When a casual conversation turns to such an unpleasant topic as prison, people sipping lazily their beer often ask: “And what about sex in prison?”

A stupid question if you ask me. Nobody wants to know how things are with food or fresh air, for instance. Sex seems to be more important.

Prior to my arrest I myself was involved in such discussions a few times. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any explanation worthwhile repeating here. The ones who ask questions make suggestions about homosexuality and masturbation being widespread in prison. The ex-prisoner would usually sound vague and pretend to be ‘long in the tooth’. The whole conversation reminded a mental hospital patients’ blether.

Whatever you might say, the overwhelming majority of homo sapiens lead very primitive lives. Their objectives are purely utilitarian: to make some money (preferably with minimal efforts), to stuff their stomachs with food, to relieve themselves, go to a football match and having swallowed a glass of vodka collapse on the bed with a whore. Such existence is no different from other mammals. The only difference is that animals don’t ruin their health by eating, drinking, breathing and injecting such a lot of shit into their bodies.

As for sex, for most people it is as boring and monotonous as, say for instance, smoking. Nothing like what they show us in the movies. However, similar to a heavy smoker who can’t do without cigarettes, most homo sapiens can’t do without these stupid back and forth movements.

Something squeaked and moved above my head. The Boney climbed down the upper bunk.

- You are still writing…

His intonation didn’t give me a clue whether it was a statement or a question. Then he saw the name of the chapter and a gleam of thought so uncharacteristic for his nature showed on his face. He sat down and made an effort to think. About forty minutes later the Boney stared at me in disbelief and said slowly:

- What are you writing about? There is no sex in prison.

He was absolutely right. How can one even think about sex in such bestial conditions?

The only possible solution of sex problem in prison is to eliminate from your conscience everything that has any association with sex. Turn it off as you turn off the light. Don’t worry - you’ll be able to turn it on again when you are out of here. But while you are here better not think about sex. Try to direct your sexual energy into a different channel like daily physical workouts to strengthen your willpower and body.

Some inmates are panic-stricken about long abstinence. They think that after a few years of abstinence they won’t be able to have normal sexual relations. Such apprehensions have absolutely no grounds. Abstinence has never done anyone any harm. More likely the opposite. Potency and ability for sexual relationship have more to do with psychological state of mind then with physiology. The only physiological function of the body is to provide sufficient rush of blood to the lower part of the body. The rest happens in human’s head.

So don’t worry. If you are physically and mentally fit you’ll be able to have full sex even after thirty years of abstinence. Just don’t think about sex. You’ll survive without it behind bars. It’s not oxygen. The only regret is that you have to spend your best years in prison. But it’s a different problem.

Behind bars mature people don’t usually have problems with abstinence. The younger ones do. They show each other clippings from porno magazines and share their erotic experiences savoring every detail. Once the Boney caught Fifi having an orgasm on the lavatory pan. He was indignant:

- What shall we do with him, mates?

Opinions split. Some thought that such behavior threatened the cell with ecological disaster. Others supported Fifi saying that it was his own business and had nothing to do with the others. The heated discussion reminded me of the debate in the Ukrainian parliament. Finally it was decided to wake up Uncle Grisha and find out his opinion - he was the oldest in the cell.

The sleepy Stepanych couldn’t make out why he had been woken up but when he understood he pulled the blanket over his head and went back to sleep.

- Do it for him in turns and let me sleep, - he murmured.

Such advice discouraged my cell-mates from further discussions.

Lots of inmates follow Fifi’s example. They believe masturbation does no harm to health or body. But then why do they become impotent at the age of thirty?

Nothing can substitute a sexual intercourse with a woman you love. Any attempts to find a different solution affect a person’s state of mind. After such Fifi is released from prison a beautiful girl lying on white sheets won’t be enough for him to get an erection. He’ll need dirty cracked tiles by the prison w.c.pan where he used to have an orgasm for the past few years.

I have already mentioned pensive Gosha who shared a cell with me at SPD. He used to sleep between me and Aslanbek who had drowned a passer-by for two crates of vodka. Unlike his hot-tempered neighbor Gosha was quiet and only sighed now and then when somebody mentioned capital punishment. He had already done a few years in prison for minor offences like hooliganism and burglaries. This time it was jealousy with lethal outcome.

