There are some people you remember immediately, even when the moment itself doesn’t seem important at the time. One of those people is my friend, J. Patri, a man I met on Parchman’s death row who has left a lasting impression on my life. I first saw him during a Prayer and Share gathering in the gymnasium at Unit 29. I honestly don’t remember much about that first meeting except for the hat. A black top hat with a red band around it. That’s what made him stand out.
There wasn’t some profound conversation that day. He wasn’t overly talkative or particularly distant. At that point, everyone was still unfamiliar to me—faces, names, stories I didn’t yet know. Back then, I had only recently started coming into the prison every other week. I still do, though these days I’m there much more often.
Over time, the men stopped feeling like strangers. I learned names, personalities, senses of humor, and little mannerisms. Some came faithfully to every gathering. Others drifted in and out depending on the week. Eventually, the men moved from Unit 29 to Unit 17, and somewhere along the way I learned that J. Patri was a writer. That changed everything for us. I asked him about it one day and watched him brighten almost immediately. He told me some of his work had been published through The GOAT PoL, a worldwide digital literary community where writers and readers connect through stories, creating a shared space centered on storytelling rather than commercial publishing.
Later, I went home and read several of his articles. The next time I came back, I asked him about them. Not casually. Not out of politeness. I had actually read them. I think that mattered to him. Probably because writing mattered to him. And maybe because writing matters to me too.
At the time, I had begun talking about wanting to write a book someday—an idea largely born from conversations with men inside those walls. So our friendship slowly formed around words. Around stories. Around the strange vulnerability that comes when someone realizes you are actually listening.
I’m also a hugger. That’s just who I am. Patri, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly fond of being hugged. I don’t remember the first time I hugged him or how he reacted. I just know that eventually it became our normal greeting whenever I walked into the unit. One day he was sitting on a bench in the common area, grinning from ear to ear when I came through the door. “I was just talking about you,” he said. He told me something I’ve thought about many times since. “You know I don’t let anybody touch me.” He said it casually, almost matter-of-factly.
And I remember realizing in that moment that he had quietly accepted my odd habit of hugging people, even though it clearly made him uncomfortable at first. What he probably didn’t realize was that somewhere along the way, he had started hugging me back. And he definitely didn’t realize what that meant to someone like me. Because the truth is, a lot of people walk around feeling fundamentally unlovable. I’ve been one of them for much of my life. Even surrounded by people. Even smiling. Even successful by some folks’ standards. Yet somehow, inside prison, a man who carefully guarded his emotions made me feel accepted. Loved, even.
I see it in the way his face breaks into a smile when he sees me coming, how he gets up to greet me and asks me to sit down and talk. He asks about my wife and my kids. He wants to know how they are doing and when they’re coming back with me.
He reads what I write, too. Once, after reading something I’d written, he looked at me and said, “I fucking love the way you write.” Then almost immediately, “Sorry. That’s just how I talk.” I laughed and told him he didn’t need to apologize. It’s probably my favorite word anyway—the only word I know that can be dang near every part of the English language. A noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb—you name it.
That’s the kind of acceptance I’m talking about. Nothing dramatic. Just the unmistakable feeling that someone is genuinely glad you’re there. What I’ve learned over the last year is that trust rarely arrives all at once. Especially in prison. Inside those walls, men have to be careful about who they allow to get emotionally close. They have to watch who they trust, who they can confide in, and how much of themselves they allow another person to see. Prison has a way of making those walls thicker. But the truth is, I see the same thing outside prison too.
Honestly, I’ve done it for most of my own life. A lot of us become experts at protecting ourselves emotionally. Some people become loud. Others become withdrawn. Some use humor so nobody notices what’s underneath. Others simply stop expecting sincerity from people altogether. We convince ourselves distance is safer. And maybe sometimes it is. But I think it also quietly starves something inside us.
What I’ve learned at Parchman is that friendship there is usually built slowly—not through grand gestures or emotional speeches, but through consistency.
You build trust by returning. By coming back when you said you would. By remembering conversations. By asking about someone’s writing. By sitting down when you could have kept walking. By treating people like they still belong to the human family.
Over time, those small things begin to speak louder than words ever could.
Oddly enough, some of the most genuine affection I’ve experienced in recent years has come from men serving long sentences behind prison walls. That realization has forced me to confront something uncomfortable about the world outside those walls.
We often assume freedom automatically produces connection, kindness, or emotional honesty. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people on the outside spend years hiding from one another emotionally, while men on the inside—stripped of nearly everything else—learn to recognize sincerity almost immediately. Not perfectly. But deeply.
The men in the unit joke sometimes and call me “ huggable friend.”
Truthfully, that may be one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been given, and I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for Patri. Because somewhere between a black top hat, a few conversations about writing, and countless ordinary visits, a man who once didn’t want anyone to touch him taught me something about trust. And every time he hugged me back, I was reminded that the walls people build around themselves—inside prison or outside of it—are not always meant to last forever.
