Some junkie-adjacent people might consider it a privilege (I did at one point) to be offered hard drugs, weed, cigarettes, & alcoholic drinks so freely—but, it absolutely is not. It is a tool to make one more complacent, a means of control over one’s bodily autonomy to get them physically & psychologically addicted (could you even have one without the other…?) to a substance.
Within a few days, I have been offered hard drugs twice, along with alcohol & smoke on one occasion. This was while riding the Bay Area Rail Transit system, where it is illegal to have any of those things, which does not stop people (MAYBE including me). I’ve been riding quite regularly since I moved back to the Bay Area in the summer of last year, and I do not typically get offered fentanyl or methamphetamine while riding (though, innumerably I have been around it). I think I understand the change, it might have something to do with the branding of a cross on my right cheekbone and a St Peter cross on my left. The blatant “born-against” act of tattoos on my face makes me more approachable to the societal “undesirables” that I pray so hard for, I hold no ill will toward them, even as they might aggressively come onto me.
This weekend I spent my time in a small town in Texas, a real test of what I have done—this is where I found people who did not wish to make eye contact with me. I did run into an older gentleman who shared with me that he also had lived in San Francisco—off the Haight in the 70s, I thought it amusing to encounter him in a seemingly unlikely place. This was not the only Californian I had run into, thus making me feel quite at home in a new state, even in a region where my least favorite denominations of church might rule.
Despite all the discouragement I received before and after making the decision to express myself, I don’t regret it, and I am relatively unbothered by any change of perception that I have begun to receive. Judgmental fellows take themselves out of the social pool for me—what an unexpected way of saving myself energy in a soul-sucking world.
Even as I am aware that I am the Devil himself, or some sort of demonic entity—I am in a content state that the more I practice this life for myself first and foremost, the more respect I receive in the grand scheme of this game. While there are people who look down on me, that is of no matter to me, for it is inevitable that some would put their noses up realizing all the convictions I have stapled to my conscience.
To an extent, I understand how our country’s society works. I can take a seat behind the eyes of those with feeble hands, fumbling the controller they hardly have a grip on. I don’t care for it. I choose to ignore it. Optimism before the fatalistic view of domination. Free will is an option I gratefully take hold of.