The Heroin Scene in Fort Myers

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Whenever she couldn't take it anymore, and she needed to get away from her miserable life for a few hours, she asked me to come pick her up. We'd go to the beach together, or to the little ice cream shop her dad used to take her to, when she was little. We watched movies at my place, and went out to eat. She told me my condo was the only place where she felt truly safe, and that being around me was the only time she felt like a normal human being and not just a piece of shit. She said I was her only real friend. The sad part was, she was my only real friend, too.

  Every time we hung out together, she teared up when she told me how much she hated her life, and how badly she wanted to get away from it all. But she just couldn't quit drugs.

  Over the years, Haley spent the night at my place many times, but in the beginning it was hard to get her to sleep in bed. She reminded me of a skiddish animal. She had been raped, groped in her sleep, and used by so many guys, that a bed had become a scary place for her. To her, a bed was not a place of rest, but a place of torment. She preferred the couch. She was used to sleeping with one eye open, always with her razor-sharp box cutter within easy reach.

  She had to use that box cutter a few times to defend herself. One time a guy tried to rape her, and she stabbed him in his throat. Another time, 2 large Mexican girls tried to mug her on the streets, and she sliced one of the girls' cheeks.

  GARY THE VIDEO GAME ADDICT

  "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

  Edgar Allan Poe

  After Hussy's mother and her sister Ferrara told me what a lying psycho Hussy really was, I needed to get away from her and Florida for a while.

  I went to New York for a few weeks and visited my ex-wife Donna and her new boyfriend, Gary. He was in his 50s, a couple of years older than Donna, and he had Parkinson's disease. He was a retired cop. So you'd think he was a commanding presence, used to giving orders. But he was the most mellow, timid push-over I had ever met. He was like a big puppy. He didn't stand a chance against Donna's domineering personality, and she bossed him around all day long. There was absolutely no doubt that she was the one wearing the pants.

  Donna didn't have a lot of friends, because she was a recluse who almost never left the house and didn't like being around other people, other than me. Our divorce had been really hard on her as well, because she didn't have a support network any more than I did. After the divorce she was all alone and she had no one to talk to, except a few online friends she had never met in person, and the occasional phone conversation with her childhood friend Roy. Roy was one of the few people who knew about Donna's agoraphobia. He was used to her not answering the door and pretending not to be home when he or anyone else came knocking on her door.

  Roy's older brother Gary was a shut in, too. After he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's, he lost his job and his emotionally abusive wife left him. He went into a deep depression and lost his will to live. He escaped his lonely, miserable life by playing the online video game World of Warcraft. Everything he was missing in his real life, he found in the game. He became so addicted to it, he practically lived inside the game. The real world didn't matter to him anymore. The only thing he cared about was completing another raid in the game, or exploring a new dungeon and winning the admiration of his online friends in battle. He later told me that a lot of handicapped people become addicted to World of Warcraft, because in their online fantasy world, they are healthy, wealthy, and handsome. The game lets them forget about their broken bodies, and they become legendary heroes, saving the world, while riding dragons.

  Gary really wasn't any different than a crack addict, when he was in the depths of his video game addiction. He wouldn't go to sleep for days at a time, and he'd play the game nonstop, day and night, only taking a quick break if he absolutely had to use the bathroom. He was totally addicted to the positive feelings he got from killing evil monsters or finding a new magical weapon or his game character raised a level and learned a new combat skill.

  Anything that feels good triggers the reward center in our brains and a little bit of the feel-good chemical dopamine is released. Whether you get a raise at work, or you eat candy, or you have sex, or someone gives you flowers, or tells you they love you, or you watch a pretty sunset, or someone sends you a sweet text message, or you find a golden sword in a video game, it all releases a little bit of dopamine. You can get addicted to anything that makes you feel good, whether it's text messages, video games, food, sex, exercise, cigarettes, or drugs.

  Drugs like crack or heroin flood the brain with so much dopamine, everything else in life pales by comparison. That's what makes these drugs so extremely addicting, and why addicts feel so miserable and empty when they don't have their drug. Once their brains get used to the endless flood of dopamine, life without drugs seems unbearably sad and dull. Nothing, no matter how pleasant, releases enough dopamine to even come close to crack or heroin. Once an addict gets sober, it takes their brain years to fully restore its chemical balance. It takes a while, before an addict can really appreciate life's simple pleasures again.

  Gary's video game addiction was so bad, his younger brother Roy was getting really worried about him. Gary was so pale, his skin was almost translucent. He hadn't showered in weeks, and hadn't cut his hair or his beard in months. Roy figured that Gary and Donna would be perfect for each other, so he persuaded Donna to take a ride to meet Gary. He looked like a caveman when they met, but they hit it off anyway. They started talking on the phone, and then, after a few weeks, Gary moved in with Donna.

