Fi's Journal

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I hate being a fat girl in summer.
I hate to be red faced and sweaty.
I dont look good in skimpy clothes that suit the weather.
It makes it hard to do the training that I need to do for the Camino.
I wish it could only be summer for 5 days a year...those are the 5 days that I go to Clovelly for the snorkelling.
The rest of the year it should be 18 degrees ...it can be sunny or drizzly...I dont care.
Mske it so!!!!!

Jonesing for my camera
Every day I walk along the Cook's river to get from Dulwich Hill to Tempe.
It is amazingly alive for a polluted inner city river.
There are fish! Lots of fish.So many that sometimes they churn up the water.
And there are loads of fishing birds.
Including 2 gorgeous pelicans.
I forget how huge their wing span is. They are clumsy on the ground...but gorgeous in the air.
The other day I saw a beautiful bird with soft grey feathers. It was some sort of cormorant I think.Kodak moment, bird standing on one leg looking intently towards the sky, wind teasing its beautiful silver grey plumage.
Have got to get my camera send down. I ache.

Writer's Block: Super-human
Mind control....over the whole population :)

Impotent
For most of the people I love, this has not been a good year.
There has been lots of loss and pain and anger, disappointment and disallusionment.
I feel helpless in the face of it.
There are some things that you cant fix.
I like problems that have solutions, I like to be able to do something. ( I can be a bit of a boy sometimes).
But right now all I can do is love them, and ache for them.

The old year is nearly dead. Long live the New Year.

Best women in the house
S was a funny old soul. She was a country woman with that laconic sense of humor. She used to say of the other girls " what would they know , they still have the print of their nappies on their arses ". S was an unrepentant 'dole cheat'. Centrelink figured that she owed them $100,00 and wanted the court to throw the book at her. She got 3 mths on account of her age...she was over 60 and was working full time as well as claiming the pension. I wondered about that, because she didnt have an extravagant lifestyle. But she has a disabled daughter in care, and a son who is a compulsive gambler. She was paying his debts and not telling her husband. S was a brave old thing. It was her first time in jail, but she was determined to tough it out. She learned the ropes quickly. She could easily have gotten out of work by pleading her age and health ( I never saw anyone take so many pills). But she was determined to take no quarter, and she worked harder than anyone in the kitchens. She did feel the cold terribly though. She frequently wore all her clothes at once. And the frosty morning were tough on her arthritis. She was also very lonely, because apart from her husband, nobody knew she was in jail. She had spun some tale for her friends and relatives, to explain her absence. She had her pride. But it meant she got no letters and no visits.

I have come to conclusion that men are incredibly weak. S's husband is afraid to drive in Sydney traffic, so he didnt visit. How utterly lame is that. Imagine leaving your partner to rot in jail for 3 mths,and not finding a way to get down here from Newcastle!

H was in a two out with S. She was in her early fifties, and so they had put the two 'old girls' in together. Both were first timers in jail, but from quite different worlds. H had married her first boyfriend, who just happened to be a minor crim. They got together when she was 13, so he had a powerful influence over her. He was your typical violent misogynist arsehole, and she lived in fear of him. His family were heavily involved in drug dealing. H had used drugs all her life. She had 3 grown up children, all involved in the family business.
When her husband went to jail again for the umpteenth time, something different happened. She met a nice man.
A nice, non violent, ordinary guy. And fell in love with him. Inspite of the risks, she decided to divorce her husband. She gave up drugs. She was ready to start a new life.
And then, it all went horribly wrong. The whole family was arrested, their little ring had been discovered. Everyone was charged, including H. Inspite of her new leaf, she got two and a half years. And her new lover was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
H was tough. She is fighting to get home detention, so she can care for her man. She is standing up to her husband, who now decides she means the world to him. She is standing up to her children , who dont want her to leave their father. She is supporting her daughters who are in the jail with her, separated from their own children. I hope she gets the new life she is fighting so hard for.

Both these women were my friends. They were kind funny and brave. On the outside we would never have met. We probably wont meet again, But they made my time bearable, and I am incredibly grateful.

M Left girls cont.

K was a wild thing. She had originally come from a small village in northern Thailand. She was one of 13 children. She has not seen her family in many years. She left for the big city with a dream of making money and sending some back home. She sex worked and straight worked her way to Australia. Along the way she discovered drugs and all the things that go with that. K was kind and passionate and funny.
In jail she loved to play volleyball. She hated the rule that you had to wear shoes, she was happiest in bare feet. She had a man on the outside who was straight and desperately trying to get her off drugs. He had cancer, and she worried about him all the time. But her spirit was cheeky and strong.She had the loudest funniest laugh, and when she started she couldnt stop. She kept us all going.
(Saw K on King St. She was released with time served. Hurray)

S was the polar opposite. She was a skinny white girl, with a big chip on her shoulder. She was incredibly dependent, manipulative and moody. She had severe epilepsy, and when things didnt go her way, she would stop taking her meds, and start fitting all over the place. This meant the screws had to come round every night and supervise her taking the meds. She would fight them all the way.
S had come from a respectable middle class family ( her words not mine ). Poor S was the black sheep. She had run away from home at a young age, gotten pregnant to a boy she met on the streets, and lost the baby to DOCS. This pattern repeated itself several times. S had 5 children, none of whom she was allowed to have contact with except by letter. Her current beau was also in jail. They had both committed a series of shop lifting offences. This was how they lived , and they accepted jail as an inevitable part of life. S spend about 1/2 of every year in jail for minor offences. She relied upon her boy utterly and was trying to avoid being let out on parole. She was terrified of having to cope without him. Welfare officers tried to set her up with housing etc, but she resisted them all the way. All she wanted was to stay in jail until he finished his sentence. In the end they had to practically kick her out the front gates. I didnt really like S. But I felt very sorry for her. i used to trade her my coffee for fruit. S hated fruit.

