Placebo Junkies Read online

I hate that.

  “Hey,” he says in a greasy tone, with a greasy smile to match. “I’m glad you called. I have been thinking about you. “

  He sounds just like Dylan when Dylan is joking around, using his pretend-skeezebag voice, except Dougie is totally serious when he talks this way. Like, he actually talks like that.

  I pull away from him so I can keep looking for Dylan. I stand on my toes, stretch my neck up as I scan the room, corner to corner. Everything is getting jumbled in my mind, and my headache is pounding so goddamn bad that I can hardly think straight.

  “Audie.” Dougie grabs me by the elbow again. Always the same place. Always that possessive, hard enough I can feel all five fingers digging in kind of grip. I really fucking hate when people do that.

  I whirl around, tear my arm out of his greasy hold, and mostly without meaning to, I sort of backhand him across the jaw in the process. Pretty hard, actually.

  I guess I’ve been feeling pretty tense.

  His hand goes up to his mouth and comes away bloody. Only a little bloody, no reason to freak out, but he still looks pissed. And ugly. And mean.

  I’ve never liked Dougie. Everything else is sort of blurry and confusing right now, but not that. I’m not at all confused about Dougie being bad news, or about not wanting to hear anything that could come out of his ugly, twisted mouth.

  “You fucking psychotic bitch.” He growls it, so low that no one looks up from their tables, no one even glances at us.

  Almost like it’s not happening.

  “This is how you repay me? I didn’t need to hook you up with that study, you crazy whore. There’re way easier ways to get into your pants.”

  I wish he would stop talking. I wish he would disappear.

  Wishes are like assholes, Charlotte used to say. Everyone has them. Or, when she was in one of her moods: Wishes are like assholes. They both leave you sitting in the same old shit.

  “What’s the matter, Audie? I’m too healthy for you? You here to choose another dying guy to fuck? Look around. Plenty to choose from.” Dougie steps closer, baring his teeth right next to my ear, an animal that needs putting down. “There’s a guy in a wheelchair over there. A double amputee—just your type. Someone who can’t run away once he realizes what a complete psycho you are.”

  I won’t let him talk about Dylan that way. My hands make claws and I go for his face, but Dougie just laughs and bats me away. “You’re famous around here, do you know that? Everyone knows how to get you in bed. Everyone knows the secret.”

  I look around, and I see that he’s telling the truth. People are staring at us now. At me. They all have that look on their faces, like they know something about me. Something ugly and dark.

  My vision is clouding over with steam, the whole room is pulsing and glowing, and I lunge after him again, trying to hurt him any way I can, but Dougie is already walking away. Laughing at me. “What’s the name you like again? Dylan? Baby, you can call me anything you want if you treat me nice, the way you did last time. Oooooh yeah.” He grabs at his crotch, does a few obnoxious pelvic thrusts, and more people are turning to look.

  Which means that he’s real.

  Which means that what he’s saying is real.

  The pain behind my eye explodes in a red mist and then everything goes black.

  ForIfver

  “One of the burdens of being exceptionally intelligent, Audie, is that your delusions are both tightly fabricated and highly effective.” For once the doctor isn’t watching the clock. Even as he’s scribbling notes with that manic enthusiasm that had all but disappeared recently, he peeks up at me between words, between lines, like he’s afraid to miss something. He wants to see every frame of the train wreck playing out across my face.

  It’s a breakthrough, he says.

  breakthrough, breakdown. potato, potahto.

  His breakthrough is my apocalypse.

  He is fascinated, enthralled, as he documents my total destruction. He is proud of his role in the annihilation of Me.

  “It’s a clever construct, really. Your delusions serve a very real purpose for you. They’re all designed to maximize your feeling of control, which is something that has always been in short supply in your life.”

  I turn my head away, focus on the framed diplomas hanging on the wall. So many letters. MD, PhD, Fellowship of this, Doctorate of that. Professor of Dust and Air and Shit, those gold-embossed certificates might as well say. So much time studying. So little time living.

