Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Social media companies have psychologists working for them, who try to make their websites as addicting as possible. The more addicting the site is, the more time you spend on it, the more ads you see, and the more money they make.

  Every time something good happens to you, your brain releases a little reward: A feel-good chemical called dopamine. If someone tells you they love you, or you smoke a cigarette, or you eat good food, or you get promoted at work, or you reach the next level in a video game, it makes you feel good, because your brain releases a little bit of dopamine.

  And our brain is wired to crave that little dopamine reward. It's like a little treat. That's why anything that feels good can be addicting. Drugs aren't really any different than anything else that makes you feel good, except that they release a whole bunch of dopamine. More than anything else. If hugging a loved one releases a cup full of dopamine, then heroin releases a bathtub full of dopamine.

  Drug addicts don't actually crave heroin or crack. They crave the tidal wave of dopamine that their brain releases when they take the drug.

  And that craving never goes away. Craving dopamine is as much part of being a human being as breathing. That's why you never stop being an addict, once you know how much dopamine you could have in your brain, when you take drugs. Everything else pales by comparison.

  So when a drug addict can't take drugs, they look for a source of dopamine somewhere else. That's why drug addicts in rehab or in jail have a whole lot of sex with other inmates, because sex is the next best source of dopamine.

  So it's really no surprise that girls like Veronica fuck everything that moves when they're in jail or rehab. They're just trying to replicate that dopamine kick they used to get from drugs.

  I had a feeling Sonya would cheat on me the first chance she gets, when she's in the halfway house. Dick or no dick, as long as she had an orgasm, she got a dopamine kick.

  Social media is built on that same principle. Everything about social media is designed to get you hooked on little dopamine kicks. Every time you get a like: dopamine! Every time someone leaves a comment and compliments you: dopamine! If the number of likes goes up rapidly: dopamine! If you get a lot of messages: dopamine! If you have a lot of friends: dopamine! Every single little thing about it is purposely designed to be addicting.

  God only knows what all this is gonna do to the brains of Millennials and the generations after them.

  Sonya was hooked on Facebook! She craved the dopamine kicks from having thousands of male friends. She craved getting likes and compliments from them. She even craved the dick pics she got from random guys. She loved the attention! Facebook lit up her brain with a firework spectacle of dopamine.

  When I told her it bothered me that she was craving all this attention from guys on Facebook, she blocked me.

  It's exactly what Veronica or any other drug addicted sociopath would have done in her situation. If someone tries to get between you and your drug of choice, you cut out that person, not your drug.

  Interacting with a loved one releases dopamine in your brain. But a drug releases way waaay more. That's why a drug addict will always choose their drug over their loved ones, if they have to choose between the two.

  A day or two later she friended me again. Because she needed me to drive her to job interviews.

  I picked her up in the morning and we drove to my condo. We had sex. Then we went out to eat or shopping. And then, towards the afternoon, she'd walk into a few random stores and asked them if they were looking for help. Of course they weren't. This was not a very effective way to find a job. Of course not. She didn't really want to find a job. She was just going through the motions, because she was court-ordered.

  We were also going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings together every day. I hated it. It was a room full of fragile drug addicts, desperately clinging to the illusion of sobriety. Their heart was in the right place. They really were trying to be sober. But the cast of characters at each meeting was constantly changing, because people who had attended last time had since relapsed. And people who just shot up a few hours ago, decided to come to a meeting today to try to get clean. Or to sell drugs to someone after the meeting.

  There were always people at the meeting who pretended to be clean, but were obviously high, but didn't want to admit it. They weren't doing it because they were bad people. They were trying their best. They were here because they didn't know what else to do. They were desperately seeking help, and this bullshit was their last and only hope.

  The whole thing was just absurd to me. A bunch of jittery addicts sitting in a circle. First they chant a bunch of pre-written texts as if they had magical powers. Then one of them reads some paragraph from the big book. It all feels like a religious cult. Because it is.

  AA started out asking God for salvation. Only later, after people complained that it's no different than faith healing, was the word God replaced by the word Higher Power. So that AA could pretend to be non-religious. But that didn't change the fact that it is just as ineffective and useless as every other form of faith healing.

  But, like a trooper, I went to these stupid meetings with Sonya. I wanted to be supportive. And I didn't want her to hook up with any guys at a meeting.

  SONYA HAS A BOYFRIEND AND IT AIN'T ME

  "The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy."

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Sonya had two babies. But both of them had been taken away from her at birth by DCF, Florida's Department of Children and Families. They had been given to foster families.

  Both of her baby daddies were in prison. Her taste in men was almost as bad as my taste in women. While she was still in jail, and told me about her babies, I had asked her if she kept in touch with her baby daddies.

