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If anything, this class has taught me that the world is full of different people and anyone who thinks they might be a bit ‘off’ is probably just fine. No one is really ‘normal’, and I know that the word normal and Josi certainly don’t fit in the same sentence. Hehehehe.
Okay, I’m rambling now. Sorry, it’s just that I don’t have too many friends, or really any at all, and I love to read on my Kindle, solve puzzles, and write so I can get carried away in a situation like this.
Well, I better go. I’ve already got my pj’s on and am ready for bed. I want to watch a bit of The Lion King on my phone before I fall asleep.
Thanks again for reading all this and I hope to hear from you and learn a bit more about you, the challenges you face and the opportunities they present, and also the kind of people you’re in charge of, both those on your team and the inmates.
I love crime shows and your job sounds very interesting!
Toodles,
Josi
2
James
A fellow inmate I don’t recognize nonchalantly flips a letter through the bars of my cell, the pink object spinning like a flying saucer before hitting the cold, hard, concrete floor and sliding toward my bunk before stopping at my feet.
His eyes never meet mine, staying head high as he reads the names affixed in tape outside each cell as he continues passing out the day’s mail.
I look down at the envelope, which has landed face up. My eyes narrow in disbelief for two reasons. One, I haven’t been allowed to receive mail in the entirety of my almost twenty-four years of being locked up. Two, it looks like it’s from…a woman.
“Hand it on up,” my cellmate above me says from the top bunk, knowing there’s no way in hell I’d ever receive mail.
“This one’s a return to sender, not for you.”
“Good. Last thing I need is some girly envelope being found amongst my stuff. I’ll pay for it in the showers.”
“I’ll return it in the morning. Might help with my parole hearing coming up,” I lie, knowing there’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this joint anytime soon.
I grab the card and bring it to rest half under my pillow and half out, counting down the thirty minutes until light’s out.
My hand starts shaking and my nostrils flare as I breathe in deep. The letter feels like it’s been dipped in perfume, or something sweet. It’s a smell I can’t ever remember inside these walls. The only smell other than mold or the pine-scented stuff they use to mop the floors is the smell of cigarettes, in the rare instances, they’re smuggled in. Never the smell of something girly like this.
My dick hardens for the first time in months, years even. I look at the envelope more carefully.
San Quentin State Prison
East Block
co Jackson James
San Quentin, CA 94964
Then it hits me.
Whoever wrote this out meant to put ‘CO’ as in Corrections Officer, but instead it almost looks more like c/o, as in ‘in care of.’ Not only that we go by our last names in here, so whoever this new inmate is who’s in charge of delivering the mail they must have mistaken Jackson James as me, James Jackson, and not Corrections Officer James, who I now realize must have the first name of Jackson. The CO’s in here never have their first names on their uniforms, preventing any inmates or visitors from tracking them down and bringing harm to them or their families, or trying to bribe them by figuring out what they like on social media, whatever that is. I wouldn’t know. I’ve only heard of it seeing that it became a thing after I got locked up.
Carefully sliding the letter further underneath my pillow, I roll over onto my back, waiting for the lights to go off. I should go to sleep and return this letter in the morning. I’m not allowed to receive mail and opening someone else’s mail is a serious crime, possibly even a low-level felony. I may be locked up for what someone perceived me to have done, but unlike most of the other guys in here I don’t just say I didn’t do the crime. I actually didn’t, and I won’t compromise my principles despite society throwing me in a box, surrounded by other testosterone-rich savage men in similar boxes all around mine playing a game of life or death on a daily basis. And it’s been this way for damn near a quarter of a century.
Before I know what’s happening the lights go out one by one in rapid succession and the entirety of the cell block goes still. And I still can’t stop thinking about the letter.
The smell. The color. The words that are inside and what they say.
Like all people, I make decisions emotionally and justify them rationally after the fact, ‘validating’ what I want to do, and am going to do, before I actually do it.
But how do you validate opening a CO’s mail? Surely he’ll find out, right?
