Lady Behind The Wall

"You need to find yourself a gal who wants to be with you and only you, I think. You should be looking for her; she's gotta be out there somewhere. But until you find her –" she stopped to kiss the palm of my hand, "– any time you feel the urge, give me a call. And now I'm off, glowing like a neon light." She put my hand down and walked out. A minute later I heard the front door click shut and she was gone.

I lay there for a minute, considering what Cleo had said. Then I climbed out of the bed still redolent with her scent and headed for the shower. The time to start my quest had arrived.

In my bathrobe with Uncle Jack lubricating my synapses, I took the clipboard that lives next to the business phone that relays from JM's main number for nights when I'm on-call and settled back into my easy chair. I decided to start by setting out the things that would answer questions in the categories Tasha had defined for me.

What was I looking for in a woman?

First off, she would have to be near my own age, call it three years plus or minus. One of the problems Debbie and I had had was different perceptions of things, and that had been due to our differing degrees of experience with the world. Not only the degree, but the variety of experience as well. There is truth in the sayings that you learn the most from your mistakes, and that you see things most clearly after falling flat on your face. If my Zen 'perfect female' approximated my own age, even if she were from a different social stratum we would still have a number of shared experiences in common on a societal level. The books say shared experiences are an important building block in any relationship.

She'd have to be attractive and have a brain in her head. I may not be some famous celebrity but I do have my pride, and I am a firm believer in Harshaw's Law. It is all very well to have a pretty woman on one's arm and in one's bed. However, if the lights are on but nobody's home, even a goddess will become tedious in very short order.

Personality counts for much, even in a beauty. Termagants or shrews are instant non-starters, likewise whiners. Partly because of my limited social skills I tend to be a solitary sort and I don't go to large parties. It's too easy to offend without intending to, or to commit major faux pas. Therefore, my Zen ideal would have to be something of a homebody outside of business hours, and preferably somewhat submissive in the home. I have been a bachelor for a long time and my outlook will not change overnight. Someone who, when we wereen famille, would devote herself to me. A gentle and appreciative sweetheart, in so many words, not a superficial bitch whose looks and manners conceal an icy heart and the soul of a tax collector.

That brought me to sex. I chewed on the pencil for a minute, but decided that if this was to work at all, I owed myself total honesty. Write it straight and blunt.

I didn't want a nymphomaniac. A clinical nymphomaniac is incapable of attaining sexual satisfaction no matter how many men she beds or how frequent and intense her orgasms may be. What Idid want was an experienced partner well versed in the arts of pleasing her lover, one open to anything sexual from plain vanilla to totally kinky, and who would be completely available and willing at all times. By preference, a woman who aroused easily, orgasmed quickly, easily and multiply, and who was vocal during the act. Even after years of training by Tasha and practicing by watching movies, my ability to read body language is, to put it diplomatically, inadequate. I miss facial and subtle body cues even when I am purposely looking for them. Therefore, I rely much more on audible cues than most people. Women who do more than gasp and moan softly during intercourse, the illusions of pornographic movies notwithstanding, are uncommon. The women who appear in movies, even porno flicks, are called actresses for a reason.

I wryly reflected that what I was really looking for was a younger version of Tasha, one who would not regard me as her gently bewildered kid brother or perhaps the reincarnation of Augustus Fink-Nottle from the Wodehouse universe. Ah well, that's what dreams are for. If you are going to dream, it does not hurt to dream BIG. Continue.

What did I have to offer a would-be partner?

Security, for one thing. I'd been brought home from the hospital to this house. I have lived here all my life and it has long since been paid for. It was part of my inheritance. No mortgage worries. Any partner of mine would not have to fear coming home to find an eviction notice nailed to the front door. So long as I kept the taxes paid, there would always be a roof over my head.

I own my own company, and it turns a profit. Because of my position in the company and the fact that I am in a line of work that cannot be outsourced overseas, I have job security. I have a respectable stock portfolio thanks to Tasha's advice and occasional hunches of my own (buying Apple stock at its lowest ebb just before it rebounded with the release of the iPod, for instance), and I own pieces of land here and there. I would present to any potential girlfriend a reasonable amount of financial independence, if not outstanding social position. Then again, I wasn't looking for a female who has had breaking into the Junior League as a lifelong ambition.

In terms of looks, I am not Schwartzenegger in his prime but I don't have any flab on me, thanks to the personal trainer who stops by two evenings a week and daily use of the home gym in the basement. The thing she would probably notice first was the handlebar mustache, compensation for my slowly receding hairline.

My doctor reports that I am in disgustingly good health for my age, with no serious issues to worry about. Eating the proper foods in reasonable quantities and daily workouts does miracles.

I have no bad habits as most people think of such. No drinking to excess, never any drugs, no gambling problems, nothing like that. My biggest vices are reading, fishing, hunting and target-shooting. I try never to miss opening day of fishing season or deer season, and I do a little varminting for the local farmers. Oh yes; and every three or four years I go on a safari, though only once to Africa so far, and never after endangered or at-risk species. If you aren't going to eat what you shoot and use as much of your kill as possible, you have no business hunting. 'Sportsmen' are despicable.

