Invitation to the Ball — er, Conference

Not even imprisonment keeps invitations to shindigs from being sent my way. To wit: the full-color glossy brochure that shouted at me, from today's mail, to register for yet another writers conference. This time, it's the 2011 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Chicago. So many literary luminaries will be present! Philip Levine! Margaret Attwood! Edward Hirsch! Hundreds of panels and readings! Dozens of receptions, dances, and unofficial off-site events.

Yes, dancing. My envisioning of a writers' dance is a grown-up analog to the fifth grade end-of-year school formal I once endured, only with crowds of other rigid, pallid killjoys jockeying with me for elbow room at the sidelines. I wouldn't expect rug-cutting prowess to be common among my writerly peers, but, then again, I lack a posteriori knowledge in the matter. What I do know is that Chicago would make for a nice shake-up.

I adore Chicago. Oh, look. The brochure says accomodations are to be had at the Hilton Chicago, on Michigan Avenue, where I stayed on that last deleriously fun trip to the Windy City. It was an unremarkable room, a great view of downtown. Can you hear me sighing wistfully?

I'd love to phone up and register, to again visit my favorite US metropolis, to network with others whose passion is the written word, to eat pizza with a fork, to be wooed by agents wanting to broker my book deal, to stay out in the Loop impractiaclly late, to court editors from literary journals left and right, to ride the El around until my backside ached. Alas, someone at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs must have missed the memorandum — I have a previous engagement. Maybe next year I'll be able to think about it... even if it's not Chicago. Keep me on that list.

Impromptu Motivational Speaker

The new guy is older than me by about a decade. Burly, with big biceps bearing tattoos of a skull and the cheery message, "FUCK EM ALL," I've seen no reason to associate with him during the months he's lived in the wing, a few doors down from mine. He's even more of a hermit than I am, which I consider a kind of warning. In short, when he and I exited the visiting building tonight — just the two of us, alone on a dark and largely vacant yard — the last thing I expected was to get involved in a conversation.

It started like small talk, which I always handle awkwardly: "How you doin' tonight, Byron?" he asked, and I answered with my customary tone. Then came more questions, like he was trying to pull something out of me or override some nagging voice in his own head. Maybe both. By the time we reached our housing unit, I'd summarized for him my experiences in the court system, my good fortune at having extensive outside support, and my current efforts to extricate myself from this place. We — okay, I — covered a lot of ground without walking far at all. The whole time, he kept up his polite interrogation in that way of everyone for whom incarceration is a fresh torture, hoping to glean some nugget of wisdom from any source, as though they didn't already know how to cope: only by doing, only by living. I blathered on, ignorant of the question he'd probably been intending since that jarring introduction.

Then, as we were coming up the stairs to our walk, he asked it. "So, how do you keep from, you know, getting depressed?"

It was funny, so I smiled. As if I don't still have low days! As if all my nights of sleep are sound ones, during which I do not feel my heart sink! I smiled, then told him. I told him about the importance, above all, of finding purpose. I told him about the brilliance of the to-do list and the magic that is to be found in holding tightly to dreams for the future, no matter how trivial. I told him about the quiet virtue of the crossword puzzle, when all else fails. We had stopped, at his door, to lean on the railing as I monologued without pause, an impediment to foot traffic, for more than a quarter of an hour. By the end, I'd all but presented him a seminar on productive coping strategies. He excused himself to call his family and to ask them to order him books on origami and word puzzles, and said he was going to start working on a list of personal goals later this evening.

I don't know how long his sentence is, nor the circumstances of his crime. If he's a person with any follow-through whatsoever is not something to which I can attest. But I think I did a good thing, however unintentionally, in giving the new guy some ideas on how to use his time for something other than catching up on sleep. Maybe I will follow up with him, see how his goals list is coming along. Right now, I'm just amazed. Was I ever that hopelessly eager for an easing of the weight, or have I always been such an isolated stoic? And should I be worried that I can no longer conjure an answer to this question?

The Return of Halloween in the Hoosegow

Do you feel the chill? There's a faint burning scent on the breeze that sweeps from the north to nip through gaps in your coat. It is the approach of Halloween. I feel it in my marrow, the pull — a merciless desire against which I am powerless. For, on the night of the thirty-first, as the moon creeps up to bathe the world in her pallid light, I am compelled to submit to my ghastly craving... for a horror movie marathon and a one-and-a-half square-foot spread of deluxe nachos.

In accordance with the ancient ritual we set forth a couple of years ago, my hunchbacked companion, Zach (all right, so maybe he's just a little slouchy — it's called artistic license, people), and I consulted the fell grimoire that is the prison's canteen price list to begin, weeks in advance, planning and procuring all necessary elements for our diabolically calorific feeding frenzy. We thought early preparedness would ensure our homage to the nacho gods would be a worthy one. But no more are olives sold by the canteen, nor are illicit onions from the kitchen. Our aboveboard and underhanded supply chains failed us equally. Arguably worse, funds were in limited supply. Still, we amassed what we could: tortilla chips, beans, meat, cheese. Even these barest ingredients would cost us dear future comforts, but the All Hallows Eve ritual must take precedence. We would not be denied our celebration.

On the night of the fifth of October, our seasonal plans were set in motion early by the broadcast of the slick new FX Network supernatural soap opera, American Horror Story, signaling the slow creep onto TV of frightful fare. "And so it begins!" I said, a sinister mwah-ha-ha on my lips, as the show's herky-jerky opening credits ran. Oozing sexuality from its every scene, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink premiere episode was almost too much (and mildly annoying in its repeated somnambulistic exposure of Dylan McDermott's ass); though by the second week of the series my inner critic was pleased. Continued appearances by the redhead maid Moira, as Ben sees her, will assure my pruriently loyal viewership.

"You got a real thing for the girls with colored hair," said Zach, when we first discussed the show.

"No, just saucy old maids," I quipped, convincing absolutely no one.

On the sixteenth commenced the second season of AMC's zombie apocalypse drama, The Walking Dead, which inaugurated the network's "Fear Fest" programming schedule and fated Zach and me to spend the next fifteen days as braindead, hollow-eyed, sleepless trudgers. For we will wait up well later than the witching hour, fixated on our TVs, hungrily hoping for some classic horror films that probably won't even be shown.

Then, a holiday miracle: without notice, one benevolent soul out in the world of the living delivered our Octoberfeast from mere acceptability, by way of an infusion of funds to my inmate account. In the eleventh hour I was able to purchase the picante sauce, jalapeño peppers, and ranch dressing for which our ritual clamors — plus a bite of chocolate for a greedy little dessert. When Zach asked how I was able to afford proper garnish for our garish dish, I summoned my best Vincent Price imitation to mutter, "It came... from the world beyond!"

So shall our screen worship persist, night upon night, until its preordained climax, commemorated by the unholy mass (of smothered chips), on Halloween. Such is the way. The craving will not be assuaged but through our sacred rite. How else might we satiate ourselves, after all — with a glut of food on Thanksgiving? Please.