Psychonaut

Chapter Four

Cold fluorescent light is burning my eyes, and they water as my leg twitches with nervous energy. I finish reading and look up at the class grouped in a half circle around the room.
“That was really funny,” says a middle-aged woman, dumpy with a bad bleach job. “You should write for Saturday Night Live.”
You’re an ignorant cunt, I think, pleased, and say, “Thanks.”
“Was it really Jesus?” this from a brunette with huge tits and quarter sized nipples that poke against the fabric of her shirt.
“I dunno.”
“Of course it wasn’t Jesus,” the dumpy woman, Wanda, is speaking again. “That man was using drugs. Jesus would never take drugs.”
Her voice bounces against the speckled tile floor, echoes off the white stone walls. She’s sitting in a plastic blue chair and I dream that one of its thin metal legs will snap, sending her fat ass slamming to the ground.
I blink and they are all staring at me.
“It’s ambiguous,” I tell them.
“I think it’s great,” says a tiny young woman still dressed in thin cotton pajamas that are decorated with dancing elves.
I wonder what her vagina looks life beneath the thin layer of fabric. Shaved completely? Maybe just trimmed into some exotic shape like a heart.
Outside the window, two panda bears are fornicating violently on the sidewalk and I try to remember the last time I ate LSD. The professor, who is short, bald, and has a tuft of brown hair under his lip that reminds me of a shit stain, begins criticizing what I’ve just read, but I only half listen. Why should I care about what this man thinks? He once told me, while we smoked marijuana from my tall glass bong, that he has been working on a novel for twelve years, yet still doesn’t even have a title.
“…you’re telling too much,” he is saying. “I want you to show.”
“But I’m telling a story.”
“Show, Reilly, show. Like a movie.”
“It’s not a movie,” I reply, anger working up through my Lortab haze. “It’s literature. It’s supposed to be superior to movies and all that Hollywood bullshit.”
“Well, then at least try to be poetic. Your writing is too vague, too raw.”
“But life is vague. And raw. It’s just a series of random nightmares. And I don’t have time for poetry.”
He answers something, but now I’m really not listening. I know what this pathetic, babbling Ph.D. scored on his SAT’s – 720 – and assume he must have misspelled his name. I want to scream curses and strip naked, explain to everyone in this shitty classroom that we should all give up, because none of us will ever make any significant contribution to the world or change anything that matters after we’re dead. Instead I feel my stomach revolt and my throat begin to siphon as the room shrinks. Then I spew blood laced vomit all over the long folding table. The smell is strong with acid.
“I quit,” I tell them and leave the room. No one objects or even speaks, but I slam the thick wood door anyway and throw my portfolio - which holds everything I’ve written these past five years - into the first trash can I see while wiping my chin and whispering, “I am the anti-man.”

Outside the July sun is hot and high, the air so humid that breathing comes hard and shallow. I squint while fumbling for my mirrored aviators. There are only a few dozen summer school students wandering in my vision. A few stare at me, raise their eyebrows at the puke decorating my shirt. My stomach feels better already.
I head back to the apartment in my forest green Audi and crack the window after lighting a joint. The last stanzas of The Band’s King Harvest fill the car. My parents had bought me a house outside of town, but I use my own money to rent an apartment near campus.
I pull onto the hot, red pavement of the apartment complex and flick the roach. The bizarre red pavement drew me to this place, despite its old worn townhouses that stink of burnt cigarettes and stale, sour paint. I see Rich’s little Honda parked in front of my building.
As I climb the steep metal stairs up to my door, pounding clangs ring under my feet and I can hear voices above. Cresting the landing, I see that my neighbor Lee is sitting with Rich on the old smelly couch we had pulled onto the balcony months before. Lee’s body is thin and bent, his leg jerks and his face is pale and drained. His irises are bright blue, but his half lidded, heroin dead eyes seem to see nothing.
“Can’t find anything?” I ask him.
Lee scratches at his arm. “Nope. Whole town’s dry. I’m staring to hurt.” He wipes the snot from him nose with the back of a hand.
Lee’s wearing dark baggy pants and a T-shirt with Metallica ironed on the front in dripping red letters. His copper hair is cropped short, almost to his scalp.
Lee’s father has bought him three cars already this year. The BMW was stolen by a friend for the insurance money which was used to be a large quantity of heroine - supposedly imported from France. His Volvo was totaled when Lee passed out driving down the interstate at three in the morning on his way home from a lake party and veered into a metal barrier. The Land Cruiser is in the lot below, parked between the truck my father bought for my sixteenth birthday, and the Audi my grandfather gave me as a high school graduation present.
“Come on, I’ve got some bud we can smoke,” I say. “It’ll help even you out. Maybe.”
