Living with a cellmate is hard, but getting a new prison roommate can be stressful. Getting a new cellmate is stressful. If people living with roommates fight over rent, parking space, noise late at night or early in the morning, or for bills, can you imagine living with a violent stranger in the same room, a stranger […]

Even in prison, there are bills to pay. Prison living has been far from easy for me. The probabilities of making it out alive are close to none, and yet all I try to do is to survive one day at a time so that I may one day die a better person than I […]

“I’m starved for love. Not ordinary love but real love. The love that’s like music or something.” (J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man) What are the alternative sexual practices in prison? This is one of the most common questions from curious women who have written me over the years is.  How does a man serving a […]

I fell into the fantasy, falling in love with her. As a desperate, sleepless in Soledad,  lonely man who felt accepted for the first time in years, I proceeded to see how far I could go with her. I began to write to the station every week and ask for hard-to-find songs, challenging her. As […]

The horrible reality of a failing system. Prison doctors are almost always in a hurry to shove medical files out, like a factory worker on a conveyor line. They are also skeptical of every inmate, on the defensive, to keep inmates from pulling a con on the prison health care system, manipulating them out of […]

Try spending a typical morning in the shoes of a prison inmate. During my incarceration, corresponding with people from all over the world, I’ve heard it all: bored, midlife, menopausal, neurotic, desperate housewives tell me how their husbands can’t get it up any more. College students complain about their sky-high debt from student loans and credit […]

If it’s prison food, it all tastes the same. When I first stepped foot into prison and read the chow hall menu, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! Ah, I remember the days when I could eat whatever I wanted: Denny’s Grand Slam for breakfast, a cold Subway pastrami sandwich for lunch, a […]

Mischief in the Prison Chapel “Is there anyone out there whom the Holy Spirit has touched, who wants to be healed by the blood of the Lamb, who wants to accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior? Raise your hands!” When it comes to religion, I personally believe that one can benefit tremendously […]

When there’s plenty of time to think about life inside and outside of prison. A prisoner has nothing but time on his hands to deal with while on lockdown — 24 hours until the next breakfast, eight hours until dinner. One Sunday afternoon, I was hanging out in the law library, reading new case law, […]

Homemade booze: it’ll kill you. On the third night, he took a sock, using it as a strainer, and began to pour the bag contents into sock, and out came a pure orange liquid, which streamed into a big jug placed below. The result was jailhouse pruno. As a free man, just 23 years old, […]