Guillermo A. Santos on his highschool commencement day in 2021, together with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the similar yr of a drug overdose.
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
cover caption
toggle caption
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
Guillermo A. Santos on his highschool commencement day in 2021, together with his father, Guillermo Jose Santos. The elder Santos died later the similar yr of a drug overdose.
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
In 2021, after years of societal forget and denial round the problem, the choice of overdose-related deaths within the U.S. reached greater than 100,000, the biggest it had ever been. A type of other folks used to be my father. In December of that yr, his existence used to be in the end taken from him through a deadly cocktail of heroin and fentanyl after a lifelong dependency. It is a tale that many American citizens, particularly the ones within the Philadelphia community of Kensington the place he lived and I grew up, know smartly. In the event you glance up movies of the worst of the opioid epidemic, you are going to see Kensington’s “zombies.” Other folks appear to go to sleep status up, lingering beneath bridges and close to subway stations. They stagger with needles nonetheless of their palms or droop over within the pains of withdrawal, from time to time immobile in the course of the road seeking to stay status. In the ones movies, you’ll be able to see the home the place I grew up.
This is a space in an intensely red-lined community. I went to university on-line and I studied track throughout the town, in a extra prosperous a part of Philadelphia. I had “buddies” from my track categories who would by no means discuss with my space out of concern of all that lay inside Kensington. Opting to avoid the horrors of drug use related to my area, they as an alternative occupied Rittenhouse Sq. in Middle Town, an area park that supplied them plentiful protection to smoke pot and cigarettes however did not scare their oldsters or nannies as a lot.
In my very own younger desperation for the approval of those friends, I as soon as attempted to host a small birthday party for those other folks at my space whilst my mom used to be out of the town. I went via numerous bother and everyone advised me they have been coming. I met other folks on the subway and walked them to my space. However out of all invited visitors it used to be simplest the opposite minorities within the staff that got here. And it temporarily changed into obvious that no person else would.
The creator as a toddler held through his dad. Guillermo Jose Santos used to be 26 when his son used to be born.
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
cover caption
toggle caption
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
The creator as a toddler held through his dad. Guillermo Jose Santos used to be 26 when his son used to be born.
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
Over texts they claimed that they did not know I lived in Kensington and had they recognized, they by no means would have promised within the first position. However after all, they knew. It is why that they had by no means come earlier than. I used to be offended, and I let other folks know. I used to be advised to forestall complaining; it wasn’t that massive a deal. One individual stated he knew what it used to be love to be a minority: “I am used to bizarre appears to be like in the street. I dyed my hair inexperienced.”
Quickly after, on social media, we noticed that the white youngsters I would invited had their very own birthday party elsewhere. However they took selfies, tagged me, and claimed to be at my space having a good time.
Flash ahead a couple of years, and the friends who have shyed away from the realities of my impoverished upbringing once we have been more youthful are actually spending their time in California, New York or even a couple of blocks from my former house in raver warehouses, dressing up like addicts. They put up and pose on social media, dressed in distressed antique, “spouse beater” t-shirts they purchase on Depop and heavy eyeliner, the entire higher to seem sullen but cool. And it’s not simply my outdated verdant-haired friends. TikTok and Instagram Reels have never-ending streams of other folks adopting this glance. Snapshots from those events display them there status immobile in the course of the dance ground, hunched over their telephones like a zombie in withdrawal, gazing the like depend develop on their very own posts of them too pretending to be at somewhere like my outdated house. That is, after all, no longer new. The similar impulse made earlier generations lengthy for tv appearances and their very own Warholian quarter-hour. It is a recurrent model pattern for the prosperous to put on the rags of the marginalized. When any individual faded, skinny, beautiful and well-known will get hooked, condemnation flips to adulation and imitation. You’ll argue the cultured of “heroin elegant” used to be born in the similar town I used to be. Fashion Gia Carangi used to be born in Philadelphia and died there as smartly, of habit identical to my father. She is the place numerous the fixation on heroin’s “horny” qualities come from, an early stick insect whose repute rose whilst medicine and illness whittled her away. A whole new technology used to be offered to her from Angelina Jolie’s eponymous portrayal of her in 1998. She died in 1986 at 26. The similar age my father used to be when I used to be born.
Rising up, I faced the painful juxtaposition of the folk out of doors my window, forged apart through society whilst on my tv, gossip information glamorized addicted celebrities. At the same time as a kid, it gave the impression transparent to me that the one distinction between my neighbors and their identically addicted opposite numbers in California used to be wealth and colour. Right here, at the literal flawed aspect of the tracks of Philly’s blue Marketplace Frankford educate line, there’s no glamour to be discovered amongst the ones with habit — no modeling gigs, no festivities, no solace or grace. And few sources to get out of the quagmire.
The commencement photograph embellishes packing containers keeping the ashes of Guillermo Jose Santos, certainly one of greater than 100,000 American citizens who died of drug overdoses in 2021. That quantity used to be greater than 111,000 in 2023.
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
cover caption
toggle caption
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
The commencement photograph embellishes packing containers keeping the ashes of Guillermo Jose Santos, certainly one of greater than 100,000 American citizens who died of drug overdoses in 2021. That quantity used to be greater than 111,000 in 2023.
The Santos-Honkala Circle of relatives
My complete existence my father lived trapped — in a town that would not believe his brown fingers with a task, in a frame that withered clear of AIDS, and in a thoughts that simplest discovered temporary reprieves from the elements that held him in thrall. I constructed my dating with him all over the ones instances when he may just abstain for a couple of weeks or months at a time. However they did not remaining. I don’t fault him for taking the similar trail such a lot of of his friends did. I fault a gadget that gave them few different choices. And a tradition that once more tries to idealize habit. My father’s overdose wasn’t elegant, so why are other folks seeking to appear to be him? The worst events I’ve been to were stuffed with what the Washington Put up’s Robin Givhan first known as a “nihilistic model of attractiveness” again in 1996. With out poverty, habit can manage to pay for to seem cool. Crushing truth for some may also be observed as a classy selection for the privileged. They may be able to manage to pay for not to know the way we are living, simply to select the portions that really feel like a pleasant sufficient departure from their daily. They go back to luxurious. To these other folks, superiority is as a lot a drug as some other they devour.
Guillermo A. Santos is a disabled Puerto Rican and Local American creator and poet from Philadelphia whose additional paintings may also be discovered at GuillermoASantos.com or @guillermoasantos on Instagram. He now lives in New York.
