I had coffee today with a man who was just released from prison after serving 6 years of a 6 year prison sentence. We've become friends in the 3 weeks he has been on the street. This is NOT a guy that I would have been friends with when I was runnin' and gunnin', mostly because he would have scared me to death.
"So what were you in for?" I asked him a few days ago. I don't have much of a filter between my brain and my mouth and frankly, I could care less what he did. I ask people personal questions because we drunks aren't great at letting secrets out of the bag, referring instead to let them steep and stew in a frothy emotional soup of fear and paranoia. Ask me anything you want. If I don't want to tell you I won't tell you. It's not that complicated.
He declined to answer, politely. Frankly, who cares? We're all free to do and say what we want - we can keep as many cats in as many bags as we want. Meetings are not where we do 4th Steps and some cards we need to play close to the vest.
On the way to coffee today he told me what he had done. Frankly, I couldn't believe he served any time at all let alone 6 years of a 6 year sentence. Every now and then I steel myself to hear something really awful. I've never heard anything really awful. I haven't heard many things that I found all that interesting. Mostly it's little things that some guy has kept hidden for so long that it has been warped so that it doesn't recognize anything human.
I enjoyed coffee. I'm going to miss this guy.
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