There were a few things that weren’t quite working out for me. Every morning we would go stand in line for clothes change. I am not a big man. I’m pretty average, 5’9”, 150 lbs., but I had put on some weight in jail from eating nothing but starch and candy all the time. I could not seem to get the clothes-house man on our block to give me the right sized clothes. Clothes exchange would only take place for about half an hour to forty-five minutes after breakfast every day. I would go to the window and he’d say, “What size?” I’d tell him that I wore a 32 out on the street, but that I wasn’t sure in prison if those sizes translated. He’d give me a pair of pants, a giant t-shirt, and yell, “Next. What size?” and I would be finished like it or not. This seemed to go on for weeks. No matter what size pants I requested, I kept getting ones that were two sizes too small. They were skin tight, and the only thing I could do to try to maintain any kind of modesty was to wear this oversized, giant t-shirt that somehow looked like a dress. The pants were too tight to try to tuck the shirt into. It was pushing summer, and so too hot to wear the shirt jacket over all of this. Slowly but surely I was being dressed the way that somebody wanted me to be dressed; Also, because of my friendship with Kenny I was getting hoots and offers for sex just about everywhere that I went in the prison. I remember one morning at breakfast one of the line cooks called me over from my table. I didn’t know him and couldn’t imagine what he could want. I went over and said, “Yeah?” He told me that I could do much better than Kenny; that I could have anybody I wanted in this WHOLE prison. He knew that I was new there, but he could show me the ropes. I told him, “I’m straight,” which I meant as “I am not homosexual”, but which he seemed to interpret as, “I’m not interested in anyone but Kenny.” I couldn’t seem to get my message across. I’ve always felt like I had a pretty good handle on human sexuality. I know that there are an infinite number of varying types of sexuality. I’ve had a pretty good understanding of that since I was a kid. I never really cared. I’ve spent plenty of time going dancing with friends at both gay clubs and straight clubs, drank at a number of “lesbian bars” and gay bars and straight bars. It was never a problem for me or even awkward for that matter. When someone would misidentify me as gay, I’d simply explain that I wasn’t. If someone who was gay hit on me, I never considered it a big deal; I’d simply explain that I was flattered, but not interested because I am heterosexual. For some reason, I expected this same reality in prison. I thought that if I simply explained who I was to the men who made passes at me then that would be the end of it, but I didn’t know about competing for status in prison. I didn’t know about power and control. I didn’t know that people and relationships could be bought and sold.

They started to ship men out of the prison at astounding rates. Busloads of men were leaving every night. A new prison had just been built down the road. It was larger. It was better for facilitating close custody inmates. Kenny was concerned that they might move him there. He had been at Eastern for nearly four years, and had grown quite comfortable. This new camp, it was rumored, was twenty-four hour lock down. Eastern had some tight rules. You had to write a request twenty-four hours in advance to be able to make a phone call, and then the guard would have to come and unlock the phone, dial the number, and stand nearby while you talked, for example- if you could find a guard that had ten minutes to kill who was willing to honor the request. They would lock you out on the yard or in the dorms during shift changes, which could take anywhere from half an hour to an hour. Not a big deal, unless you have to pee. Eastern, however, would be nowhere near the structured living that this new camp promised to become. There were rumors that no one was allowed to play cards there. A lot of guys were getting truly nervous about this. It was a constant topic of conversation out on the yard, in the dining hall, walking the halls. Kenny had requested to see his caseworker looking for some reassurance. He came back satisfied. He was sure that they wouldn’t be moving him, because he was such an excellent janitor.

I had started attending the prison’s AA meetings. They weren’t really anonymous at all. On different nights either a guard would sit in the circle with us, or one of the caseworkers would work late and he or she would sit in the discussion with us, so it was like an AA meeting in that we all sat in a big circle, and we read some of the readings that formally start the AA meetings, and we would say, “Hi my name is ________________ and I am an alcoholic, “ before talking; but because there was an authoritative presence actually in the room with us nobody was really going to say much. Also, the people sitting in the room with us that weren’t inmates had some say in determining our futures. They would be making recommendations for custody levels, and job assignments, and evaluations, so anything that WAS said was done in an attempt to get into these people’s good graces. The other thing was that while many of us did struggle with addictions on the outside, most of the people that were attending the 12-step meetings were there because they were required to be- they could not give a damn about what was said during a meeting. They were only there to sign a sheet of paper saying that they had attended, so that they could get promoted eventually to minimum custody, or so that they could report it to a potential parole board somewhere. Anonymity? Anonymity was out the window at this point. There was not much use in talking about feelings, or fears, or remorse, or much of anything at this type of meeting. It was useless.

I was sent to Eastern specifically because they had counselors that worked at the prison. Eastern housed about 500 inmates and about a quarter of them were there for mental health services. They had an entire block dedicated to men with severe mental illnesses, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, men who needed pretty heavy drugs to control their behaviors, or to quiet the voices in their heads. They lived on this one block, but mostly interacted with the rest of the prison population at will. We shared the same yard, the same basketball court, the same weight pile. I had one friend who was locked up because when he was un-medicated he had believed he was God, and stabbed someone to death in the middle of a busy highway. I had another friend who regularly saw men in black, believed we were being watched over by invisible men in helicopters. Other men just shuffled down the hallways, a sad mimic of Night of the Living Dead, no arm swing, tiredly dragging their feet, blinking lethargically, asking over and over and over, “Do you have any tobacco?” pathetically.

Eastern had some degree of mental health counseling because of this. Most prisons don’t. They had one psychiatrist, and a few psychologists, I think. The judge, my judge, in a defying move of compassion, had made access to counseling a required part of my sentence, and so I was sent here because this prison had it to offer. I was allowed to speak with a counselor once a month for about a half-an-hour to forty-five minutes.

One morning there was a bunch of hollering in the chow hall kitchen. I had just been through the line, had gotten my breakfast, and had gone to sit down with Kenny. One of the servers, the guy who had hit on me, had accidentally dropped a strip of bacon into an entire vat of grits, making it inedible to the Muslim or Jewish population. The guy who had made the grits was madder than hell about it, and the verbal sparring ensued. Eventually, this server was removed from his position. He would not be allowed to continue living on the other side of the prison where all of the kitchen workers lived. He’d have to move immediately. I did not realize until much later that this had all been done intentionally.

Kenny ended up shipping out that night. We were sitting downstairs, drinking our coffees, when an officer brought Kenny three shipping bags and told him to pack up; he was heading down the road. Kenny protested, went and begged the officer on duty to call his caseworker, talked to everybody that he could. It didn’t matter. It was decided. Somewhere between midnight and two in the morning I woke up to the sound of someone banging repeatedly against my door. I pulled myself up tiredly, looked up to see who it was, and there was Kenny with his gentle grin waving. “Bye-by, “ he said smiling. “Bye-by.” I said, “See ya, Kenny.” Rolled over and went back to sleep.

