by S. G. Browne
“But what you’re talking about aren’t just side effects,” Frank says. “Making people fall asleep or throw up or go into convulsions? That’s not possible.”
“Then why don’t we put that to a test?” Vic says, standing up. “You didn’t like your lunch anyway. How about you let me see if I can help you get rid of it? Shed some of those extra pounds you’ve been putting on.”
“No way,” Randy says. “Not in my place.”
“Why not?” Vic gestures to the floor, which is about 350 square feet of patterned vinyl flooring. “It’s just linoleum.”
“For your information, this is luxury vinyl,” Randy says. “And I don’t want Frank or anyone else throwing up all over it. You want to make someone puke, go outside.”
“Well, since I doubt anyone wants to go into a seizure or have Isaac hand out hard-ons, how about we have Lloyd cast his fairy tale sleeping magic on one of us,” Vic says. “That way we won’t make a mess on Randy’s luxury vinyl or cause anyone to question their sexuality.”
Isaac lets out a laugh, while I wonder if I can perform under pressure. Over the past couple of days, I’ve become better at making my lips go numb, but doing it on command in front of an audience makes me wonder if I need a fluffer.
Vic turns to me. “How about it, Lloyd?”
“Sure,” I say, even though I’m not.
“This is bullshit,” Frank says.
“Why is it bullshit?” Randy asks.
Frank looks around at all of us and folds his arms across his chest like a petulant child. “It just is.”
“You know what I think?” Vic says.
“No,” Frank says. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“I think Frank doth protest too much,” Vic says.
“What does that mean?” Charlie asks.
Vic grins a humorless little smile. “It means I think Frank’s hiding something.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Frank says.
“Really?” Vic says. “Randy’s having itching attacks. Lloyd’s developed insomnia. I’ve been nauseous. Charlie’s got the shakes. And Isaac . . .”
Vic looks at Isaac, who shrugs and gives a sheepish smile.
“Well, I don’t think I want to know what precipitates Isaac’s ability to dispense woodies,” Vic says. “But the point is, everyone here has something going on, some physical manifestation that reflects these side effects we’ve developed. And we’ve all noticed you’ve been eating for two lately. Since you’re not pregnant, I’m guessing there must be some reason for your increased appetite.”
“No reason,” Frank says, though he doesn’t sound convincing. “I’ve just been hungry.”
“Then why are you so reluctant to believe that the rest of us have developed these abilities?” Vic asks. “Is it because you haven’t developed your own unique talent and you’re feeling left out?”
Frank doesn’t say anything but instead just stares at Vic.
Vic takes a couple of steps closer to Frank. “Or is there something else going on?”
“I’m done with this.” Frank steps around Vic and walks to the front door. “You can finish your ridiculous conversation without me.”
“Come on, Frank,” Vic says. “What are you hiding?”
Frank throws his left hand up in the air without looking back and extends his middle finger, then walks out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
No one says anything. Vic looks at me and shrugs while Isaac clears his throat and hums an unrecognizable tune. Randy drops to the floor and starts doing push-ups.
“Do you guys think we should tell someone about this?” Charlie asks.
“Tell who?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Charlie says. “Someone who might know what’s going on. Someone who’s in charge.”
“In charge?” Vic says with a sarcastic laugh. “In charge of what? The only ones in charge of this are us.”
“What about G-God?” Isaac says.
Vic gives a Bronx cheer and waves off Isaac’s comment as if someone just farted.
“I was thinking more like the people who run the clinical trials,” Charlie says. “If the drugs we tested caused this, maybe they can figure out why it happened and how to reverse it.”
“I don’t care why it happened,” Vic says. “And I don’t want to reverse this. I like having this ability to make people throw up. It gives me the chance to teach all of the douche bags of the world a lesson.”
Randy stands up. “I agree with Vic. Not about the douche bag thing, but I’m okay with this. It’s kind of Kool and the Gang. Once you get used to the itching.”
While there’s a voice inside of me that echoes Charlie’s concerns, it’s muffled behind a closed door at the end of a long corridor. The other voice, the one whispering encouragement in my ear, makes me feel special and empowered, which is a new experience. So I’m not in any rush to risk giving that up.
Plus, if anyone knew what I could do, what any of us could do, we’d probably end up in a lab somewhere, forced to endure a bunch of tests, and no one would ever see us again. We’d go from being volunteer guinea pigs to imprisoned lab rats.
“I think we should keep this to ourselves,” I say. “You never know what could happen to us if word of this got out.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says. “You’re probably right.”
Charlie’s easily persuaded. He’d make a lousy politician.
“Isaac?” Vic says. “You have any concerns you’d like to share?”
Isaac looks around as if he’s trying to find a concern; then he smiles and shakes his head.
“All right then.” Vic rubs his hands together. “Now that we’ve got the existential crisis out of the way, who’s up for a little scientific research?”
Randy, Vic, Charlie, Isaac, and I are near the corner of Forsyth and Broome in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, where teams of thirty-something men play soccer on the fenced-in synthetic turf field in an effort to extend their sporting youth. Right now, in the mid-August heat, the only ones out on the field are a couple of teenagers throwing around a Frisbee, but there are plenty of other targets for us to choose from walking past on the sidewalks and sitting on benches, enjoying a normal Manhattan summer afternoon.
