In Jail With Pablo

I went to jail last night. Wasn't a dream. It was reality. Pablo was with me. Seriously. In my bag, I carried a photo of him. That counts, right? Also had a couple Pablog posts that I'd printed at the office. The posts and the photo of our son were for the benefit of the kids I was there to hang with. It was my honor to carry Pablo's spirit and energy into the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall. He would have loved to have been there. I mean, in Pablo's kiddie version of jail, people wore striped uniforms like this....

...and busted up boulders with big hammers for no apparent reason. The jail I went to was a little different. The inmates wore oversized grey tee shirts and grey pants with Chuck Taylors. All the gates were electronic. No guards with giant skeleton keys. Kind of a bummer about the keys. That would've been cool.

Here's how Pablo and I ended up there.

My buddy Todd Rubenstein is an entertainment lawyer by day and a volunteer instructor for the Inside Out Writers program by night. He invited me to sit with seven young men from Block H. These guys meet with Todd every Wednesday. They listen to Todd read a piece of writing, something that sets the tone for the day. Back in June, Todd carried his own printed Pablog post into the Wednesday night writers circle. He read it as the week's writing sample, to get the kids started on a topic. He told me later that the kids dug deep in their writing that week, that they related to Pablo's story a lot.

These kids, I learned last night, know a lot about loss. One kid described the day his dad hugged him and told him that his sister had been shot three times. Another boy wrote about his best friend losing his life in a gang-related gunfight. Another dude noted the background of everyone in the room based on their neighborhood gang affiliation. He turned to Todd and I and said, 'I don't think y'all bang.' I responded, trying to be funny, but pausing to be sure I wouldn't be inappropriate in doing so, which made me sound like a nervous nerd. 'Not today,' I said. Everyone laughed. But only because I sounded like a lame-o. At any rate, I wasn't there to ask about everyone's crimes. Clearly, the dudes we hung with last night weren't in there for shoplifting.

What was more clear was that the seven participants in the group last night were incredible writers. They lit up as the pens and loose leaf paper were handed out. A young man named Pablo, who was all smiles and very happy to share his name with our Pablo, wrote furiously at the table. When it came his turn to read, he revealed two additional pieces he'd written on his own during the week. Everyone read, and everyone got feedback from the others in the room. People gave compliments and described what they'd heard in the piece. The words 'tight' and 'clean' were used quite a few times. And those were accurate descriptions of what we heard.

The courage and vulnerability of these seven young men was the most impressive thing I witnessed. Where these dudes come from, putting your feelings on paper—or anywhere—is probably not an easy thing to do. Feelings are liabilities in neighborhoods where shots ring out night after night. Feelings are what people have when they know the person inside the chalk lines. Powerful to see people taking a social risk to sit in a tiny airless room and write. Writing words is something I do every day. Sitting in that room, it took on a different dimension.

While words written and spoken were the common currency among the nine of us, Todd and I were on the guest list. We got to leave. The kids didn't. The guy who speculated about Todd and I bangin left early. He was chained at the wrists and ankles along with a few other dudes and walked elsewhere in the facility. The rest of the guys walked out in the block hall with us, and went to their cells. I got to leave and sleep in my own bed.

I opted to thumb type on my Blackberry while everyone else freestyled on paper. Todd's instruction to the group was to write about love for another person, or losing someone you love, and the pain that came from that.

Here's what I read to the group when it was my turn:

I stare at the screen. Pain? Love? For another person, within myself. What f***ing use is love, is what I think a lot lately. How can I avoid feeling anything for anyone, is what I think a lot lately. If I save all my love and spit out all my pain, will Pablo come back? If I wear my white Adidas and not my silver Nikes, will Pablo come back? I play these games over and over and over.

Walking into jail tonight I felt at home. Not because the walls in my house are painted piss yellow, but because I feel like I'm in lockdown. When I wake up in the morning I feel like the walls are closing in. In normal times I feel like that once in a while. Having it start first thing in the morning is pain on top of pain. It feels small, tight, like a jail cell. These rooms also remind me of hospital rooms. You get a bed, a place to wash up, and some people behind a central desk. Here they are called guards or discipline officers. At Childrens Hospital they're called nurses, and they're much nicer. But they don't have to deal with fights and discipline and s**t like that.

Walking in here, I felt hope. Hope for the dudes who live here. I get to leave. They don't. My greatest hope for love and for the dudes in here is that they can connect with their love and empathy and turn around whatever it is that got them here. I grew up not feeling a lot of love. I don't know everyone's story in this room, but I bet a lot of these guys are growing up the way I did. My parents left me with someone who messed me up. Felt a lot of anger, got in a lot of trouble. And that was just what I got caught doing. Somewhere in my 20s I got sick of trouble and started asking for help. That's when the word LOVE showed up on the street signs. I'm not a whole lot different than the guys in this room. A lot of people offered me help. I said 'no' time after time. At some point, after the millionth time, I started saying 'yes.' That's when I opened myself up to the possibility of love. It started with finding a way to accept myself, to stop believing I was a piece of shit. When I learned how to love me, I was able to love others.

Made me want to fight a hell of a lot less.