Yours for Eternity: A Love Story on Death Row
Page 25
* I’m talking about Submission, a bondage shop online at the time, not sandwiches.—DE
* This was the draft of my first self-published book, Almost Home.—DE
* Anna Phelan, screenwriter for Gorillas in the Mist and many other movies, wrote an early script for Devil’s Knot by Mara Leveritt. It was, to my mind, a great and truthful depiction of the case and our situation, although sadly it was ultimately shelved.—DE
* I was only allowed to have three phone numbers on a list of people allowed to call the prison, and it often took months to change those numbers.—DE
* It wasn’t long before we were talking on the phone, although as everything with the prison system tends to be, it was convoluted and expensive. The prison phone system is something most people don’t know anything about. Most state prisons have contracts with large phone companies and the calls are always collect, and the costs are hefty. There is always a connection charge—usually several dollars, and a per-minute fee after that. A call usually lasts 15 minutes before it’s cut off, then you must pay the surcharge again for another call. An out-of-state call can cost up to $25 for 15 minutes. Looking back, it’s shocking to realize that we ended up paying around $200K on phone calls alone.—LD
* Here’s a photograph of me, taken at a Yankees game the day after Damien first called me. He’d promised to call the following day, although I’d forgotten to tell him I wouldn’t be home—my upstairs neighbor listened for the phone and ran downstairs to answer and explain my absence. In this photo, with my friends Luis and Julie, I’m keeping the happiest secret inside. When I read this letter, I am astounded by how accurate it was, in some ways. Looking back over the years, and what happened to both of us, the paths our lives would take—it was as if I were looking into a crystal ball. Even now, as our lives are unfolding in the free world, I am experiencing a sense of what my words forecasted. I’m increasingly grateful for all our patience.—LD
* How I remember this time. I’m not a fainter, yet I keep reading these references to passing out. I do remember that when I flew to Arkansas, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was doing this very emotional thing—going into a prison, seeing someone I loved who was on death row. I went about it in a very demanding way. I flew down and arrived late at night, got up very early after tossing back and forth in bed, went to a very early morning visit with Damien, then flew back to NY that very afternoon. I ate nothing, it seems, in the whole time I was traveling—too nervous. Just going into a prison is taxing. Later, when I lived in Arkansas and visitors would come, I would tell them they should spend the night before flying home. Going into the prison, seeing Damien—all of it is too exhausting, both mentally and physically. Yet I went about it this first time as if I were superhuman, and I wasn’t. Far from it. I suppose I really was out of my body for much of this, but then again, I was in the most surreal time of my life. When I read of this time, I actually don’t recognize myself. That’s how far I had pushed past my “acceptable” boundaries. My psyche was telling me that I was completely out of control, and my body was telling me that this was something only crazy people do. I wasn’t listening to either.—LD
* I met Rick when he first wrote me a letter in the midnineties. He was a dealer and trafficker in prison art by notorious inmates, such as Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Ramirez, among others. His initial pitch to me was that he could “find a market for my work.” He and his partner used to come see me at the prison and take my paintings and artwork to sell, though I never did see my cut of the sale if there was one. When Lorri and I started writing to each other, he did do us the favor of storing our letters and keeping them all in one place. (Except for, I suspect, the few that have found their way to eBay and elsewhere.)—DE
* I would come to realize the magnitude these small treasures had on Damien’s life after he was released. I would open the refrigerator to find bits of aluminum foil, drinking straws, plastic cups—all stored in the side compartments. There would be such a stash of these items, and I wouldn’t know what to do with them. It seems they were precious commodities in prison. Foil could be used to keep your food from the rats, a plastic cup was a luxury, and a straw was a golden ticket. Damien used one straw he was fortunate enough to come across for years.
So I left them in the refrigerator and said nothing, along with the bottles and bottles of tap water he would store. He would reuse plastic milk containers, glass soda bottles, water bottles—the whole fridge would be teeming with what looked like a crow’s haven.—LD
* This was a course Damien took with a nondenominational church, studying the Bible, and it took about a couple of months to complete. They ended with a test, on the Book of Matthew, say, or Revelations, and then Damien would send me his certificate of completion. As he put it, they become so fundamentally fundamental after a while, he took to his own studies.—LD