(originally from March 13th, 2008)
I had an extremely early call time of 6 am to be on a bus in Manhattan for 7am to go to the Women’s Correctional facility in Westchester to tape an episode of Law and Order SVU. I managed to get there on time, because I would really hate for the bus to leave without me. I just got on the bus and I had my friend Julia saving me a seat. That was a relief because I didn’t recognize half the people on the bus and didn’t want to sit with any “butchy” lesbians. In fact, save for the bus driver and PA, the entire bus was reeking of estrogen.
Normally this would be hitting the jackpot for the male bus driver, though I really doubt half of the Women on that bus were into the male anatomy. So off we were on the way to WestChester to a real prison facility. I immediately made friends with this Woman who called herself “Poppi”, who was a very proud Lesbian. At first I was intimidated by her as she was an older Woman, and I am not into bull-dykes or Lesbians. Though she was very colorful and sociable character that really was fun and outgoing, you had to like her.
We get to the Westchester facility where the entire place is fenced and barbed wired up. Then Poppi yells out “This is your last chance to get rid of your contrabands!” We all start to laugh and then one of the guards comes on the bus to check our ID’s for security purposes. Then Pappy gets all “Shifty” and tells us that she has been in the joint for 5 years for selling a kilo (of cocaine). I’m like great of all the people I end up sitting next to. Well I guess I was lucky to have “Poppi” on my side.
We got ourselves situated up in holding and we soon gravitated to one table in holding and became "Poppi's Posse". We started posing for pictures which were funny though came rather naturally while in the “orange suits”. Poppi of course was our fearless leader. Here is a picture of “Poppi’s Crew”.
The scene was set up in the indoor basketball court/recreation room. All of us were dressed in those orange jumpsuits. Some of us were by the basketball hoops, and others were situated by the backgammon and trivia tables. They also had a Yahtzee game there. I haven’t seen that or played it since my youth.
On set, it became the usual milling around and waiting for something to happen. When you are bored you look for people or situations to amuse you. There was this one SAG player who looked really nasty. She had that really worn out look with massive ingrained wrinkles probably from over-exposure to the sun. She really did have that hard look of a convict. In fact we thought she may be an escapee! Not only did she look the part, but she acted like a convict and bitch like she owned the basketball court!
That skanky looking bitch really owed up to her title when we had finally had a break. There was one table set up with trays of Ham and turkey slices and huge slices of rye and white bread. Also on the table were grapes, and some minor snacks like skittles.
Since we were down on set for several hours, when they yelled out “break”, you can imagine this tsunami of “orange suits” all piling up the stairs to get to the food. I admit the way they had it set up was ridiculous. They had the one big table in the middle of the corridor eight by the prison cells. The SAG players were coming in from one end of the table as the Non-Sag players were coming in from the other end. It was a huge “tranny” mess.
Then the really harsh looking SAG player showed her true colors and owned up to her demeanor. She started complaining how she could not get to the food table and when she finally did she got into a huge scrap with this other over the “prison” food.
Once the fight finally settled down, I got to the table and investigated to see what the fuss was all about. They were fighting over a piece of ham. I really don’t get it. It wasn’t like it was quality ham like Boars head or something like that. It was more like a cheap PathMark sloppy and slimy slices of ham. Plus there was still an entire tray of Turkey. I personally would “kill” for a quality boars head slice of ham, Pathmark brand not so much.
Shortly after we were summoned by the drill sergeant to come back to set. A wave of Orange suits filed down back to set. I tell you they should have taped the “ham incident” as it was far more entertaining than the actual scene.
Luckily it turned out to be a decent day and the majority of us were signed out while it was still daylight. After spending a day in prison I realized that I never want to do anything wrong to be locked up in a prison cell. It’s a really dreary place. The only good thing about this prison cell was that we were released and at the end of the day. Let me tell you it is a great feeling, this thing called freedom and having a slice of ham of my choice.
A.
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