  She told him that he wasn't allowed to play the game anymore, and he obeyed. But his beloved fantasy world never really left his mind. A year or so after he moved in with her, he begged her to let him play his game again. Just a little bit. Just on the weekends, after he finished all his chores around the house.

  I'm sure you can guess what happened next. Well, not only did he get totally addicted to the game again, he got Donna addicted to it, too. When I visited them again a few months later, they both got on their laptops as soon as they woke up in the morning and played the game all day long, every day, until it was time to go to bed.

  Anyway, after I talked to Ferrara and Hussy's mother, I spent a few weeks in New York with Donna and Gary.

  A few days before I got there, they walked the dogs in nearby Seaview Park in Brooklyn late at night. All the parks in New York City close at dusk, because they're not safe at night. But Donna couldn't stand being around other people, so she only walked the dogs very late at night, when nobody else was in the park.

  This one night there was someone else. A black guy on a bicycle. The dogs saw him from afar and started chasing after him. He was afraid for his life and tried to escape from what must have looked like vicious beasts to him. But the dogs were really just being friendly, when they barked at him.

  He returned a little while later, holding a big stick. He wanted to beat the dogs with it. Donna freaked out and started screaming at the black guy. Gary slowly shuffled behind her. There was a big commotion, and Donna told Gary to call the cops. The black guy dropped the stick and ran off.

  From that point on Donna didn't feel safe in the park at night anymore and decided that she needed a taser for self defense. But of course she didn't just order one. She ordered five.

  She was a shopaholic. One of anything was never enough. She ordered so much stuff on the Internet every day, the whole house was full of crap. There were unopened boxes of kitchen appliances, dozens of unused purses, hundreds of plastic jars that were on sale, clown dolls that she bought wholesale in China and wanted to sell on Ebay but never did, and so on and so forth.

  And when she ordered something on a Monday, she wouldn't be interested in it anymore by the time it arrived on Thursday, because she already bought different stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday. So the house was full of unused, unopened stuff, that she eventually threw away to make room for more stuff.

  She had done that for years, ever since I started earning a lo
t of money on the Internet. There were times when she spent over $3000 a month on things we didn't need and that just cluttered up the house. She was still doing the same thing now, on a smaller scale, using Gary's credit card, instead of mine. I think shopping for things online filled an emotional void in her life.

  Anyway, after the five tasers arrived, she put a few of them in her purse. One day she was rummaging through her purse, when she touched one of the tasers, and accidentally shocked herself. I was in Manhattan at the time, but she told me all about it when I got back at night: "Oh my God! I accidentally tasered myself today! It hurt like crazy! I felt like I hit a brick wall! Want me to taser you?"

  "What? No, hell no," I replied and laughed.

  "Gary, get over here, I'm gonna taser you," she yelled.

  Gary said ok and obediently shuffled into the living room and sat down on a chair, to prepare himself for electrocution.

  Donna had bought several different tasers. One shot 2 metal tips. And another was the kind that looks like an electric razor. But she decided to use the one that looked like a cattle prod to taser Gary.

  "Ready?" she asked him.

  "Hold on," I said. "Are you seriously gonna taser him? I gotta get my camera. I'm gonna tape this!" We all laughed.

  I had given up on trying to stop Donna from abusing Gary. In the beginning I felt really bad, when I saw the way she treated him. One time she had ordered a cheap couch from Walmart online, and told him to put it together in the front room. His trembling hands accidentally dropped it while he was in the middle of assembling it, and one of the legs snapped off.

  "You broke it! You are so useless," she screamed at him in front of me. "You're not even a real man!"

  Emasculating a disabled man like that was bad enough. But to do it right in front of me, her ex-husband, was just cruel. I felt so bad for him.

  Later that night we were all sitting in the living room, and when she talked to him like he was a piece of shit again, I told her she can't keep abusing him like that. She got all defensive and with a vicious, threatening tone in her voice she yelled at Gary: "Am I abusing you?!? Is that what you're telling people, you wimp?"

  "No, no, you're not," he said quietly, with a shaky voice.

  "Gary you need to stand up for yourself," I told him. I figured it was now or never. He had me as his backup right now, so this was his one chance to tell her to stop abusing him.

  But he didn't. He couldn't stand up to her. He was afraid of her. She could make his life a living hell, and he knew I would leave eventually, and then he'd be alone with her again.

  She had forgotten that I wasn't as easily pushed around as Gary was. So a few times, when I stayed in New York with them, she tried to start shit with me. For old times' sake, I guess.

  But I just yelled right back at her. I didn't need to put up with her shit anymore. Unlike Gary, I could leave any time I want, so I had no reason to back down and let her boss me around.

  I learned that she only enjoyed throwing tantrums and bossing people around with her hateful tirades, if she felt like she was in total control of the fight. If it started when she wanted it to, and it ended when she wanted it to.

