Why Don't You Love Me?

This is the loaded question I've been asking the LOML (aka love of my life) for the past five years of knowing him. All because I had temporarily forgotten my true worth when it came to loving him. Now that I am over the self-pity I allowed myself to indulge in while in prison, I'm now asking myself why on earth did I ever love HIM?  He is extremely unavailable, inattentive, and aloof. Beyonce had it right when she said "There's nothing not to love about me. Maybe you're not the one. Or maybe you're just plain Dumb!"

You Don't Even Care to Care

The last few weeks I've spent cleaning out my prison approved contacts list - deleting a lot of my old contacts/friends/Plan B's, C's and D's. Getting ready for my new life just around the corner. I even deleted the LOML from the list. Twice. In the last week.  Only to end up adding him back in after much consideration. I wasn't just quite ready to delete him for good yet. Until today. After one last desperate failed attempt at making him love me.

I should have known it was never gonna happen from the moment he said to me that his career would always come first. I had never had a man tell me that before, so I didn't quite believe him when he said it. Neither did I know exactly how to process that bit of information. All the while I'm thinking, "Fine. No problem. Go work so you won't be up my butt 24/7."   I didn't ever stop to think that he MEANT it literally. I mean, it's not as if when I considered painting him green and calling him Benjamin so I would find him more exciting - I actually meant it in a LITERAL sense. Don't we all sometimes say things we don't mean from time to time?

Check My Credentials


His being a workaholic didn't bother me in the least bit.  I needed a man with his own life's ambitions, so that I could be free to pursue my own. So this is a quality that I actually placed on the "pro" side of the list on my assessment of him.  Not too many women I know look forward to their significant others spending more time at work than at home.  But for me, the less time I needed to spend entertaining him, the better. So, yeah...work is good. His living four states away? Even better!

It's not as if I was ever going to fit into anyone's happy homemaker role in this lifetime.  And that's when I finally realized that it's not him that's maybe not the one. Maybe I'M just not the one.  It's me that was trying so desperately to become the ideal woman I was picturing in my mind that he needed or wanted.  And then I realized that no matter how much I tried to change who I am, it was never going to work with this man, or any ordinary man, for that matter. I'm way too into doing my own thing, working into all hours of the night, doing whatever I want, whenever I want.  I have a trash mouth when I'm mad, a crass sense of humor, I get bored easily, I LIKE to be alone, travel alone, eat out alone - but I'm also a walking contradiction.  I like a man to dote on me, adore me, take care of me, buy me things, pay my bills, go places with me on long weekend getaways. But when I need him gone, he needs to know when to go. And when to come back without me having to ask. Is this too much for a woman to ask for? This is probably why I will be all alone for the rest of my life. At least it is according to my mother, my friends, my friends' mothers, and their mother's mothers.

I've Got Moves In Your Bedroom

Case in point... One of my Plan D's flew in to see me, and while out to dinner looking over the menu discussing this and trying to decide on what to order, he said, "Don't look at ME. I'm not on the menu!" And I just couldn't resist... out from my mouth came, "Well that's a good thing because I was thinking of just f*@#ing you, not marrying you." So NOT the right thing to say if you want a guy to ever call you again. Well, at the time, I thought it was pretty effing hilarious. Still laughing. I thought we were platonic! Sheesh!!! Guys can be so sensitive!

Or, this other Plan Z, who was annoying the heck out of me whining about me not wanting to go out with him on this particular evening. He said, "But I drove over 200 miles to come see you, Alexa." My response... "So! All my OTHER boyfriends cross the seven seas to come and see me!" Um... he never called me again either.  Did I mention he was Plan Z?  I thought that was a pretty clever comeback. Obviously, he didn't. Oh, well, that's why it's called "dating" and not "commitment." He can now save on his gas mileage for sure.  So, what is a girl like me to do?

Honey, You Better Sit Down and Look Around

I've been considering going for a nice Jewish guy. I met one once. Leaving a bagel shop in the Upper East Side a few years ago. He's a lawyer on Madison Avenue. I'm a lawyer, so immediately I thought "No WAY!!!". I know I'm reaching, but I've often wondered where my life would be now if I actually had called him instead of losing his business card somewhere in the bottom depths of my Gucci pocket book. Hmmmm....

Too bad we don't have Google/Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter/People Finder here in prison.  I'd be all over that by now.  Can you imagine a bored prison babe with too much free time on her hands having access to all these tools? Scary, isn't it?

Well, there's always M. Krause, the sexy German-Mexican guy I met once on holiday. He had offered to pay whatever it took for me to leave my old life and become his wife. I wonder how much he would pay for me NOW? Am I worth less for being locked away all these years, or am I worth MORE because of it? I think it all depends on who you ask.

Let's face it, I get to work out everyday to keep the booty right, and these lips haven't kissed a man who isn't my father, brother, uncle, cousin or nephew in the last couple of years. That's gotta be worth something on the single's market! I wonder if his Black AMEX card really comes without a limit... I will be saying "Si! Si! Si!" all the way to the Cartier storefront in Manhattan first stop out of here!

I Even Put Money in the Bank Account

Well, to give credit where it's due to the LOML, we did agree to date casually "until someone better came along." Five years, and countless Match.com dates later, no one better ever did come along, but I kept hoping.

