I have a story to tell. It’s not mine and I won’t be able to tell it as fully as I’d like to since I actually wasn’t there. No, you see, I’ve always been a free man, but when the vast majority of what we’re going to talk about took place, my friend wasn’t. In fact, by the time he got out of prison in 2013 at age 43, he had spent nearly half his life at “camp” as he calls it. So that puts me in a weird space, as I, normally, am an expert on what I write about, mainly because I typically write about me.

So how do I write this?

I’ve struggled with that question for the past few months. My role is in the background, but I feel it’s still intrinsic to the story line, even if not as much as several other people around us, whether they know it or not. It revolves around a few factors that we now know played a role in shaping our world views and our common beliefs . . .  as well as several beliefs we hold individually. When it comes down to it, where we came from, who we chose to surround ourselves with, what we learned growing up, all of that shit still matters, whether we want to admit it or not. It plays a part in who we are today just as much as it did in the 1970s when we were learning to walk and talk and play, and the 1980s when our social skills expanded into the terrifying territory of adolescence. From there, we were steps away from adulthood where we knew everything . . . or more likely, lied to ourselves as we barely knew anything at all.

So I have to back out of my normal spotlight when writing even though it will be my thoughts and opinions on several aspects of what you will eventually read here. Balancing that is going to be difficult, but the subject matter we have here is what’s important, not my personal pontifications. That he’s willing to open up and talk about his story and how it unfurled over time – as you’ll see, the word ‘time’ provides a completely different perspective for him than most of us – is paramount. Without his desire to share his experiences, I would be back to writing about myself, and that’s not nearly as interesting.

But that’s to be expected as I haven’t been locked up in prison for 18 years like he has.

Over the past year, we’ve spent significant time talking. We had official, hours-long, on-the-record interviews on more than a dozen occasions – and still counting – helping me prepare for this time when I could start cobbling together a public record, to put on paper how he got to his current status in life and more importantly what he’s been through. My cajoling and poking around certain topics lead to several great interactions and what you’ll see to be memorable quotes once you’re done digesting all of this. But as I look back and wonder, the question has become: what was I probing for? Maybe there were answers to be found, ones that were just for me because I didn’t understand how so much of this story could transpire the way it did. Or maybe they came only on the giving end, the answers to my repeated questions only useful for him, some kind of therapeutic endeavor to help him get to a better place. While both plausible, for some reason, I don’t feel that either of those scenarios fit.

Deep down, I’m not sure you’ll really find any significant revelation to a greater theory here because I’m not sure this story can ever have a true, definitive answer. At least not to the main question I’ve asked myself dozens and dozens of times over the years: “How’d that happen to him of all people in the first place?”

Why? Because it’s not over; this story can’t possibly be concluded until my dear friend is dead.

I know, I know. That’s an awkward thing to write about a friend. But his story truly is one that will stay with him throughout this lifetime. It won’t, no, it can’t leave him. I know I don’t want it to leave him, and he shouldn’t want it to leave him either. I wholeheartedly hope no one who reads this or has heard of it wants it to leave him as well. He has to own his story, what with it being such a heinous crime. And so far he has. Straight up, he’s done his time because he had to. Manned up. His crime was fully of his own doing. My understanding is that no one coerced him, truly no one but him made this story come to be. Not on the front end when he took a man’s life, and especially not on the back end when he came out of prison and now seemingly – to anyone looking in from afar anyway – is as well off as if nothing had happened on that night in 1994.

Well off. It’s difficult using those words in that previous sentence that way. Who can really be well off after that kind of stint behind bars, going from one pen to another, even state to state, not just as a prisoner but more a number in a system? A system that says it’s there to rehabilitate but, as you’ll hear later on, is more likely to recycle.

That’s not to say he’s the same person he would have been had he not spent 225 consecutive months in prison. No fucking way. That lengthy of a stay in itself changed him. It’d change any man. Every man. Maybe in his case, in this one, very specific instance, the word really isn’t “changed” as much as “pushed,” or how about “directed.” Yeah, that’s better. Directed. The situation he created directed him into being someone different than he would have been had he obeyed the law, followed our societal norms, and kept his freedom all those years. But where he ended up in life, at this stage when we’re goddamned middle age men – something we never believed would happen, ever – no, it’s still hard to believe he could have done THAT and now he’s like THIS.

