Нед Виззини - It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I see.” Across the room, Jimmy is trying to open his juice with one hand. The other hand stays at his side; I can’t tell if he can’t move it or just doesn’t want to. Smitty comes over and helps him.

“It’ll come to ya!” he says.

“Do you feel that I’m a threat to you?” Humble asks.

“No, you seem like a pretty cool guy.” I munch.

Humble nods. His food, which was sitting on the plate in front of him, very innocent and oblivious, gets destroyed over the next twenty seconds as he eats half of it. I continue my slow and steady pace.

“When I was your age—you’re fifteen, right?”

I nod. “How’d you know?”

“I’m good with ages. When I was fifteen, I had this chick who was twenty-eight. I don’t know why, but she loved me. Now, I was doing a lot of pot back then, my whole life was pot. . .”

It’s weird how your stomach can come back around. As I tune Humble out, I eat not because I want to, not because I have to overcome anything, not to prove myself to anyone, but because it’s there. I eat because that’s what people do. And somehow when the food is put in front of you by an institution, when there’s a large gray force behind it and you don’t have to thank anyone for it, you have the animal instinct to make it disappear, before a rival like Humble comes along and snatches it away. I think, I think as I chew, my problem might be too much thinking.

That’s why you need to join the Army, soldier.

I thought I was already in the Army, sir!

You’re in the mental army, Gilner, not the U.S. Army.

So I should join?

I don’t know: can you handle it?

I don’t know.

Well, you seem to know that you like order and dis cipline. That’s what the Army offers young men like you, Gilner, and that’s what you’re getting here.

But I don’t want to be in the Army; I want to be normal.

You’ve got some considerin’ to do, then, soldier, because normal ain’t no job as far as I’m concerned.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Humble asks.

“What?”

“Do you? Somewhere out there. You got a hot little fifteen-year-old?” He points his food-colored fork at me.

“No!” I smile, thinking of Nia.

“They got cute ones, though.” Humble runs his hand through hair that is no longer there. He has hairy dark arms with tattoos of jokers, swords, bulldogs, and pirate ships. “They just keep making the girls cuter and cuter.”

“It’s all the hormones,” I say.

“That’s right. You’re very smart. You got any sugar?”

I hand over a sugar packet. I’ve finished my chicken and I could eat more, frankly, but I don’t know who to ask. Might as well make the tea. I open the teabag, which is labeled “Swee-Touch-Nee,” a brand I have never heard of and am not convinced actually exists, and stain my water with a bunch of deep dips. As I’m finishing up, Smitty approaches with a second tray of food, identical to the first.

“You look like you could handle some seconds,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Eat up.”

I tackle the second chicken. I am a working machine. Part of me works that didn’t before.

“The girls, they drink all this milk with cow hormones,” I say between bites, “and they develop a lot younger.”

“You’re telling me!” Humble says. “The crazy thing is how the girls in my day were a lot better than my father’s girls. I wonder what the next generation will be like.”

“Sex robots.”

“Heh heh. Where you from?”

“Around here.”

“This neighborhood? Nice. Must’ve been a quick ride. If you came by ambulance. And I’m not assuming and I’m not judging. I’m just being curious.” He eats two gigantic bites of his food, chews and continues, “How did you get here?”

He’s broken the rule of Six North. But maybe it’s not a rule. Or maybe eating with someone breaks it.

“I checked myself in.”

“You did? Why?”

“I was feeling pretty bad; I wanted to kill myself.”

“Buddy, that’s what I told my doctor the other week. I told him, ‘Doc, I’m not afraid of dying; I’m only afraid of living, and I want to put this bayonet through my stomach,’ and then I stopped taking my blood-pressure medication. Because I have high blood pressure on top of everything else, on top of the drugs they have me on here that keep me whacked out of my mind; if I don’t eat lots of salt to regulate my blood pressure I’ll die, so when I told him I wasn’t taking my medication he said ‘What, are you crazy? Are you trying to kill yourself?! And I looked him right in the eyes and said ‘Yes.’ And they carted me off here.”

“Huh.”

“The problem is I’ve been living in my car for the last year. I have nothing; I have the clothes on my back and that’s it. The only thing I have is the car and now the car has been towed and all my stuff is inside. There’s thirty-five hundred dollars’ worth of film equipment in there.”

“Wow.”

“So over the next few days I have to call the police station, the tow yard, get myself into an adult home, and talk to my daughter. She’s about your age. The mother I’m completely over but the daughter I love to death. The mother I’d like to love to death.”

“Heh.”

“Don’t do me any favors; only laugh if it’s funny.”

“It is!”

“Good. Because right now I don’t have you pegged as a yuppie. You’re something else. I’m not sure what you are, but I’m going to find out.”

“Cool.”

“I’m gonna go get my medication so I can sit through this afternoon with my head completely whacked.” Humble slides away; I finish eating the chicken. When it’s done—clean plate—I feel better than I have about anything I’ve done in a long time, maybe a year. This is all I need to do. Keith was hes itant at the Anxiety Management Center, but he was right—all you need is food, water, and shelter. And here I have all three. What next?

I look across the dining room, and three of the younger people—the big girl, the girl with dark hair and blue streak, and the blond girl with cuts—are all sitting together.

“C’mere.” Blue Streak beckons.

It’s been a while since a bunch of girls asked me over to their table. First time, really.

“Me?” I point at myself.

“No, the other new guy,” Blue Streak says.

I’m not sure what to do with my tray. I get up, then turn back, then turn toward the girls, then swivel—

“On the cart,” Blue Streak says. She turns to the big girl. “God, he’s so cute.”

Did she just say that? I put my tray on the cart and sit at the vacant seat with the girls.

“What’s your name?” Blue Streak asks.

“Ah, Craig.”

“So what’s it like to be the hottest guy in here, Craig?”

My body hitches and jerks up as if on a pulley system. She’s got it all wrong— she’s the hot one. It’s tough to tell whether her skin or teeth are the more perfect white. Her eyes are dark and her lips pouty and open; the blue streak accents the contrast of hair and face, and she smiles at me—that’s definitely smiling. I don’t know how I didn’t notice her hotness before, when I looked into the dining room.

“Jennifer,” the big girl says. She leans toward me. “I’m Becca. Don’t take advantage of Jennifer; she’s a sex addict.”

Jennifer smacks her lips: “Shut up!” She turns back. “I’m only here for one more day.” She slithers forward. “You want to spend it with me?”