Prison's Awful Acoustics

The prison soundscape was far worse in decades past. Between the slamming gates and the jangling keys, the rappers and the howlers, the aggressive disputes and the lustful whoops, there was no escape from the penitentiary's auditory assault. Most cells had at least one wall made up of bars, making the whole housing unit a sonic space shared by upwards of 100 men. Modern prisons tend to offer residents the luxury of a solid steel door, but their inhabitants are still awash in a great deal of noise.

Before coming to prison, I'd never experienced high-volume culture. I didn't know that playing cards could be popped. I took for granted that people didn't incessantly beat on random surfaces for fun. I had no concept of a casual shout. I might've seen a lot in my pre-imprisonment world travels, but it seems that my life prior to this life-without sentence was still somehow sheltered.

Back in the nineteenth century, prisons were places of maximum quiet. No one spoke, except in official communication with guards (called "keepers") or with the prison's religious advisors. You'd labor without making a sound. You could practically hear a flea jump in a neighboring cell at midday prayer. Oppressive stillness was believed to spur the prisoner to search his soul and, ultimately, repent. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.

Neither did abandoning those tyrannical silences, though. Once the carceral system ditched that deeply flawed model of imprisonment, chaos reigned. Guards' radios beeped and squelched. Intercoms blared. Communication across the yard or between locked-down cells became a simple matter of verbalization. "Kites," the written notes that prisoners "fly" to one another, remained in use, as did sign language—but why scrawl or signal messages when you could shout to their recipients directly?

Memories of life at Missouri State Penitentiary still abound for prisoners who did time there before it closed down. They recall a maddening, twenty-four-hour-a-day cacophony, running the gamut from TV laugh tracks to the sounds of real-life forcible rape. There was no getting away from it, they say. All you could do was fight fire with fire: crank up your own radio, start reading aloud, or sing at the top of your lungs.

The aural unease inflicted by my own imprisonment has been mild by comparison. Yes, I was once earwitness to a neighbor being stabbed. I also endured countless deafening dining rooms, and in the last of my years at Crossroads, blogged about the torture of what I termed "aggressive whistling." Worst was my time in administrative segregation—a cumulative three months of my wingmates' all-night shouting and incessant metal banging—which gave me an acoustic experience close to the hell that people survived at MSP.

Nightly lockdowns today usually bring hours of quiet. This is disrupted only by guards' occasional radio traffic during walkthroughs, and by cooks and bakers leaving for their 3 AM kitchen jobs. Unbroken sleep is possible, at least theoretically. In the daytime, however, all bets are off.

One man in my wing does daily aerobic laps past cell doors with his ear buds in, subjecting everyone to his caterwauling. "I can't help it," he insists. "I got the music inside me." We roll our eyes and abide his off-key singing because, despite being regarded as a pest by nearly everyone here, he's recognized for being quite stupid and therefore not able to comprehend the concept of impulse control.

A quartet of comparatively compos mentis card players bellows obscenities amongst themselves, punctuated by verbal gunshot noises—for hours. When that no longer amuses them, their ringleader adds honks and abrasive car alarm effects to the mix. Sometimes one of them starts to scream, then modulates his larynx to create uniquely maximalist laughter, the likes of which I've (thankfully) never previously known.

Beyond these auditory offenders, the wing's volume reliably crescendos after recreation periods. Ballers continue their on-the-court disputes in the shower, shouting across the wing, from one stall to another, about who had better layups or three-pointers. Anyone trying to have a phone conversation in the midst of this often gives up and retreats to their cell.

Frustratingly, no one with sufficient clout to mute these uproars ever does so. Prisoners don't need or want absolute silence, but volume caps would be nice. Conversations I've had and overheard over the years imply that a majority of us would welcome occasional interruptions over the intercom, telling the noisemakers to turn it down a notch.

While awaiting the realization of this pipe dream, I plug my ears and remind myself: circumstances could be worse. They certainly have been before.

Stranger in a Strange Land: A Dream for the Future

Completely stopped on the freeway during rush hour, I put the car in park, take out my phone, and begin recording a TikTok video. I talk into the camera about the happiness this standstill inspires in me. I explain that, in prison, I would yearn to have exactly this sort of moment to myself, and how being in my own vehicle now—although momentarily kept from going anywhere in it—represents such a wonderful level of freedom that I'm compelled to express my joy in a video.

After I get home, I use the subject of my TikTok video as a jumping-off point for a bonus episode of my podcast. Some of the episodes are topical, addressing the challenges I face as a retuning citizen, but what I most enjoy is recontextualizing mundane experiences and everyday nuisances. I like sowing in listeners (I hope) the seeds of gratitude for our astonishing, precious lives.

Before the day is out, I edit and upload the podcast. I see that my rush-hour TikTok video has seven heart reactions and a thumbs-up emoji. It's a start. It's also purely theoretical.

No, you haven't missed any big news; I'm still in prison. The scenario described above is pure imagination. It's something I've considered for a while. I often think about how to make the most of my wrongful imprisonment after I'm finally exonerated. People who engage with the formerly imprisoned have told me that the people who most successfully reintegrate are the ones who lean in to their experiences, openly sharing what their time in the system taught them. It makes sense. That's how I arrived at this social media concept I call "Stranger in a Strange Land."

I envision it as a series of videos and writings that document my return to society after more than two decades. The thinking goes like this: if I can synthesize the lessons of my twenty-odd years of imprisonment into a public-facing platform, my story can be of benefit to others. I could share how I found purpose, meaning, and deep happiness despite terrible circumstances. I could offer people perspective. I might even spark inspiration in the process.

The world looks today very much like what British wordsmith William Burgess had in mind when he wrote A Clockwork Orange. One term he used in that book, "real horrorshow," could substitute for any news headline, any day of the week. That's the view from where I sit, anyway. More than a few people agree. I suspect, though, that despite the attachment people feel to their doomscrolling and hyperbolic echo chambers, it might be worthwhile to buck the trend by creating alternate narratives. That's how I envision "Stranger in a Strange Land": a possible antidote to the hatemongering and hyperactivity that seem to dominate contemporary society.

In addition to being a therapeutic outlet, I see potential here for an extension of my Zen practice. My camera could linger in moments of mundane beauty—an iridescent puddle on the sidewalk, a caterpillar climbing a tree, the sinuous curves of a snowbank, water circling the sink drain—either accompanied by commentary or silently meditative. The feed would offer prompts for everyday awe, and highlight things I missed during my decades of imprisonment. In this way, I might expose people to otherwise invisible reasons for gratitude.

