Hyper

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "I guess I'm a complicated guy."

  We talked for another half-hour until lunch. Jim was obviously no dummy. He had a sense of humor, and if he wasn't exactly an intellectual, he had thought about stuff besides sports. He considered the current political system to be "bullshit," though I wasn't clear about his objections.

  I felt fortunate to have found a new friend so quickly. Especially a large and obviously strong new friend. I doubted many of the kids here would be stronger or bigger. I hoped not, anyway.

  In the cafeteria, I met Jim's "homeys" – Robbie, Ben, and Dan – and joined them at a table with food that looked exactly like the dreck they served at my school cafeteria. Food I usually avoided like the plague.

  Jim's friends were a mixed bunch. Robbie was what Keith called a "weight head" – a dude with a blocky body and jaw and prematurely thinning hair (steroids?) who could probably bench twice my body weight. Dan resembled a modern-day hippie with his shoulder-length blond hair, granny glasses, and fuzzy beginnings of a beard. Ben wore sunglasses and smirked a lot. I judged those to be his most noteworthy attributes.

  The conversation wasn't quite as "sparkly" as I would've liked, but it wasn't stupid, either. The guys had some choice words for this facility and the system that imprisoned them.

  "It's all about the money," said Dan, smoothing back his long blond locks. "We've become a prison society, because it's profitable. We imprison more people than China or Russia, for fuck's sake."

  "Yeah, it's all a scam," Jim agreed. "Look how much money they put into this place. You know damn well they build something like this they gotta find a way to fill it."

  "Build it and they will commit crimes?" I ventured with a smile.

  "You guys and your whining," Robbie grumbled. "Not saying I disagree. I was busted for drugs myself. But we knew the score. We took our chances, and now we're payin' for it."

  "Maybe," said Jim, "but it's still bullshit."

  "Jews in Nazi Germany probably knew the score, too," said Ben, smirking even more from behind his dark sunglasses. "That doesn't make it right what the Nazis did to them."

  "Right on," said Dan.

  "Not sure about comparing drug laws to Nazis," said Robbie. "Dope's okay – just makes you stupid – but I know personally some people whose lives were ruined by meth. Some shit should be against the law."

  "But you got busted dealing prescription drugs," Jim snorted. "Now there's some dangerous shit. Talk about drugs that can ruin your life."

  "Very funny."

  "That's actually a good point," I said. "Prescription drugs can cause problems worse than the disease they're treating."

  "Yup," said Dan. "When I was on Paxil I almost committed suicide."

  "How do you almost commit suicide?" asked Robbie, his half-scowl skeptical.

  "I got so depressed that one day I emptied the whole bottle in my hand and was about to drink it all down when the phone rang. It was my grandmother. She talked me out of it."

  "That was lucky," I said.

  "Yeah," Dan murmured. "I sometimes wonder if it was luck."

  After lunch, my new friends had to go to classes. Since I hadn't been assigned any classes – my "counselor" had to show up for that – I wandered around and ended up in their exercise room. A group of Latinos clustered around the free weight area, so I headed for some exercise machines on the opposite side.

  I worked my way through the circuit of presses, squats, and pull-downs. The machines could've use some adjustment and lubrication but weren't all that bad. I was starting in on my second set of pull-downs when the Latinos drifted over from the free weight area and closed in around me.

  "Hey, chirujo," a tall Latino with a sparse goatee greeted me in a slurry-sounding purr. His fellows snickered. "This isn't your time. This is our time, holmes."

  "Sorry," I said. "I didn't know there were schedules."

  "That's a lot of weight you're busting," observed Senor Goatee. "How'd a pretty boy like you get so strong?"

  "I like working out, I guess." I looked around for a detention officer, wondering if I were in trouble.

  "How much can you bench?"

  "I don't know. Maybe one-ninety?"

  "That's impressive." His "that's" sounded like "thas." "We're done over there. Why doan you show us what you got?"

  "Uh, I think I'll pass. I'm kind of tired."

  "Or maybe you were lying about how much you can bench, ese?" He looked to his fellows. "We doan like being lied to, do we, batos?"

