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Sam
“Schizotypal personality disorder, my ass,” I growl, slamming the heel of my palm into the horizontal crossbar of my shrink’s door.
“Sam, come back,” she calls out. “You’re not stable right now. We need to talk about this.”
And she thinks I’m the one who’s not in my right mind? Who in the hell wants to talk to someone who calls them names? You don’t need a Ph.D. or any of those other fancy pieces of paper hanging on your wall to know that.
Screw her. Before she turned into the name-calling judgmental bitch that she is I got the only thing I really want from these stupid pro bono visits anyway.
My prescription for Halcion, a sedative that contains the drug triazolam, which helps with my insomnia thanks to working the graveyard shift. And it helps with…other things…too.
Huffing and puffing down the sidewalk I see the bus depart the stop not fifty yards ahead. Missed it. Fuck.
Walking even faster I beat feet, wanting to get out of West Hollywood as soon as I can. I hate this pretentious area. Stupid psychiatrist thinks she’s all high and mighty, that she can judge me with that Karen voice, talking to me like I’m a damn retarded baby? Newsflash, woman. We’ve all got issues.
Bocephus called it way back in 1981…interest is up and the stock market's down, and you only get mugged if you go downtown.
I sure as shit can’t afford stocks, but these rising interest rates are damn sure trying to keep me from ever living the American dream, whatever the hell that is. Owning a home? Shit. Not in my lifetime. That’s for damn sure.
But where I can have the power, where I can be someone who matters, who is an active participant in society instead of just another ant getting stepped on under the well-heeled shoe of some rich prick is downtown. Oh, Hank Williams, Jr. was right all right. You can definitely get mugged downtown.
Or a whole lot worse if you run into me when I’m on tilt like tonight.
It’s my one day a week off and I’m going to make it count in the cesspit that is Los Angeles. City of Angels my ass.
The devil rages through me and I know I should go home, lock myself inside and not do what that little man in the red suit sitting on my left shoulder is commanding me to do. I shouldn’t listen to him. I should go home to my shitty efficiency studio, lock the door and set the timer so I can’t leave even if I wanted to. Not until morning at the earliest, when I’ve had a chance to calm down.
But where would the fun in that be?
A smirk tugs at one side of my face as I see some guy in designer clothes talking on what’s surely the newest model iPhone as he walks his French Bulldog down the sidewalk. The asshole’s in the middle of the damn shared space for pedestrians, and the dog he’s neglecting by paying it no mind isn’t on a leash of any kind.
If there’s one thing I hate, it's people without manners. And if there’s one thing in this world I love, it’s showing these wannabe high-society people just how far away they are from being as cultured, elegant, and most importantly important, as they think they are.
He never sees it coming.
Leaning in with my left shoulder I drill him right in his left chest muscle, sending him backward onto his ass and elevating my mood skyward.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, jerk!” he calls out but I don’t even stop. Why should I? To apologize, when he’s in the wrong. When some greedy, self-entitled person has no time for marginal citizens like me.
Well, I count buddy. We count, and tonight I’m going to remind as many people as necessary of that exact fact, which is why I speed walk the next couple blocks to the bar on the corner, tucking myself in line and waiting my turn as guest after guest cuts the line. My blood boils and my nostrils flare.
Manners, people. Manners.
You might have more money than me, nicer clothes than I do, and use fancy fifty cent words out of context, but your shit stinks just like mine, a whole lot worse actually. Because you try and interject fancy words that are nothing more than Charles Bukowski lines you ripped off, trying to pass them off as your own like you came up with them yourselves.
See, that’s the advantage of growing up poor and parentless, the outcast that other kids want no part of. You can spend an entire day at the library, oblivious to time as if you’re in some dark, clock-less Las Vegas casino. But my playground wasn’t betting on drugged up horses running around in a circle, due to the frills of some billionaire owner with a small dick who needs to show off at his fancy parties naming the beautiful animal something he finds clever all the while spouting about climate change or indigenous rights when he’s enslaving and torturing these beautiful creatures on the daily.
Fuck those guys.
I locked myself inside the echoing chamber in my mind, filled with book after book that I voraciously consumed…living vicariously through a whole host of protagonists until I really started to grasp the nuances of literature.
And there’s one certain in storytelling. You can’t have a real hero unless you have a worthy adversary.
A hollow, cardboard-cut out Snidely Whiplash? Yeah, that’s not going to cut it.
And that’s where I come in.