D was one of the much feted butches of the jail. She was a Koori girl of indeterminate age. I struggled to see the attraction. D was stupid and she was always scabbing things of you. She had big black circles under her eyes and slobbery lips. Butchness doesnt seem to compensate for that in my eyes. But she was very much courted. In the end she went to an enormous Maori femme, who pussy whipped her shamelessly. D moved out of our wing to be with this girl.

There is always a lot of musical rooms in the jail.
N went to Emu's.
L was moved back to Mullawa while awaiting trial, and when she returned she was housed in a different block.
V went to Low Needs, and so I was given her one out cell,hurray
J2 was released.

Just me and Miss C2
I was awakened abruptly on my 4th night in Mulawa, by having a torch shined in my face and being told to grab my stuff.
It was 1am and I was moving!?!!!!

I grabbed up my gear and bleary eyes, followed the 2 screws down the hallway.
The door to one of the 2 outs was open, they gestured for me to go in, slammed the door and that was it.

Huddled on the top bunk was a skinny little figure with the blankets pulled well over her head. i said hello, but got no reply, so I set about making my bunk , crawled in and went to sleep.

It wasnt until the sirens went off the next morning that we got a proper look at each other. C2 was another young one. 19 going on 12. Koori girl with big dark eyes, lots of freckles and a long skinny frame bisected by a giant surgery scar. She had been in a major car accident and only released from hospital the week before. She had lost about 3 feet of bowel and the site where the colostomy had been attached was still weeping. She had been picked up police for a series of petty crimes and fail to appears dating back nearly 2 yrs. Corrective Services, in its infinite wisdom had decided to bring her to the IMU instead of the hospital unit !

She told me that she had been terrified the night before that I would be some scary streetie, so she had just stayed quiet. But when she saw me in the light of day, she realized that although I was big , i was perfectly harmless :)

Over the next few days we developed a less than typical 'slotties' relationship. She was still very sick, and very ashamed and modest about her scar. Her bowels still werent working properly, she had bouts of explosive diahorrea that were hard to manage in the cells. I helped her clean up, turned my back when she changed, stood in front of the door when she was using the toilet. I gave her my toast, which was all she could eat. it felt good to look after someone.

She called me Mrs Power, which was cute and soon all the other inmates and even the screws were doing it. I tried to get her to call me Fi, but to her I may as well have been a hundred years old and she couldnt think of me as an equal. I was an 'Auntie" from a Koori point of view and to be treated with respect. I found this at Dillwynia too. The younger Koori girls all called me Auntie Fi.

She was a chatty little thing, madly in love with her boyfriend and desperately worried about how he was coping on the outside without her.
They lived in a squat in Redfern and she was worried that he would go off his 'done and start using again, without her there.
She was grateful for my help and understanding, and she looked after me in return by telling me all about the different prisons and how the system worked ( from a prisoners perspective...quite different from the official version in the handbook.)

I was sad to hear that after I left she went of the rails a bit, and got into trouble for stealing other inmates cigarettes. it was never an issue for us because I was a non smoker. I hope they didnt hurt her. There is no mercy for anyone who steals smokes, even someone like C2.

I know that so far I have portrayed my fellow inmates in a fairly rosy light. That is because that was my initial experience. While I was in the IMU there were no violent incidents, except for D2 slashing up, which I understand was a regular event :( . There are bad scary women in jail, and I did meet some later. But my first experiences were of a bunch of ordinary women, who treated each other fairly decently and dealt with very difficult circumstances with courage and humour.

More later.

And the big metal doors slid open and....
I am out on parole.
Thanks for all the kind wishes conveyed by the Grace. I really appreciated it.
I am still acclimatizing to the world that is not green, but I will get there.
When I have time I will write some entries about my experience in the jail system, and some handy tips , in case any of you are unlucky enough to find out for yourselves.
I am now about to wade through 3 mths worth of friends entries and emails......LOL.
Luvs yus all.

I have lost my phone........waaaaaaaaaaaah!
It is the most inconvenient thing!
I now discover I use it for everything.
Watch, alarm clock, paying bills, remembering appointments.
I never knew I loved it so til it was gone.
Come back baby...all is forgiven:(

Strangely depressed
by the news that my marriage to grace may soon be legal.
Love never lasts...sigh

I miss kink :(
Which is odd.......because I have been going on fine without it for a year now.

And then suddenly last night........I want it sooooooo badly.

I got totally nostalgic for play. The sound of floggers on hot sweaty squirming flesh. The smell of fear :) and blood and sex.
Needles sliding in like butter. All the cooing and purring and crying an beggin

I miss my favorite flogger with the motor bike handle (currently living with grace)
I miss my little hand made suede floggers that look so tame....but sting like buggery.
I miss my little pin wheel.
I miss my favourite dildoes.

Waaaaa!