  Once I figured that out, I took that sense of power away from her, by keeping the fight going for 5 more minutes, after she decided she had enough. Suddenly the end of the fight was not hers to control anymore, because even when she was bored of it, I continued to berate her. Now she no longer felt like the bully, but like the one who was being bullied. Once I figured that out, we got along pretty well most of the time, because I don't start fights, and she was scared to pick fights with me. Gary was a much easier target.

  Another time he was cooking. He did all the chores around the house, while she sat on the couch, playing Facebook games on her laptop, and issuing out orders. I guess he was taking too long or something, but suddenly the fact that he was cooking wasn't good enough. Nothing he did was ever good enough.

  He was standing in front of the stove. The kitchen was small, and she shoved him with her shoulder while passing him. "Get out of my way," she said.

  Then, when she passed him on her way back into the living room, she body-checked him with her shoulder again, with a little more force.

  She kept doing that a few times. Finally he mustered enough courage to stand up to her: "Stop shoving me!"

  "Or else what?" she asked with an arrogant, condescending look on her face. "What are you gonna do about it?"

  He decided to try to get physical. He slowly shuffled over to her, almost in slow motion, and tried to push her or wrestle her or something. But he was a featherweight with no body strength whatsoever. She took a step back and karate-kicked him in the stomach. I could not believe my eyes!

  I was just quietly sitting in the living room, watching the drama unfold, and when she lifted her leg and kicked him, I wished I had my camera, to tape this insanity. I bet it would have gotten millions of hits on YouTube!

  After kicking him, she mocked him and called him a wimp. Yupp, she bullied and kicked a cripple, and then laughed at him. Classy. And he continued to live with her after that, like nothing ever happened. It was just another normal day to him.

  Anyway, let's get back to the day when she tasered him:

  She turned on the cattle prod, stuck it against the skin on Gary's arm, and pulled the trigger. It crackled. There were blue sparks. She really tasered him! Holy fuck! What a crazy bitch! And I got it all on camera this time.

  And Gary just sat there. He didn't feel a thing. I guess his Parkinson's, or the medication he was taking for it, had dulled his senses so much, his nerve endings didn't even feel it when you tasered him.

  After staying with them for a few weeks, I flew to Europe. I visited my parents in Germany, and together we went on vacation in Spain for a month.

  Suddenly Patty called me. I hadn't talked to her in months, ever since she had tried to come to Florida uninvited, to spend another birthday with me.

  She told me that I was still on her mind all the time. Remember, I hadn't seen her in about 2 years, ever since she had spent those two sex-crazed weeks with me in Florida.

  Patty asked me how I had been and apologized for acting so crazy last year, when she texted hateful messages all night and then showed up in Florida the next day, even though I had told her not to. I told her I was in Spain right now.

  She said she would like us to give it another shot. She told me she made me a key to her apartment in Scranton, and we could be snowbirds, living in Scranton during the summer, and in Bonita Springs during the winter. I didn't really know what to say, without hurting her feelings. Moving in with her was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. She was just too damn nuts. She was worse than any of the drug addicts I had met.

  She said she had been thinking about her life a lot lately, and she wanted to make some changes, because she was miserable with the way things were. She wanted love in her life, but she couldn't seem to make any relationship work. So she decided to have a baby. A baby comes with built-in unconditional love, so Patty figured having a baby was going to fix her loveless life. She said she had thought about getting artificially inseminated, but then she decided she wants someone she really cares about to get her pregnant: me.

  I had not seen this woman in two years, and we had not left off on good terms at all, and here she was, calling me in Spain, asking me to put a baby inside her. What. The. Fuck?

  I told her I had to go and hung up on her. Then I blocked her number. Enough was enough.

  BROTHERLY LOVE AND SISTER WIVES

  "I think people should be free to engage in any sexual practices they choose; they should draw the line at goats though."

  Elton John

  After I got back from Spain, I still wasn't talking to Hussy anymore. I hung out with Haley, when she needed to get away from Palm Beach Boulevard for a while, or I hung out with Kayla, the quirky 20 year old math student.

  Kayla was living in Cape Coral with her boyfriend Alex, an app
liance repairman, but she still wanted to hang out with me. I asked her if she wasn't worried about her boyfriend finding out about us having sex. "He knows," she said.

  "Huh? And he's ok with that?" I asked.

  "Well, no, not really. But I told him that the only way I'll be in a relationship with him is if he'll accept that I'll keep having sex with you," she replied.

  That was the craziest thing I had ever heard. How the hell is that a relationship? Did that guy have no pride? He's ok with his girl having sex with someone else? That's nuts. That would drive me insane. Then again, maybe he really didn't care about her. Maybe he was just using her for sex, and as long as he got what he wanted from her, he didn't really give a shit what she did on her own time.