Meet Bed #37 Chapter Two

October 4th, 2026

Saturday I gallivanted around the al fresco splendor of the bullpen with my current squeeze, a sweetheart half my age hitting the criteria of my prison play-pals: smokin' redneck. I'm determined to marry one. Seriously, being locked down's sunniest feature is a sea of available hot hillbillies, and I intend to lock a good one down if it kills me. 3 decades+ of doing guys "like me": artsy-fartsy fags (I can say that, like these African Americans in here saying the hurtful "N-word" like 800 times a paragraph) might explain my violent criminal outcome. Pretentious, yawn-worthy, and needlessly competitive - ugh. Gimme a working man who shovels my cooking down saying "This shit's fire, Babe" or even "I love you" with his yap full (this has occurred a fistful of times and I'll never get over it), then we give each other handies beneath our blanket while binging some Marvel series or Tarantino(-esque) joint and there's my dream forever. Screw compromise. Back to it, I checked Lantern for my refreshed Statistics score. There was a Notification from Dr. Nakia Mitchell saying "You uploaded your text book".

Apparently in the scramble following my quarter-day loss and recovery, when I submitted there was only one file labeled MAT 120, the test was lowercase so I dropped a book and not the paper. As pinpricks showered my heating skin, frantically I tapped glass resending, uncovering a rare instance of pro-activity with my term courses removed despite them ending the next day. Rerouting I sent the tardy test to 3 overseers from Simmons. Monday night I finally got a response from a Dr. Young who overlooks the Second Chance Program alerting me he had forwarded the file to the Dr., and "Little by little I can breathe again" like Robert Plant sang in an 1980's song after his apparent castration.

Yesterday morning dispensing brooms, mops, and cleaning chemicals while breaking down how working works to those who never encountered it before yesterday as somebody handed them a paper telling them they do it now, I checked to see if my grade got updated. Zero for the final and a big fat F for the class. No comments from the professor, nor email responses from the 3 responsible peeps I msgd ad nauseam about this horror show. Pissed to the stars and back I re-msgd all those nonrespondents, tried tracking the principal here and cursed like a megaphone into any available ears coming to check out cleansers.

My new Robber came home from the gym. Quickly he learned winning with me today wasn't doable, poor kid. He's precious, really. Sweet, not loud, hard-body natch, and raised Pentecostal. Went buck wild around 15 from booze to meth, gun-toting - the pistol in the street not rifle in the forest type, all thugged out. Prison calmed that down to hear him tell it. Daily he pulls mistakes and they're his to make. Already I've tried the raising-somebody-else's-wreck route and nobody wins says history. I'm soft-mentoring, and aiming for being a warmer regret on a decent list one day.

He's back to hitting the Lord's House, and I'm supporting this. 3 nights I'll hit IRC (IRC (Intermediate Religious Center), the interdenominational chapel of whoever shows except "Ring of Fire", a Church of Christ sect with one hefty hollering Black babe who gets in the audience's business and works her cop fantasies out reporting disapproved behavior. Hard pass. Last eve were Jehovah's Witnesses who showed a 'Prodigal Son' flick that either stole the longest 1.5 hours of my life or the shortest 10.5. Robber told me the other day about his mama's Yorkie mix, a cute little thing she takes everywhere and loves the fuck out of. Looking into those clear eyes headed at me every time I near the room, I get how she feels.

What wound up quelling my savage inside was a frustration-fueled cheesecake. Yep, Anger Baking even happens to hardened convicts.

For starters, I dumped a package of Lil' Dutch Maid Duplex Sandwich Cookies into my foot-tub. With a folded can lid for scraping the creams from the shells, I put each in different bowls. Once all were stripped down, I rabidly beat the shells to pieces with a Peanut Butter jar until I had crumbs. I added a pack of Cinnamon Roll Oatmeal from a box of 10. Then that P.B. jar got filled about 1/3 with milk. Opening a package of Yoo-Hoo candy bars (don't be delusional and grab a bag of these tiny treasures so you can smash 1 or 2 a day because you'll devour every damn one like the most seasoned chain-smoker says all) I busted up four of those bitsy bars and dropped them into the milk. Then I stirred around 2 tbsp of Sugarless Maple Syrup (gotta go with whatcha got here) in and nuked about 2 minutes in :30 second intervals. Pouring slowly into the cookie crumbs, I coated them. Next I spread them to cover the tubs bottom, then cooked it 1 minute. That produced a perfectly smashing crust I whispered salt onto.

