Glass Cages

 I was sitting across the table from Joker, reluctantly burying the hatchet. Earlier in the hour when our cells were opened for rec, I believed I had won the pool to pick the winners of a NASCAR race. So did Joker.  He was red in the face as he told me I was wrong, and he pointed with his completely tattooed hand at the official list of picks. Damn, he was right. My copy of the list had an error.

So there I was at the table with Joker, whose indignant anger had mellowed into smugness. He chose this moment to impart some wisdom, telling me, “Prison is like an aquarium. All those guys over there playing cards and trading commissary items are like the school of minnows swimming in a pack.” Joker took a breath and gestured with his head toward the tough guy working out. “He’s the piranha all the other fish are afraid of.” Less discreetly he pointed at the grimy man who everyone avoided, adding, “And of course you have the bottom-feeding sucker fish that eats the scum off the walls.”

Then Joker looked me in the eye and said, “You’re just a clownfish. Everyone loves to look at you and watch you swim, but you ultimately have no purpose.”

You get to be whoever you want in prison. I heard people say that countless times. They were talking about all the pathological liars that run around saying they have six sports cars and a mansion on the outside. I was surprised how many of those guys I met.

Once I was sentenced I got sent “up the way,” which is prison speak for a sentenced facility. In my case that was Cheshire Correctional Institution, a maximum security joint. When they first opened my cell and I started mingling with the other convicted men, some unexplained impulse came over me and I introduced myself as DC.

As soon as the name brushed past my lips it was mine. The initials were already inked inside my forearm in Old English, like a royal decree. No longer would I have to drag around my old name, a word frequently misspelled, ominous, pretentious. I could settle into my dream of having an inconspicuous name. Just two letters, like AJ. Everyone knows an AJ.

I could have been a star. When Macaulay Culkin got too old for another Home Alone sequel, I was offered the part. The film was going straight to VHS though, which was no way to make my acting debut. I left the casting director heartbroken with my refusal, so my story goes, but the truth is I was too shy to ever audition.

My early childhood was nevertheless my most impressive feat. Reading and math came to me with ease, and I used big words that made grown-ups laugh. My grandparents loved talking to me, and I loved living at their house. I was there because my parents divorced just before my fourth birthday, an event I remember as the two of them screaming from opposite ends of the upstairs hallway. I kept running from one of them to the other, asking if they still loved me.

I wasn’t a “people person” when I was younger. Instead I was constantly trying to figure the world out from inside my own head, and simultaneously getting lost in the fantasy worlds of TV, books, and video games.

As I got older I began to hate this personality of mine. I felt alienated from my peers, and ashamed for no apparent reason. It seemed like everyone else caught on to something I was missing, they fit in naturally and I did not. I tried on many different personalities to be the opposite of who I was, to live this important life I believed I was missing.

The first time I got high I loved it, and I knew it was going to be a problem.

In the county jail day room, I asked the other guys if they ever felt like dogs being kept in a kennel. The room erupted in laughter and one person said, “Every fucking day! How is this just now crossing your mind?”

I never thought much about being chained up, dressed in cheap ugly clothes, locked in a cell, or yelled at. The ones who yelled back were the crazy ones. The judges and prosecutors who shot me dirty looks and gave me condescending speeches only hurt me on the surface, because I couldn’t honestly dispute them.

I kept wishing I auditioned for Home Alone. Being a burned out former child star would have been better than being a burned out nobody.

There are at least 30 species of clownfish in the wild. They vary in size, color, and pattern, but they all form a special bond with the sea anemone. The anemone provides nutrients and protection to the helpful algae cultures within the anemone. The clownfish’s bright coloring also attracts small fish which are trapped and consumed by both the clownfish and its home.

The clownfish-anemone biome is currently threatened by climate change as warmer waters can cause bleaching, which kills the anemone and stops the healthy development of clownfish. In addition to the environmental factors, clownfish are further endangered by overfishing as they are in constant demand for tropical aquariums.

Clearly, the clownfish is anything but useless. It is a beautiful creature with an important role in its ecosystem. As a human species, we are destroying it in our exponentially industrial age. Ignorantly we capture this fish and disrupt the balance of the sea, just because we love to look at it. We seek to confine it in a glass cage, the only place where it does nothing.