And of course all of this would tie in with my desire to speak to audiences about thriving amid life's travails. Monologues and interesting, intelligent conversations with thoughtful guests (I'm thinking here of writers, philosophers, meditators, other former prisoners, and more) would help to elevate the podcast above so much of what's out there.

Post-release video content can find popularity. Just look at the accounts of ex-prisoners like Keri Blakinger, Dontrell Britton, or Morgan Godvin. Each has a unique style and focus, and there are quite a few others putting stuff online these days. Some are earnest, some are serious, but all of them did time and now use the experience to engage with people in a positive way. I'd love for "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be an extension of that. A guy can dream, can't he?

A Poem (Because It's Been a While)

The Week Begins

On call. I relax

Into indeterminacy

And train my focus on

Another literary novel about

Embodiment. Somewhere

Else, work is being done. My cellmate

Sleeps away his morning off,

Preparing for another marathon

Of crap afternoon TV. Other prisoners

Laugh, cook, and play card games

While I turn pages. A digital clock

Mutely crowns the bunk. A manuscript

Lies in wait. An image

Of Shakyamuni

Overlooks the desk.

On the other side our thick

Steel door, one voice tells another,

"Suck a dick, Danny." The loudspeaker

Calls an indecipherable name.

I glow softly with intention

In these badlands of

Steel and wire.

I finger printed pages

And court amused delight,

Treated to overhearing

Some blasphemous exchange

About Jesus and the Eucharist.

Six Books I Read This Summer

Short stories! Back in late June I ran across a collection of them by Kelly Link and was struck full in the face with a reminder of my love for the genre. Link's collection Stranger Things Happen is reportedly what Wikipedia contributors label slipstream fiction. I prefer the label "speculative fiction," which might be imprecise but at least isn't as outright douchey as "slipstream." Tomato, tomahto.

Link writes surreal little fairy tales—stories of the afterlife, pretty blonde space invaders, little girls with the power to disappear, spectral dogs, and much else. Oh, but now I'm making her writing sound less uniquely fantastical than it is. Some of it reads like a fever dream. Jonathan Lethem blurbed this book with great enthusiasm. Link clearly has a wonderful imagination and a gift for plainspoken perversion, traits that made Stranger Things Happen a pleasant summer read for this indoor-only weirdo.

I followed her contemporary takes on the age-old form with what I trusted would be a genuine classic of Victorian horror, The King in Yellow, by Robert William Chambers. It features ten stories that I was told all concerned madness and woe. The description says that the stories are linked by a fictional play entitled (what else?) The King in Yellow. I was drawn to this book as much for its purported creepiness as for its renown. Horror icon H.P. Lovecraft said it "really achieves notable heights of cosmic fear." Others obviously agree; The King in Yellow has been referenced in books, on TV, and in songs, videogames, and movies for 130 years.

It does start strongly, with stories of horror, dread, and overall unease, but suddenly lurches, around the halfway point, into four tedious, unrelated tales of French romance. I kept waiting for a connective thread to reveal itself. Neither the fictional play within the novel nor even the color yellow receives additional mention after "The Street of Four Winds." All of this makes me want to ask, "What the hell happened, Chambers?"

Such a promising start. Alas! The King in Yellow: two stars do not recommend.

My introduction to the humorist David Sedaris came from NPR's This American Life. Afterward, I was happy to find his occasional contributions to The New Yorker, after I took a subscription to the magazine. His very funny collection Me Talk Pretty One Day had come out a few years before that, but I didn't read it until this summer. It's pure early Sedaris. We might even go so far as to call it his Temple of Aphaia (a stately marvel of Greece's Early Classical period), except, you know, it's a book not a building, and makes repeated references to taxidermy and methamphetamine use. Hilarious!

No pun intended, but I found Sitting Inside: Buddhist Practice in America's Prisons, by Kobai Scott Whitney, to be an enlightening read. Whitney served a six-month sentence for drug charges, where his previously halfhearted Zen practice blossomed. He's now a spiritual leader in the Tien An tradition. In its array of related topics, his book breaks down the ways that Buddhism works (and sometimes doesn't) in prison's quasi-monastic setting. As Whitney writes in Chapter One, "Discipline, in its external form, is imposed by the very structure of prison, but sitting still in silence is so out of keeping with the chaotic, noisy atmosphere of prison that it takes great courage and cleverness to practice at all."

Whitney covers the history of Buddhism behind bars, from the earliest days of Buddhist prison outreach to the Constitutional battles that practitioners had to win before they were allowed to meditate together. I had no idea, before I read Sitting Inside, that it was a Buddhist whose lawsuit (Cruz v. Beto, in 1977) went to the US Supreme Court and opened the gates to prisoners' religious freedom. This book is intended for imprisoned practitioners, for the volunteers who visit them to teach and assist, and for readers curious about the great effort that prison practice requires.

Shunryu Suzuki's book Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness explores Buddhist practice via the Sandokai, a seventh-century work by Chinese poet Shitou Xiqian, that's become a tool of Zen in the modern world. A lot of contemporary practitioners recite its forty-four lines to remind themselves of the ultimate nature of reality. Suzuki was instrumental in bringing Buddhism (specifically, Zen) to the United States. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness represents a series of talks he gave in 1970, which his students preserved in transcripts. He speaks digressively and incisively, in ways that are silly and profound. As far as I can tell, it's Zen, through and through—but what do I know? That's why it's called "practice."

Acknowledging ignorance in spiritual matters is all well and good, but feeling a cleverness deficit in other areas can be troubling. I experience mine when confronted with the writing of William Shakespeare. Like most people, I first ran afoul of the Bard's poetry in high school. I don't even remember the play, only that I gave up pretty quickly on his opaque Elizabethan elocution. When my book club elected A Midsummer Night's Dream to be our midsummer read, my first thought was, Well, shit.

I read it, though. We all did. Together. Aloud.

Specifically, I recited the parts of Bottom and Puck (aka Robin Goodfellow), and of the fairy queen, Titania—in a Monty Python–like lady voice. Keith read the lover á la Scarlett O'Hara, and Danny did silly voices for the fairies the whole way through. No one else hammed it up as much as the three of us did, but everyone managed to have fun with it. Without our silliness to guide me, I doubt I'd have been able to actually follow the play's dialogue and plot, as four interchangeable lovers run afoul of two feuding fairies and proceed to caper around the stage in demonstration of how "the course of true love never did run smooth."

How have I changed in the last thirty-odd years? Only in all ways. I still feel no particular desire to engage with Shakespearean drama on the page, but at least I have an open mind about it. I didn't even dissent when the club voted to start reading Titus Andronicus, come October.

