Graffiti is in some way an expression of the will of the street. Or the ideas, at least, of the population of those willing to commit minor misdemeanors to express said ideas.
Including this one.
Somehow, a grainy cellphone (actually tablet) shot, including finger, is fitting for an essay on a graphito.
F*CK HEROIN, as I call this otherwise unnamed work of art, is shocking not because of the words. I have seen both many times. Separately. What's more shocking is the message. It is doubly politically incorrect, eschewing more common essays on cops, corporations, racial conflict, Nazi symbolism, or depictions of phalli, for a message that a graffiti artist "ought" not to say. This message could be found in any 80's anti-drug PSA, but for the specific choice of a Anglo-Saxon-derived verb. Indeed it is more effective, because no one on those PSAs implicitly claimed a personal experience on the matter.
I wonder who did it. Was he (or she) a friend of an addict? A lover? Did he himself use heroin? Or was it many, acquaintances, friends, lovers, even perhaps family, who used heroin. Perhaps later to die.
Why was the F-Bomb defused? Did the artist, who normally did not hesitate to say such words, hold off on such a serious subject? Or did he, knowing that live ammunition, as it were, would lead to more immediate cleaning, self-censor? There is no way to know. There is no tag. Only blue spray paint, and the two words. F*CK HEROIN does not answer our questions, only demand our attention.
The artist is also intelligent. Clear planning shines through every aspect. The words are stenciled, not drawn. Further, that support on which it is stenciled is not only part of I-70, but it is placed in such a way that almost anyone driving across Wheeling Island must see it.
This, as well, amazes me. Perhaps it is the simple urban decay of an economically depressed city--there is a graphito in Wheeling, Moon Dog, that has been in Wheeling for perhaps a decade, while nearby Stars of David were painted over. But F*CK HEROIN has laid undisturbed for months. Is it that, being on an interstate, some Federal permission would be required to paint over it? Is it that no one wants to close the on-ramp to the busiest bridge on Wheeling Island?
Or do those in power quietly agree, a passive aggressive offensive in the war against drugs?
The Ohio Valley has been devastated by drugs. I think of what I hear and see, an endless war of attrition against a seemingly invincible foe. Needles found in parking lots, young adults found unconscious in alleys, beds in rehab facilities full, and on the news 11 overdosed in 24 hours... And it never ends. Even crime has increased, in what is nominally small town rural America.
I think also of my time at the local psych ward, where I was an oddity--a young man who wasn't there due to some kind of drug abuse. I learned more about drugs in a week than I did in my entire life up until that stay. Of artificial marijuana, fittingly called "Not for Human Consumption." Or, when a counselor asked one young man about why he did drugs, this answer: "It's better than sex. It's better than anything. You're on top of the world!"
I think also of my time spent hanging with the homeless at the House of Hagar (a rather indescribable place, as if a transplant from a better world than this), and their stories. How a long-time visitor will one day stop visiting, and you wonder if it's back to the drugs (or the alcohol, or the gambling.) Or if they'll ever come back again, still alive. Drugs, alcohol, gambling--a never-ending litany of addiction, like a hymn for human sacrifice to a false god of debauchery. And for many who try, few escape. For some, it is too late.
I think of all this, and one, no two, words spring to mind:
F*CK HEROIN.
