Day 226 – The Skin of My Teeth
A difficult day. I was reprimanded this morning because yesterday it seems I left my “Bridging Program” worksheet in the courtyard, where I was reading a book after collecting the worksheet. (The whole thing is a charade. We get our daily worksheets, and go back to our bunks and toss them. They do not collect or check them, which is all for the best as I have little use for “Thinking is a Skill- the PMI method.”) But evidently my lost worksheet was discovered by the Big Boss, the Capo di Tutti Capi, and the Bridging Program Director said “Don’t front me off like that.” It’s an interesting expression I’ve heard a few times in prison that means: “Don’t Make me Lose Face.” I’d be fascinated to understand how it came to mean that.
I don’t think I’ll get an “A” day, which would mean I would get out a day later, but it’s possible. That would make my release date November 17th. My mother’s birthday is November 18th, so I’m cutting it very close as it is.
Speaking of my mother, I received some correspondence that reminded me how truly terrible this ordeal has been for her. The unspoken question of the letter-writer seemed to be the one my mom, in her boundless capacity to love and forgive, has not asked me. That question is “How could you…?” And, I imagine that same question has alighted in the minds of almost everyone.
I have explained at various times that living with AIDS distorted my sense of consequences. Overcoming the fear of death had as a side effect losing the fear of a lot of things, or more accurately, fear of the future. I didn’t have to worry about bad things happening to me, like prison, because I wasn’t going to be around for them to happen to me.
But then, when it started to look as if I would survive AIDS, it inflated my sense of hubris, and this fueled by by the high. I had gotten but by the skin of my teeth for so many years, I think I was addicted to that rush as much as the rush of the drugs.
I had a job interview scheduled for the day after my arrest. I sincerely hoped that would be the step that led to another step that led back to a “normal” life. This was probably an unrealistic scenario, given the hold of crystal meth on me. But I was hyperaware of the possibility of going to prison, and my legal misadventures in constructing a new identity testify to my intense desire to avoid this very situation, as much for what it would do to my family as for what it would do to me.
I think the War on Drugs is wrong and immoral, and I defy anyone to come up with a credible argument for why drugs should be treated by the law any differently than alcohol. But I do recognize that their illegality was all I needed as a reason not to sell them, and my love for my family should have been enough motivation for me to refrain from any activity that could have such a devastating impact on them. The solution was not going there at all, not getting away with it by the skin of my teeth.
I thought I was going to end my drug adventures on my own. I intended to write of the educated white boy submerging himself in the demimonde of drug-dealing and living to tell the tale. But I didn’t know how I was going to carry that out without my family figuring out that the reason the account seemed so authentic was because it WAS authentic. The ultimate irony being of course, that I am indeed finally documenting the submersion into the demimonde by an educated articulate white boy.
The way of the world does seem to be one of balance, or reciprocity. I had said it many times when I was dealing that I had yet to see anyone emerge from it unscathed, out of debt, and without a criminal record, and I turned out to be no exception. It’s not too different from an intense love affair. I have never had one in which every moment of joy was not accompanied by an eventual moment of pain. (Very often, in my case, it seems to be two parts pain for one part joy in the love department.)
Everyday for 3 years or so I artificially induced euphoria in myself. The body, the psyche eventually seemed to say “you cannot live on cake forever, you must have the meat and potatoes of real life.” Right now I am eating all the meat and potatoes I didn’t eat for so long, although it’s all rather half-baked, or overcooked, depending on your metaphorical preference.
My mother told me once my birth was one of the highlights of her life, because she had had difficult pregnancies prior to mine, and it was her first completely natural childbirth. It seems as if the universe demands some sort of payment for that joy. I can only hope that I can translate my grief and guilt over being the source of such pain to her into a birth of my own.
I hope my writing can result in a work which will seem inevitably necessary in retrospect. A worthy grandchild to present my mother, one that also emerged after a difficult gestation. There’s a Latin phrase that says if I remember well: Through Art, Redemption.
I want to live those words.
MCO 2004
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