The class was called Alcoholics Anonymous, so we pretended not to know one another, even though we had been living together for months, years – decades, in some cases.

We were all wearing the standard costume – light blue baggy tees with deep blue canvas pants – one of the many methods they use to try to strip away our individuality. But we hold on wherever possible: a pair of shoes or piece of jewelry, unique placement of facial tattoos, various medical accessories and accoutrements.

Not everyone spoke. The topic was resentments. Not everyone listened either, being occupied with college homework, for example, or dozing. A story could last several seconds or go on for more than half an hour. We were a group of men unfamiliar with social norms, and we had time to kill.

An older fella with a walker, wearing a bright neon vest to indicate his impairment, had just finished telling us why he had been denied parole the day before. He had only paid off two-thousand of his ten-thousand dollar restitution.

“The Board told me,” he continued, “they’d have found me suitable if I hadn’t been putting money on other people’s books.

Consternation rippled through the group. This was an unwelcome shift in policy, for the behavior was not uncommon.

“You need to stop if you’ve been doing this,” he implored us. “They have ways of finding these things out.”

The Board had given him a three-year denial.

“I’ve had to work through a lot of resentment,” said a new voice, belonging to a short, well-groomed man with a nice-looking face.

“When I went to Board, they told me, “If you only had your GED, we would have found you suitable.” So, I got my GED. When I went to my next hearing, the same commissioner denied me again. The very same commissioner. It was only later I learned they had implemented the No Parole policy.”

This policy was enacted in the 80s, forty years ago. The man looked to be somewhere in his sixties.

“After that I lost all hope. It set me back quite a few years,” he said, trailing off.

Then another man began to speak. He has no respect for authority, he told us in broken English. A neighbor hurt his dad, he explained. And while the cops caught the neighbor, they then let him go.

He finished by saying, “My dad, he hurt. He bleeding. He will tell me he not goin’ to die. He dead.”

Silence filled the classroom. I mean, what could you say after something like –

“This has been bugging me for a couple of days,” admitted a new voice, a rather lively fellow. “My neighbor in the cube (meaning “cubical” – the living quarters for ten to twelve men) is the type of guy where, if you have something, he wants it.

“Well, I give a lot of food away. Sometimes I give it to him. But it’s gotten to the point where he expects it.”

“I gave a pepper to another cubie (cube-EE), and now my neighbors’ mad at me because I didn’t offer it to him first. He wanted it.

The group politely suffered through a lengthy monologue regarding this predicament and followed with a rather opinionated discussion on the relative merits of various courses of action.

I think we all wanted to cry.

Errol Klein