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The Diaries

One year, 5 months & 29 days in -- Two minutes left

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Good late morning, all. I have already showered twice and it’s not yet lunchtime. The first to get the tiredness and sweat off my body and mind from another restless night, locked in dreams of a farm, a woman, temptation and escape. The farm and the woman were unfamiliar. The temptation was not, nor was the escape. Waking in a single bed soaked in sweat. Knowing I would sleep between those sheets two more nights, I left the covers open to dry them out when I went to breakfast at 6:00 am -- half-cooked French toast, burned bacon, watery orange juice, no milk (no Kool-Aid either). The more things change, the
more ….

Back to bed, not to sleep, but to lay there and wonder. If I will survive these last two days, or if the warnings that I may soon be “violated” are true. I have heard that rumor now twice, both times from the same person on the outside who appears to be speaking to a federal judge (though not to mine). Yesterday I was told that if I spoke to the press one more time, my judge would revoke my probation and haul me back into court for re-sentencing. That message (relayed from a lover of a friend of a judge) had me wanting to ask the lover (just for fun) if the friend had ever told the judge -- his good friend -- that he smokes pot. But I didn’t, expecting that the "house" phones are bugged.

So, instead, I called CNN in Atlanta and told the reporter there (who has already interviewed me for a half hour on tape) not to come to Nashville on Thursday to film me leaving the halfway house. She understood immediately, though she said that this story – my story – was not going away. In fact, she said that some higher-ups at CNN were so interested in the story that they wanted to take it away from her and give it to a more high profile person. She said that I might get a call from others there, but I told her that I would tell
them that I was already speaking with one of their reporters and didn’t need to speak to another. I form loyalties fast, and most times, they serve me well.

So my story is not going away, and neither is her interest – hopefully, the interest of the American people. I told her (for the benefit of anyone listening to our conversation) that if I was “violated”, there would be no reason not to speak to her or to any other reporter who wanted to cover this story. We’ll see just what difference that makes.

So this early morning, I lay in bed wondering. Not counting down, just wondering. Just what my destiny is at this moment, whether I am indeed to be a martyr for compassion and common sense, for the Goddess. There are certainly worse ways to go, lesser things to offer oneself to and for.

Unexpectedly, the “house” was closed before 9:00 am, and one of my dormies came upstairs grumbling about the director being such a dick-head. That let me know that the director was back in town and that my real worries should now commence. Then the dormie (Dale, a nice former investment banker and reformed crack-head, now devoted to church and in love with another felon who has left the “house” ahead of us – a tougher place to be than where I am now – in love with a women whose status makes her off-limits – but I guess I can understand that also, having taken a recent vow to just let another woman “be”) said something about U.S. marshals coming, and my heart skipped a beat. I said aloud, “I wonder if they’re coming for me” and Dale said it was likely they were coming for another inmate who had blown hot on the alco-sensor and pissed hot for pot who was their likely prey. That inmate here for his second tour during my own sojourn, the first time being kicked out for snorting cocaine in the bathroom and challenging everyone who came in there late at night to a fight. We sat wondering if he would be sent back to taxpayer-funded treatment (again) or would be revoked and sent back to prison. In either case, the penalty for being a knucklehead is more time in confinement and more money diverted from health care and education to “treat” the (at least for now) untreatable. What a stupid and senseless misery-go-round, with no brass ring in sight.

Then the first shower, reading in the sun leaning against the concrete abutment while another new inmate (the most seriously mentally ill resident we’ve had in the past 18 months) ranted and raved at anyone who would sit still long enough to listen – about making money, loving high school and college girls, Libertarians, Socialists, Communists, his aching stomach – all spewed without punctuation or pause, without rhyme or reason. I don’t look at him and I don’t respond when he speaks to me. I am angry that he is even here, and angrier still at the other inmates who egg him on for their own entertainment.

He wouldn’t stop talking so I went back inside and climbed up on my trusty stationery bike (after taking my own mountain bike out of the “house” shed and chaining it to the fence so I can load it up quickly early Thursday morning) less than two days from now. This morning, I did almost 15 miles on the bike, soaking through the sweatpants and rugby shirt, and the blue t-shirt below. I won’t be able to wash those clothes until tomorrow (one of the men’s days—4 days in the laundry room for 50 men and three days for 4 women). So they are hung over my metal chair – one of four chairs in the grown men’s dorm and another sign of Big Man's rank. I will likely wear them again this afternoon, for another 13 miles on the bike. Hoping that soon, I can shift something in gear around here and (finally) get out of Dodge.

This afternoon, I will track down a bakery and order one (or two) German chocolate cakes and two gallons of Breyer’s vanilla ice cream for a going home gathering tomorrow evening. Fearful that even that gesture might backfire, but still playing the hopeful romantic and the expectant martyr. We’ll see, we’ll see ….

Lunch is about to be called – two sandwiches of something, four cookies, maybe some milk. Fritos and Cheetos from the vending machine to balance my diet, then upstairs for a nap (I hope, I hope). More dreams of more strange farms and strange women. Though, for some reason, I have thought about one of my high school girlfriends (Beverly), someone I haven’t thought about in years. And Rosemary, the senior I sat next to my entire sophomore year in our cramped car-pool, both of us responding to hormones that had me hiding my erection behind my school books every morning and me complimenting her sweet perfume one morning when (blushing) she told me she was wearing none (back before I knew what sex smelled like). Nice thoughts, jumping up from the buried past, sexual yearnings without fulfillment. Distant times, soft women, barriers waiting to be broken with others, soon.

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