Almost every drug addicted girl will try to move in on some other girl's man, if she feels she has a chance to get him on her team, and it will benefit her in her quest for more drugs. So what Alice's friend Kat did when she had sex with me, and what Kayla's friend Morgan did, was not uncommon. That sort of thing happens all the time.
When Veronica started writing me letters and calling me from jail every day, I remembered what Kayla had told me when she was in jail. All the girls in Lee County Jail try to get money out of guys on the outside, by selling them dreams, and pretending to love them. Some girls call a bunch of different guys every day, telling each of them that he's her one and only true love. They scam so many guys into sending them money, that they end up having more canteen money than they can spend on snacks. So by the time they get released from jail, they have hundreds of dollars in their accounts, or on the books, as they call it. As soon as they get out, they cash the jail check and go buy drugs with the money.
Remember the sleazy douchebag who wrote a book about the hookers in LCJ, called Sex, Drugs and Taxi Cabs? One of his little stories stood out to me. One of the streetwalkers he had been fucking went to jail. He started to visit her regularly, talked to her on the phone all the time, and put money on her books. She sold him dreams and convinced him that she loved him and that she was his girlfriend.
Then some other girl was released from jail, and that other girl met up with the guy, to tell him that his so-called girlfriend was really in a relationship with that other girl. Those two girls had been dating in jail the whole time, and to prove it, she showed him love letters his so-called girlfriend had written to the other girl. He was crushed, because his so-called girlfriend had him fooled the whole time. She had even put some of her inmate friends on the phone so they would tell him that his so-called girlfriend was really faithful to him and loved him oh so much.
He had a bit of advice for his readers: If you date a girl in LCJ, don't believe anything, anything, ANYTHING she or her inmate friends tell you. They will lie for each other to con guys on the outside. They lie all day long, about everything, because that's what they're used to doing on the streets.
I told Veronica all that. And I told her about my experiences with Alice and those other girls I had met. Veronica was offended. Or pretended to be. She said: "Don't compare me to those other whores. Can't you tell I'm totally different? I would never do to you what those other girls did to you. I will never ever hurt you the way Alice hurt you."
Of course I knew that a con artist will never admit that they're conning you. But I really believed that Veronica was being sincere. I believed that she really hated being a drug addict, that she really hated what her life had become, that she really hated the things she had done for drugs, hated herself for doing them, and that she genuinely had feelings for me and wanted to have a better future with me.
Everyone who has ever dealt with a drug addict knows that they lie all day long. Lying is their most important tool, when they try to con people into giving them money or drugs, or trying to hide the true extent of their addiction. They are so used to lying, sometimes they don't even realize they're lying. It's just habit. And old habits die hard.
So I already knew I would catch Veronica in lies occasionally, and that that didn't necessarily mean that she didn't love me. Becoming a sober person and living a sober life required her to not only stop doing drugs, but stop living like an addict. Stop hustling. Stop cheating. Stop conning. Stop lying. That's a pretty big, difficult change, if that's all you know.
When Alice and I went to Florida together for the first time, her friend Becky called her and asked where we were. Alice told her we were in Canada. Afterwards I asked her why she lied to one of her best friends. She replied: "I don't know. I'm just so used to lying every time I open my mouth, sometimes I can't turn it off. Lies just slip out for no reason at all."
I was willing to give Veronica the benefit of a doubt, if I caught her in a lie. I knew she had a difficult life and that the transition to a new life with me would not be easy for her. But I really believed she genuinely loved me. She had told me a lot of things about herself that I didn't think she ever told anyone else. Like the fact that she had been sexually abused by her mother's boyfriends ever since she was a little girl. It was very difficult for her to talk about that. I believed it was a good sign that she was able to tell me things like that. It showed me that she was not a completely broken human being yet. Despite everything she had been through, there was still hope that she might be able to develop a deep, meaningful bond with me. And that's really all love is.
During the first few weeks in jail, her letters were long and thoughtful. She wrote about the things she wanted to do with me once she got out. She wrote about our future together, and that she wanted to get married and have a baby with me, and live happily ever after. I felt the same way. For the first time in my life, I actually wanted to have a baby with someone. She drew hundreds of little hearts along the top and bottom of her letters.
Then her letters changed. They looked and sounded different. Sloppy. Like she wasn't really putting all that much effort into them. Or like she was writing them hastily, maybe while trying to hide the fact that she was writing me from some other inmate. Maybe a girl she was dating in there? I found out later that my instincts were right again.
A week or two later, Veronica told me that she had a fight with some other inmate, and that the other girl threatened to write me a letter, to tell me what Veronica was up to in jail. Veronica was clearly worried that I would be upset about the letter, and she swore that whatever the other girl was going to write me, was all lies.
