Less Than Hero

by S. G. Browne

  When I’m done in the kitchen, I turn on the television and flip from the Discovery Channel to Animal Planet, trying to entice Sophie to stop cleaning and come over and join me on the couch while hoping that I don’t end up spending the night on it like I did when I moved in with Sophie five years ago.

  For the first month or so I slept on the couch and continued to look for a full-time marketing job while keeping both of my part-time jobs. Sophie and I weren’t dating or having sex. I was just a new friend crashing on her couch and she was just a kind and trusting person who gave me a place to live for cheap while I tried to get my life back in order.

  Then one day, while riding the F train from one part-time gig to the next, I saw an ad inside the train, right above the emergency instructions and next to a Dr. Zizmor notice for beautiful, clear skin:

  DO YOU HAVE A DRINKING PROBLEM AND BIPOLAR DISORDER?

  The ad described a research study for men and women, age twenty-one to sixty, who were bipolar alcoholics and who would be willing to take medications or placebos for two weeks. The study offered to pay eligible participants up to $2,000.

  I didn’t have a drinking problem or bipolar disorder, but I was willing to have both of them if it would get me two grand for a couple of weeks of doing nothing but taking medications.

  So I started searching the Internet for clinical trials and found a study in Brooklyn for the association between brain function and depression. They wanted healthy subjects as controls to be given PET scans and MRIs. It only paid $600, but it was the easiest $600 I’d ever made. And they told me I could come back to participate in two more studies.

  At the time, I figured volunteering for clinical trials would just be a temporary solution to my financial situation and allow me more time to find a full-time job. But eventually I stopped looking for a marketing career and started looking for more clinical trials. And somewhere along the way, I stopped sleeping on the couch and started sleeping in Sophie’s bed.

  That’s more or less the way my life has gone. I don’t make decisions so much as I fall into things. But the problem with falling into things is that you don’t think about having a plan. And the problem with not having a plan is that you don’t learn how to follow through on anything.

  This isn’t the best blueprint for financial success.

  Eventually Sophie finishes watering the plants and joins me on the couch, neither of us saying a word. After a few minutes of our silent standoff, she breaches the empty space between us and curls up next to me with a small sigh. I kiss her on the top of her head and put my arm around her and we watch TV for another half hour in silence before going to bed.

  I’m not expecting makeup sex and don’t make any overtures to that effect, but Sophie surprises me with her desire to get naked, and I don’t argue. It’s more or less the way we resolve our problems or disagreements. Physical intimacy is a great salve for emotional wounds. The problem is, the scabs often get pulled off before the wounds can properly heal.

  When we’re done, Sophie sprinkles pixie dust on my penis, blows the rest across my thighs and abdomen, then curls up next to me and kisses me good night. I want to get up and go into the bathroom and wash off the pixie dust before it gives me another rash, but I can’t get up without disturbing Sophie, so instead I listen to her soft exhalations as she drifts off into sleep.

  I stare at the ceiling for a few minutes before I close my eyes and wait for sleep to claim me, but thoughts keep racing inside my head, chasing each other around and around until they finally fall down, exhausted. A moment later, off in the distance, comes the pitter-patter of more thoughts.

  Some of them are about clinical trials. Some are about the kid on the skateboard. Some are about black-and-white cookies and coconut cream–filled doughnuts.

  But most of my thoughts are about Sophie.

  Sometimes I think she deserves someone better than me. Someone with more ambition and the courage to think about his future. Someone who has his shit together and knows what he’s doing and where he’s going. Someone who has his life mapped out. Any map I may have once had of my life is good and lost.

  This is not the kind of internal dialogue that is conducive to getting a good night’s sleep.

  I get like this sometimes after a trial, my head filled with thoughts that keep me up into the early morning. I’ve tried counting sheep. Counting backward. Meditating before going to bed. Taking valerian root. None of it works. Lately it’s been getting worse, happening to me more often, resulting in a lot of unscheduled afternoon naps and stifled yawns. I’m hoping it’s a phase and that it’ll pass, sooner rather than later.

