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People who lived in Corcoran stayed not only because economic adversity left them stuck in space, but also because they had struggled to make Corcoran their home, building a community that, while organized in a race and class hierarchy, was also a place proud of its small-town ethic of care. Mexicano/Chicano and African American subcultures flourished in the inter- stices of the dominant paternalistic Anglo social structure. Some marriage between Okies and Mexicanos weakened, but did not break down, the division between the two groups, who had, uneasily, allied at the forefront of the 1938–39 labor strikes (Weber 1994; Gregory 1989).14 A single middle school and a single high school educated all the children who did not drop out; indeed, the most academically ambitious kids rarely transferred from Corcoran High School, because of the chance to compete for one of two full-tuition (price unlimited) four-year Boswell scholarships. And finally, nearly every adult in town who was not a Boswell, Salyer, Guiberson, or Hansen had, at some time in her life, if only for a summer, chopped Alcala cotton in the southern San Joaquin sunshine.
As the carceral entrepreneur—himself an ex-prisoner— explained how much good the prison would bring to South Central, the ROCers listened closely. Then, in an orderly show of po- litical passion, each one told him why, from her perspective, the ROC would never endorse the facility. His claim that somehow the community could control the inner workings of a prison because of its location struck them as ludicrous; they had learned that distance is not simply measured in miles, and that the prison would not be a neighborhood or community facility, but rather a state incapacitation facility run according to state rules. His promise that perhaps their own children might be in the prison elicited, at first, an emotional moment of hope on the part of some women, who drove fifteen-year-old cars four hundred miles round-trip on Saturdays to see their sons. But the record of failures in many of the campaigns to have children moved closer to their families indicated that the people in the proposed South Central prison would not likely come from the area. The ROC told the entrepreneur, over and over, that they would not remedy the disappearance of jobs at GM, Firestone, and Kaiser by putting half the population into prisons so the other half could make money watching them. They sent him on his way, somewhat bruised by their blunt words.
brutal
The proliferation of antiprison groups during the decade when this book was in progress indicates how many kinds of people understand that prison is not a building “over there” but a set of relationships that undermine rather than stabilize everyday lives everywhere. Unfortunately, many remedies proposed for the all-purpose use of prisons to solve social, political, and economic problems get caught in the logic of the system itself, such that a reform strengthens, rather than loosens, prison’s hold. In a sense, the professionalization of activism has made many committed people so specialized and entrapped by funding streams that they have become effectively deskilled when it comes to thinking and doing what matters most. What are the possibilities of nonreformist reform—of changes that, at the end of the day, unravel rather than widen the net of social control through criminalization?
I have, in my slightly perkier moments in the wake of my and Jen’s break-up, let myself believe that chatting women up might be fun; that, with age, I might have got better at it. For some reason, this assumption gets stronger with every break-up, despite not having done it for the years I’ve been in a relationship, and despite never being very good at it in the first place. And then I’m thrown into the world of flirting and I realize that sitting on the sofa with the same woman watching box sets has not made me more courageous and charismatic. In fact, it has done possibly the exact opposite. How could I have let myself believe, even for a second, that single thirty-something life would be an endless buffet of opportunities, when I know it is, at best, small plates.
lol
‘This is too hard,’ she says, waving her hands in a way that suggests she’s given up. ‘We can’t talk without hurting each other. It doesn’t work.’
‘We can agree on that,’ I say. ‘Goodbye, Jen.’ I walk away and, after a few paces, turn back. ‘I can’t even look at the sea any more because it reminds me of you.’
‘If you can’t look at the sea that’s YOUR FAULT, ANDY,’ she shouts. Passers-by look at her, surprised to see someone so well-put-together bellowing something so demented in the middle of the day. ‘Not mine. YOURS. YOU need to go fix your relationship with the sea, NOT ME.’ She turns and walks away.
‘YOU’VE RUINED THE SEA,’ I shout before I turn and walk the other way.
She always was melodramatic.
I soon realized that inevitability of every relationship: the things which initially draw you to each other become the exact things that irritate you the most. I’d loved Andy’s nonconformity, which became irritation at the lack of structure in his life. He’d loved my independence, which became an annoyance at my remoteness. In the early days, he explained away my lateness with my free-spiritedness. After a while he thought it was selfishness. I used to love that he wanted to make everyone laugh because I thought it was a sign of his generosity. At some point I saw it for what it really was – neediness. I realized he saw every social interaction as a miniature gig and therefore an opportunity for acceptance or rejection. His mood was so dependent on how he felt these conversational performances went and I hated being wise to it.
Andy gave my mum a pair of karaoke mics for her birthday.
He knows she’s never done karaoke in her life and in fact the most modern song she’s ever sung is Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in the church choir. And as I saw her open the gift, trying to think of something polite to say, I thought about how Andy always does whatever Andy wants to do. I thought back on all the presents I’d bought for his mum over the years and how much time I’d put into each of them – how I’d listened every time she said she liked a piece of jewellery I wore or mentioned a book she wanted to read and mentally noted it for her birthday and Christmas. Andy kept laughing to me afterwards about how baffled my mum had looked when she opened the present. And I realized he’d chosen not to be thoughtful but to be funny instead. To no one but himself.
I challenged a political view of Andy’s, which led to an argument, and he said: ‘I would love you no matter what your opinions were.’
And I know he was telling the truth. He would have loved me unquestioningly and stubbornly forever. And I don’t know if I want to be loved like that.
The next day, as we stood in front of the Venus de Milo in the Louvre, I looked over his shoulder and saw that he was googling himself.
Specifically, he was googling ‘Did Ask or Task air in France?’
I know why he was doing it: it was because he was feeling sore about the conversation with his agent and he needed reassurance that he wasn’t wasting his life, that his work had had some impact on the world. He wanted to know if there was even the tiniest possibility that as he walked around the cobbled streets of Paris, a French person might spot him and say, ‘Isn’t that Andy Dawson? From that unknown subtitled English game show that only ran for eight episodes?’, despite the fact he’d never been recognized in his home country. He needed to have hope that this could happen, more than he needed to take in the beauty and history of the famous ancient Greek sculpture that was right in front of him. More than he needed to hold the hand of the woman he was in love with, who was standing right next to him.
I once heard a theory about the first relationship that occurs after a big relationship ends. It’s called the 90/10 rule. The theory goes: whatever the crucial 10 per cent is that was missing from your partner who was otherwise totally right for you is the thing you look for in the following person. That missing 10 per cent becomes such a fixation that, when you do find someone who has it, you ignore the fact they don’t have the other 90 per cent that the previous partner had.
i mean so true