I have never struck a woman in my life or spoken to one with the intent of deliberately inflicting emotional harm. I wondered if that counted for anything, but wrote it down anyway.

On reflection, I wondered if my never having had a long term relationship counted as an asset or a liability. I added it to the list just to be on the safe side. Let the women in the search group, whatever that was, decide.

This brought me hard up against the next item. What sort of woman fit the first two categories?

I needed to find a woman who might not be looking for a companion in the usual ways. Someone who was loath to deal with the traditional bar scene, or who wanted the safety of not meeting in person before communications established some degree of compatibility. But why would she want to delay such a meeting?

Possibly because she feared rejection. I thought back to the two attempts I had made at speed-dating, egged into it by a client who ran a dating service. I flushed as I recalled the reactions of the ones that had piqued my interest but had not returned it, and of my own negative reaction to a couple of obviously predatory women. Nobody likes to be rejected. I have experienced enough of it from females in the amatory arena that I find it hard to open up and give even a gal I am interested in a chance to get to know me. Perhaps it was the same on the opposite side of the sexual divide.

I had read here and there that many beauties found it hard to date because their looks scared potential suitors off. If such a one was also smart, she might seem so intimidating that only the bravest and most confident men would have the nerve to approach her. Or perhaps such women figured that most men were trophy hunters after only one thing and wanted nothing to do with them, erecting their castle walls so high as to make them impenetrable.

Hmm. What if those walls were there because she saw herself as damaged in some way? Not to keep Lotharios out, but rather to keep her locked away so society and its rules could not hurt her again? What kind of women fit that picture?

I took another sip of my drink as my mind shifted into a higher gear. A woman who looked good and was smart but was damaged goods in the eyes of society. What constitutes 'damaged goods' in this day and age? Not divorce; that was long accepted – was almost expected, given the current statistics on marriage failure rates and some social commentators referring to a first marriage as 'the trial marriage.' Single motherhood could do it, especially in the lower strata. In strait-laced sections of society, biracialism still missed the socially-acceptable cut. Sexual abuse like rape qualified females for this set, because even now there is the tendency of society to say that the victim was really asking for it, that she was really a slut or a cock-tease who led the rapist on, even though anyone with an above room temperature IQ knows that's utter horseshit. And except in the very highest circles, possession of a criminal record was worse than the scarlet letter had been in Puritan New England four centuries ago.

Could that have been what Tasha meant? That I needed to look among the females rejected by mainstream America because they had been convicted of something? There are crimes and then there arecrimes. Some are more crimes against societal mores than crimes against the common good. Not all criminals are equal. There are lots of cases of people turning their lives around after doing time, although today such a turnaround requires determination, education and more than a little luck. Well, at least it was someplace to start looking.

As with many questions, perhaps I could find my answer online. I finished off the bourbon and went to my computer. Heaven knew there were enough mail order bride sites out there listing women from around the world who wanted to link up with someone. Could it be there was something similar for female convicts?

A quick search told me that indeed there was, and not just one or two websites. I raised my eyebrows and dove in.

Refining my search by specifying American female inmates as part of the search string got the number of sites to investigate down to six. A quick look at them cut that number in half. Three websites was a universe small enough to check manually if necessary. I looked the sites over. Although I fully intended to check all the entries that seemed close to my Zen perfect woman's specs on all three websites, I expected one of the three might be easier to use than the others.

ladiesbehindthewalls.com seemed to be the easiest of the three to navigate, so I decided to start there. I began with the frequently-asked-questions page.

The site operators were up front about what they did and how it was done. Prison inmates do not have access to computers, so communication with the outside is by snail mail. The site acted as an honest broker. A woman sending her bio, ad listing and photos to the website had to swear that the information was accurate and the pictures were actual pictures of her. Current snapshots with something to prove the date they were taken were preferred, although there were plenty of candids, topless and even professional pics posted with the listings. The site stressed that when a listing arrived, before it was added to the online catalog the operator accessed national or state prisoner registries to verify that the information – date of birth, age, state where incarcerated, date of expected release, physical stats, etc. – was true.

They also checked the provided photos against the record shots in the inmate's file. If there was some question that the photos really were of the inmate, the ad would be held until the woman satisfied ladiesbehindthewalls.com that they were photographs of her. All photos had to provide the month and year they were taken, to enable lonely men and women cruising the site to extrapolate current appearance based on that date.

If someone attracted you, you could purchase their mailing address for $15 or four addresses for $50. If an address turned out to be unusable, the site would give you three addresses of your choice for free.

ladiesbehindthewalls.com also offered assistance in getting gifts to prisoners. Sending something to someone convicted of a crime isn't like sending a prisoner of war a Red Cross parcel. American prisons are far more restrictive in what inmates are permitted to receive. However, each listing included information on what kinds of things were acceptable, the procedures for sending them, and when certain things could be mailed. These varied from state to state and institution to institution quite a lot.

The other sites I checked were more or less the same. Prices for the addresses and the amount of information each offered changed but that was the only real difference. I concluded I'd lucked onto the best of the lot first crack out of the box. I closed out the others and returned to ladiesbehindthewalls.com to begin my search for a woman who might accept me.

