Recently, I had the opportunity to have a heart to heart with a meth addict I know. We traded stories about some of the terrible things we've done to other people. At the end of our conversation, he called me a monster and said I might be the devil.
We spoke some more on the subject and neither of us could really decide. You see, I used to be quite a handful in my younger days. I was dredging up some of these less rosy colored memories the other day and I had to take a break because I realized just how many people I've done some type of injustice to in the past. It's staggering to think of how many people I've fucked over in one way or another.
I've decided to share some of those memories here and now. I'll see how it goes but I'm hoping for some type of cathartic effect, I guess? Maybe I'm just a guilty soul with a lot to confess and no one to confess to unless you count priests who might try and molest me after? Will this do anyone any good other than myself? No, of course not. I hope the people in the stories I include here never read them because they might realize the cartoon like proportions of my callousness.
The very first story I'll share is an educating one. It took place while I was in college. There was a political science class I can't remember with loads of people I've forgotten except for one. I can't remember her name but I callously wronged her one afternoon.
This was very early in my drinking career and early in my college life as well. I believe it was in my junior year but I can't be sure because I had a fake ID before I turned 21 so this could have been any given Friday in spring. It was late spring in northeastern Pennsylvania. The winters there are long and the snow seems to linger forever only to return again instead of spring showers. When the spring finally gets sprung, you only have a few brief weeks before summer's heat comes back and makes the afternoons much less tolerable.
The class was a typical afternoon affair. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 3 until ???. Like some kind of weekly wheel of misfortune, this particular professor would occasionally decide Fridays were going to be short and sweet. Mostly due to the fact that this was his last class each day, we got out early on many Fridays. More often as finals and other things approached because the actual final itself was a presentation on god knows what. Whatever the speeches were about was always incredibly boring and I was always incredibly thirsty for some afternoon drinks. Most people would have called my drinking habits at the time "alcoholic".
These presentations went on for at least two weeks because for some reason all the political science classes were always full. I have no idea why because it was a mind-numbing experience from the first day to the last afternoon. This is partly why I feel so bad about this particular devilry. If I had not hated the class so much maybe I would have felt different.
It was our very last class and our very last Friday and our very last presentation and finally, it was over. Except, we couldn't leave just yet. The professor was going to be kind enough to make us decide whether or not to allow some young lady to give her presentation. What a gentleman! Allow a class full of someone's peers with shit to do and drinks to drink on a beautiful Friday afternoon to decide if this random face in a crowded room gets to hold up their busy finals schedules for all their other classes? Maybe this was his way of passing the blame on to the class when this group of nerds undoubtedly decided they needed to study (yes, on Fridays, especially finals Fridays).
Before he even finished speaking I had grabbed my bag and looked around to see which nerd would speak up first. Someone had to, I could see some people already reading for the next week's tests or whatever. I was just excited to finally go get drunk after a long day of sitting through classes.
As I looked around to see which nerd was going to deny their classmate an opportunity to get any points on her final, I started to try and guess who would raise their hand as the professor asked "if anyone has to leave, we're all leaving" because of reasons. I think he just wanted everyone to suffer through another presentation with him but I was sure we wouldn't.
I turned and looked around some more and it slowly dawned on me that none of these fools were going to raise their hand. I knew they had books to read or whatever nerds do, but none of them wanted to be the bad guy.
Well, I was fucking thirsty. So I stood up, told everyone "I have to go" and left. One of the guys from that class told me later that it seemed like the professor was going to stay and let the girl give her presentation for the credit but I was mad so I didn't look back to see if anyone else left like I did.
I probably didn't need to be so dramatic about it, but maybe I did?
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