On to those Duplex creams: I added a generous squirt of chocolate syrup, a crushed package (5) of Dolly Madison Glazed Donuts (I'd rock a Rascal® scooter and muumuu had i discovered them at the height of my bong-hitting career, prison's led me to visualize), squirted 2 packets of Eastview Farms Cream Cheese in, half a cup of oatmeal with cinnamon, a pinch of salt, and a packet of Splenda. To this mixture I added about 1/2 cup of milk. All I heated in the microwave 1 minute, then stirred another half cup of Cool Whip in. Covering the completed crust, I placed the oversized pie so far into ice.

Daily I get a fine red apple, so I chopped the fruit in half then one of those I diced. Filling a small bowl with Cool Whip I added Food Express Orange Drink (Tang® with Tartrazine) and stirred, adding the apple bits I'd salted. Chilling this layer separately in its bowl, I added it quite cold as the "icing" for the cheesecake. Desperately and fruitlessly I searched for a handful of marshmallows as this confection tasted straight-up that fluffy fruit cocktail salad many a Mamaw made for Sunday suppers. With the chocolate syrup I drew a cute little whip on top and chilled the finished piece another thirty minutes. By the time it was finished, zoned out from the mixtape throbbing from my ear-buds, I was 20 lbs of psychic trash lighter.

That dessert flew out the tub and into hungry happy hands of grateful inmates whose appreciation showed via "donations" supporting my craft. Around 10 last night, I made another with adjustments like phony Sprite in the mix and apple slices fried in a popcorn bag adorning the roof. Huge hit this quiet Saturday morning. Boy Wonder-ful had me wake him at 9. Then I was working on an assignment: editing and revising a convict's "wedding vowels". Hopefully if you laughed, there was a human doing it for this grammatically-flawed sweetheart clearly smart enough to know so. Seeing that label I grinned like a hyena, myself. Correcting the shamelessly sappy parade of promises, I carefully did not omit anything genuine. Instead I downsized his word economy, bolstering his verbal confidence. If he keeps his words she's a lucky lass. Said, maybe a couple's retreat to the County Health Department before the honeymoon.

Knowing what this groom's been up to in the bathroom and shower not to mention who with - an ambulatory blowup doll. Dude's a sucker for "love", an exchange of physical connection for material objects. Being younger he sees himself rescuing damsels in distress, not dudes in drag profiteering from the vaginal vacuum. It does play tricks on the mind. Right recently while talking to a plump goatee wearer I reminded myself it was, in fact, a guy. That absence has a curious impact even on seasoned types like me. Literally everything in this microcosm is barter, relationships hardly the exception.

Today's another prayer answered: a chilly Fall overcast, me and the Junior Executive walking the loop. For lunch I did Hawaiian Chicken and Potato Tostadas I whipped outta my creative kiester and maybe we'll view "Predator: Badlands" before the sirens call it a day. Another typical American couple enjoying the weekend like many others. Tonight it's church unless its the hollering lady, then late night Adult Swim. Finishing editing PinkPanthress blasts into my hearing-holes with "Tonight". Playing spades are two White dudes, one's a bad-off junkie with a good heart, the other a lesser of both and bisexual openly, a Black Muslim, and a light-skinned guy I cook with a couple nights with a week. It's 4 PM, do you know where YOUR family is?

FOLLOW-UP: October 6th (not "Octopuses" though cooler, which autocorrect tried): last night the test finally hit Dr. Mitchell. Why it took an Act of Congress I'll never get. 28 out of 40 points getting me a hard-fought C I'm jazzed more over than some unchallenging A's. She served up great feedback, always making work worthwhile.

Apparently I rock several statistical concepts like standard deviation, variance, and hypothesis-testing decision. Questioning claims like "proves" is go, too. Still need fine-tuning on differentiating medians, modes, and means. Likely that'll be a problem with my Teflon® coated cranium losing the meaning of anything algebraic a day post-final.