Having returned to his native town after his fourth and longest imprisonment Gosha decided: That’s it. Enough is enough. Time to start a new life. Things seemed to work out well for him. He found a job at the bread-baking factory. It was there that he met a nice middle-aged woman. She was divorced, had no kids and lived with her parents. The attraction was mutual and soon turned into a strong feeling. Gosha swore his intentions were serious and moved in with his woman friend. Her parents protested at first, - after all it was their apartment, not their daughter’s - and Gosha’s past worried them a lot. But Gosha gave up drinking (apart from a couple of beers at the weekend), cut on smoking and always brought his wages home. Eventually the old folks gave in: they wanted their daughter to be happy.

That night Gosha was sleeping beside his loved one. He was dreaming about a beautiful seaside resort with magnifucent white yachts gliding on the water. One of the yachts came closer to the shore and to his horror Gosha saw the woman of his dream on the deck hugging a fat bald man and moving slowly to the quiet music.

He woke up with a start. He couldn’t make out where he was. Only darkness surrounded him, no seaside, no white yachts. The woman was sleeping peacefully beside him. Everything seemed OK. But the dream wouldn’t leave Gosha’s mind. The smiling face of the fat man stared at him with a jeer. Before going back to sleep Gosha grabbed the woman by the throat and pressed her tightly to his chest.

When he woke up the following morning his loved one lay motionless, her mouth open. She wouldn’t wake up. It took Gosha quite a while to realize what had happened. He could think of nothing better than to hide the body under the bed and leave for work as usual. I don’t know how he felt that morning - maybe couldn’t bear the thought of parting with his beloved, wanted her to stay with him forever. Anyway, the night accident hadn’t changed his daily routine much. The only difference was that he himself had to make his own breakfast. At night Gosha would get the body from under the bed and put it beside him under the blanket. In the mornings it went back under the bed, wrapped in old blankets. The woman’s parents started asking questions about their daughter’s whereabouts but Gosha would only say pensively: ‘Better ask her.’ The old folks remembering their daughter’s unhappy first marriage and divorce didn’t want to interfere.

It went on like this for a few days until a strange unpleasant smell coming from the daughter’s room appeared in the apartment. When Gosha was at work the old man looked under the bed. You can imagine how he felt when under the old rags he found his daughter’s dead body.

Gosha was arrested on his way home. Cops were waiting for him by the front door. He was hit with the club on the head and before he regained his senses his hands were hand-cuffed. Gosha got mad:

How could you?!! - he shouted at his in-laws to be. - Send for whom?! The cops! To get me!

He was pushed into the police car and taken to SPD. ‘That’s real love!’ - a romantically-minded person would sigh. ‘Love has nothing to do with it,’ - a realist would disagree. - ‘Gosha is just a psychopath. Capital punishment is the best cure for him!’.

It is easy for outsiders to judge. For them prisoners are abstract persons from the cops’ reports. For us they are real people who live side by side in the same cage. Besides, being a judge is so much nicer than being a defendant. Just open the Criminal Code, find the required category of offense and give the longest possible sentence (to win a reputation of a ‘fair’ judge and make a successful career) or the shortest sentence allowed (in case there was a bribe). No need to worry about the punishment being too severe. Sooner or later justice will triumph in Ukraine and prisoners will be rehabilitated posthumously. Examples are endless.

It’s difficult to prove now if Gosha was really guided by a deep fond feeling or if he just had a loose screw in his head which is not uncommon for somebody who had served four terms of imprisonment. Gosha was certified mentally fit and stable and sent to a different prison.

Downcast Gosha wasn’t the only one with unusual sexual fantasies. His jealousy looked quite innocent compared to the fixed idea of Petyunya Fastovsky, another of my cell-mates. The only relative he had outside prison was 90-year old granny who though quite advanced in years regularly brought parcels to her grandson. Every time among the modest foodstuffs in the parcel there was a white handkerchief with verses from the Bible written on it in unsteady handwriting.

Petyunya was very fond of his granny. But his love found quite a weird manifestation. Petyunya had a dream: after his release from prison he wanted to screw not a famous Hollywood bimbo but his own granny. And in a very peculiar way at that: he wanted to drill a hole in his granny’s head and come into it at the sight of pulsating blood. That’s how Petyunya was going to demonstrate his gratitude for the granny’s care.

People are weird creatures. First strangle or shoot each other, then hang themselves like Yura did. Make a mountain out of a molehill. I remember a young man, a banker by profession who one day was put to our cell. He was obviously well-off and well educated though wouldn’t talk much about himself. He squatted in the corner and started rocking himself to and fro. We first thought it was the way he reacted to the ten years bit promised to him by the investigator. But we were wrong. The young man didn’t pay much attention to the accusations of severe embezzlement in his bank. He had a different concern.

