THE GATES OF HELL

It never fails. I'm in a hurry. I'm trying to escape the daily grind of prison. I'm standing near the sliding glass door, waiting for it to do what it should do--SLIDE--but it doesn't slide. And if I tap on the glass I'll only piss off the officer in the enclosure. I'm not in control of this situation; she is. She says, "Gate 1" to the officer handling the electronic switches.

Now I'm mad. I'm ready to pull my hair out. Why not Gate 2? Visitors are entering the neutral zone. They have to go through a metal detector and be patted down. The officer makes them take off their shoes. We're talking a good three minutes. Tack on another two for the elderly. Tack on another five if a baby's involved.

"Hello darling," Ricco says from the prison yard phone, "bring Junior with you, and remember to hide the drugs in his diaper."

I shouldn't be this way. Even though I'm not paid by the hour. I'm salaried. The time clock, I've been told, is for my safety. But administration isn't fooling anyone. They monitor our time with computer generated printouts. Time in, time out. It's all there, in black and white.

I'll never forget the day I arrived for work and set the metal detector off, not once, not twice, but three times. "I can do this," I told the gate officer.

"Let me pat you down," he said.

I assumed the stance. He started with my ankles and worked his way up. He scrunched my shirt pocket. "What do we have here?" he asked.

Then I realized: my wife and I had gone to a party. She decided to let her hair down. Put this in your pocket, she said, handing me a pink barrette. It must've went through the wash. "It's my wife's," I said.

"Sure it is," he said.

Gate 1, Gate 2, it doesn't matter. When you're between them, the officer is in control. And now there's a security camera to prove it.