Chapter 18: Char’s visit—Ellen
Over the loudspeaker, “Jennings, report to visiting.”
“Four ounces of anal droppings.”
“Check.”
“Right index nail, smudgy.”
“Check.”
“Left eyebrow, dandruff dots, minimal.”
“Check.”
“Posture, erect, point zero four.”
“Check.”
“Top collar, passable.”
“Check.”
“Stomach, in curvature two-seven-seven.”
“Check.”
Check check check CHECK! K-rist, let me go.
“Go, righteous eight-eight-six-seven. Checked.”
All checked out, Jared stands at the inmates’ entrance to the visiting room. He surveys the room looking for her.
The Watcher says, “Over there. End of row two.”
“Char. Goddamn, it’s good to see you.” Jared glides into an orange chair. Fingertips tingle with soft erotic touchings, eyes moisten. “Goddamn, Char, so glad you could make it today.”
“Yes, my love, my brother, it is good to be here.”
She combed her hair a hundred times in preparation. Scented herself: Here, my love, stroke my hair, breathe in my heart’s sweet yearning.
“HAIR: on all residents is not to exceed one inch above the collar of standard dress. Afros not to extend in width more than two (2) inches from the center of the back of the head. Sideburns not to grow below the earlobes. Moustaches: to be squarely trimmed to the edge of the upper lip. Drawings appended give clear indications of the applicability of this policy. Infractions punished by loss of Good Time.”
Jared fidgets, settling down in a circular motion. He’s uncomfortable in preformed plastic. Ever so slowly his thighs and buttocks settle in for the visit. From the far side of the room, the Watcher notes his posture. Nothing unusual.
“Char, what’s been going on?”
“Hmm, really, not much. Let’s talk about you.”
“No.” Softly, almost inaudibly, the regularized sigh. “No. I don’t think that would be too helpful. You know things go on in a caged routine like squirrels on a treadmill, the peanuts come and go. It’s hard to get a handle on this last month. Let’s talk about you.”
“Sure.” Laying her slim fingers on Jared’s thigh, “Okay.”
I told you, Mother, he’s suffering! Goddess, can’t you see that?
“Sweetheart, let me talk awhile about the Sisters. Something interesting’s happening in town. Interesting—gee, what a funny word.”
Char coughs a pausing breath into her hand then returns her hand to his khaki thigh. “Last week, let’s see, two weeks ago last Thursday, the Collective got together and decided that all the Sisters should separate from their men and live together. Now Jared . . .”
She expects him to fume, is surprised when he doesn’t. She speaks before he can.
“Don’t get upset. It was only a suggestion.”
Dismissively, “Suggestion, yuck! Ptui! It sounds like a crock of shit to me.”
A deep breath for control, then sharply, “Let me say more. The Sisters feel that the primal hostility for all violence comes from the sexual habits of our culture.” Another deep breath, “Simply, if we can work in our lifetime to create new structures for male-female relationships then we can make some significant contributions to the historical struggle.”
“Hmmmph.” Indignation. “I don’t know. I guess it leaves me feeling, err, ambiguous?”
Char stands and lifts her palms upward to frame Jared’s face. Her full-length frock clings to the rounder parts of her slender body, evoking images of well-worn stones found on ocean’s shores and tossed into the sea.
“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom. It’s my time—my blessed lunar spell. Be right back.”
She steps spryly past him.
While waiting Jared decides to get some coffee. When she returns he hands her a cup, extra light. She smiles, he always remembers. Back on track, ready, she sits and positions herself sideways in the molded chair. For some reason, the seats in this section of the visiting room are bolted down. She’s more than a bit uncomfortable but her posture conveys that she’s serious and wants his full attention.
Prisoners are truly captives in that they can never move at an advantage when a matter of affection is concerned. Try as he might, for every con, no matter who he is or what his connection with his woman was before prison, sure as the sun rises, prison destroys that relationship.
Unaware and unintentionally, Char is experiencing her first day of conquest. Jared, her lover, her friend, her playmate, is her first conquest. She’s driving him further Inside, into dark corners he doesn’t even know exist.
But he moves first, obviously having to get something off his chest.
