Behind the BarsFiveo1

In my cell, there functions a society. A society developed in the barrios of Colombia.

We have a list on the bathroom wall that consists of the names of the men behind the walls. My name does not change. Others come and go, but mine stays the same. A list. A rotation.

This is a social dictatorship. An economy driven by drugs. Marijuana. Cocaine. Tusi. Shrooms. And some other shit I just fucked with. I tried shit. Period.

It is brought in — 100 grams of coke here, 250 grams of marijuana there, bags of others. A controlling party finances and funds the minions who wrap and package for sale and distribution.

Along the way, in our society of eighteen men, the product is cut. Lost. Stolen. Sold by the constituents within these walls.

The police already extracted their cut as the product passed from hand to hand. From freedom to oppression. From A to Z.

Inflation.

—

So back to the list. The list of inmates who come and go. It fluctuates. Inmates — their transition unknown. Some short. Some long. Mine without measure.

A reality hidden from the world behind these bars. A fluctuation of fifteen to twenty-four men as the seasons change.

A society built with terror and fear.

Continually and ignorantly repeating the past. No hope for intellectual growth outside the tried and true pattern of narcotics. The revolving pattern of shit running downhill. The original pyramid scheme.

—

The names on the list define a moment in the order of things. A cog in the wheel. Those moments of simple labor had a value. A value that could be traded for a ball or a baggie.

The addictions serving as a natural call to arms. A labor force upon request.

Others hold securely to their ranks of slavery for the access it provides them. To have or not to have. In a society of nothing, the splitting of atoms. The remnants of dust.

Still others wait for their handout. The society developed on the entrance fee of a plume or a bump. The ruling society of ruthlessness driven by self-preservation of potential and imminent loss of respect.

A labor force up for bid to build your reputation. Your criminal empire.

—

And me?

I did drugs in prison. Let me be clear about that. I am not a saint. I have never claimed to be.

Cocaine. Marijuana. Tusi. Shrooms. And some other shit I just fucked with. I tried shit. Period.

Not because I was addicted. Not because I needed an escape from the concrete box and the steel door and the eighteen angry men. Not for any reason that makes a good story.

I tried shit because I was there. Because it was available. Because I have always been curious about what happens when you press buttons you are not supposed to press.

The car. The locks. The borders. The drugs.

Same impulse. Same lack of fear. Same irrational intuition that has driven me my entire life.

—

I did not become an addict. That is not a brag. That is luck. Pure, dumb, unearned luck.

I watched men around me lose themselves to the drugs. Their souls draining out through their nostrils. Their personalities flattening into nothing. Their bodies becoming vehicles for nothing but the next hit, the next bump, the next plume.

That could have been me. It was not.

But I am not better than them. I am not stronger. I am just different. My curiosity is different. My demons are different. My escape hatches are different — I had a hammock, a notebook, a pen, and a story to write.

—

I wrote this on November 9, 2022. I was in cell #3 at the Envigado police station. Twenty-four months stretched out before me like an ocean I could not see across.

The list on the bathroom wall grew longer. New names. New faces. New stories. Some stayed a week. Some stayed a month. Some — like me — stayed so long their names became permanent. Etched into the paint. Unerasable.

I learned the economy quickly. I participated in it. Not as a seller. Not as a distributor. As a consumer. A customer. A man who occasionally wanted to feel something other than the weight of his own choices.

—

The police knew. Of course they knew. They took their cut at the door. The drugs entered. The money exited. Everyone pretended otherwise.

In Colombia, that is how prison works. Not justice. Not rehabilitation. A business. And the inmates are inventory.

I was inventory. But I was also a customer.

—

Let me be honest in a way I have not been in other entries.

I did drugs in prison because I was bored. Because I was lonely. Because the days blurred together — each one identical to the last — and I needed something to mark the passage of time. A before and after. A line in the sand.

The drugs provided that. A bump of coke meant the next hour would be different from the last. A hit of weed meant the weight on my chest would lift — temporarily. A few shrooms meant the concrete walls would breathe, and the steel bars would dance, and I would remember that I was alive.

I tried tusi because someone handed it to me and said, "Try this." I tried it. I did not die. I did not ascend to a higher plane of consciousness. I just felt strange for a few hours and then felt normal again.

Some other shit? I don't even remember what it was called. Some powder. Some pill. Some thing that someone swore would change my life.

It did not change my life. It changed an afternoon. That was enough.

—

I am not proud of this. I am not ashamed of it either.

It is just what happened. Just what I did. Just another button pressed. Another door opened. Another experience filed away in the messy filing cabinet of my brain.

—

The list on the bathroom wall did not care about my drug use. It only cared about rotation. Who was in. Who was out. Who had paid their debt to society — or to the man who ran the cell.

My name never changed.

But every day, I watched others disappear. Transferred. Released. Sometimes dead.

The list updated. The economy continued. The drugs flowed. The cycle repeated.

—

This is not a story with a moral. There is no lesson here that will save you.

This is just what I saw. What I did. What I tried.

Eighteen men. One cell. One toilet. One shower. No windows. No hope. A bathroom wall covered in names. And a lime green hammock where a gringo lay, high on god knows what, writing down his sins for strangers to read.

—

I did drugs in prison. Cocaine. Marijuana. Tusi. Shrooms. And some other shit I just fucked with.

I tried shit. Period.

That is the truth. Take it or leave it.

It will not change what I did. It will not change who I am.

But at least now you know.

All of it.