To be continued…

Kenny was the first person that I met at Eastern. I still have good memories of Kenny. Everyone called him “Slim”. He was tall, close to seven feet, dark skin that just soaked up the whole sun. He had a giant smile, and eyes that seemed a little too far apart. He came and introduced himself to me. He was childlike in his innocence. Kenny had just been moved up to this block. He had been down for about 22 years. I can’t remember if he was ever getting out or not, I don’t think so. He had broken both of his ankles and had been in a block downstairs on a medical unit because of this. He had been in a wheel chair for months and months he’d said. I asked how it happened and he’s said it had been a basketball accident, but I’m still not clear as to what happened. He never could seem to explain it in a way that made sense. Kenny was pretty slow. He reminded me of Steinbeck’s Lennie from Of Mice and Men, “Tell me about the rabbits, George.” But honestly, that was kind of what I needed at the time. I didn’t feel like talking too much, and I certainly didn’t feel like talking about anything too heavy. Kenny was the janitor in the block. He was terribly proud of this. Every night after lights out, he would get to stay out in the block and mop the whole place. And every night before he would go to bed he would stop by my door, tap on my window and with a giant smile say, “Night night.”

We would sit downstairs and drink coffee and watch TV together, and in the morning we would go have breakfast together in the chow hall. You could buy individual packets of instant coffee from the canteen for twenty cents a pack, one pack made one Styrofoam cup full of coffee. I hadn’t had coffee in what seemed like forever. You couldn’t get it in jail, or in processing, and suddenly at Eastern, I could. Kenny was impressed because I insisted on drinking my coffee black. He called it, “cowboy style”, with deep satisfaction. After breakfast I would usually retire to my room to read until lunch, and then after lunch Kenny and I would go out on the yard for a while where we would play a game of “guess which hand I am holding this pebble in.” Kenny LOVED that game, and honestly probably could have played it for hours if I hadn’t insisted that we stop so I could go read for a while.

I was a little confused; I still didn’t understand how the custody thing worked. During processing I was told by the caseworker that I would be placed in medium custody. I had too much time to do to be eligible for minimum custody, but I wasn’t dangerous enough or didn’t have enough points or something to necessitate close custody; so, she’d said I would be sent to medium custody, but everyone at this prison was in close custody. Kenny was too. What was I doing here?

I asked Kenny what he was in for, and he’d said that he’d shot and killed a police officer that was trying to attack him. I asked about this a few times, and never could put it all together. The best I could surmise was that Kenny had been driving down the road with a gun under his seat, and a police officer had tried to pull him over for something, who knows what? Routine traffic stop maybe. Kenny didn’t pull over, and the officer had started chasing him. At some point Kenny stopped, and terrified that this officer was trying to kill Kenny, Kenny reached under his seat and pulled out a gun and shot the poor guy in the chest. Jesus. Kenny never did seem to understand why he was in prison. He knew they were going to let him go any day, as soon as they realized that Kenny was innocent, that he had just been defending himself. Poor kid. I bet he’s still in there, and still thinks he’s innocent. I bet he still doesn’t understand what he did.

Kenny may or may not have been gay. Prison sexuality is a whole different thing. I met lots of guys who insisted that they were not gay that had romantic partners in prison. When pressed on this they would typically explain, “Hey, I just do this while I’m in here.” And in close custody it was even kind of the social norm. You were expected to have a partner. I had one friend “Tounk” who ran the card tables for a while. Well, Tounk loved women, but he was expected to have a partner, that was just one of the expectations that people had for him as the person who was running the card tables. Remember, there is a lot of money to be made at the tables, and that can actually become pretty important when you’re locked up. It buys you prestige, name and power. So, Tounk bought a partner so that he could keep running the tables. He purchased one of the most coveted “women” in the prison. He paid her to be his partner, and he paid her to tell everyone that they were sleeping together. This worked well for a while, but eventually Tounk’s partner developed real feelings for someone, and told Tounk that she wanted out of the contract. Tounk told her that he couldn’t just let her go like that; he’d lose face. So, she had to buy him out of the contract. Also, the person that wanted Tounk’s woman would have to fight Tounk over it. It was really the only reasonable solution. She acquiesced, paid off Tounk. They staged a fight, and Tounk’s woman left him happily for another man. Prison sexuality is about a lot of things. Some guys are genuinely homosexual or transsexual, or bisexual, but honestly, a lot of those guys are really not very open about it at all, being so could prove to be dangerous, if not entirely fatal. Other guys are completely out. There are almost always transgender inmates walking the halls, with socks stuffed down the sides of their legs to emulate women’s hips, and even some with real breast implants. The scarier sexuality in prison though, has almost nothing to do with sex. Like Tounk and his partner, it is about power, control, ownership, dignity, and sometimes just an all out sickness.

I think Kenny used sex as a way to be friends with people. He had made offers to me on a few occasions, but it sounded more like a child asking if I was interested in sharing his toys with him. Kenny would say things like, “I know you ain’t like this or nuthin’, but if you wanted to we could sneak into my room and I could give you a massage.” And I’d say, “No Kenny, you’re right. That’s not really who I am, but thanks for the offer. I’d just rather stay here and watch television. What comes on next?” And just that easily the subject would be changed and forgotten. Sometimes sitting next to Kenny watching television, drinking our coffees, he’d put his hand on my shoulder and start kneading it. This sounds naïve, but I honestly never thought anything about it, mostly because I knew Kenny, and I just saw him as this child, who was nice, and kind, and really pretty innocent, and unfortunately for him, trapped in this giant basketball player’s frame. The other thing was, that it had been so long since I had experienced any kind of human touch at all, a hug, hell, a handshake, that it was kind of nice to have someone rub my shoulder, and I knew we were out in the open, and I was safe, so I just didn’t think much of it.

So, was Kenny gay? Given all of the varying and complex factors relating to prison sexuality, I really don’t know. I didn’t think it really mattered. He was a nice guy. He meant well enough, even if his reality had been a bit sadly twisted, and he was always kind to me. I would end up paying for my indifference, not to Kenny though.

To be continued….

A couple of years before I was released I became eligible for “CV’ passes. These were 6 hour passes out into “the world” with a community volunteer, usually twice a week if the volunteers weren’t busy. Typically, I went to a friend’s house where we would eat fresh fruits and salads on one of my passes, and the other pass I would almost always go to the Chapel Hill Zen Center, a Buddhist Temple that was a couple of miles from the prison. The emphasis on silence, the soft incense, and the glow of candles were always a huge relief from my prison life.

Surrounding the Zen Center was a small patch of woods and sometimes I would go walking through this strip with a friend of mine who was also incarcerated.

One afternoon as we were walking through the woods in between periods of Zazen, having tea, my friend turned to me and said with a sigh, “I miss the woods…”

Stunned by the irony of being at a Buddhist Temple, which stresses so much emphasis on being wholly present, and talking to a friend standing in the middle of a patch of trees who missed the woods, I didn’t say anything. What could I say? I knew what he meant. He missed being able to go to the woods. So did I. It is the place where I am most comfortable.

His phrase has even become part of Kara’s and my relationship. When one of us is being obviously distracted by the future or the past, the other will give a gentle reminder of, “I miss the woods.”