Most recently, I read the curious Dana Spiotta novel Innocents and Others, a book about three women whose lives focus on seeing and being seen. It tells their story in somewhat experimental ways, through both traditional third-person narrative and first person "articles" written by the characters. I love this almost mixed-media style in fiction, and Innocents and Others used it to deliver a deeply satisfying convergence of three seemingly disparate narratives. On the strength of this book alone, I might have to venture deeper into Spiotta's work.

The Staggering Heartache (or Not) of Coaching Returning Citizens

Working in the prison's Reentry Center gives me an active role in people's pre-release self-improvement efforts. It also highlights the severity of my own LWOP sentence—the infamous life without parole.

I'm allowed to help returning citizens prepare résumés, coach them for job interviews, tutor them in computer literacy, do after-hours research on other states' reentry programs, and write proposals that could bring better opportunities to these people who are so eager to return to society as engaged, productive members of society—but no one who has more than one year left on their sentence may benefit from the Department of Offender Rehabilitative Services. The DOC's computer system shows my release date to be 99/99/9999.

People ask how I can do this kind of work with such a heavy sentence hanging over me. "Isn't it hard to watch them leave, knowing you can't?" one friend asked. "How do you deal with the jealousy?" another wanted to know. Still another wanted to know if I secretly resent the clients I see. These are all good, valid questions. My answers probably seem either annoyingly vague or disgustingly pious.

I'm not jealous of others' successes. If someone has expended real effort or dearly yearned for a particular outcome, I enjoy seeing them achieve their desires. Also, it makes me happy to make people happy. Whatever the opposite of schadenfreude might be, that's what I feel.

The people I help seem sincere in their intention to do good after prison. They want to work respectable jobs, stay clean, get an education, and generally live a good life. I tell them all that my greatest hope is to never see them again. In other circumstances, that comment might be considered rude. In this place, it's a testament to my desire that they do well out there.

I don't discuss my sentence with them, but of course they talk. That's what people do. Word got around that the shadow of LWOP hangs over me, and now they have a different perspective. Before this tidbit got around, they thought I was just performing the duties of a job like any other.

In prison, almost no one gets to work a job they actually want. It's all kitchen slavery, factory toil, janitorial drudgery, library tedium—forget about interests, let alone passions. Beyond cultivating the general experience of pride in a job well done (which is tricky under these conditions), few prisoners are fortunate enough to find employment fulfilling. I recognize fully how precious an opportunity my reentry job is. That's why I sought it out.

The first client I helped to complete a Medicaid application told me he was getting out "on Thursday." It blew my mind. The excitement he must've felt, having not years or months but days remaining on his sentence! This was unfathomable to me, and I told him so. He smiled. I smiled back. Sharing in even a fraction of his joy felt nice.

"You don't get paid?" one staff member asked me this week. "If there's no money involved it's not a job, it's a passion."

In a sense, he wasn't wrong. There's purpose in this work. It doesn't just keep me from being press-ganged into food service work, it lets me share inspiration and teach life-changing skills. It's said that if you do what you like, you'll never work a day in your life. Every day I'm reminded how true that adage is.

Prison's War on Paper

With the worsening problem of synthetic drug use in America's prisons, officials have started thinking of paper as a pernicious evil. Other states saw a rise in their incidences of K2 use (and overuse) as early as ten years ago, but Missouri's K2 problem became an epidemic at the same time as COVID-19 did.

K2 (known around the prison yard as "deuce" or "two") is nominally synthetic marijuana. I say "nominally" because so many chemicals are used to create it, its composition and, we can safely assume, its effects change all the time. Only its manufacturers know what's in the stuff—whatever works to get users high, I guess. A batch of K2 could just as well be wasp spray on a piece of paper, which someone then smokes. If the process sounds inelegant, its end results are even uglier.

K2 may not show up in standard drug tests, but I see its effects every day. Deucers stumble and droop and appear blinded by their stupors. Some of them twerk in slow-mo. Some of them mumble incomprehensible syllables from the floor where they sprawl. Some don't get back up. Overdoses are rampant. The prison's already understaffed medical department has to cancel or postpone normal operations a couple of times a day to deal with emergencies such as K2-induced nonresponsiveness or seizing. The worst part may be many deucers' reactions when they see another prisoner's collapse: "Man, he got the good shit! Where can I get some of that?"

More than half of US prisons have reacted by prohibiting prisoners from receiving paper mail, which could be laced with drugs. Instead, they use electronic mail. Missouri contracts with a so-called digital mail center in Tampa, Florida, to receive and scan prisoners' snail mail, then forward it to the mini tablets provided by Securus Technologies.

Less effectively, last year, Missouri also cut off people's ability to order books or magazines for their imprisoned loved ones. I can still place an order with Bookstore X, using my own money and a certified check, but they won't let you order the same thing for me from that same bookstore, because policymakers fear that the pages could be laced with synthetic drugs. I never knew a payment method could have such power!

Legal scholars have authored reams of papers dissecting the benchmark 1987 case Turner v. Safley as it applies to prisons' curtailment of correspondence and books sent to prisoners. They all seem to agree that electronic messaging and e-books are the solution to the flow of K2 into jails and correctional centers. I happen to agree. But there's no evidence that book bans or granting monopolies to for-profit prison telecommunications companies (Hi, Securus!) is effective in that regard. Missouri's book-ordering policy took place in 2024, yet the rampant overdosing continues. According to a recent episode of the Marshall Project's Inside Story, book bans to curb the prison drug problem are highly suspect.

There's no question that synthetic drugs have significantly changed prison culture in a very short amount of time. Before K2, the suggestion of bringing a computer—let alone a USB storage device—into a maximum-security prison would've practically got the police called on you. Computerized devices in this cloistered environment were considered a major threat to safety and security. The Department of Corrections and facility administrators believed such technology might be used to endanger an institution with the introduction of pornogrpahy, blueprints, maps, or other types of illicit information—to say nothing of laptops' ability to record audio and video, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Anyone who entered a Missouri prison as a teacher or group facilitator had to print out hard copies of the class materials they wanted to bring in. In our digital age, this posed a significant inconvenience. It was also rather wasteful. Printing thirty color copies of a multi-page packet, for instance, seems far less efficient than simply copying a PowerPoint slideshow to a thumb drive and displaying it on a projector screen at your destination. Inefficiency like this is characteristic of virtually every circumstance involving prison, which just tends to make things difficult.

I never thought I'd see the day when a warden was more concerned with stemming drug use in his institution than with preventing violence or security threats. In a way, though, it's refreshing. There are human lives at stake, after all. Saving people from themselves is a more humane and admirable goal than simply striving to keep nude photos or maps of the state out of prisoners' hands.

