Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (50 page)

I told myself that all those other people
didn't know Veronica like I knew her. I believed that they weren't
lying, but that they were talking about the old Veronica. The
grimey lowlife who had lived on the streets. But I believed she had
changed. And they just couldn't see it, I told myself. Of course I
was just lying to myself. They all lived with her in the same dorm.
They were around her 24/7. They knew her a lot better than I
did.

Several people told me that Veronica bragged
about conning me. I knew they weren't all just making that up, but
I told myself that Veronica was so damaged in the head, she thought
it would make her look weak if she admitted to the other inmates
that she had real feelings for me. She didn't want anyone to know
that she was really just a little pile of misery, who depended on
someone else's kindness for her survival.

So instead of telling people she appreciated
that I was there for her, and risk looking like a charity case, she
thought she would look cool if she told people she was conning me,
like she was a hustler and a player. Just like during her
conversation with Nancy at rehab, when I heard her pretend we never
even had sex, and that I was just some dumb motherfucker that she
was manipulating to buy her whatever she wanted. I think that was
just her way of pretending to be in control of her life, when
really she had no control over anything whatsoever. She wasn't even
allowed to go to the bathroom without asking a corrections officer
for permission first.

After more and more people told me that she
wasn't really pregnant, I knew she had been lying all along. Erin
and Lola both told me to ask her for the sticker on her food tray.
Pregnant girls get double rations in jail, and the sticker on their
tray says "pre-natal diet" and then their name. Lola told me if
Veronica couldn't send me that sticker, she wasn't really
pregnant.

So I asked her to send me the sticker. She
claimed she did, but I never got it. She claimed her letter had
gotten lost somehow. I asked her to send me another sticker. That's
when she finally came clean. After months of pretending to be
pregnant, she finally admitted that it was all a lie. She said she
did it, because she was afraid I'd never talk to her again.

All this time, Veronica told me that she
couldn't wait to come home to me, be sober, get married, have a
baby and live happily ever after. But in her letter, Nancy wrote
that that was all a lie, and that Veronica was telling people in
jail that her dad was going to get her an apartment in Forestwood
on Brantley Road, near College Parkway. It just so happened to be
in walking distance of Pine Manor, one of the worst drug
neighborhoods in Fort Myers.

Nancy wrote that Veronica was telling
everyone she and Kim were going to live there and she would sell
drugs and pimp out other girls. She was going to be the man, the
provider, in her relationship with Kim.

A few days after Halloween, I drove back to
Fort Myers. When I visited Veronica in jail, she acted arrogant and
condescending. I could tell that she really was dating someone
else, and that she was putting on a show for them. I was getting so
tired of this shit. Why was I wasting my time with her, if she was
really just conning me?

I had tried to show her unconditional love.
I tried to show her that even after she fucked up repeatedly, I
wasn't going to abandon her. But all I was doing was teaching her
that it was ok to treat me like a doormat. Instead of learning what
real love is, all she learned was that even if she cheats on me, I
wasn't going to leave her. So to her, cheating on me was ok. I kept
hoping that once she got out of jail, and we lived together, things
would get better.

Veronica always tried to act tough, but she
was so insecure, she mirrored the behavior of the people around
her. She really didn't even know who she was, unless other people
told her how to act. She was like a little high school girl who
just wanted to fit in. If the people around her used certain
phrases, she used them, too. If people talked black, she talked
black, too. During one of our visos at the Salvation Army, she had
asked me in a thick black accent: "What time it is?" She thought
she sounded cool. She had no clue how retarded it looks when a
little white girl from the suburbs tries to act like a black thug
from the hood.

Virtually all the female inmates in LCJ are
drug addicts who have prostituted themselves at some point or
another to pay for their drug habit. And, like all drug addicts,
they are used to lying and manipulating people, just like that guy
had written in Sex, Drugs, and Taxi Cabs. No wonder Veronica was
acting like a lying, cheating lowlife while she was in jail. She
was trying to fit in.

I held on to the hope that once Veronica was
released from jail, and came home to me, she would no longer be
around manipulative con artists, and she'd take her behavioral cues
from me instead. I figured if I show her nothing but kindness and
love when she comes home, that's the kind of behavior she would
learn to adopt.

But she never came home to me. Everything
Nancy and the other 13 people had told me about Veronica was
right.

A few days before her release, she told me
that her father was coming to town to pick her up. She said it
would be rude if she didn't let him pick her up, because she hadn't
seen him in ages. She told me not to worry, because she'd only
spend a day or two with him at the most, and then she would be all
mine. It sounded strangely familiar. Kayla had told me the same
thing a few days before her release.

During my last viso with Veronica, one day
before she was released from jail, I told her that I had a really
bad feeling, and that my instincts told me I would never see her
again.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I love
you. Of course I'm coming home to you. Watch, as soon as I get out,
I'll call you from my dad's phone. I don't even really want to
spend time with him. I'm just doing it because I have to, so he'll
get off my back. He's only in town for two days, so the day after
tomorrow, he'll drop me of at your house in the evening, and then
I'm all yours."

There was no sense in arguing about it
anymore, because her mind was made up. She told me that she had no
choice but to have her dad pick her up, and she said it was really
no big deal, because she would be home with me less than 48 hours
later, so I shouldn't make such a big deal about it.

For the rest of the viso, we talked about
something else. Somehow we ended up talking about Lucy. She had
just been arrested again for drug related charges. Veronica told me
she used to date Lucy, and asked: "Isn't Lucy hot?"

I didn't really know how to answer that. Was
that a trick question? Would Veronica get pissed at me if I said
another girl besides her was cute? Or was she going to tell me that
she wanted Lucy to be her "female friend" when she gets out, and
that I would have to share her with Lucy?

