for me to be able to complete a workout without wanting to puke.

My prison 'job' only took about four hours a day, five days a week. That left me with a lot of time to kill. Many of those hours, I was typing on the cheap detachable keyboard I'd gotten with my tablet. Nothing was really happening that was worth a book, though. This facility wasn't Shawshank; it was for the most part a bunch of middle-aged men who had let their lives go astray.

Still, prison dictates certain behavior. Show respect, don't pay attention to what anyone else is doing if it doesn't affect you, and most importantly, don't snitch. People still got hurt or worse for that. When you've had your entire life taken from you, you jealously guard everything you have. The staff turned a blind eye to a lot of things that made prison function smoothly, so there was usually some homemade liquor, hooch as it was called, tobacco, and weed available, if you could afford it. I never took notes about those things for the book. Anything I sent out on the tablet was subject to monitoring, and that could lead to problems I didn't want. 'Do the time, get out, go home' was my mantra.

My first visit with Beth took place in the large, open visiting room I'd walked through on my other visit. The tiled floors and high ceilings created annoying echoes, and it was hard to keep a conversation going with about 40 other visits going on at the same time. I could tell Beth was uncomfortable being here. She worked as an interpreter at the UN, and this was nothing she'd planned for her life. She stayed for two hours, which was about 80 minutes longer than I thought she'd make it.

"Let me know when they get the visits straightened out, Roland. I'll come back then, but I just can't do this." I told her I understood, and we hugged and kissed each other goodbye.

"Not a chance of changing your visitor roster," my wellness counselor said. "You were cautioned to be careful." I resented her condescending tone, but nothing I said or did would change the situation.

I wasn't exactly surprised at Beth's reaction to the news.

"Look, Roland, I'm sorry to do this, but I can't put my life on hold for two years. It would've been different if we had the conjugal visits, but... well, it's over." It was all very mature; we'd been together less time than I'd be locked up, so I couldn't fault her decision. I wished her well.

I let Cathy know what was going on. As expected, she took it in stride.

On our next visit, she teased me about the rest of my time to keep my spirits up. "Maybe you'll meet a nice boy in here," she grinned. "One of those... what are they called? Prison bitches?"

"Shut up," I said, elbowing her as we sat on the bed. "I'm not gonna be here long enough for anything like that!" I flexed my right hand. "Sally here and I will just have to make the best of it."

Cathy grinned. "I can try to sneak in some lipstick next time. That way, you could doll Sally there up to look like a mouth; it might not seem quite so lonely."

"Yeah, or you could do your brother a solid and wear the lipstick yourself," I laughed.

"You wish!" Cathy said brightly. She paused, looking like she was turning something over in her mind. "Although..."

I tried to wait out her silence. "Although what?"

She shook her head no. "Nothing. Never mind."

I shrugged. "OK."

Cathy seemed a bit distracted the rest of the visit, but managed to keep up her end of the conversation. I thanked her for the junk food; prison chow had already lost any appeal it might have had, and it was a nice break from the routine.

We said goodbye and hugged. I realized I was going to miss my sister. It's funny the level of importance people can take in your life. I really appreciated her willingness to come see me.

The next time she visited, I walked into the trailer and saw her wearing bright red lipstick. I stopped, remembering our joke, and stammered a greeting. Cathy hugged me tight; the hug lasted longer than our usual contact. "It's good to see you, baby brother," she breathed into my ear, her hands moving slowly over my back. My breath caught in my throat; what the hell?

Cathy pulled back to arm's length; the smirk on her face let me know she had been messing with me.

"So not funny," I laughed.

"What?" she asked innocently. "You asked me to wear lipstick, didn't you?"

"OK. It's funny now. It wouldn't be funny in six months, when I can't remember what a woman feels like," I grinned.

"You're such a big baby, Rol," she grinned as she elbowed me.

We caught up over the last couple of weeks, then Cathy turned to me. "I want to have a serious conversation now," she said.

"Oh. OK, sure. What's on your mind?"

"You know I was overseas for the Iraq War, right?" I nodded. "Well, for part of my tour, I was assigned to a Navy ship, which was used as a recovery hospital for servicemembers who were too injured to return to their units but who weren't stable enough to be shipped back stateside."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah, I don't talk much about that time. But anyway, Rol, some of the cases we saw were just tragic..."

She proceeded to tell me about the fighting men and women who were badly injured, disfigured, and in some cases, had lost limbs.

"These folks, Rol, especially the front-line fighters, they were heroes. Most of them barely out of their teens, if that, and facing the rest of their lives as amputees."

"Sounds awful, Cath."

She nodded. "It was." She took a deep breath. "So we'd do what we could for them... anything we could for them." She looked at me intently.

"I'm not sure what you mean, Sis," I said.

Her face scrunched up. "Unofficially, of course, as part of patient recovery, we performed a therapy that we called Manual Stimulation of the External Genitalia."

My eyes got wide. "You mean-"

She nodded. "Hand jobs, Roland. We would do for them what they couldn't do for themselves. It was seen as a kindness, even a mercy." She paused. "From what I hear, it still goes on in certain units in most hospitals. The body has a biological imperative, both for release of sexual tension and for compassionate human contact."

"I guess I can see that, Cath. But why are you telling me this?"

"Because I can help you, Rol." She opened her purse and pulled out a latex glove. "Take your pants off, Roland."

She had to be joking. "Ha-ha, Cath."

She shook her head. "Not a joke, Roland." She snapped the glove on her hand. "When I visit you, I can give you something more than your own hand while you're here."

"You want to jack me off, Cath?"

She shook her head. "I'm not saying I want to, and don't think of it as jacking you off. I'm

willing

," she emphasized the word, "to provide you with a needed biological release to make your life more comfortable."

"I'm not sure-"

"Roland, don't make this weird. I thought about this after our last visit. Any day, any time I want to, I can go home to my collection of sex toys, and I have a variety of things to satisfy me. I did some research on women in prison, even talked to some ex-cons whom I've treated. Do you know that in women's prisons, they buy Jolly Ranchers candies, melt them in a bag in hot water, and fashion dildos out of them?"

I had never even thought of such a thing.

"And what can you do? Nothing," she said. "If I were where you are, I'd probably be looking for an outlet, too. I can be that for you. Take off your pants, please." She spoke with a clinical efficiency, which is what made me realize she was serious.

"I really can't believe this," I said as I unbuttoned and unzipped. I slid my pants down, kicked off my shoes, and stepped out of my pants.