There I was, standing outside our apartment.

There I was, yelling.

“Must you yell at this moment? I am trying to write!” the old man in the window in the hall said to me.

“Look, I tried everything,” I told the old man in the window in the hall who was trying to write.

I tried the door, kicking the door, slapping the door, telling the door a bedtime story, etc.

“Yes I understand that but I am trying to write, perhaps try the doorbell.”

I pressed the doorbell, or I pushed the button rather, because like the processes of the human ear canal or the inner-workings of a piano, the button forced a lever which moved a string and so forth so that a bell could be heard within the house. Nothing.

The old man got up and he had no underwear on. A penis in the window, framed like a voyeuristic porno that primarily focused on the aspects of elder-adult sex-life.

I yell again. The old man does not yell back, no he is making love to his wife, so he is not interested in me anymore. Now I feel like a sad schoolgirl at a 1950’s dance.

“Where they had real bands,” I imagined the-old-man-in-the-window-in-the-hall-who-was-trying-to-write-but-was-now-making-love-to-his-wife adding if we were in a musical-comedy film and he could hear my inner-dialogue.

I had two options. I had my car keys. I could go to my obligatory, regularly-scheduled sober-support meeting. Or I could wait. Wait till my flatmate got home or woke up. I didn’t have my phone to call him.

I needed this meeting, however. I made it a habit lately of eating marijuana edibles and according to the practices of sober-support meetings, this was not ok. I would say my primary goal for sobriety was job-security. My boss would not have it if I were high on the job again. It was an office job, scheduling events for sober-life promotions at a local university. It was a bit soulless I must admit. The person before me overdosed on the job. Am I sad that that happened? Not particularly, I needed a job. My resume was shit and I didn’t have many good references besides those at the dispensaries I had worked at. I later got fired from the dispensaries for stealing from the workplace.

I had been going to the bathroom a lot at work lately. Not to use the bathroom, no, just to go into it. Why? I don’t know. When I’m high I sort of float between decisions with no real idea as to why. But I was in the bathroom, and my eyes were particularly glossy, so I thought to wash ’em. My boss walked in and it was a particularly awkward explanation I had to give him. In fact, he did not even ask as to why I was washing my eyes, no, all I said was: just washing my face-tubs if you’re wondering.

“Is everything ok? You’ve been in here for three hours.” He may have feigned sincerity but I suspected he was really satisfied with the opportunity to get rid of me. Possibly due to a recent progress report that showed I had actually regressed in productivity recently.

“Really? I thought it had been five minutes by my calculations.” I looked at a watch that wasn’t on my wrist. That’s when he began to inspect my “face-tubs” and sent me home. It was required by HR, which also happened to be my boss’s wife, that I attend these meetings. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that he, my boss, personally told his wife, also HR, to send me here. If I missed more than 3 weekly meetings, that was a strike. I had two already and didn’t want a third.

I parked outside a series of office spaces owned by the church just beside it. Fuck man, I didn’t even have my tobacco. I was about to rawdog this meeting, no phone, no tobacco, though I did have the faint taste of the marijuana edible I ate earlier. I suppose it was already working if I had forgotten I had taken it. This was a problem, see, often I would get too high, because I would take one edible, forget I had taken the edible, and then take another, and this would go on until I had no edibles, because, I would forget I had taken the edible. Rawdog no more, I thought as I entered the meeting.

The door had been partially open as I greeted Clayton. Clayton was an old, southern hippie who always moved as if he were stepping over dog shit, and he did in fact have a dog. He walked over invisible dog shit as we both traipsed into the meeting.

“What’s with your pants?” Clayton asked, like a child, in that he was not judging me by asking, but simply inquiring about the nature of the world, or in this case, my pants or lack-thereof.

“It’s in fashion these days, like when Princess Diana wore those biking shorts with a sweater, similar look, see?” Really I had just forgotten to put on pants.

“Oh I guess you’re right… Listen. Are you high? Cuz you’ve been staring at the clock for a long, fucking time.” Clayton made sure to whisper around Tammy, the facilitator.

“I don’t remember,” I said and Clayton started laughing.

Tammy drolled out her introduction like you unfurl toothpaste or when a caterpillar contracts, and then extends. With a long sigh and a quick, “may-all-voices cease-before-the-facilitator-begins-to-SPEAK, thank you,” she started the meeting.