My friend is out now, and occasionally while out running trails I’ll take a picture and send it to him as a reminder not to take our freedoms for granted.

I usually write next to the picture: “Not missing the woods NOW!!!”

Enjoy your day today wherever you are.

Don’t miss the woods.

Sometimes when I talk to my grandfather on the telephone about running he will listen patiently, and at the end I can hear him say a quiet, “I miss it.” He doesn’t run anymore, but he is still an exemplary person, a gentle, loving man who drives himself to church on Sundays (though between us, they should paint his car a bright plaid and put a fire alarm on top so people will see him coming.) He likes to sing. A few years ago he started teaching himself to cook, and was making a pretty great vegetable soup. My grandfather is 95 years old.

Once, when coming off of a running injury when I was at a minimum custody prison, my grandfather dug out his old knee braces and passed them off to my wife Kara with the instructions that I should always wear them when I ran. Some guys were trying to get drugs, and cell-phones across the fence. I was smuggling in running gear. I had the only pair of Balega socks on the camp; I’ll guarantee it. A friend of mine snuck in a plain white, sweat wicking t-shirt for me to run in. I came up with a plan and managed to smuggle my grandpa’s old knee braces into the prison. These were something out of the 1970’s I think, and seemed to be not much more than the knees cut out of an old wetsuit. They were uncomfortable. They burned. They shredded the back of my legs. But it didn’t matter. They were a link to my grandfather. They were a time capsule of running adventures that he shared with me. For a while when I would wear them under my prison garb, while out running my thousands of laps around the yard, I got to run with my grandfather’s legs.

My grandfather’s legs.

Before I started running I watched friends of mine spend endless hours out on the yard’s weight pile. They were always complaining about injuries. There were pulled muscles, and disjointed backs, torn ligaments and tendons that were overstretched. I not only could never figure out why they did it, but also it was always a good justification of why I shouldn’t. Weight lifting was dangerous. People got hurt.

Runners are like this. A few weeks ago when out running some early morning trails with friends, on the very first mile I stumbled, landed horribly wrong, slammed my knee into a rock, tore the skin on one hand and managed to scrape a pretty good chunk out of my shoulder. We paused. My friends politely took a few minutes while I walked in circles cursing. I spit a couple of times and we were off again. I did 17 more miles that day. Luckily, THIS time the injury wasn’t too bad.

If you use your body like this you will get injured. It is inevitable. Talking to other runners about injuries is like walking back out onto the weight pile. There are stories of plantar fasciitis, IT band syndrome, runner’s knee, and countless other injuries that seem to happen regularly on the go.

So, why do it at all? Why would I do something that I am absolutely certain is going to hurt me?

Because the only other option is for me not to do it at all.

And I don’t want to live like that. Not anymore.

I have this one life, and I really want to use it until it’s all used up.

And then, like my grandpa, I want to wring it out when I’m done.

Every

last

drop!

I love you grandpa. Thanks for the use of your legs.

The coveted green cart. Story has dreams and wishes of this green cart. Sometimes, on our way to the grocery store I hear Story offer a quiet prayer to the Universe, “I hope we get the green cart.” And though I try to withhold any sense of promise, I say back to her, “I do too, baby.” Oddly enough, I find I mean it.
One time we were leaving the store, our shopping tasks complete, Story quietly satisfied in her own, very normal, brown cart, which is just one of so many other identical, boring brown carts, when Story and I both spotted the green cart. It was parked in a corral right next to our van. I have to confess, I didn’t hesitate; I even found my pace quickening in time to my heart. I rushed to the corral, looked sneakily around for any competing souls, and spotting none, I proudly dug the green cart out from its burial behind so many other carts. There should have been music, some anthem. Steps away from our destination, Story grinning reached her hands up into the air and I whisked her into the sky and landed her proudly into her verdant palanquin. I then let her sit there, satisfied in her ownership, as I slowly unloaded our purchases from our now childless cart.
Another time (I wasn’t there for this one and only heard about it later) Kara and Story had gone to the grocery store mid-morning. It was slower than usual and as they stepped through the automatic doors, Story froze in her tracks, unable to grasp what was taking place in her young brain. The green cart was just right there; it was unattended, childless, abandoned. Kara told me later that day that Story stood there in disbelieving anticipation full moments before exclaiming, “IT’S. THE. GREEN. CART!!!” for all the world to hear.
She had won.
This evening we had walked into the store, the three of us, to gather fixings for dinner and a few odds and ends to get us through the workweek. Not only was there not a green cart in sight…there weren’t ANY children’s carts in sight. I heard Kara tell Story that she was sorry, but today Story would just have to ride in a regular cart. Story was kind, understanding of our inabilities. She did not say a word, but simply stood there with defeated acceptance on her face.
I’m not sure what it was. Maybe a car in the parking lot moved in just the right way. Something at the far end of the parking lot caught my eye. Was it? Could it be? I didn’t want to make any promises; I was a long way away. It was all the way across the parking lot. Damn it, why did I have to wear these shoes?!?
I whispered sternly to Kara and Story, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I’m a runner.
Deep breaths in the summer heat.
I’m a Runner!
…
Later as we pushed Story through the grocery store we overheard another child offer wistfully to her father, “I had the green cart once.” I stood a little taller, a little more satisfied.
Another father and his child, their drab-brown cart being pushed heavily through the aisles, stopped to admire the green cart. Kara and I acknowledged the oddity of there just being this one green cart in the whole store. Kara and I told the discomfited father that the store across town was a veritable land of Canaan, with green carts as far as the eye can see. “That’s all they have there,” I explained promisingly. Then we all agreed that it just wasn’t the same. He pushed his child away whispering words of comfort, “maybe next time we come here you can have the green cart…”
My workdays are often filled with bitter hardships, and horror stories. I listen to tales of abuse, famine, theft, and disease. I spend all day talking to people, crying with them, hoping to offer enough inspiration for one person to make one right decision.
Just one.
Like all of us I suppose, I find myself bombarded with an unhealthy amount of information, dis-information, lies and disenchantments from our leaders and role models.
It’s so easy for me to be swept away in the yelling matches. So easy to become overwhelmed by the dis-ease of Life.
It can be so easy to get caught up in the questions of why Trump is so full of hatred and yet still supported, or why Hillary can get away with the most egregious lies, or arguments of gun control and second amendment rights, and how to control terrorism while being compassionate to those in need.
Sometimes it can help to go to the park and hear the laughter of children; to remember that no matter how important and civilized we might think ourselves to be if you’re the last one down the hill, you’re STILL a rotten egg.
Sometimes it really helps just to take a trip to the local grocery store and remember that at the end of the day the green cart is the most important thing.
The arguments still matter.
The discussions taking place are important.
But it helps every once in a while to take a deep breath and remember the green cart.
Sometimes, on our way to the grocery store I hear Story offer a quiet prayer to the Universe, “I hope we get the green cart.” And though I try to withhold any sense of promise, I say back to her, “I do too, baby. I do too.”
And I mean it.

