45 MINUTE VIDEO ESSAY ON YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO GUYS LIKE US IN PRISON!!!!

45 MINUTE VIDEO ESSAY ON YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO GUYS LIKE US IN PRISON!!!!

My Chemical Romance vocalist Gerard Way once explained before a live performance that “You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison,” off of the band’s 2004 record Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, is “about getting sodomized in jail, if you’re into that.” This is a point that Way would hammer home again and again, providing another helpful explanation before a 2005 Los Angeles performance of “Prison” that “This song got us arrested in France because it’s about getting fucked in the ass,” before beginning the signature moans that typically precede live performances of “Prison.” Before another live performance of “Prison” in Mexico City, Way would command “just the boys” in the audience to “take your shirts off” and “swing it over your fucking heads” before breaking into the usual moans.

Despite Way’s theatrics, the lyrics of the track are far from crude. On its most basic, literal level, this song tells the tale of two criminals—“two men as God had made us”— and what follows after a shootout with police in a restaurant ends with the narrator in prison and his partner dead. Through this story, the track explores the narrator’s struggle with how this moment of profound loss changed everything for the narrator—his identity, his circumstances, his fate, and what he thought he and his partner shared. This track also features a guest appearance from Bert McCracken of The Used; at times, the storyline in the song would come to mirror aspects of McCracken and Way’s own lives, as well as the tumultuous and intense relationship the pair had. In this essay, we will break down and analyze the meaning of each line in “You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison,” their context, and broader themes regarding the relationships that some develop while out “on the road,” away from societal norms.