  What could he possibly know?

  “It felt real.” My voice comes out as a whimper. The sound of my weakness makes me want to curl up and finish dying. “He felt real.”

  He finally stops taking notes and puts down his pen. He strokes his ridiculous beard for a minute—it’s overgroomed, pointy and so white that it looks fake. He looks like a goddamn garden gnome.

  Did I tell you that already? I’ve been repeating myself a lot lately. It’s like hearing echoes everywhere I go.

  He sighs, and looks genuinely pained. “You’re talking about Dylan. Or rather, the construct of Dylan.” He flinches a little when he says the name, tenses up like he’s afraid of my reaction. He looks ready to duck.

  Past predicts future.

  But I’m too weak to defend myself, much less attack. My hands stay in my lap, curled into limp approximations of fists.

  “I know this is difficult for you. But it’s a good starting point. It’s necessary for us to address your promiscuity, for the sake of both your physical and your emotional well-being.”

  “My promiscuity? I’m not a fucking whore.”

  The doctor shakes his head. “Of course not. It’s never been about sex, Audie. Like I said, your delusions are highly functional. For example, in the case of Dylan, or more accurately, the concept of Dylan, you were able to experience a perfect relationship. You created an idealized notion of what a boyfriend should be, and each person you spent a night with had some element of that ideal. In essence, you sought out the best qualities in every young man you brought into your life.”

  “Into my bed,” I correct him. No need to soft-pedal things now that it’s all out in the open, now that we’re sitting here talking so openly about Just How Crazy Audie Really Is.

  Perfect.

  Dylan.

  I know there are other words coming out of the doctor’s mouth besides these two. I know he’s surrounding Perfect Dylan with words that negate everything I know and love, but I try not to hear them.

  “He was hardly perfect,” I say. “He had cancer.”

  The doctor raises a triumphant finger in the air, then catches himself, tries to cover the gesture with another stroke of his beard. “In a less complex framework, the idea of a terminal illness would indeed be considered a flaw. But once again, Audie, both your intelligence and the intricacy of your fantasy world come into play. In this case, by seeking out potential partners with serious medical issues, you were actually bolstering your psychological construct.”

  I am suddenly, inexplicably, exhausted. I can barely keep my head up, and the doctor’s words sound like they’re coming at me from the other end of a tunnel a hundred miles long. I’m too tired to hear more, but I’m also too tired to escape his words.

  But the doctor won’t stop. “Think about it this way, Audie.” He doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s torturing me, killing me. It’s like verbal vivisection, sitting here listening to him. “It’s considered bad form to speak ill of the dead, correct? When people die, we put them on pedestals. We, myself included, forgive, and sometimes quite literally forget the negatives. It’s a coping mechanism. There’s something about loss that makes us reset our hard drives, so to speak. So we purge the bad memories, which allows us to remember the dead with artificial fondness. It’s an act of self-preservation we all engage in when we lose someone close to us—we get to kee
p all of the good, comforting memories, and rid ourselves of the bad ones.”

  He finally pauses for a second and tilts his head at me. He wants me to chime in. To agree with him.

  I’m too busy trying to curl into myself and disappear.

  “In other words, Audie, you chose boys who, even if they disappointed you, or hurt you, would be the easiest to forgive. By extension, this allowed you to preserve your idealized notion of Dylan as the perfect boyfriend.”

  Dylan. Perfect boyfriend. I try my old tricks—to at least block out what I can’t black out—but they’re not working.

  He sits back in his chair and smiles. “As I said, Audie, it’s ironic that part of the problem here is your intelligence. Your delusions are so complex that they’re sometimes difficult, even for me, to untangle.”

  His eyes shine with pride. He is impressed by my crazy. To him, I am fascinating in my brokenness. Clever in my delusions. I am the prized possession of this Professor of Air and Dust and Shit. A paper waiting to be written. A case study served juicy and medium-rare.