Kenny was the first person that I met at Eastern. I still have good memories of Kenny. Everyone called him “Slim”. He was tall, close to seven feet, dark skin that just soaked up the whole sun. He had a giant smile, and eyes that seemed a little too far apart. He came and introduced himself to me. He was childlike in his innocence. Kenny had just been moved up to this block. He had been down for about 22 years. I can’t remember if he was ever getting out or not, I don’t think so. He had broken both of his ankles and had been in a block downstairs on a medical unit because of this. He had been in a wheel chair for months and months he’d said. I asked how it happened and he’s said it had been a basketball accident, but I’m still not clear as to what happened. He never could seem to explain it in a way that made sense. Kenny was pretty slow. He reminded me of Steinbeck’s Lennie from Of Mice and Men, “Tell me about the rabbits, George.” But honestly, that was kind of what I needed at the time. I didn’t feel like talking too much, and I certainly didn’t feel like talking about anything too heavy. Kenny was the janitor in the block. He was terribly proud of this. Every night after lights out, he would get to stay out in the block and mop the whole place. And every night before he would go to bed he would stop by my door, tap on my window and with a giant smile say, “Night night.”

We would sit downstairs and drink coffee and watch TV together, and in the morning we would go have breakfast together in the chow hall. You could buy individual packets of instant coffee from the canteen for twenty cents a pack, one pack made one Styrofoam cup full of coffee. I hadn’t had coffee in what seemed like forever. You couldn’t get it in jail, or in processing, and suddenly at Eastern, I could. Kenny was impressed because I insisted on drinking my coffee black. He called it, “cowboy style”, with deep satisfaction. After breakfast I would usually retire to my room to read until lunch, and then after lunch Kenny and I would go out on the yard for a while where we would play a game of “guess which hand I am holding this pebble in.” Kenny LOVED that game, and honestly probably could have played it for hours if I hadn’t insisted that we stop so I could go read for a while.

I was a little confused; I still didn’t understand how the custody thing worked. During processing I was told by the caseworker that I would be placed in medium custody. I had too much time to do to be eligible for minimum custody, but I wasn’t dangerous enough or didn’t have enough points or something to necessitate close custody; so, she’d said I would be sent to medium custody, but everyone at this prison was in close custody. Kenny was too. What was I doing here?

I asked Kenny what he was in for, and he’d said that he’d shot and killed a police officer that was trying to attack him. I asked about this a few times, and never could put it all together. The best I could surmise was that Kenny had been driving down the road with a gun under his seat, and a police officer had tried to pull him over for something, who knows what? Routine traffic stop maybe. Kenny didn’t pull over, and the officer had started chasing him. At some point Kenny stopped, and terrified that this officer was trying to kill Kenny, Kenny reached under his seat and pulled out a gun and shot the poor guy in the chest. Jesus. Kenny never did seem to understand why he was in prison. He knew they were going to let him go any day, as soon as they realized that Kenny was innocent, that he had just been defending himself. Poor kid. I bet he’s still in there, and still thinks he’s innocent. I bet he still doesn’t understand what he did.

Kenny may or may not have been gay. Prison sexuality is a whole different thing. I met lots of guys who insisted that they were not gay that had romantic partners in prison. When pressed on this they would typically explain, “Hey, I just do this while I’m in here.” And in close custody it was even kind of the social norm. You were expected to have a partner. I had one friend “Tounk” who ran the card tables for a while. Well, Tounk loved women, but he was expected to have a partner, that was just one of the expectations that people had for him as the person who was running the card tables. Remember, there is a lot of money to be made at the tables, and that can actually become pretty important when you’re locked up. It buys you prestige, name and power. So, Tounk bought a partner so that he could keep running the tables. He purchased one of the most coveted “women” in the prison. He paid her to be his partner, and he paid her to tell everyone that they were sleeping together. This worked well for a while, but eventually Tounk’s partner developed real feelings for someone, and told Tounk that she wanted out of the contract. Tounk told her that he couldn’t just let her go like that; he’d lose face. So, she had to buy him out of the contract. Also, the person that wanted Tounk’s woman would have to fight Tounk over it. It was really the only reasonable solution. She acquiesced, paid off Tounk. They staged a fight, and Tounk’s woman left him happily for another man. Prison sexuality is about a lot of things. Some guys are genuinely homosexual or transsexual, or bisexual, but honestly, a lot of those guys are really not very open about it at all, being so could prove to be dangerous, if not entirely fatal. Other guys are completely out. There are almost always transgender inmates walking the halls, with socks stuffed down the sides of their legs to emulate women’s hips, and even some with real breast implants. The scarier sexuality in prison though, has almost nothing to do with sex. Like Tounk and his partner, it is about power, control, ownership, dignity, and sometimes just an all out sickness.

I think Kenny used sex as a way to be friends with people. He had made offers to me on a few occasions, but it sounded more like a child asking if I was interested in sharing his toys with him. Kenny would say things like, “I know you ain’t like this or nuthin’, but if you wanted to we could sneak into my room and I could give you a massage.” And I’d say, “No Kenny, you’re right. That’s not really who I am, but thanks for the offer. I’d just rather stay here and watch television. What comes on next?” And just that easily the subject would be changed and forgotten. Sometimes sitting next to Kenny watching television, drinking our coffees, he’d put his hand on my shoulder and start kneading it. This sounds naïve, but I honestly never thought anything about it, mostly because I knew Kenny, and I just saw him as this child, who was nice, and kind, and really pretty innocent, and unfortunately for him, trapped in this giant basketball player’s frame. The other thing was, that it had been so long since I had experienced any kind of human touch at all, a hug, hell, a handshake, that it was kind of nice to have someone rub my shoulder, and I knew we were out in the open, and I was safe, so I just didn’t think much of it.

So, was Kenny gay? Given all of the varying and complex factors relating to prison sexuality, I really don’t know. I didn’t think it really mattered. He was a nice guy. He meant well enough, even if his reality had been a bit sadly twisted, and he was always kind to me. I would end up paying for my indifference, not to Kenny though.