Introductions and check-ins were going great. My main man Jefferey, who was from Jamaica, had been doing well, in fact it was his 2-month anniversary. He started coming to meetings after he got caught robotripping at his office job.

“2 months, wow!” Clayton would sometimes talk to himself, a little too loud, as he went to the back to grab a coffee and a pastry; or for today with Jefferey’s anniversary, a slice of cake.

“Thanks everyone, I am really looking forward to whatever is in store! I am so EXCITED!” And Jefferey threw his hands out, shocking me with sudden movement, the room spun.

It was a big moment for me too. For me and for the department of human emotions that deal with that special thing the Germans call SCHADENFREUDE. Because at that moment my boss walked in.

“Well it looks like we have a newcomer, welcome! Can someone bring a chair? From the back maybe?”

My boss sat down, humbly. As he sat, his belly protruded out his shirt, loosening a button. When he swept the thin combover hairs on his head, he also adjusted his shirt buttons, leading to an awkward moment where it looked as if he were trying to pat his head and rub his belly at the same time, like a monkey. He smiled at everyone as he checked out all the new faces, that is, until he got to mine, instead he frowned and looked down. I wanted to spit on him.

I was high and smiling. When I get high I often like to watch videos of extreme gore. This is because somewhere in my brain, I associate intense terror with intense pleasure. It’s just something that makes me, me. But in this moment, as I mentioned with such reference to SCHADENFREUDE, it was not my terror I was taking pleasure in, but instead my boss’s.

The whole meeting went on this way. Everything normal, quiet, calm, cool, collected for everyone but me. My smile was contorted in such an extreme way that it made others genuinely concerned, having to look away in either worry or disturbance. I had intense tunnel vision and a complete lack of consideration for social norms. I was absorbed in my boss’ intense shame. It was so palpable I thought that if I drank his sweat, I would feel sweet pleasure tingle.

My boss’ offense, I’d come to find out, was trying to get high off Sudafed. This was all because a young, pretty intern told him she thought it was hot when her high school boyfriend got high off of it during her interview. There were rumors swirling around the office that he was a closeted pervert already. Noises, that would arouse suspicion sometimes. This just confirmed it.

The nature of working for this sober-department, sober-wing, of the university’s student health services, was so intense when it came to drugs, when it came to abstinence, that even things like Tylenol, Advil, and Sudafed, were prohibited. The intern probably knew he was a pervert and that he’d give her a better chance than any of the other candidates so long as she played up her flirting. The only thing my boss ended up getting from the Sudafed was an accidental fix to a long-lasting sinus infection that would annoy us all with his constant sneezing. Mucus would splash on whoever he was talking to. The intern would leave the job that same week, perhaps she got tired of flirting with such a sad and perverted man. It was neither confirmed nor denied, but the same week that this all went down, the intern was seen going into the HR office.

There she was, I imagined, the intern, telling HR, her boss’ wife, that she, the intern, was inappropriately flirting with her boss, the boss’ wife’s husband, HR-boss-intern, a love-triangle. And the intern leaving and the intern going into HR were two events that week that drove many to intense speculation, but only that, speculation. Because, after all, all we had were our eyes and assumptions and rumors, with some of us able to get closer to the intern than others. But see, this is what the soulless nature of an office job causes, intense and awfully-rude speculation into the lives of these victims and perpetrators.

So when it came to the moral question of whether or not it was good or virtuous to smile at my boss like a snake in the sober-support group, probably not, but I did it anyway. And if you were familiar with this special corporatized group, there was a beautiful, wonderful, absolutely amazing resentment circle, colloquially called “the inventory of annoyance,” that would happen at the end of the group.

“Before we end today, would anyone like to step forward with any resentments they would like to resolve in today’s meeting?”

And because today was my special day, as much as I thought it wasn’t with my underwear and sweater and no phone and rawdog and edibles, it indeed was.

I raised my hand.

“Who?”

I pointed directly at my boss.

“You.”

He did not give me the satisfaction of looking up, when the hairs on his back raised, when I pointed at him. I believe that when you point at somebody, you are using all of your psychic abilities, which, let me tell you, psychic abilities are real. You ever drive somewhere and you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck raise as you almost, just almost, get side-swiped by another car? No? Just me? Well I personally believe that psychic abilities, like extra-sensory perception, are real. Which makes me think that when you point at somebody, whatever psychic energy you’ve accumulated, goes into their karmic bin of bad shit that’s bound to happen to them. So in that moment, with my all-mighty-wisdom, I did my darndest to put all my energy into turning my boss’s karmic cycle to shit.

