Fridays With Louis - Just Doing Time

Nothing new here. I’ve been busy being sick and working, and Louis took a day trip to the hospital this week for some problems he’s been having with acid reflux. He got scoped for scar tissue in his esophagus. (He would much rather have been going for surgery on his swollen knee, which everyone seems content to ignore, even though the doctor told him therapy wouldn't help.)

Anyway, they found out that yes, he does have scar tissue there, and the treatment is anti-reflux medication. I was supposed to visit him today, but the weather is not cooperating. We’re expecting ten inches of snow. Just spoke with him on the phone, and today’s daily meditation in the book we’ve read for years, Tao 365 by Den Ming-Dao, is about using common sense.

So home I stay, to continue to work. The weather is expected to remain bad over the weekend, and then on Monday deer hunting season begins. Since he’s in the middle of the woods, I won’t be seeing him for a while. More common sense. Between trigger happy hunters and terrified deer, taking a drive through the woods is not what I’d call the best of ideas.

That said, here is another excerpt from Letters to Laura. Enjoy, and I hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving.

September 17, 2002

Dear Laura,

My lucky day. I got to call you and received a nice letter, too. I’ll try to answer it now. Let me make a mug of coffee, first. My third of the day.
So you got a raise. Congratulations. I’m sure it’s in dollars and not cents like mine. I went from nineteen to twenty-three cents an hour.
I don’t usually eat hot dogs, either, but your birthday cookout sounded nice.
I may talk so fast on the phone to keep from stuttering, but lately I haven’t been worried about it. Generally people who stutter talk fast to keep it going, it’s an avoidance tactic.
Actually, I don’t remember worrying about stuttering at all this morning. Maybe at saying hello, which is hard for all people who stutter, but that’s it. I’m real comfortable talking with you.
I know I interrupt a lot, and that may also be due to stuttering. If I don’t speak now, I may not later, so I talk when I can.
Next Sunday night yard is over. In the winter we really get beat for yard time, so I signed up to be put on the volunteer snow-shoveling list.
By the time you get this, we will have met. Why will you be nervous? Because you’re coming into a prison? You won’t need to worry with me there.
It’ll be interesting to see who talks more on the visit, especially if I have coffee in me. I’ll try to be patient and listen to you. Just kick me.
At my previous prison I got a special food tray three times a day. All my meals were prepared in the diet kitchen by a guy who used to be a chef on the street, and were delivered to my cell. I made up my own menu and I paid for it. I only went to chow on Christmas and Thanksgiving because no food could be smuggled in on those days. Money talks and bullshit walks in prison, and probably out there, too.
Maybe I’m more compassionate about the issues women face today because I miss women in general. But I admit the courses I took on Women’s Studies really opened my eyes to women’s issues. Now I have a real respect for women, and Jews and blacks. To be treated as second-class citizens is wrong. Black women have it worst of all.
Some of the loneliest times in my life were when I was 28 to 38. I cried for a woman, but realized I was of an age where most women my age weren’t available. At the time I was making thousands of dollars and I’d be on a visit and see guys with their girls and I’d suffer inside.
Ironically, they’d be jealous of me because I had it all in prison, but I would’ve given it all up for a woman. I used to tell them that, and they’d tell me, “You can have the bitch.”
I really get on dudes when they call their girls or mothers bitches. I don’t like it at all.
Okay, I’m going to chow soon and will let this type out while I’m gone.
Louis