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   Your addictions are like crack to me. Nothing better than two lungfuls of secondhand smoke to a non-smoker, retrieving a dropped quarter in the gaming room and slotting it for frail Aunt Julie. ‘Kind young man’, she says. Lady, the pleasure’s all mine. At festivals, I loiter in the bottleneck of the portapotty queues, make ‘em shove past me with a contrail punge of dope. HUFF that shit, man, goes the monkey in my head. It’s not your vice—so indulge, guilt-free.
   Doctor friend of mine reckons I’ve gotta addiction, dangerous one I mean. Not so. Addicts seek out the thrill, manufacture opportunities. I just take ‘em when I see ‘em. Same doc abuses opioids, writes scripts I fill and hand right back. Texts me gibberish this morning, dntj tlejj Joon sorta shit, so I head over and find doc facedown drooling into plush red carpet, half buried by this Madagascan old-growth table, contents: a razor, six Millers, a nudie mag—in this age! quaint old pervert—and three crushed white lines of Percocet.
   Do I know it’s Percocet? says the monkey. Looks like Perc, he gave me Perc, 2+2=4. You gotta be sure, insists the monkey, so I snort a line and it’s Perc. Fucking *A*, dude. Doc lives right next to the hospital so I hossle him out to the car and drop him off. Let the nurse know it’s Perc. Not that they couldn’t figure it out but hey maybe it helps. My name & number? Argh, see, let me move the car outta the way first, b.r.b. and I’m gone, wheels up for takeoff—by the time the Perc really smacks me I'm under the 5th Ave Expressway, lookin’ up at the sun streaming through the median gap and how the outbound-traffic shadows tumble down the girders like chase lights. Pure, sweetest cinema. A few of us there, bums ‘n misfits. We don’t say nothin’. Pop by a Klein’s on the way home for a bag of cherries and a salami—two greasy teens in aisle 6 are hiding hands in too-big hoodies, go kids go!, I’m cool, d.w. I chitchat the checkout girl while they make their escape.
   I’m lucky though, not having an addictive personality. Withdrawals, zip, shakes, zip, whatever cellular cleaners I got are doing god’s work I swear. The Big J.C. could personally inform me I’d never get another chance at this, no more vicarious vice for Me, & it wouldn’t bother me none. I got my own things going on. It’s cool. What I think though is that boogeymanning degeneracy will fuck you up just as bad. Spend your whole life scared shitless of addiction and you weaken your immune system to it—butter yourself up nicely so when that midlife crisis hits, when you finally dabble, you’re hooked for good and twice as hard. Cortisol kills more people than meth. Steve Prefontaine loved cigars.
   ‘Sides, it’s not like I gotta partake to get my fix. Proximity’s enough. Out the windshield I see a man waiting by a bus stop, cradling his last Chesterfield, pensive, clearly lost awhile till he full-body-jolts back to the world so quick his grip loosens and he chucks the ciggie 3m across the road. Ha-ha. So what’s he do? Hurls himself for it—fucking *A*, dude—so the left lane driver panics and crashes into me instead. No biggie, ride’s a piece of shit anyway, monkey says, so I clamber out the uncrumpled passenger door with my eyes transfixed on the smoker now taking a drag and sizing me & Left Lane up like we’re the inconvenience. Left Lane’s shouting; some drycleaner lady comes outta the shop and starts fussing over my forehead, s’pose there’s a gash; still all I can think is how sublimely smooth that drag must taste in his moment of triumph. I nod. Chester F. reciprocates. We come to a silent understanding. Leftie wants my name & number, you the fuckin’ nurse? I say and walk on home instead.
   This is what I’m saying: if I start banging fent on the reg or dropping 20k a mo. next to Aunt Julie, ok, stage an intervention—I get it. But I’m fine. Really. I got floaties on in the kiddie pool of dependency. So don’t go preaching to me that two great lungfuls of secondhand smoke 1x a month or a sporadic line of the same shit your gramma’s on at doc’s hospital are some Big Bad while you sit on your ass all day in your Herman-Miller hellhole, 2 inches on your gut each year, snarfing down BPAs & aspartame like it’s nobody’s business. You’re the fuckin’ weirdo, if you think about it. At least I’m having fun.