The First Time I Showered In Prison (2025)

I must have smelled terrible. I hadn’t been able to shower in about a week.

For the past month or so, I had been held at an intake facility in Michigan that looked like Alcatraz. Called the Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center, it’s where men and boys from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula are sent within a week of being sentenced. It is also known as “quarantine” because of the isolation you face as an inductee behind its walls. Locked away with nothing but a toilet and sink next to your bed, it could be months before the administration determines which prison to send you to.

Steel bars separated me from the hallway, and, because I was 16 years old, an additional cage separated that hallway from the one used by everyone else. The idea was to keep anyone under the age of 17 safe — away from older, more dangerous prisoners. But the rule intended to protect me led to neglect.

The officers treated me, at best, like I was a nuisance. They resented having to go through the extra steps to patrol another cage. So, for the last week or so that I was there, they didn’t come through to open my cell and lead me to the shower down the hall.

I was eventually transferred to the “punk prison” units at Thumb Correctional, a facility about a hundred miles away from the Reception and Guidance Center. This is where Michigan’s incarcerated boys ages 12 through 17 are held, and treated as adults in terms of culpability, sentencing and imprisonment. When I arrived, a guard led me to a maximum security cell with another teen who smelled as badly as I imagined I did.

The cell was about the size of a parking space, with steel bunk beds welded into the walls, each topped with a thin mattress. A concrete desk and chair were built into the floor, and a steel toilet sat in the corner next to the heavy-duty sliding door.

In a surreal twist, my cellmate chose those nerve-wracking initial moments to remove a rusty thumbtack from the wall and use it to pierce his lower lip. It later got infected.

Waiting for my first shower

In my first hour in real prison, an attempted murder a few cells over triggered a lockdown that lasted the remainder of the night. I was terrified of what was out there. But I knew that what was in my cell stunk. Two adolescents who haven’t seen deodorant or a shower in weeks created a potent force that, if harnessed, could make enemy combatants give up secrets or force opposing troops to surrender.

The next day, when we were released for breakfast, I got to see a bit more of the cellblock. I walked past a TV room, what looked to be a couple of offices, and an officer’s control room, or “bubble.” On my self-guided tour, I didn’t see the showers. But while eating cold grits and a dry biscuit a little while later, a fellow resident told me that they were at the end of the hallway.

When I walked back into the cellblock, I looked down the gray hallway, to a place that seemed so far away, figuratively and literally.

My mind wandered. What were the showers like? I had seen prison movies. The concept of dropping the soap is so ubiquitous that it’s entered into popular imagination, which is a sick thing if you think about it. But despite being fearful, I knew I needed a shower.

Another day passed before I was able to get clean. During that time, I received a surprise visit from my father. It was the first time I had seen him since coming to prison. He gave me a giant hug, and I hugged him back. I was so happy to see him, and he was happy to see me. But although he never said anything about it, I know I must have smelled terrible.

Letting the water wash over me

I was nervous but tried to remain cool as I walked down the hallway in my shorts and sandals. I later learned that this was a prison faux pas: You’re supposed to wear your state-issued shoes, and carry your sandals, to signal that you’re ready to protect yourself. The shower room had six broom closet-sized showers, three on each wall. Each had a chain-link door that you could lock if you wanted to, but, if you did, you might have to wait up to an hour until an officer came around to let you out.

Finally, I got into one of the showers, hung my towel on a hook, and started to take off my clothes. I looked up to see a man, probably in his 20s, in the shower across from me, staring.

“Hey,” he called over to me.

All of my fears about being in a prison shower swirled through my mind. But then he said, “Bro, put the towel through the holes [of the chain link] to cover yourself up.”

I let out a deep breath and followed his much-appreciated advice. As I turned the shower on, the hot water seemed to melt half of me away. I lathered up with the somewhat caustic soap the prison provides to indigent residents and those who are new. I swear, so much grime washed off of me that I felt physically lighter.

19 years of prison showers

Since that first shower, I’ve never, in 19 years, gone more than a day without showering. And despite being in prison, I believe I smell pretty good.

I’ve been around predators who stalk the prison showers, looking for victims — or at least hoping to see something. I’ve been around “shower flashers” who intentionally try to force you to look at them while they’re naked. I’ve walked away and waited to wash myself later when I’ve seen the four ankles of a “shower transfer” in progress — a sign of a debt being paid or love being made.

At some prisons, we are forced to shower in groups. The best way to do that is to arrange your shower time with friends or at least people you feel comfortable with. That way, if you do drop the proverbial — or very real — soap, you’ll only be laughed at.

I’ve learned that when you have access to a single-person shower with warm water and some element of privacy, you feel like a real human being.

Away from everyone and everything else, the roar of the water covers the constant din of prison life. You can relax as the water washes over you. You can almost imagine yourself swimming in the glittering beads that stream across the tiles like wind-filled sails across the sea.

For one fleeting moment, you almost feel free.

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