Online Male Friendship Stories and Novels

Sections below:

* Robert A. Heinlein: The Puppet Masters.
* Thomas Mott Osborne: Within Prison Walls.

Robert A. Heinlein: The Puppet Masters. Science fiction; spy fiction. (Free with free registration to the authorized distributor, Wowio.)

Published during the anti-Communism period, The Puppet Masters tells of an American intelligence agent's attempts to fight an insidious threat from outer space. The novel has many of Robert A. Heinlein's favorite themes: the need for private ownership of firearms during times of crises, the equality of men and women in the workplace (with the women subsequently showing a keen desire to immediately follow the orders of any man who threatens to spank them), the relativity of all social customs (especially social customs governing the use of clothing), and the supreme importance of picking a cat for your companion.

There's a heterosexual love story in the novel, but it's overshadowed by the emotional bond between the intelligence agent and his boss, with whom, it turns out, the agent has closer ties than that of employment.

I entered our section offices through a washroom booth in MacArthur Station. You won't find our offices in the phone lists. In fact, it does not exist. Probably I don't exist either. All is illusion. Another route is through a little hole-in-the-wall shop with a sign reading RARE STAMPS & COINS. Don't try that route either – they'll try to sell you a Tu'penny Black.

Don't try any route. I told you we didn't exist, didn't I?

There is one thing no head of a country can know and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him. Hence our section. Suspenders and belt. United Nations had never heard of us, nor had Central Intelligence – I think. I heard once that we were blanketed into an appropriation for the Department of Food Resources, but I would not know; I was paid in cash.

All I really knew about was the training I had received and the jobs the Old Man sent me on. Interesting jobs, some of them – if you don't care where you sleep, what you eat, nor how long you live. I've totalled three years behind the Curtain; I can drink vodka without blinking and spit Russian like a cat – as well as Cantonese, Kurdish, and some other bad-tasting tongues. I'm prepared to say that they've got nothing behind the Curtain that Paducah, Kentucky doesn't have bigger and better. Still, it's a living.

If I had had any sense, I'd have quit and taken a working job.

The only trouble with that would be that I wouldn't have been working for the Old Man any longer. That made the difference.

Thomas Mott Osborne: Within Prison Walls. Contemporary memoir published in 1914.

When prison commissioner Thomas Mott Osborne stood up in front of thirteen hundred prisoners at the state prison in Auburn, New York, and announced that he planned to have himself voluntarily incarcerated for a week, some of the prisoners were naturally skeptical. Would the man who had once served as mayor of Auburn really be willing to live in a four-foot-wide cell? Would he be willing to do manual labor in the workshops, follow the strict rules of the prison, and eat the often inedible prison food? Most of all, would he be willing to do "bucket duty," carrying his own human waste daily from his cell?

He did all this and more, as recounted in this gripping memoir, mainly consisting of passages from the journal he kept at the time he served as prisoner "Thomas Brown, No. 33,333x" in order to learn more about the prisoners' lives. Lest the reader think that Osborne has exaggerated the emotional impact of his stay on the other prisoners, he includes prisoners' written accounts of his imprisonment, as well as letters they sent him afterwards.

Osborne denies elsewhere that he has sentimental goals for the prisoners; however, his belief in the prisoners' humanity, and his certainty that their essential goodness can be brought to the surface, is manifest in every page. Also clear is that he is a creature of his era, writing in a year – 1914 – when men could speak unashamedly of their friendships with each other. The backbone of the tale is Osborne's growing friendship with Jack Murphy, a fellow prisoner whose insights and sacrifice would allow Osborne to make his mark on Auburn Prison.

After about half an hour spent in the cells, from eight to eight-thirty, we are off to work. Again the keys are turned in the locks, again the clicking of the levers, again the hurried march along the gallery, again my heavy shoes clump down the iron stairs, again we form in the sunny doorway, again we march down the yard to the basket shop.

As we break ranks my partner, Murphy, comes forward with a cheerful smile. "Well, Mr. Brown, how do you feel to-day?"

"Fine," I respond briefly, and we step to our working table.

"How did you sleep?"

"Not very well; I kept waking up all night."

"Well, don't worry. It's always like that the first night; you'll sleep better to-night."

And with this comforting assurance we hang up our coats and caps and start to work.

The convict instructor, Stuhlmiller, comes to our table. "Well, Brown, how did you like bucket duty?"

"Oh, I've had to do worse things than that," I reply. "I don't know that I should select that particular job from preference; but somebody has to do the cleaning up. That's the reason I was once mayor of Auburn."

The last two chapters of Osborne's 1916 book, Society and Prisons, provide a low-keyed afternote to Within Prison Walls, describing later events at Auburn Prison, as well as Osborne's brief tenure as warden of the notorious Sing Sing Prison. In addition, Osborne Stirs Carnegie Hall Throng with View of Mask and Whip from Sing Sing, a 1916 New York Times article, gives a glimpse of Osborne's work; it is one of many New York Times articles referring to Thomas Mott Osborne. Today, the Osborne Society continues the work of that its founder began: to help prisoners re-enter society and to educate people on the benefits of prison reform.

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