Another Degree of Infamy

Another podcast addressed the death of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen last week. It went up on YouTube a few days later. Unlike last time, I had nothing to do with this one—Crime Junkie—because my legal team doesn't want any distractions as we prepare for a major court filing. I'm told that the Crime Junkie people did a fair job of discussing the case, considering they only had an hour-long episode. Just the same, I'm glad I didn't have to hear or see it.

As infrequently as I speak about my case, or about the senseless pair of deaths that preceded it, I feel that it's been more than enough. I'm tired of rehashing the same events, answering the same questions, and changing nothing, least of all the minds of people who think fact is subordinate to feeling. Arguing against that kind of stubborn ignorance is utterly exhausting.

I know I'll have to speak again, maybe next time in court. When that happens, I imagine it will be a high-pressure experience—even more so than the first time, and accordingly nervewracking. But at least it should be for a judge who won't be as easily swayed as some people by my onetime girlfriend's incoherent fictions. At least it should require no speculation. At least it should lead to something valuable—more so, anyway, than vacuous publicity.

The Goblin Wranglers of B-Wing

At the age of twelve, I knew magic. I knew spells, charms, and potions. I knew the rules of invisibility, flight, and future sight. Furthermore, I knew other schools of heroism and villainy—psionics, spycraft, vampirism, ninjitsu. I knew how mutants were made. Most importantly, I knew how to rally those with these powers, and together, we embarked on quests. Yes, I was a preteen game master.

Roleplaying requires players, and as an unpopular kid I didn't have many. The one campaign I ran was with my obliging cousin and a fellow nerd from Latin class. This didn't stop me from developing nonplayer characters and mapping out strange lands, nor from blowing whole summer job paychecks on game supplements from my neighborhood comic book shop. My lifetime of active RPG gameplay might add up to less than forty hours, but I know gaming.

Many years have passed, but I can still recognize roleplayers at a glance. (Who else has use for a twenty-sided die?) In prison, where roleplaying games are forbidden by policy, they're even more obvious.

The dauntless roleplayers in my wing use every opportunity to occupy a sagging plastic card table in the corner. Variously used for independent study, Bible group get-togethers, and the occasional loner eating a bowl of instant ramen, the gamers stake their claim there and set up camp, armed with sourcebooks, character sheets, pencils, markers, folders, charts, and dice. They spend hours at that table, quibbling over rolls and strategies. It appears they're operating in a different realm, in a world where they're stronger, better, more adventurous versions of themselves. In a sense, they are.

Their dice are made of soap that's been pulverized, liquefied, molded, meticulously shaved, etched, then coated with several layers of floor wax. No such elaborate craftsmanship would be necessary if the Department of Corrections simply permitted its residents to purchase RPGs. Alas, prison policy explicitly bans roleplaying. Dice of any kind are considered gambling paraphernalia, ergo also contraband. But life finds a way.

The RPG of choice in Missouri seems to be Palladium, a competitor to its more famous forebear, Dungeons & Dragons. Over time, somehow, different titles have trickled into the prison—The Palladium Role Playing Game, Rifts, Ninjas and Superspies, and more. Fans of D&D often call Palladium's rules cumbersome, but what Palladium sacrifices in fluid gameplay is balanced out by satisfying realism. The Palladium system has a smaller market share of the RPG world. It happens to be the one I bought as a kid. Surprisingly, it's also the one that many people in prison risk conduct violations to play.

Sometimes I overhear the B-Wing gamers in their questing.

"I pick up the donkey shit and put it in my bag," says one.

"You can't," the Game Master responds. "The bag's already full."

"Are any of the goblins hungry?" asks another player.

I learn that a crew of the creatures run a boat that the players want to take across the sea, and the players plan to supply food for the journey. I also learn that Goblins eat poop.

This is ridiculous, and I probably could've just left it out, but I think the absurdity speaks to an important point: this is what roleplaying looks like. According to the old-school gamers I've asked, the DOC imposed the RPG ban in the 1990s. Reading through Missouri case law and national law reviews didn't confirm this. It did, however, speak to the historical war between evidence and fear that surrounds roleplaying games in prisons.

In a quick search on LexisNexis, I found sixty-two articles that included the terms "Dungeons & Dragons" and "prison"—most of which appeared to scoff at arguments that D&D could incite gang violence or function as an escape tool. The articles cite the prosocial aspects of the game—how it fosters cooperation, rewards communication, and can serve as a nonviolent channel for players' emotions. A 2023 News Inside article by Keri Blakinger describes how D&D even allowed one death row inmate to cross prison's hard-drawn race boundaries and gain his sole form of daily human interaction.

To play the part of a daring magician, a heroic dwarf, or an intrepid elf, when your autonomy has been hijacked and your material sense of self stripped, could only impart a feeling of freedom. Roleplaying is an escape more engrossing than any book or TV show, and both safer and less expensive than any drug. For the gamers in my wing, who barely interacted before their campaign started, roleplaying is many things.

It was an excuse to improve his reading, says the Game Master. He remembers being functionally illiterate when he came to prison in 1996. Joining a campaign with some guys on his cellblock became his incentive to learn how to read. He praises RPGs for their potential to teach.

Another man describes his in-game character as a grownup version of his young son, who lives out of state and whose voice he hears only when he calls home on weekends. For him, gaming is a way to cope with the distance and feel a connection to his only child.

Not that every gaming story is a noble one. Most people probably just play because gaming is fun. Regardless, the value of RPG shouldn't be denied. If hiring some shit-eating goblins to take them overseas keeps these guys quiet and out of trouble, I say set sail.

A Little Fascist Playtime

Being Hitler isn't easy. You almost never get to vote for policies in line with your real values, lest the liberals sniff you out. You have to be vigilant in keeping that pesky bunch from getting suspicious and assassinating you. Being Hitler is also lonely business. Many times you don't even know who your fascist bedfellows are. It's tough, trusting strangers to do what's right for the party. When the time comes, will they elect you Chancellor?

It's an emotional rollercoaster. I should know—I've been Hitler five times.

I once described how a cellmate and I crafted our own makeshift SCRABBLE set. We weren't alone in this. Prisoners looking for a game less common than chess, dominoes, and cards (all of which are sold in the canteen) often apply ingenuity to satisfy the gaming urge. Are you surprised? People in prison are widely recognized as an enterprising bunch. We make alcohol from raisins and bread, fabricate knives out of toothbrushes, and successfully litigate court cases with nothing but our wits, a ballpoint pen, and some toilet paper. By comparison, crafting handmade decks of Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards is a cinch.

