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.

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?