I fell in love in a prison visiting room. My friend G. came out escorted by a pretty blonde prison officer, sat down opposite me but, for a minute, I wasn’t looking at her but at the women in the crisp white bouse, her hair tied up, an expression that made her look stern but maybe not too stern. And then there was G, in a sweatshirt and leggings, a stained red bib pulled roughly over her head. Her long hair was tied back, emphasising her round face that, to me, was always pleasant and pretty if never beautiful. She wore no makeup. There were new wrinkles beneath her eyes. She looked tired.
And, all the time, I shot furtive glances at the pretty young prison officer. Our eyes met. She half smiled, as if forgetting her carefully practised professionalism. She blushed. Or I may have imagined that.
“Hello Eve”
“Hello G”
We sat down, either side of a Formica topped table, on hard wooden chairs. I took one of her hands and squeezed it gently. It felt cold.
“You can get us tea” she said in a voice that carried a hint of reproach. “There’s a vending machine over there.”
I stood up and went to the machine. Every table was now occupied and there was a quiet hum of conversation, interspersed with painful silences. As the first tea spluttered and choked into the plastic cup I looked around ant mu new love, hands joined behind hr back as she walked between the rows like an exam invigilator, listening, not listening.
“Thanks Eve.” G. took a sip of the hot insipid tea. “How are you?”
I mumbled “OK” but it didn’t seem right even to be OK when a friend you loved was behind bars, when we couldn’t drink cocktails together, when we couldn’t even talk openly. Even as I thought this, my crush walked past us, listening, not listening. She accidentally brushed me, and I felt a frisson.
“How are you?” I responded, and this seemed like a dull opening move in a desultory game.
And the hour passed in the said, even more, the unsaid. Before we parted, before she was let back to her shrunken world of lukewarm mashed potato and petty humiliations and before I went through a further gateway of the humiliation prepared for visitors, as if we are tainted by association, to stand with relief on the pavement outside the walls, I said
“I love you G.” and squeezed her hand. She did not make eye contact, made no attempt to return the squeeze. It was as if prison life had already dulled her. I wanted to say,
“God loves you; Christ loves you, his Holy Mother is with you in your pain,”
but could not. I began to walk towards the bus stop. I looked back at the prison, where the lights were going on, on the wings as winter dusk fell. Prison, a place where you were never alone, but always lonely.
G and I originally met about ten years ago. We became friends. Reluctant friends who felt they should be friends because it seemed like the thing we ought to do, not because we particularly liked each other. I wasn’t sure I liked her, I really wasn’t, but I was sure she didn’t like me. Actually I wanted her not to like me. And if she hated me that would be even better. So one day I publicly humiliated her. Coldly and deliberately, I blew up our friendship. I don’t know whether she really hated me, she didn’t block me on social media, even when I invited her to my birthday to taunt her and he replied “No way” with laughing emojis as if she saw a joke that I hadn’t intended. Anyway none of my friends liked her so it was all for the best that she didn’t come.
Two years passed without us having contact until she got in touch asking to meet me. We met in a café near where I lived.
“Eve I have fucked up so badly.”
“You can tell me everything. Please do.”
“I got pissed at a works leaving do. I tried to drive home. I killed a man.”
She began to sob. Was she sobbing for the life she had taken? Or sobbing for the things she was going to lose, like her job in PR and the leased Mercedes? I was sure it was ore the latter, G. had never been one for empathy or imagination about the effect her words and actions had on others. She was a cold fish except when she needed sympathy.
“You won’t judge me? I am an awful person”
She sobbed again. I said nothing. I was determined not to say the trite comforting things she was setting me up to say. She was an awful person. She was an irresponsible person. Why had she not taken a taxi? Why did she flee the scene and hide for two days? Why did she look up a friend she had shunned? That I knew. She had nobody else left to manipulate. And yet, even in my unspoken disgust I loved her. I felt the love rise through me like a coffee stain through a sugar lump. I loved despite myself. I was so full of the love I had received from others that my soul was stretched to breaking point. I needed the outlet. I loved G. in her brokenness, I loved her to use her. My love was my revenge.
I wasn’t there on the day G.’s trial finished, and she was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. But I went into a church that day, lit a candle and prayed for her. I did it again the following need, I needed to be before Mary, even Mary made of tacky cheap plaster, Mary in her blue cloak, Mary in the hideous blue cloak she would wrap round me and envelope me in unbearable love. The loving was an ache that started between my legs. I was single, determinedly single, deprived of sex though thinking I might be, could be, asexual. But you can never be truly asexual. The drive is too strong and carries you off down unrated rapids to dark places. This love, I knew, was dark.
It was at Mass one Sunday that I knew that I felt the further tug of my dark loving, the need to be in full Communion. The need for the thrilling self-abasement. One lunchtime the following week I went to the cathedral in the city centre and joined the short queue at the confessional. When the light turned green for my turn I went in, and nervously shut the door behind me,
“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It is……Father I have been away from the faith for twenty years, but God never gave up on me, he has called me back, made me a vessel of his love, and I just want to say sorry.”
I began to cry.
“I love a woman, a criminal woman, a damaged woman. Not sexually but this love is so overwhelming it can only come from God. God has made me His vessel to love this woman. I spurned Him for so long and He has called me. Little, broken me.”
I sobbed again and the priest began to speak quietly, reassuringly. I was in a daze; I could barely make out what he was saying. The words of absolution washed over me. I remained, kneeling on the cushion before the grille.
“You can go now” said the priest gently.
After that I became a regular at the Old Rite Latin Mass, I wire long modest dresses and fat heels, I placed a white mantilla on my head and knelt in adoration of the miraculous sacrifice that was being enacted for me and my sins.
“Introibo ad altare Dei” yes I want that
“Et homo factus est” Yes! Yes! Yes!
“Hic est enim corpus meum” My Lord I want You, I need You,
I knelt in adoration of G., prayed fervently for her to send me a visiting order, that I might worship her in person, worship G. in her brokenness, in her criminal callousness. And through pouring out this unbearable love I felt healed, if only for a day until the next disappointment of the postman’s visit. Then one day the visiting order came. I prostrated myself on the floor and kissed it.
I am back home after the first prison visit, I am alone in bed. I have my private cinema of fantasy. I have a drawer full of underwear and toys. G’s misery and the humiliations of the stained red bib. I begin to think about the pretty young officer, no guard, the chain, the keys, the cell door banging shut behind me, the things she can do to me if she just wants, the humiliation she can inflict. I work furiously with my fingers. Nothing. I am dry. Nothing. No fantasies can work for me anymore. I roll over, place my hand under the pillow, put G. before me, G. who is alone in her cell as I am in my cold bedroom. I send her love, send her love until I fall into a deep dreamless sleep. When I wake up I know it is to another day without sex. And that feels good. So good.
I wake early as I always do these days. I kneel by the bed and pray the Rosary. I long for God, I long even more for the prison visiting room, I long for G., long for the painful work of love to which He has sentenced me.
