(10/13) “I was 48 years old when they let me out. Twelve years...

(10/13) “I was 48 years old when they let me out. Twelve years of incarceration. The HIV medication had decayed my bones so badly, I could barely walk. I needed two full hip replacements. When they were checking me out at Discharge, the guards made a joke. They said: ‘See you when you get back.’ Same joke they make with everyone. It’s what they want. They want you back. Because without inmates, there’s no funding. No free labor, no correction officer picnics, no paid overtime. They need you coming back; 78 percent of inmates are reincarcerated within 3 years. ‘See you when you get back.’ Not me, motherfucker. Not 56134066. You’re never seeing me again. I’ve lost too much time. I decided right then, limping across that parking lot, that I was going to beat these people. And there’s only one way to beat a system incentivized by your failure, and that’s by succeeding. They don’t lift a finger to help you. They let you out with no money, no clothes. No health coverage. Not even a fucking driver’s license. At least someone from the clemency initiative escorted me to a halfway house in the Bronx; most guys just get dumped at the bus stop. The halfway house is just another arm of the criminal justice system. So many rules that it’s nearly impossible to get a full-time job. Most guys just give up, but I tried. I sent out applications to restaurant after restaurant. I’d see the same ‘Help Wanted’ ads in the newspaper for weeks. But the moment they found out about my record, they didn’t want help from me. Not 56134066. I developed a phobia of telling people about my past. I couldn’t hear it one more time. It’s the same message, coming from everywhere: ‘You made your choice. You’ve chosen to belong to this class of people. Now stay there.’ The whole world is saying it: scumbag, scumbag, scumbag. Then somehow, all on your own, living off food stamps, despite all your regret, all your self-loathing, you’ve got to summon the fortitude to not believe them. While the whole time it’s right there. One sniff. One sniff to erase everything: the HIV, every year I spent in prison, every cop, every CO, every judge that made me feel like nothing. One sniff to feel invincible again.”