  "Ha! No, definitely not! They're total losers! They keep trying to get back with me, but I want nothing to do with them!" she said.

  After I had picked her up from jail, I checked her bag for hidden drugs or needles. I found love letters from one of her baby daddies. She had been corresponding with him the whole time she was in jail. She had blatantly lied to me. I could tell from the replies in his letters that they had been making plans to get back together once they were both free.

  I confronted her about it. She came up with a typical drug addict lie: "No, I'm just making him think I'm still his girlfriend, because his parents know the foster parents of my baby. So as long as he thinks I'm his girlfriend I get to see pictures of my baby. If I break up with him, I don't get to see my baby anymore."

  Masterful.

  Now if I insisted on her breaking up with her baby daddy, I was gonna be the bad guy. It takes enormous balls and the soulless inner void of a sociopath to be that ruthlessly manipulative.

  I told her that I saw right through her bullshit and that if she still wanted to be with her loverboy in prison, he could have her. Good riddance.

  We stopped by her mother's nifty little trailer every now and then. Her mother decided to tell me what a terrible person I was for asking Sonya not to talk to her prison boyfriend anymore. Obviously Sonya had primed her mother earlier.

  I also found her most recent ex-boyfriend Tommy on her Facebook friends list. I hacked into her Facebook account (so sue me!) and found her flirting with lots of dick pic guys, and local men she had been fucking regularly while she was a hooker. And she was flirting with her ex-boyfriend Tommy. She told him she still loved him and wanted to get back together with him. The same stuff she told her baby baddy.

  They made plans to meet at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. She told him to be careful so I wouldn't notice.

  We went to the meeting and she sat down next to Tommy. I sat down next to her. I didn't let on that I knew what was going on. She thought I had no idea that she was sitting next to her ex-boyfriend. She and Tommy kept giving each other looks and smirking. They were playing footsies.

  After a few minutes, I looked directly at
Tommy. He noticed me staring at him. Then I said: "Hi Tommy."

  Sonya's eyes got big. She was surprised and scared. I looked at her and said: "You really think you're slick, don't you?"

  Then I got up and walked out.

  People were looking. Sonya didn't want to make a scene. The last thing she wanted was to get in trouble with Drug Court and go back to jail.

  In the hallway she said: "Wait! It's not what you think! I didn't know he was gonna be here!"

  "You fucking liar." I replied coldly. "I know you made plans to meet him. You even told him not to let me know."

  That caught her off-guard. She stuttered for a second. But addicts are so used to lying, they're really good at it. They can think on their feet: "Ok, fine, I knew he would be there. I didn't want to tell you because I knew you'd be upset. But I was just dying to rub in his face how good I'm doing. I didn't want him to know that, so I pretended to make plans with him behind your back. But I really just wanted to show you off and show him how happy I am now!"

  It's the same trick Lucy used, when I asked her if she was still talking to Blizzard. She simply pretended that she wasn't lying to me, but to the other person in the story.

  Red Sparrow would be proud.

  Every drug addict uses that trick when you catch them in a lie. They simply pretend that the story they told you is the truth, and the story they told someone else is the lie.

  After that Sonya didn't want me to come to the meetings with her anymore. She claimed that the kerfuffle with Tommy at the meeting had made the house mother at her halfway house suspicious. If Sonya got caught having relations of the manly kind while under the house mother's roof, she would be reported in violation of her probation and go back to jail.

  The next time we went to see Supermom, she bitched at me again, for questioning Sonya's story. Of course Sonya didn't just want me not to come to the meetings any more so she could meet other guys. No, no. It was only out of concern for what the house mother might think. Suuure.

  Sonya also messaged another ex-boyfriend, Brandon. He was not only her first love, no he was also the guy who introduced her to her greatest love: heroin.

  How romantic!

  Brandon was her first boyfriend, the origin story of her illustrious career as a crackwhore, and her drug dealer.

  After I told Sonya I didn't want her talking to him on Facebook, her brilliant mother told me I was completely wrong for telling her not to talk to Brandon: "He's like a member of our family. I think of him as a son. He's like Sonya's brother."

  See that? That's where Sonya learned how to manipulate. Her mother was a master manipulator, too. Now I was the bad guy for even suggesting that Sonya should break up with her big love, Brandon. The brother from another mother.

  I also noticed that Sonya kept messaging this guy Joshua. Joshua Josh. Yeah, his first and last name were stupid like that. They matched.

  On some days she had to participate in work programs to be in compliance with her probation. Addicts from different halfway houses met up at some of these programs. At one of them they had to prepare leaflets and free condoms for an AIDS awareness rally.

  That's where she met Joshua Josh. The Joshmeister. The Joshenator. He was a skinny little loser with a big bobblehead and frog eyes. Somehow he reminded me of Morty from Rick and Morty.