Every man dreams of meeting a glamorous woman from a fairy tale, the best and the only one in the world. For a single moment with Her a man is prepared to sacrifice his life. And there is no better reward for him than her consent to accept his sacrifice. Some may not think such exchange worthwhile. But they just know what it is like to touch a Dream. They have never experienced moments of such intense feeling of being alive that years of the past life seem a waste of time.

Unfortunately for most people a dream remains a dream. Beautiful but inaccessible. Some are just unlucky. Others missed their chance. It was either too early or too late. Some travel from bed to bed hoping to wake up in Heaven one day but only end up satiated and disappointed. The really lucky ones are very few.

The young banker was born under a lucky star. He had everything: youth, good looks, excellent health, money (not everyone can afford wearing a fifteen hundred dollar track suit in the prison cell), respect. At twenty five he married a 18-year old beauty.

He worshipped his wife, overwhelmed with love and passion. He felt like making love to her day and night. She became his drug - the more he had her the more intense was his desire. He stopped enjoying life and experienced physical pain when his wife was not around. Passion usually dies away with time. It is gradually substituted by friendly affection, habit, respect, reluctance to change the pattern of life. But it’s different with those who have met a Dream. Their feelings grow even more intense with years, passion becomes overwhelming and turns into obsession.

For the first time in seven years the banker had to sleep alone, away from his wife. Being apart was unbearable for him. Jealousy like an evil uninvited guest settled in his heart. He became jealous of every man who passed his wife in the street, every male who looked at her. It made him desperate, he felt like tearing the metal bars with his bare hands and escaping to be by her side.

Realization of his own inability to do something multiplied by passion and jealousy exhausted the guy so much that within a few days he lost about 10 kilos and his hair turned white at the temples. I have never seen a man change so dramatically in such a short time. We knew we could do nothing to help him. He had to cope with it himself. He had to learn to keep his emotions under control. It is impossible to survive in prison without enduring. But giving advice is always the easiest.

Some of my cell-mates tried talking to the young banker to help him overcome his depression. Their efforts were useless. Nobody had any doubts that the guy would go nuts sooner or later. Watching the suffering of the banker Denis once said philosophically:

- Got to prison - change your wife.

He thought for a moment, then added sympathetically:

What’s wrong if she screws your neighbor? She has to practice to be in good shape. You don’t want her to go rusty between legs, do you? You are of no use at the moment, but it’s vital for her health. Don’t worry, buddy, she’ll visit you in the camp, such things are allowed there. And in 10-15 years when you are released, you’ll be together again if you are that crazy about her.

That was the longest speech Denis had ever made. He was genuine in his desire to console and cheer up his cell-mate. Believe it or not but he seemed to succeed. The banker stood up, approached Denis and without a word hit him between the eyes so hard that the poor boy landed in the opposite corner together with his mattress. I was surprised his clever head had failed to break through the wall. Watching Denis fly across the cell the banker smiled for the first time - a wide open smile. We realized the guy was returning back to life.

I saw his wife’s photos. The banker always carried them in the breast pocket of his jacket and didn’t mind showing them to the cell-mates, bored to death with the monotony of prison life. In the pictures a beautiful young woman wearing a bikini was standing under the palm trees like a princess from a fairy tale. No wonder her husband was so jealous. Once when we were looking at the pictures a red-headed pickpocket of the younger generation suddenly rushed to the w.c.pan and started masturbating. The banker froze in shock - he hadn’t expected such a reaction to the photos of his beloved wife. He obviously was at a loss: should he beat the red-head? scold him? or pretend nothing had happened?

Without saying a word the banker picked up the photos and put them back into his pocket. He had never showed them to anyone since.

Many inmates had carried with them photos of their nearest and dearest from cell to cell often sharing them with the others. It’s up to them, of course. To my mind keeping photos of the relatives in prison is a bad omen. They don’t belong there. Besides, photos can absorb the negative energy of the on-lookers. And I hate the uniformed pigs to discuss my relatives when they find pictures during the shake-down.

In prison, as well as on the outside, everything is for sale: fresh air, food, water. For money a prisoner can be transferred from a damp cell to a dry one, see his relatives, pass or receive something from the outside. For a hundred bucks a warden can arrange a sexual intercourse in a smelly prison cell.

It’s no secret that among women prisoners there are some who don’t mind such kind of entertainment. Many of them use sexual contacts for getting pregnant. This way they try to earn leniency of the judge and later on to be exempt from hard labor. When their babies grow older and become of no use mothers forget about them. They live in total neglect, waifs and strays of the society.

