A Generation of Dark: A Prison Notebook (1)

I remember one year when I was much younger than I am now and in a room lonelier than this an old-fashioned windowless (county raised/?state paid) structure, the kind with corkboard partition walls and chocolate brown threadbare carpet, the kind with two chairs and a rectangle boardroom table, in the middle, a wooden box with huge plastic pegs for small funny shaped holes. And a psychologist who sidled too close to boys, who always stunk of Hi Karate cologne and antiseptic, who had yellow nails and labored breathing, who stared at you from over the rim of his wire glasses, who like to play word association and ask for personal histories, where leather straps and iron cuffs and long chains were still in style, where little men like these jogged down notes and determined futures of young boys like me he asked about my mother...