Page 12 of Rat Park
“Thanks,” Dominic said quietly, digging in despite the fact that his stomach was in knots. He was scared for some reason. For the first time since he was caught, he didn’t know what was going to happen next. What he would do now that he was being given a choice to decide.
He ate slowly, quietly, not glancing at his mom even though he could feel her eyes on him, the smoke of her cigarette wafting between them. His stomach felt uncomfortably full despite the normal portions when he was done, and he stared at the red stain the soup had left inside the bowl.
Dominic flinched slightly but managed to stay still as his mom reached across the table to stroke his face for a moment before pulling away. There was a moment of silence.
“Benny isn’t going to like you staying here,” she said. Dominic closed his eyes briefly before nodding.
“I’ll leave tomorrow,” he promised.
He hadn’t expected anything else.
**********
It didn’t take long for his life to return to his kind of normal after that. Despite all the threats, the police barely kept an eye on him after his release, and he slipped back into the murky swamp of his old life without so much as a whimper.
The irresistible pull of being high was the burning star he revolved around. Years fell around him without protest. Everything he did—where he lived, who he talked to, what he did day after day—was somehow related to getting his next hit, to the life that came along with being addicted to something that took a million more things than it gave back. Even who he fucked was constrained by that world. His first time was with one of Prince’s dad’s friends, his hand soft but firm around the back of Dominic’s neck as he took a hit from the pipe.
“I heard you’ve got a smart mouth,” the man had said. Dominic had nodded and put it to use.
It was an open secret that Dominic was gay, but he didn’t flaunt it around. A relationship was completely out of the realm of possibility, and who he slept with was limited to people that could be trusted, for their own sakes, to keep their mouths shut.
Guys in his business had a problem with homos, but they sure thought any semi-wet hole was convenient when they were high enough.
People appeared and disappeared from Dominic’s life like mayflies in spring. Overdose, prison, the natural disintegration of the weak bonds he managed to make. Everything was as transient as a crack high.
Dominic just let the tide take him, but there were moments when he was able to step back from his life and look at it from the outside. One day, not long after his twenty-first birthday, he was coming out of a shop with a case of beer he’d purchased legally, for once, when he stumbled outside the store and fell on one knee, managing to keep the bottles from breaking by sheer luck.
“Oh! Are you all right?” A woman said, her hand already at his elbow, helping him up. Dominic looked at her, dizzy from the simple state of his body, and saw the expression on her face from inches away. It wasn’t disgust or even condescension. It was a distant kind of concern, a temporary connection he knew was going to fade quickly. He was something foreign she wouldn’t have to deal with for long. His sallow skin, his limp and greasy hair, the bruised shadows under his eyes…those things didn’t belong in her world. He was a kind act for her, an anomaly.
He looked at her and was stunned at hownormalshe looked. Her cheeks were rosy and full, her nails clean and eyes clear. He was just a statistic to her. He’d overdosed twice in the past year, had to be injected with Naloxone just to stay alive.
“Yeah, I’m—thanks,” Dominic stuttered. The woman looked at him for a moment before nodding and stepping away a little awkwardly.
Dominic watched her go. He watched her go to her normal car and load it with normal groceries. He watched her get in, rumble the car on, and drive off to her normal house in her normal life.
A scream got caught in his throat. He could have had that, in another dimension. If he had never touched a narcotic, if he weren’t such a selfish asshole, if he thought of anything except himself and his next high. He could have spent his whole life without knowing how little he could trust himself.
He wanted to rip himself apart. Not just kill himself—but eradicate any evidence that he had ever existed.
He started walking. The scream got swallowed down, joining its kind in the pit of his stomach. There was nothing he could do to change his fate. Staying sober was an impossibility. It wasn’t only about giving up the drugs. He would have to give up his whole life. Everyone around him, everything he knew how to do.
Even with nothing, he had something to lose.
**********
Dominic had done a few stints in jail here and there for possession, only weeks or a couple of months at a time, but his luck ran out when he was twenty-two and got caught for possession with intent to distribute. With his record, he got five years with the possibility of parole with good behaviour, which included enrolling in a Stay Sober program inside.
It had been a long time since Dominic had gone through withdrawals. The prison system was all about trying to treat addiction with punishment, so they didn’t give him anything to help him through. They just tied him down to the bed when he got too desperate and monitored him as he went on his journey through hell.
He came out the other side alive. Barely.
In prison, almost every decision was taken out of your hands. Where you slept, what you wore, what you ate, the activities you could access. Even who you talked to and how you presented yourself was constrained by the unnatural ecosystem of prison. Dominic was used to keeping to himself, and his smart mouth had been beaten out of him by life a long time ago. He avoided trouble, and it wasn’t even that difficult. The struggle to remain sober was distracting enough.
He consented to join the Stay Sober program six months into his sentence. He filed into a classroom-like room, a semi-circle of chairs facing a whiteboard. Lee, the tough-looking facilitator, greeted each of them as they approached the chairs.
“Welcome,” he aimed at Dominic, and he just nodded slightly. He didn’t want to be there but, as he looked around, he had to admit he fit the part. Like the other guys, he’d gotten a collection of tattoos in and out of prison, colouring his neck, the back of his hands, his scalp where his hair was shorn. His skin had a sallow look that suggested he hadn’t taken care of himself for a long time, skinny and without muscle, an easy target if he wasn’t so good at passing unnoticed. Most of all, he recognised the look in their eyes. The desperate twitch, the bone-deep guilt only one thing could burn away.
“Right. Welcome, everyone. I see you’re all ecstatic to be here,” Lee joked once they were all seated. A few people chuckled.
