One evening last July, I was on a phone call with my girlfriend Taemi that would no doubt end like all the others: with me hating myself and wondering why I called in the first place. That seemed to be our routine. Still, I’d line up for the telephone each night and spend half of my 45-minute rec time receiving a sustained dose of verbal bashing from someone who was supposed to love me — about all I’d done wrong, all the shame I should feel, and so on.
This seemed to be the norm for quite a few of my fellow offenders. Gluttons for punishment and prisoners of our past wrongdoing, we couldn’t bring ourselves to stop calling home. Most of us were hooked on abusive relationships, and had been for years.
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Nothing was out of the ordinary about this night. There was no full moon and it wasn’t Friday the 13th, and as usual it was hot. In Minnesota’s St. Cloud Correctional Facility there is no air conditioning, so, even in our open-facing cells, we’d strip down to our state-issued tightie-whities, trying to think cool thoughts. (Thankfully I had a cell on the bottom floor.)
Taemi and I had just started talking when another inmate walked by with a piece of paper clipped to his chest. I only caught a quick glance out of the corner of my eye, so I had no idea what it was and paid it no mind.
After all, it takes an incredible amount of concentration to maintain a phone conversation in B-House, where I lived. Often the man on the phone next to you would be begging whoever was on the other end of the line to put a little cash on his books for ramen noodles and coffee. There was also, usually, an inmate crying, promising he’d change, pleading for one more chance between sobs. Meanwhile at least one abusive bastard was berating some poor insecure woman, calling her every name in the book.
