Taste of Prison

“What is the crime of robbing a bank compared to the crime of founding one.”
—Bertolt Brecht

SEAN CALLS to tell me he’s writing a cookbook, “a prison cookbook,” he says, as though I need clarification. It’s based on the meals he surreptitiously makes in his cell. He lays out his Deep Blue Sea Menu, detailing the ingredients of his favorite dish—fried seafood tortilla, a concoction of crushed ramen noodles, refried beans, canned mackerel, and jalapeño cheese, all of which he spreads onto a corn tortilla. “The trick to frying it,” he says, “is to place it inside a vending-machine potato chip bag. Wrap the bag in newspaper. Make sure none of it is exposed. Then microwave it for two minutes. Fries right up.” I have my doubts about this method. But since I don’t know jack about the physics of microwaves or the secrets of prison life,

I take his word for it.

“The seafood tortilla pairs well with convict apple wine,” Sean says. I chuckle at his use of fine-dining discourse. He’s an exceptionally intelligent but often troubled man in his mid-thirties, who, having grown up in residential treatment facilities and then spent much of his adult life in prison, has had to teach himself from inside the institution nearly everything about life outside of it. Once incapable of focusing his powerful mind, he’s now a voracious reader. I imagine him coming across the word “pairs” in a cookbook, perhaps read in preparation for his own, though he sometimes talks about those brief moments spent outside the prison walls in which he hustled his way into feigned social respectability.

He pauses. I wonder if he’s worried about prison administrators listening to our conversation. His deep, sandpapered voice drops an octave. “I’ve never made this,”