A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [24]
I look at Ted. I don’t respond.
Ed speaks. His voice is low and worn. A blue-collar voice.
What’d you do to him?
I look at Ed.
I ain’t gonna say nothing to anybody.
I look at the scar. It’s deep and brutal.
I just wanna know what you did to him.
I asked him if the Toilets were clean enough, pushed him around a bit.
Leonard speaks
That’s it?
Yeah, that’s it.
I stand and I pick up my tray and I walk to an empty table and I sit down and I start eating. The oatmeal is gray and mushy and disgusting but the sugar tastes good. It soaks into my tongue and its sweetness is the first taste I have recognized aside from whiskey or wine or smoke or vomit since the evening of my accident. I like the sweet and the taste means that some of my senses are coming back. They will all come back if I stay here. I’ll be able to taste and smell and experience normal sensations that normal people experience every day. If I stay.
I shovel the last sweet spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth and as I swallow it, I can feel my stomach trying to send it back up. I clench my jaw and I hold my breath and I squeeze my abdominal muscles and I try to stop it. I start gagging, having small violent painful heaves. I feel a mass move up my throat and it no longer tastes so sweet and I take a breath and I swallow again and the mass moves back down. As soon as it is down it tries to come back up. I repeat the process. Clench, squeeze, breathe, swallow. Clench, breathe, squeeze, swallow. My body is fighting what it needs to get better. I am fighting what I need to get better.
The mass finally settles and it’s uncomfortable and I take a deep breath and I lean back in my chair. My stomach is full and burning. It’s not used to keeping so much food and it’s not used to keeping so much food so regularly. It feels as if it’s stretching and it begins draining me of all of my energy. The simple act of digesting a bowl of oatmeal is draining me of all my energy. I have been awake less than an hour.
Around me the other Patients are filing out of the Dining Hall and heading to the Lecture. I stand and I put my tray away and I follow them down the glass Corridor and through the maze of Halls and past the streaming windows and the open doors and the smiling faces of the Staff. I look at no one and I acknowledge no one. I’m in my head and in my head I’m alone. I’m trying to decide what I’m going to do.
I find a seat among the men of my Unit and I sit down. There is nobody on either side of me and that is the way I want it. It is also the way the men of the Unit seem to want it. I can feel them looking at me and when I look back they look away. They look away quickly and I stare at them until they can feel me staring and they can feel the message behind my stare and they know not to look at me anymore. They don’t look at me anymore. Roy is sitting two rows in front of me and is whispering to a man I don’t know and he is leering at me out of the corner of his eye. I stare at him. His whispering becomes more animated and is accompanied by angry gestures. The man starts leering at me. Roy punctuates a sentence and they start laughing. I am in no mood.
Hey, Roy.
Roy stops talking, stares at me.
Is there a problem?
The rest of men of the Unit stare at me.
No, there’s no problem.
If you’ve got something to say, come say it to my face.
I don’t have anything to say.
Then why don’t you and your little Butt-Buddy shut the fuck up.
Roy gasps, the man is shocked. I hear several People laugh. I stare at Roy until he and the man turn around. They look straight ahead and there is no more whispering.
A woman steps onto the Stage and the Lecture starts. The woman talks about sex and addiction and how Alcoholics and Addicts often have cross-addictions between their drug of choice and their sexual activity of choice. She talks about how the connection can drive both activities to dangerous and deviant places. Physical places and figurative places. Places without exits and places from which it is impossible to return.
The Lecture