The Storytellers

    Fed Med, the U.S. Medical Center for federal prisoners, is filled with the sounds of stories. They

circulate in the air of the yard, the chow hall, indoor rec, dayrooms, hallways, and dorms. Some

tales take minutes, others seemingly hours, to unfurl for their audience. Guys recount events

from just hours before; others retrieve and dust off experiences decades prior from memory’s

vaults. A few are solicited. Most are freely shared without prompting. Like all of humanity

across the millennia and continents, the men at USMCFP are homos narrativus at their core.

We tell stories to teach, to impress, to injure, to create, and to fill the voids of endless time.

Guys enter prison as tabula rasas, blank slates, their true pasts. only known to themselves.

    For those who've been down a while and made the rounds at other compounds, their story isn't

fully theirs to tell. Others they've bumped into in the system can weave as many threads into

their public narrative as they do. These contributions can be to a newbie’s boon, but mostly

bane. “Jackets”, or reputations, can be draped on new arrivals within days, weeks, and even

hours. Stories paint some as snitches, liars, fighters, gossips, debtors, slobs, or worse. These

“Scarlet Letters” are seared onto a guy's reputation, true or not. The slander of others can

deafen out one’s daily actions of honor months after arrival.

    For those doing their first time, they own the rights to their story. If they choose, their past can

be a work more of fiction than fact. At Fed Med, Guys are rarely asked for their “papers”.

The record of their crimes. Only staff can access their Pre-Sentence Investigation, or P.S.I., The

court’s written record of life pre incarceration. Some with cases involving sex crimes attempt to

craft another tale for why they’re here. Tax fraud, transporting weed cross country, money

laundering, or abetting a robbery all carry less stigma than having the pejorative “cho- mo”

attached to you. Some may be able to maintain the ruse for their whole sentence. Usually, it's

veneer rusts. Guys notice inconsistencies, lapses, omissions, and impossibilities. The house of

cards implodes, and the truth rises to the top, warts and all.

    Instead of minimizing their criminal past, others hyperbolize it. Income from slinging dope is

puffed up, escapes from “the law” are dramatized, and victims from fights are bloodied up.

Others cram anecdotes into their young lives to the point of strained credulity. One inmate

here, for example, claims to have been a champion rodeo rider, an army veteran with two tours

overseas and a farmer of a multimillion-dollar operation all before the age of 26. Another man

who left a year ago doled out stock market and business advice based on his claimed lucrative

experiences. He also seemed never to have money on his commissary account. Without access

to Google or a private investigator, though, these fictions remain the truth. These artifices are

much like the plumage of male birds. They're effective at drawing attention and temporarily

impressing, but they lack much substance.

    

    Substance, however, is often overshadowed by style here. Magnets for guys’ attention are

omnipresent, so if you want their sustained focus, you have to put on a show. Storytellers over

centuries and cultures have realized this truth making tell telling and art. The bards at Fed Med

use posture, face, and voice to create “peaks and valleys” while recounting exploits. When

retelling the climax of brawls, guys add onomatopoeia like “Bam!”, “Pow!”, and “Wham!!”, with

vocal intensity and feigned “slow mo” punches. Villains in life’s stories - like Cops, exes, or rivals

become animated with their own dialogue, voice, and body language to illustrate ignorance,

arrogance, and fear. By adding costumes and makeup, these retellings would be one - man

theater productions. Sometimes, though, less is more. I've been captivated by guys who

recount raw violence they've witnessed in a collected matter-of-fact manner. Recalling seeing

someone stabbed in the neck in the chow hall or beaten to a bloody pulp in the TV room with

the coolness of giving a deposition adds to the believability of brutality.

    Besides voice, though, it serves as another medium to share stories. Instead of paper, spanks of

skins are the canvas. Descending from eye corners down pocked cheeks, permanent teardrops

mark lives extinguished. The names and faces of wives, girlfriends and children emboss arms,

next, and chest. They are constant reminders of who matters most, giving “whys” For a living.

One man's broad back features a mural montage of family and friends in vivid detail, their faces

and figures animated by moving muscle underneath the dermis. Shoulders and torsos don

religious icons, indicating either faith or gang affiliation. Closely shaved heads look like globes,

mapped with life mottos, cultural imagery and geometric patterns. Not only does this body art

remind their owners of what they believe and value, they narrate to passersby, characters,

events, and themes of a man's unfolding story. They can provoke fear or evoke curiosity.

