Now one of the more encouraging spectators threw him an empty half-gallon bottle.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with this? Its empty." He tossed it down.

Then the guy handed him a small bottle of gel that contained a numbing agent, intended to ease the pain of a tattoo needle, and Steve got the idea. He picked the bottle back up, squirted a generous amount of the gel onto the neck of the bottle and dropped his pants again. Now even I doubted that Steve's considerable tolerance for pain would allow him to force something that big into his ass. But determined as he was to cause himself pain he bent down and set about working this difficult item into his rear. The crowd was hushed with anticipation and at first not much happened. I recommended that since the end of the bottle was threaded he try screwing it in rather that just force it. Sure enough it worked and after only a few turns his ass gave an inch or two. The drunken crowd erupted with sounds of amusement and discomfort. Steve's face contorted in agony while beads of sweat formed on his face, reddening from the effort.

"Oh god, oh god it fucking hurts!" he was screaming in pain but he never stopped rotating the bottle, forcing it ever upward. The excited cheers of the decadent crowd mingled with Steve's cries of anguish. I found that I was now laughing hysterically and I realized then that I didn't need that dickhead to define "fucked up." This was it. Not just Steve's act of sodomy but also the fact that so many people could be found to laugh and encourage this behavior. From my vantage point (sitting on the floor cradling a beer in my legs and smoking a roach) I could see the side of Steve's bottle. The numbing gel was oozing slowly towards the bottom, stained brown at first from contact with the inside of Steve's ass, it slowly started to run red. He'd actually torn his asshole. Now he was done. He started to pull the bottle out but this seemed even more painful for him. He was now nearly shrieking from the pain of the endeavor. His cries of pain and the frenzied laughter of the crowd were cacophonous. I didn't realize until later on but the suction of the empty bottle pulling at his insides must have been excruciating. Finally, inch by painful inch, the bottle came free. Steve tossed it down, hiked his pants up and, pale and shaking, asked for a beer with a triumphant smile on his face.

We all spent the rest of the night drinking and laughing. I never had to ask Steve why he'd done that to himself because I think I knew. We were shitty people. Maybe not all of us, maybe just the lucky ones. We would do most anything for a cheap laugh, a cheap thrill, a cheap woman or a cheap bottle. Our lives were ones of suffering and poverty. You might think we're disgusting but I would say beautiful. We might be poor and trashy but we were also, in a way, the kings of the world. We had nothing to lose so we were always winning. Life had offered us the worst it had and from the bottom the only way to go was up. We'd suffered rejection from everything that could reject you: schools, jobs, women, even the military for some. We had endured so much that all that was left to do was smile. Smile and laugh from atop a mountainous pile of disappointments and shattered dreams. When you can smile through split bleeding lips because you're bruised, homeless, jobless, wanted by the police and hopelessly indebted to jails and hospitals you laugh because a man in your position has no right to laugh, the idea of it was ridiculous. So all you do is laugh. Laugh at your own ridiculous self. Laugh at every punch to the mouth, at every click of the handcuffs. When life gives you shit you make a shit sandwich, on wry, and demand seconds because it's the first warm meal you've had in days. Woe to the rich, long live the depraved. It was an almost Taoist approach to life. All you've ever known was struggle so you might as well enjoy it. Our hard work will never make anything better so we're comfortable on the bottom rung of society where everything was cheap and nothing came easy but pain and shame. I'd chosen to live a sad life and I now enjoy every painful experience and underpaying job, all the mistakes and failures only add to the humor of the whole sick joke. Maybe I could do better, maybe not but the point is to remain defiant till the end and try not to look too far ahead.
At the time of this writing Steve is in the county jail after enjoying only a few short months of freedom from the psych ward. Steve's in jail with the cockroaches while a man who stole fifty billion dollars from charities is confined to a seven-million-dollar penthouse. He might be sick but society is a hell of a lot sicker. At least Steve hasn't stolen from a charity, fucking pigs.

Previous-1-2-3