  The group rumbled its agreement and stared at me with stern faces. I glanced longingly at the entrance to the gym.

  "Are you a liar, ese?"

  "No. Not generally."

  "Not generally?" He laughed with what almost seemed like genuine amusement. "Enough bullshit. Prove you are not a fucking liar."

  I rose, and the group parted as I headed with heavy reluctance toward the nearest bench. The barbell in the rack held two fifty-pound weights – adding up to one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Not a bad warm-up weight for me.

  I got the barbell off the cradle and pressed it a few times under the stony stares of the gang. I barely got the bar racked up when two "batos" slapped twenty-five pound discs on either end.

  "Ah, I'm not really warmed up," I protested.

  "We don't got all day, holmes," said Goatee.

  I sucked down a few deep breaths, grabbed the bar, and shoved it free. Two more panting breaths and I lowered it. Explode! The bar surged upward. Looking good.

  Then I hit my usual sticking spot, and the barbell froze. I snagged another breath and tried to grunt my way through it, but it was as if the barbell had struck a wall.

  "Didn't think so," Goatee sneered.

  He and his posse sauntered away, a few pausing to smirk back at me on their way out. I made one last snarling attempt to push past the sticking point, but it was hopeless. What goes up must come down, as Isaac Newton once pointed out. I eased the bar down on my chest. Now came the awkward part. Fortunately, I'd been in this position a couple of times before, and knew what to do.

  I was starting to roll the bar down my chest onto my stomach when a familiar voice called, "Dude! Hold on a sec!"

  Jim and Robbie raced over and grabbed the bar on either end. I felt the blessed release of weight as they lifted it up and onto the cradle.

  "Not a good idea to bench heavy without a spotter," said Jim. "I mean heavy, relative to your strength."

  Now Einstein's relativity had joined Newton's classic mechanics, I thought. I could die happy.

  "What are you smiling about?" Jim grunted.

  "The ironies of life?"

  "Man, you are one weird dude."

  I sat up, rubbing my shoulders. "I only got in that situation because some Hispanic dudes were in here, and one of them asked how much I could bench press. When I told them, they kind of forced me into doing it."

  Jim and Robbie looked at each other.

  "Shit, man," said Jim, "didn't I tell you to stay clear of the Mexican gangs?"

  "I can't be in the gym when they're in here?"

  "Hell, no. They got their time, and we got ours."

  "No one told me that."

  Jim glanced at Robbie again, and issued an exasperated grunt. "Yeah, well, we should've talked more about the way things are."

  "Did one of the guys have a wimpy goatee?" Robbie asked.

  "Yes. He seemed to be their leader."

  "Roberto," Jim growled.

  "Who is he?"

  "Just your basic piece of gang banger wannabe shit. He's in here for carjacking and beating the fuck out of the driver. Didn't even care about the car – it was just a gang initiation thing."

  Great, I thought. Man, to think that a few months ago I was getting straight A's, hanging out with my nerd friends, and having incredible sex with pretty women. How far could a guy fall?

  "You just have to hang cool," said Jim, as if reading my thoughts. "They might fuck with you a little, but nothing serious."
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br />   "Unless you piss someone off," Robbie grunted.

  I flinched. Jim placed a protective hand on my shoulder.

  "Don't shit yourself, dude," he said. "The dickless wonders who run this place won't protect you, that's true. You might've noticed no one's patrolling the place. But there are cameras everywhere. How it works is if someone causes trouble, then they send someone in and haul the assholes off to solitary confinement. People around here don't like solitary confinement, so..." He shrugged.

  "That's the incentive," I said. Daring to entertain some optimism. "Does that work?"

  "Most of the time."

  I HAD another problem that was getting larger by the minute. Despite my counting out Pi to the two hundredth place, sleep would not come. Instead, my "problem" was raising its hideous head and demanding release.

  On the theory that counting out Pi was too exciting, I tried multiplying and dividing numbers. Apparently, that was too close to reproductive issues, since my problem grew even bigger. I reached down tentatively, not quite touching the offending member, but wondering if I could submit to its demands without waking up my bunkmate. That seemed unlikely, since the bed creaked even when I breathed. I made my hands into fists and released a soft groan of frustration.