    No matter the medium, the stories we tell others can shape their thinking of ourselves,

themselves, and others. Communication scholar Walter Fisher, with his Narrative Paradigm

theory, explained that sharing a story influences others’ thoughts, beliefs and behaviors even

more than a fact-based, logic-driven argument. At Fed Med, guys often try to establish

their ”cred” through stories. Going through your fighting exploits on different yards and at

different compounds can convince others why you can “call the shots”. If you're dissuading a

newbie from lending stamps to a guy, relaying a story of being burned by him before will stick

with the newbie more than a blanket warning.

    Fisher also argued that for a story to resonate with an audience, it had to have coherence and

fidelity. First, the tales we weave have to flow well. There needs to be background set up-

which C.O.”s, or inmates, which year, which compound. For a prison audience, most who have

lived with tumult and tension as a constant, conflict is as expected. After the buildup to a

climax, guys want to know the outcome of what happened to those involved. Are they still

here, did they transfer or leave, or are they still alive? With the fidelity element, a story that

jives with the listeners lived experience will speak to them better. We all have our individual

“truths”, shaped by our demographics, upbringing, and interactions. At Fed Med, guys hail from

both the urban coasts in rural “fly over country”. They represent they full spectrum of race,

religion, ideology, social class, education level, age, and crime histories. A black man who grew

up in inner city Washington D.C. serving time for bank robbery, at first glance, might not find

much common truth in the story of a white man from rural Nebraska here on a sex offense.

    Many times, these differences create a chasm of misunderstanding; however, effective

storytellers will find the bridges to connect with themes of family, trauma, regret, loneliness,

and hope being truth shared. Compelling stories can foster empathy and friendship between

surface-level polar opposites. The human condition breaks down walls.

    Too frequently, though, the incarcerated rely on simply two-dimensional narratives they hear

from others or tell themselves to define others that live by daily In her much viewed TED Talk,

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche cautions her audience about the danger of a single story to explain

your world. In her case, she details how the West has a narrative of Africa as a war-torn,

helpless, deprived, and primitive continent desperate to be rescued by a White Global North.

    Such stories limit our understanding of people, places, and events. We fail to recognize and

value layers of nuance, the complex gray area, and messy complexities of reality. Fed Med

residents Including myself, listen to and embrace narratives like “All cops are inhuman assholes

on power trips”.” all sex offenders are monsters incapable of reform”,” trans women are things

seeking attention”, and “all Mexicans are ego driven thieves”. These collective narratives unite

subgroups that put up barriers of intolerance. These “single stories” place people in boxes,

offering quick, self-assuring ways to navigate prison life. Seeing and acknowledging the

contradictions, layers, and full rainbow of a person involves time and cognitive complexity. It's

easy to read a tabloid blurb and form a cardboard cutout understanding of someone it's much

harder to dive into a memoir and wrestle with the paradoxes and broken beauty of being

human.

    Instead of staking out their uniqueness, some guys assume characters roles singular to the

prison milieu. just like the archetypes of the hero, the teacher, the trickster, and the Redeemer

existing across literature, the unfolding drama of incarcerated life as its own casts of recurring

figures like the follower, the shot caller, the enforcer, the hustler, the pot stirrer, the snitch, and

the information expert. Developed over decades and hundreds of institutions, these parts

change hands as guys arrive, transfer, ship out, leave, grow older and weaker or die. For

example, the shot collar the alpha male of a prison “car” , typically negotiates, regulates, and

advocates for their group because no one else wants to do it or sees the point in it. Other times,

akin to lion prides or chimpanzee troops, younger arrivals challenged the shot callers authority,

wanting influence, notoriety, and control. In this Shakespearean drama, the crown passes, but

it comes with added pressure of dealing the petty squabbles of their subjects. Typically, when

tensions escalate to fighting between rival groups, the shot callers are the first to be shipped

out bringing an abrupt end to their reign. For the rudderless, these rules supply a compass, a

direction in a sea of monotonous days, weeks, and years. They can make “nobodies “from the

outside into movers and shakers inside the walls. These roles fulfill needs of order out of chaos,

power in the midst of disenfranchisement, community instead of loneliness, and excitement in

the face of boredom. Some can shed these masks as easily as they slipped them on, then

release; for others, these roles define their core over the years, making the transition to

freedom, with a different set of parts to play, challenging.