“I love you.” Jared places his right hand on hers and tilts his head to watch her eyes.
“I love you too, Jared,” Char responds as she pats his hand.
Fidgeting a second or two. “When I’m alone in bed at night I really know why I like being with you. There’s an ache in my bones and muscles that I feel remembering how we sleep back to stomach.” Pauses. Searching for clear words. “I lie there and shudder. I’m moved by an eerie sense of your power, which is there even though you’re not.” Excited, “It’s only too, too clear to me how much you’ve become a part of my flesh. How my sweat is your sweat, my comfort your comfort.”
She says nothing; he pauses, waits, hesitates, plunges forward. Angry and confessing, “One unhappy thing is that when I work myself up to masturbate, I can’t imagine you.”
He’s comes to a full stop, shuts down. They’ve never discussed this before. Char’s listening intently. He screws up his courage to admit, “At times I feel terrible. That I have to conjure up scenes of lewdness—fuck, practically rape. But the worst part’s that as quickly as I ejaculate I’m nauseated by the feeling of propelling death from my body. Throwing it away in the seed that’s supposed to be life.”
Jared can’t seem to stop himself. Why?
“Char, it may seem perverse to you—it does to me—but if I don’t masturbate I feel less than alive. Yet when I do, I feel so much of the darkness in here,” knuckle-rapping his heart. “It’s not guilt or sin, nothing like that. Probably though, if I’m honest, it’s more a sense of my life being so utterly futile. Goddamn!” Jared knows he must stop talking. “Goddamn, I hate where I am and what I’m becoming.”
Char frees her hand and with practiced fingers slowly but firmly rubs the back of his neck, the base of his skull. She doesn’t speak for awhile. He sits there, head slightly bowed, left hand on her knee. He reaches to get his coffee, stops, then picks it up, tilts his head back and swallows half.
She stops massaging. Concerned, earnest, “Sometimes, you just have to follow what seems most healthy. Ugliness is sometimes all that life offers,” she sighs, “but you don’t have to wrap your identity up with what you’re doing even if it is the most pleasurable thing to do.” She shifts forward in her seat. “Sometimes, for a while, all you can do is fake it. Then hopefully, sometime, somewhere an opening occurs and you slip through and it’s all past.”
Jared looks at her quizzically, not quite grasping her point. He redirects the seemingly off-track moment by asking for a cigar.
“Did you bring one of those Italian jobs, like I asked?”
Char remembered, as she always does, to bring the little things he relishes. Sometimes it’s bittersweet chocolate, at others, pieces of dried fruit, like figs. He never requests dope, although Sean’s girlfriend says it’s easy to smuggle in.
Satisfying a deep longing, Jared unwraps the elongated, finger-thick stick and mock-puffs away in pleasure. “Ah, for a little cognac my dear and the night would be es-plendeed!” He mimes to her, Later! He’s already savoring toking on this log later tonight.
While he’s distracted with this small delight, Char figures it’s timely to
bring the matter up. As Jared blows on his steaming java, she blurts out, “What do you think about lesbians?”
He keeps blowing. Sips. Eyes her quizzically. They’ve talked endlessly about feminists of all stripes but lesbianism is an off-beat topic for him. Uncharacteristically, yet so expectedly, he doesn’t respond with the tolerant philosophical tone and touch she’s accustomed to.
“Lesbians?” is delivered with an air of, “Oh, them. Who cares about them?” He sips, then shrugs, clearly judgmental. “Just women cranked up all wrong. Prunes. Little gal homos who have penis fright, I guess.”
His stupid and insensitive remarks throw her off her mark. She’s momentarily unsure about how to proceed. After an unnoticeable pause she just pushes forward.
“Jared,” Char touches his arm, “there’s been just a wonderful surge in the Women’s Movement since you left. It’s really exciting.”
The intensity and passion that explodes from “exciting” jolts him a bit since this is how she gets worked up when she’s about to testify about an injustice. The topic “Lesbians” is clearly not a casual matter. Cautiously, he nods, “Go ahead.” As if I could stop her!
“Women are really coming together as Sisters. All women. From all classes, religions and . . . ” she hesitates, doesn’t complete the thought. Then, “You won’t believe how powerful our meetings are now. I’m just thrilled by a new energy.”