  I’m still hoping this at three in the morning, when I finally drift off into a restless slumber.

  From the New York Daily News, page 4:

  FORGET-ME-NOWS:

  MANHATTAN MUGGING VICTIMS DRAW BLANKS

  A string of muggings in Lower Manhattan has victims and police scratching their heads.

  “I don’t remember what happened,” Andrea Orozco said. She was robbed while walking along Grand Street after withdrawing money from a nearby Wells Fargo ATM. “I have a vague recollection of someone approaching me, but I don’t remember what he looked like or what he said to me. The next thing I know, my purse is on the ground and the two hundred dollars in my billfold is gone.”

  She’s not alone in her confusion. Over the past week, more than half a dozen people have reported being mugged after withdrawing money from ATM machines throughout Lower Manhattan. And none of them can recall who robbed them.

  “It’s not uncommon for people to get mugged after walking away from an ATM, especially at night,” Sergeant Perry Lee of the NYPD Fifth Precinct said. “What is unusual is not having any eyewitness testimony to help us find out who’s doing this.”

  While eyewitness accounts are often unreliable due to such factors as anxiety, stress, and false memories, the muggings are remarkably unique in that none of the victims can remember anything about the perpetrator.

  “At first I wasn’t sure I was mugged,” Andrea Orozco said. “I thought maybe I’d just had some kind of a fugue or episode and dropped my purse. I wasn’t even sure I’d taken any money out of my bank. Except I still had the receipt. It’s baffling.”

  Six other victims have come forward to report what they believe was a mugging, with nothing for the police to go on other than hazy memories and blind guesses. About the only constant is that no one knows for sure how the mugger is causing them to forget him.

  “Maybe he’s using some kind of gas,” Andrea Orozco said. “Or hypnosis. Or drugs. It’s almost like someone gave me a roofie.”

  The police are warning everyone in Lower Manhattan to use extra caution and vigilance around banks and ATMs and to report any suspicious persons or activity to their local precinct.

  A few days later we’re at Charlie’s playing Texas Hold’em, seven of us crowded around a six-foot folding table decorated with bottles of cheap beer and stacks of poker chips—though Blaine’s stack is by far the largest, which is unusual. Blaine rarely wins at poker.

  “You guys better break out the plates and forks.” Blaine lays down his cards and pulls in another pot of chips. “Because taking your money tonight is a piece of cake.”

  Blaine is a thirty-two-year-old know-it-all with a Brooklyn accent and a helmet of black hair that makes his head look one size too big.

  “You better be careful.” Vic runs a hand across his head, his bald dome the cosmetic yin to Blaine’s abundance of hair. “You know what happens when you talk shit.”

  “I feel better about myself at the expense of others?” Blaine says.

  “You end up tempting fate and getting kicked in the ass by karma,” Randy says. “That’s what.”

  “I think you’re mixing your idioms about predestination and cause and effect,” Blaine says.

  Charlie looks around the table with his usual expression of confusion. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that fate a
nd karma are two entirely different things,” Blaine says. “Karma is the sum of all that a human has done, is doing, and will do. The effects of all actions and deeds create past, present, and future experiences. So a particular action now doesn’t condemn you to some predetermined fate. It simply leads to a karmic consequence.”

  “How do you know all that?” Charlie asks.

  Blaine shrugs. “I read it in a book somewhere.”

  Four years ago, Blaine lost all of his money to an identity thief who cleaned out his bank accounts and charged thousands of dollars to Blaine’s credit cards. While he didn’t have to pay the credit card debt, he needed some quick cash to cover his rent and some of his other bills and got a payday advance from an instant-cash service, only to end up owing more in interest than the original loan when he kept getting charged cash-advance fees on the unpaid balance. He started guinea-pigging to pay off the fees and just never stopped.

