Chill

I started writing Chill in prison back in 1987. He was locked away in Utica, serving 15 years to life for murder with a stick at a pool hall in East New York.



He was only nineteen.



The poor unsuspecting soul received my hand written pen pal letter postmarked from Nurenberg, West Germany while sitting bored to tears in a cold, lonely cell.



I was one of only a handful of writers to send him a letter during those 15 years. Only three of us visited him while at Utica. His mother went to take him care packages several times over the years. My lover and I went to see him in the Spring of 1992.



He saved those letters for years he told me after he finally got released. He thought I was only his brother’s Army buddy who liked to write.



One does not simply pick up a piece of paper and a pen and start writing a murderer informing him that you are his new brother, but not in-law.



It took time, lots of stamps and careful writing to draft my way into the Miller family and the heart of Chill.



I wrote about the crabs I caught from a girl I banged, the horrible field training exercises in the woods of Bavaria, my sight-seeing ventures to the Dachau Concentration Camps and other happenings from my life in a different prison of sorts.



I sent a photograph from the barracks in my tight brown t-shirt. He returned a Polaroid of himself with dread locks and a green uniform of his own. He also requested that I order him a few things from the prison approved catalog.



His wish list consisted of boom boxes and Adidas sneakers.



After all those exchanges I never had to heart to tell him I was blowing his brother.



When he got released, he came to live with my partner and I. Nobody else would have him.



He seemed surprised at the one bed in the house.



Anthony turned to him and explained, "Now Chill, you were away for a long time. Don’t tell me you remained a virgin all that time."



He grew silent and angry but didn’t kill us.


He remembered my letters and they saved us from additional murders.



When I was released from a psychiatric ward, decades later, my pen pal paid me a visit at home.



He was one of only a handful of folks to do that.



He brought me a gift, a fancy ink pen and some paper and told me to come off those drugs and write down my feelings.



He explained that he didn’t like what those drugs did to his boyfriends in Attica.