Exorcise Room - Family Plan/Rough Justice

I really can't let the last 2 epis with Shaz & Denny go by without commenting, for obvious reasons.

For me, Shaz embodies the essence of the hyperactive, annoying adolescent. Being around kids like that usually drove me crazy, especially in a lockup. Yes, even though I was a teenager myself.

These were the kids I was sent away with: the girls were – CC, PD, DS (DS was my secret crush, she was such a little cutie). The guys were - JS, BW, JR, and VM. VM was definitely a Shaz-alike.

He was maybe 2 yrs older than me - so, he was 18 or 19. And Totally. Fucking. Hyper. All the time, bouncing off the walls. And like Shaz, he was pretty happy to be there. Not quite as happy as Shaz, but VM really didn’t have anywhere else to go. His home life was so fucked up, he actually preferred being upstate.

He was there for some kind of insurance fraud, I think – he'd throw himself in front of moving cars, pretend to be hurt, and file claims for the money.

When I watched the scenes of Shaz and Denny sneaking out of the dorm, I was really struck, all over again, about the idea of powerlessness. When you’re a teenager, you don’t have a lot of power over your own life anyway. And if you’re a teen who’s locked up, you’ve got even less power. And if you’re a teen who’s locked up with adults, well, you’ve got less than no power. So yeah, you’re gonna find ways to act out and amuse yourself. And since you’re so limited in terms of options and resources, more often that not, they're usually stupid forms of amusement.

I got into trouble once for not making dinner there. There was a huge snowstorm, so I got all the kids together and we snuck off to go sledding. Sliding down the hill on trays we took from the mess hall. Now that was good fun. But when we got back, it turned out it was really hard to just whip up a meal for 70 people (who knew??) So everyone, staff included, had to eat pb&j and coldcuts that night. And they were pissed. We were all on report for a week. I swear, we must’ve shoveled an entire 12 acres of snow in 7 days, but it was well worth it.

VM’s idea of fun was to flood the entire laundry room because he didn’t wanna do other people’s laundry. So we all were stuck with dirty clothes for days (VM’s punishment was to handwash all his clothes in the lake for a month).

He also had a propensity for harming animals, which upset me to no end. We had a stray cat once (yep, just like the Julies in S3). Our cat hung around outside the kitchen for a couple of months, but there was no way to sneak him into our rooms (believe me, I wanted to). Instead, I fed him everyday, smuggling food outside down the stairs. I’d sneak off during the day to play with him when I could.

Other people there knew about him – one of the adults named him “TC,” for Top Cat (which I didn’t get until he explained it to me). He’s the guy I went to when I caught VM throwing rocks at the cat. I never found out what he said or did to VM, and I didn’t care – I only knew V left the cat alone from then on. Not long after that though, the director found out about him and the next day, drove TC off the grounds. He never said where he took the cat or what he did with him. I took it pretty hard, and cried for days.

Another thing that struck me was that brief scene where Denny shows Shaz her scar and tells her the story behind it - 'war stories,' they're called, and it's really common when you're locked up. There's definitely an element of "oneupmanship" to it, but it's also a powerful form of storytelling - I'd even go so far as to call it an art, the ability to tell good war stories.

One guy I was tight with, DV, was, hands down, the best storyteller I've ever met. That motherfucker could make you laugh your ass off then bawl your eyes out, all in the space of 10 seconds. And he had some war stories... He was also a damn good pool player and taught me to play when we were there (btw, thanks, D! You inadvertently financed some of my college education in later years).

Telling war stories is another way to just help pass the time there, a way to amuse yourself. I don't know if anyone's written about how hard is it to just pass the time, fill your days, occupy yourself in places like that. And even though I'd find Shaz annoying in real life, I can appreciate her and Denny's antics onscreen. The one thing that saved me from sheer lunacy there was my love of reading. I get why Nikki buries herself in books - pure escapism. It's an easy and safe way to lose yourself in that kind of environment, and the best way I found to pass the time.


The fact that people like VM and Shaz prefer being inside, speaks volumes to me. They're the kids at the greatest risk of becoming thoroughly institutionalized. Never having had any kind of structure or semblance of a family, they get so used to institutions, that they can’t function on the outside (and it’s not just for lack of education or vocational training).

There’s a reason the system's referred to as “a revolving door.” These places provide somewhere for VM and Denny and Shaz to fit in and belong. This couldn’t be any clearer when Zandra decides to stay in Larkhall and die there, since she has no family and nowhere to go. And I guess that’s the saddest part – that right from the start, people like Shaz and Zandra and VM barely stand a chance.

I don’t know what happened to VM, though if I had to guess, things probably didn’t turn out well. I lost touch with all the other kids eventually, but last I heard (which was years ago): DS married a guy we knew from there (they divorced a few yrs later). CC, I don’t know, but I’d guess she’s okay. I already said PD died of AIDS. JR robbed a bank with another guy from there, one of the adults, and got 25-to-life since they used guns. I have no idea what happened to the others.