  “The good news is that we’re making progress,” he says. “The fact that we’re even having this conversation is proof. I just want you to be prepared for the hard work ahead, and to understand that I need you to do your part. You’re going to continue to have good days and bad days,” he stops here and chuckles. “Or, good hours and bad hours, as the case may be, and I know that can feel confusing.”

  I don’t laugh with him. And I’m not the least bit confused. I know that his cure is my destruction, and that somehow, somehow, I have to find the strength to fight back. To fight for what’s mine.

  Fortunately, I’ve already taken the first step: no more pills. I’ve been chemically celibate for two days already; I’m snipping the strings that bind me, one skipped dose at a time. Soon enough I’ll be born again. I’ll be me again, just like before.

  Only better.

  Chapter 36

  Expert Testimony

  Hey.

  You over there.

  Yeah, you—junior-college lifer. You too, high school dropout. Gather round, Little Miss D in Chemistry, Mr. Incomplete. And get that drunk guy over there, while you’re at it. I’m talking to you, teeming masses. The Great Unwashed, and the early peakers.

  Hoi polloi.

  Riffraff.

  Scumbags.

  Losers.

  Want to know something interesting? It’s a dirty little secret, kept hush-hush by people with fancier degrees and clothes and cars than you’ll ever have.

  You know those doctors, those know-it-all, white-coat-wearing motherfuckers, supposed guardians of science and chemistry and endless co-pays?

  Well, they don’t know jack.

  You go to them for help, humbly baring your ass and your soul and your wallet. You supplicate in germ-filled waiting rooms, wait forty-five minutes past your appointment time on a good day, just so you can turn your head and cough. Tell me why it hurts, you beg. Save me. Cure me.

  And yet, for all their diagnostic manuals and insurance codes and prescription pads, guess who actually does the real work when it comes down to it?

  That’s right: you.

  Welcome to the world of self-reporting.

  Say it with me, loser brethren. All together now: self-reporting.

  You’d be amazed how many illnesses are diagnosed and drugs dispensed simply because you say so. YOU.

  How much does it hurt? Where does it hurt? Is your cough productive? What do the voices in your head tell you to do? Are you experiencing difficulty breathing/sleeping/climaxing/digesting? Are you anxious? Depressed? Filled to the gills with violent sociopathic tendencies? When was your last bowel movement, and are you a threat to yourself or others?

  They ask. You answer.

  So tell me, fellow Alumni of the Streets. Your MD may stand for Menial Drudge, but who’s really doing the heavy lifting here?

  The fact of the matter is this: unless there’s a specific blood test for it or unless you have a gushing, gaping hole in obvious need of suturing, there’s a metric shit-ton of guesswork involved in this little field of pseudoscience that we call medicine.

  And psychiatry? Don’t even get me started.

  Well, maybe a little. Since you asked.

  Actual conditions listed in the DSM-5, the bible of mental health professionals everywhere:

  —Internet Gaming Disorder (step away from the Candy Crush!)

  —Caffeine Withdrawal (when a Starbucks on every corner just isn’t enough).

  —Tobacco Use Disorder (because cigarettes cause cancer and crazy?)

  —Frotteuristic Disorder (a laughable medicalization of those nasty dudes who rub up against you on the bus.)

  Do you suppose there’s a blood test for pedophilia? Excuse me. Pedophilic Disorder. I don’t think so.

  They only know what you tell them, friends.

  Yeah, but some things are obvious. That’s what you’re thinking, right? You know a pervert when you see one. You can spot crazy from a mile away. Surely those doctors can, too.

  But you’ve had a different sort of education. Your certificates bear very different sorts of distinctions. Involuntary commitment. Parole violation. Ward of the court.

  How many psychiatrists do you think have actually been energetically and wetly frottaged while crammed in the back of a standing-room-only city bus?

