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Prison | May 13 2002

Years ago at a holiday party hosted by a friend’s well-to-do parents, I found myself standing with a group of people discussing crime. A woman said something about how people in prison haven’t had many opportunities in life and that that’s why they’re in prison—something by-the-book liberal like that—at which point another woman offered the group tangelo slices, so I took a slice and said, “Now, this is an opportunity I can’t pass up.” “You’re making fun of me,” said the first woman, whose name was Pamela and whose disability (cerebral palsy, I believe) twisted her body in several directions at once and made her sound like she was… well, retarded, which I soon realized she wasn’t. I touched her arm and said, “No, not at all.” Subsequently I made an effort to show her that I liked her, only it soon became clear that she was liking me back a little too much. I temporarily escaped her gaze by excusing myself to go the bathroom (I didn’t actually need to go and instead simply walked to the other side of the apartment). When I returned, Pamela waved me over to introduce me to her mother, who was sitting on the couch eating hor d’oeuvres. At some point in this conversation, Pamela gave me her card and mentioned the possibility of us having dinner. I wish I could remember how she said this, for it was brilliantly done. Somehow she posed it as a general question, something like “Do you think that people like us can have dinner together?” or “People can dinner together, can’t they? Like us, for example!” No, this isn’t how she said it. But however she said it, I ignored it and instead complimented her on the design of her plain-as-toast business card, which as it turned out was her mother’s creation. We discussed the possibility of her hiring me to make a website for her disability consulting business, and her mother asked how much it would cost. I said, “Well, I generally work with my girlfriend, who is a graphic designer. We’d need to sit down with Pamela to get a sense of the scope of the project.” The girlfriend part was a lie, but I felt I had to find a way to tell Pamela not to like me. I am a consummate liar, but I’m not so sure I pulled this one off, in part, as I imagine it, because Pamela had heard such lies again and again. The look on her face, one of trying not to betray her emotions, was excruciating. I excused myself on the pretext of getting my card, which I said was in my bag in the bedroom (in truth it was in my pocket). When I returned, Pamela’s mother was alone with her hor d’oeuvres. I never asked where Pamela had gone.