“I love you.” They were words I had longed to hear from Justin for
years, but when he finally spoke them, something held me back. Three
layers of Plexiglass and armed guards, to be precise.
Justin and I had dated off and on for years, and some part of me
always believed we would end up married. Our parents were close friends,
and we’d grown up together. He had always been a troublemaker. In fact,
that might be what drew me to him. I was quiet, studious, painfully
shy; he was full of boisterous energy and crude jokes. I loved his pug
nose, his fiery red hair, and his teasing smiles. But as his school
detentions led to expulsions and, eventually, arrests for possession of
weed and then burglaries, we fell out of touch. I was ambitious, and my
sights were set on anywhere but Delaware. I couldn’t afford to have
Justin drag me down. Maybe when got his act together, I told myself, we
could finally have a real relationship.
But in the spring of 2006, Justin came back into my life with a phone
call from my mother. This time, he’d really screwed up, my mom told me;
he’d been arrested as an accomplice in a double murder. His friend, a
prescription drug addict, snapped one night and shot two of his dealers.
Justin said his friend turned the gun on him and demanded that he help
bury the bodies; Justin was, in turn, arrested and imprisoned.
I had pushed myself to get through my final year at Georgetown. For
various reasons I felt utterly disconnected from my family and friends
back home, who were struggling with their own problems. But I couldn’t
quite find a way to fit in at school either, where one relationship
after another imploded. I felt lost and lonely. I drank too much, drove
too fast, worked too hard, and dated men even worse off emotionally than
me.
The summer after I graduated from college in 2007, I moved back to
Delaware and drifted along the couches and floors of family and friends.
I was the girl who had always known what she wanted, the girl who was
finally going to make her family proud, but I felt my drive and ambition
draining away. I no longer had to push myself to maintain a full-time
job and a decent GPA and good social standing, so I swung to the other
extreme. I stayed up late writing or reading or just thinking, and slept
in until I felt like getting up. I dyed my hair green and I cursed in
front of children and I showed up late for work at Subway. For the first
time, I allowed myself to admit I had no idea what I was doing.
That’s when Justin’s letters began finding me with increasing
regularity. In the months before the trial, Justin had a lot of time to
think. And he often thought of me. We wrote about books and family and
mutual friends. I’d tell him about quitting Subway after only a few
weeks, and then I’d describe my nights working at the next job, front
desk clerk at a hotel and casino. He’d describe a fight he’d witnessed
and poker games with his new cellmate. Time wore on, and the letters
became more intimate. I told him about my disastrous dating experiences
in college: the boyfriend who cheated on me with my roommate; the
supervisor at work who was sleeping with me and a handful of other
co-workers; the older guy who was living in a Neverland of no
commitment. The physical boundaries between me and Justin only served to
release us from our inhibitions; nothing was off limits. Writing to him
freed me. After all, who was he to judge?
Our interactions were carefully circumscribed by guards and glass and
distance. After a few months, we were talking on the phone in daily
15-minute bursts, and we wrote letters to each other every day. Every
other week, we greeted each other shyly between panes of smudged glass.
Between my family problems and my painful dating history, I wasn’t
ready for a real relationship. I loved him, but I also cherished the
convenience the physical distance provided. If I needed space, Justin
didn’t exist to me. It was as easy as not answering a phone call or not
picking up the letter lying on the counter. But when I did need him, I
could conjure him up with a pen and paper.
He was kind and sensitive in his letters, and I was fun and
flirtatious in mine. On paper, he could be the man that I longed for,
and that he longed to be. I never really had to figure out how he would
treat me after a bad day at work, or whether we would fight over money
or our in-laws. How much can you ever really know about another person,
anyway?
Prison relationships, in particular, “tend to be built mostly on
fantasy of the other,” Harley Conner assures me. Conner is a doctoral
candidate in clinical psychology at George Washington University who has
worked as a probation counselor to jailed youth and has conducted
clinical work in forensic and correctional settings for about three
years. A pen pal can project all of her hopes and dreams on an inmate
who wants nothing more than to be a repository of those desires, Conner
explains.
My attraction to an inmate mate is not so unusual, either. In 2010, the last year for which data is
available, more than 2.2 million men and women crowded U.S. jails and
prisons. With seven people out of every 1,000 incarcerated, the U.S. has
the highest number of inmates in the world—even though crime has
steadily fallen in the United States since the ’60s. That means we have
more prisoners than China does, despite their higher population.
As incarceration rates hit record highs—and men are 14 times more likely than
women to be incarcerated—more inmates are looking for love before their
sentences are over. And women are finding them, through places such as Meet-an-Inmate, WriteAPrisoner, PrisonInmates, InmateConnections, Convict Mailbag, and InmatePassions,
to name a few. Users are not required to disclose their crime(s), but
many volunteer it in their bios—often with a plea for legal
assistance. I had known Justin for years before he was arrested, but
many women write to men they’ve never met before.
But what was in it for me? Why would a perfectly nice girl like me
want to date a prisoner? My relationship with Justin gave me strength,
confidence, and stability, and helped me get the rest of my life in
order. On the way to my twice-monthly visits to Justin, I would stop by
the houses of my older siblings, who were dealing with some of their own
problems, including addiction. Justin encouraged me to talk with
them—and to listen. I began to understand the impulses that drove my
siblings so far from me, and they asked forgiveness for the chasm their
choices had put between us. Slowly, we began to trust each other, and we
became friends for the first time.
Justin also got me in the habit of writing every day—first, letters
to him, and then short stories that he would read and offer comments on.
When I felt overwhelmed by not knowing where my life would go next,
Justin reminded me of the girl he had always known, before the pressures
of school and the tumult of my family life had shaken my confidence.
He encouraged me to apply for jobs, and he supported my decision to
move to Washington, D.C., when I was offered a position in
publishing. He helped me decide on a new apartment after I described to
him what each room looked like and how the potential roommates had
acted. I washed the green from my hair and started keeping a normal
schedule. And I learned to be okay with uncertainty.
My prison romance lasted for one year. Our relationship went wrong in
much the same way other long-distance relationships do: We grew apart.
Things that I had always known about him began to bother me more and
more. Justin had never graduated high school, and he hoped to keep
working in his dad's tire shop when he was released. I still wanted more
than that. I wanted more than he could give me, I realized.
But the things that he gave me—steadiness, hope, the ability to love
and trust—endure in my life even after our romance faded away.
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