incarceration as cosmetic enhancement
There's a small quadrant in downtown Portland roughly the size of a pig farm that hosts most of the city's transients. Grey-bearded drunks push shopping carts and Mexicans sell chiba under the bridge.
When I run across someone I remember from prison, it's nearly always in that blighted little sector. It's almost as if they're commanded to stay there once they spring free. And for most of them, it's only a waiting station on their way back inside the tall grey walls.
I'm always glad to see that they're free. And I'm usually shocked at how severely their looks have deteriorated since prison. The muscles are gone, replaced by wrinkles and scabs. The clear, piercing eyes are now yellowy and distant. Men who didn't age one day during the two years I knew them on the inside have aged twenty years since being freed.
Much of it can be blamed on full-tilt backsliding with the speed, crack, or heroin which was denied them on the inside. And much of it, sick and sad as it is, can be blamed on the fact that no one—especially themselves—ever took care of their basic needs as well as the Department of Corrections.
I vow on every drop of blood within me to take care of myself.
