Blades, Buzz Cuts, and Barbed Wire
A Conversation About Shaving
"I've been meaning to ask — when you were in prison, how did you shave?" my old lady1, Annie, asked while we were enjoying a campfire .
And the answer to that question depends on whether you’re in jail or prison. In jail, if you wanted to shave you had to sign up for razors. They'd put out a sign-up sheet at some point and then in the evening about a half-hour before lockdown they'd bring around a bag of these shitty safety razors. Short, orange-handled, single bladed shaving razors that felt like dragging barbed wire across your face. When you were done using them you had to turn them back in and they all had to be accounted for by lockdown or else they would shakedown the facility2 to find it.
In prison you could just buy double-bladed Bics from commissary. The administration made no efforts to track them. Razor blades are useful for lots of non-nefarious reasons too, so pretty much everybody would have a naked blade stashed somewhere. You’d just stomp on the Bic, break out the blades, and voila — now you can cut your summer sausage without breaking your plastic spork. It was technically against the rules to do this, but nobody cared.
“I’m sure blades were also useful for protection too, right?” was Annie’s next question.
“Oh no,” was my answer.
Not where I was anyway. If you got caught with a weapon you would immediately be shipped to a higher level facility. There was a guy in jail with me who had previously done some fed-time in Oklahoma who was addicted to making weapons. He would tell a story about going out to a steakhouse after he was released from his previous bid and when the cutlery was put out he stashed the steak knife in his lap out of habit.
He ended up in the same low-level prison as me, made a weapon, and got tore off3 the same day. I was in the hole when this happened and I remember overhearing his conversation to one of the shift lieutenants as he was being brought in.
“I don’t know where that thing came from. Somebody must have put it under my bunk, man. I mean, I’ve only been here for a couple of days, how could I have even made one in that time? And what would I need to do with it anyway?” his rhetoric sounded confident to me.
“Oh yea,” the LT’s voiced boomed back at him. “We can’t prove it’s yours.”
“So ya’ll can let me go then?”
“Yea, movement’s closed for the day so sit tight for now and we’ll get you taken care of in a minute.”
…the next morning he was gone. Shipped overnight to a high-level facility. Most transfers to other prisons happened on a schedule of once every 2 weeks, but this one was special.
I put another piece of wood on the fire and waited for her next question.
There was a bit of a pause before she asked, “how did you cut your summer sausage in jail?”
The most common way was with your teeth. Just take little nibbles, let the cubes drop into a bowl, then mix it in with your soup or whatever. Most new inmates would try to use the side of a spork or spoon and would inevitably break it. The most creative offenders would sharpen one side of a spoon a bit on the concrete rec-yard pad, but these would often get confiscated.
Only on one occasion did I see a naked razor blade in jail. It was shaving time with the safety razors and a guy came running down the stairs from the top tier toward the COs’ desk.
“I didn’t mean to I swear,” he shouted. “I just dropped it accidentally and accidentally stepped on it and it accidentally broke and I’m sorry and everything’s all here you can check look it was an accident,” I’ve never heard a sentence spoken faster in my life.
Everybody in that pod — including the COs — knew he was lying, but nobody was bleeding and all the bits of the safety razor were accounted for so he got away with it. No way he’d get away with it a second time.
“What about hair cuts?” she asked. “In that picture you showed me you had a shiny bald head.”
In jail, a sign-up sheet would be posted once a month. The next day 2 inmates from phase-3 dressed in white scrubs4 would enter the pod and set up a couple of barber chairs. They didn’t have scissors — just ordinary electric hair trimmers. One by one they’d go down the list and give out buzz cuts.
Craig was a light-skinned black guy and he’d give out more than buzz cuts. If you were expecting a visit and you wanted to look sharp, you’d put a couple of stamps in his hand and he’d give you a nice fade.
Hollister was a white guy with a stern face who’d never cut hair before. Craig tried to teach him to do a fade but he wasn’t very good at it. Only inmates who didn’t want to pay for a fade would let him use them for practice.
In prison it was different. You could buy your own electric hair and beard trimmers. It was kinda like getting commissary but slightly different. You could make a property order once a month for bigger items and they would engrave your state inmate number into them to help prevent theft. They were expensive though — like 50 or 60 bucks.
But they also had a barber shop you could sign up for once a week. I went to it once and asked for a buzz cut with the shortest razor-guard he had. I think the guy must’ve thought I was racist because I left there with more than a few cuts on my head. After that I decided to just use a Bic on my head while showering every couple of days. A bonus was that when it was cold at night, my bedsheet would stick to my head like velcro.
“It’s funny to hear you say 50 or 60 bucks is expensive. That’s like a tank of gas,” Annie remarked.
When the highest paying job is 45 cents an hour for 35 hours a week you get a paycheck of $63 at the end of the month. You can buy an electric razor and 9 soups with that.
“You’ve come a long way since then, hon,” she said after letting the fire crackle through the crisp night air for a moment. “I’m proud of you.”
Interesting story about Hollister — I once asked him what he was in for and his answer was simply, “probation violation.”
I looked him up when I got out and found out that he was on the sex offender registry. I also found out just a few months prior to me looking him up that he was involved in a high speed chase while on a motorcycle. He did not survive.
Everybody says "girl" when referring to their daughters and "old lady" when referring to significant others.
Somebody snitched on him.