“I got a lotta shit to say.”

“Before we start, could you maybe just refrain from swearing, that would be great, thank you.” Tammy sort of melted into the chair. She had wild, curly long hair that framed the rest of her like an ornate mix of botany and pottery. It seemed like whatever energy she was trying to put out, it was firmly planted in that chair, in that stance, like she was assuming a position other than herself. What her true self was like, I wondered, the one that we all hide from others for the sake of reputation and societal expectations. Due to the edibles, I was showing mine.

“Of course,” anyone who disrespected the facilitator always got a lot of shit from everyone. As mad as you might’ve been at somebody from the group, it was never good to do friendly-fire at the facilitator, they were a neutral party.

“What do you want to say?”

“Well first off, bleep-you, alright, I’m here, I’m here, well, I have a problem alright, but, but, you’re here, I’m here, we’re here for the same reason, so, I don’t bleeping know, maybe a. ‘Sorry.’ A ‘sorry’ would be nice. An, ‘I understand’ would be nice.”

I was so impassioned I let a tear welp up on my eye. I wasn’t crying, it was just from the marijuana edible causing my eyes to get irritated. And you may be thinking that, my boss apologized, we hugged, the meeting ended, everyone hugged, we ate cake, yay, end of story. No.

And this is partially my fault, because, the dialogue I gave you, wasn’t the dialogue I actually said. No I said something more to the effect of you-take-over-the-counter prescriptions-to-get-it up-to-fuck-the-young-intern-that-you-shouldn’t-be-looking-at-because-you’ve-got-a-wife-at home-and-she-is-also-HR-which-is-fucking-weird-or-something-to-that-effect.

And you might think that it was in that moment that he lunged at me for the sake of his honor, his manhood, his masculinity. Or that he threw the cake he was eating at me, and I looked like a clown with blue, white, and red frosting on my face, and instead of being mad I laughed and we got up to dance and do an old musical routine. I would expect that to be a more interesting pattern of events than what happened.

Instead he came. He came. In his pants. This balding, overweight, nebbish boss of mine who I came to hate and despise, came in front of everyone. I didn’t know that could happen.

Some nights. Alone. When the edibles really relaxed my body. I’d crack my back like how I imagine you might break a chicken bone. I felt fluid, less rigid. I’d be terrified to admit to anyone that I tried, pants off, to reach such an erection that I’d try, with my mind, to arouse myself into completion, without my hands. It never worked. But my boss, he was able to achieve it, in front of a crowd no less.

What he achieved was, by no means, welcome in this quote-unquote normal, corporate sober-support meeting. But the revelation that my boss wasn’t as perfect as I had presumed him to be caused a ripple in my value system. I had thought for so long that if I didn’t feel as though I fit into society, that I had to act in a way that would make me perceived as bad within society. That if I did not feel I fit in then I could assume a hedonistic, nihilistic life, not caring for anyone. I realized that even the person I despised, that represented society to me, had proved himself immoral within the natural conventions of society. I thought it would be better for me to pursue good deeds for the sake of doing them, regardless of my disagreements with society and my persistent nihilism.

I would like to blame my parents, that they did not give me enough love and so I acted out now, as an adult, in ways I wish I would have as a child. But no, I took the active choice to not do my job. The job itself was not my concern, but what it represented, being a part of something. Even if that being was meaningless, it was human, to be human was to be floating in meaninglessness. Humanity, connection, these were things I had been missing as I drolled at my desk.

Everyone stared in horror at the white stain on my boss’ pants crotch while the echo of the quiet moan he had made at completion still lingered. Humiliation kink, that was his thing, the part of me that was still cruel and vindictive thought. I shook it off. I grabbed one of the tissue boxes nearby, usually for tears of the “facetubs,” and wiped the tear from his crotch.

The meeting ended to everyone’s relief. We stood outside as everyone avoided eye contact with us as they eagerly stepped into their cars and screeched off. We weren’t friends, but rather bounded by our shared ostracism.

“What’s going on with the underwear? You got an exhibition kink?” He asked with an air of cool charisma that was nowhere to be seen when we were at the office. As a few more people shuffled out he squinted, like if he tightened his glare hard enough he’d be able to disappear.

“I’m not a pervert like you, but, uhhh, I got locked out,” and we both laughed.