“Okay,” he said wearily. “Follow me, Belfort.” He led me through a series of foreboding steel gates, the last of which closed behind me with an ominous clank.The unspoken message was: “You are now a prisoner; everything you knew in the outside world is now gone.” Then we entered a small, windowless, tableless, chairless room, at the rear of which was a large white curtain hanging from the ceiling.

“What's with the tennis racquet?” snapped the guard.

“I'm going to the camp; I was told I could bring a tennis racquet with me.”

“Not anymore; they changed the rules a few years ago.” He looked down at the clipboard for a moment, then looked back up and said, “Are you sure you're going to the camp? It says that you're going to the low here.”

Taft had two separate facilities: the low and the camp. The low housed realinmates, whereas the camp housed campers,as the phrase went. While the low wasn't filled with murderers and rapists, it still had its fair share of violence; the camp, however, had none. In fact, it didn't even have a fence around it—you stayed there on the honor system and could walk away at any time.

Trying to remain calm, I said, “I'm sure I'm designated for the camp; the judge recommended it at my sentencing.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “You can take it up with your counselor; give me your sneakers.”

“My sneakers?” I looked down at my brand-new Nikes. “What's wrong with my sneakers?”

“They have a red stripe on them. Only plain white sneakers are allowed. We'll ship them back to your family along with your tennis racquet. Now go behind the curtain and strip.”

I did as I was told, and two minutes later—after pulling back my ears, running his fingers through my hair, opening my mouth, rolling my tongue around, lifting up one foot, then the other foot, and, finally, lifting up my nut-sack (as the guard referred to it), he gave me back my sweat suit and told me to get dressed. Then he handed me a pair of blue canvas slippers, the sort Chairman Mao had given to political dissidents upon entering one of his reeducation camps.

“Your counselor is Ms. Richards,” ^1*said the guard. “She'll be here in about an hour. Until then, you can make yourself comfortable.” His last few words came out with a healthy dose of irony; after all, there was nothing in the room to sit on other than the cheap linoleum floor. Then he left, locking the door behind him.

Remain calm!I thought. There was no way they were going to stick me in the low. I was camper material! I had no violence in my background, and I was a first-time offender. I had even cooperated with the government!

Thirty minutes later, the door opened and in walked my counselor, Ms. Richards. She was huge, the better part of six feet tall, with the shoulders of an NFL linebacker and the thick, fleshy features of a shar-pei. Her dark-brown mullet looked a mile high. She was dressed in street clothes—blue jeans and a dark-blue wind-breaker. Her feet were shod in black army boots.

Before she had a chance to say anything, I popped up off the linoleum floor and said, “Ms. Richards, I have a serious problem here: The guard told me that I'm going to the low, but I was designated for the camp. The judge recommended it at my sentencing.”

She flashed me a friendly smile, exposing a pair of central incisors that were so severely overlapped they looked like one giant snaggletooth. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Counselor Snaggletooth said in a rather cheery tone: “Okay; well, let's see if we can't get it sorted out. Follow me.”

Snaggletooth turned out to be very nice. She escorted me to a small interview room, where she spent a few minutes looking down at my file. Finally she said, “I've got good news for you, Belfort; you do qualify for camp.”

Thank God!I thought. I was, indeed, camper material. I had always known it. Why had I even worried myself, for Chrissake? So silly of me.

Then: “Wait! I spoke too soon!”

A fresh wave of panic.“What's wrong now?”

“Your probation officer never sent us your presentencing report. I can't put you in the camp until I review it. The report has all the information about your case.”

Near panic: “So you're sticking me in the low?”

“No, no,” she answered, flashing me her snaggletooth smile. “I wouldn't stick you in the low; I'm sticking you in the hole.”

My eyes popped out of my occipital orbits, like hat pegs. “You're putting me in the hole? As in solitary confinement?”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah, but only until your paperwork gets here. It shouldn't take more than a week.”

Panic on top of panic now: “A week?How can it take a week to get my paperwork here? Can't they just fax it over?”

She compressed her lips and shook her head slowly.

“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. “A week in the hole. It's not fair.”

Snaggletooth nodded and said, “Yeah, well, welcome to Taft, Belfort.”

First they took my clothes, then they handed me an orange jumpsuit, and then they handed me back my reeducation slippers and told me to put my hands behind my back so they could slap the cuffs on me, which they did, with a smile.

“They” were two uniformed guards from the Special Housing Unit, known as the SHU, for short. Located in the lower bowels of the administration building, the SHU was that section of the prison where they kept the serious hard cases. Handcuffed and panic-stricken, I was escorted down a long, narrow corridor with ominous steel doors on either side.

Not surprisingly, “they” were of an entirely different breed than the affable intake mullets. (Neither of them even had mullets, for Chrissake!)They were unusually tall, overly muscular, and had the sort of overdeveloped jaws that indicate steroid abuse coupled with a genetic disposition toward violence. As we made our way through the SHU, no words were exchanged, other than a passing comment I made about my being thrown in the SHU not for doing something wrong; it was simply one of those lost-paperwork things. (So they really ought to go easy on me.) To that, they both shrugged as if to say, “Who gives a shit?”

The guards stopped and unlocked one of the steel doors. “Step inside,” one of them ordered. “After we close the door, you stick your hands through the slot in the door and we'll uncuff you.” With that, they fairly shoved me into the cell, which was incredibly tiny, perhaps six by twelve feet. Two steel bunk beds were riveted into one wall, a steel seat-desk ensemble was riveted into another wall, and a steel toilet, sans toilet seat, was right out in the open for public dumpages. A tiny window, covered by iron bars, looked out over a dusty field. The lower bunk was occupied by another inmate, a middle-aged white man with a sun-deprived complexion. He was busy doing paperwork, and, to my shock, he sported the most fabulous mullet of all. In fact, it was world class—comprised of curly red hair that was so flat on top you could have used his head as a plate. The moment the guards slammed the door, he popped off the bed and said, “So what happened? What did they say you did?”

“Nothing,” I answered. “I self-surrendered, and they lost my paperwork.”

He rolled his eyes. “That's what they always say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they make extra money throwing people in the hole. Taft is not actually part of the Bureau of Prisons; they're a private corporation, for profit. You know that, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it's owned by the Wackenhut Corporation.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And each day you're in the hole, Wackenhut bills the federal government an extra hundred dollars. Anyway, I'm Sam Hausman.” ^2*He extended his closed fist toward me for a jailhouse handshake.

“Jordan Belfort,” I replied, banging knuckles with him. “So what are you in the hole for?”