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Another response to a workshop assignment. We were supposed to include certain things...
“The Trap”
I’ve got white cinder walls, a while plastic floor, and grey trim—a metal toilet and a metal sink—shampoo in a fool-proof dispenser, shampoo that’s non-toxic anyway. But I don’t want to off myself. I want to do what they want me to do, which is sit here and get over it. I want to try to remember.
I’ve got the dt’s all day and it makes it tough to do any of this. They give me a golf pencil and a composition book, no wires, of course. But I don’t want to off myself anyway. They think someone in my situation would. It might be with me for the rest of my life, flashbacks and such, of stuff that never happened—sometimes stuff that did.
I see Marcus winding a spool of gold thread around a purple velvet sack, but it’s an embellishment. The report they made had the stuff in a regular aspirin bottle—nothing so creative. But the juju juice was in that flask printed with a gold scorpion. I thought it interesting they did put that little detail in the report. Garfield wrote it. I think he wanted to be a novelist, but I can’t remember his face. I want to remember.
Marcus had me half into it. I don’t know how. It was an easy assignment, easy to blend in. I looked young. Now I don’t, but I did. I’m guessing that it’s more than I think. Carlos warned me not to take the drug, of course, Carlos the father. Whatever. I must’ve wanted more than to just prove to him that I could handle it. I could’ve tongued it, but I suppose I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle it, and I wanted to try it.
Here’s how it went down. I rehearsed it with Garfield and did it with Marcus verbatim, cause we had Marcus’ mannerisms down to a T. Honestly, he wasn’t that complex. I’d imagined the orchestrator of my doom would be complex. Anyway, I told Marcus that I didn’t like the rave scene, that the music was too industrialized. It lacked flavor. This is true. But Marcus was passionate about the scene. He said it’s not about the flavor. It’s about what it does to you, what it does to you when you take the drug, but I pretended I didn’t want it.
I’d take a swig of liquor though. And here’s where Marcus broke out with the flask, and whatever was in it tasted sweet and warm, and I started to warm up, and then…
I don’t remember. We got in there, and it was dark and there were lasers shooting everywhere and it reeked of sweat, but there were girls in there, everywhere. I’d never been to one of these things. All through high school it was the bowling alley and all that shit, and we didn’t have much in town that I knew about. This craze is new. You can see the things on Dateline about it, tearing up the youth. I don’t know how old those girls were, but they looked good, and I was plastered. Marcus gave me something laced with something.
I should’ve seen it coming.
I can’t remember when I lost the wire. I made out with a few chicks in the bathroom, in the corner. I must’ve ditched it. Marcus was watching me, sitting over in the corner, smiling the Cheshire cat smile… fucking drug dealer smile. I took my petty cash and ordered a couple rounds at the bar, blue shit. It was on special. It tasted like a Long Island, but it was blue. The girls loved it, and I had their faces all over me… and…
It was the brunette one who put that thing in my mouth. And for 15 minutes I wanted to fuck everyone, but then, this.
The precinct has me on film, when they lined us all up and cuffed us before Garfield took me aside. I don’t look so hot, and now I forget. I forget it all.
I see out the plexiglass bay windows people who can think.
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Siredwinsantos@gmail.com
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Tony... Tony... Tony...
