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The Roommate Chapter 20 Induction and Transition
From the end of Chapter 19... The judge banged his gavel. The judge now looked down at me again. "Bailiffs, the offender at the defense table is no longer an accused free man,but a legal hard labor involuntary servant. I direct you to have this servant properly displayed." "YES YOUR HONOR." Three bailiffs said. Where did the other two bailiffs come from? Then I suddenly realized that as a hard labor servant I was assumed to be violent and intransigent, and so I was going to be manhandled to show me that my choice was to obey or to suffer. After I was released from the chair and my leg shackles were unlocked from the floor, I was put into a belly chain,and dragged in front of the bench. "Bailiffs, this hard labor involuntary servant needs to have its appearance altered to confirm to its new station."
The Roommate Chapter 20 Induction and Transition
There was a flurry of activity around me, but with a guard holding onto each of my elbows, I was going nowhere.
The Bailiff went to the defense side of the courtroom and after unclipping a ring of keys from HIS belt, sorted out a key and opened a door that was in the wall nearest the defense table. The interior of the closet was immediately illuminated by a bank of fluorescent lights.
I sardonically thought that clearly the room had been planned and constructed to efficiently take control of the new involuntary servants. I noted that the door opened so that the free citizens would see the door open toward them. They would not see what I saw. Inside the closet I saw a line of striped pants and shirts arranged on several shelves. I could also see white "t's" and another stack of small white clothing which I concluded must be white boxer shorts. Finally on the bottom of the shelves and down to the floor was an array of heavy looking black boots, with seriously thick soles on them. I shuddered looking at my new clothes. The cloth looked more like canvas and would enclose and be a first layer of confining and enslaving items which would hold, control, and identify an involuntary servant to any citizen, even from a distance. I involuntarily shuddered as I looked at my clothing for years to come. It would both identify me and envelop me to myself and to anyone seeing me in those cloth walls of slavery. I almost allowed myself to smile as I realized that my mind had identified what I would be when enveloped by the cloth and leather garments and shoes, an involuntary servant... and if we were to dispense with euphemisms what I was going to become was a hard labor slave.
I could see the guard looking back at me and selecting items for the piles for me. As I watched him, I had an additional thought which actually made me shudder. All though the stages of my descent into the status of an involuntary servant, in the back of my mind there was a small voice assuring me that this whole scene was planned by Beau, and that Beau had planned my transformation. I knew for certain now that Beau was behind the change in his parents' plans to go on their trip earlier, and was behind all my change from sleeping in my luxurious bed in the mansion to awakening in my now crumpled and soiled clothing in a car that I knew I had never driven, much less driven into the fences along the lane to Beau's home. Deep in the back of my mind, even as I experienced the chains, cuffs, and loss of dignity and freedom of my trip to the jail and to the court, I knew that all this experience was following a script that Beau had planned. Somehow, I thought, in much less time than the court might give to me, I would be returned to my family in Massachusetts with a background and understanding of the life of an involuntary servant that would contrast to my observation of the life of an inmate and even my experience as an inmate in the SHU in our prison adventure.
Actually as I had thought about my situation awaiting my turn to leave by door 320, I had more than once thought that I was experiencing pay back for the time Beau also had experienced the clothing, boredom, chains and the imprisonment of a SHU inmate. But as I came to this point, I began to shake even more. Beau never could have expected that the judge would look over the record of Thomas G. Miller so meticulously. I was confident that Beau never would have intended to make me a life involuntary servant, and especially that he would never have intended to make me a life servant, but with the additional burden of being a hard labor involuntary servant. I thought back to see the huge muscled men who were life hard labor servants when Beau showed me the lumber and the quarry operations at Pleasant Acres. I guess my muscles would also grow as I labored at hard labor.
Once my clothing had been selected, I noticed that action was also occurring on the opposite side of the courtroom. From the door on the opposite side... the prosecution side... of the courtroom, two black and white striped servants appeared. One carried some sort of a rubber mat, and the other brought a box which showed a couple of electric cords dangling over the side. These servants appeared to be older than many I had seen. If I had to guess I would put their ages in their forties to early fifties. Their black and white suits were sparkling clean, pressed, and appeared to be of a finer and less stiff cloth than those of the other involuntary servants I had seen. What really struck me was what I saw at the two opposite ends of their bodies. Around their necks were steel collars, but theirs were shiny as if they had just been polished, and were much less wide and high than other servants' collars I had seen. Their collars were probably an inch tall and a quarter of an inch thick. On their feet were polished black shoes. They were not in the thick soled, heavy leather boots that the officer had picked out for me, and that I had seen on the feet of all those new servants from my chain gang companions who had arrived in the court hoping for mercy as well as punishment, but whose clothing and vacant stares as they had passed me in the hallway showed the agony of their reduction from citizen to servant, and from a person who had choices and freedom of movement, to one whose movements, expressions, behavior, and every aspect of life itself were something ordered, enforced, and DONE to them and were planned to keep them always aware that they were servants, living totally under the control and for the benefit of others. The court servants seemed to have showered recently, and from the top of their shaved bald heads to the hands and any other skin I could see, they were clean and missing bruises and evidence of any slave strap encounters. I realized that I would not be housed in their much softer and smoother and much less comfortable footwear, and I was quite sure my collar would not be like their more symbolic than serious ones.