  "What the hell is your problem up there?"

  I almost flew off my mattress. It was as if Jim had radar or dog-ears or something.

  "I don't know," I mumbled. "Just kind of wired, I guess."

  "Your first day," he said. "You'll get used to it."

  I doubted that. It was bad enough to sleep on a mattress that must've been designed by Hieronymus Bosch, eat crappy food, live in a concrete tomb of a room, and worry about "gang bangers." I thought I could adjust to that. But this not so little problem promised to blow up in my face. And this was only the first day.

  "Is there any place," I said, "where you, uh, you know, can have some privacy, by any chance?"

  "Are you asking what I think you're asking?"

  "I might be."

  Jim let out a low chuckle. "You're 'wankerville'?"

  "Is that what you call it?"

  "Heat, rut, high, juicy, the curse, jizload, wankerville, weiner time –"

  "Okay, I get the idea."

  "Did it start today?"

  I cleared my throat quietly. "I guess so."

  "You shouldn't have to guess." Jim didn't speak for a few moments. "I can give you some privacy tomorrow. Also, the docs are willing to prescribe Melatin, if you ask for it. Or you can just wait for it to pass."

  I sighed. Wouldn't it be great to go back on Melatin? And if I stayed on it, which I'd need to, everyone would know what I was. I could just imagine the torment Roberto and company might dream up for me if they learned I was hyper.

  "There, is, ah, something else." Jim cleared his throat. "Probably not something you'd be interested in doing."

  "There's almost nothing here I'm interested in doing."

  "Yeah, right. Anyhow, there's the showers." More throat-clearing. "Some guys go there to get relief."

  "As in, uh...with each other?"

  "Can be. Or solo." The bed creaked as Jim shifted his body – as if he were looking for a comfortable position to discuss this.

  "Like, a gay bathhouse or something?" I asked.

  "Dude...this isn't exactly my area of expertise. It's not my thing, but I'm not judging. We all know solo doesn't cut it – we're programmed by this thing to want contact. Reproductive urges and all."

  "You're saying they – the prison officials – allow that?"

  "Officially, you're allowed to shower between six-thirty and seven in the morning, but they've set aside a time for what they call "special needs" people." He chuckled. "Yeah, that's how they describe it – I'm not fucking kidding. It's between eight-thirty and nine every night. You have to get a permission slip from the medical office, and all that takes is saying that you're in heat. They don't want people in that state mingling with general pop, or so they say. Anyhow, a detention goon takes your permission slip and actually stands guard outside. I'll leave the rest to your imagination."

  I listened to Jim's low, awkward laugh and suppressed a shudder.

  "It all sounds so Orwellian," I said. "How many of these 'special needs' people show up for these showers?"

  "Don't know for sure. I heard maybe a dozen or so every night."

  "Given that there are roughly 360 people in here, and the average adolescent male is in heat roughly twelve days a year..." I noted the obvious mathematical symmetry. "That would mean you'd have roughly 12 people in estrus on any given day."

  "If you say so, Einstein."

  "How do you handle it?" I asked, wondering if I shouldn't have.

  "I take Melatin. It's actually not so bad. Kind of takes the edge off everything for a few days."

  "I know," I muttered.

  "You've been on it?"

  I felt like slapping myself in the head. Why did I say that?

  "Uh, yeah," I said. "My mom thought it might make things easier for me."

  Jim snorted. "You mean easier for her. Haven't you figured out that making it easier for grownups is what this is all about?"

  "I'm not sure what you mean by 'this'."

  "The whole medication bullshit. The one time in our lives when we can screw the most, and we're not allowed to do it."

  "Except you say they allow it here."

  "'Cause it's one more way they can control us. If you behave, they let you use the showers during wiener time. Otherwise, no deal."

  "And it sounds like most of the kids here choose to use the showers instead of Melatin."

  "I don't know, man. I hadn't really thought about it before, but yeah, I think you're right about the numbers. When I was thirteen, it was almost twice a month. Now it's more like ten times a year." He released a loud sigh. "Past your prime at eighteen. What a fucking drag."

