It only takes me two weeks—just two sessions—to come to the conclusion that I don’t belong in the Addicts Anonymous group that met at Booth Tarkington School #92. I start to draw this conclusion while we sit in a circle in a kindergarten classroom. The fluorescent track lighting is horrible; the seats, excruciatingly small—especially for my fat ass. “The room smells like really good fuckin’ meth,” says one of the men of the group, a tall burly man who looks like he eats far too well to have ever been addicted to meth. Maybe he moved on to cocaine, I wonder? Lord knows I could always eat after a healthy helping of it. Shame that, really—cocaine is far more expensive than meth; at least with meth you could save on your grocery bill, if not your dentist bill.
The guy sitting next to him—Jesse, if I’m to believe what’s scrawled on the Hello My Name Is sticker on his chest—inhales deeply. As his chest expands, his eyes roll around behind closed eyelids. “It’s the paste, Pete,” he says on the exhale. “It’s always the fuckin’ paste.”
“Paste never smelled like that when I was a kid.”
“I doubt you knew what meth smelled like back when you were eating paste.”
Nowadays, I wouldn’t be so sure.