When Bernard Webster went to prison, hardly anyone carried cell phones. Now, the one he was given this month rings regularly.

Sometimes it's a friend calling, sometimes it's his lawyers. Sometimes it's someone who managed to get his number and wants to talk to the new local celebrity, or to beg for a meeting.

That's all a bit overwhelming for Webster, who lived for two decades in a razor-wire world far from anything resembling fan mail or cellular technology.

But Nov. 7, the muscular, 40-year-old Baltimore man walked unshackled out of the Baltimore County Courts Building and into a throng of television cameras, finally exonerated by DNA evidence in the rape he went to prison for in 1982. He focused his large eyes on the cameras, flashed his award-winning smile and waved.

Instantly, the man who spent 20 years labeled a rapist became a local hero. Reporters hounded him for interviews, people stopped him in the street, organizations asked him to talk about his experience.

But Webster was trying to build a "normal" life out of a world that, after 20 years of wrongful imprisonment, was anything but.

"The thing is, I have to be normal," he said. "Everything ain't normal right now. I tell you, I'm just trying to get my life back together."

Compared to many people leaving prison, his attorneys said, Webster is doing exceptionally well. In the first week or so after he left the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, he found a job working as a prep chef, moved into an apartment, obtained a copy of his birth certificate and sent for his Social Security card.

"Bernard is about the most determined person I've met," said Patrick Kent, one of the lawyers in the public defender's office who worked for his release.

Webster asked that his address and place of employment not be revealed to maintain his privacy and allow him time to find a normal life.

Although he made comments during a lengthy interview this week that revealed his disillusionment with the justice system, he did not talk about anger and he did not fling criticisms.

Prison "takes a psychological effect on people. You have to be very strong to push through," said Webster, who would have been released from his 30-year sentence in February based on good-behavior credits. "It's inhumane to keep someone locked up for something they didn't do."

When he went to prison, Ronald Reagan was president, the Colts hadn't moved to Indianapolis, the Orioles were a year away from winning their last World Series and Hutzler's Department Store was a popular place to shop in Baltimore.

Kent and attorney Michele Nethercott said they are looking for a lawyer who will represent Webster in his efforts to be compensated by the state - a potentially complicated process in which the public defender's office is not allowed to take an official role.

But that decision could be weeks away. For now, Webster is getting reacquainted with fun.

He visited an aunt, and met up with friends. He went to a Wizards basketball game in Washington and he saw two movies - Half Past Dead, a prison film, and 8 Mile.

He took his first ride in the Baltimore subway, built a year after he was incarcerated.

Webster said he feels comfortable in public and spending time with old friends.

"You know, I didn't know if I'd be able to blend in," he said. "I blend right in."

But, he said, there are bumps. Some are small, even amusing.

He was astonished by panhandlers. "That's another strange thing, these guys walking around the street asking for money all day long," he said. "I mean, they ask you for money and they don't even know you!"

He still doesn't understand how to use a Giant discount card, and said he is stunned by how much food costs. During his first meal in freedom, he couldn't finish his City Cafe crab cakes because he only imagined what they would do to his stomach after decades of prison food.

Some of the hurdles are frustrating. He does not have a Maryland driver's license. He got lost on the light rail.

Other changes are sad.

The East Baltimore neighborhoods where he grew up are worse than he remembers and ravaged by crack, he said. He was behind bars before that drug attacked the city.

"I've been told about all this in prison," he said. "I kept my ear out. But you don't realize it's that bad until you see it. It's a whole lot of different stuff now."

He was offended by a group of teens loudly hawking drugs as an elderly woman walked down the street. He said when he was that age, he and his friends respected people and the neighborhood.

But the hardest adjustments seem to be those less tangible.

He said he is touched beyond words by the letters and assistance he has received these past weeks - everything from a 7- year-old's $3 piggy bank donation to the cell phone to countless hugs.

He wants to thank everyone who has helped him, and said he wishes he could return all the support he has received.

But he is also overwhelmed.

So many people want him for different reasons - to meet this person, to tell that story, to speak for this cause. He sometimes feels pulled in every direction. And while some people are genuine, he said, others are not.

The pressure that can put on him, he said, is not normal.

"It's not so much tough, as I'm just not used to it," he said. "When you're not used to something, you don't know how to react. Sometimes you want to cry. Sometimes you don't."

He said he likes work, where he feels at peace.

"I'm not going to be normal for a long time. But I would like to do something like normal people do. Go to work, come back from work, kick your shoes off, take a shower and go to bed. Maybe watch football games. You know what I'm saying?"