I told Veronica that if there was anything I should know about what she was doing in jail behind my back, it would come out sooner or later, and that it was better if I hear it from her, rather than from someone else.
In her next letter, Veronica wrote that she had made a friend in jail. Her name was Theresa. She said she didn't mean for it to happen. Right there she gave herself away again. People only say that kind of thing if they cheat, not if they simply make an innocent friend.
She wrote that she needed a female companion in her life to be truly happy, but that I didn't have to worry about it, because she still loved me and wanted to be with me, but she was going to do things with Theresa, that she couldn't do with me.
Apparently she really thought that was an acceptable thing to write, and didn't even realize how badly it hurt me. When I'm in a relationship with someone, that girl is the center of my world. She's not just my lover, but also my best friend and confidant. She is closer to me than any other person in the world. There is nothing I could do with someone else that I can't do with her.
And here Veronica was telling me that she was gonna do all the things with Theresa, that she couldn't do with me. That obviously implied that she felt closer to Theresa than to me. I was always going to be the third wheel.
Rather than trying to explain that with a million words, and risk being misunderstood, I decided to show Veronica exactly how I felt when she wrote me that stuff about Theresa.
I wrote her a letter back, and wrote pretty much exactly the same stuff she had written me. I wrote that I had met a new friend, and that her name was Faith. Faith didn't really exist. I made her up. She was simply a mirror image of Theresa. But of course I didn't tell Veronica that. I made her believe Faith was a real person.
I told Veronica that I didn't mean for it to happen, but that I needed a friend like Faith in my life, because with her I can do all the things that I can't do with Veronica. Veronica and Theresa had been living together in the same dorm for weeks, so I told her Faith and I had been spending a lot of time together every day for the past few weeks.
Veronica had asked me how I would feel about her "occasionally" having sex with Theresa and if I would be ok with that. The concept of being faithful to someone seemed foreign to her. So when I wrote her back, I asked her if it was ok if I had sex with Faith every now and then
. I wrote that it would work out perfectly, because then I could do all the things with Faith that Veronica may not want to do with me. Like, if Veronica didn't like going to museums, I could do that with Faith. And if Veronica didn't like anal, I could do that with Faith, too.
When Veronica got my letter, she freaked out. She was livid. She threatened to beat the shit out of Faith. "I'm gonna drag a ho!" she screamed on the phone. She was sooo upset and jealous about Faith moving in on her man. Then I told her that Faith didn't really exist, and she was really just an imaginary mirror image of Theresa that I had created to show Veronica how her letter made me feel.
Finally it sunk in, and she said I really fucked with her head. She said she understood now why all that stuff with Theresa was not ok. She told me she would never cheat on me with Theresa or anyone else. She said she was 100% faithful to me and I had nothing to worry about. Later I found out she was lying to me the whole time, and that Veronica and Theresa were officially a couple and had been dating in jail for months.
But at the time I didn't know that yet. I did get more and more suspicious though, because I caught Veronica in more and more lies and keeping secrets. Kayla had told me a few months earlier that girls in jail date each other and have sex with each other all the time.
I didn't tell Veronica I knew that was going on. I just asked her, if girls in jail have sex with each other. She said: "No of course not. Don't be ridiculous. This isn't a youth hostel. It's jail. You can't have sex here."
She was clearly lying. And why would she lie about that, unless she was having sex with someone in jail and didn't want me to know about it?
Kayla always told me the latest gossip that was going on in jail, about who was making out with each other, who got caught writing love letters, who was taking showers together, and so on and so forth.
But Veronica kept her jail life completely secret. I realized later that she was afraid she might accidentally let slip out a bit of information that would reveal that she was dating Theresa. So she figured the less she told me about what was happening inside the jail, the better. But the more I realized that she was purposely keeping things from me, the more suspicious I got.
While she was cheating on me all this time with Theresa, I really had been 100% faithful to Veronica. I had never cheated on Donna in over 15 years of marriage, and I wasn't going to cheat on Veronica either. I completely stopped talking to any other girls. I wouldn't even answer the phone when Haley or Crystal or any other girl tried to call me.
A lot of people say Romeo and Juliet is the most romantic love story every told. I disagree. I think seeing an old couple who has been married for 40 years is way more romantic. They truly are each other's best friends and soulmates. They truly have grown together as one, like one soul in two bodies. That's beautiful.
That's the kind of relationship I want to have. I want to grow old with someone. I want to go through life together, face storms together, enjoy the happy little moments together, and be there for each other always. But in order to have a loyal partner, you have to be a loyal partner. You can't expect someone to be loyal to you, if you're not loyal to them.
