Penner, who was on heroin for most of 18 years, decides to get an HIV test while in Mountjoy Prison in a last-ditch effort to get back his wife, the mother of his daughters Aine and Aoife, even though he knows she is now with another man
`During those 10 days that I had to wait for my results, I went through a lot of soul searching. Did I really want to know the results? Would it make any difference to Marie or not? Would I throw caution to the wind if I had the virus? If it's positive, would it make me develop a worse habit when I'm released? It would be like a death sentence. I wanted to know. But I didn't want to know. During this I had a surprise visit from her. I was thrilled, because I hadn't seen her since before I got locked up about four months ago. Her long blonde hair was even longer than the last time I saw her. It was freshly washed. She wore narrow black trousers and the usual black leather ankle boots with stillettoe heels. As she got closer, I thought, `Her new man doesn't know how lucky he is.' Even though I fucked up, I still loved her.
I sat half-way down in the visit room. A screw on a high chair sat on each end, about 40 feet apart. I was separated from Marie by a four foot wide counter. An eighteen inch high perspex partition ran down the middle. There were visitors and prisoners there already. Most of them leaned on the counter with folded arms, chins resting on the partition. The new cameras cover every angle. Big Brother was peeping.
I leaned over and kissed her before she sat down. She looked pale and wasn't smiling like usual.
"How' ya, Marie. You're lookin well." She only half smiled. "So are you. You're putting on some weight." "I'm strung out on the rice now, that's all." "It's well for ye." "Did the kids get me letters? And did you get the poems I sent?" Aine was our eldest daughter. She was blonde and pretty like her mother and had just turned 18. Aoife was just 15 and more like me. I think I treated her too much like the son I'd never had. When she was younger, we'd go catching frogs and newts. I sent them a letter and a poem at least every two weeks.
"Yeah, they're lovely. Your eldest is working now." She was doing an office-procedures course and was still living at home. "She's going to type your next letter."
"Ah, sure! That's great. I can't wait to hear from them. By the way, I went for an HIV Test. I've to wait for the results." I could hear children all around us in the visiting room. They were laughing and playing. Marie raised her eyebrows waiting for me to say more. When we were still together, she'd asked me to have one, but I'd never got around to it. There was a silence then as I looked into her eyes. Marie said, "I've had an HIV test myself." I could smell her perfume. "What made you go for that?" "I'm pregnant." I felt like someone had given me a hard clatter in the face. "You're not serious Marie? You're pregnant?" I thought I was hearing things. This was one of my worst fears. I was gutted. The final nail ran into my heart as I looked at her. She's only after becoming a granny, how could she. "You must be mad," I said. "There's Aine's baby in the house already."
"I'm due next February. I didn't plan it." I had a million things I wanted to say, but they went out of my mind. So that's it, I thought, that's why she's not her usual bubbly self. "Do you want to see a scan of the baby?" "Yeah. Give us a look." The black and white pictures show the baby's features. "That's a big baby," I say when she puts the picture back into her bag. `I hope you don't mind all the poems I'm sending you, Marie. I'm not trying to get into your head or anything . . . "
"You know I don't mind. I love getting them." I thought to meself, "At least she's leaving me a bit of hope. I wouldn't care if she had twins. Or even fuckin' triplets. I'd still love her."
Something definitely died inside me that day. Having another man's baby, mistake or no mistake, was not what I wanted to hear. Thank God, I was strong enough to handle it. If she'd told me two or three months earlier, I would have thought very hard about ending it all one way or another, because my mind was so fragile. At least she told me face to face. All I could do was congratulate her.
When Penner's test result came it was negative. But initial relief turned to depression. "The pain of cold turkey was child's play compared to the heartache I was going through now," his essay ends.
YOGI tells of going to get drugs at Fatima Mansions in Dublin
THE first thing we see is two blocks of redbrick flats. "Lovely, "I say to myself. "There it is. Fatima." Fatima is about eight or nine blocks of flats. Each block is named with a letter of the alphabet. And the block I'm looking for is H block. I always thought that was funny. Of all the blocks, the dealers pick to sell `H' from, they would have to pick H Block.
As we're walking over to the flats through one block, I take four 20-pound notes out of my pocket. "Charles, have you got a tenner there?" "Yeah, here." I put a 20 back in my pocket thinking to myself, "there's no way I'm giving a full 80 pounds for the gear". I'll get 10 for 70.
As soon as we get to the H Block, we're hit from all angles with people selling gear. It's a bit like a market. Instead of "Here, I've got lovely shirts here for twenty pound," the dealer's shouting, "Are ye looking? Here. He's lovely gear, young fella."
So Charles sees a bloke he knows who's selling gear at the stairs. But before we get to him, a skinny little bird with the biggest mouth I've heard shouts over, "Here young fella. Are ye lookin'. He's lovely gear."
I just ignore her and walk past. "Do ye want this gear?" I swear it's rocket fuel. Having acquired the drugs Yogi starts to head for home. "When you're walking out of Fatima with a few bags of gear, you're on top of the world. The gear's your pride and joy, and it's what you're living for. And no one is going to take it away . . . the police, the rip-offs, no one.