  “So then what’s f-fate?” Isaac asks.

  Isaac is a twenty-six-year-old wannabe actor with bleached-blond hair and a mild stutter, which might have something to do with his inability to land any roles.

  “Fate predetermines and orders the course of a person’s life,” Blaine says. “If you’re forced into your circumstances, then that’s your fate.”

  “So my fate is being forced to play poker with you assholes in Charlie’s rectum of an apartment,” Frank says.

  Charlie has a studio apartment one floor above the Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, complete with industrial-strength brown carpet and a postcard view of Bayard Street Obstetrics & Gynecology.

  Most of the time we play poker at Randy’s, Charlie’s, or Frank’s. We played at my and Sophie’s apartment once, but Blaine’s allergic to cats. We’ve never played at Vic’s. As far as I know, no one has ever been to his apartment. For all I know, he could live in Queens.

  “Blinds,” Randy says as he deals the cards.

  “Why do they call them blinds?” Charlie asks.

  “We go over this every time,” Vic says. “How do you not remember?”

  “I have a problem with short-term memory,” Charlie says, scratching his head. “Or is it long-term memory? I forget.”

  “They’re called blinds because you make your bet without seeing any cards,” Blaine says. “So you go into the hand blind.”

  That’s kind of what we do every time we volunteer for a drug trial. We go in blind and lay down a bet that we’ll come out healthy without knowing whether or not our cards are any good.

  “Did you know when they started playing poker in saloons back in the 1860s, players took turns dealing to avoid cheating?” Blaine says. “Back then, a knife was used to identify the dealer and the marker became known as a buck in reference to the buck horn handle of knives. When the dealer finished, he would pass the buck, which is how the expression became a metaphor for avoiding responsibility.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Frank says. “Professor Poker?”

  “Hey, I’m just throwing down some knowledge,” Blaine says. “I can’t help it if you don’t appreciate a little education.”

  “What I appreciate is proper poker etiquette,” Frank says. “So why don’t you stop vomiting useless information that needlessly stalls the action of the game and make a bet.”

  Blaine calls the big blind and I follow suit, then stifle a yawn.

  “Past your bedtime, Sleeping Beauty?” Vic asks.

  “Just tired,” I say, trying to focus on the game, but my thoughts seem a little muddled. “And I sure hope you’re not my Prince Charming.”

  “I always thought it would be awesome to be Prince Charming,” Randy says. “Snow White. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. I bet he gets major booty calls all over Fairy Tale Land.”

  “Did you know that in the original version of Sleeping Beauty, the king who finds the sleeping beauty fails to wake her?” Blaine says. “So he rapes her instead.”

  “Well,” Vic says, “there go my childhood memories.”

  “You been eating a lot of carbs?” Frank asks me.

  Certain carbohydrates with a high glycemic index break down fast and cause a steep rise in blood sugar levels, causing an initial rush that’s followed by periods of drowsiness.

  I shake my head. “I’ve just had trouble sleeping lately.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Charlie asks, then calls.

  “Trouble,” I say. “You know, the kind that keeps me from falling asleep.”

  Isaac looks at me from across the table like he’s getting ready to say something he finds amusing. He’s easier to read than a Dr. Seuss primer.

  Isaac’s a lousy poker player.

  “You sure it’s not your girlfriend’s p-pixie dust?” Isaac says, then lets out a snort of laughter.

  Isaac was a bit of a thespian in high school and thought he had enough acting chops to make it big on Broadway. Apparently, he had a couple of minor roles in small theater productions and was waiting tables part-time but wasn’t making enough to pay his bills, so he and a couple of other actors/waiters started volunteering for clinical trials to earn some extra cash. Somewhere along the way, he developed a stutter, which made it tough to land any roles. As far as I know, Isaac hasn’t had an acting gig in over four years.

  Every guinea pig has a story. Most of them don’t end with happily ever after.

