MALE IN THE ROOM

Reclaiming My Voice: 11/14/17

"MALE IN THE ROOM"

The standard announcement made as I enter a dorm of several young female inmates. There are two groups: ages 18-21, ages 15-17. I am accompanied by a security officer, and a program manager, both female. It’s Tuesday, roughly 6:30 in the evening, on Rikers Island.

In the dorm room is a single flat-screen TV perched high on the corner of a wall looking out into the rest of the seating area which is a bare room with metallic tables and chairs fixed to the ground. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and the ambient drone of TV chatter seems to harmonize in a static duet that echoes into emptiness. Occasionally the jarring buzz of a gate cuts in, punctuating phrases with a sudden shock reminder of where you are, and that you are alive.

The seating room opens up into the sleeping area, where about 30 sparsely made beds are arranged in a grid, each with a large trashcan next to it. Some of the beds have snacks and water near them, some books, magazines. There is a clique of young women seated towards the far east corner of the room, chattering. A lone girl comes up to me and my two female companions from behind. She is shy, but interested in what the male in the room has to offer. Her name is A. After being introduced, I utter just as shyly:

“I’m here to see if you want to learn how to write songs and sing them.”

She shuffles around, half interested.

“Do you like music?”

“Yea,” she responds.

“Well I’m thinking we can even get some musicians in here and perform the song with them.”

“And this starts today?”

We all share a laugh as she scribbles her name on the top of the sign up list.

The other young women in the clique signal that they wanna know what’s going on. We approach them and give them a more animated pitch, as it is harder to keep their attention. They coordinate a boisterous chorus of “LISTEN” by Beyonce, as a response to my asking if they enjoy singing. Clearly they are ready to go. They ask me to sing right now, and I let them know they’ll have to show up to the first class for that. They sign up, and also add the name of another girl who was listening nearby. There were a few other young women, one was reading, another on the phone, who were not interested. The visit with the 18-21 group lasts a little less than 10 minutes.

I’m led through a labyrinth of gates, hallways and elevators that I had no space in my brain to even begin to map out. I relied solely on the security officer and program manager, as was my only option. In this world I made no decisions, and everything was suspect.

Now I’m in another room with the exact same setup, only there are 3 girls, 2 of whom approach me first. We sit at the tables and talk. I avoid sitting on a chair at the table with the rest of them, because on the chair was a small opened packet of a gel-like substance that had been sitting there for what seemed like more than a few hours. I didn’t want to draw attention to it, so instead sat awkwardly distant.

“I’ve been wanting to write a song. Ok, because I’m pregnant so I’ve been wanting to write a song really bad.”

“That’s great!” I exclaim awkwardly. “You could write a song for your baby.”

She smiles, as if to say Duh.

I would go on to learn that she may not have actually been pregnant, otherwise she would be in a different room. Was she lying? Or did she really believe she was pregnant, even though in reality she wasn’t? How much of it mattered?

The other girl was an obvious candidate for the workshop. She’s well known within the other arts programs that work at the facility. “What are you talking about, remember when you freestyled like an entire act of a play?” exclaimed the security officer, who was also new and just starting to form relationships with the inmates. 2 more names on the list. Then pregnant-or-not girl walks to the sleeping area and takes down the name of another inmate who was on the phone. 3 now from the 15-17 group.

This age group is divided into two sections, for socializing reasons. “Some girls just don’t get along with each other, they’re adolescents” explains the newbie officer. We walk into the second room, same setup, to encounter a lone girl with glasses sitting closer to the TV and hard at work on a large puzzle. It must have been a thousand piece puzzle of a country home scene: white fence, red house/converted barn, autumn colored trees and hazy bluish grey skies. She was about half way through. She had Cazal frames that rested on top of a button nose with freckles, and poofed out hair- your average hipster nerd get up. A 3 liter orange Fanta bottle, half emptied, sat next to her and her puzzle.

“Hey I’m Chris. I’m here because I wanna see if you’d be down to learn how to write some songs, and maybe sing them.”

…

“Do you like music?”

She nods.

“What about singing?”

Silence.

“Weeelll maybe we can work on that!”

She agrees.

She only makes eye contact with me about midway through our conversation, and in that instant, I realize how much work lies ahead of me. We convince her to sign up her roommate who is in the bathroom. She smirks at the small victory of having forced her roommate into a singing workshop without her knowing, and resumes her thousand piece puzzle as we leave.

While on our visit to the Serenity Room where the workshops will take place, an alarm goes off halting our tour for 15 minutes. An alarm is really just a bright flashing blue light that means no one can move, and everything freezes until whatever situation that caused the alarm is fixed. The program officer lets me know that I’ve been asking too many questions and that I’m making her head hurt. I take a back seat, and stare into the Serenity room at all the self portraits the girls have done. The program and security officer exchange stories of inmates, and their experiences with trust. They both talk about how some of the inmates grew to love them so much, that they would kill in order to protect them. And some did. From the casualness of their conversation and the order of everyone around us, I could deduce that alarms happen often here.

Another series of tight security measures, seemingly meaningless hand offs of documents, tags, and clips and I’m back out to the visitor’s center waiting for the sole bus that comes on and off the island to take me back to the outside world. I’m in the waiting room with a few others who are obvious do gooder granola artist types, Trader Joe’s reusable tote bags and all. And a few friends or family of the inmates. A droning TV again overhead, and even less flattering lighting again to match. I sit. I think about music. I think about what I’ve signed up to do, by myself. I check my calendar, add in Mondays and Thursdays for the next month, which will include Thanksgiving, Christmas and my 31st birthday. The brightness of my phone, which wasn’t allowed in, shocks me back into the reality of where I am and that I’m free to leave. On the bus ride home I feel heavy, and my mind is swirling with information overload mush. And the swirling, like thunder, conducts lightning synapses of ideas that only half form and then die too soon.