It is freezing in here. Inexplicably, the heat was turned on and then immediately shut off. After lying in the dark for an untold amount of time, I reluctantly rose from the shelter of my vomit-green blankets to empty my bladder. I quickly retreated to my cask and stared at the ceiling from a crack that allowed me to breathe more easily. I pressed the light button on my watch. It read 1:19 a.m., but it was daylight saving time, so it must actually have been 2:19 a.m. I can vaguely hear the garbled conversation between two men. It appeared that one guy was smoking K2, also known as synthetic marijuana, and he wasn’t sharing. Out of boredom, I tuned in.
“Yo, why you actin’ crazy?” one guy asked.
“I don’t think you want none of this, son,” the other guy said, refusing to give him a smoke. “I got the ‘Rona (coronavirus). I’m tryin’ to save you,” he said, laughing in a sinister tone.
“So what? It ain’t gonna affect me. I already had it. I got the antibodies. I’m immune… all the way passssst that!”
“Aight, dog. Here.”
I was stunned at the degree of insanity and sheer recklessness of the conversation.
I thought back to when I used to get high, when I used to sell drugs, when I ran the streets and when I was morally deficient. Still, the dialogue left me speechless. I wondered, would I have done the same? As an addict, would I have knowingly smoked behind someone who had the coronavirus?
Although I no longer indulge, I have accepted that I will always be an addict. As an addict, would I have convinced myself that I was immune? My addiction would have surely rationalized that the man was lying about having the virus and just did not want to share his K-2.
I stayed up most of that night, weighing the many ways that fate brings a person to a place in life where we are able to make such callous decisions.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.
Poor Choices
