Dark Side of the Honeymoon

Recently, my friend began coordinating pen pals for prisoners, a noble service for which she isn’t being paid. She asked me if I knew anyone who might be interested, since she had more free people waiting than prisoners for them to write. Sure, I said, I’ll ask around. 

I presented the offer of a free pen pal referral to 15 guys, give or take. Obviously, not a random sample of the mainline population–rather, this was a small subset comprised of prisoners whom I speak to, ones I would consider putting in contact with someone, anyone, from the free world. Those two lurking variables distinguish them from much of the yard, to be sure. But of the 15 prisoners I asked, only 3 responded positively. The other dozen responses landed between ambivalence and hell, no. To be clear, it’s not as if my friend is running a snail mail dating site. Presumably, the free folks in contact with her are motivated by compassion and social justice sensibilities moreso than the personal sort of interest fueling traditional prison pen pal services. A distinction more salient out there, I’m afraid, than in here.

I passed on to my friend the names of the three interested, but not the entirety of my “data.” I saw no need to paint my social microsphere as the other hermit kingdom.

A few weeks later, she and I were discussing the aching thirst some prisoners have for connection–a craving that, for some, seems to color their every interaction with the outer world. And how oftentimes their efforts achieve an inverse effect, the way grabbing desperately for a floating object will cause it to drift away.

“I can’t blame them,” she said. “Everyone in prison wants to connect, and the ones who’ve been in there a long time are bound to be unskillful about it.”

“Well,” I said, “that hasn’t been my experience. Not by a long shot.”

Granted, no statistician worth his pocket protector would reach a conclusion based on such a tiny sample size. But my own considerable aggregate of observations made over the past couple of decades would square with the recent results, more or less. About half the prisoners I have ever heard discuss the prospect of connecting with outerworlders were adverse to doing so, some more staunchly than others. The investment differential between friendship and romance doesn’t seem to be dispositive. Our blanket statements about the free world tend to be woolen: itchy, cumbersome, and oftentimes of uncertain provenance.

Reasons for disinterest vary, of course. Some are bound to be deeply personal, others grounded in ignoble flaws, the embittered reasoning of those convinced that the only way to weather banishment is to make it mutual. There are a few misanthropists in here to be sure, a smattering of sour grapists among them. Raw cynicism and bitterness neither require nor deserve much explanation. Instead, I will explore a few of the more common–and complex–bases underlying the mindset to opt for loneliness over the possibility of connection.

In the free world, we form relationships to feel safe and secure–to feel loved, or at least felt. But all this heartlife hinges on our willingness to trust, which makes us vulnerable. Even out there, where we at least feel like we have some control over our lives, vulnerability can be scary. Most of us know the peculiar pain of betrayal that occurs after we have let our guard down. In here, vulnerability is a weakness seen as fatal in ourselves and deplorable in others. Some of us become incapable of relinquishing to another what feels like control over our emotional well being. The old convict dysphemism for the phone is, after all, “the stress box.”

Much of the chronic stress in dysfunctional relationships is rooted in fear and the inability to resolve it. Thanks to a few nosey scientists, we know that the amount and kind of attention we receive in the first two years of life has much to do with whether we will feel safe with intimacy as an adult–the formation of a secure attachment style, in shrink speak. Research says only about half the population attaches securely, about 45% insecurely, and the other 5% inflict on their partners a conflictual boomerang born of ambivalence. An insecurely attached person (a personality type of which I’ve known my share and yours) can bring to a relationship an exhausting medley of dysfunction, the amplitude of which is dependent on a stew of variables including emotional IQ, self-awareness, ability to manage stress, and how well you get along with her friends. (Clash, and they water seeds of doubt in her head. Hit it off too well, and she farms her own.) Codependency is the fetid flower blooming forth from the steaming confluence of two insecurely attached partners. I am often held aurally hostage by codependent displays taking place on a nearby phone. Thankfully, the receivers are of such poor quality that my people rarely overhear Gadget, who manages daily to stretch across three 20-minute phone calls a resounding quarrel (usually punctuated by desperate pleas for reassurance) with his girlfriend or Eazy E, who regularly calls his girlfriend (collect) only to make jealous demands and solemnly swear in the name of God to somehow deliver unto her grievous, and often specific, bodily harm should she not start “acting right.”