There were a few things that weren’t quite working out for me. Every morning we would go stand in line for clothes change. I am not a big man. I’m pretty average, 5’9”, 150 lbs., but I had put on some weight in jail from eating nothing but starch and candy all the time. I could not seem to get the clothes-house man on our block to give me the right sized clothes. Clothes exchange would only take place for about half an hour to forty-five minutes after breakfast every day. I would go to the window and he’d say, “What size?” I’d tell him that I wore a 32 out on the street, but that I wasn’t sure in prison if those sizes translated. He’d give me a pair of pants, a giant t-shirt, and yell, “Next. What size?” and I would be finished like it or not. This seemed to go on for weeks. No matter what size pants I requested, I kept getting ones that were two sizes too small. They were skin tight, and the only thing I could do to try to maintain any kind of modesty was to wear this oversized, giant t-shirt that somehow looked like a dress. The pants were too tight to try to tuck the shirt into. It was pushing summer, and so too hot to wear the shirt jacket over all of this. Slowly but surely I was being dressed the way that somebody wanted me to be dressed; Also, because of my friendship with Kenny I was getting hoots and offers for sex just about everywhere that I went in the prison. I remember one morning at breakfast one of the line cooks called me over from my table. I didn’t know him and couldn’t imagine what he could want. I went over and said, “Yeah?” He told me that I could do much better than Kenny; that I could have anybody I wanted in this WHOLE prison. He knew that I was new there, but he could show me the ropes. I told him, “I’m straight,” which I meant as “I am not homosexual”, but which he seemed to interpret as, “I’m not interested in anyone but Kenny.” I couldn’t seem to get my message across. I’ve always felt like I had a pretty good handle on human sexuality. I know that there are an infinite number of varying types of sexualities. I’ve had a pretty good understanding of that since I was a kid. I never really cared. I’ve spent plenty of time going dancing with friends at both gay clubs and straight clubs, drank at a number of “lesbian bars” and gay bars and straight bars. It was never a problem for me or even awkward for that matter. When someone would misidentify me as gay, I’d simply explain that I wasn’t. If someone who was gay hit on me, I never considered it a big deal; I’d simply explain that I was flattered, but not interested because I am heterosexual. For some reason, I expected this same reality in prison. I thought that if I simply explained who I was to the men who made passes at me then that would be the end of it, but I didn’t know about competing for status in prison. I didn’t know about power and control. I didn’t know that people and relationships could be bought and sold.

To be continued…

I love almost everything about Autumn. It’s endlessly romantic. I love the fallen leaves and the quiet remembering that it always seems to bring up for me. I cherish the smells of wet earth, the leathery claps of football games on Saturday afternoons. I love that somehow the light seems different, more golden, that the tastes are sweeter.

It’s a hard time for me, Autumn; not all of it. There is a lot that I love about it, but it is also the anniversary of my sobriety. I think that sobriety is a celebration for most of the people who I know that are in recovery, and it is for me too, but it also comes with a lot of grief, and maybe that’s true for all of us who are sober. Maybe all of us have that one dark day…

Can I be honest? I’ve never really stopped living that night. It actually never goes away. I have lots of happy moments, but that night is buried definitively in everything that I do. Story sits on my lap and I tell her stories and read her books; I’m madly in love with these moments, and I reflect on how one of my victims was only eighteen years old when he got killed. He had stopped to help someone on the side of the road, and now he never gets to have this moment. This moment was stolen from him. I run on a Sunday morning blazing up and down hills with the cool air filling my lungs to capacity, and feeling just so, so alive in the world, and I wonder about a six month old child whose father had lost his life that night, and I just wonder. I just wonder.

So, it’s always there.

Always.

It’s not always bad. It was. It was really bad for quite a long time, but at some point I realized that I just couldn’t wake up crying everyday for the rest of my life. At some point I had to dry my tears and get to work. It sounds odd but it really was almost that clear and concise. It was almost like I woke up in my cell one day and felt like the darkness had lifted and it was time to get going. I started laughing again. That was hard. At first I felt really horrible for just having this ability, the ability to laugh. I felt like I should never really feel good again, like if I could just feel bad enough all of the time, then it would mean that I was a good person, but reason kind of won that argument. I started thinking that I owed it to my victims to laugh. In fact, I owed it to them to laugh a lot! I’m sure that this doesn’t make sense, but I really feel like my laughter is an offering that I give back to my victims.

The other hard thing about Autumn, which thankfully is not hard at all anymore, was that in prison as the days got shorter I got less time out on the yard. That may not seem like much, but it was often just so loud inside, it was just such a constant assault on the ears, and being outside at least helped to dampen the noise that when we were allowed those extra hours during the late spring and summer it was just such an absolute relief.

This was how loud it was: At one point I had smuggled in a special set of earplugs. They were the wax kind; that don’t really go into your ear canals but rather, they fit over the outside of them. So, what I would do on a Saturday night would be to put the regular, soft earplugs into my ears. (You could buy those at the canteen for a couple of bucks. The first time I did I swear to you I almost cried with relief. In the county jail these weren’t available and I had taken to stuffing wads of wet newspaper into my ears.) Anyway, I would put the soft kind into my ears and the wax kind on the outside over those and then I had some headphones that I had bought off of someone out on the yard for about twenty bucks (a prison fortune!) that would go over your head, and I would put these on and play the classical station at full-volume in order to drowned out the sound of human voices and clapping and rapping and the slamming of dominoes, and checkers, and cards, and yelling over card games that was a constant background song in my tiny little world. That was how I found relief for just a moment on a Saturday night in prison, and I would lay on my bunk and wonder what the days would be like when they finally did let me go, because really, I had no idea. I had never really been free and sober at the same time, and it scared me a little bit.

But today I took Story to a giant “bouncing pillow” and a corn maze and it was loud too. Children were running and laughing and screaming. They were tumbling violently, and their parents were using loud voices to try to keep them from getting hurt. It is really a different kind of noise. I’m not sure why it is, but it is. IF I had to guess, I’d say that I think it’s because there is joy in it, and that was the one thing that you really couldn’t find much of in prison. You could find laughter, but there wasn’t much joy.

I still have moments where I feel ashamed that my life is so good, and calm, and steady these days.

Today when the days get shorter it means that the holidays are upon us. It’s one of my absolute favorite things about being married to Kara, she insists that we embrace the holidays; we revel in them. Our porch will be filled with pumpkins and our house will smell of cider. At Thanksgiving our house will overflow with food and the Thanksgiving Day Parade will certainly be played in the background. Christmas we will sing songs, and drink eggnog, and make Kara’s mother’s manicotti recipe while we watch Miracle on 34^th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life. Kara believes in celebration and I believe she’s right.

It all starts happening around October, as the daylight begins to fade, and I start to reflect.

It never goes away. I’ll always regret that horrible night. I’ll always be so sorry that happened. I wish I could take it all away.

But I am thankful.

I am grateful.

I’m thankful for the people in my life.

I’m thankful for the chance to be free again even if I didn’t always deserve it.

I’m thankful that I am sober.

I’m grateful for the quiet.

I’m grateful for the happy noises, grateful for the light.

It was a long bus ride, but there wasn’t really anything else to do but try to take it all in. I was so impressed with just how cool some of the other guys were about it. They boarded the bus with indifference, most of them laying their heads back trying to sleep. This was the first chance I had really had to spend any time outdoors in many months, and this was my last glimpse at civilization for, well, I didn’t know how long. I clung to the metal grates welded across the windows, staring out at the cars and the drivers down below, wondering where they were going, wondering about the problems that they would face today. I was jealous. I wanted to be pissed off about something that just didn’t matter much, my dirty house. I wanted to be annoyed at a co-worker. I wanted to be in a rush to get somewhere and stuck in a traffic jam, frustrated. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

Eastern Correctional Institution is in the middle of a bunch of farmland. There’s not much to see there. I think the closest town might have a stoplight. I’m not sure; I never saw the closest town there. The only reason that I know that there was one was that that was who worked at the prison, the people that lived in the town. As the tobacco industry in North Carolina began to crumble for the smaller farmers, the state started building remote prisons on the now vacant farmlands, typically in the poorer counties it seems. This helped to create jobs for people with lower level educations, people who would have been farmers, but they no longer had farms to tend. You could never get rich working as a prison guard, but there are decent benefits, a retirement plan, and it doesn’t require a lot of skill. Most people can figure out how to open and close a door, and turn a big key to lock it.

