Colleen Atwood, Where Are You?

Things change all the time—laws, governors, our understanding of the truth.... Today I wear the gray of a prisoner; tomorrow, who knows?

"What do you want to wear when you leave there?" someone recently asked me, and I froze, unable to give a response.

Leaving prison after any amount of time is a life-changing event. After more than twenty-four years inside, its significance can't be overstated. The state of Missouri has curtailed my day-to-day choices and provided my wardrobe for nearly a quarter of a century—twenty-odd years of gray pants and white T-shirts. To have my choice restored sounds great, but like trying to order dinner from the menu at Cheesecake Factory, the infinite possible choices intimidate me to the point of paralysis.

Clothing is a fraught issue for me. In school, as I struggled to understand what made things "cool" or "uncool," classmates invariably ridiculed my poor judgment. Once I entered my morbid teen years, every day was Halloween. My makeup and all-black wardrobe attracted not just mockery but violence.

Even without a good understanding of how, I was keenly aware that clothing played a big role in our daily performances. "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dresed man" aren't just cheesy song lyrics, they're recognitions of a truth: that how we drape our bodies in everyday life plays an important role in how we're regarded by our fellow humans. It's why uniforms and designer labels exist. It's why they use costumes in movies and theater. It's why the term "personal style" was coined.

In short, how we're dressed is who the world believes we are. Asking what I want to wear when I leave prison is akin to asking who I think of myself as being.

So who am I? Buddhist teachings caution against confusing the self with the skin bag we call a body. We're ultimately so much more (and less) than this crass material form suggests. For that reason, Buddhism aims at lessening practitioners' attachment to adornments such as jewelry, clothing, and hair, which reinforce our ego-clinging. (Hence, why Buddhist monks and nuns are bald.)

I don't mind wearing the same uniform day in, day out. In fact, having my identity defined by my character and actions, not by my clothing choices, is nice, in a way. It takes the pressure off. Going back to a world where I'm judged by my wardrobe means that I have to decide, to some extent, who I am.

For as long as I've considered the question, you'd think I'd have an answer by now.

I do know that I'm not someone who wears patterns or a lot of color, and I don't care for leisure wear, being uncomfortable in shorts and sweats alike. I may be closer now to fifty than to forty, but I'm still a weirdo. There's just less of an edge now. Teenage Byron could wear black velvet and thigh-high Docs to dinner; what's the age-appropriate, toned-down version of that look like?

I watch the Netflix series Wednesday and think, Gomez Addams was a snazzy dresser—would there be anything wrong with a pinstriped three-piece suit? Is that too much? Am I too much? And if I am, then what's really the matter with that?

When I brought this question up to a friend, he had some sage advice. "Whatever your raiment," he said, "appear as the person you are. That's not just good. It's better than good."

It's nice to hear that from a friend. What a shame that most people believe clothes make the man.

A Taste of Fall

With a gentle knock, my friend Beau hesitantly brings his face to the narrow window of the cell door. His timing couldn't be much better; the movie I was watching just ended. I wave him in.

He's holding his mug, the same transparent plastic kind that everybody in prison owns. Amber liquid sloshes around inside. "Get a cup," he says with an excited smile. "You'll want to try this."

I turn off my TV and eye his mug with skepticism. For just an instant, I fear he might be trying to give me alcohol. I've gone decades without drinking any of the blinding trash-bag booze that some prisoners ferment under their bunks, and I'm not interested in trying the stuff now. Even though Beau doesn't have substance use issues, I have trust issues and can't help but wonder....

Beau grins, almost conspiratorially. He says, "It's hot apple cider."

I'm confused, that's the only word for it. There's a thriving black market for contraband foodstuffs here, but cider isn't something I've ever known to exist inside the prison fences. It just isn't the sort of innocent thing people here usually crave.

"Well, it's kinda apple cider. I made it. It's fantastic."

A little warily, I retrieve a cup, which he proceeds to pour two fingers of his concoction into.

I take a whiff. It smells like cinnamon. Cautiously, I sip.

