I did something stupid on Friday. I was so distressed at being assigned the porter job that I took the offer of a cigarette. And I’ve smoked all weekend.
But there is hope for me. These are not those smooth, filtered menthol lights that were my downfall in lives previous to this one. They are hand-rolled, unfiltered and non-mentholated, and make your heart beat fast and your head spin. I experienced some temporary satisfaction for about 10 minutes after smoking one, but on the whole it has ratcheted up a wired feeling in my head and dried up my mouth and I’m hoping, hoping it’s not too late and I can pull back from the brink of re-addicting myself.
I admit I did like the social aspect of it, which is probably the real reason I picked up again. “Let’s go have a cigarette” is such a lovely excuse for a good gossip. And after eating, walking back to the dorms, and while waiting in line, it gives one the illusion of doing something. Cigarettes are the death knell for people who need to think themselves productive. Writer’s Block feels a lot less like Writer’s Block when you’re smoking, as if it’s a visual manifestation of the thinking process that may or may not be occurring in one’s head. But it is beyond stupid for me to re-addict myself, because it is out of the question that I smoke upon paroling, and I’m just recreating the likelihood of that awful withdrawal that was physically even more difficult than withdrawal from the meth.
I remember after my first arrest, when I was sans cigarettes for 72 hours. I was finally bailed out and disgorged onto the pavement, outside Twin Towers, (penniless of course, because they take all of your money) at 4 in the morning. An enterprising Armenian taxi driver with a cell phone immediately walked up to ask me where I wanted to go to, meaning was there someone who I knew would pay the cab fare when I got there? But before I called to warn ahead, he knew to offer me a cigarette. He didn’t even smoke, he told me in the cab, but to a man, the cigarette was always gratefully accepted. I’m sure it also clinched the deal every time.
So I’m using the technique of a public confession to see if it helps me get back off the nicotine. If this doesn’t work, I may have to become addicted to SNUS, a Swedish nicotine chew that is odorless and non-cancer causing. I doubt that it can be sent in here, but I’m hoping I just liked nicotine because it went with the meth use, and without meth, smoking has lost its grip. I didn’t particularly miss it before Minimum, but smoking was not allowed in Reception, so it was easy enough. Then everyone was suddenly puffin’ away. For those of you who can’t imagine surviving the nightmare of all the smoke, there is a huge fan at the end of the dorm hallway that not only cools us admirably (we’d have been dying in the dog days of August without it.) but keeps the smoke dissipated efficiently.
This morning, at 8 and 11, I swept and mopped C-wing, and at 8, also swept and mopped the bathroom floor. The reason this simple menial work drives me nuts is because there are always a few inmates who don’t want you to sweep their “driveways,” or don’t think you do it right and take the mop from you and do their area themselves, or who get irritated because they are trying to sleep and you accidentally clang the foot of their bunk trying to do your job well. Most porters don’t think twice about these sorts of problems, but I am always tense that any little thing is going to get me yelled at or worse.
Part of this can be ascribed to my congenital nervousness, the other part is a legitimate picking up on the reality that there is an implied threat of violence that runs under the surface of almost all interaction among the criminal class, in or out of prison. So many of these men are ready to feel themselves insulted at the drop of the hat, and they see violence as part of the solution, rather than the problem. Well I suppose it does resolve the issue sometimes, if your goal is to intimidate, dominate, terrorize or control. In the case of the U.S. in Iraq—control.
This is the problem with US foreign policy. We want to control the world and we wonder why the world is rebelling. Bush is, quite honestly, I think, under the delusion we are a benevolent power. He can’t really quite grasp that what’s good for America isn’t automatically good for the world. He suffers from the same terminal subjectivity that is rampant here.
And while I’m dumping on Dubya, let me point out that he’s not really against drugs or drug use, he’s just against getting caught. Otherwise why didn’t he turn himself in for his past use of cocaine?
All right, all right. I’m obviously irritable either from the nicotine or my anticipation of withdrawal. This was an odd day because we waited in the yard for 45 minutes to go into breakfast, and no one had any idea what the cause of the delay was. (It is often violence elsewhere, which is why delays make everyone tense).
I had a chance to observe that young black men aren’t really comfortable wearing their pants under their ass, because they have to continually suppress the urge to pull them back up. There is not, never will be, nor ever has been, a fashion that is more guaranteed to cause intense embarrassment by its wearer when they look back on it 20 years from now. On this I would stake my reputation, if I knew what my reputation is at this point in time.
MCO 2004
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