title: A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women
author:  Erin George 
description: <br><strong>Erin George</strong> is an inmate at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Virginia, where she is serving a life sentence for murder. <br><br><strong>Robert Johnson</strong> is Professor of Justice, Law, and Society in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He has published extensively on prison and the death penalty, and is the editor of Victor Hassine's <em>Life Without Parole,</em> Fourth Edition (OUP, 2009).<br>
zlib_text: PULP
  
  
  Requiem for Spider
  
  By Reed Farrel Coleman
  
  Her heart was lonelier than Sergeant Pepper’s and the whole fucking band. I
  could see that from across the bar, not that across the bar was like seeing
  across space and time. It was more like twenty feet and, at that time of
  night, the view was relatively unobstructed. She had last call girl written
  all over her. Don’t misunderstand, she wasn’t a call girl. She wasn’t even
  much of a girl anymore. Thirty, at least, she hadn’t fit that description for
  quite some time. What I mean to say is that she was the kind of woman who
  probably had more than her share of men, but only because she understood that
  desperation was her ally. She was that pair of shoes on the discount rack you
  bought because you needed shoes and you only had so much money and the store
  was closing. When the bartender screamed “Last call for alcohol,” it was her
  mating song. She was a last call girl.
  
  I watched her quarry approach, lean into her, buy her a drink; watched 