I wonder if there are prisoners who might enjoy such sexual relationships. Tastes differ. To my mind, anyone who has experienced true love won’t be tempted by such primitive satisfaction of physical needs. Though prison has often turned people into beasts.

Though there is no sex in prison many of my cell-mates had sexual offenses. I have already told you about Gosha, Othello of modern times, Denis who apart from murder was charged with rape, Yura who had killed his wife for sexual motives and then hanged himself in prison. There is no denying that people’s behavior and actions are often dictated by sexual motives. Such motives are not always easy to trace - a teenager , for instance, might start stealing to pay a prostitute but when caught he is charged with theft.

According to newspapers the male potency problem is quite acute nowadays. Look at how popular Viagra has become with the male population on the planet! To me, however, all this talk about potency seems to have no logic. If the problem really exists how come the population of the Earth keeps growing and has recently exceeded six billion? Time to think of something to stop the increase rather than worry about potency.

Situation in Ukraine, however, is different from the rest of the world. The population here is decreasing quite rapidly. If it continues like this for a few more years the population of Ukraine will be reduced by half in the near future. This doesn’t mean that people have lost interest in sex. On the contrary, judging by rape statistics, especially in summertime, homo sapiens are still very fond of it.

The story of a diffident youngster named Stas, a former student of economics, is also sex-related. He lived in a new residential area of Kiev together with his parents. Shy and indecisive by nature, Stas was attracted to older people, experienced and worldly-wise. That’s how he became friendly with 42 year old Vasya who had had two convictions and spent fourteen years in camps and 39 year old Pasha, an alcoholic with eight years of prison experience. In their company a young student felt manly and steadfast. His mature friends didn’t mind his company because Stas had always been able to find in his parents’ pockets enough money for a bottle of vodka.

That night was no different from the others. The three friends were drinking vodka mixing it with beer in Vasya’s small apartment. The older ones were sharing their experience with Stas who listened to them with his mouth open. When there was no more vodka left the company went out to get one more bottle. Conversation turned to women. Who, when, how and with whom. Stas had nothing to boast of - he hadn’t been with a woman yet.

- Why not? - Pasha started giggling. - You can’t or they won’t let you?

Stas felt hurt: Pasha touched a sore spot. Vasya put his hand on the student’s shoulder:

- Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll take care of it. Nothing is easier.

The evening walk turned into hunting for lonely women. There weren’t many. Most would measure them with contemptuous eyes or send them packing. A group of schoolgirls got off the bus talking and laughing light-heartedly. The three friends followed them. Soon a thin girl of about fourteen separated from the group and waving good-bye to her classmates turned left. Catching up with her was a matter of a few minutes. What happened next was described by three friends very differently. Each tried to put the blame on the others describing himself as a mere drunk observer.

The investigation concluded that the schoolgirl had been brutally beaten. Then Stas raped her while the other two were holding the girl by hands and legs. Pasha did the same after Stas but Vasya decided to relieve the monotony of the entertainment. He made a deep cut with a pen-knife on the girl’s right breast and committed violent sexual act into the open wound.

The girl was lying on her back, unconscious and blood-stained, only a hundred meters away from the motor road. Cars were passing by, people returned home after work. But nobody noticed anything. Or maybe refused to notice?

- Is she dead? - asked Stas in a trembling voice when the three ‘heroes’ were buttoning their flies.

- Your passion was too much for the little one, - Pasha said with a smirk. - Don’t panic, student. Here are my keys. Go get an old blanket under the bed and a jerrycan from the balcony. We’ll wrap her up and set fire. Passers-by will think it’s rubbish being burnt. Fire will take care of everything.

Stas did as he was told, then helped his friends to wrap the girl in the blanket. Pasha poured some gasoline, Vasya set fire. The three friends were about to leave when a police car drove up and stopped beside them.

All the three were proved guilty. They were lucky: the girl survived though remained a cripple. The older ones admitted their guilt, but Stas wouldn’t agree to go to prison. He pretended to be mentally ill - a few years in mental hospital looked better than fifteen years in prison. He would take his clothes off and jump from bunk to bunk like a monkey or relieve himself into the prison bowl. Once he unscrewed a bulb and started eating it. And one day Stas began washing dishes in the w.c.pan. It was the last straw - he was thrown out of the cell.

- Good riddance! - sighed Maximka with relief. - Stepanych, what do you think of the student?

But Stepanych, wrapped in a blanket, was reading New Testament in a tattered cover. The fuss and racket in the cell didn’t seem to bother him at all.