We go inside and I sit down on the leather couch and begin packing my bong. The downstairs of the apartment is a living room, kitchen, and spare bedroom. There’s a spiral staircase that leads up to my bedroom and bathroom. A big TV hangs on the smoke stained walls and I turn it on with the remote. Richard goes into the kitchen and draws a glass of water from the tap.
“Goddamit, use the filter!” I yell.
He empties the glass and refills it using the capsule shaped white Brita.
“It’s there for a reason,” I say. “Who knows what kind of shit is in that goddam city water.”
“You’re a freak,” Richards tells me.
Once, when I asked Rich why he always wears gloves, he told me: “Because mittens are for faggots.” He has a speech impediment that causes him to sound British, so “Hello,” comes out “’ello.” Other than that, and his habit of constantly sniffing cocaine, Richard is the most normal person I know.
The lighter clicks once, twice. The flame hits cannabis and the bong gurgles. I pass it to Lee and exhale a great white cloud. Rich sits next to me and pours chunky white powder onto the glass coffee table. He breaks it up with his thin plastic driver’s license. It quickly disappears up his nose through a rolled up twenty. He leaves another line for Lee.
“Reilly,” Rich is pacing now.
“What?”
“I got to talk to you about something.”
“What?”
“I met this bitch with cerebral palsy a couple weeks ago.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did. Fucker. Listen to the damn story. This chick has cerebral palsy and her arm is all curled up and-“
“Which arm?” Lee asks.
“The right one. And she has this real bad stutter so that she can hardly talk.”
“That sucks,” I say.
“Yeah. But look, if she smokes like one good bowl the stutter goes away and she can use her arm a little.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s crazy to watch. Puff, puff - all better. The stutter’s there a little but it’s pretty much gone afterwards. But she has to drive to Atlanta to get the green and even that’s not a regular thing. It’s a big risk, too, you know.”
“Okay.”
“So I told her I knew somebody who could hook her up with some real good shit. Like medicinal shit.”
“You told her that? Sounds like you kind of committed me without asking. You know that I don’t like to work with private smokers. It’s nothing but trouble.”
“She’s sick, you asshole.”
“I appreciate that. But what if she gets arrested and the cops show up at my house and find a hundred fucking marijuana plants?”
“She won’t even know who you are. It’ll all go through me.”
“I don’t know...”
“Come on, be a buddy.”
“Alright. I’ll just give it to her, though. No charge. Like an ounce a month.”
“Thanks, buddy. That’s great. This is a good thing for you to do. God’s smiling right now.”
“Yeah, that means so much to me. Are you trying to fuck this girl?”
“What? No…I mean, so what?”
“Wow. You’re trying to fuck a girl with cerebral palsy you yakked out mother fucker.”
“So what? She’s hot, you fucking bigot.”
“Is it like a fetish thing for you?” Lee asks.
“No! Fuck you asshole. That’s goddam offensive. She’s attractive, and smart, and-“
“And you want to stick your dick in her while she b-b-begs you for it.”
“Exactly.”
“You could have just said that you needed drugs to fuck a girl. There’s no shame in that.”
“It really does help her, though.”
“Alright, whatever.”
“You know medical marijuana is biblical,” Lee says.
“In the bible?” I ask.
“Not in the bible. It’s been around since biblical times, though.”
“But I think the definition of biblical is ‘in the bible.’”
“No, it’s something that pertains to the bible and bible times, asshole. But the point is Jesus used cannabis to heal people.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. I just read about it. Recent archeological evidence suggests the balms Jesus used to heal the sick were olive oil mixed with cannabis. That’s why it made them feel better.”
“That’s pretty goddam interesting,” I admit.
“That’s why I find it so hypocritical that our government, which is based on Christian values, has decided to outlaw and vilify a plant that Christ himself approved of and used.”
“Wow. Thanks, for sharing that.”
“It’s a valid argument, you fuck.”
“You sound like a fourteen year old who just smoked his first little pinner,” I tell him. “It’s a waste of breath to discuss this kind of shit. Nothing ever changes and you’re a goddam fool to even worry about it.”
“We’re the youth, man. It’s our responsibility to rebel and bring about revolution!”
“We’re getting close to thirty. That’s not really youth.”
“Twenty-six isn’t close to thirty.”
“What does it even matter, anyway?” I ask.
“Rich just told you about a sick girl that could go to jail for using the only medicine that helps her live and function. Isn’t that enough? Marijuana should be legal.”
“Of course it should, but so what? Suicide should be legal too, and gay marriage. But no matter how much we talk about it or bitch at the government, it won’t change anything. They’ve already won. We just have to try to beat them at their own game. Go around their stupid, asshole rules and enjoy ourselves without worrying about their bullshit.”
“Nah, fuck that. I have hope for our society. I have hope for humanity.”
“That’s stupid and sad.”