But he did. And he is.

On its face, this is pretty much why I wanted to write about his story when he said he was willing to put it out there. If you met him today, well after his terrible action, you likely wouldn’t guess he could have done that. You wouldn’t be alone. By far. And even if you could – because really, when we look down into the dark, deep inside us, who here couldn’t do what he did, if we’re really being honest with ourselves? – well, we all love a comeback story. Disney and the Hallmark Channel sure do and this shit would play in primetime if they got a hold of it. Well, maybe it’s more made for FX than Disney, but you get my drift.

It’s been going on two years since we really first talked about what he wanted to get out of this, whatever this blog is. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for us, one of the first extensive conversations we had happened during his first visit to our yearly big poker weekend, and came at a time of the night when we were absolutely shitcanned. It wasn’t just the alcohol talking that time, making him more bold, more open to speak about what he’s encountered, what he’s done. He has presented himself the same way every time we’ve discussed his imprisonment since then. He was open and honest as we talked about what he wanted to say. That’s not surprising. In fact, it’s something he’s always been. But what’s weird is, being honest may be something you’d think would be lost on him during his time inside. Many other things might have replaced honesty considering who he was hanging out with for so long, whether by choice or station in life. He wasn’t just away at boarding school with Kinsley, Huxley and Bernard IV for the better part of two decades. No, he was stuck elbows to assholes alongside robbers, cheats, and drug dealers, if we’re talking about the lower-level criminals. It was hard-core, lifetime criminals at the other end of the spectrum. Bad hombres, as one bad hombre called them once. Luckily for us, his ability to decipher and project a truth within his personal realm has come through that confinement and exposure as pristine as the backcountry snow, untouched by anything other than nature’s hand, where his family has enjoyed a yearly hunting expedition for the past half century.

This coming summer, in 2018, it will be 24 years since we started our weekend party, the one where a few years ago we got shitcanned and began talking about writing his story. It was at our guys’ weekend that me and my friends call the Symposium, or CCMP for short. We’re not getting into the specifics of the name right now, but for those who don’t know, it’s a yearly gathering for a bunch of dudes to get away from the normal grind and play a lot of poker, drink a little bit of alcohol, and reminisce about the good old days. Or a lot of all of that.

He had started his prison stint by the time the first Symposium came to be. Yet he was still a part of it all those years, and not only in spirit. Funny thing was that I thought we were including him – he was listed on the first giveaway we did, a beer pitcher with all the attendees’ names printed on it – so that we could help ourselves deal with the loss of a friend. It was our way of coping with the unknown because we knew so little, only that one of ours was gone and it really felt as if we may never see him alive again. At the time, we were like most 23-year-old guys only thinking of ourselves. We had no way of knowing that all of our actions, not only as a group for one weekend every summer but individually off and on throughout the year, held at least a small key to not only his ability to stay in touch with the outside world, but really to his overall survival.

From his viewpoint, when we started this conversation in earnest, he just hoped to talk about, to really express what he termed the “prison condition.” I had no goddamn idea what he was talking about when he first said the words. Maybe it was the alcohol, but likely, he’s a lot smarter than me and I just didn’t comprehend his meaning. Deep down, I know I’m only doing him lip service by saying that I get it now. I haven’t experienced it, haven’t lived it 23 hours a day, every day, in an 8×8 cell with another grown human being, or, as it happened more often, in a run with 50 other guys crammed in like sardines. So how the hell can I say I get it? But, that’s the perspective you’ll be reading about, from his point of view. It’s how he experienced it, and along the way you will get some of my opinions and even thoughts of other key people who make up this unique story.

Because in the end, the reason he got through those 6,571 consecutive nights in prison and came out the way he did wasn’t based on the fact that he was physically strong. No, a lot of it was because of who he was, who he is, and how he stayed true to himself throughout the course of it all.

Of course, that was only a part of it. The real reason any of us is who we are is because of who we surround ourselves with. It was the strength of the family he had behind him, helping him every step of the way. And not just the blood relatives, whose support never wavered. It was also because of a ragtag group of peers who formed a true brotherhood that has stood up to the test of time and held stronger to him than the forces that would have liked to see him undone. Together, they made his time feel like a walk in the park.

Almost.

You know, other than the fact that that park was in a prison.