Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Eliminating insults from the vocabulary doesn't eliminate the pain and hatred that created these insults in the first place. People will simply invent new insults to express their rage.

  Look at how creative people get when they want to insult Trump. If the censors won't allow jokes on Late Night TV about the president's tiny little dick, then the talk shows simply make fun of his tiny little hands instead. Everyone knows what that really means.

  Even if you could ban words so that people cannot use them any more without going to jail, you won't stop people's basic human need to insult someone when they're angry or hurt. Insults exist for a reason. They serve a purpose. They're a coping mechanism. It's better to hurl a strong word at someone than to shoot them.

  If you ban a word like fuck, people will just use another word that means exactly the same thing, like screw. If you forbid the word nigger, racists will start using a different word, like spook, that is hurled with no less hatred.

  Racist Republicans are really good at that. They have all sorts of veiled insults that almost sound harmless to the uninitiated. But Republican audiences instinctively know what their politicians mean when they talk shit about black people with racist dog whistles like "urban youth" and "welfare queens." Those are simply euphemisms for "nigger." Just like "the N-word."

  They do the same thing when they use the word "liberal." That word means something completely different when it comes out of a Republican's mouth.

  When we liberals use the word "liberal," we mean open-minded, caring, fair, honest and kind.

  But when Republicans use the word "liberal," they mean corrupt, anti-American, unpatriotic, communist, treasonous, gay, and enemy.

  They have managed to taint words like "science" and "intellectual" and "Hillary" in the same way.

  So a completely harmless word becomes a vicious insult depending on who uses it. And you can't just ban the words liberal, science and intellectual, just because millions of hateful right-wing extremist assholes use them as insults.

  The Nazis did the same thing. They loaded the word "Jew" with so much hateful baggage, that when you wanted to insult someone and call him the worst of the worst scum, all you had to do was call him a Jew. Everyone in Nazi Germany knew exactly what you meant.

  You didn't even have to call him an anti-German, baby-eating, devil-worshipping, Jesus-killing traitor. All that was already implied in the word "Jew."

  Nowadays words like "Liberal" and "Muslim" are used by right-wing extremists in the same way as the word "Jew" was used by the right-wing extremists of Nazi Germany.

  Meanwhile the word "nigger" is not meant as an insult when black people use it. Then it's meant as a euphemism for "bro." And in England, the word "cunt" isn't any more offensive than the word "dick."

  So even the most harmless words can become vicious insults, and even the most obvious racial slur can be not racial, depending on the context.

  Anyway, after Lucy told me that Norbert was at the hospital with her, I was hurt and jealous. I texted back: "I can't believe ur fucking that lowlife piece of shit nigger! He probably gave u boils when he fucked u in the ass!"

  I didn't call him a nigger because I'm racist. I'm not. I don't hate entire races. (Actually I kinda have a man-crush on Obama.) I hate individual people. Like Norbert for example. I called him that because that was the worst, most obvious insult I could think of off the top of my head right now. I had to vent my rage quickly and effectively. And you do that by using the worst insult you can think of. The nuclear option.

  "Bullshit! Boils are not contagious," Lucy texted back.

  "Maybe not the boils themselves, but the bacteria that cause boils are highly contagious. Look it up!" I replied.

  She didn't text back after that.

  A week or two later she called me collect from jail.

  "Why are you calling me? I thought you're with Norbert," I said sarcastically.

  "You were right. I got the boils from him," she admitted.

  "Did you get rid of them?"

  "Not really. The old ones are almost gone. But now I got two new ones. One is really close to my vagina. I'm scared," she said in her sweet little voice.

  "You're gonna end up killing yourself with this shit. Either you'll overdose, or you'll catch AIDS or something."

  "Why the fuck would you even say that?" she yelled angrily.

  "Because it's the truth. You yourself told me about some of your friends who overdosed and died. And remember when you had that infection in your heart? Or when Veronica had that MRSA infection in her leg and they almost had to amputate it? Remember when Haley's face was swollen to twice the size because she had a MRSA infection really close to her eye and almost died?"

  "You're right," she said remorsefully. "I gotta get clean."

  "Yeah, yeah. That's what you always say when you're in jail. And then you run right back to some drug dealer the minute you get out."

  She called me back every day, but I wasn't gonna fall for her shit anymore. I was seeing Sonya at the time. Lucy didn't like that: "Why are you dating Sonya? Do you love her? I thought you love me."

  "Well, just between you and me, no, I don't really love Sonya. It's just nice to have someone around. Things with you and me obviously never worked out, so I gave up on you. Did you think I was just gonna wait for you and twiddle my thumbs while you fuck scumbags like Blizzard and Norbert and Cho and Albert and all those lowlives on Backpage?"