They came all the way to where I was standing. I was facing the judge still, but they went behind me and one of them placed the rubber mat on the floor behind me. I could feel its raised edge against my ankle. I heard the other servant set down his box beside the mat.
"SERVANT!" the Judge shouted at me. As I heard the Judge's angry shouted address at me, I also received a lesson in the proper etiquette of servants. I received a blow from a servant strap on my buttocks which almost knocked me over. As my nervous system was processing that pain, I heard the Judge yell at me, "YOU DO NOT MOVE UNLESS ORDERED!" I almost smiled at the thought of my father's comment to me as I was being paddled as a youngster "The fastest way to a boy's brain is through his butt." I decided what was true for a boy was also true for an involuntary servant. That stinging in my butt was memorable enough that I believe it would intervene with any impulse to move unless I had been ordered to do so.
Apparently all was now in readiness to turn me from a citizen to a life hard labor involuntary servant. In my mind I now resolved to end my use of the euphemism of involuntary servant, and at least for a life hard labor involuntary servant, the right term was slave, and that is my term for me from now on. I knew it, and I was sure Beau and those who would control me totally at Pleasant Acres knew that I was just as much an owned piece of property as any slave in history.
One of the slaves in stripes turned me so that I was now facing the audience in the courtroom. Apparently this ceremony was something of interest as because instead of perhaps five or six non-participants in the courtroom for my trial, the seating area for an audience was now almost totally filled. I remembered the words that Mark Twain gave to a man who was about to be run out of town on a rail. "If it weren't for the honor of it, I'd just as soon walk." Right now I would have just about liked to do almost anything else and be almost anywhere else than in this courtroom, and watching preparations to turn me from a citizen to a life hard labor involuntary servant – slave.
My head was covered with the permanent hair removal cream. It burned, as I actually had expected it to do.
Totally humiliated now, I observed that the two court servants had a tub of the permanent hair removal, and they themselves wore rubber arm length gloves as they slathered the cold, viscous product on my neck, chest, back and arms until they were covered with a thick coat of the exfoliate. The coating stank, and it soon began to burn and itch.
In my mind, a court that would do that to a naked being had no dignity, but it was clear that no one was interested in my opinions.
Soon my legs and feet were clothed with the itchy hot exfoliate that would make them also forever clean of hair. Now, I thought, my humiliation is over. Just wipe me down, give me my servant boxers and my striped servant uniform and let me escape this public spectacle. Unfortunately, I did not anticipate the next step in my transformation. To my shame all the handling of my cock and balls to get them coated, had given me a reaction: my dick was rising. I tried to will it down, but my libido trumped my rational thoughts. The realization that I was naked, covered with a substance that I knew would change me from a normal human being to a hairless freak, also was stimulating my inner and most repressed and hidden being. It was sexually simulating. The thought that secretly...way down in my libido... repressed and denied... I wanted this to happen to me was perhaps what really shook the old Franklin Wilkinson into a confused but deeply, sickeningly excited life hard labor servant. Beau perhaps was a better psychologist than I would ever have thought. Could he be doing this to me because he knew back in the part of my brain and emotions I kept hidden even from myself, that this life was the life I wanted to experience? That thought made me stand there differently. I let the audience stare at me, not like I had a choice, but perhaps also not that I really was being treated totally differently than I wanted to be.
One of the court servants arrived with a hand held vacuum, and soon the clumps of hair that had built up around my feet disappeared. At first I wondered why they were concerned for my comfort; then I realized that of course that wasn't their purpose. The cleanup was not for my comfort, but to facilitate the next phase of my transformation. The servants set down the two buckets, each with a sponge floating on the top.
"Proceed!" the Judge ordered.
