Chapter 29
Men Are the Narcotic
of Women
Woman at the base of a golden staircase of impossible obstacles, looking up with a small smile
There are moments when it all feels ridiculous—when I can see straight through the overlay, this eternal game of hide-and-seek we call life. The naked mind, dressed up in costumes, acting out its own little play. The purpose of it all? Maybe just delight. Can you find delight in the kaleidoscope, no matter how it turns? That seems to be the game—and apparently there are levels to it. I think of Kanye saying he signed up for the “level-ten video game.” Love you, Ye, but I’m not sure that’s it. Maybe there are levels within levels—the way some spiritual traditions describe paths of discipline, compassion, and finally the audacious stage where you stop pretending to be anything less than divine and just live the truth out loud.
Woman in lotus with crown of living fire, prison chaos diminished around her
Maybe Kanye’s playing level ten of the everyday world. The real game starts when life tosses you somewhere unexpected—and you have to find yourself there. Imagine this: “Alright, you wanted to wake up. You wanted to serve humanity. The people in the high seats said you really had it in you. Great. Now add this: You’re sent to prison, called a fraud, and dropped into a dorm with thirty-seven women who think meditation is an Illuminati ritual. Go!” “Um…” “Too slow. You look confused. In here, confusion looks like weakness. And weak is not how you want to look. Have fun!” So you do. You learn to have fun fast. You make sweet-and-sour noodles out of vitamin-C packets, sugar-free honey, and ramen.
You finally meditate the way they told you to for thirty years—like your hair’s on fire. You turn the sadism of certain correctional officers into part of your obstacle course. You reframe it all as a cosmic game: how to stay human in the most inhuman conditions; how to remember you still have wings when every rule in the place is designed to tie you to the ground. And you tell yourself jokes pretty much all day long. Like when they reward the girls with candy for keeping the dorm neat. And you just wish you could have some vegetables. Or when you think you’ve got it down, quietly meditating in your bunk but the rug gets pulled out from under you and you realize your enlightened activity is really disengagement because you were just using it to avoid the fact that there is someone in here with serious mental disabilities who jumps on her top bunk and eats plastic and that there are no adults in the institution who have any idea what to do other than let a bunch of convicted felons look after her.
So I make up my own sayings. Like, “May your hopes-and-dreams rug be pulled out from under you.” Because maybe the real miracle isn’t in peace and quiet—it’s when your idyllic vacation turns into your car landing in a ditch and a bear stealing your food and you’re not quite sure how you are going to survive this but the townspeople come to help. That’s where the story gets good. And then I start to notice the theme running through every woman’s story here. The same one I saw before entering this karmic boot camp of prison: men. If religion is the opium of the masses, then men are the narcotic of women. Every woman here—except maybe two—has a man at the center of her story.
Women yelling through the gate toward men in windows above, voices crossing the invisible divide
Almost every one of them says to the judge, “He made me do it.” It’s baked into the script, whether the prison is internal or external. They still organize their lives around men—real, imagined, or long gone. Men occupy the floors above us. Women will stand at the “gate” to the outside we are not allowed out to and yell to the men waiting at the windows above. They can hear but not see each other. Some of the women lose themselves to the “gate,” waiting for their man to yell back. They risk their freedom to do it. These women “fall in love” with men who are also incarcerated, fighting over disembodied voices through metal bars. One woman is obsessed with a man everyone swears is ugly, but she calls him beautiful—saying his name like a spell.
She lives for the gate. If her best friend in here tries to feed her dinner and it delays her gate time, she drops her friend without blinking. It’s like watching addiction in real time. I want to shake them and ask, If you never get out, what will your life have amounted to? But I don’t. I don’t go near the gate. I’ve learned better than to get between a woman and her high. They ride a merry-go-round: some horses go up, some go down, some never move. Up is when they’re “the best”—the prettiest pony, the one who got called special. Down is when they’re forgotten. We just lost one of my favorite women to the gate. She’d never been.
Went out to crochet. Heard a whistle. Now she’s gone—hooked. It hasn’t dawned on them that the ride’s rigged. The up isn’t really up, the down isn’t really down, and the horses that don’t move—the marriages, the “stable” ones—aren’t stable either. They’re hypnotized by the pendulum of male approval, not noticing the wild horses running free just a few feet away. They think rebellion means risking it all for a man. But true defiance—the kind that changes you—is choosing yourself even at the risk of “not belonging.” It’s when you stop organizing your life around a man. Luciana keeps talking about how, when she gets out, she’ll show them, prove them wrong, make it to “the top.” I tell her there is no top.
Woman radiating gold light outward, others beginning to turn toward her
The “top” is an illusion built on comparison. People tell her she’s “better than this place.” I tell her there is no place—only the best you, wherever you stand. Being loving is the only wealth. She panics about her looks, about if she’ll “get ahead” fast enough. Because she’s heading back into the world of transaction, where currency is measured in desirability. She’s preparing to sell herself—if she wants to get ahead in that game, she’d better have an alluring product. The real game, where the real treasure can be found, is the other side of success. In the everyday world, whether on the inside or the outside, people cheat and hustle for “the best”: the bag, the rich boyfriend, the happy-looking family, the résumé polished with just enough virtue signaling to seem noble.
Woman pouring light from her hands, warmth spreading outward from her center
You check everything off the list—the job, the man, the baby—and in exchange, you receive the praise, the validation. And while you might have the validation and you might have the money, you live in a world of limited resources, where no one generates anything of true value—they just hoard it. Creativity is lacking. You starve yourself for the right body, pretend not to compete, and secretly glow when another woman loses. You live by the law of scarcity: There’s only so much “best” to go around. Get yours before it’s gone. But on the other side, you unlock a different kind of power—the power to bestow value. You master your mind, become resourceful and fast on your feet, and detach from any labels, whether designer or cultural.
You stop chasing worth and start radiating it. You take what you have—your scraps, your wisdom, your mackerel rice—and turn it into gold by the force of your perception. You don’t make things valuable; you see their value. You live from the deep, not the surface. Then you wake up in the morning and give thanks. Real, bone-deep appreciation. You thank whatever gods or coincidences you believe in for your bowl of bran cereal with sweetener, your two hours of quiet to meditate and do breathing exercises, and the faint sense of being in love with everything you see. And slowly, the other women start to notice. They start choosing nutrition over the sweets. They start copying your peace instead of your lipstick.
They try to steal a glance at how you do it. Not all of them, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is to fall in love with what you already have. That’s the real rebellion. That’s the game. You free yourself first—and somehow, that frees everyone around you.