Such odds–one in two for secure attachment styles–do not bode particularly well for the longevity or health of relationships where both parties are free and physically present, let alone ones where interactions have no moving parts. A significant percentage of prisoners are state-raised or survivors of traumatic home lives, factors skewing the probability of healthy emotional development. I don’t know if anyone has studied the proportion of insecure attachment among prisoners, but a month of lunch trays says it isn’t less than one in two.

A few days ago I asked a friend how his wife was doing. An attempt at small talk, really, albeit one motivated by genuine curiosity. I couldn’t recall having seen them in the visiting room for some time. When they got married about five years ago, I was happy for him and, if I’m being honest, astonished. Clay has lived in the free world for all of a year since he was sixteen. He’s 46 now, and the years haven’t gone out of their way to be kind to him. Nor had he been in a relationship the entire time. In this state, there’s a three year wait between the wedding and the opportunity to consummate it. Just to keep that time from slipping by without his noticing it, I would ask him periodically, “How long?” 

“Seventeen months, two weeks, three days and fuck you for asking,” he’d say.

“Nope. You’re a married man now.” A week later I’d ask him again.

A few months out, I drew his attention to what was obvious to everyone but him. “Look, man. You can’t expect her to do all the work in there. And besides, what, are you going to apologize every time you take something off? Why don’t you start lifting with me in the mornings?”

Clay made it to exactly three workouts, then said he felt like a crippled person.

“I talked it over with her. She said not to worry about it. She don’t expect much anyway.”

On their honeymoon, their first trailer, he not only broke in Little Clay, he actually broke it. An uncommon, but evidently real (and real disappointing) injury, a sort of internal member-dismemberment. And, his back went out.

“Should have kept working out with me,” I told him. “That’s what happens when you try to hit a homerun with a maple bar. And no, I won’t sign your cast.”

But she remained steadfast–visiting regularly, coming to trailers through thick and thin, for richer or poorer, until the death of his part (and even after, unshaken by the wobbling and hobbling along the way).

So when I asked him a few days ago how she was doing, I was taken aback when he said, half-facetiously, “Who?”

I immediately chastised myself for not having thought the situation through better before asking. These things can be awkward, and I try to avoid mishandling prickly topics. But evidently, once the entire yard knows exactly how you threw out your back and then your front, your metric of embarrassing information expands to filter out little.

He told me it’d been nine months since she had visited, longer since their last trailer. But they still talk on the phone, he said. I asked what had happened.

“I was being too controlling.”

He told me how he’d tried to put restrictions on whom she spent time with. Some of her friends he’d found objectionable, for reasons based solely on perceived violations of standards some of us profess to live by, in here. One of her friends had connected with a sex-offender at another prison, making her a sympathizer. One was black, another gay. 

Because race factors into most conflicts in prison, mutually exercising our freedom to disassociate passes for harmony, or at least extends the dull periods between discord. In here, gays typically equate to unnecessary personal drama, as well as being the perceived cause of many restrictions (coveralls at work, elimination of vestigial privacy, and the weaponization of PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act), etc.). They are rarely persecuted outright, but for most of us, avoidance has become a component of simple risk-aversion.

“I’m just so used to the rules in here,” he said. “The way we handle things.”

“You want her to be a convict, this is what I’m hearing. We can’t really expect our girls to get matching shitty tattoos and only walk in ovals, can we? And who’d want that anyway? You got what, eight, nine left? What then? There’s more to living out there than just no longer being here.”

“I know. I’m trying not to think that way, but it’s hard. This is all I know.”

“You know, out there they have labels for people who go around making the sort of snap judgments that come naturally in here. And those labels will alienate you from anyone you probably want to be around. The freeworld may have a few overlaps with prison, but politics ain’t one of them.”

We talked about how dragging a prison-based system of beliefs out into the world is pretty much being your own guard. And how foreign and unsafe it feels to rely on the judgment of another, after so much time in this world. In here, we tend to hold the actions of others to rigid standards, ones each of us superimpose differently on situations. We judge harshly, and keep score in indelible ink. But the singularly crucial tool for maintaining an operable relationship from here is faith. (Not the religious, blind variety, but rather the slow-growing species rooted in honesty, and nurtured through engaging wholeheartedly.) I told him that, in my experience, you have to decide whether you trust her or not. If so, then you have no need to try controlling her (which you cannot do anyway). If not, then you ought to save both of you the stress and phone bill, and move along.

He agreed with me, but questioned whether he was capable of changing. Seeing it is the first step, I thought. But I was starting to feel too Yoda-like for my own comfort, so I shrugged and said nothing.

