First Day Out of Prison

I am in the car…Thank you…I’m coming home…

After a prolonged absence, there were many elements that required some getting used to. My loved ones finally had the option to call me as they wished; and we could speak for more than 15—uninterrupted and unmonitored—minutes if the spirit moved us to do so. I had forgotten how quickly life moved on the other side of captivity. The speed of traffic (i.e. cruising at the speed limit) almost made me throw up.

The first stop I made that morning was to see my mother. Before I could ring the doorbell, the door opened from the inside. She, quite obviously, expected me. We hugged for longer than usual.

“Come on in, out of the cold,” she said.

The place looked and felt smaller than I remembered. Granted, I thought I remembered it fairly well, having spent a year there under house arrest (between my arrest and my trial). The smallness of her home notwithstanding, it never felt encroaching. Rather, it was warm and safe—like a velvet-wallpapered tree house in autumn. The smells were familiar. They always are. And every room was immaculate, even the tiny bedroom where I slept. She managed to find enough room to store the many boxes of books, letters, and papers I mailed home from prison over the years; and she did it tastefully, contributing to the genuinely pleasant aesthetics of her surroundings. We sat and talked for a while.

The clock moved, and I with it. One of the conditions of my commuted sentence left the terms of my supervised release intact. I had 72 hours to report to the Federal Bureau of Probation in my designated district. But it was December 22—72 hours would have been Christmas Day. The last thing I wanted was to fail on a technicality. I hugged my mother goodbye and made my way into New York, in order to meet my probation officer.

The building was downtown and unassuming, not at all what I had envisioned. The most unnerving part of the visit was the palpable force of ascending quickly in an elevator, a sensation I had almost forgotten. My probation officer seemed decent, respectful, and fair. Admittedly, I anticipated a continuation of the attitudes and dispositions I experienced from more than one employee of the Federal Bureau of Prisons when I had a federal identification number glued to my green clothing. The officer read me the terms of my supervised release and asked if I had any questions. When I said I did not, he grabbed some latex gloves, a small plastic cup, and stood up.

“Can you go?” he asked.

“On command,” I replied. Giving urine samples became second nature over the years. It was never personal, just protocol. We walked to an empty bathroom, one of many, that lined the office halls. I whizzed into the cup, washed my hands, waited for my green light, and wished the officer a good afternoon.

Following a quick lunch at a familiar restaurant, we made the final stop of the day, at the recording studio. The facility belonged to my dear friend, JK. We co-produced “I, John,” the album I recorded during the year I was under house arrest—I had a curfew, but the judge allowed me to travel into the city for work. The studio was impressive and intimidating. The technology had clearly changed during the time I was away. The computers were sleeker, the machines were less noisy, the lights were more blinding. There was one thing that did not change about recording facilities in my absence—the power of the live instrument. I asked JK if it was cool for me to play one his acoustic guitars. (There are many guitars and they’re all breathtakingly beautiful.)

“This is your home now,” he said. “Play.”

I cautiously picked up the instrument, strummed a few chords, closed my eyes, and sang. I sang one song, then one more, and another. When I finished I opened my eyes and saw that more people had entered the room. They applauded. They cried. I was home.

John Forte is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and producer from Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Forte is a classically trained violinist who is known for his work with the multi-platinum group, The Fugees. Forte was granted a commutation by President George W. Bush on November 24, 2008 after having served more than seven years of a 14-year federal prison sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offense.