“Okay,” Vic says, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the sweat from his chrome dome. “Who wants to go first?”
“Me, me!” Charlie waves his hand in the air like a student who never gets called on.
“Let’s try to tone down the enthusiasm,” Vic says. “The last thing we want is for anyone to know what we’re doing.”
“Oh, right.” Charlie puts his hand down. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Vic says. “But since you’re such an eager beaver, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Charlie smiles and takes a couple of deep breaths, then closes his eyes a moment before opening them again. “Okay. I’m ready.”
He looks around for a target and appears to settle on one of the two teenagers tossing around the Frisbee.
I watch them making backhand throws and acrobatic catches, having fun and showing off, and it occurs to me that the five of us are not so different. Beneath the veneer of adulthood, we’re just five kids who got new toys and we want to take them out for show-and-tell. It just so happens that Charlie’s new toy makes people go into convulsions.
Lots of prescription drugs list seizures as one of their possible side effects. There are even anti-epileptic drugs that can make seizures worse, so taking them is kind of like going on a diet to lose weight so you can get fatter.
For several minutes Charlie stares at the teenagers, his face tight with concentration, doing his best to make something happen. He reminds me of the hulking mute sidekick to General Zod in Superman II, trying to blow something up with his laser vision and not being able to do much more than cause a cigarette burn.
After another minute, Charlie turns back to us. “I can’t do it while you guys are watching.”
“Isaac?” Vic says. “You want to give one of them a boner?”
Isaac laughs and looks around like a kid in a spelling bee who can’t remember how to spell bacon.
“I d-don’t think I can right n-now,” he says. “It just d-doesn’t feel right.”
“I’ll give it a shot.” Randy stands up and looks around and picks out a fiftyish woman sitting on a nearby bench, reading a paperback.
Rashes caused by prescription drugs can come in a variety of flavors, including hives, purpuric eruptions, and Stevens-Johnson syndrome—which is a hive-like rash on the lining of the mouth. Not something you’d want to list on your Match.com profile.
While Randy tries to make the woman break out in a rash or hives or seborrheic dermatitis, I turn to Vic. “So how many people have you made throw up?”
“I don’t know,” Vic says. “Three or four.”
I get the impression he’s lowballing me. “Is that all?”
“Maybe more,” he says with a shrug and a smile.
“How many more?” I ask.
“Let’s not focus on numbers,” Vic says. “Instead, let’s focus on Randy’s attempt to give that woman herpes.”
“Is he really going to give her herpes?” Charlie asks.
“Not if he wears a condom,” Vic says.
Isaac laughs while Charlie gets a puzzled expression on his face and looks at me for help.
“He’s kidding,” I say.
“Oh,” Charlie says, then laughs. “I get it.”
He doesn’t.
Randy, meanwhile, isn’t having any more luck than Charlie, so he gives up and sits back down. “I can’t get it to work.”
“That’s because you haven’t learned how to develop your trigger,” Vic says.
“What’s that?” Charlie asks.
“Just before I make someone throw up, I get nauseous,” Vic says. “Then this pressure builds up inside of me until I think I’m about to throw up, which is when I project my side effect. But the nausea is where everything starts.”
Nausea and vomiting are listed as possible reactions for nearly every prescription drug on the market, from antidepressants to sleeping pills to opioids. They’re like the Starbucks of side effects. They’re everywhere.
“For me, my lips go numb,” I say.
“I get cold,” Charlie says. “Like my stomach fills up with ice.”
“I feel like someone rubbed Bengay all over my balls,” Randy says, a little too loud, and several people walking past get treated to the out-of-context statement of the day.
“How about you, Isaac?” I ask.
“It’s kind of like R-Randy,” he says. “Only d-different.”
“Whatever it is,” Vic says, “the trick is to access that trigger on your own rather than having it just happen. You need to re-create the circumstances that exist just before your lips go numb or your stomach fills with ice or your nuts start to burn. That’s the key to success.”
The keynote speaker at my college graduation said the key to success was hard work, ingenuity, and perseverance.
“I want to see you d-do it,” Isaac says. “I want to see you m-m-make someone throw up.”
“All right,” Vic says. “I don’t think you’ll learn anything by watching me, but let’s pick out a target.”
“How about one of them?” Charlie points to the two teenagers still playing Frisbee.
Vic shakes his head. “They’re not doing anything to deserve having me make them blow chunks.”
“I didn’t realize there were rules,” Randy says.
“There are always rules,” Vic says. “Of course, rules are made to be broken.”
At the moment, it seems like we’re breaking all sorts of rules. Rules of biology. Rules of physics. Rules of nature. Eventually we’ll probably have to consider the philosophical implications of what’s happening to us, but right now we’re just having some fun.
We all look around, trying to find a target for Vic so he can make them throw up—not exactly how I thought I’d spend my afternoon when I got out of bed this morning, but sometimes life takes you places you never thought you’d go.
“Bingo.” Vic points to a slick-looking guy in a light gray suit a block away, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone loud enough for us to hear him.
