Prison for Dummies...chapter 8..... Must be love.

Most people assume that the only lovin available in the slammer, is of the "Drop the soap" variety. But that's not what this post is about. I am going to cover a broad spectrum here, but it's all related in one way or another to the various relationships convicts have with real world women.

The first and most obvious type of relationship is between inmate and wife/girlfriend. Very few relationships withstand the toll and time of a prison sentence. Oh sure, things go well at first. The weekly visits, the daily phone calls, letters swearing love and devotion . Somewhere between the 6th and 12th months a change starts to take place. The visits go from every week to every other, to once a month. She tells him to stop calling everyday, not because she is tired of hearing his whining, but because the phone bill is too high. The letters taper off, they get shorter. This can mean only one thing. Jody. Jody is a generic term for the guy who is bumpin uglies with your soon to be former wife/girlfriend. Thankfully my exes always fled at the first sign of trouble, so by the time I was ready to go away, she was long gone. But time and time again I saw the pattern repeat itself with guys I knew in the joint. A few times , when it was someone I knew on the outside, or had become what passes for friends in prison, I would try to give them a little reality check, tell them not to count to heavily on things not changing with his other half. And almost every time, the response was the same, " She ain't like that, she will stick with me". A nice sentiment that rarely held true. I don't fault the women who walk away from the dead end relationship with a guy in prison. In most cases they most likely tried to get the guy to clean his act up before he wound up in the joint. So it just stands to reason that they would eventually walk away.

But for every woman who decides that a long distance relationship with a convict is pointless, there are countless screw ball women who think they have found the one good guy in the pen. Don't get me wrong, there really are some stand up people doing time, but using prison as some kind of E harmony is a pretty goofy proposition. There are the way creepy types who go for the notorious or infamous inmates. Richard Ramirez, and Manson probably have more groupies than a rock star. I suppose these types of love connections are understandable. It's a matter of celebrity, albeit a twisted obsession.

But it's the less common love connection that sometimes occurs in prison settings , that has always befuddled me. Women working within the prison who fall for an inmate. It isn't usually a female guard, although that's been known to happen. Normally it will be whats known as a Square or an L7, connect the L and a 7, you have a square. So a square person is some prison worker, other than a corrections officer. Prisons are full of square people, they run the kitchen, the laundry, work in medical, etc. More often than not, the woman is of a plain nature, at best, often quite large in circumference, not that there is anything wrong with that, I'm just sayin. The one common trait they all posses is a low self esteem and more often than not, a shitty marriage. So these women risk it all , job, marriage , reputation and often freedom , for a guy who has nothing to offer other than a good line of bullshit and hurried sex in a supply closet. Go figure.

That's it for this installment. And to those of you who have been making direct requests for me to write about certain subjects in prison, what do you think I am , a tour guide? Just kidding, I'll be getting around to your questions in the future, thanks for reading. Later this week, I will be discussing the innovative and various forms of weaponry in the joint, stay tuned.