Most men fantasize about getting laid, or getting high when they get out of prison. But as my release day neared, I fantasized about getting a facial. This from the man who once bit off a piece of a guy’s ear because he had sold my Playboy magazine that I loaned him for a one-night date.

By the time I landed in jail in 1989, I had robbed more than 24 banks. I never wore a mask. That is, until I got to prison. Just take a look at my mug shot. People say I look like a corpse, with my dead stare and slack facial muscles.

I wanted to be like Gambino family crime boss, John Gotti, capo di tutti capi, who, prison lore tells, scrubbed his face with a hard-bristle brush in his cell on the morning of a court appearance to make his face look tough for the cameras and jury. I fed into the macho prison ethic that bad asses aren't supposed to look pretty in prison. In fact, the first time I met Steven, a lifer who as a teenager was likened to James Dean by courtroom journalists, I couldn't believe that he were actually incarcerated like me. Such was my expectation that beauty was a currency that could keep people out of prison.

Exactly 13 years ago today, I was released from a Massachusetts prison.

Early in my confinement, as I talked about my eventual release, I bragged to other prisoners that once outside the prison gate I’d turn around and hold up both middle fingers to the prison that would mistakenly release me. I intended to come out and rob more banks to show the Federal Bureau of Prisons that I could be knocked down but never counted out.

But standing outside the prison gate, I opted not to sully the moment with a vulgarly aggressive gesture. I was a different man than the one who walked into prison seven years earlier.

I lifted two boxes of books---all the property I owned---through the gate, then walked to my friend Father Mark Serna and gave him a bear hug. He would be my companion for the day, and ride to Boston’s Logan Airport.

Mark helped me carry the boxes to his black Lincoln Continental in the parking lot. There was a brief moment while Mark fiddled with a lever in the car for popping open the trunk when I turned back to steal a last glimpse of my prison. I felt peculiar, like I was betraying my friends with my freedom.

There is no way of predicting which trauma you will bring out of prison with you. I brought out recurring nightmares. Two of them.

The first nightmare is always the same. Six men rush into my prison cell, toss a bed sheet over me, then begin to stab me to death. In my dream I slug and kick. One night I woke myself up because I literally kicked my big toe into the wall by my bed. I thought I broke my toe, the pain was that intense. I limped all day. Another night I woke from the nightmare in time to see my fiancee flying off the side of the bed, her eyes wide with panic. She had tried to shake me out of my distress, but I shoved her violently thinking she was one of my attackers. I spent the day depressed, seriously considering whether it was ethical for me, with my violent past, to allow a woman to become intimate with me. Up to that point it was a point of pride with me that I was a man who could protect her from my worse self during the day, having learned how to control my rage. But I felt defeated and vulnerable knowing that while we slept I was unable to protect her from my violent imagination. (I finally subjugated my fear, and submitted instead to my optimism as I decided to move forward with the marriage.)