  How many doctors knew by age six how to zigzag their way home from school, avoiding this house, and that guy, and this corner, since the direct route would’ve gotten them killed before puberty?

  Not many.

  No, they seal themselves off in luxury sedans and take the long way around our neighborhoods. They don’t know crazy the way we know crazy.

  They also have very different definitions of sane.

  So the question becomes: What label would you like to see pasted across your file? Which fancy new medicines would you like to give a try?

  And even more importantly—what, friends, do you believe to be true? What do you want the world to know about you?

  Because if you self-report it, then it must be true. Nine out of ten doctors agree.

  So name your own symptoms.

  Write your own disease.

  Prescribe your own cure.

  Because the truth is whatever you say it is.

  Chapter 37

  I lose a fistful of time trapped in that dark fog, but once it finally lifts, I see that only a few hours have lapsed, and I still have just enough time to make Charlotte’s last appointment of the day if I hurry.

  I run, hoping that a little money might help me salvage what has so far been a complete ruin of a day. I’m barely two minutes late, but the office manager is waiting for me with a frown on her face. She obviously has no idea how hard it is just to get from point A to point B when you have to fight your way through the darkness. I could’ve been days late. I could’ve been years late. You never know how much time will vanish once the fog rolls in.

  She gives me a form to sign, then picks up the phone, tells someone in a clipped voice, “She’s here.” She follows me with a pinched-face stare, doesn’t let me out of her sight until a man in a lab coat comes to get me.

  Lab Coat leads me to the tank room, and once I’m undressed he starts attaching the electrodes to my body. I kind of expect him to check out my tits, since they’re pretty much right in his face, but he doesn’t. It’s like I’m not even human, like I don’t even merit the usual degradations. “Just like last time, these are perfectly safe. They’re specially designed for this kind of study, and I promise you won’t get electrocuted even when you’re in the water.” He checks something off on a clipboard. “Everybody always worries about that.”

  He turns on a monitor and then helps me climb into the warm saltwater of the tank. He’s silent as he fidgets with the wire l
eads, testing the signals and then making adjustments until he’s satisfied that everything is working.

  “Okay,” he finally says. “You know the drill. Signal if you need emergency attention, but try hard to make it until I come get you out. If we interrupt the process, we have to start the whole thing over.” He starts to close the tank, to seal me into the darkness, but then changes his mind and swings the round door open again. This time his face is heavy with pity, and when he opens his mouth to speak again, I hear his embarrassment. He’s embarrassed for me, a realization that coats me with shame even before his words sink in. “I’m supposed to tell you that you can’t come back after today. We probably shouldn’t even be using you now, but we’re almost done with this data-collection phase and we can’t afford to lose any more subjects this close to the end. But everyone’s been told to watch out for you, not let you into any more studies. So today’s the last time here. Okay?”

  I close my eyes. Nod. Everyone knows, says Dougie. Everyone’s been told, says Lab Coat’s embarrassed-for-me expression. Their voices echo and collide with a hundred others in my head. Crazy, crazy, crazy, they all say.

  “Okay. Then here we go. Good luck, and I’ll come and get you when we’re done.” The metal door closes, and I hear the compartment seal engage.

  Cue ominous music: I am alone with myself. Me, myself, and I. Quite the diverse group, it turns out.

  I wait, one minute, two minutes, then blink my eyes. Open, shut, it makes no difference. There’s only blackness, so complete it has an almost tactile presence, velvety and thick as pudding, and the only noises are those that come from me—stomach gurgles and hitching breaths that sound almost deafening now. I can literally hear myself blink—my lashes make tiny, wet clicks as they clap together—and my hand wiping away a tear sounds like a limp body being dragged across a slick floor.

  It’s my second time here, and apparently my last, since I am officially unwelcome and officially undone. Without Charlotte’s identity to hide behind, I have no choice but to face the world’s reaction to the real me, and judging from my last few interactions, that’s not going to be pleasant.