    Some choose to “do their time” In the quiet out of the spotlight, away from the madding

crowding and with a focus toward positive transformation. Their experience is a one-time

chapter in life greater story arc. There are a third- person observers, tourists to the chaos,

drama, intentions of others. Once they leave, they fade quickly from the prison’s collective

memory. For those who choose to inhabit some roles mentioned above, they drink deeply the

conflicts and tensions, becoming first- person participants in the swirling and unfurling

maelstrom. they are the ones who are brought up in others’ stories after leaving, not always

fondly though. Is it better to be entirely forgettable here, to disappear, or to have made a mark

even it’s “Remember that asshole who used to……?’

    This brings up the issue posed by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard of choosing to live

an ethical or aesthetic life. An ethical life guided by wise thought, speech, and action might lead

to long term physical, mental, and spiritual wholeness. Nevertheless, it lacks in the fullness of

lived experience that one of hedonism, crime, debauchery and chaos yields. Years ago, I heard

an author interviewed comment on how very few novelists had happy childhoods, fairy tale

romances, or smooth or a straight life path. This description matches the background of the

incarcerated, even those who‘ve reformed. Narrative thrives on the big, the brash, the broken,

the explosive, and the unstable. Peace and certainty might make for a happy life, but not

engaging subject matter for a listener. Still, are the scares collected through life's tempests

worth the stories we can share? Are the ”remember whens" from our past a fair trade for living

in the hell of the moment?

    Rather than sharing their own past feats and follies, some guys at Fed Med opt to keep witness

and share with others the current dramas and gossips unfolding on the compound. They know,

or claim to know, who owes whom money, what “cars “are having turf wars, who went to the S.

H. U. And why, which staff are under investigation, and how many guys are coming to or

transferring from the institution. Known as “inmate.com “, The rumor mill churns out stories

from unknown sources and hearsay. These information experts are story alchemists,

transforming kernels of truth into sensational. Like a grass fire, the plague, a tick tock trend, the

collective narratives spread and ripple through the halls and units only to fizzle out, making way

for another wave of speculation. True or not in an environment where much is unknown, kept

secret, and unsearchable, it's empowering to have this information currency and pass it on. If

anything, prison gossip is the time filler and the respite from routine.

    Moving from tale of the past and present, we layout for ourselves the story of our future once

we leave Fed Med. We envision a course yet to unfold and our plans for life put on hold. We

plot out reuniting with family and friends, going back to school, starting a business, and

traveling the globe. Some of these plans might seem like attainable fairy tales, but such

idealized visions provide light on our darkest days in our deepest doldrums as Langston Hughes

penned, “hold fast to dreams /for when dreams die /life is a broken winged bird that cannot

fly.” To borrow another avian metaphor from Emily Dickinson,” Hope is the thing with

feathers/that perches in the soul”.

    Hopes and dreams lift men up and provide” a why “ to endure most any “how” to paraphrase

Nietzche. Promise of brighter third acts in life can motivate men to attend therapy, battle

addiction, taking on an apprenticeship, and make proactive choices.

    Upon starting a new chapter post incarceration, the stories we tell come to a head with new

realities. The plot lines of family and friends have moved on without us. We also discover so

have technology, prices, social norms, and job opportunities, we are Rip Van Winkle’s waking

up from a dream world, trying to catch up to a transformed present, other antagonists also

emerge and impede our plans. Social stigma of felons makes us the villains in others narratives.

This leads to barriers in housing and employment in our reentry quest. The resilient fall back on

themes of ingenuity, and discipline cultivated over years of incarceration to meet adversity.

While many overcome obstacles others returned back to a sequel they vowed not to be in ,

usually serving a longer stint.

    At their best, the stories the incarcerated tell, absorb, live, inspire, connect and teach. At their

worst, they divide, delude, denigrate. It falls to the individual what role they'll play in the plot of

life still unwritten.