The visiting room.

I never stopped talking to her.  I didn't care that she was pregnant.  I cared about not being completely and utterly alone in the world even if I couldn’t say it then.  I didn't know it then, but this would be a theme in my life for quite some time.  That switch has always been getting flipped on and off.  Keeping it off has been difficult to say the least. 

Prior to being in Booneville I never really got many visits.  Visits flat out weren't allowed in FRDC and that 120 day shock program was really far away, so no one ever came to visit.  I think I got a single visit the whole time I was in FRDC and it was only JoAnn.  It was immediate family only there, and I really didn't want to see her.  She was the reason I was in the hole doing months of solitary confinement.

Once I got to Booneville though the rules regarding visits changed.  I can't remember the exact number, but each inmate was allowed to have a certain number of people on their visiting list.  People had to be cleared through the prison to be able to visit.  What was even better was that each month we were allowed to have a certain number of visits.  Rachel rarely ever missed a visit.  For years she visited me religiously.  I never knew anyone who was visited as much as I was. 

I struggled with it back then, but she must have really loved me.  I foolishly believed love depended on certain things even though I knew that sex had nothing to do with love.  That is how you know if you really love someone or not.  I did not own her body.  I just loved her.  I spent many years of my life projecting onto others for not directly seeing it in myself.  It's an illusion we all deal with.  We can be really successful in one aspect of ourselves, yet be a complete idiot in another.  I was fast on my way up the ladder in prison.  I was quickly changing myself.  I was fulfilling what I was meant to do, but when it came to love, according to everyone else, I tended to be an idiot. 

Maybe it was how JoAnn did me, always betraying me, or maybe it was all the sexual activity I witnessed due to her promiscuity, but I have never really gotten insecure about sex.  I knew for a fact Rachel was sexing other people.  Sex was never the actual issue.  The lie I lived was that if I could somehow get her to change for me that would mean I was valid somehow.  This false belief caused me no small amount of grief in life.  I couldn't see that I was loved.  The similarity in their promiscuity cannot be overlooked.  I was stuck attempting to change a female just like I had tried for so long with the woman who gave birth to me.

This affected my life in more ways than I can count.  Never getting a sense of being loved by JoAnn I was forever after seeking to fill that hole using someone else.  It was a hole no one could fill but me.  I was doing everything I could to shove Rachel into that hole, but what woman wants that?  It was a very unfair thing of me to do, but it was all I knew.  It’s that whole China metaphor in effect.  For me to love Rachel properly would have been like waking up one day and knowing Chinese, without even knowing there was a China.  The only love I knew was the love that I had been given, and that wasn’t much at all. I craved being loved by a woman so badly it quite literally blinded me to reality. 

Perhaps I am making it seem like I was wiser than I was.  Don't get me wrong.  I was a dumb ass, but I was also an idealist.  It is possible to be a dumb idealist after all.  Maybe it would be better to use the word young.  I was a young idealist, but even now when it comes to love I do not listen to anyone; I do my own thing regardless of practical consequences.  In this light, I fulfilled my purpose.

That love was real for me could not be doubted, but who I directed it at, and how I directed it was another thing all together.  Does it even matter why I loved her?  Does it matter that I was terribly afraid to be alone in the world?  Does it matter that she was all I had?  I still loved her with all my being.  Her being pregnant with someone else's child really didn't matter that much to me, and it sure as hell wasn't the child's fault.  My love did not somehow vanish because of her actions.

I could never have known it then.  Even now, at almost forty, I do not know many guys who understand what’s up regarding females.  Back then it was my desire to fill that hole in my heart that made her promiscuous.  Made is a strong word.  I’ve learned over the years that women operate on an unconscious level a great deal of the time.  They don’t have to think, they just feel and sense.  My weakness could be sensed, and just like me, she was attempting to fill a hole in her heart.  My weakness meant I could not fulfill her so she looked for it elsewhere.  That weakness in me haunted me for a long time.  It wasn’t the female that I needed to change in order to feel loved.  Looking back on it now, raised as I had been, learning to love myself was the most difficult part of it all.   

The visiting room was just like the rest of the prison; a house converted into a prison.  The main visiting room was just a big room full of tables and chairs.  The house was just like R&O without the basement.  At the front of the room was a big counter top where the guards watched over the room.  Inmates had to sit facing the counter.  There were cameras in the corners, with extra's pointing anywhere there was a blind spot from the guard’s position at the counter.  Right off the main room was a search room with a small bathroom.  Along the wall between the visiting room and search room were several vending machines and the prized cigarette machine.  A visit meant at least one day of smoking name brand cigarettes.  Back behind the guards counter was the doorway to the main gate.  There was an upstairs too, but that was only used when there were lots of visitors. 

Visits were double edged like everything else.  Getting to see loved ones was always tainted with a solid dose of humiliation.  Before being able to visit one must be strip searched.  I became a pro at stripping off my clothes.  I used all my visit points every single month my entire stay at Booneville.  There were maybe only two months where I didn’t use all my visits.  I was raised all over central Missouri, so Booneville was not far from everyone I knew.  After every visit came another strip search.  I mean, who doesn't love to lift their sack, only to have to turn around, bend over, and spread their ass cheeks?  Seriously, who doesn't love that?  It’s even better when there are five or six other inmates in the room too.  It was always the same guards working the visiting room too, so that guy probably had my butthole memorized.

Guys still managed to sneak stuff in all the time.  There was a guy who was famous for sticking a whole ounce of cannabis up his ass.  Double reversed lined condoms already lubed up by his wife, ready to go.  Without the high tech security there just isn't a way to stop it.  Sometimes there would be fifty or sixty people in that room, yet only a couple of guards.  Guys would have everything worked out before even going in there.  I couldn't do it though.  I had given it up.  I walked a straight line in there.  My life of crime was over.  Rachel even brought me something once, but my hands were shaking so bad I just gave it back.  I just couldn’t risk it. 

I got to hold her hand.  I got to kiss her.  I got to hug her.  I would get to sit and talk to her for over an hour at a time.  Between jail, FRDC, and the treatment program I hadn't seen her really for over a year.  All we had were letters and collect calls.  There was no glass, no bars; just her and I at a table.  It was really intense at first.  I was so happy to see her I flat out didn't care that she was big and pregnant. She could have had her boyfriend driving her to the prison to visit and I would not have cared. 

The visits were timed, especially if it was busy, so they never seemed to last long enough.  The visiting room became a dream world.  I became so well known in the visiting room that I was often allowed to slide on the time.  That is one of the perks of never causing trouble or doing suspicious shit.  Some guys just never learn.  Watching stuff go down in the visiting room it's no wonder so many of those guys got caught and were serving time.  I just couldn't risk not being able to see her.

She must really have loved me.  No one was making her visit me.  No one was making her accept my collect calls.  Even back then the phone system told the person you were calling that the call was coming from a prison.  It was constantly being thrown in her face, yet she always showed up.  Without her I don't think this story would have gone like it did.  Without her I don't think I would have ever gotten back out.  She was the light at the end of my tunnel.