He waved me off. “Don't worry about it; we'll work it out later. You and I are gonna do a lot of business together; let me go fetch the racquet.” He walked off.

I looked at Tommy and said, “What a freak show this place is!”

“Oh, you have no idea,” he shot back. “This isn't exactly what you call ‘hard time.’ In fact, at nighttime, people sneak out into the fields and pick up packages from their friends; some of them even meet their wives for sex. It's a total free-for-all.”

And indeed it was.

As Tommy and I spent the next few day trading war stories, a seemingly endless stream of inmates offered their services to me. There was Miguel, the Mexican masseur ($10 for a sixty-minute rubdown with no happy ending); Teddy, the Chinese portrait master (for $200 you'd give him a snapshot of your children and he'd re-create it in watercolor); Jimmy, the redneck leather man (for $75 he'd make you a Western-style pocketbook to ship home to your wife); Danny, the gay barber (for six cans of tuna you'd get a trim, while he tried to rub his dick against your kneecap)… and on and on it went. Of course, there were all the jailhouse chefs, who, using a combination of food bought in the commissary, grown in the garden, smuggled in through the fields, and stolen from the kitchen, cooked gourmet meals in a microwave oven.

And just like that I was hooked up: living the Life behind bars.

Yet it wasn't until the fourth night of war stories that Tommy brought something to my attention that would end up changing my life forever. “I've been around some insane people,” he said, “but you, my friend, definitely take the cake. I had my wife Google you because I thought you were full of shit—especially that nonsense about sinking the yacht. I mean, that's outlandish!Who sinks a yacht? But she said it's all on the Internet.”

“Yeah,” I said, with a mixture of sadness and pride. “I guess I lived a pretty fucked-up life.”

Tommy shrugged. “It might be fucked up, but the stories are totally hysterical, especially the way you tell them, with all the nicknames: the Blockhead, the Chinaman, Mad Max, the Cobbler, the Drizzler, and especially the Duchess, who I'd like to meet one day.”

I smiled. “Well, I'm sure I can arrange it in a few years. We actually get along pretty well these days. No more throwing things around.”

Tommy raised his eyebrows. “I'll tell you what you reallyoughtta do.”

“What?”

“Write a book.”

I started laughing. “Write a book? How am I gonna write a book? I don't know how to write! I mean, I can write, but not a whole book. Now, if you wanna talk about speaking,that's something I can do. I'm a really greatspeaker, I promise you. You put me in front of a room and I'll make people cry.”

“There's no difference,” he said confidently. “Writing is all about a voice, and you have one of the best voices I've ever heard. Just write down your story exactly the way you tell it to me.”

“I'll give it a shot,” I said, and then I spent the next week trying to find a starting point for my story. Some very bizarre things had happened to me—in fact, my whole life seemed to be a series of bizarre events strung together, one after the other. I decided to make a list of them.

Before long, I found myself wondering why so many bizarre things kept happening to me. I came to the conclusion that things weren't just happeningto me; I was bringing them on myself. It was as if I were a glutton for punishment. At the top of the list was the yacht debacle, and at the bottom of the list was midge-tossing. I decided to give writing it a whirl.

With pen and paper in hand, I sat in one of the quiet rooms and began writing my memoir. Two weeks later, I was still on the first paragraph. I read it to myself. Then I read it again. Christ—it was fucking terrible! It was some ridiculousness about men in self-constructed ivory towers wanting to jump out after the crash of 1987. Who gave a shit? I didn't. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I write?

I decided to take a different tack: I would talk about my parents and how they liked to eat at the same diner all the time. I quickly wrote four pages. I looked at them. They were damn good, so I rushed them over to Tommy for a critique.

“Okay,” he said eagerly. “Let's see what we got here,” and he started reading, and reading… and why wasn't he laughing?There was a terrific joke in that first paragraph, and he had blown right by it.

A minute later he looked up. “This really sucks!” he said.

“Really?”

He nodded quickly. “Oh, yeah, it's really bad. I mean, it's absolutely terrible. It doesn't have a single redeeming quality.” He shrugged. “Start over.”

“What are you talking about? Didn't you read that first paragraph?”

Tommy looked me square in the eye and said, “Who gives a shit about the diner? It's fucking boring, and it's ordinary. Let me tell you something, Jordan. There are two things about writing you can never forget: First, it's all about conflict. Without conflict, no one gives a shit. Second, it's about the most of.You know what the most ofmeans?”

I shrugged, still wounded by Tommy's contemptuous dismissal of my diner story.

He said, “It means you always write about the extreme of something. The most of this, the most of that, the prettiest girl, the richest man, the most rip-roaring drug addiction, the most insane yacht trip.” He smiled warmly. “Now, that was what your life was all about: the most of. You get the picture?”

Indeed I did, and indeed I couldn't write it.

In fact, for a month straight, day and night, I did nothing but write—only to have Tommy review my work and say things like: “It's wooden; it's irrelevant; it's boring; it sucks moose cock.” Until, finally, I gave up.

With my tail between my legs, I walked into the prison library, searching for a book to read. After a few minutes I stumbled upon The Bonfire of the Vanities.I vaguely remembered seeing the movie, and, as I recalled, it absolutely sucked. Still, it had something to do with Wall Street, so I picked it up and read the first two paragraphs…. What utter nonsense it was!Who would read this crap?

I closed the book and looked at the cover. Tom Wolfe.Who the fuck was he?Out of curiosity, I reread the first few paragraphs, trying to figure out what was going on. It was very confusing. Apparently there was a riot in progress, an indoor riot. I kept reading, trying to stay focused. Now he was talking about a lady; he can't see her, but he knows by the sound of her voice what she must look like: Two hundred pounds, if she's an ounce! Built like an oil burner!With that, I dropped the book and started laughing out loud. And that was it. I was hooked.

I read that book from cover to cover—698 pages in a single day— and I laughed out loud the entire time. I was blown away. Mesmerized.Not only was it the most brilliant book I had ever read but also there was something about the writing style that resonated with my soul, or as Tom Wolfe might have put it: With my heart and soul and liver and loins.

I swear to God, I must have read that book two dozen times, until I knew every word by heart. And then I read it again, to learn grammar. Then I paid my trusted laundry man, Mark the meth dealer (who happened to be an avid reader), ten cans of tuna to go through the book with a fine-tooth comb and write down every simile and analogy on a separate piece of paper. Then I read it over and over again until I could recite them in my sleep. And before I knew it, a voice popped into my head: my writer's voice. It was ironic, glib, obnoxious, self-serving, and often despicable, but, as Tommy explained it, it was funny as all hell.

However, I wouldn't actually write my memoir in jail; I would simply learn how to write. In fact, when I came out twenty months later, I didn't have a single page. The date was November 1, 2005, and I was scared as all hell. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I think most people write out of inspiration or desperation. In my case, it was desperation all the way. I had an unspeakable past and an uncertain future, and no way to reconcile the two.