Psychologists call our own personal ideal a “search image.” The mental model of desirability I’ve constructed, my search image is the person or object I quickly compare everything else to. Chances are, my “type” has traits in common with figures prominent in my formative years, whether my mother or the neighbor girl who was my first crush. A sexual selection quirk we’ve inherited mostly intact from our animal ancestors, we imprint on whomever becomes familiar first. Most search image studies involve appearance–but compatibility, as we all find out, is made of more than Brangelina features. We choose mates and sex partners for all sorts of reasons, but the longer we stay together, the less looks seem to factor into attraction.

We employ search images for non-physical attributes, too. These tend to be more complicated, non-static in nature, and rewritable. In couples studies, not surprisingly, strong correlations exist between personality traits of each partner. Like tends to marry like, but religious and political views rank much higher in order of correlation than physical traits, a commonsense fact exploited by matchmaker sites purporting to employ “secret and scientific” algorithms. I am an atheist, and it’s unlikely I could relate meaningfully with a deeply religious woman, no matter how many physical characteristics she shared with my mother. (Sorry, Mom.) Clay’s personality search image has been co-opted by three decades of prison politics. His “type” has become someone willing to adhere to the absurdities of the convict code. The only thing uncommon about his plight is that he is aware of it. 

His wife, conversely, has realized that his expectations are a glaring feature of an ideology she underestimated for all its absurdity, one she likely failed to recognize early on as a roadblock. (Since I began writing this, she has filed for divorce.)

Barriers to compatibility aside, interprison relationships face obvious limitations when it comes to love languages. People express and recognize love along five vectors: verbal exchanges, quality time spent together, gift giving, loving acts, and last but (agonizingly) not least, physical contact. We tend to be more fluent in one love language than the others–few are apt polyglots, and fewer still can shift their strength of suit to compensate for life-changes. 

Our circumstance restricts us entirely, or nearly so, from all but verbal exchanges. We make do with visits because it’s what we have, but no couple would choose to sit virtually motionless together for seven hours in a crowded, noisy room while being nitpicked by killjoys while on camera. Nor can we do more than hold hands, our timed kissing not to exceed five seconds at the beginning and end of the visit. I can perform few helpful acts for her, and my gift selection is narrowed down to whatever I can make. For those of us less able to distill emotion and affection into language, relationships tend to stagnate after six months to a year, languishing in a wistful phase of disenchantment before dissolving. 

Over the years I have ghostwritten dozens of personal ads for prisoners. From each, I ask for a short list of interests, which I weave into what amounts to my own ad beneath their name and picture. My response rate has been high enough (some pictures, it turns out, are worth more than a thousand word explanation). But a well-written ad is going to attract someone whose primary love language is verbal. Someone needing me to write their ad… well, you get the idea.

Several years ago, a co-worker at the prison furniture factory showed me the ad he was planning to send to a penpal site. It began: “I like to watch NASCAR and drink beer with pretty weman [sic]…” I must have looked suitably unimpressed, because next he asked if I’d go over it for him. The brief list of interests he jotted down for me included (sigh) NASCAR, beer…

For his ad I departed entirely from likes, focusing instead on what I knew from our conversations: how much his young daughter meant to him, the regret he felt over the suffering his prison sentence was causing her. The rest consisted of what I would say myself. The woman who promptly responded was British and gorgeous, a former model. She said his ad “spoke to her heart.” He would show off her photos to everyone but his old buddy Cyrano. I had to ask to see pictures of the girl who’d thought she was responding to me. A couple months later he asked if I’d give him some ideas, things to write about. I declined, surprised only that it had taken so long for him to ask. She likely grew bored and disillusioned, and they called it quits not long after. My coworker grew resentful toward me, as if I’d betrayed him somehow in telling him I didn’t feel comfortable padding his letters.

From here, our role in any relationship is incorporeal. We send forth our verbal avatars to court and comfort, our inked likenesses to accompany, we wait patiently for abbreviated table-dates made of chaste longing and vending machine burgers. But sometimes that simply isn’t enough for her. A piked feature of our reality is that sometimes, Sancho exists. 

Usually faceless, always despised but often accepted, Sancho is the one filling at least a physical role in your absence. So ubiquitous has Sancho become, that Sublime immortalized his “punk ass” in “Santaria,” making him a cultural reference even out there. In the song, the singer’s got a new .45, and he “won’t think twice to stick that barrel straight down Sancho’s throat.” A line aptly capturing the impotent malice we harbor toward that son of a bitch.

