A Game of Strip Poker

By David Coogan

Chapter 1

“Pretend I’m in jail and these are the bars,” my four year old daughter says from her side of the sprinkler. I poke my hand through the slow arcing spray with a pretend candy bar. Then I slump by the fence, haze hugging me blind.  Lucy leaps through then turns around to face me.

“What was the name of that guy from your class?  You were talking about him yesterday.” She pushes her matted blond hair out of her eyes.

“Stanley,” I say, while she smoothes it against her round cheeks. 

“How do you spell it? What’s the first letter?” She picks up a stick. Pulls the puddle water like paint. She wants to know what I do each Saturday when I leave our home and go to jail. She nods quickly when I tell her I’m teaching men how to write about their lives. 

“Why are they in jail?”  She asks, gripping her stick.

“Why do you think?” She’s squatting by a big S she’s made on the sidewalk.

“Did they put chemicals in their bodies?” she offers tentatively, her blue eyes oceanic and full.

“Uh-huh.” I crouch down near her.

“What’s the next letter?”

“T.” She wets her stick then turns to face me.

“Are they robbers?”  We lock eyes.

“Some of them. And some of them hurt people. Or they got hurt.”  Her brow comes down. This is the kind of drama she knows how to follow. 

“Did they say sorry?”

***

“Motherfucker!” Burt shouts, suddenly slamming down his pad. He is perched in the front pew, sandals off, white toes pointed toward the altar. “I don’t want that punk-ass anywhere near me!”    His feet hit the ground. The other guys start shifting in their seats, eying me helplessly, begging it to end.  I interrupt him to ask him to tell us a story about how things first went bad between him and his father, to go way back in the relationship, to foreshadow the current situation. He begins again with the punk-ass warnings, temple veins turning a tinge of green-blue.

“Look,” I say quietly, “you’ve got a right to be angry.  But in here, it’s all about the writing. You need to get it down so we can help you with it as writing.” He’s muttering to himself now. Ebb and flow. Eventually he asks if he can go to the bathroom.  A collective sigh cuts loose as soon as the door closes behind him. I return to my place by the altar, the convicts in their pews. Against the sky blue walls of the cinderblock chapel, the green felt piled high with Bibles, I explain.“This is not about telling the Truth, getting down every single thing that ever happened to you.  It’s about crafting a plausible truth. You’re developing characters, making a plot. You’re turning your life into a story.” A little lull settles in as they consider the proposition.

You want the writing to force you to rethink things. You need to make meaning, piece things together.

“Excuse me, Dr. Coogan.”  Tall Kelvin crumpled in the back pew.  “What do you mean, not telling the truth? I mean speaking just for myself here, the reason I-I-I came to this class was to get at the truth, how I got stuck in this revolving door of incarceration.” He watches me curiously from under his corn rows. 

“All I’m saying is that writing changes whatever it is you’re feeling or remembering. And that’s good. You want that. You want the writing to force you to rethink things.  You need to make meaning, piece things together.”

“I-I-I see where you goin.” He settles back and starts marking up the handout.

“Find your own story in it,” I conclude.

“What’s the quid pro quo?”  Stan asks, cinching his eyebrows. With his gold rimmed glasses half down his nose, his hair neat and trim, he looks more like a business man closing a deal than a prisoner stuck in a cinderblock chapel.

“You mean why I’m here?”

“Yeah, what’s in it for you?” he asks gently.