  He was only in his early 20s, but his rap sheet was already an epic tale of a life dedicated to petty crime. He had more mugshots on record than Veronica.

  When I picked Sonya up after work and brought her back to the halfway house, I noticed that the purse on her lap was bulging. It was stuffed to the max.

  "Whatcha got in there?" I asked.

  "Nothing," she said and pulled the bloated purse out of my sight.

  "Let me see," I said at the next red light and grabbed it with my right hand while holding the steering wheel with my left.

  I opened the zipper, and a shitload of colorful condoms in different flavors burst out.

  "What the fuck is that?" I yelled.

  Girls get a thorough health check-up when they go to jail. They get checked for lice, Hep C, AIDS, MRSA, etc. The wardens don't want to risk having some contagious disease cause an epidemic in jail. Imagine the lawsuits! So when you pick up a girl released fresh out of jail, at least you know she's clean. That's the one good thing when you confuse the LCJ website with Match.com.

  Sonya and I didn't use condoms when we had sex. I always pulled out. So why the fuck would she need a truckload of condoms, unless she was fucking someone else besides me?

  "No! It's not what you think," she said. "I thought they were funny, so I wanted to show the other girls at the halfway house."

  "If you thought they were so funny, why didn't you show them to me? You know I'm easily amused."

  "I forgot. Yeah, you're right. Here, look at this one! It's cherry-flavored! And this one! Look! It's strawberry! And chocolate! We should try them out together!"

  And just like that she changed the topic and we were laughing about the different condom flavors.

  The next time we saw her trainwreck of a mother, I got yelled at for questioning Sonya's undying devotion to me. How could I even insinuate that her angelic, unsullied daughter was up to sinful shenanigans?

  Sonya and Joshua Josh were constantly commenting on each other's Facebook pictures. They were flirting right in front of my eyes.

  When I confronted her about it, she blocked me again.

  The next time we had an audience with her saintly giver of life, I was scolded for interfering with her daughter's harmless friendships: "You can't put Sonya in a golden cage. My beautiful daughter is a strong, independent woman. You can't tell her not to have friends. If you want to be with a desirable woman like my daughter, you must have strong self-confidence. You can't worry about your woman leaving you for a better man all the time."

  Wow. Just wow. You have to admire the artistry in these epic manipulations. This is finest craftsmanship. She deserved an Oscar for that diabolical performance. Now I was the asshole if I had a problem with Sonya flirting with other guys right in front of my face!

  Sonya had to work in a soup kitchen. I was there to pick her up after work. But she was gone. Turns out Joshua Josh was working there too. Isn't that special?

  They had left together a while ago. They went to his place together. You know, all innocent like.

  I tried to call her. No answer, so I left her a voice mail: "Have fun fucking your little loser boyfriend Joshua Josh you piece of shit whore! Fucking cunt!"

  Later that night Sonya's mother called me. I didn't answer. She left me a voice mail: "Don't you EVER talk to my daughter that way again you motherfucker! I know where you live! I know bad people! I can have you killed! Watch your back you fucking fuckface!"

  You have to admire her commitment to her role.

  Since Sonya had blocked me on Facebook, she felt free to post whatever she wanted, without fear of me freaking out about it. She thought I couldn't see it. I guess she didn't really understand a hacker's primary skill set.

  She posted a selfie of her and her new boyfriend, Joshua Josh, kissing and holding hands. How precious.

  In her private messages, I discovered that she had been flirting with some old retired guy with white hair. His name was Richard. It was obvious from the content of their messages that he was one of the regulars she had been fucking before she went to jail.

  I friended him and send him a message. I introduced myself as a friend of Sonya's and asked him if he had seen her since she got out of jail, and if he knew how she was doing.

  "Yes, of course. I've been seeing her regularly since she got out of jail and into the halfway house. She's my girlfriend."

  Say WHAAA?!?

  I asked him for his phone number and called him.

  Turns out he was to Sonya what Albert was to Lucy. Some poor lonely old loser who thought he was in a relationship with a girl much younger than him. It was ridiculously obvious to everyone else but him, that he was
n't in a real relationship with that sexy young girl. But he didn't even realize it. And everyone else was too polite to point it out.

  But everyone could see from a mile away that she was just manipulating him, using him, in exchange for sex, because there was nothing she could possibly find attractive about him.

  She was completely out of his league. They didn't even look like members of the same species. Kinda like Melania and The Orange.

  Oh... my... God... What if Melania is a Red Sparrow?

  Richard told me a little bit about himself and his amazingly successful dating life. He had a string of unbelievably, incredibly hot young girlfriends. They were so out of his league, it was comical and sad at the same time.