by G. Jack Urso
Jose was one of
my first students in the college program I began running at Hudson Correctional
Facility in 1989. My first real impression of him came the first night of the
Spring 1990 semester when he skipped class, claiming to be ill. I went to his
cottage to deliver his books to him and the correctional officer pointed down a
short hallway to his dorm room. I went and found him and several other inmates
smoking a joint.
Jose looked at
me like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Everyone went silent.
“Uh . . . ” he
muttered, “Want a hit?”
The other
inmates broke up laughing. I declined his gracious invitation and never
reported the incident. I couldn’t fault them for finding some solace from being
in the can.
Jose was
incarcerated for raping a minor. Rumors are a dime a dozen in jail, but the
word was the victim was a child under 12. There is a common perception that
child rapists are tortured in prison by other inmates. While that may be true,
I never saw any evidence of it. Most inmates are simply not willing to risk
their “good time” satisfying the need for justice of those who put them behind
bars. If someone does get attacked, it's often for reasons other than their
crimes. Jose quietly completed his degree and then transferred to another
facility.
A couple years
later, Jose transferred back to Hudson looking about thirty pounds lighter.
Jose was somewhat slight to begin with, so the weight loss was noticeably
unhealthy. His brown skin seemed paler, his eyes watery.
Entering my
office, Jose seemed anxious to speak with me. I thought it curious because I
seldom spoke to Jose when he was a student. He had me pegged as an
over-educated college boy too nice to drop a dime on him when I caught him
smoking weed in the dorm room.
He closed my
office door and told me that he had AIDS, and he was dying.
I was stunned;
no one had ever opened up to me like this before. My role was as an academic
advisor, not a therapist. I advised students about which courses to take and
which majors to declare — questions about life and death were not in my job
description.
With all the
counselors on staff, I wondered why Jose elected to tell me. He was not in the
college program anymore and, as I previously stated, I had little interaction
with him while he was a student.
I read Randy
Shilts' massive book, And the Band Played
On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. Indeed, it sat on a shelf in
my office when I took over the job. A compelling mystery, I read it on lunch
breaks and between programs — several times.
A family friend died because of AIDS-related complications, so I had
some sympathy most, at the time, did not. In the early 1990s, fear ran rampant
about the disease. People feared being touched by someone with AIDS. HIV-positive
children were driven out of their schools and communities. For someone like
Jose, a child rapist, exiting this world at this time was going to be a long,
hard journey.
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| "Could I Not Move Like a Clock?" Inmate art by Michael Nieves, 1994. (Author's collection.) |
Inmates seldom
ever speak about their crimes, and while Jose seemed to want to speak about the
weight of his life, he was unable to do so. Perhaps the fear of being rejected
by even the too-nice-for-his-own-good college kid held him back. I felt a like
a priest being asked to give last rites.
There is a
secret fantasy I think we all entertain when contemplating our own shuffling
off of the mortal coil — just who will miss us when we are gone. For someone
like Jose, who burned many bridges in his life, those numbers were few. Even
though my relationship with Jose was minimal beyond my role as an academic
advisor, I think he wanted to know there were people he had to say goodbye to even
if no one would miss him.
Speaking with
Jose, it became clear that he was analyzing his life in an entirely different
light since his diagnosis. I could sense the regret he felt for not being more
aware of the pain he caused others until now, when there was nothing he could
do about it but just lie down and die.
I know there are
many reading this now who feel Jose’s condition was the result of him sowing
the seeds of his own self-destruction and whatever lonely, pathetic death he
suffered was just reward for the crime he committed. I can't say such thoughts
did not also cross my mind.
Nevertheless,
looking at Jose and seeing the whole weight of his existence settling in on his
shoulders and pushing him into the ground with each passing moment, I figured
he didn’t need me to tell him what he already thought himself. Overwhelmed by the whole tragedy, I could only
embrace Jose and wish him Godspeed.
I never saw him
again after that. According to my research, Jose died about eight months before
his next parole hearing and exactly one month before author Randy Shilts also
died of complications brought on by AIDS.
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