The servants did indeed proceed and from the top of my head and working carefully down the length of my body, They washed the cream off, along with the last vestiges of my adult hair pattern, clearly marking me as something different from all other adult males in the world.
As they did my head one of the court servants whispered very quietly in my ear. "Close your eyes as tight as you can, and do not open them till one of us tells you to boy."
I bristled a bit being called boy, but did as they suggested. Soon the cream was sponged off me. The heat and the discomfort were being washed away along with the old Franklin Emerson Wilson Wilkinson. I did not know what my new state issued ID would be, but I would never be the same person who arrived at the airport so recently. I would not be a "person" at all.
Somewhere in my mind a coping mechanism there was a coping mechanism – humor. I thought to myself, that now I was not a Mexican hairless, but a Yankee hairless. I laughed inwardly because I knew that if the judge saw even a smile from me interrupting the procedure, something bad would happen, and I had no desire to see what punishment could come my way for interfering with the process. Suddenly I thought to myself..."You are now thinking like a servant slave!" My next thought was that if I ever had the opportunity I would like to examine the adaptability of the human species. Surely my ability to grasp aspects of my new reality represented a high level of human analytical ability and adaptability. I thought how surprised the members of the audience would be if they knew that the naked, reddish hairless creature being displayed for them was actually quite capable of high level thinking, analysis, and rational decision making – not that it mattered.
Again I thought... Well they have done all they can. Or course I was wrong – again.
I was brought back to my new reality. I stood naked and hairless not in private but in front of a packed courtroom audience. Once I had privacy, but I realized that now was something only human beings had. Nothing about me would ever be private again.
The judge banged his gavel. "Bailiff, what is the servant registration number for this servant?"
The bailiff looked up from his handheld computer. "SIR, 613 210 541, SIR," he replied
My left arm was pulled away from my body and held securely by one of the court servants, while another came with some sort of a flat paddle that trailed an electric cord to an outlet in the side wall of the court. As my left arm was held tightly by two court servants, the paddle was held against my arm from about my wrist up toward my elbow. I did not expect the searing heat that happened when the paddle hit my skin, and I screamed out in pain. The audience's reaction was applause.
Next I felt a paddle being held against my back just below where my neck connected to my shoulders, and again I felt the searing heat.
As I was recovering from what I now realized was my branding, the Judge's voice came though my pain. "Servant you have just been branded with your servant number. Remember it, as it is now your identity. Of course since we know that the mental acuity of servants is not great, that is why we have placed it in easy view for you on your left arm." He was right – It was in easy view – my new name, a brand of nine digits 613 210 541.
The court servants then held me up by both of my arms. As I was being displayed the Judge again intoned solemnly. "CITIZENS! OBSERVE AND BE WARNED! If you choose to violate the laws of this state, you can now observe the consequence of that disobedience. You see before you a hard labor involuntary life servant permanently denuded of hair, branded with its new identity number, and soon to made decently clothed for society by being placed in its striped servant clothing. It will be taken from the court and sent to a training facility where it will become a compliant hard working life involuntary hard labor servant. Do not allow this to happen to you!"
I mentally was defeated and ready to be removed from the courtroom in which I had just been transformed from a confident, upper class gentleman to a subhuman object – a life involuntary servant. But again, of course, I was wrong. My transformation was not over.
The judge...the man responsible for my misery and my transformation had more in store for me.
"Attendants turn this servant around full circle so that I can inspect all of your work."
"Master Judge, Yes Master Judge!" one of the servants promptly responded.
Immediately with an attendant on both my elbows, I was fully rotated one full circle.
Once more, I was facing the citizens there to witness my complete subjugation.
"ATTENDANTS HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN A STEP? THIS SERVANT IS STILL NOT READY TO BE DISCHARGED FROM THE COURT."
"MASTER JUDGE, we attendants are ready to complete this servant's attire SIR."
"Proceed," the Judge ordered.
I wondered what was needed, and the answer came I saw the physical presence of my steel servant collar.
I didn't realize it was coming. All too quickly a servant was in front of me, and also a bailiff. The servant presented to the bailiff something that almost caused me to break the façade of calm that I had tried to give to deprive the crowd OF something that I suspected they would enjoy – the sight of a servant breaking down begging and crying.
In front of my eyes was an open steel collar. I had seen collars come by me in the hallway, worn by servants that passed unnoticed by freeman, as subhuman objects do, but this one was very different. It was easily an inch and a half wide, although it might not have been a full half inch thick. The collar sported four "U" shaped projections evenly spaced around its circumference. The attendant was clearly letting me see this collar closely, but my attention was a bit distracted by the Judge's beginning to speak again.
