Dream: The Coed Prison

Dream 20040402, 3:20 AM: I’m in prison. In the context of the dream, I don’t recall any reason behind this, or remember any crime – I’m just here in prison now, and learning to adjust. My cellmate is a rugged looking shaved-bald-headed man, and he’s kind of acting as my mentor, teaching me how to adjust to things.

We somehow get a shipment of fancy art paper smuggled into our cell. I remember leaning over across the stack of it to hide it as it sits on my bunk; several people come up and kind of lean over there as if talking with me, and take sheets of it away. After a while, it’s mostly distributed except for the stack that I’m going to keep, and my cellmate says something about how well the whole transaction has gone. We’ve apparently cut the prison library in on the action, because *nobody* gets paper of this quality, not usually even the art stores. We laugh together in a satisfied way, pleased with ourselves.

There are four or five people hanging out in our cell. I remember my cellmate standing around with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders and draped kind of like a snug cape. There is a woman here who reminds me of Awis from the SCA long ago, and she asks if we want her to tell a story. She starts giving us a sample of the kind of story, and it’s racy, like something you’d read in a porno mag. She keeps talking about “Haezl,” saying the name with an accent so strong it’s like “Hezzle.” She explains that we could just all sit around and listen; there’s an implication that some people would listen and masturbate. We decide we’re not quite in the mood for this in our cell, and tell her so nicely, and she and her girlfriend leave to go back to their own cell.

My cellmate and I are outside, walking across a parking lot to some kind of dinner. I remember watching as people are stirring big pots of food on outside banquet tables. There are a lot of people milling around, and I don’t remember any tables. I have to get a code key, which is a little thing the size of an ink pen that attaches to a chain I wear around my ankle; I realize that my cellmate has one, and he shares it with me. There are guards checking to make sure that everybody has one. I am walking very close to my cellmate, and I think that we are arms-around-shoulders with a third guy as well. We’re all in orange jumpsuits. One of them says something about, “Hey, they’ve got *real* bread!” pointing to the banquet table. I say that he doesn’t want to hear about how long it’s been since *I* had real bread. I’m particularly looking forward to this one savory dish that looks and smells like chili.