It would have helped if the site had included a decent search engine. The only sorts that it could do were by ages within a range you set or by distance from your zip code. As distance would not be a consideration until a gal was released, I simply set the age ranges and hit the start button. Fifteen pages with 24 listings per page popped up. I started looking at the hits.

The team that had set up the site had been considerate enough to include a clipboard to which you could transfer the listing of any lady that caught your eye. I took my time studying the photos, trying to see into a woman's soul from photographs. By the time I'd finished my initial run-through I had seventeen files on the clipboard. I selected Clipboard, and the seventeen selected ladies displayed on a single page similar to the main page. I took a deep breath and opened the first file. I spent the next hour examining them, reading what they had to say and looking at the ladies' pictures. More than a few went into the trashcan.

A couple were dumped because the listings made it plain that they were avaricious predatory types like Debbie. I'd learned my lesson concerning that variety of woman.

Three didn't make it because of their constant reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not a churchgoer, much less an evangelical. Having met people with that kind of mindset professionally, I felt too many of them were narrow-minded bigots who regarded anyone who didn't share their worldview and religious creed as half-human at best. That kind of aggravation is easy to live without.

Two more went into the trash because something simply didn't ring true about what they were saying. I may not be able to read body language very well, but my ability to detect bullshit in written and spoken words is sharper than most. Asperger's takes away, but it also gives.

Five more were weeded out by Harshaw's Law because they seemed to have been written by subliterates who'd never finished grade school. I'd long since concluded that while bimbos are wonderful to look at and often fun in the sack, you don't spend your whole life in bed plugged into a female. For a relationship to work there has to be more than attraction based on beauty and sexual skill.

This winnowing left me with five possibles. That's a reasonable number to check by following the suggestion made on one of the other sites, of subscribing to an online access service that could pull up the record of any currently incarcerated convict in the country.

A quick trip to a new window made me a subscriber. Switching back and forth between screens, I compared what each remaining inmate had said in her listing with the data in her records. Two more ladies were weeded out this way. Now I was down to three. It was decision time. Although all three websites had suggested ordering more than one name at a time, I knew I couldn't handle more than one woman at a time, at least not in a romantic sense. Which address should I order?

I kept returning to one photo. A professionally shot still, she was looking at the camera in three-quarter front view. The woman was lying on her stomach, shoulders up to show off her cleavage, long legs together, bent at the knee and crossed at the ankle, toes pointed in black stiletto heels, the calves long and shapely, the thighs firm. A bandeau top barely restrained a pair of boobs, definitely and defiantly tits, not titties; and a tiny bikini bottom below her waist showed a nice ass to good advantage. Unusual reddish skin; natural, not makeup, given how little she was wearing in the way of clothing. Long black hair in two braids, secured by rawhide thongs. She had an oval face with an aquiline nose between fashion model cheekbones. One manicured finger brushing her full, slightly parted lips, her expression was wistful; but it was her eyes that called to me. Irises so dark they appeared to have no pupils, they were expressive even to somebody like me. While I can't interpret body language very well face to face, I do better at reading emotions in photographs. I had never seen a more perfect definition of loneliness trying to disguise itself as allure. I clicked on the picture to open her file.

Her name was Deirdre. She was 39 years old, confined in Texas with a release date next year in late summer or early fall. Her height was given as 5'10", her weight as 180 pounds, and her measurements as 38-28-34. She was heterosexual, had two adult children, didn't do drugs but did drink; and was willing to relocate. The thumbnail photo, which expanded to snapshot size on the file page, was two years old. So much for the short form data. I read what she had written about herself.

"A nice girl like me ended up in a place like this. Beautiful enchantress seeks divorced or single male to share an intimate correspondence relationship with the goal of finding a 'happily ever after' in each other.

"I'm 39 years of age, a Pisces, with beautiful looks and a beautiful mind. Although I'm 39, people tell me I look ten years younger. I can still turn a few heads. I have silky hair that falls all the way to my waist. I take pride in my captivating smile and sincere eyes. I am open-minded with a great sense of humor. I am incarcerated for getting my second DUI. I don't do drugs, but I do love my alcohol.

"I'm trying to change my life and I'm tired of being alone. I am looking for a generous man who wants a real woman in his life. Yes, I need a man to help me change my life. I consider myself to be passionate, attractive, sexy and in good physical shape. As you can see from my pictures, I am well endowed.

"I am seeking a kind, passionate man who is not verbally or physically abusive. A man who knows what he wants in life, who is in good physical shape and doesn't have a lot of emotional baggage or trust issues. The man I'm looking for must be self-supporting. I've always worked and look forward to holding a real job again, but I won't get involved with someone who expects me to support him. I don't want a player or a bullshit artist. He must be my age or a little older so we'll have things in common and be able to relate.

"Basically, I'm looking for friendship first. After that, we'll see what comes. I need someone who is willing to love me unconditionally and be there for me, now and later.

"I like to be spoiled and I'm happy to do the same for my mate. Although I have never been married, I dream of finding the right man someday so I can love and cherish him. I want us to share our lives and our selves in and out of the bedroom, in public and in private.