The Suffering Is Optional

It was the summer of 1987 and I was just transferred to the R-units after a year in the county jail.  Nothing much changed except for trading my red jumpsuit in for an orange one.  But things were changing, it was becoming real.  For the last year in county, it took at least three months for the fog to lift, three more to sort through some public defenders until I found one who drank like me (I could smell the booze when we met in the holding cells).   In my view, he felt like someone who could hear me.  Perception, little did I know, mine was skewed.