I wanted to celebrate the good news immediately. ‘Let’s get a bottle of something. My shout,’ I suggested to Ricardo.
‘But we’re already going to Carlos’s party.’
‘But I don’t know him.’
‘Doesn’t matter. You’re invited.’
After what had happened with the standover gang, I was becoming more accepted in the prison and Ricardo had started introducing me to other inmates. Occasionally, they invited me around to their rooms. The rest of the prison was also celebrating that night because it was the twenty-first of June – the longest night of the year and around the same time as la Noche de San Juan – a significant date in the Bolivian calendar. I wasn’t sure if it was the longest night, but it certainly felt like the coldest, and it took several rums to get warm.
A group of about seven of us, including Ricardo, Carlos, Carlos’s wife and some of her girlfriends, were sitting around a table in Carlos’s room. Not all the women who came into San Pedro were wives, sisters and girlfriends. Sometimes women accompanied their friends to parties. The girl sitting next to me was beautiful. After a few more rums, I felt confident enough to try out my Spanish, which was improving rapidly by that stage. I couldn’t understand every word she said, but if I concentrated, I could follow the general conversation well enough.
Then someone pulled out a small plastic bag of cocaine and handed it around with a key to sniff puntitos, which was done by scooping a small amount onto the tip of the key, putting it just below your nose and inhaling. Everyone took two small puntitos, one in each nostril.
When the bag came around to me, I said that I was quite happy just drinking. However, they insisted that I try some.
‘Come on, Thomas. You’ve got your first room in San Pedro. You’re one of us now. Join the party. For Pinos.’ Everyone raised their glasses and toasted the section.
I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so, instead of arguing, I dipped the key into the bag and pretended to scoop some coke onto its tip, then held the bag in front of my face as I sniffed so that they wouldn’t notice that I was pretending. Everyone cheered, except the girl sitting next to me.
‘You didn’t have any,’ she cried, pointing at me. ‘There was nothing there.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘No, you didn’t. I saw you. Cheat!’ She was half-joking, but it was also embarrassing because she was showing me up in front of my new friends in the section.
‘I did.’
‘OK. Do it again, then!’ she challenged, grabbing the bag and holding the key under my nose, loaded up with a huge puntito.
‘But I just did,’ I protested, looking to Ricardo for support. Ricardo shrugged his shoulders casually, as if to say, ‘I don’t care. It’s up to you,’ but at the same time, ‘Why not? You’re not going to die or anything.’
‘Come on. You need to take your medicine or you’ll catch a cold.’ The beautiful girl waved the key around in the air and made an aeroplane noise. With all her confidence and joking around, she had everyone laughing and watching to see what I would do. There was no getting out of it. I was trapped.
‘OK, then.’ I let her put the key right up to my nostril and when she nodded, I sucked in hard through my nose.
‘And another one for this side,’ she said, administering more medicine to my left nostril. ‘And one more for good luck,’ she made me take a third dose that was even bigger than the first two. ‘That’s it. There’s a good little boy,’ she kissed me on the cheek and the others laughed before returning to their conversations.
I had been trafficking drugs for years, but that was the first time in my life I had ever tried cocaine.
The girl was smiling at me. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t that hard now, was it?’
‘Mmm.’
‘How do you feel? Do you like it?’
Yes, I liked it. I liked the feeling it gave me and I liked the way she was looking at me, but at the time I also thought that what she had done was wrong. No one should put pressure on anyone else to take drugs, I thought, especially if it was their first time. What if they became addicted or something went wrong? But now I don’t blame that girl for pushing me to try some, because later I was to do the same thing myself many times with tourists who visited the prison. Maybe what they say about drug-takers is true – that they try to get everyone around them hooked, so they don’t feel so bad about it themselves. I’m sure that neither of us had any evil intentions. Maybe it just comes down to this: when you’re happy, you want everyone else around you to be happy too.
In any case, I certainly can’t say that it was the girl’s fault the next time I tried cocaine, or the time after that. It wasn’t like someone was pointing a gun at my head. I made the choice. I liked cocaine the first time I tried it. I liked it the second time. I’ve liked it ever since. At times it’s been my saviour. At times it’s almost been the death of me. But even when I started doing it too much, I didn’t blame anyone for it, not that beautiful girl, not even the drug itself. I sometimes ask myself whether my life would have been better without cocaine. Really, I can’t say. It certainly would have been different. But I can tell you this: it certainly wasn’t what I thought it would be and it certainly isn’t like they say it is.
I was expecting the effect to be instantaneous, but nothing happened for a few minutes; when it did kick in, it was nowhere near as strong as I expected. The first thing I noticed was that my front teeth went numb, followed gradually by other parts of my mouth. Next, I realised that I was wide awake, but the effect still wasn’t that strong. I felt more confident, but it wasn’t at all like being drunk because I was still in control of everything and it didn’t affect my coordination. The world didn’t look any different; it didn’t go blurry and I didn’t see things that weren’t there. It didn’t even change the way that I thought. It was just a good feeling. In fact, I felt better than good – I felt very good. No, I felt fantastic. For several minutes I couldn’t think of anything except how amazingly happy I was feeling. It was like I was flying in my emotions. I can’t describe it any other way. I felt that I was somehow more alive than I’d ever been before.
For several minutes I couldn’t get beyond that feeling. I had never experienced anything like it. I looked around the room at everyone else, wondering how they could act as if everything was so normal, when it so clearly wasn’t.
The girl next to me caught my eye again. She smiled at me and raised her eyebrows, and I smiled back. Then we launched into a long conversation. I had no trouble speaking to her because my thoughts were coming to me more quickly. In fact, my Spanish seemed to have improved and I began talking non-stop. If I didn’t know the word for something, it didn’t bother me; I could get around it or have a guess based on the word in English. Sometimes I’d get it wrong, but that didn’t matter, she could understand me and I could understand her too. I could now do what I wanted and say what I wanted. I was communicating! But most of all, I was just plain happy. I felt connected to the people in the room. Everyone was talking, but even without saying anything, it’s like we were all on the same level.
‘I told you,’ she put her hand on my knee and kissed my cheek again. She knew.
The strongest part of the effect began wearing off after half an hour. I was still high, but I wanted more. I had two more puntitos when the bag came around again, which brought me back up, although not like the first time. A third set kept me high, but after that it reached a plateau.
When I did more after that, my leg started shaking and I couldn’t stop it. My nose also started sweating and I could feel my heart racing.
‘That’s just nerves,’ Ricardo said to me in English when he saw me observing my knees as if they weren’t part of my own body. ‘It’s perfectly normal. Have some more rum if you feel nervous.’
‘No, I feel great. Thanks for this. It’s amazing.’
‘What did you expect, my friend? That’s San Pedro vintage you’re trying there.’
‘Well, then. I think maybe I should get thrown in prison more often.’
Ricardo laughed. ‘But remember it’s your first time, inglés, so take it easy. You really don’t need too much coke if it’s pure.’
It was probably good advice, but I didn’t follow it. I didn’t want to take it easy. I wanted more cocaine and more to drink with it. Everyone did. We partied until ten o’clock the next day. The Bolivians had been right: it definitely was the longest night of the year.