"Servant, the attendant is allowing you to look at this collar. After it is affixed around your neck today, you probably will never be able to see it directly again, but you will for the rest of your life be aware of its presence. The collar is both symbolic and practical. The neck collar has for centuries identified the indentured servant, and so any being wearing it can be identified even from a distance as one of the servant class. Any citizen seeing the collar knows that the wearer is a servant and the citizen has the right of the free citizen to order and demand obedience and subservience from the wearer of the collar. Your collar has four "D" rings which are not welded onto the collar, but are cast as PART of the collar. These "D" rings will be available to any citizen to attach you to any solid structure to make sure you don't wander away in your ignorance. It also ensures that you will be attached to your work in many cases, but always reminds you and the world of your subservient status as a life hard labor involuntary servant." Here the Judge paused.
I had stopped looking at him. I was absolutely fixated on this collar that I knew would soon be around my neck, and by its weight and its "D" rings that would indeed allow any citizen to lock me anywhere that free citizen would desire.
"The court servants will allow this new servant to hold the collar for the first and last time in its life so that the memory of its weight, its strength, and its ability to allow the servant to be locked exactly where the servant is supposed to be will always be imprinted on its memory."
The court servant had a surprised look on his face. I could see this part of the ritual of the transformation of a citizen into a servant did not normally contain this step.
HE placed the collar into my hands, and although I thought I was ready for its weight almost dropped it. As I fought to gain control of the collar, I could feel the Judge's satisfaction as indeed the massive power and weight of my collar caused me to shudder, and I began an involuntary shaking which was received by the audience with laughter and derisive remarks.
"That's what these animals need" somebody yelled.
"I bet he'll learn to love it!" was another comment.
"Serves these servants right! It needs to know that we free citizens can control it no matter how muscle bound it will become."
After these I tuned out all the rest of the comments. I was confident that not one person would say anything like how cruel it would be to have to work with that weight on your neck, or how really cruel it was to add this weight permanently to any person.
But one last remark got to me and caused what I guess was the result the crowd wanted—the one that finally broke my resolve to confront the crowd's attacks by showing great dignity and rectitude. What was the comment? "Looks right on him. He looks too dumb to function without being chained and collared. He's as dumb as an ox, and now he'll look like one!" That broke me down, and caused the crowd to break into laughter, and cheers of agreement.
The Judge banged his gavel and the crowd immediately heeded its demand for silence. It was awesome that a little wooden hammer could exercise so much power.
"Servant you will also know there is no lock on your collar. I have here the liquid that will actually fuse to two parts together when they come into contact with one another. After it has hardened for all practical purposes you will have a solid unbroken piece of steel around your neck. I know of no servant who has worn this collar that did not die with it as securely surrounding his neck as this one, (here the Judge held up the collar in front of me) which will soon begin to circle, control, and identify you." Here the Judge paused. I could feel his piercing gaze on me.
"Court servants, here is the solution. Put it on the two edges, and use the closing jaws to set the two edges together tightly."
The two court servants seized the collar and pulled the opening between the ends further apart, and scraping my neck soon had it around my neck but not yet closed. As I looked into their eyes, I, at first, saw nothing. Then I saw a certain look in their eyes – the kind of glint that meant they were happy to be doing their job, happy to be in the spotlight, doing the job of enslaving another human being, transforming him into an object like them, but on a much lower level. My role would not be that of a prominent part of the judicial machinery. My role would be in a slave world where not free citizen would ever applaud what I did or address me as if I could rationally understand my task. I would not have a profession or even a job: I would have only anonymous labor as a numbered hard labor servant for life. They were proud of the collaring me to my new identity.Anther servant then approached me with something that looked like a giant set of pliers. I could see the ends were tapered and were spaced to go through two of the four "D" rings. I felt the collar go on, and I saw the servant break open the seal and smear the clear viscous liquid on both ends of the collar. Then I saw one of the other attendants, whose muscles looked rippled under his stripes like he could bend anything, fit the two small ends of the crimping tool into two of the "D" rings, and with muscles bulging began to close the collar. I felt the two sides of the collar close. As the circle closed, the muscle-bound servant continued putting pressure on the closing tool, and I felt my neck receive its collar, the attachment that I had no reason to doubt would be around my neck until the last day of my life.
My heart was pounding as I listened to the hash slow breath of the servant fitting my collar to my neck. Then some attendant said "TIME," and the tool was released--BUT my collar remained pushing down on my shoulders, and securing my senses that I was now a collared servant.
