How to Write to Inmate 02879-509
Penal correspondence with a susceptible narcissist
Here’s how you write to inmate 02879-509.
She’s currently serving her 20-year-sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. It’s a minimum-security prison for light offenders, but it’s still prison, and you have to assume even with her notoriety, she has enough time to answer her mail, given that what you write merits her engagement.
From what you know, Florida is a place where the headlights are always on, but Tallahassee is absolutely not. You went there once and have nothing positive to say. It’s a shame to pen a woman of such crass class in such a shithole.
Tallahassee, not the institution. The prison looks fine, all things considered.
To write to inmate 02879-509, you’ll need her address.
You can find this on the website for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Next you’ll need her Bureau of Prisons register number. You’ll find this on a different page of the same website.
Take out a white envelope. On it, write her name, number, and address. Do this before you start the letter. Order in this area is very important.
When you’re ready, take a seat at your desk. Light a candle and put on music. It should play from an external speaker placed behind you. Put the addressed envelope on the desk next to your notebook, which is unlined like a sketch pad. Ensure the ink in your pen is black. Sit up straight before the page.
There are three things you want to tell her. Three things you’ve been dying to tell her, to be totally truthful, after reading that book and seeing all the ways your shadow is his and his figure laps you. And it goes far beyond the acronyms and name-focused word games. It goes into the green scum occupying certain human hearts. You know about this. You know about this intimately.
Three things. The first is about her. The second is about you. The third is about the third. None of them are quite what they claim, but isn’t that the puzzle of this? You’re pretty certain yes. You dream and believe yes. You move forward, an arrow through your own life, with that sentiment as the driver: yes.
Think about the yes. Don’t think about the no.
Don’t think about your family, your real family, not the one you present on the page.
Don’t refer to her by any of her nicknames. Slide the one her father used into your back pocket. This is important and will come into play later.
Don’t mention any details of her case that the media has dragged into the public over the last few years.
Don’t mention him.
Mention her, lots, and yourself, less. Reference the blocked account and the prolonged legal fight between your father and uncle. Mention skiing in Colorado and summering “in West Egg.” This is not a literary reference, but a life reference, and you’ve read enough about her ears to know that they’ll perk.
This is a delicate directive, but try to make the ‘g’s in Egg look sexy. Start with a confident loop for the upper bowl — full but not bloated — then let the lower curve flow gracefully, a ribbon falling from her hair. Practice your lowercase ‘g’s over and over. This too will come into play later.
Once this saturates within you, you’re ready.
Write the letter. Write two drafts. Keep them both to a single page, nothing more. This is important.
Once they’re drafted, put both in your desk, in different drawers. Go for a long walk. Admire the water by the reservoir at this time of year. Ignore the pretty girls by the fountain who don’t look your way. Try not to notice the men who do turn them. Admire the water, how it reflects and contains, how it gives life but can also take it. Don’t think about drowning. Don’t think about Virginia.
Walk back to your apartment. When you return, read the letters again and decide which one you prefer.
It should be a manifesto to yourself maneuvered through her. You know who she is. You know who she is like you know who you are, in the letters you write and in the body you wear. Know the two are different and yet how they come together for you to step into his feet, a looming eventuality. Practice this. It’s important.
Once you’re ready, slide the selected letter into the envelope, stamp it, and only then lick it closed. Follow the order. Rush the envelope to the nearest post office. Don’t trust mailboxes. You need a witness, someone to hand this first letter to. Later on, it won’t matter as much.
Wait two weeks, three. If you don’t hear from her in a month, keep trying.
Send letter after letter if you must. Variations on the same.
Always include updates on your uncle’s financial wranglings.
She has 18 years, a line she didn’t respect then. She will respond.
She has nothing but time and her memories of the island, the ranch, the townhouse, the plane, but mostly the island. She will respond.
While you wait, watch a lot of movies.
You like movies. Not to stereotype yourself against yourself, but you see this act like you see your life: a story of great power and consequence that will soon be captured in film by a deserving director. But it won’t come from you. It will come from the great tale you’re telling, the great lie you’re living, involving inmate 02879-509.
While you wait, watch your movies. Between them, think about the constellations and the few human beings whose shadows can fill an entire planet.
You’re mesmerized by people who do big dark things and tie it to art. People who shoot singers and then hold up the book. Or the ones who try to take out the President so an actress will know their name. Or high schoolers so obsessed with serial killers and their own depression that they go hunting in the cafeteria.
Think of the great low ones who scribble symphonies before shooting strangers, who paint saints with the same hands they use to slit throats. You’re bowed by their commitment to their art, to their destruction, an extra measure of eternity, which art only sometimes needs.
Think of her.
Think of the woman you’re writing to.
Like most prisoners, she’ll read anything you send her, but she’ll only respond if you code it correctly.
Write her name, in your notebook. Names are entry points to people.
Get it right. She hates when people misspell it, even more than when they mispronounce it, so practice.
The lowercase g is the first step.
There are currently eight steps. The ninth is your return, soon, to the island.
It starts with the letter.
It ends in the room on the rock.
Follow the steps.
You’ll get there.