Saturday evenings, for the past few months, I've joined between five and seven other tabletop gamers in pursuit of a good time. The games we play aren't exactly Milton Bradley products. When we commandeer a table in the wing, it's to play Exploding Kittens, Sheriff of Nottingham, Settlers of Catan, and everyone's perennial favorite, Secret Hitler. Although you might never have heard of them, these are real games; you can easily buy them, either online or off the shelf at a game shop.

You can, but we prisoners can't. The versions of these games that we play are totally bootlegged. Meticulously crafted with glue, markers, and other so-called nuisance contraband, our boards and cards aren't perfect, but they're in exactly the correct quantities and bear the same values as an official set.

The popular game Catan contains the nineteen hexagonal tiles that make up the board; plus 100 resource cards; road, settlement, and city pieces in up to six colors; six player tokens in those same six colors; one "robber" token; and a pair of ordinary, six-sided dice. Everything but the dice can be made with just a few manila file folders purchased from the canteen, a few hours of scribbling with a pen, and a bit of intrepidity. A nicer set (and let's be honest, we all want a nicer set) takes longer and requires a wider variety of raw materials. As for game rules, those are sourced online and sent in to us by people who are probably just relieved that their imprisoned loved ones have such an innocent pastime.

The coolest thing about these games might be that other prisoners see us playing them and get curious. A game of Secret Hitler can get a little boisterous as controversial votes are cast and players start accusing their tablemates of being fascists. Our loud finger-pointing inevitably draws attention. Pretty soon, "cool" guys who'd never accept an offer to play some lame board game start asking questions. "What is this?" often turns into "Can I get in?" pretty quickly.

I suspect our Saturday-night gaming sessions are more diverse than any other gathering in the facility. Where else can you find a chemical engineer, a gangster, an ex-marine a transgender woman, a devoted athlete, and a literary nerd enjoying each other's company during a shared pastime? Even a guard walking through one time expressed a wish that he could sit down with us to play. Now that would be crossing boundaries!

Fostering community. Finding accord. Obliterating stereotypes. Having pure, noble reasons for taking part in these games would be great. I just think we play because the friendly, low-stakes competition provides a nice break from the drudgery.

How about that? What a concept: I'd rather be Hitler than spend an evening in prison.

Good Thoughts for Sam

My friend Sam's been gone from ERDCC for a few years. He'd been my neighbor, a friend in Buddhism, and a good, positive person to be around. I appreciated his seemingly endless energy and his willingness to point out when I was being too serious. The day he asked me to be the best man at his wedding surprised and humbled me in equal measure. In return, I got away with calling him Sam; everybody else here he made use his full name, Samuel.

Just weeks before the wedding, Sam was unexpectedly transferred to another facility. We stayed in contact by mail for a few months. Then the Missouri Department of Corrections banned communication between any prisoners who aren't related to one another. The last letter I got from Sam was handwritten on yellow notebook paper. It expressed mixed emotions about the Buddhist community in his new environment. He missed the dedication our group had when he'd still been here. The feeling was mutual.

Sam's a big-time videogame nerd, self-described. Get him talking about memorable titles and you won't be given a chance to change the subject for quite a while. His love for gaming runs deep. It shouldn't have surprised me that he'd find a way to get close to his passion in spite of videogames being banned from Missouri prisons.

Over at Farmington Correctional Center, fifteen minutes from ERDCC, where he ended up, Sam started a television show on one of the prisoner-run closed-circuit channels. The show was all about—you guessed it—videogames. Together with a gamer at FireTV, Farmington's video production studio, Sam created "LFG: Looking for Group," a show for imprisoned gamers to talk shop and watch walkthroughs of the hottest titles. I didn't learn about "LFG" from an exchange with Sam or from seeing the show. I only know about it because of Sam's TED Talk.

There's an app on prisoners' tablets called Edovo. It lets us read and watch all kinds of enriching and educational content, from Kahn Academy, MasterClass, the Marshall Project, and more—including a few podcasts and e-books. While using Edovo the other day, I happened across a program guide for the TEDx event that was held at Farmington last April. I knew about that event but hadn't really been interested in watching the footage, even though it's been available for months. Curiosity about the event's organization was the only reason I opened the TEDx program guide. Perusing its fifty pages, I happened upon a smiling headshot and recognizable name in the list of speakers.

Holy shit! Sam! My mind was blown. Why did I wait so long to get curious about this event?

I got such delight from seeing Sam talk alongside his "LFG" cohost. He looked a little nervous onstage, under those bright lights, but he delivered his message with characteristic openness and enthusiasm. I watched it and thought only, Damn, Sam, you did that!

After the video ended, I conducted a little amateur sleuthing. I learned that, a while after giving his TED Talk, Sam was released on parole. Today he's out of prison, enjoying a new life with the woman he loves, playing whatever game he wants. I feel so much joy for what he gets to experience now.

Someone asked me recently if I felt even the slightest sting, seeing people leave this place. "Not that there's no chance for you," she wrote, "but still, how do you cope with that?" Especially considering what I do for work now, it's a legitimate question. I considered my response awhile before replying.

I choose to be present and aware, and to nurture the good in others. On the path I've chosen to travel, others' successes are cause for celebration. It's like the opposite of schadenfreude. Jealousy gets in the way of our happiness in the same way that plaque builds up in arteries. Why shouldn't I be glad when someone makes it out of prison? They've completed their punishment. They deserve to have that new start so many of us dream about. They deserve some good, for a change.

Sam, if you happen to read this, congratulations! Here's my message to you:

May you be happy.

May you be at peace.

May you be safe.

May you be free.

The Prison Food Survey

Never before in my twenty-four years of prison living has the Missouri Department of Corrections asked those of us in its custody to take a survey—until this week. The interactive form appeared on prisoners' tablets on Tuesday morning. It asked us to rate the temperature, portions sizes, and general quality of the meals we're served, and for me, it posed a real dilemma: in what way should I answer the question How would you rate the overall taste and flavor of the lunch menu?

How, indeed.

There's no question, Texas has it worse. According to an article in the February 2023 issue of News Inside, "meager improvements" in the Lone Star State's notoriously awful prison food were short lived. Between May of 2020 and when the article went to print, Texas prisons were still struggling to serve fresh fruit and bread without mold on it. Our diet here in Missouri prisons isn't raw-potato bad, but it's no picnic.

Bringing Texas into this little diatribe isn't what-aboutism. I'm saying only that the problem is widespread, not that its equally distributed. The Missouri DOC contracts with Aramark, a food service giant that's in institutions of all kinds, all around the country, and exercises what seems to be minimal oversight of its (for lack of a better word) franchises.

