Halfway
A short-short story
Yeah, I have an addictive personality, but it’s not just that. It’s that I’m ugly and the kids always shunned me. So, because I wanted friends, any friends, I hung with the goths, and that meant cancer sticks, alcohol, and then weed.
When I got a little older, I was bored and depressed so I went on to party drugs, you know, shrooms, ketamine, and my fave, MDMA, you know, ecstasy. No, I never did fentanyl; that’s more an urban thing. The school counselor was useless, the shrink was useless, my parents were superuseless.
Then I got into a car wreck and broke an old lady’s collarbone. My lawyer got me residential treatment rather than jail and when I got out, I thought I’d stay straight. But when life got tough again and an old friend asked if I wanted to party, I did. And soon I was back to baseline.
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My parents were sick of me so, when they found my stash of shit — a lot, I was now selling — they called the cops. Again, the lawyer got me residential.
This time I was really fucked up. I would sneak out, use a burner phone to order a case of small plastic test tubes with stoppers — just the right size to go up your ass. I got them sent to one of those public mailbox places. When I got them, I’d go to the high school and hang out in the bathroom. When I found guys who looked nerdy but not so nerdy that they’d probably tell the principal, I offered them $10 if they’d pee into a test tube.
I was making beaucoup bucks from the residents — We had to do daily urine tests plus random ones. I taught them how to quickly, in the stall, pull the tube from their ass — the piss being warm fools the nurse. They pour it into the plastic cup and stick the tube back up their ass — The whole thing takes like five seconds.
I may be ugly but it doesn’t mean I don’t like sex. I crave sex and so did a few of the girls in the house — The administrators thought it would be healthier if the house were co-ed, more like the real world. One time, a supervisor caught me and a girl but I saw that the supervisor had watched a while before stopping us. So I threatened to tell that to the house manager unless she joined us. She said, no, no, absolutely not, but — haha she did. It was my best moment!
Today, I just completed my “period of confinement” and now I’m back on the street. I’m scared — No structure, no easy way to do my pee business. But I think I want to try a day or two without using shit.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and is a career and personal coach. He’s also the author of 27 books, including How to Do Life. You can reach Marty at mnemko@comcast.net