He reads the perplexity on my face. This beverage is surprising, to say the least. We don't have access to apple juice, nor to fresh apples in quantities enough to crush for drinking. This so-called cider is something else. Either I'm delusional or it's a passable stand-in for the real thing—hot, tart, sweet, and appropriately spiced.

"I know, right?" Beau enthuses. He takes a swig and smacks his lips with delight. "Tell me that doesn't taste like camping and hikes through the woods and trick-or-treating. It's actually powdered lemonade, honey, cinnamon, and butter. Butter is key. It rounds out the flavor, adds richness."

This stuff is good. Beau's usually pretty successful at engineering interesting recipes. Maybe that comes with having a degree in organic chemistry. We stand in my cell, letting this cider's pleasant volatility entice our olfactory systems.

I try to think back to my childhood and autumn nights with family friends who lived out in the country. They always had hot apple cider on hand, and we'd sit beside a bonfire, our faces warm, our backs cold, as we nursed Styrofoam cups of scalding sweet liquid. I remember once burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth on it, so that I couldn't taste anything for days but still drank the whole cup and went back for seconds, afterward. Is Beau's "cider" actually similar to that cider, or can I simply no longer recall cider's flavor?

"Don't overthink it," he says, "just enjoy it."

So I release my weak grip on the past, and my lame philosophical fumblings, and take another sip.

There's More to Reentry Than Toilet Paper

Some people just don't recognize a good thing when it's presented to them. Case in point: this week's uninvited guest at the ERDCC Reentry Center.

Slouchy and bald, with thick glasses and a long, gray goatee, a little pear-shaped man trundled into the Reentry Center on Tuesday and asked to use the restroom. It was a warm, sunny day in Bonne Terre, and most of his housing unit was outside, enjoying its daily recreation period. The guard at the Reentry Center's front desk said he could enter as long as he signed in.

Why didn't the man just use the toilet at his house? It would've saved him from walking at least twice as far as he did. Unfortunately, the guard didn't think to ask. The man scribbled his name on the sign-in sheet, did what he wanted to do, then returned to his recreational activities on the yard.

That afternoon, without being released by the staff running his house, our visitor inexplicably returned. He once again signed in, once again went into the restroom, and once again left without apparent incident. This time, the guard reported the event to my boss.

Such behavior would probably seem odd no matter where we were, but ERDCC is a place where strangeness thrives, settles in, raises kids, sends them off to college, celebrates their astonishing success, then retires and opens up a snazzy, circus-themed Airbnb. I'm saying the weirdness here manages to operate at a particularly advanced level, while simultaneously being kind of vanilla (which is weird in it's own way, but that's beside the point).

Still, my boss is a former captain with twenty-one years' experience in corrections. He understands the difference between weird and weird. These restroom goings-on had captured his notice. Reentry is his domain, and he will abide no fuckery.

He checked the restroom. Every roll of toilet paper was gone. We had ourselves a TP thief.

The Reentry Center's Wednesday activities include a 2nd Opp class, the Global Leadership Academy meeting, and Anger Management. That morning's bathroom visitor wasn't enrolled in any class, presentation, or program, but he nevertheless finagled a way out of his housing unit and showed up in our building, asking to use the restroom for a third time in two days.

The moment the man signed in, my boss abandoned the spreadsheet he was working on, sprang from his desk, and beelined for the suspect. It wasn't much of a conflict. The man was caught red-handed and quickly surrendered the stack of paper towels and two flattened rolls of toilet paper he'd stuffed in his socks.

"I was gonna let it go," my boss told him. "but you got greedy. I mean, hell, you already got me for three rolls this morning!"

The man smiled and corrected him. "Four."

"Get the hell out of here," my boss laughed. "If you come back in here, I'll write you up for being out of bounds."

The guy was lucky to not get a conduct violation and a bill for the cost of what he stole. A roll of toilet paper costs 95¢ at the canteen. If he's stealing it, he probably couldn't afford the wholesale price the state would charge him for it. It's a little sad—but also ridiculous.