Orange Is the New Black

control seemed in my grasp.
    O NE OF the good things about living in B Dorm was that you had your choice of two bathrooms. Both were equipped with six showers, five sinks, and six toilet stalls. That’s where their similarities ended. Natalie and I lived next to the bathroom that I liked to call theHell-mouth. The tiles and Formica were various shades of gray, the shower curtain rods were rusted, the plastic shower curtains were practically in ribbons, and not all of the stall door locks worked. None of this was what made the C Dorm bathroom a Hell-mouth, though. It was the infestations that made the place unacceptable for anything but a quick pee or toothbrushing. During the warmer months when the ground was not frozen, little black maggots would periodically appear in the shower area, squirming on the tiles. Nothing could make them disappear, although the bathroom orderlies did not have much of an arsenal—the cleaning supplies were stingily doled out. Eventually the maggots would hatch into evil little flies. They were the sign that the bathroom had been built over a direct route to Hell.
    I showered instead in the bathroom on the other side of B Dorm, which connected to A Dorm. It was spalike by comparison and had been recently refurbished in shades of beige. The fixtures were new. The light was better. The mood was brighter, even if the shower curtains were just as ratty.
    Showers were a complex ritual. It was necessary to schlep all your hygiene products to the bathroom—shampoo, soap, razor, washcloth, and whatever else you might need. This required either great minimalism or some sort of shower caddy. Some women had illegal crocheted bags to carry their stuff; some had mesh nylon bags from commissary; and one woman had a large pink plastic shower caddy, an actual shower caddy. I wasn’t about to ask, knowing that it had either come from some long-ago and distant commissary or was contraband. Morning and evening were peak shower hours, with gradually diminishing stores of hot water. If you showered in the afternoon or early evening, you would have less competition. We were not supposed to be in the showers after lights out at ten P.M. , to discourage people from having sex in them.
    Many women would wait in line three deep for “their” shower to be free. In the good bathroom there was one shower stall that indisputably had the best water pressure. Some big shots, like Pop, would send an emissary to see if that stall was free or else dibs them a placein the waiting line. If you interfered with one of the early-morning risers’ shower ritual by getting into “their” shower, you would be met with an icy stare when you emerged.
    Once you had secured your shower stall, you faced a moment of truth. Some women would disappear behind the stall’s plastic curtain still fully clad in their muu-muus, out of modesty; others would whip off their clothes in front of everyone and climb in and out unabashed. A handful would shower with the curtain open, giving everyone a show.
    At first I was among the former, but the water was always freezing initially, and I would yelp as it rained down on my naked skin. “What’s going on in there, Kerman?” someone would inevitably joke. “Piper’s getting busy!” After a while I became convinced that the Linda Blair rape scene in
Born Innocent
was never going to be re-created in the Camp, so I took to starting my shower before I got in, checking to see that it was at least lukewarm before I whipped off my muu-muu and jumped in. This won me a couple of fans, notably my new neighbor Delicious, who shouted with surprise, “P-I Piper! You got some nice titties! You got those TV titties!! They stand up on they own all perky and everything! Damn!”
    “Um, thanks, Delicious.”
    There was absolutely nothing threatening about Delicious’s attention. In fact, it was mildly flattering that she noticed me at all.
    All cleaning in the Camp was highly ritualized, including the all-hands-on-deck Sunday-night scrubdown of our cubicles. One day a week B Dorm’s laundry was done for us (laundress was a prison job, captained by an elderly woman everyone called Grandma), and so the night before, I’d stuff my bag with sweat socks and a packet of laundry soap. Natalie would wake me at five-fifteen before the laundry opened so that I could get mine in before everyone else. Otherwise I’d have been part of the usual stampede of half-asleep women in the still-dark hallway getting in