Prison, part 3

After my initial awkwardness, I found myself drawn in to the conversation with my inmate. I had messages of support from Snow’s family that I delivered and a promise of a story involving Stevie Nicks from his favorite Aunt. We spoke of prison beaurocracy and how he was almost not allowed to see me because of it. We rehashed his trip to New York 5 years ago, and Snow remembered much more of it than I did. He asked me about a friend we both know, and I asked him about his life in prison. He spoke of his case, and the details that he never dared write down in a letter to me. He told me of his man, a straight guy (read: gay for the stay) that Snow has been with since he first arrived in Prison 3 years ago. Aside from his brother and myself, the only other visitor that Snow has ever had was the mother of this man that Snow calls Starboy. In his letters, he had written about his lover and told me that Starboy is the one thing that makes his life bearable. Somehow they managed to get assigned to the same cell, and they mostly keep to themselves.

Starboy had been put in the safe-keeping unit when he left a gang. My friend Snow, on the other hand, was put in safekeeping for other reasons. When he had first arrived in prison, he was put in general population, and the leader of the Aryan brothers approached him and asked him if he was gay. He said yes, and this gang leader told him that even though he was gay, they would protect him, but just don’t ever get with a black or latin guy. I can only guess that they chose to protect him because he has very white, European features. But there were many people that wanted to “get” with my friend, including the blacks, and this gang leader must have thwarted them and it turned violent a few times. So, they told Snow that he had to be permanently transferred to safe-keeping which is where he immediately met Starboy.

He told me of some of the more sordid happenings of prison life, and since we both assumed we were being recorded or listened to, when he reached a particularly sensitive part of the story he would stop vocalizing and exaggerate his lip movements so I could follow. He asked me about my life and my career, and I told him stories about myself. And so we continued for almost 3 and a half hours until visiting hours were over at 5. As we said our goodbyes I pressed my palm up to the glass, something I felt was much too intimate and at the same time much to cliché. But I did it anyway, and he returned the gesture with an accompanying tear or two. He thanked me for coming and we both walked our separate ways, him into hell, and me into the sunlight. The journey back to my car that had taken almost 2 hours coming in, took about 5 minutes going out.