“It’s sad that you don’t care,” Lee says. He’s sitting up now, twitching occasionally as he speaks.
“I guess I can understand why you feel that way, but it’s a waste of time. Just don’t try – at anything. This is all just a flash of consciousness before infinite blackness, anyway. So why waste it worrying about changing the way other people think? Everyone who’s tried to shape the world as they want it to be have failed. Jefferson failed. Washington failed. Lenin and Marx failed. Hitler and Stalin failed. Castro and Che failed. They were all great men, but they all ultimately failed. So what chance do we have? Just leave it alone and try to be happy with the way things are.”
“Where do you get that bullshit, man?” Rich asks.
“Everything I’ve ever learned or witnessed in my life has demonstrated to me that we - people who think differently than the rest and want change - can’t win. We broke away from England. Brave, passionate, intelligent men risked and lost their lives in the hope of freedom. They did everything they could conceive of to guarantee that that freedom would be sustained forever. Yet now, only two hundred years later, we’re already almost as bad off as they were at the beginning.
“No taxation without representation, right? Bullshit. Those cocksuckers who make the rules that decide our lives sure as hell don’t represent me. I want health care for anyone who gets sick. I’ll pay taxes for that. But do they do it? Hell no. They spend hundreds of billions of dollars invading countries that I don’t care about and, frankly, don’t want anything to do with.
“I think drugs should be legal and heavily taxed, but instead they declare this futile ‘war on drugs’ that costs countless billions and trillions that could go to schools and roads or just be given back to the citizens. I think we should get off our oil dependence, but instead, the government kills every chance we have at alternate energy.” I pause, breathing heavily. “Goddammit, you’ve got me ranting.”
Rich has stopped pacing and is sitting next to me.
“That’s because the government has been bought by the corporations; the pharmaceutical companies, the defense contractors, the oil companies, the car companies,” he says.
“Okay, that’s true. But so what? Unless you have more money than those corporations, you can’t buy back the government. So there’s no reason to try. Just leave it alone.
“They don’t leave me alone!” Lee yells, excited now. “I should be able to smoke whatever I want, whenever I want. I should be able to shoot up if I want.”
“We just smoked.”
“Legally! I should be able to do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody besides myself. If secondary costs go up because more people overdose or get hurt, then take all the taxes away from defense and anti-drug budgets and use that. Who the hell are these politicians to tell me what I can or can’t do? This is a free country.”
“Wow,” I laugh, “you’re just full of moronic ideals, aren’t you? We’re not fucking free and you know that.”
“We’re supposed to be free.”
“People don’t really want to be free, though,” I tell him. “They’re fucking cowards. Most people wouldn’t wipe their asses if the government didn’t have some oversight committee to ensure that the toilet paper is triple bleached, extra soft, super sanitized, and fluffy.”
“That’s just stupid. You’re fucking stupid, Reilly.”
“We need to be controlled. Don’t you understand that? It gives us a mindless sense of security and safety. It’s an ingrained need of human beings. Even Adam and Eve were told what they could or couldn’t eat. Yeah, they broke the rules, but the story just proves that control through higher powers has been around forever. It’s a lesson as old as mankind, passed down from parents to children - that if you disobey, you suffer. It’s in our blood to be controlled. It’s in our blood. America’s a country of scared little children who need to be looked after by a babysitter.”
“Well then I guess the babysitter must be too busy fucking her boyfriend to pay attention to the children. Because they don’t know what the fuck we want.”
“But why fight it? They have the power,” I say.
“Because it’s our responsibility to the children to come.”
“Oh, God,” I moan. “You can’t fight the powers. They don’t understand logic. They absorb it like they’re made of putty and then spit back out whatever mutated trite fits their current message. They change lost elections to presidencies, peace to war, criticism to praise. It’s like a gimp, retarded roach trying to bring down an army of giants. I’d rather just do my own thing and wait to die.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Probably,” I admit. “Let’s get drunk.”

Lee brings over Coronas from next door, but the bottles are warm and the beer is skunky in my mouth.
“Warm beer?” I ask him. “Only sociopaths drink warm beer.”
“Shut up.”
I ditch the beer and search desperately for whiskey. Finding a half empty bottle, I take the first slug before speaking again.
“I quit school today.”
“Dumbass,” Rich tells me.
“I just can’t take it anymore. It’s so fucking stupid.”
“How will you get a job?” Lee asks.
“Who cares?”
“You should, asshole,” Rich says.
“I don’t care about things like that anymore. I don’t think I care about anything anymore.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“Oh well,” I say. “I don’t care about health either.”
“Then why go to that shrink?”
“For the drugs.”
We pass the bottle back and forth in silence while Rich breaks out another line for himself. Leaning back and sniffling, he tells me, “I saw Lisa yesterday.”
“I hate my life,” I say.