I had become used to the fact that I was actually naked in public, except now for my collar. At this time, however, in my peripheral vision, I saw a stack of striped clothing being brought out for me.
Again the Judge intoned his direction. "Attendants, clothe this servant according to its category."
A chorus of "Judge, Yes, Judge!" followed and the striped group approached me smiling. I momentarily mused about how these involuntary servants did not seem to identify with me even as I entered into a brotherhood with them as a striped and collared servant, but they seemed to identify with the freepersons who owned and exploited us. Once again I seemed to remember in a psychology class I think it was called the Stockholm syndrome: captives at some point identify themselves with their captors. I believe this concept was developed for persons taken hostage, but it seemed to me to also explain the complicity of involuntary servants against involuntary servants.
Again the Judge banged his gavel. "Citizens, many of you may never have been close enough to look at the servant clothing that this life hard labor servant will soon wear. As the court servants handle the clothing, you will notice that it is made of a distinctive material , heavy and thick, almost like canvas."
"Servants take the life hard labor suit out so that the audience can feel it and appreciate its qualities."
I stood there naked and with a wilting but still more than flaccid cock saluting the audience while one of the court servants took my new trousers, and the other my new shirt, and went through the little gates in the low fence that separated the court officials' space from the audience's space. They carried the pants and shirt out and down the center aisle. They moved very slowly so that audience members could reach over and feel the thick cloth. Several comments were made but they weren't said so loudly that I could really hear them. Anyway, I tuned them out. The parade of my clothing went down the center aisle, and returned by the outside aisle.
Upon the court servants' return to the area beside me they again paused.
"Show the servant his new clothes." the Judge ordered.
I looked down at the trousers and felt the thick cloth. One of the servants held up the shirt. I saw the familiar black and white stripes. I saw the normal ID between two stripes of the shirt identifying me as a TN servant, but as the court servant unfolded my shirt for me I saw that it had a second line of red printing. This read in letters big enough to be seen from far away: "LIFE HARD LABOR SERVANT."
I now was given a white "T" shirt with my new ID number printed on it, and I waited. I had already become wary of doing anything now specifically ordered.
The Judge solved my problem by stating "As you are given your clothing items, servant, you will put them on. The court servants will assist as needed."
I pulled my new "t" over my chest and was given my new boxers, which, as the court servant showed me, were also stenciled with my permanent ID number. I slipped these on as ordered, and was surprised that I did not feel as much satisfaction as I had expected to feel about no longer showing my previously private areas to the court and the audience. I had a fearful thought. Was I already accepting my role as something that deserved to be treated as much less than a true human being and citizen? This was what I was thinking as I pulled my stiff white boxers over my reluctant nuts and inserted my now-white-clad nuts and ass into my new servant trousers. I saw that my number and the notation that I was a hard labor life servant were emblazoned across the butt of my trousers, which were every bit as thick and difficult to get into as I had thought they would be just from their looks. Then came the thick white and black striped servant shirt and the thick steel buttons that nailed it securely to my body, the stiff collar buttoned on my neck just below my new steel collar. Finally the stool was repositioned so that I could sit and put on my thick white socks, and finally my thick-soled black servant work boots.
I was stood up. I thought I was ready for my exit, but the clanking of chains immediately told me that I had forgotten that I needed chains to be applied to me in addition to my very distinctive stripes. Soon I wore thick steel ankle and wrist cuffs. There was no connective chain on the wrist cuffs, but the my ankles were not only cuffed but attached to each other by a heavy linked chain of perhaps eighteen inches,
"Hold your hands out." one of the court servants said quietly to me. I held out my arms, and an additional suit of white and black servant garb was placed on my folded arms.
I was guided back and off the rubber mat.
The judge again banged his gavel.
"Servant, serve faithfully and fully as a hard labor servant." Here the Judge paused.
"Guards. Remove this servant to begin his service."
I clanked toward the door I had entered as a different being not all that long ago. I had trouble walking because I was not used to the weight and the restrictions of my shackles, and because I had the bundle of clothing to carry with me, holding it before me as if I had been given a wonderful gift to carry home with me.
One of the court officers opened the door. I couldn't help smiling to myself when I realized that although I was the life hard labor servant, it was the freeman guard who was opening the door for me. But as I went clanking down the hallway to the elevator, I began to appreciate how much hard labor I would have to do just to move in my new status. We reached the elevator, and again the guard operated the controls. Soon the elevator chimed, the doors opened, and we were descending. My mind continued wandering. I thought it was the last symbolism: I was descending into the hell of my new life.