After I arrived at Eastern they put me in a holding area. I sat there for hours. They brought me another sandwich to eat for dinner, and a small apple that wasn’t ripe yet, a container of milk. I had unfortunately arrived between shifts. I know this now; I didn’t know what was going on then. They just admitted me, brought me into a holding cell with a toilet and left me there, sitting on a bench to wait.

This happens pretty regularly in prison. I was the next shift’s problem. They would get to me once they got around to it. There wouldn’t be any rush, after all, what was there to rush for? I wasn’t going anywhere. So, I sat there for what I guess was a few hours wondering when they would come and get me. Eventually someone did. He didn’t handcuff me or anything. In fact, thinking back on it, I don’t think I was ever handcuffed again the entire time that I was in prison. Well, that’s not true. There was one other time that I can distinctly remember handcuffs being put on me. But most of the time that you are in prison you don’t wear handcuffs, shackles, anything like that. Once you’re in, you are in.

The guard came and got me. He was nice enough. He took me to “the clothes house” so that I could get a change of clothes, and some sheets, and a pillow. As we walked down the long hallway he said, “Guess I get to give you the official tour, huh? Well, this should be easy enough. Right here is the chow hall. Programs’ll be comin’ up on our right. That’s the library just across from programs. Right there’s the barbershop. That’s Custody over there. And upstairs is the unit you’ll be sleeping on.” We made a right and kept walking down the hall, up a couple of flights of stairs. The place was madhouse busy. Conversations were yelled across hallways. Men running past us on the stairs. Doors slamming as guys came in and went out onto the yard. And of course, the ubiquitous sound of dominoes and cards crashing down on steel tables. Too much noise. Always too much noise. Whenever I think of prison that’s the first thing that comes to mind. Ever. The goddamn noise. It never stops. It rarely takes a break. Jarring your nerves, it’s always random, so it never achieves the soothing rhythm of an old train, or the crashing of ocean waves. It is clanks, and screams, and swearing, and someone trying to get a guards attention in a sound proof booth by yelling, “A Block!” over and over, and then when that doesn’t work yelling, “Ay! Three down! A block! You stupid motherfucker!” Trying to let the guard know to open a cell, the third cell over on the bottom floor in A block. But of course there are three blocks that this guard is trying to keep track of all at once, all at three different angles, and about thirty men per block, so there’s not just one guy screaming for the guard to unlock his cell, there are lots of guys, competing for his attention, all the time. Lots of noise. And there are other men competing for the guard’s attention, to be let out of their cells. When your cell is locked you can get out by pressing a button that looks like a doorbell, and this will light a button in the guard booth, which the guard will then press to unlock your door. Unfortunately, the guard doesn’t always think to look down, or he or she gets busy on the telephone, or becomes distracted trying to keep up with the guys who are trying to get into their cells, or if it’s late at night the guard will go to sleep, and so the traditional way to get the guard’s attention when this happens is by beating the hell out of the metal door with the heel of a prison boot. It doesn’t work at all, but it sure adds to the noise.

The cells at Eastern didn’t have any toilets in them, instead there were four bathrooms at the end of the block. Each bathroom contained a shower, a few toilets and a few urinals, and a couple of sinks. The walls of the bathroom were made entirely out of glass so if you had to use the bathroom, then everyone else watched you. Well, what you learn pretty quickly is that no one really wants to see you on the toilet. Eastern’s bathrooms were pretty private really. If you went in and sat on the toilet, no one would dare think of coming and sitting on a toilet next to you. There were other bathrooms to use. This isn’t true for a lot of prisons. A lot of prisons there isn’t much choice, if you sit on a toilet, then you can be sure to have someone to talk to on the toilet right next to you. I always hated that, never did get used to it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to for a few years.

One confusion with Eastern’s bathrooms though was that to get to any of them you had to go directly past a corner cell. When we were processing we watched a well thought out, low budget “training” video of the do’s and don’t of prison life. It was about ten minutes long, and seemed to have been put together many years ago, apparently shot, produced, and acted in by the prison program’s staff. It included tips like what to do if you unexpectedly find a candy bar on your pillow, advice on not taking “gifts” from other inmates, and wisdoms imparted like “stay away from the corner cells, because the correction officers often cannot see them very well.” There didn’t seem to be a way to stay away from corner cells, and use the bathroom, take a shower, or brush your teeth. They didn’t think to include this in the video.

The guard took me to my cell. It was on the fourth story, the top floor, of the prison. There were two windows, about four or five inches wide and a few feet tall, with plastic window panes that at one time were probably see through, but the edges had been smeared with paint, and they were scratched all to hell. A corner had been broken out of one and there were nicotine stains at the bottom there where someone, or many someones over the years, used to lay his cigarette. I could kind of make out one of the basketball courts outside, not in any detail, but I could recognize what it was. Once it got a little darker I could make out the giant security lights outside surrounding the perimeter of the prison. There was a bed mounted to the wall, a little higher than a standard bed frame, and a small locker underneath that. There was a small, two foot by two foot stainless steel table mounted to the other wall, and a plastic armchair with a the tie from a shipping bag tied into a loop around one of the arms.

The officer left and I started to unpack my bags, make my bed. I had been collecting photographs of friends from the letters I had received over the months. I had paper bags full of mail, which I held onto as a comfort, a reminder that there were people outside that still cared what about what happened to me; I was loved. I had hygiene products- toothpaste, a toothbrush. I had some rolling tobacco, and papers. It all seemed so pathetic. I remembered times that I had moved having to rent giant box trucks, making multiple trips, chairs, tables, paintings, dishware, and now, here I was, a few yellowing papers: a hand written version of the periodic table of the elements that I had copied during lunch one day while still in jail in one of the classrooms, and then smuggled back into the block after class so that I could practice memorizing it. That would give me something to do to kill time when I was awake. I folded the periodic table in half and placed it into the locker. I leaned the photos up against the foot of the wall all the way around the room so that my friends, the people who loved me somewhere, could surround me. There was a smiling Regina, and a picture of my folks. There was a picture of my grandmother and grandfather, friends of mine dancing in the bars that we frequented. Somewhere behind all of these pictures there was a person. I missed him.

Lonely, I finished unpacking my few, useless belongings. The yard had closed because a spring storm was rolling in. I could barely hear the rumblings of the thunder on the other side of the wall. The excitement in the block was mounting. Guys now back inside from the yard were hyper-charged from basketball, the weight pile, volleyball. One guy was rapping at the top of his lungs; the block was an electric buzz of noise.

I closed my door.

I walked over to the far wall, to the windows. Such a perfect sound, thunder. It was impossible to see the sky through these windows. I could see that there was lightening, but couldn’t see the lightening itself. I could hear the rain splatter the slim windowpanes, could fit my finger through the hole and feel the rain with the tip of my finger on the tiny ledge.

