My short conversation with a guy injecting heroin into his neck in broad daylight, steps from my front door
I walked past this fire truck the other day. It was bright daylight, not nighttime, like when I took this picture. I saw a guy standing about where the “18” is on the truck’s bumper, facing toward the truck, doing something with some stuff on the bumper, keeping it hidden, looking at himself in the reflection on the chrome on the grill.
He was focused on what he was doing so didn’t notice that I stopped to look more carefully at what he was doing. You know from the subject of this post what he was doing, but it was pretty obvious he was doing something secretive with the stuff and, given that we’re in the United States in 2025, it was likely drugs. In this picture, the three people on the left are almost certainly doing drugs too. That spot is popular because the combination of the scaffolding and the fire truck offer protection. The truck has been there for months, the scaffolding for years.
The guy I saw could possibly have been doing something with money, but when I looked closer I saw the orange cap of a syringe, the syringe, and his focus on putting it in his neck.
I can’t changed the past so couldn’t undo that he had already finished injecting, but it being my neighborhood, I didn’t want him to feel comfortable doing it here.
I approached and asked politely, “Are you alright?”
He gruffly said something like, “I’m fine.”
I said, “It looks like you’re doing drugs.”
He said, “I’m injecting heroin into my neck. I’m fine.”
I said, “It doesn’t look like you’re fine.”
At this point I don’t remember exactly the words he said, but he got angry and started telling me his life was better than mine, that I was miserable, and didn’t pay attention to me. I don’t know how a heroin user feels after injecting and not he nor anyone knows exactly what substances he injected anyway.
He then walked away, which was the direction I was walking in, though I walked on the sidewalk and he walked on the street, so I wouldn’t describe our interaction as a confrontation, but he kept angrily insulting me, not me personally, he was just being angry.
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