“Why him?” Randy asks.
“Because he’s a self-absorbed douche bag,” Vic says, as if the answer should be obvious.
Vic doesn’t own a cell phone. Mostly, he says, it’s because he doesn’t want the obligation of having to answer phone calls when he’s not home. He doesn’t have voice mail or an answering machine for the same reason.
He’s not the easiest person to get hold of in an emergency.
We all watch the self-absorbed douche bag as he gets closer, talking so loud you’d think the person on the other end of the conversation was hearing impaired. “No, no, no. It’s like I told you. He doesn’t give a shit. And as far as I’m concerned, he can go fuck himself.”
When he reaches the corner less than five feet from us, he stops and takes a drag on his cigarette, then flicks the butt onto the sidewalk, his cell phone to his ear, no regard for anyone around him as he swears and walks away.
I glance over at Vic, waiting for him to do his thing, and I notice that his eyes are closed and he’s taking several deep breaths. His face has grown pale, his lips look thin and colorless, and he appears to have come down with the flu. Just as I’m about to ask him if he’s okay, he opens his eyes and gives me a weak smile.
“You might want to get out of the way,” he says, the suggestion coming out in a rough whisper.
I move aside and Vic takes a deep breath, then makes a face as if he’s just bitten into a rotten tomato before he lets out a burp, deep and guttural, like Darth Vader with indigestion.
For a moment nothing happens and I think this was all just some silly game of pretend we were all playing. Then the guy in the suit stops talking, leans over, and starts throwing up. And when I say throwing up, I don’t mean like your garden-variety street drunk spewing on the sidewalk at two on a Saturday morning. This is more like a busted water pipe. Or a fire hydrant.
Vomit pours out of his mouth across the sidewalk. He doesn’t even have time to make any noise until the first wave is out of him. Then he sucks in a long gasp of air and wipes his mouth before he lets out a groan that’s followed by another stream of vomit. For whatever reason, the entire time, he keeps the cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Holy shit!” Randy says.
Charlie and I watch in silence while Isaac lets out a machine-gun burst of laughter. None of the other people in the vicinity seem to notice Isaac’s reaction since they’re all too busy watching the suit lose his lunch and his breakfast and whatever he ate for dinner last night. After it goes on for another ten or fifteen seconds, I start to wonder if he might need some help.
I turn to Vic. “Do you think we should call an ambulance?”
The color has returned to Vic’s face and he no longer looks like a candidate for a blood transfusion. Instead he’s shaking his head slowly back and forth as the suit drops down on all fours and starts dry heaving.
“Fucking smokers,” Vic says. “It’s like they think the entire planet is their goddamned ashtray.”
From the New York Post, page 5:
GOT MEDS? PRESCRIPTION DRUG THEFTS ON THE RISE
A wave of prescription drug thefts has swept across Upper Manhattan, with thieves posing as potential buyers while targeting open houses and then raiding the medicine cabinets. Last weekend alone, three separate homes on the Upper East Side were hit while hosting open houses.
“We don’t know who the culprits are,” Detective Sergeant Steve Moura said. “By the time the owners realized their prescriptions were missing, the thieves were long gone. Sometimes the homeowners didn’t even realize they’d been robbed until several days l
ater.”
One real estate agent, who asked not to be named, said she didn’t remember anyone who looked suspicious or who appeared to leave with any prescription bottles.
When asked if they had any suspects, Detective Moura said, “While we do have some video surveillance footage from a couple of homes, unfortunately there’s not much to go on.”
Prescription drug thefts are nothing new in the criminal landscape and have been on the rise in recent years. Various crimes—from home invasions and muggings to homicides and assaults—have been committed in the name of prescription drugs. Frequently the victims are those least able to defend themselves.
Addicts often prey on the sick or the elderly in order to get their fix. Some, rather than using the drugs themselves, will resell them. Opioids such as Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet tend to be the drug of choice for getting high and can command a premium price on the street.
But the recent rash of drug thefts in Upper Manhattan has a decidedly different prescription.
Antianxiety drugs like Valium, Xanax, and Ativan have been reported missing or stolen, along with the pharmaceutical sleep aids Lunesta, Sonata, and Ambien. In addition, statins like Lipitor and Zocor, which are used to lower high cholesterol, have gone missing.
“It’s a bit of a change from the usual prescription drug thefts we see,” Detective Moura said. “High-quality pain relievers tend to be the drug of choice, but I guess if you’ve got a craving, a drug’s a drug. So long as it gets you high or puts you in an altered state of mind, that’s all that matters.”
When asked if this was the work of a single person or several different thieves, Detective Moura said he thought they were looking at a single group of maybe three or four individuals who are selling the drugs on the street.
“The volume of pharmaceuticals that’s been stolen is more than the average addict would consume,” he said. “So it’s unlikely to be the work of a single individual.”
I’m home on the couch, surfing the Internet for clinical trials and watching television, flipping from Adult Swim to The Daily Show while I try to figure out how to tell Sophie that I’ve developed the ability to make people fall asleep. It’s not the kind of thing you ever expect to have to explain to your girlfriend.
