Noodle pen diaries

I cannot express the torture of waiting for pen and paper in this place. Commissary day is Tuesday, and if you don’t fill out the form perfectly—down to the last detail—they reject your entire order. It's like a bureaucratic version of the Hunger Games, but with less fanfare. And since that's the only way to get anything beyond the essentials (a bar of soap, a comb, and a single roll of toilet paper), you can imagine the stakes. Finally, after nearly a week of making do with nothing but my thoughts, I had pen and paper. And that? That felt like a world-changing event.

Now, let me tell you about this pen. You know those flimsy plastic straws you get with a cheap cocktail? Imagine writing with one of those, and you'll have a good idea of what it’s like to use a security pen in jail. No hard casing, just a bendy plastic tube over the ink. You’d have an easier time writing with an uncooked spaghetti noodle. Apparently, the flexible design is to prevent anyone from shanking their cellmate—a necessary precaution, I guess, but not great for aspiring novelists. At first, I tried to MacGyver a solution by rubber-banding a plastic spoon to the pen. It kind of worked, though my hand cramped after a while. Then, a fellow inmate showed me a trick: wrap the pen in the clear label from a deodorant bottle. Voila! Instant rigidity. It was like a bizarre arts-and-crafts moment, but hey, it worked.

All things considered, I’ve adjusted to jail life. Or at least I’ve stopped crying every time I look around. I’ll be here for five or six weeks waiting for a bed at Metro State Prison, just up the street. Everyone here has to go through the prison system’s Diagnostic program, where they give you the full mental and physical evaluation treatment. Kind of like a check-up, but with more shackles.

The old-timers—women with past convictions who seem disturbingly comfortable with all of this—say I should be paroled before nine months is up. The “should” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, though. Nothing moves quickly when you're wearing jail-issued flip-flops. Nothing can even begin until I get into the prison system, and right now, I’m stuck in this holding pattern. A waiting room without magazines.

The day I turned myself in was... surreal. Kelly stayed over the night before, because I couldn’t stand the idea of waking up alone on my last day of freedom. We woke up early, with plenty of time to get to the courthouse by nine. Before we headed out, I stopped at McDonald’s for a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Extra cheese. I figured it would be my last decent meal for a while, though my stomach seemed less than enthusiastic about the idea. I forced it down anyway, knowing that the next few days would be a torturous blur of paperwork, concrete benches, and warm, greenish bologna sandwiches.

Saying goodbye to Kelly outside the courtroom was brutal. We both knew it had to happen, but neither of us was ready for it. There’s a kind of raw, helpless feeling that comes with watching someone you love walk away, knowing you’re stepping into a world where their hugs won’t follow. He gave me one last tight hug, a silent moment of support before I turned to face the bailiff.

That guy. He recognized me instantly. I could see the flicker of recognition in his eyes—the sturdy man in his early thirties who had barked at people in court for wearing hats or chewing gum. I always liked him, in a weird way. He was firm, but not unkind. As he led me back to the holding cell, he gave me his one piece of advice: “Keep to yourself. Don’t get caught up in everyone else’s drama.” Sage advice, really, for any scenario in life, but especially here.

What I dreaded most was the jail itself. Rice Street jail had been built up in my mind as some kind of hell on earth, a Dante’s Inferno with metal toilets and fluorescent lighting. And now, here I was, entering the gates of Hades, armed with nothing but a roll of toilet paper and a comb. The bailiff tried to reassure me, saying I’d likely be transferred to the prison in just a few days. But that weekend stretched ahead of me like a lifetime.

The holding cell they put me in was... charming, in the way that rotting drywall and urine stains can be. It was in the bowels of the courthouse, hidden away from the public. There was a toilet in one corner—more of a metallic suggestion of a toilet, really—and a combination sink that looked like it hadn’t seen a sponge since the Clinton administration. I made a quick pact with myself to drink as little water as possible. Desperate times.

Left alone with nothing but my thoughts, I quickly realized I had two choices. I could let this place eat away at me, become bitter and resentful about the whole situation. Or, I could turn it into a weird sort of experiment. You see, I’ve always been interested in psychology. I even went back to school to finish my bachelor’s degree in it. So, I pitched the idea to Mike over our final dinner before I surrendered myself: What if I approached my time in prison as one big social experiment? I mean, when in life do you ever get the chance to be a part of a whole new society, one that functions on rules completely foreign to you? The ultimate out-of-comfort-zone experience.

I thought it was a brilliant idea, but I’m also fairly certain that my defense mechanism for handling stress is humor. And humor has always gotten me through life’s weirdest moments.

Fast forward to the jail transfer van. I found myself shackled, handcuffed, and squashed between two women who clearly did not share my “laugh about it later” attitude. The van ride was a spectacle—an actual convoy of police cars, lights flashing, and sirens blaring as if we were heading to the Super Bowl instead of a jail just down the road. People on the sidewalk stopped to stare, point, and gawk as our little parade rolled by.

And that’s when it hit me. I’m not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t rob a bank. But here I was, just another face in the chain gang, shackled to a woman with third-degree burns on her hands from smoking two crack pipes at once.