ERDCC's food service department has many problems, one of them being roaches. It would help if someone cleaned—at least by wiping counters or mopping the dining hall's greasy floors once in a while. Finding workers who won't use their prodigious downtime to smoke synthetic marijuana at the tables would help with that. Too bad no one—neither guard nor Aramark employee—displays any willingness to enforce the rules.

Whole logs of ground beef routinely leave the dining hall in unsearched wheelchairs. Meanwhile, line-jumpers snatch their second, third, and sometimes fourth extra trays right in front of the guards stationed at the serving window. Many times, the kitchen runs out of something and has to make a last-minute substitution. For entrées, this is usually turkey loaf or bologna. When a vegetable side runs out, someone just adds lukewarm water to mashed potato mix. A bruised and unripe apple usually fills in for desserts. No one likes any of this. Predictably, the survey doesn't ask how often we're served the food we're actually supposed to get.

Imposing a teensy bit of accountability would improve this environment for everyone. I suppose it's easier in the short run not to care.

As I answered the survey, I felt acutely aware of the grace I was affording Aramark. Most of the people taking it are probably going to rate everything a 1 out of 5, just to be spiteful. I kept wanting to ask, "Compared to what?" I suppose there's always Texas.

Preparing to Leave

George stares at the monitor, whispering the words onscreen as he reads them. His hooded, watery eyes follow the cursor right, then down and left, then right again, line by line, as he uses the mouse to follow every word of the exercise prompt.

This is George's first time at a computer in years. He said that the last time was in a computer literacy class he took at a different prison, all the way back in the '90s. Before that, decades of wild living had brought him no contact with the digital realm. As I took a seat beside him at the keyboard, ready to guide him along, I asked how much of the class he still remembered.

"I know how to do this." He jiggled the mouse back and forth. "That's about it."

Clearly, George and I were in for a journey. But of course, preparing for a parole date isn't easy for anyone.

At the moment, George still lives in one of the good-conduct wings here at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center. Both of us came down as very young men. No stretch of language or imagination could qualify us as that now. I observed my twenty-fourth anniversary in the system this year. George's time inside amounts to nearly double that. Each of us have traveled a long, rough road, but at seventy-one, George is finally nearing the end of it. He's being released on parole in November.

With less than a year left to serve, George qualifies for services from the Reentry Center, the new facility within ERDCC's fences, where residents can come for career exploration classes, housing assistance, post-release benefits, and more. (I blogged about the Reentry Center here.) Imagine a modern career center—computers, job flyers, motivational slogans, and so on, then post a guard at the door—that's a fairly accurate picture. The state of Missouri opened this facility at ERDCC in May. A few weeks later, I became one of three prisoners to get a job there. That's how I met George.

He trundled in one Tuesday afternoon, wearing a white do-rag with the standard Missouri prisoner uniform of gray pants, a white T-shirt, and clunky, black 10-hole boots. He's a big guy, average height, but close to 300 pounds. It surprised me when he said how old he was. The man doesn't look a day over sixty.

My boss, the Employment Transition Supervisor, welcomed him and did a short interview to gauge George's needs. Probation and Parole approved his home plan, but how he's going to get by out there is another matter. More than anything, he wants a job. At his age, most Americans are retired and living off some combination of pensions, Social Security, or life savings.

"I wanna do bricklaying," he tells us. "Then, after a while, start my own concrete business—sidewalks, patios, porch steps—maybe do a little landscaping on the side."

He's someone I expect will work until he falls over dead, probably with a shovel in his hand.

My position at the Reentry Center encompasses many roles, from administrative assistant to guidance counselor. I'm also on hand to provide technical support. People sometimes have issues interacting with the web-based platform that examines their interests and skills, coaches them on interview techniques, then helps us create their resumes. I sit with every client for a little while at the outset of each exercise, to field any questions that come up.

When George asks about a dotted blue line under a phrase he's typed, I explain how grammar check works (and how it sometimes doesn't). When he misspells "experience," I show him the magic of right-clicking. When he inadvertently enlarges the browser viewport 300 percent, I point him to the zoom control. As eager as he is to progress, I'm hardly surprised by how quickly he catches on.

The early assignments encourage users to focus on personal strengths. A colorful illustration of a tree laden with different fruits prompts everyone to list their personal achievements. George thinks long and hard before answering. Another client needs help, so I walk away to let George contemplate his accomplishments for a bit. When I check on him again, I see that below an image of a shiny pear, he's typed, "Surviving prison."

"Wow," I say, impressed. "That's...."

Words fail me. I'm struck by this plainspoken truth. Not everyone in his position would be able to acknowledge the challenges that life in the system has posed. I've known too many people who, especially as the decades fell away, started accepting the banal horrors of prison life as "just how it is," as though the circumstances we struggle through are normal. Whether they did this out of denial, misplaced self-preservation, or fear is a personal matter. I just appreciate that George recognizes himself as a survivor and is neither cowed nor brainwashed by the trauma he's lived through.

I tell him so. He takes a deep breath and settles back in the chair. "You know, back at the old Walls"—what everybody today calls the now-decommissioned Missouri State Penitentiary—"they had a sign at the gate where you came in: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' Well, I never did. I never let 'em beat me down."

At three o'clock we gather our stuff and make to leave for the afternoon. As he tucks a folder full of notes under his arm, he voices concern for the future.

"You know, I been down thirty-six years now. It's a whole different world out there than the one I left. I ain't never used a cellphone, I don't know the internet..."

I cut him off. "We've got tablets, though. They run on Android, the same as half of the phones out there do. If you can operate a tablet, you can use a smartphone. As for the internet, didn't you know you were on it today?"

His eyebrows rise as he shoots me a doubtful look.

"The exercises you've been doing on there—those are all web pages. You can't go to other websites because of security settings, but when you use the computers here, you're actually online."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

Such a little thing, and yet he smiles, suddenly less anxious about rejoining the world. George is becoming a man with fresh hope—the one thing that everyone should leave prison with.

Four Books I Spent My Spring Reading

When the time came to choose what to read next, our book club facilitator suggested we pick up Alice McDermott's novel After This. He was teaching a course on Catholic literature at Saint Louis University and, with characteristic forthrightness, begged our mercy in selecting a book he was already teaching, rather than adding another book to his literary load. After This is a book he loves, he said, which sounded promising enough. Then he went on to say that it was the one book from the course that his students suggested he remove from next semester's syllabus. "They think it's boring," he said. Being the type of readers for whom such warnings arouse curiosity, we assented almost immediately.