A few years ago, Justin’s cellie introduced him to his sister. Amber and Justin bonded quickly, and soon she was here every weekend, her darling little girl in tow. Justin fell in love with them both, the little girl taking to calling him Daddy at some point. One of the most renowned fighters in this joint, Justin would transform into a Teddy Bear upon entering the visiting room. If she wanted his hair in pigtails that day, you’d see a sleeved-out convict crawling around the kid’s area in pigtails, a little girl on his back, squealing, “Faster, Daddy Bear!”

But Justin had many more years to serve, and Amber was a young, attractive girl with needs. She was honest about her trysts, her friendships with benefits, as per their arrangement. Justin accepted the consequence of his circumstance, but grew concerned with her choices in “friends.” Knowing that the girl you love is having sex with someone else simply because you cannot be there is no small thing. But above and beyond that particularly heart-chafing reckoning, he’d begun taking seriously his role as daddy. Some of her friends’ behavior, he felt, wasn’t safe for the little girl to be around. 

He introduced Amber to Reese, a friend of his who’d done five years here, and with whom Justin credited a moral code similar to his own. His thinking was that at least then he’d know Sancho, and the little one wouldn’t be exposed to harmful behavior. Amber and Reese grew close, quickly. She saw in him traits overlapping with those of Justin, making him feel somehow familiar. Reese was undoubtedly more grateful than he acted, ecstatic that his partner from the joint would set him up with this stunning girl who made her wants and needs clear. He’d been out a few weeks.

Within three months they moved in together, and Reese got down on one knee, presenting Amber a sparkling ultimatum: Him or me.

In the year since then, she has crept back repeatedly into Justin’s life, only to vanish over and again. Each time, she swore her undying love, assuring Justin that if only he were out she’d leave Reese in a heartbeat, that this is only in the meantime. Reese has sent emails to Justin, the tone of which have sealed his future, should he ever come back here. For too long, Justin remained open to her, accepting with equanimity her actions for the sake of maintaining a relationship with the little girl. Finally, he had to sever ties altogether, else risk his own mental and emotional well-being.

The girl who left me for Sancho did so far less dramatically. She simply ghosted me after we’d begun the marriage paperwork.

To those of us trapped in a microcosm predicated on structure and enforced consistency, where oath-breakers are shunned and sometimes punished, flaky behavior shines starkly as egregious, intolerable. We cannot simply swipe right and try again. Our social networking obeys the law of small numbers, imputing to each relationship a value far greater, typically, than our free world equivalent. Out there, ghosting has become commonplace, an unfortunate byproduct of social oversaturation. In here, it’s monumental, ground-shattering. Stories such as the few I’ve shared here abound. Some of us have lived them, others simply observe our cautionary tales and shy away, vicariously disillusioned.

Habituation plays hell on memory, the phenomenon that takes place when you live an endless Groundhog’s Day, inured to the tedium and conflict comprising the faded fabric of daily life. Faces and events blend into a continuum of sameness. But emotionally charged memories encode differently. For obvious evolutionary reasons, it pays to not forget windfalls or close calls. Given that most, if not all, of our prominent memories are fear-based and thus loom menacingly in our minds, some of us become surprisingly risk-averse. A striking characteristic considering the lifestyles we led in the freeworld. And so in spotlighting the emotional perils of being in a relationship, we overestimate the probability of disappointment–in many cases, a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feels safer and simpler to avoid pain through withdrawal, foolishly resigning ourselves to a quantum of suffering that remains predictable, or so we believe, provided we bear it alone.

And yet, others of us remain incorrigible romantics, certain that the human condition isn’t meant to be experienced alone. We practice radical acceptance, appreciating what is, rather than craving what could be. We thank the universe every time we receive a letter or enjoy a conversation with a freeperson–focusing our attention on the moment, rather than projecting onto it our desires and expectations. We foster within ourselves an undying faith in the preponderance of trustworthiness and decency among the freer half, embracing the richness of experience in all its forms as an opportunity to learn. And learn we must–not how to avoid, but rather how better to treat the ones in our lives who matter. And however foolish we may appear in doing so, we dreamers marshal our resilience and reach out again and again, steadfast in our belief that only through willingness to feel pain, baring ourselves to the possibility of loss and heartache, do we discover the brilliant alchemy of learning the heart of another, our minds aglow with fireflies of ever-deepening conversation. For us, to dare greatly is to behold the luminous pulse of connectivity in a realm otherwise dark.