Inside This Place, Not of It by Ayelet Waldman

Author:Ayelet Waldman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781940450537
Publisher: McSweeney's
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

YOU GET LONELY

When I got to prison I had to learn how to survive, how to live, how to not do something that was going to get me beat up, stabbed, or hurt in any kind of way. You have to learn and you have to be quick to learn.

You get lonely. Women who haven’t been with other women before, they do it in prison out of loneliness. Affection, you know? You just want to be with someone. I ended up getting a girlfriend—something I swore I wouldn’t do. Everything I swore I wouldn’t do, I ended up doing!

Laurie was a prison guard. She met me the very first day that I came, and she asked me a question that I was tired of being asked: “So what are you here for?” I didn’t want to talk about it, so I just looked at her and I replied, “Overdue library books.” That was our first encounter.

Laurie would make it a point to come around where I was. One lady walked up to me one day and straight out told me that Laurie liked me. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never been with a woman before, and I thought, Are you serious? Is this happening? One time I was sitting on top of a fire hydrant in the yard, and Laurie came over and told me that she thought I was pretty and that she wanted to get to know me. That was the beginning of the relationship.

She would make it a point to trade places with my housing staff so she could be close to me. It went on for a while this way, and I did start feeling attracted to her. She made me feel good. We never had sex, but we did kiss. Laurie and I were together for four years. She was a beautiful person. She made this not feel like prison, because of the treatment, the respect, the hope that she brought me. She was different. She didn’t belong working here.

Laurie ended up quitting the job in 1999. We never got caught. The staff were never sure, but they kind of suspected it, and they thought it was my fault. If you ever get involved with staff, it’s always your fault. You did it, you manipulated. After Laurie quit, she was close with my family. She would go and stay with my mom down south. She was also good to my son, and would help him out. She took him to Disneyland, bought him bikes and toys and clothes.

I was doing okay for a while after Laurie left. Then a few months later, I started hooking up with a new girl, and she used heroin. I had never seen it before, and I remembered I used to put down the dope fiends, I would talk really bad about them. Then my time hit me. First my grandpa passed away, and I was trying to deal with it as best as I could, but I started getting suicidal again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.