Joe Loya

Train crossing.

It was really intense.

And so I would just push through it by bringing up all this rage.

I would just remember humiliating things in my life and the rage would come up and then immediately all the noise would quell in my body and I was still.

And that's how I'd go in and I would march through it.

and get it done, not unlike how I ended up doing what I did as a prisoner, but also how I started with my father.

I just had to get done.

I was standing there with my dad, can you put it down, put it down?

I'm like, I got resolve, and I'm going to do it.

And then I do it.

I mean, when I came out and I wrote my memoir, my memoir got a great review in the New Yorker magazine.

I turned myself into a literary man.

Did you see that coming?

Yeah.

But more importantly, I got myself in the magazine I wanted to get into, which is the premier literary magazine in the country.

The first time I did that.

And the issue is that when you walk in and you hand a note, you've given them a reason to look down and not look up.

And that's what happened to me.

I slid a note the very first time, you know, the first one before I got arrested and went for all those other things in San Diego.

I slid the note thinking I'm clever.