I placed my forehead to the cool, concrete wall for a long moment. Then I rolled my head placing my ear up against the concrete wall to try to hear, to try to feel, the thunder.

Spring.

I was missing spring.

And nighttime. I was missing the night.

I was missing my family. My friends.

My innocence.

I cried long, deep, hurting sobs leaning up against that wall.

I felt so scared, so lonely, so alone.

So empty.

I just cried.

And cried.

And cried.

To be continued…

Israel had to steal. I had been working in the prison kitchen for about 3 months before I requested the position as baker. There were a few advantages to being the baker in the kitchen. One of the main ones was that the baker had his own little room in the back of the kitchen. Privacy was such a huge commodity, just the ability to be alone on any given day was an absolute luxury for those of us in prison. It wasn’t a large room. It was about the size of a medium sized bathroom. It had two stainless steel tables in it and a floor mixer. Under one table were three, white plastic bins. One of the bins had flour. One had cornstarch, and the last one had sugar. The sugar bin was supposed to be locked all the time to keep people from sneaking in to the kitchen and stealing all of the sugar to make “Buck” (prison wine), but this proved impractical to the kitchen corrections officers who didn’t want to be bothered with having to unlock it at any given time, and so they usually just left the padlock on it unlocked. Sometimes the sugar would get stolen. The other advantage that the baking room had was it’s own radio. It was nothing fancy, just a standard, mono-speaker old thing from the 1980’s, with a broken antenna that had been wrapped in aluminum foil, but it was nice to be able to listen to music without having to wear the standard headphones that we wore for everything. Even the televisions could only be heard through headphones (believe me, we were ALL thankful for this).

I first learned to bake under an older man named Friends. No kidding that was his real name. He was a round, little man who always wore a brimmed toboggan, and never wore his teeth. His southern drawl was so thick that it often was even hard for me to understand him and I grew up in the south. It bordered on a kind of Creole musicality. I had asked Friends once how he had gotten his name, and he responded by saying that he really didn’t know, kind of shrugged it off as if to say, “I never really thought about it.” Friends had told me that he had learned to bake years ago when he was much younger because he had noticed on his numerous stints in prison that the bakers on the camps always had something to sell out on the yard. “I figgered if I learned to bake I’d always have SOMETHING.” Friends had been in and out of prison for most of his life. He told me once that for him it had been “that Crack” that had always led to his downfall. He also liked to play cards, and I got the feeling he wasn’t too good at it, which was one of the other reasons that he learned to bake.

Friends got out a year or two before me. I had heard that he had died not long after getting out, which hardly seemed fair, but I had also heard that he had died sober…so there’s that…

Israel was a Rastafarian friend of mine. Truth be told he wasn’t exactly sane, but that was true for a lot of the prison population, and he was a nice enough guy, not really threatening or anything. He had the longest dreadlocks I have ever seen. He told me once that he had been dreading his hair for his entire life, and he was my age. He said he had never had a haircut. Not once. He usually wore his dreads wrapped up in a large spiral under his “Crown” (the colorful knit hats that so many of the Rastas wear). These were pretty common around prisons, along with Muslim kufis and even a few Jewish yamakas. The states had to allow inmates to practice their religions. In fact this even helped me a little: I’ve been a vegetarian for since I was about 19 years old and when I didn’t know how to get a vegetarian diet in jail, before I went to prison, someone told me that if I could justify it for religious reasons they’d have to supply me with a vegetarian diet. I filled out a sheet of paper saying that I was Buddhist and that I needed a vegetarian diet, and that covered it. I ate pretty much beans and rice everyday from that day forward, but I was able to maintain a vegetarian diet. Of course the funny part about that is that there really isn’t a requirement that Buddhists be vegetarian, that and at the time I really didn’t know the first thing about Buddhism, but I figured that whoever was up there governing what was right or wrong in the universe would understand and forgive my motives; It was, after all, an attempt to do less harm in the world.

Anyway, Israel had been in and out of prisons most of his life too. He had originally been locked up in New York, and had hit just about every prison he could on his journey south. I’m not sure what he was locked up for; what I do know is that he absolutely HAD to steal. I learned this the hard way.

About once a week I would have to make cookies for the camp population. Initially, I had hated making cookies. They took forever. It was such a repetitive process. It was messy. What I really liked baking were biscuits, fast, fun, and instant gratification. I liked cakes too, when we had the right ingredients. There was something really magical about cakes, mixing this liquid batter and then popping it into the oven to have something of a completely different form come out later. I also liked the powerlessness of the oven; once something went in there was nothing else that could be done. The oven took away all of the choices; that was both damning and freeing all at the same time. If there was something wrong with the mix, well, there was nothing that could be done. If it was a perfect batter then that was a happy accident too. This was true no matter what was being baked that day. The oven only had so much say in the final outcome. It was each step of the mix that was what defined us.

Cookies on the other hand, well, I had to make hundreds of them. I think on any given day I would make about three hundred cookies. I’d make enough for the general prison population, and then more for the poor bastards in disciplinary segregation (“the hole”). I’d make extras for the guys I worked with in the prison and then some for them to take to their close friends or to sell out on the yard for whatever they could get, but somehow I STILL always came up about thirty cookies short.

Every time!

I actually reached a point where cookies became one of my favorite activities. I turned them into a meditation practice. I started turning off the radio, and trying to be present with each, individual, cookie that I rolled. It was calming. I would practice counting my breaths while just being with the cookies, pondering the rain that fell to the earth to provide the water for the chickens that created the eggs, and thinking about the fields of wheat that were grown to create the flour. It was a nice time.

I don’t remember exactly how I learned that Israel was the person stealing my cookies. I think I set a trap one day, by putting a bunch of them in the storeroom to set and just waited and watched. When I did catch him at it I didn’t call him out on it or anything like that. Later, I did finally ask him about it, but not in an accusatory way. There really wasn’t any reason to; it wouldn’t have done a damn bit of good.

The odd part about it was that Israel worked in the kitchen, which means that whenever I baked cookies, I always offered him some. He would just smile and say, “No thanks, man, but thank-you” in the kindest, most heart-felt way. He really meant it.

Then he would steal them from me later and this would leave me short about thirty cookies at lunch or dinner.

It was a simple solution.

I started baking an extra batch of cookies for Israel to steal. I’d cook one extra sheet and leave them in the back of the storeroom on top of the sacks of flower or cans of tomatoes.

One evening when Israel and I were in the chow hall eating before they called the general population in Israel and I talked about stealing, and I asked him why he insisted on stealing cookies that I had offered him for free.

He said, “I don’t know, man.” He smiled his big, gold-toothed, Rasta grin. “They jus’ taste better when you steal them.”

“Really?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, everything tastes better when you steal it.”

Israel had to steal.

I’m not sure when he got out. Maybe he’s still in there; somewhere haunting a prison kitchen storeroom. Maybe he’s free right now, contemplating his next unsuccessful hustle. I don’t know what the batter was that went in to pouring Israel; one thing I know for sure though is that no matter where he is right now, Israel has a lot of hard days ahead of him. Poor guy.

