IT’S FEBRUARY AGAIN AND I’M FEELING MISERABLE. I put up the front like I want help, which I do, but I’m jaded. I’m not really getting the best help in Creedmoor. The programming is atrocious. The groups, when they do run, are more like mandatory time wasters where they talk at you but avoid real contact. The professionals should teach by example but all they demonstrate is apathy and burnt-out indifference. And most of the Mahatas appear to be loafers, opportunists, and coldblooded gangsters on the sneak tip. I know the system is faulty, and at times detrimental to some trapped up in it, but I still naively believe it will work if you work with it. So far it isn’t effective, and that’s frightening.
Slapped with retention, I have no one to confide in. Feeling alone and afraid, I am quick to buy in to the naysaying of Angel and Yucifer. They are the mental health Mutt and Jeff. They say, “You’ll never leave Creedmoor.”
Yucifer is a towering, lop-gaited bear of a man who pled insanity after stabbing a diplomat on the steps of the UN. I know him vaguely through noncommittal nods we shared in Mid-Hudson, as I was escorted to art rehab and he was on his way to an upholstery workshop. He arrived at Creedmoor just months before me. He claims to associate with the devil, even introduces himself as such, while dropping Muslim doctrines in fluent Arabic. He is presumed menacing and induces great fear in the ward staff for his slow strolling, tongue rolling, and popped eyes, which protrude out of his black skin like lidded golf balls. Even with those off-putting physical tics, I know Yucifer as an extremely intelligent and sensitive guy. He’s the Building 40 chess champ (staff included) and has a filibuster ability that would rival many in Washington. He also has a poly-substance addiction that would rival many others who are presently deceased. I have seen him down fifths of straight rum, joint after joint of marijuana, chase that with crack, and even shoot up heroin, all in one day.
Angel, his partner in crime, is five foot nothing with the pencil-thin moustache and dramatically bowed legs of a western desperado. He lived all his life in Spanish Harlem until his heroin addiction drove him to madness and mayhem, murdering his girlfriend and her mother some fifteen years ago. He possesses the most evil eyes I think I’ve ever seen, redder and deader than Christopher Lee’s Dracula, thanks largely to the whiskey, weed, and horse he devours in a round robin of wanton abuse.
Like Bayou next door, they inspire fear, respect, and need in the other addicts on and off the ward. I’m surprised I fell in so quickly with them. I believe it was due in part to the lack of coherent conversation found on the ward. I’m not a bug out, and they determined I’m not a threat, thus I am all right. We were also all insanity plea patients. We confide in each other, we look out for each other. We pool our weekly eight dollar personal needs allowance to order in Chinese food, though they are always loaded, and I front them quarters for the phone, though they usually use it to call their connection.
Yucifer and Angel control an impenetrable drug operation from 6-B. It is invincible because the staff makes it possible to continue and flourish. Many Mahatas act as moles, lookouts, and even suppliers of the dope that the two patients sell. Some of the Mahatas conduct their own business as couriers and pushers to patients who can afford their inflated prices for speedy, reliable service and discretion. For thirty or forty bucks you can score a small bottle, or a dime bag of weed, or two fives of crack. The extra vig is the price of convenience and silence.
When out of depressed desperation I feel the itch to smoke again, Yucifer fronts me a joint gratis. While high I get loose and cocky, giving them the laugh of their lives when I tell them the amount of time I believe I’ll spend in Creedmoor. With thirty years between them, my estimate of “two to three more years tops” is met first with incredulous stares, shaking heads, and then uproarious laughter.
“Drugs, a fatality, and gettin’ caught fuckin’ the staff? Yeah. Y’know, you may get out sooner than that,” Angel crows before nodding out.
When given the cold facts from the other insanity plea patients as well as Barry Newfeld on New York State’s excruciatingly slow handling of my type of pariah, I see no alternative but to give up hope and resort to the dope I used to use and used to be. The staff knows I am getting high. They just turn a blind eye (and stuffy nose), much like they do with Angel, Yucifer, and others who cop and use on the wards. So long as I don’t do it right in front of them, show them a modicum of respect, and of course don’t bug out, I am safe to do whatever I want.