I told Veronica that I had never actually
seen Lucy in person, but that I had known about her for over 3
years, because I used to date Lucy's stepmom Hussy when I moved to
Florida, after Alice ran away from rehab in New York. Veronica was
startled. "You used to date Lucy's mom? Wow! Small world," she said
and grinned. "Why didn't you tell me that sooner?"

"I did tell you all about Hussy, but I
didn't know you used to date Lucy," I replied. Then I told her that
when Hussy and I used to hang out all day every day, she'd tell me
about her young kids, or her abusive ex Dick. Veronica said she
knew Dick. Of course. He sold drugs. They all know each other.

Hussy had told me a lot about Dick's teenage
daughters Summer and Lucy, who was only a few years younger than
Hussy. She had told me lots of stories about how badly Summer and
Lucy were addicted to drugs, and all the trouble they kept getting
into. So although I had never met Lucy, I actually knew her pretty
well.

The next day was Veronica's last day in
jail. It was the beginning of June, 2013. She called me one last
time that night, only a few hours before her release early the next
morning. She told me once again that she loved me and that she
would be home soon, as soon as she got this annoying visit with her
dad out of the way.

Her dad and Rachel had split up pretty much
right after Veronica was born, and he had never really been a part
of her life, except for sending her some money occasionally. He was
a truck driver who drove all across the country, and she only saw
him two or three times a year, for a day or two, if even that
much.

She had told me that he owned a successful
trucking company in Ohio. But when I met him in person during one
of his short stays in Fort Myers while she was in jail last time, I
found out that she had lied again. She always tried to make herself
sound better than she really was. He didn't own a company. He
didn't even own the truck he drove. It was a company truck. And he
was homeless. He lived in the truck. He just used his brother's
address in Ohio to receive mail.

Veronica rarely talked to him on the phone.
Maybe once every two weeks. Meanwhile she called me several times a
day every day. She had told me many times that she was estranged
from both her parents, and didn't really want either one of them in
her life once she came home. She said her mother was her biggest
trigger for using drugs, and her father was a mentally ill dry
alcoholic who heard voices. He thought he could talk to angels.

One time, when he and I were texting after
Veronica got arrested again, he suddenly wrote, completely out of
context: "The blue angel sees everything. The white angel laughs.
And the red angel takes his revenge."

Aaalrighty then. Thanks for sharing.

"The most beautiful people we have known are those
who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an
appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that
fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen."

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I met George for the first time in August
2012. He was a heavyset guy in his late 50s, with white hair and
glasses. He told me he hadn't been fishing since his dad had passed
away, so I went fishing with him, even though I had never been, and
I had no idea what I was doing. He enjoyed being able to teach
me.

He also took me to a gun range for the first
time in my life, and showed me how to shoot. I had been against
guns my whole life, but now that I actually shot one, I was hooked.
It was a whole lot of fun! I ended up buying an assault rifle and a
hand gun. But then I felt the rifle was a bit much, so I ended up
selling it again. I kept the pistol though.

George was old enough to be my dad. I guess
that's why we got along so well. My parents lived in Germany, and
Donna had been my only family in America. After the divorce, I had
nobody. That's why the divorce and losing Alice later on had been
extra hard on me.

When I met George in Bonita Springs, he was
like a father figure to me. I told him about all my crazy little
stories with the girls I had met in Florida, and he'd always say:
"Nobody has the right to abuse you." He agreed with me that
cheating is a form of abuse, because emotional pain hurts so much
worse than physical pain.

He was not a fan of Veronica. He already
knew me when Veronica ran away from the Salvation Army rehab in
September 2012. And I told him all about her running off with Kim 2
or 3 days later, instead of staying home with me. I talked to him
every day, and he was familiar with the whole story. He knew that
all she ever did was hurt me and cheat on me. He saw it much
clearer than I did, because I kept holding on to the idea that
she'd turn around eventually. He'd just sigh and say: "The heart
wants what it wants."

I really loved Veronica, despite everything
she did to me. Or, maybe I was just addicted to her. I had read an
article about brain scans that showed that when someone goes
through a painful break up, it activates the same part of the brain
as cocaine withdrawal. In other words, these brain scans showed
that missing a loved one was really not that much different from
craving drugs.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Every
pleasurable experience releases the feel-good chemical dopamine in
the brain. So when you spend time with the person you love, it
releases dopamine. Just like heroin or cocaine does. And when that
person is suddenly gone, so is your source of dopamine. So the
mental anguish you feel after a break up is not that different from
an addict's cravings for cocaine. The article concluded that love
is the original addiction all human beings share.

We all want to feel loved, and we are all
miserable when we lose a loved one and it leaves a big emotional
hole. And we all deal with it in our own way. Some people curl up
on the couch and eat a tub of ice cream. Some get drunk at the bar
down the street. Others smoke weed. Some smoke crack or shoot
heroin. Others have a lot of sex, or become fitness fanatics. We
all try to find a distraction that helps us get over the pain. But
if the pain persists, we get addicted to whatever we're using to
try to forget the pain.

In an interview with Vice magazine, Dr.
Gabor Maté said about the current heroin epidemic in America:
"Heroin is a painkiller. It's actually the strongest pain reliever
that we have, and it relieves emotional pain as much as physical
pain. So the real question is not why is there a heroin epidemic,
but why is there so much pain amongst young people today? And that
has to do with two factors: one is that a lot of young people are
traumatized and abused in childhood, and another is that a lot of
other people that are indirectly abused are still not getting their
emotional needs met."