WHAT’S A GIRL TO DO? A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE PENAL KIND

“Is this seat taken?” he asked.
I removed my backpack from the seat next to me on the bus, and he sat down.
He looked to be in his early thirties. Attractive in a boy-next-door kind of way. We got to chatting and he asked where I was headed. “I’m visiting a friend in Santa Barbara,” I told him. I was twenty-two at the time, a young single mom. This would be my first weekend away from my baby son. “You?”
“I have family in L.A. Haven’t seen them in a while. I just got out.”
“Out?”
“From prison.”
I took a closer look and noticed the clothes he had on – khakis and a button-down shirt – were new. Also, he’d boarded the bus in Lompoc, the location of a state penitentiary. “Oh,” I replied, feeling a bit nervous. “How long were you in for?” From the length of his sentence I’d know the severity of his crime.
“Three years.”
Whew. I wouldn’t have to change seats, since it didn’t appear he was a murderer or a rapist. But, jeez, where do you go from ‘I was in prison?’ I’d never been in a situation like this before, so I didn’t know if it would be rude to ask what he’d been in for. I decided to go for it. I’d never met a real, live ex-con before. I was a newbie writer back then and figured it would be grist for the mill.
“Possession,” he informed me. The drug had been marijuana, in a large enough quantity to charge him with intent to distribute but not a Mexican-drug-cartel-sized bust. Okay. I could deal with that. He broke the law, which was not good, but it wasn’t hard drugs and he hadn’t killed anyone.
We chatted the rest of the way to Santa Barbara, where we both got off. As we were parting company, he made an unusual request. “May I kiss you?” He explained that he hadn’t kissed a woman in three years and wanted nothing more in the moment than to kiss a pretty girl.
I was flummoxed. This was a first. I’d had plenty of guys who I didn’t know very well try to kiss me, but none had asked politely like this guy had and none had been fresh out of prison. But, like I said, he didn’t seem at all threatening. So my twenty-two-year old self answered, “Sure, why not?”
The kiss was brief but strangely passionate, and mercifully, no groping was involved. As we drew apart, I saw other people watching, the smiles on their faces (as in “ah, young love”) giving way to looks of confusion when I called after the guy as he was walking away to get back on the bus, “Nice meeting you!”
The memory of that curious encounter has stayed with me all these years and did in fact prove to be grist for the mill. In my work-in-progress an ex-con newly released from prison after twenty years returns to his hometown where he was found guilty of murder to find the real murderer. I tapped into my memory of the ex-con I’d met…and kissed, while creating the character of Jonas Magnuson. If I learned anything from my experience it was that things aren’t always what they seem.
Never more so than in fiction.

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