  I told Lucy that I'd still be her friend, if she was serious about getting clean and needed a friend, but nothing more.

  She requested to be transferred to Dorm 2, the rehab dorm. She signed up for the jail's 12 Step program. I knew by now that it did absolutely nothing to keep anyone off drugs. Veronica, Wendy, Nicole, Haley, Abby, Sonya and some of the other girls I knew had all been in that program for weeks or even months. And they went back to using drugs the minute they got out of jail. Even Lucy herself had been in Dorm 2 before and that stupid program never stopped her before from relapsing as soon as she got out.

  I wondered why the 12 Step program was even still being used as the Gold Standard of drug rehab in America. I read up on it and found my suspicions confirmed: Doctors had done studies on the Narcotics Anonymous 12 Step program, and found that it really didn't do shit to keep anyone off drugs. In fact, according to their statistics, the rate of relapse was close to 100%. Higher even than among people who tried to stay clean some other way and did not go to NA meetings. Some studies found that these meetings even increased the rate of relapse compared to people who didn't join any rehab program at all and simply stayed away from other addicts.

  So much of what we call conventional wisdom is complete bullshit.

  Most people don't think for themselves. They just regurgitate someone else's opinion and pass it off as their own.

  Oh yeah, let's ban the N-word! Everyone else says that's a great idea, so it must be a great idea! Never mind that banning it makes it the most potent insult around.

  And let's send vulnerable addicts into a room full of other addicts at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting! Never mind that they all relapse sooner or later. That doesn't mean the program doesn't work. It just means that almost 100% of the patients are doing something wrong! Yeah, right.

  In recent years, with the tidal wave of opioid addiction in America growing larger by the day, and the need for a treatment that actually works becoming ever more urgent, more and more doctors are finally speaking out against the 12 Step program. Everyone knows by now that you can't just pray the gay away. Well, you can't pray drug addiction away either. Faith healers are charlatans.

  But there was no sense in telling Lucy how sceptical I was about Narcotics Anonymous. She was staking all her hopes on the rehab program in Dorm 2, and if I had told her not to believe anything these people say, I would have sounded like the bad guy to her, who doesn't want her to get clean.

  She lived and breathed the program for weeks while she was in jail. Her sister Summer, who was an alco
holic, and her aunt Nicole, who was a crack and heroin addict like Lucy, both swore by the program, because they were told that it works. Never mind that both of them had relapsed since they had been in the program. They thought that was their fault, not the program's. Because that's what they had been told.

  As part of Summer's probation, she had to join some local church's rehab program for a year or go to jail. It was a little bit like a cult. Prayer all day every day. That was their answer to everything.

  Of course the church program was pretty popular, because girls preferred to be in a church program rather than in jail. But spots opened up regularly because girls ran away and relapsed all the time. But of course the church didn't advertise that part.

  Summer told Lucy that she could get her into the one-year church program, too. A few days later the minister, a matronly old lady, visited Lucy in jail and told her that God had a plan for her and blah blah blah.

  Lucy was excited about it and told me that she planned on joining the church program for a year after she got out of jail.

  It was gonna be like living in an all-girl convent. No boys allowed.

  You know, the same concept that worked so well for Sonya. What could possibly go wrong?

  When Lucy was finally released from jail, of course she didn't join the convent. She went right back to doing drugs.

  She called me a few days later and said she wanted to see me. By that time I had broken up with Sonya.

  I asked Lucy about her boils. She said they were still there but somehow she was able to hide them when she had sex with people. So now she was spreading the bacteria to God knows how many guys. Come for the sex, stay for the boils! I kinda hoped she was still seeing Albert and that his dick was gonna fall off.

  I had no desire to see her. I didn't even want her anywhere near my condo. What if the boil bacteria got into my bed or my bathroom? Or even just my poor couch? My couch had been through enough already.

  A few days later she called me again. She was crying: "The boils are everywhere! I can't have sex! I can't even sit down! It hurts so bad!"

  She wanted me to come get her. She wanted to stay with me, and have me take care of her.

  Of course. She figured if she tells me she loves me, I would be dumb enough to give her money, so she could buy drugs until she's healthy enough to fuck every guy in Fort Myers again.

  No thanks.

  "Ok, I'll come get you," I said. "Where are you?"

  Afterwards I called the church lady and told her I was a friend of Lucy's. She said she was worried about her, because Lucy was supposed to join her one year rehab program but when she was gonna pick up Lucy at the jail after her release, she was already gone.

  Been there, done that.

  I told the church lady that Lucy was sick and I wanted to find a safe place for her. We agreed that I would pick Lucy up and bring her to the church.