  “I’m out.” Frank throws down his cards and gets up from the table.

  Randy and Isaac call and Vic checks the big blind, then Randy deals the flop and everyone checks to me.

  “You been upping your caffeine intake, Lloyd?” Frank asks.

  “Nothing more than usual,” I say, not liking the look of my hand, so I check.

  The check goes around the table as Frank opens the refrigerator to grab another beer. Outside on the street, some woman starts shouting at the top of her lungs.

  “What’s going on?” Charlie asks.

  Frank glances out the window. “Just some homeless woman pushing a shopping cart down the street and shouting at everyone.”

  “What’s she shouting?” Randy asks.

  “Her Facebook status,” Frank says. “How the fuck should I know?”

  “Did you guys know that at least a third of all homeless are thought to suffer from severe mental illness?” Blaine says. “Many of them were released from state mental hospitals due to huge cuts in public mental-health spending and ended up on the streets.”

  “That’s not cool,” Randy says.

  “A lot of homeless people apparently have mild to severe schizophrenia,” Blaine says. “They’re delusional and have trouble telling the difference between what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “You guys hear about how someone’s been dosing people?” Charlie says.

  “D-dosing them with what?” Isaac asks.

  Charlie shakes his head. “They think it might be LSD, but no one knows for sure. Apparently it’s happened a few times. People hallucinating and freaking out. I heard at least one person died.”

  “Douche bags,” Vic says, shaking his head. “The world is full of douche bags.”

  Randy deals the turn and Isaac bets a dollar. The bet goes around the table, with Vic and me folding before Randy deals the river.

  “Have you been d-d-dreaming?” Isaac asks.

  Everyone looks around the table, wondering where Isaac’s question is directed. He occasionally asks questions or makes comments that don’t make any sense until you figure out he’s referring to something someone said three conversation threads before.

  “Dreaming?” I ask. “About what?”

  “I d-don’t know. Just . . . dreaming,” Isaac says.

  It takes me a moment before I realize he’s asking me about the trouble I’ve had sleeping lately.

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding. “But they’re just snippets. Like thirty-second commercials from my subconscious. I don’t remember much about them.”

  “Your subconscious needs to work on its advertising campaign,” Frank say
s, then sits back down and grabs a bag of potato chips.

  “Have you gained weight?” Blaine asks and bets a dollar.

  “Why is everyone so focused on my goddamned weight?” Frank says around a mouthful of Ruffles.

  “Well, you’re usually the one preaching moderation and diet,” I say. “So it seems a little unusual.”

  “Plus there does seem to be a little more of Frank than usual,” Vic says, cleaning his glasses. “Kind of like you’ve been supersized.”

  Charlie nods. “And you have been kind of cranky lately.”

  “Crankier than normal, anyway,” Randy says.

  “What is this?” Frank says. “A fucking intervention? I thought we were playing poker.”

  Randy scratches at his chest. “We’re just expressing our concern, that’s all.”

  “Well, all of you ladies can stop waving your tampons,” Frank says. “Now can we speed things up? By the time this hand is finished I’ll be wearing Depends.”

  Blaine ends up winning another hand, which turns the attention from Frank’s weight to Blaine’s run of luck, with Vic accusing him of cheating. I catch Isaac looking at me like he has something on his mind, something he wants to ask me, his head tilted like he’s trying to figure something out. But then he just gives me a smile and cuts the cards and deals the next hand.

  New York always looks so romantic from here,” Sophie says, her right arm hooked through my left and her head against my shoulder as we stand at the back of the Staten Island Ferry and watch Lower Manhattan recede beyond the wake, the buildings reflecting the late-afternoon sun and the blue sky painted with clouds. “It’s beautiful and sad all at the same time.”

  Sophie loves to explore New York and do all of the fun, cheap, touristy things that most people who live in Manhattan never get around to doing. Like hanging out in Times Square or touring the art galleries in Chelsea or riding the Staten Island Ferry.