With kids’ books, our writers tend to double down on the silliness and the whimsy to make something grotesquely over the top. While the rest of the show had cartoon cereal mascots and B-list Disney characters, Colin’s piece was DARK, gritty, almost noir-like in tone. What’s the adult equivalent to a candy habit? A sex addiction with a side of cocaine, natch.—AMY
Hello, my name is Joe Bucket—no limericks, please—and I’m an addict. I’m mailing this in and having this guy read it because my life is hell. But more on that later. I’ve been clean for… six years. Wow. I mean, for a while there I was as addicted to breaking my sobriety as I was to anything you could smoke, snort, or shoot. But things have slowed down lately. It’s good. You get old, you get a little sick, a little weak, and you slow down. I mean, my addiction’s out there in the parking lot doing cock push-ups and chugging Vegemite, but I’ve been retired to “the bed” for something like… shit. Seven years. Seven and counting. Seven years ago my boy and his wretched wife claimed Josephine and I were too “old and tired” for a place of our own, and they plopped us on a stinking bed in their miserable apartment, along with George and Georgina. And once they set us down, there was no good reason to get back up. When I’m up, I’m trouble. But in “the bed,” well… six fucking years clean, man. I should get a shot and a screw just for living that long, on top of the eighty I was already carrying around with me.
I’m kidding.
George and Georgina are decent people, but they’re boring. You’d think being eternally confined to a bed with your wife and another couple would turn into some kind of endlessly sexy fuck and swap party, but that’s because you’re all a bunch of young assholes. The biggest thrill I get these days comes whenever my wife sleepily throws a leg over mine and I get a cool, cruel chill from reprimanding her.
“Dorothy, climb off. Your crotch feels like a deflated football.”
Nobody wants it around there, not even me. And I always want it. But as I’m writing this, Josephine’s leaking God-knows-what from her nethers and that’s of course pooling beneath us. But no one’s going to say anything about it. We all leak at some point or another, different fluids but in equal measure. It’s just the way it is. So, like I said, nobody wants it around here. Not even me.
My thing was always excess. Of any kind. Fucking, sucking, ass-licking, shooting shit, shoving shit up your ass, vodka enemas, gargling cum mixed with cocaine and codeine, fuck it. I liked to mix it up. And I was durable, man. I could take it. I was looking to fucking blast off and I wouldn’t even check the view until I was orbiting Uranus.
That guy knows what I’m talking about.
Forgive an old man a joke or two. At my age, it’s the only comfort you can provide people: letting them shrug off a dumb joke and feel like they’re tolerant, good people. You’ve all done it. I did it all the fucking time. I still do it. These goddamn aneurisms I call bedmates would be the death of me if it weren’t for my false sense of superiority.
Look, I know I could take another hit. I know I could fuck another whore, let her fuck me. Let her open me up. I know I could take it and take it harder and longer than I’ve ever taken it. I know I could shower these octogenarians with cum and sign it Jackson Pollock in piss. I mean, I’ve got life left in me. But I don’t know if I’ve got another recovery in me.
So I stay in “the bed” and shrug off these shitty personalities and their even shittier bowel movements, and I tell myself I’m just a little better than them. Just a little. Me, I’m doing fine, I say. And I write these letters to remind myself that I’m not.
I pray this thing finds its way to the right place, to the right set of hands, and not to someone who’ll hold it up in front of a crowd and encourage everyone to laugh at the pathetic old addict with HPV—that’s right, warts bigger than my dick ever was—the old drunk who drove his secret second family out to Florida some thirty years ago and abandoned them in a motel outside Disney World.
One of the steps says I have to reach out to them. Give them my real name. Tell them I’m sorry. Amends, is the step. But when you’re a tired old man full of cum and regret, you start to walk pretty goddamn slowly.
I’m getting morbid. I’m getting sad. I wish I could be there to stand in front of you all and say this stuff. I’m better in person. I’m funny, I swear. They’ve probably got some fat ex-pothead reading this. One of those guys who insists on leading the meetings week after week, regardless of the protocol. Or maybe not.
Guy who’s reading this, don’t take my bullshit seriously. You’re doing a great job, man.
Well. What else? Like, I said, my thing was always excess. I’d go for anything, as long as I could keep doing it and doing it and doing it. But. Nowadays. Dick’s broken so the sex addiction’s not much of an issue. Nose is rotted out, so cocaine’s not appealing. Heroin would be good. I think I would enjoy some heroin, or whatever equivalent they’re mixing up these days. Something that just slides into you and makes you not give a fuck. That’s the worst thing about being six years sober: how much you start to give a fuck. I care about shit now I wouldn’t have thought twice about before. Like my boy’s boy, Charlie. I mean, he’s a complete shit. We cook up cabbage, right? That’s a meal for us. We cook up cabbage and this little shit makes a face at us, like we’re not all fucking miserable and eating cabbage. I’m just like, Look, kid, don’t make a fucking face. Eat your cabbage. Put your face away. Do you know how much better I used to have it? This ain’t my life. This is a fucking cell.
So, this kid, all of a sudden I give a fuck about him. I listen to him. I’ll sing a song with him, if I’ve got the energy. I mean, what is that? Maybe it’s love, and I’ve just never known it like this. Without the fucking part, I mean. Anyway, it’s not what I pictured for myself.
But maybe if I keep at these letters and “keep on keeping on” this shitty, boring love will become my new addiction. My new access to excess. Wouldn’t that be fucking ironic?
I’m joking again.
You people are good people for hearing me out on all this. I’m going nowhere precise, but just kind of wandering around here at the end, so I’ll sign off. Charlie’s got some news that’s got him more than excited than the day he realized you can fuck a wet roll of toilet paper if you take the cardboard out. And look at me, prick that I am. I’m going to put down this pen and actually hear him out.