So, why then, am I so obsessed with making this guy fall in love with me, when clearly it was never our intention for that to happen? I've said "no" a million times over to a million different men, and when I finally found someone I wanted to say "yes" to, this one was no longer asking.

Perhaps it's nothing more than the thrill of the chase? Mixed signals coming from his sweet kisses? The really wanting to, but being afraid of everything that comes heavily packed in my Louis Vuitton baggage?

It doesn't really matter now. I am this close to coming home and going right back to making my own way in this world - unattached and free to choose someone truly deserving of me.

And as Beyonce says.....

I've got Beauty.
I've got Class.
I've got Style, and
I've got A$$.

I couldn't tell you the time, date or location with any immediate certainty; however, what I could tell you is that we weren't in for much of a pleasant layover.  Our final stop yielded us as what we would later find out to be the Oklahoma Federal Transfer Center, in Oklahoma City.

By the time we arrived at the facility, almost all of the women had managed to find new boyfriends from among the male prisoners aboard the flight.  The long flight time also proved to be ample opportunity for consummation of these noncommittal relationships - lending a slightly different take to the traditional induction into the Mile High Club.

Ordinarily, the airplane would have made its taxi directly up to the gangway leading straight into the seemingly innocuous high-rise building in front of us.  Except, of course, on this particular frigid November day where we were made to deplane onto the runway and then marched single file up the tarmac, and onto a steep set of stairs leading straight into a new kind of Hell.

Once again, surreal is how I could best describe my surroundings.  We all made our way into the building at a snails pace - lots of shuffling and metal clanking - eyes darting nervously in every direction as we did our best to take in this new place that was unlike anything I could ever have imagined.

We stepped into a long and narrow corridor.  There, we found ourselves lined up shoulder to shoulder atop a long metal elevated runway where a small army of U.S. Marshals stripped us of our steel.  Everything in there was the color of prison. Grey. More grey. And then some charcoal - for added contrast.  This is where I last parted with my beloved shoes. It would be another long five years of missed fashion seasons, latest trends and fabulous footwear.  Five long years of khakis, chains, and combat boots. Five long years of my life all set to be gone.

The men and women were by now separated into two groups.  There were about thirty of us women, and approximately four times as many men.  We were taken into closed off dressing areas where we were stripped, inspected, and outfitted in khaki scrubs, a white t-shirt, blue cotton slip ons, socks and prison issue undergarments.  Some of us women were issued used panties smelling of antiseptic institutional detergent. 

From here, we boarded elevators - up or down - I couldn't tell you.  We discharged into a dungeon-like area whose walls were dark, damp, and lined with steel in a stamped diamond pattern similar to an auto mechanic's garage. The men went off to the right into a long narrow cell with large barred windows facing inward.  The women were led into a small and cramped cage of a room across the hall. It was already at capacity with women filling every inch of floor space.  They either stood, crouched or sat shoulder to shoulder, and heel to foot on the damp and filthy floor. The room smelled of body odor, urine, sweat and menstruation.

We all shared the one cold and discolored steel toilet that sat near the open glass window across from the men's holding cell.  Every time one of us had to go, we took turns forming a human curtain facing outward to give some privacy from the men's glares or from the occasional Marshal doing his rounds. We struggled to keep toilet paper supplied, and we could forget about asking for tampons or other hygiene products.  We were no longer women, we were now inmates. The scum of all society.  Not worthy of even a single sanitary pad.

Some of the women had been waiting there for days for word on their immigration status.  They hadn't bathed. They hadn't been given a bed to sleep on. They hadn't been afforded the same protections under the Constitution as the rest of us. No one had yet to explain to anyone of us where we were, or how long we were expected to be there.  I didn't know if this was a stop-over for the night, for a few weeks, or forever.

Many hours later, all the Con Air passengers were gathered and escorted up to another floor where we were processed in yet again.  It was not until we were photographed, fingerprinted, and DNA'd here that we were given information as to where we were, how long we were expected to remain, and where we would be headed to next.

This holding area was bright, clean and spacious in comparison to where we had just been.  A very welcoming contrast to the hell hole we left behind.  Here, we were able to relax a bit - we were American citizens, after all.  Armed now with a fresh set of clothes, new underwear, a hygiene pack, and clean bedding, we made our way to our new temporary sleeping quarters. The cells were very clean and comfortable. We even had thick comfy mattresses to sleep on.  Not your ordinary jailhouse cots. It was unfortunate that my roommate found it necessary to twiddle more than her thumbs all night long with her long bone-skinny arthritic fingers, while our neighbors played phone tag with the men located one floor above us.  The men would flush the toilets to drain them so that they could send down Ziploc baggies full of coffee, creamer and extra creamy goo for their enjoyment.  The women, in turn, would fish string their panties up to the men as a reward for the goodies passed on to them.  This went on every night for weeks.  I couldn't wait to get out of this crazy place!  Even maximum security state prison was tamer compared to this hot mess!

By the end of a few weeks, some of the women would find themselves impregnated by these faceless men.  Their children destined to know their fathers only by their inmate numbers for the first few years of their young lives. When I asked what would compel a woman to do this - the answer was always the same. It was their last chance at motherhood before being locked away during their best reproductive years. So, as it turns out, they were using the men as a means to a much desired end.  And the men ... well, the men, I'm sure, weren't thinking that far ahead.

Thank you for the coffee, cream and sugar, Sugar.  Please come again.