I hope he gets all the cookies he wants.

Walking around the fence’s perimeter, another lap, another…quarter mile? I wonder if it really is a quarter mile. That’s what I’ve been told, but there’s no way to be sure, really. How many times have I made this particular journey? Hundreds? Thousands? I should know the distance by now, or, if not the exact measurement, then at least the number of steps. I suppose I could have counted the steps, but I’ve learned enough to know that counting is a bad habit to fall into in here. It’s dangerous. Sure, it could start with something simple, like steps, but it wouldn’t stop there. Next it would be…what would it be next? Months? Yeah, probably months, and then weeks, and then days. No, it’s better not to count. Better just to keep on walking.

I start into the longest stretch of the walk. On my right, about sixty, or maybe it’s closer to one hundred feet away, I see the long, tangled vines of what I’m guessing to be sweet potatoes. I hope it’s NOT sweet potatoes. They grew sweet potatoes the first year I was here, and that’s all we ate for months after the harvest: sweet potato bread, sweet potato pancakes, candied sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie. I don’t mind sweet potatoes; they’re okay. really, but…well, too much of a good thing…

Last year they grew cotton. The year before that it was soy. I wonder if there are rules about what the farm next door can and can’t grow. Corn might be a bad idea. Even tobacco grows pretty high. It doesn’t grow as high as corn, but it grows high enough that I can see where it might be considered a threat, a “security risk.”

I pass a sign hanging from the galvanized steel linkage. In sharp, red letters it warns: “STAY BACK TEN FEET.” I ignore the threat, like everyone does. The well-worn path that I’m hiking, the one created by the footsteps of thousands of men before me, is a mere two feet from the fence. The only time I can recall this close proximity being a problem was about six months ago. There was a new guard training in the gun tower. Poor kid. She didn’t know that this is the path we always tread. One of the guys was out doing his walk, this walk, two feet from the fence. She shouted down from the tower for him to “Get back ten feet!” He ignored her, of course. Must have thought she was yelling at someone else. She panicked and pulled the gun on him. Staring fiercely down the barrel of the rifle, she screamed, “I said get away from the fence.” Her shrill voice sounded more full of fright than authority. The whole yard broke into fits of laughter. Guys were hooting and hollering, falling off of the weight benches. The basketball game came to a standstill in order to watch the drama unfold. I don’t know how it ended. Bored with the hysterics, I walked back inside. I know she didn’t shoot him. Everyone laughed about that event for days afterwards: “She pulled a gun on him! Stupid. Can you believe that? She pulled a gun!”

What a riot.

Sometimes it frightens me, how easily I’ve adapted to this place. The language, my language itself, was the first notable change. Not just the semantics, either – though those have changed, too – but I expected that. No, what frightens me is the way I approach subjects now. For example, early on, when guys would ask what I was in for, I’d go into a long soliloquy describing the unfolding of the nightmare that landed me here. I’d carefully explain how a car ran a stop sign one evening, slammed into an on-coming vehicle, and injured someone. I’d tell how a group of people stopped to help, and then how I came over the hill too fast to stop, but then, I had been drinking, too, and…

These days, when someone asks what I’m in for, I shrug and say, “Car accident. Killed a bunch of people. I was drunk.” And I shudder inside at how easy that has become to say…”killed a bunch of people.” That should never be easy to say, but the guys closest to me over the years have grown bored with my despair. They have their own hells to face, so I’ve learned to shrug off my despondence out of…politeness?

A mockingbird lands easily, tauntingly, between the glinting blades of coiled razor wire that shrouds the top of the fence. She chatters at me angrily in some unknown tongue. The fence is what makes this a prison. The buildings are just buildings: concrete, steel, glass, bricks, tar – just buildings. The earth that the buildings rest on, cooled by their looming shadows, is just earth. In a thousand years, long after nature has had her way with mankind’s “progress”, this will still be earth. The mockingbird doesn’t know this is a prison, a penitentiary, a place for penance. No, what makes this a prison, what confines me to the point of suffocation, is that fence, that quarter mile run of metal mesh, tangled barbed wire, and accordioned razor wire. I can see freedom through it, but I can never reach out and touch it from here. If not for that fence, this wouldn’t be such a bad place; free food, free rent, and I’m only lonely when I want to be lonely.

If I could just saunter over there and pluck one of the leaves from a sweet potato vine, smell its fresh, green scent, rub its milky smoothness against my skin. If I could just do that, then this wouldn’t be a prison.

Dragonflies busily zoom here and there, across the yard, over the fence, to some unexplored water source, some mythological Xanadu. If I could just follow them to that magic fairyland, just hear the splash of water, smell the cool, damp earth, dip my fingers into that dark, liquid pool; if I could do that, then this wouldn’t be a prison.

What I really want, desire…CRAVE, is a day off. I want my innocence back, just for one day. I want to enjoy the quiet creaking of a porch swing, to chase fireflies in the twilight, to thump a watermelon under the blazing sun and listen for the telling ring of ripeness. I want to not know death. That would be freedom! But I’ll never be that free again.

It surprised me to learn, in here, just how malleable time can be. Get a steady routine going and the years fly by. Shave every other day. Lift weights for an hour or so daily. Read voraciously, because a good book is the closest thing left to actually living. So that’s the trick. Get a good, steady routine and watch the seasons melt into each other. Of course, the downside to that is that I’m aging faster, too. Well, it’s about time I grew up. I’ve been playing this Peter Pan thing for too long as it is, and it has cost too many people far too much.

Step after step, lap after lap, mile after mile, always watching the ground, watching the grass blur beneath me, I walk this fence, going nowhere, just walking, because the body needs motion.

Sometimes I imagine that I’m training to hike the corridor of the Appalachian Trail. That’s one of my dreams of freedom. I’ll march the twenty-seven hundred miles of mountain ridges and flowering valley floors, and I’ll remember prison. I’ll look on all of nature’s splendid perfection, and I’ll muse to myself that I’d never be able to complete that stretch of walking if it weren’t for the endless miles I’d laid down behind these walls. It’s important to dream.

Other times, I’m just walking to escape the ghosts that haunt me now. If I walk fast enough, or far enough, or both, then maybe they’ll give up and leave me alone. (They never do.)

Some days, I walk to feel the sunshine warming my bones, browning my skin. The sun is a shimmering reminder that the world will be okay. Life will prevail.

I walk in the rain for solitude. I revel in the drenching sky-water rolling off my face, baptizing me, healing me, renewing me.

I walk in the winter for the winds, which is another form of travel for me. I begin in the Arctic, move down from Canada, across endless plains, and blow out to the Atlantic. I’ve wandered with the wind many, many times.

Mostly, though, I just walk.

I walk.

I walk towards some future, away from my past.

I walk.

With countless miles to go, I walk.

It’s better not to count the miles. Counting can be dangerous.

I walk.

I walk.

I walk.

A body in motion, I walk.