This was my first encounter with McDermott. She writes beautifully at the level of the sentence, with prose rich in meaning without ever being ponderous. Plotwise, I can see why contemporary college students struggled with this book: they probably couldn't relate to the world it depicted. Spanning a period between the end of two wars, World War Two and Vietnam, After This has at its center an Irish-American family in search not of happiness—because wanting happiness, in these characters' deeply Catholic mindset, would constitute a kind of unseemly greed—but of simple contentedness. Just to be okay with how their lives are going seems to be their aim. Their saga unfolds episodically, in a series of vignettes, with years disappearing easily between sections. Its 277 pages flip past with almost a breeze.

Freed in May from an onerous work schedule, I did my best to make up for lost reading time, leaping straight into several books at once. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a collection of Zen and pre-Zen writings compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki in 1957. It includes texts previously published as 101 Zen Stories, The Gateless Gate (called Mumonkon in the original Japanese), 10 Bulls (maybe better known as the ox-herding pictures), and an ancient Sanskrit text entitled Centering that emerged in India 4,000 years ago, more than two millennia before Bodhidharma famously brought Zen teachings to China. Unlike McDermott's novel, I took extra time with this book, ingesting it in small, meditative bites that never overwhelmed my ability to sit awhile with a given story, koan, or passage.

When Freedom Reads visited ERDCC a couple of years ago, I had to know its representatives' answers to two questions. First: what one book each of them read during their imprisonment most resonated with them. Then: what book they recommend for others in these circumstances. One response to the second question was The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writers Life in Prison, edited by Caits Meissner. This essay collection was put out by PEN America a few years ago, forwarding the organization's mission to celebrate and elevate the literature of writers "whose voices have too often gone unheard or been ignored." The Sentences That Create Us collects inspiring pieces by justice-impacted writers—novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, screenwriters, playwrights, memoirists, and everything in between—to reveal how prisoners whose minds remain free can create a different kind of life through their writing.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about Zen the way he taught it: simply and with a directness that matched his subject. His book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation was probably intended to be an introduction to the practice, for readers who were not yet intimate with the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Five Aggregates, the Paramitas, and other essential Buddhist teachings. Even though I've been practicing this stuff for a while, its good to go back to basics every so often and get a refresher. With straightforward pronouncements like "The person who has no compassion in him cannot be happy," and "Twenty-four hours are a treasure chest of jewels," Thich Nhat Hanh once again proves himself a teacher worthy of his beautiful reputation.

I'm not really sure where my reading will take me next. It's been so long since I had enough downtime from work to read much of anything. A visit to the prison's library is in order—my first in almost three years. Who knows what I might pick up.

Modern-Day Cave People

The Flintstones notwithstanding, I don't know where the term "caveman" came from. Although some might've taken shelter in occasional caves while hunting and gathering, our ancestors and the other early hominids—from Australopithecus to Neanderthal—tended to inhabit valleys, plains, and trees. So why do my neighbors, in this modern age, choose to live as troglodytes?

It's against prison policy to cover any window or overhead light. Still, the people next door to me do both. Lining the window with rolled-up towels, they keep their cell blacker than a starless night. Using contraband tape to hang manila folders over the fluorescent light fixture, they ensure that any light emitted will amount to no more than a dull glow. I doubt either of them have thought about the reasons behind these choices. If you asked, they'd simply say, "I like it dark."

And dark it is. I once had occasion to knock on their door. Let me tell you, that void was deep. Even light from the open door barely pierced the gloom. I'm baffled as to how they achieved such an effect. It's not like the canteen sells light-absorbing paint.

What I could see was a small clip-on lamp fitted with a cardboard sleeve, which functioned as a spotlight. Outside of its beam, my neighbor's face was nearly invisible. All you could see in the cell was the small circle of light on the desk where he pieced together a cardboard tractor—precision work that'd be so much easier if someone turned the damn light on.

They're hardly alone in practicing what I call the dark arts. Across the small stretch of grass visible from my cell window sits 2-House, ERDCC's administrative segregation unit. People confined there get "recreation" in wire cages like dog kennels three times a week. Otherwise, they're out of their cells virtually not at all. You'd think they'd want a little sunshine in their lives, but no.

Twenty-four windows of 2-House can be seen from my cell. More than half of them are completely covered with some kind of detritus. A couple have identifiable items hanging in them—shirts or sheets—to thwart the sun. Others are papered with what I assume are Health Service Request forms or pages torn from paperback novels that float around the Hole every so often. As questionable as those works of "literature" usually are, and as little love as I hold in my heart for direct sunlight, I just can't condone vandalizing a book.

The number of cells in ad-seg with covered windows far exceeds the number in general population. The number here in the honor dorm is even lower than that. Based on a quick, informal poll I took before starting this post, only about one in eight cells have some form of window covering. Most of those are temporary fixes—a shirt hung up in the afternoons, for example, when the sun casts a glare on someone's TV. The same held true at Crossroads, the prison where I spent the larger part of my sentence. There's no accounting for taste, but the consistency of these numbers between prisons doesn't seem like mere coincidence.

Are the prisoners who keep a dark cell trying to block out their surroundings? Is their pitch-black room an outward manifestation of depression? Is it merely a sleep aid? There are probably reasons I'm not even considering—some sort of superstition, maybe, about light.

Whatever reason these people have for living that way, I don't relate. Prison may be hard-edged, dirty, and visually unappealing, but I'd rather not have to fumble around blindly to find my coffee cup, my toothbrush, or my surface-dwelling humanity.

Breakfast Line

Queued up for breakfast in the dining hall, it seems to be a mostly ordinary morning. Shouting is at a minimum, since much of the population's still waking up. The smell of this afternoon's lunch—fish patties—has yet to permeate the place. The only real negative is that, directly behind me in line, a frustrated soul won't stop ranting about how his elderly cellmate pissed all over his freshly cleaned floor.

"It wouldn't even bother me so much, but when I mentioned it he just waved me off and said, 'Eh, it'll be okay.' No, it won't! It won't be okay! I have to clean it up!"

This is what I get for asking about his morning. Ahead of me, our mutual acquaintance half turns and rolls his eyes. The line hasn't moved in several minutes, which isn't unusual, really. Anyone who transfers here from another prison will tell you that the chow hall at ERDCC serves more slowly than any other institution in the state. The joke is that the servers are too "deuced out" on K2 to do anything. It's not a joke at all, actually.

"Just sit down! For Christ's sake, if you know you have prostate issues, don't stand to piss!"

Up ahead of us, another person takes a tray from the window, and the line immediately stalls again. Have the prison's biscuits and gravy ever been good enough to warrant this level of discomfort? I venture to think not, then check my privilege. At least you're getting fed, Byron.

