With shaggy blond hair and Birkenstocks to match my orange jumpsuit, I looked terribly out of place in a New Orleans prison. I crossed my arms to stay warm and to cover up my yellow wristband, a clear indication I was a misdemeanor offender among the red-wristbanded felons. I kept inching closer to the steel-and-Plexiglas door I had been ushered through, as far away as I could get from the 50 or so other inmates in the open cell block.

Growing up in New Orleans, I knew that white skin often denoted wealth and circumstance. I stood out, which was the last thing I wanted as I thought of every stereotype I had seen in movies of prison: showers, shanks and rape. I prayed someone was looking out for me behind the tinted glass tower overlooking the block. My friends had already abandoned me, and I feared a New Orleans prison was the last place I would find a good samaritan.

My freshman year at KU, I brought a few friends back home to New Orleans to show them what Mardi Gras was all about. I warned them that fighting and urinating in public were the quickest ways to jail. It’s not out of the ordinary to warn tourists of this, because while most everything goes during Mardi Gras, police do not tolerate those two infractions. I showed them around the streets I had watched parades on for years, drinking and socializing with no trouble. Around noon, as we had just begun to ride into our afternoon buzz, a hometown friend of mine got into a verbal argument with a man on the street. The argument escalated into a fight. I couldn’t believe that even after I had warned them, my own friends who should have known better were breaking the cardinal rule of Mardi Gras.

I tried to pull my friend away from the altercation but didn’t have much success. He knocked the man to the ground and vanished into the crowd.

Things had settled down for almost an hour and we were enjoying ourselves again when the man my friend had hit showed up, this time with police officers. It turns out he was an off-duty officer himself. He recognized me and, with no questions, had me arrested.

Once at the prison, the off-duty officer showed his authority by making sure I didn’t just sit in a drunk-tank like most misdemeanor offenders until I was bailed out. He had me transferred to general population, where most inmates were awaiting parole, not bail.

The cell block was an open concrete room about 30 yards long and 20 yards wide. A handful of steel tables and two TVs were surrounded by two levels of cells, each with two bunks and a sink. Most inmates were sitting on the tables watching the two TVs, tuned to the same channel. I continued to stay close to the cell block door and hoped my parents would get the message I had left on the answering machine before someone took any interest in me.

It soon hit me that the guards would eventually lock everyone in the cells. I had been hugging the wall trying to remain unnoticed for more than an hour and realized the guards did not assign roommates, so I would have to make a friend.

A short black guy walked up to me near the door not long after I began nervously trying to figure out what I was going to do. He wasn’t much taller than I was, but he was stocky, in his 30s probably, and seemed well-acquainted with his surroundings.

He asked me why I was in jail. I told him, leaving out the detail that I had not actually been the one who hit the cop. He asked me where I was from and if I was scared. I tried to tell him I wasn’t too worried, even though I could not have felt more alone.

I noticed him glance down at my wrist and the yellow band. He had sized me up and knew I was helpless. He stood just a foot away from me and looked from me to the crowd of men watching TV in the open area of the cell block. Then he began to coach me. He told me to not look so scared. He reassured me and told me I would be fine if I didn’t look so frightened. As much as he tried to be calming, I still felt nervous about him.

Just before we were locked in cells, he told me, “Go stand by Whitey over there. Don’t go more than 6 feet away from him, and you will be fine, boy. No one’s gonna mess with you. Just hang out with Whitey.”

I was skeptical. The man he indicated as Whitey, the only other white person in the cell block, was a tall guy with dark, greasy hair down to his shoulders and several days stubble on his face. He looked like he hadn’t showered in a week and had probably seen healthier days. I looked back at the black man and questioned his intentions.

“You sure nothing’s going to happen to me? You’re not setting me up or anything?”

He retorted, with some impatience, “You’ll be fine with Whitey. Just don’t look so damned scared.”

I walked to Whitey, who was standing outside a cell away from most of the other inmates. I tried to look as invisible as possible walking across the open space of the block.

Whitey’s name was actually Steve. He had been arrested for dealing cocaine, and I gathered he had been in jail for about a year. He asked me a few questions about how old I was and where I was from. I began to calm down with Steve as we mostly stood in silence outside the cell he had been using. The only other inmates who came near us were three men who asked Steve if they could use his cell to smoke crack. Steve didn’t object, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of the moment.

At lockdown, I climbed up to the top bunk and sat with my back in the corner. The sound of the cell doors slamming shut and the eerie darkness had a surreal feeling. I had no help from my parents, from police or my friends, but I felt vaguely secure.

My parents arrived to bail me out sometime around 4 or 5 a.m. My name was called from that same steel and Plexiglas door I had nervously stood by hours before. I remember crawling down from the bunk and telling Steve, who was only now half awake, that he could have the sandwich the guards had given me. In the next moment I remember laughing at how stupid that must have sounded to him.

As I walked toward the officer at the door, I wanted to yell thanks to the guy who had coached me and helped me out earlier. I thought about how I would surely come out of my mess fine. My family knew plenty of lawyers and judges (That sounds pretentious. Sorry), but that guy who had helped me probably had no one to help him. I wanted to do something for him, but I didn’t even know his name. Still, I wanted to convey how much I appreciated his help when no one else had helped me that day. I almost yelled a “Hey, thanks man,” when I looked up and saw the guard waiting for me. I didn’t want to do anything that would make her change her mind and lock me in for another few hours.

The guy who helped me probably doesn’t remember me, but I can’t forget his directions: “Just go stand by Whitey.”