  Lucy was at one of the shitty motels on 41. She got into my car and we hugged. She was pale and her eyes were red. She looked like she had been crying a lot.

  We made some small talk as we were driving.

  Suddenly she asked: "Where are you going? That's not the way to your condo."

  "I'm taking you to that church you told me about," I said.

  "No, I'm not ready to get clean! I don't wanna be stuck in some church for a year like a nun!" she yelled.

  I tried to calm her down: "You don't have to stay if you don't want to. Let's just go see the church lady. She just wants to talk to you. Nothing more."

  "NO!!!" she screamed.

  "Calm down! She's not gonna keep you against your will. She just wants to talk to you. Just for a few minutes. That's it. Then we can go home if you want."

  I had to slow down because we were approaching the intersection of 41 and Colonial. Both of them are big, busy streets with lots of traffic. I pulled into the far left lane to make a turn. The car did not even come to a complete stop yet when Lucy opened the door and jumped out. Right into a whole bunch of traffic!

  "WAIT!! What the fuck are you doing?! You're gonna get hit by a car!" I yelled. But it was too late. She was already gone. I saw her dodge a few cars and run across the street. Then I couldn't see her anymore.

  It took me forever to make the left turn, turn the car around and come back to the intersection to look for Lucy. But there was no trace of her.

  I called the church lady and told her what happened. Then I headed home. Later that night, Lucy texted me: "I can't believe u just left me there and u drove off without me! WTF! Why didn't u run after me?"

  I texted back: "R u fucking serious? How the fuck am I supposed to run after u when I'm in the car, in the middle of a busy intersection? And I did turn around and look for u but u were gone!"

  She didn't reply.

  I was so sick and tired of this shit.

  It's so exhausting, so mentally and emotionally draining, when you care about a drug addict and they never miss an opportunity to disappoint, manipulate or hurt you.

  I needed another vacation.

  GOODREADS

  "When we read, another person thinks for us. We only repeat his mental process. The difficult part of thinking is already done for us. This is why it relaxes us to read a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is in fact only the playground of another’s thoughts. If anyone spends all his time reading, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid."

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  "Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

  Albert Einstein

  "It is only by reflection that you can assimilate what you have read. If you read nonstop without thinking about it afterwards, what has been read does not take root. Most of it is lost."

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  "A book only serves its purpose if it has a soul - the soul of its author. If he doesn't reveal himself, there is no point in reading it."

  Karl May

  Meanwhile more and more people were reading my book Sex and Crime. Not just the inmates and guards in Lee County Jail. It was available on Amazon and in bookstores.

  After a few months, over a hundred thousand people all over the world had downloaded it on Kindle, Google Books or Apple iBooks.

  It was exciting to get my first feedback from complete strangers. People posted reviews online, and I was getting fan mail from female readers.

  I mentioned earlier that social media websites are designed to be addicting by giving you a constant stream of little dopamine kicks. Every time your selfie gets a like or a compliment, it feels good because your brain releases a little bit of dopamine.

  Some primitive tribes in the Amazon or in Africa are afraid of cameras, because they think a photo can capture your soul. Of course a photo can't really do that. But a book can.

  To an author a book is like a selfie. A very intimate, soul-exposing selfie. You open yourself to the world by pouring your heart and soul and all your innermost thoughts into a book. And that book is like a part of you. It captures your essence. A book is much more personal than a selfie.

  Getting fan mail from your readers is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

  I didn't have to distract myself from my lonely life with crackwhore drama anymore. Now I was getting my dopamine kicks from the reactions to my book. It felt really good!

  Until I got my first negative review.

  Some mean bitch trashed my book. It hurt. I felt personally rejected. She didn't just reject a bunch of words on paper. She rejected the essence of my very being.

  What made it worse was how casually this random stranger trampled all over my feelings. She didn't even know me, and it meant nothing to her to hurt me. From her perspective, I was nothing more than a bug under her shoe. She didn't put any thought into it.

  The stuff she wrote didn't even apply to my book. It was clear that she didn't even really read it.
She just skimmed through it, read a few paragraphs here and there, didn't get the point, couldn't follow the story, so she just trashed it.

  Why would someone write a review for a book they didn't even read? That's just stupid. Would you review a movie you didn't see? Of course not. Would you review a restaurant you've never been to? Of course not. Well, unless you're a spiteful asshole and you just want to hurt the restaurant owner with an undeserved one-star-rating.

  But this woman didn't even know me. So why would she purposely go out of her way to hurt me by trashing my book without actually having read it?

  Then I found out she was a regular on a website called Goodreads. I had never heard of it. It's another social media platform, like Facebook or Twitter. But it has a focus on books. All the people who hang out on Goodreads love to read. Or so they say.