"So I ask him, right? I ask him why he didn't just sit down, instead of just spraying and dribbling over half the cell, and you know what he says to me? You know what he says?"

I shake my head, my face expressing what I hope is a kind of nonchalant half-interest. I don't want to encourage this, but I don't want to abruptly shut him down, either. The line continues not to move.

"He says, 'I didn't want to pull down my pants in front of everybody.' I was like, 'The cell door was closed! There was nobody around!"

People behind him quietly snicker at his tirade, and while I've not quite reached a point of being ready to bail on this breakfast venture, I'm definitely wishing the servers would get their shit together and resume pushing trays.

And just as this uncharitable thought about the kitchen workers develops—wonder of wonders!—the line's moving again.

"He just expected me to wipe it up like a water spill. I'm like, 'And let it start stinking? No way! I'm gonna get down there and bleach the whole area all over again!' The dude's gotta be senile, or else he was born before germ theory existed."

Baby steps nudge us closer to the window. At least we're around the corner now—the home stretch, with fewer than ten people in front of us.

The guard posted a few feet ahead commits to his vacuous stare as not just one but three line jumpers retard everyone's progress. It's like landing on one of those disappointing spaces in an even more disappointing board game: "INCUR DISRESPECT! Go back three spaces." I let loose a sigh.

"I should tell the case manager he's incontinent and get him moved to the ECU. I don't know how many more pools of piss I can stand to clean up."

Here comes my food, at last. I take the lip of the brown plastic tray and see that something's missing. A quick inventory tells me there's no gravy, jelly, nor butter. All I have is corn flakes, a box of raisins, two dry biscuits, and a half pint of milk. If breakfast is truly the most important meal of the day, this bodes ill for my afternoon.

At least I can get away from the barrage of bitching. Holding my tray in one hand, I pivot and assume escape velocity, course set toward an outlying table. Behind me, still at the window, I hear the complaints change tack.

"Hey, what's up with my gravy?" he yells into the window. "Are you guys too high to work the ladle anymore?"

The New Guy (It's Me)

Just as I open the book to resume my reading on the history of Zen, the housing unit's intercom squelches. Sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher, guards' announcements on the wing's loudspeaker are often an object of interpretation, but this time I understand perfectly: "Case, bravo one-thirteen, come to the sally port." I set down the book and walk to the housing unit's control module. "Stay right here," says the guard. "Your boss is coming to pick you up."

He means my new boss, over in the Reentry Center. Today is my first day at the job. The Zen book can wait.

I interviewed for a position at the new facility a couple of weeks ago. The pair in charge—Department of Rehabilitative Services employees—wanted a technologically-adept all-rounder, someone who could help prisoners log in and navigate the computerized career resource system, assist with people's résumé preparation, offer tech support for visiting corporate partners who bring video or PowerPoint presentations, do interview coaching, track client attendance, and maybe even facilitate a class or two. "Sounds great," I told them. I didn't even care that it meant giving up nearly $100 a month for a position that won't pay a dime. That same afternoon, I gave my coworkers and boss two weeks' notice. My last day was Monday.

Had the Reentry Center not opened last month, I doubt I would've so easily abandoned my position as XSTREAM's team lead. Instead, I'd probably have continued gritting my teeth through stressful projects, losing sleep over toxic coworker conflicts, and wringing my hands over how to fit personal responsibilities into a day crowded by business tasks—all of the stuff I wrote about in my previous pariahblog.com entry. Options are nice, even when those options are theoretical.

The Department of Corrections boasted that Missouri had opened a Reentry Center in each of its prisons last year; however, the truth of this announcement depends on how you define the word "open." The Reentry Center here at ERDCC didn't even have furniture when that publicity notice went out. (The DOC isn't often dissuaded by tetchy details.) Shortly after that, I heard whispers that a clerk position was available there. One of the inmate carpenters who'd worked on its construction discretely asked if I knew of anyone "reliable." (That's basically prison code for "not a druggie, a thief, or a piece of shit.") At the time, I said no and moved on. But his question planted a seed.

Now here I am, walking across the yard with my two new bosses, feeling my excitement grow as we approach the gate to the "reception and diagnostic" half of the prison. R&D is where new and returning prisoners are processed before it's determined where they belong. Some of the people who come through are on 120-day "shock" time and will be out in months; some are at the beginning of life sentences and will die in prison. Because of the possible disparity between our custody levels, I can't walk unescorted across this yard. Hence, this commute by necessity involves my bosses.

"We've got a plan for you," says one. Just a few years ago, he was a likeable captain working for the DOC. Now he's a likeable civilian. I appreciate the offhanded way he refers to a plan; it sounds like a deliberate downplaying of thrilling possibility.

"I want you to learn the Chromeboxes inside-out," he went on. "Then we'll run you through the VR simulations."

It all has the tinge of dialogue from an early William Gibson novel. Then his female counterpart, a former case manager, cuts in. She brings us back to the present, saying, "After that, I've got some spreadsheets I need made up. I found an extra keyboard, monitor, mouse, and standalone computer. We'll get you set up on that soon."

All this novelty! I always get a flush of uncertainty with the new: Is this really what I wanted? Of course, in this case it very much is.

We pull the first door and step onto gray vinyl extruded to look like artfully distressed floorboards. Foot-tall adhesive black vinyl letters that I cut and applied to this wall last month welcome us.

About $150,000 went into converting the former 11-House into the space that it is today. The open dorms are long gone, having been pulled out in favor of erecting light gray walls. The doors are white. Most of the trim is black. Colorful prints and framed Successories liven up the walls of the Reentry Center's six classrooms and two meeting areas. Wi-Fi antennas and rows of CAT-6 wall outlets demonstrate the building's potential. In one room—the room in which I'll be spending most of my work hours—a row of desktop workstations boasts career resources for anyone nearing release, who requests access to them.

"It smells like oranges in here," I say. The guard, whose post used to be the visiting room, smiles and says, "I just ate one."

"Byron is going to be working with us here, Monday through Friday," my boss explains across her elevated desk, where the former housing unit's control panel used to be. "He'll be staying through, most counts, but taking off for his religious service on Fridays, and for visits, whenever those come up."

"Well," she says, still smiling pleasantly, "welcome aboard, Byron."

It's all so convivial, so... normal. I experience a moment of uncertainty about what to do with my hands. That feeling vanishes once I'm set at a computer and instructed to learn the material backward and forward.

Five hours later, I'm halfway through module one of three—a point that users don't usually reach until their second month.

"I think you'll do pretty well up here," says the boss as he leads me back across the yard. "See you tomorrow."

I can hardly wait.