Unfortunately people who have abandonment issues don't grasp that simple concept. People like Veronica, who have been abused and abandoned by their parents at an early age, believe that if their own parents don't love them enough not to leave them, then nobody will ever love them enough, and everyone will leave them eventually. And being abandoned or betrayed like that hurts terribly.
Nobody has ever killed themselves over a broken arm. But every day, thousands of people kill themselves because of a broken heart. Why? Because emotional pain hurts much worse than physical pain.
When someone you love leaves you or betrays you, it hurts like nothing else in the world. I know, because I went through it with Alice. Queen Elizabeth II of England once said: "Grief is the price we pay for love." So true.
People who have been abused or abandoned during early childhood, people like Veronica and all the other drug addicted inmates in LCJ, are so scared of being abandoned and hurt again that they are afraid of real relationships. Many of them prefer to be in shallow, meaningless, fake relationships, because they think those relationships can't hurt them. Someone you don't really care about can't really hurt you all that bad when they leave you or cheat on you. But those meaningless fake relationships leave you empty inside. You will never find real love like that, because you will never develop a deep, meaningful bond with someone.
They all want to find someone who will truly love them and never leave them, but they don't even realize that by acting slutty, and bouncing from one shallow fake relationship to the next, always cheating, never faithful, they're sabotaging themselves. Nobody will ever take you seriously as a potential life partner, if all you ever do is cheat on people and jump from one shallow relationship to the next.
And yet that's all the love-starved drug addicted girls in LCJ do. They're afraid to put all their eggs in one basket and really commit to one person. One day they profess eternal love for this person, and the next day they proclaim they are madly in love with the next person. And they constantly cheat on everybody with everybody else. They really have no idea what love actually is, because they don't know how to really bond with another human being. They confuse sex with love.
And that's exactly what Veronica was doing, just like all her so-called friends. They all had dated each other in various combinations. And most of them had dated the same guys, usually dope boys, at one point or another. They all supposedly loved each other, and then cheated on each other 5 minutes later.
Veronica wasn't just cheating on me with Theresa. She was cheating on Theresa with a dyke (or a "stud" as dykes in jail like to call themselves) who was known as Snickers. I guess she liked those candy bars a lot. She had short blonde hair and she liked to say she looked like Justin Bieber. Everyone in jail knew Snickers. She had gotten arrested so often, she had spent more time of her young life inside of jail than out. She looked like a boy. She had dated pretty much every girl in jail at one point or another, because she was just as love-starved as everyone else in LCJ. And now she and Veronica were dating, too. Behind Theresa's and my back.
Snickers thought Veronica had broken up with Theresa. But then she realized that Veronica was still cheating on her with Theresa. Theresa and Snickers both got really pissed at Veronica, and decided to date each other to make Veronica jealous. It worked. She was really upset about it and wrote me letters about how depressed she was. But she didn't tell me what exactly she was depressed about. I didn't find all this out until much later. At the time I thought she was simply depressed about being in jail, so I tried to cheer her up by sending her funny postcards every day.
She told me that Snickers was a stalker who wouldn't leave her alone. At the same time she told Snickers that I was a stalker who wouldn't leave her alone. Veronica told me that she wanted to get a tattoo with my name right over her pussy. At the same time she told Snickers she wanted to get her name tattooed over her pussy. She told me she couldn't wait to get out of jail and cuddle up with me under her pink Disney princess blanket. She told Snickers exactly the same thing.
That's how Veronica operated. She threw herself at a bunch of different people and kept telling them all that she loves them. And then, when someone finally said it back, she acted like they were chasing after her instead. She talked shit about them behind their backs, and acted like she wanted nothing to do with them while she was around other people. It was her way of trying to make herself feel wanted, powerful and in control.
While all this stuff between Veronica, Snickers and Theresa was going on, Veronica was also sending love letters to a bunch of other girls. She was fishing. She was throwing herself at a dozen different people at the same time, selling everyone dreams, using the same lines with everyone, hoping someone would actually love her back for real. She was desperate for love, and she was always worried that whoever she was with would leave her once they
got to know the real her, so in every one of her fake relationships, she was always with one foot out the door right from the start, always looking for the next fake relationship already. She thought she was completely unlovable, because not even her own parents loved her. So why would anyone else ever really love her?
In all her fake relationships, she actually bribed people to be with her. She bribed guys with sex. And she bribed girls by giving them drugs, or candy while she was in jail. She thought nobody would ever want to be with her, unless she had something to offer them.
While living on the street, she had sex with a bunch of different guys for money, so that she could use the money to buy drugs for herself and her girlfriend, which was always another crackhead. Of course the only thing the other crackhead really cared about was crack. So as long as Veronica fed them drugs, they pretended to be her girlfriend, even if they weren't gay at all.
The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers Page 11
