There are many ways to meet women. Church. Coffee shops. Grocery stores. Dating apps. Mutual friends. And then there is the Jefferson County Jail. I do not recommend that last one. The atmosphere is poor, the lighting is harsh, and you never actually get to see who you are talking to. It is the original blind date, with guards.
I learned that when human beings are deprived of ordinary communication, they will invent extraordinary alternatives. Somebody in the Jefferson County Jail had apparently invented the toiletphone, and I was there to witness it. Unfortunately. I will spare you the plumbing details. Let us just say Alexander Graham Bell never imagined his invention would be improved upon in quite this way, and no phone company will ever put it in a commercial.
The men’s jail was on the sixth floor. The women’s jail was directly beneath us on the fifth. Every evening, men up and down our cell block started shouting toward the floor below. “OH, NOW FIF’ FLO’! OH, NOW FIF’ FLO’!” That was the call. Just that, over and over, like a rooster with a court date.
It became part of the rhythm of the place, like a dinner bell, or church bells on a Sunday morning, except nobody was calling anybody to worship. Well, not exactly.
In our cell, the name I kept hearing was KK. I never saw her. I heard her voice. To this day I could not tell you what she looked like, how old she was, or what brought her to the fifth floor. She was a voice through concrete, and in that place a voice was sometimes all anybody had. Elsewhere I could hear other men shouting, but I could not hear who answered. All I knew was that our cell had KK, and the guys were interested. Very interested. I have seen less enthusiasm at a Crimson Tide game.
Meanwhile, I was lying on the floor, face to the wall.
I did not have a bunk. Some nights I was directly on the concrete. Other nights I had a thin plastic mat and a blanket, which is the jail’s version of a luxury upgrade. And I was terrified. While the courtship went on above me, around me, and through the plumbing, I was trying to make myself as small as possible. I was not looking for romance. I was looking for morning.
Today I can laugh about it. I can laugh at the sheer inventiveness of people refusing to let concrete and steel stop them from reaching out. There is something almost admirable in it. Locked doors, steel bars, concrete floors, and still those men found a way to say, Is anybody down there? Can you hear me?
That is not just a jailhouse question. That is a human question. It may be the oldest prayer there is.
But I cannot laugh about how frightened I was. Both things are true. I have learned that a story can be funny and painful at the same time. Most of the best ones are. The laughter does not cancel the fear, and the fear does not cancel the laughter. They just sit together in the same cell, like a couple of reluctant roommates who have agreed not to discuss politics.
People need people, even on the fifth floor, especially on the sixth. God made us that way. In the very beginning, He looked at Adam alone in a perfect garden and said it was not good. If being alone was not good in paradise, it certainly is not good in the Jefferson County Jail, where the landscaping is much worse.
The fifth floor taught me something about loneliness. We tend to think of it as a feeling. In jail it was a condition, as real as the concrete. You could be in a crowded cell block, surrounded by men day and night, and still feel completely cut off. The shouting was not really about romance. It was about being heard. There is a reason solitary confinement is considered one of the harshest punishments a system can hand out. We are not built to be alone. We break down without connection. We start forgetting who we are.
I was fighting it too, in my own quieter way. Lying on that floor, I prayed. Not eloquent prayers. I have given eloquent prayers in my life, usually in public, usually with an eye on the audience. These were not those. These were short. Help me. Get me through tonight. Let me see morning. God heard every one of them, even though nobody on the fifth floor ever knew my name.
I do not know what happened to KK. I do not know her real name, her story, or whether she ever went home to people who loved her. I hope she did. I hope all of them did. Men nobody on the outside would think twice about, calling out in the dark, hoping somebody would call back. Whatever brought them there, they were still made in the image of God. So was KK. So was I, lying on that floor with my face to the wall.
When you have been that cut off, ordinary conversation becomes a small miracle. A friend’s voice on the phone. A neighbor waving across the street. A cashier asking how your day is going. I notice those things now. I am grateful for them in a way I never was before. I may be the only man in Birmingham who gets emotional when the bank teller says have a nice day.
Some people spend their whole lives behind walls nobody else can see. Loneliness, grief, addiction, fear. They are calling out too. Oh, now fifth floor. Is anybody there? Jesus spent a remarkable amount of time with people everyone else overlooked. Lepers outside the city. Tax collectors nobody would eat with. A woman at a well who came at noon to avoid the crowd. Over and over He stopped for the voice everyone else ignored. If He did that, I can at least slow down long enough to listen. Some of those voices are closer than the fifth floor. Some are at our own kitchen tables.
So the next time you are tempted to complain about a dropped call or a slow text, remember those men hollering down through the floor. They would have given almost anything for one bar of signal.
“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.”
Genesis 2:18 (KJV)
— JC
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