  Chapter 11

  THE NEXT WEEK TRUDGED by in a Melatin-induced daze, having chosen the pharmaceutical option for my dilemma. I took my meds discreetly, and at the lowest dose I could find that didn't fog my brain too much but took some of the edge off my super-powered libido.

  I met my counselor, Viktor Antonov – a huge guy who I imagined was an ex-power lifter from Russia – who spoke with a strong Slavic accent in a quiet, rumbling murmur that had me straining to hear. He assured me there would be no problem keeping my Melatin prescription filled, and that if anyone gave me any grief about that or anything else to let him know. He seemed like a decent enough guy, if a little strange.

  I signed up for a couple of classes (household mechanical repair and crafts; they didn't offer advanced math) just to pass the time.

  My mom visited, and while I was happy to see her, I spent more time reassuring her that I was okay than anything else. Her cheery act folded about thirty seconds into the visit, when she stared into my eyes with this awful, heart-wrenchingly sad expression and asked if I was okay. I told her I was fine, that I'd made friends, was taking some classes, and was even enjoying some of our sports activities. Her dour expression brightened, but then she asked: "What kind of friends are they? What did they do to get in here?" And it was back to reassuring her that they weren't rapists or homicidal maniacs.

  I hadn't lied about enjoying some of the activities. Working out and playing basketball were my favorites. Craft class wasn't all that bad, either. I especially liked painting abstract images – big splotches of color that somehow reminded me of my life.

  In the gym, I learned to push myself harder with little rest between sets in order to avoid "schedule conflicts" with Roberto and his gang and to leave time for basketball in the yard. I'd lay off the Melatin until later in the day, when a bit of brain-freeze didn't matter. Working my body hard helped keep me distracted until then.

  With only one basketball court and maybe thirty kids who wanted to play every day, the odds of getting on the court weren't that great. Your odds improved hugely if you belonged to a good team, since the winn
ing team stayed on the court until it lost.

  The facility had done one smart thing, I thought, in placing a detention officer in charge of the games. He acted as referee and general manager, settling disputes and sometimes selecting or changing up teams to keep a fair rotation going. The games were twenty minutes long. The team that was ahead at the end of those twenty minutes – or was the first to reach ten (each basket counted as one point) – emerged victorious.

  Fortunately, Jim was one of the better players, if not the best, and he had assembled one of the better teams, which included Robbie and a couple of other decent athletes I didn't know. Our friends, Dan and Ben, didn't play, but Jim generously offered me a spot on their team.

  At first, I'm sure he regretted that. Having no experience with team sports, I totally sucked. I didn't know how to play defense or handle a defender. In my first game, I had the ball stripped out of my hands four or five times, a pass stolen, and either clumsily fouled opposing players or let them breeze by unmolested.

  My teammates would've thrown me off the team if not for Jim's intervention. "He's got potential – just has to get his round ball legs," he said. "Give him a chance."

  Luckily they did, and soon my alleged big brain kicked in, analyzing tactics, ball-control, and why I made mistakes. I started dreaming about the games, rehearsing my moves at night. By my third game, I was no longer a complete klutz – blocking a shot, making a good pass, and even scoring on a lay-up. I enhanced my "up and coming" status with my first dunk while warming up: a two-handed, barely-scraped-over-the-rim deal, but I got it down. I could've danced and shrieked "Yes, yes, yes!" – but I played it cool, acting as if it was no big deal. I only knew of three other inmates who could dunk, and one of them was Jim, who needed a running one leg jump to accomplish that feat.

  Leave it to Jim to spoil my moment of bliss: "If you can jump that high, how come you aren't getting any rebounds?"

  That first week slipped into the next, and the detention apocalypse I'd envisioned wasn't happening. I was actually entertaining the unthinkable notion that some aspects of my imprisonment not only weren't bad – they were kind of fun. If nothing else, it was educational. Maybe I was crazy, but I could think of worse ways to spend part of a summer. (One of my mom's "vacations" came to mind.)