Char’s rhapsodic. Jared can almost hear her gasping at the remembrance of these meetings.
“There’s something I’d like you to know. It might be painful for you to hear but it’s very important.”
She shifts her delivery, speaks deliberately at a slow pace, with short intervals between important points. “This is something that won’t surprise you but you might react to the timing. Although, as we often agreed, I can’t do time with you.”
Resigned, “Fucking-A, it’s bad enough one of is doing time. Go on.”
Char clears her throat. “When I returned from my vacation it became increasingly clear that I wanted to spend my life with women and women’s struggles. In Europe the three of us met some fantastic women who were really at ease with being lovers. We had such fun times at night, drinking and dancing and rapping. The whole trip renewed my enthusiasm for our Sisterhood.” She’s oblivious to his unhappy facial contortions. “It was really inspiring, the freedom so many Sisters felt when they honestly dealt with their affections for one another. It might’ve been the distance and not being in places old and familiar but I felt so free being with them. I had no desire to be anywhere else.
“I love you deeply, Jared, and always will.” She pauses, emphasizes, “Our love is something I will never deny.”
Jared blows and take a long sip of coffee.
She shuts her eyes. “What I’m excited about is the possibility of our—your and my—living this vision.” Opens her eyes, checks for his reaction.
Jared breaks right in. “I’m not quite sure where you’re going. We’ve talked about this before. I’m hip with the fact that we won’t marry. That you might be living in a Women’s Collective and me with other people. It’s cool, okay?”
The immobile chair prevents him from sidling up right next to her, so he reaches over and takes her hands in his, kisses them. “Are you implying more? That you want to love a woman?”
Straightaway, “Yes.” Pause. “While we were dancing and drinking I really felt ecstatic. Ellen and I happened to be alone. We danced and danced and listened to Laura Nyro late into the early morning.” Go! “Honestly, we slept together.” Emphatically but softly, “But I want more than that. For us.”
Jared gets the message, knife directly hitting heart. He wants to bolt and race wildly around the room, up the wall, out a spectral chimney.
“I wanted to write to you, but knowing how they read the mail I didn’t. I wanted to wait until we were together.”
Damaged goods. “Sure,” drawing upon the protectiveness of seeming logical, “ . . . well, yes, of course, this is not unexpected. In so many ways it’s the logical extension of all you’ve been struggling for.”
Char moves closer to Jared, brings both of his hands to her lips. She sighs deeply as a tear snags the corner of her right eye. He can’t see it, not her face or moist eyelid. He’s in flight mode, eyes catching over her shoulder the time, 2:58, registering inside his mind, in a space not very conscious, only two more minutes of visiting.
Char breaks the silence. “Jared—” but she does not get to say, “While I’m eager to know Ellen and develop our relationship, I want you to know my vision—that the three of us live together. Oh, I’m so thrilled because I know you will love Ellen. And I was thinking that if you’d like, I’d bring her to visit one of these times.”
She does not get to hear the response she seeks, “Sure, okay, sweetheart, of course, I guess, well, that would be fine.” Rubbing his hands, “Sounds juicy to me!”
All goes unsaid as everyone hears, “Visiting time’s over!” The Watcher booms again as he stands up, “Visiting time’s over!” He scans with stealthy eyes to check that nothing improper is attempted, as so often is during these final minutes.
The time spent with a visiting relative or friend is a privilege. Accordingly, each inmate will conduct himself properly. He is not to engage in acts that might embarrass other visitors. Placing hands upon sexual regions, prolonged kisses, undue embracing, and sitting face to face with legs touching are some direct violations of this policy. All infractions will be punished by a loss of Good Time.
“Have a good time with Sean and the rest. Give them my love,” are Char’s parting words.
Jared idly waits in the middle of a throng of khaki men, all about to be stripped naked and arse-inspected again as soon as he can no longer see her.
Char turns around once she’s inside the iron exit gates, rises on her tiptoes to spy Jared, his height distinctively marking him out in that wash of common dress; waves and blows a kiss from the tips of her hands.
Kill the dove! Page 18