Christmas Party

December 24, 2010

Christmas Eve actually ended up being kind of nice. I was invited by the nerdy gaming community to attend a banquet they were having that overlapped the crappy dinner that was being served in the cafeteria that day.

I was asked to donate five bucks in commissary to help with the cost, but they told me that I wasn’t required to pay if I wanted to attend. I try to be a nice guy, so I paid the commissary, hoping I’d get to eat at least five dollars worth of whatever they were going to be serving.

The organizer told me that he was getting pizzas, and that the pizza guy wanted nine bagels as part of his payment. So, whatever. I bought the nine bagels and gave them to the organizer two weeks in advance.

When the 24th finally arrived, I really didn’t know what to expect. Dinnertime came, and I grabbed my plastic serving bowl and headed out to the rec yard per instructions.

I knew ahead of time that the party would be OUTSIDE instead of in the indoor complex, but the day was actually very warm for December. I thought I’d have to eat in the middle of a deep freeze, but the temperature was surprisingly pleasant. The other attendees and I all converged on the small group of outdoor tables that commonly get used for playing Dungeon and Dragons after working hours (no matter how cold it gets).

As I got there, some other inmates were arriving with two huge trash bags full of ice and canned sodas. Another guy looked like he was toting a giant stack of cardboard. Well, it WAS a giant stack of cardboard, but sandwiched between the layers of cardboard was the main course of the evening: Contraband Pizza.

When it comes to cuisine in this particular prison, pizza isn’t something that really exists. Of course, there’s no Papa John’s or Pizza Hut, but even though pizza is served occasionally in the cafeteria, I just can’t call cafeteria pizza PIZZA. The last time I got “pizza” in the chow hall, all I got was tomato sauce and a few slices of melted cheese ON A HOTDOG BUN. To make matters worse, the cops made sure that each prisoner got only ONE, like it was Grade A cuisine or something. I could just imagine all the departed Italian chefs rolling over in their graves as I took my first bite of that epic failure.

REAL pizza is a special treat in here, as well as being an industry. Wanna guess where a lot of those stolen onions, bell peppers and tomatoes from the kitchen go towards making? You guessed it, Contraband Pizza.

And we wouldn’t DARE commit an atrocity such as serving the ingredients on a hotdog bun. We use flour from the kitchen to make REAL pizza crust. Rob will sometimes fry tortillas in the microwave to make Mexican pizzas, but the toppings will always stretch farther on a traditional crust.

What does Contraband Pizza taste like? It varies based on the skill of the inmate chef and the ingredients being used. Taste typically ranges from near-restaurant quality to the cheap two-dollar Totino’s pizzas that are often found in the frozen foods section of a supermarket.

Is Contraband Pizza safe? Considering that many of the ingredients get smuggled out of the kitchen stuffed in inmates’ socks, pant legs and UNDERWEAR, don’t ask. Just tell yourself that microwaving makes food safe, then pray to whatever god you believe in that you don’t catch the latest strain of hepatitis. You’ll find that such practices will become necessary as your standards for food cleanliness will plummet to record low levels during your incarceration.

Anyway, the banquet was a complete success! It was fun to finally feel like a part of something despite being in an alien and somewhat hostile environment. I killed an entire pizza by myself, ate a bunch of chips, and washed it all down with two cans of Pepsi. That might seem mundane by free world standards, but in here, that bordered on overindulgence. And since I ate while being surrounded by geeks and nerds like myself, I could afford to enjoy the event without constantly having to look over my shoulder.

Our group made up most of the inmates out on the rec yard while the rest of the inmate population was busy eating a special seafood dinner in the cafeteria to celebrate Christmas Eve. I heard later that night that the “special” meal turned out to be a bland pasta salad with imitation crab meat, so I didn’t miss anything. Now, I just have to wait out the last few days of 2010, and hope that the next year will be better than this one was.