Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,50

day later, when Martin starts pounding on my door. He comes into my room and sits in the corner, asking me if I feel okay, if I need a doctor. He doesn’t say it, but I can tell he’s worried that I’ve gone off the deep end. I don’t blame him. I’m worried too. I can’t even begin to explain what’s happening to me.

I am informed that some doctors in Los Angeles can get you anything you need, no questions asked. They will even come to your “temporary furnished and serviced apartments” if necessary. They are quick with the diagnosis and even quicker with the prescription pad. I figure now is as good a time as any for a consultation. The Disaster knows a guy who knows a guy, so I have him summon a doctor to my bedroom. A slick-talking guy, with a wide tie and a white smile. Tan. Pager on his belt. He looks like he just stepped off the set of a soap opera. Maybe he did. It doesn’t matter all that much. He listens to me talk for a while, then whips out the pad and gives me a script for Zoloft. The little, blue miracle workers. He doesn’t even ask if I’m taking any other medications, probably because he knows the answer already. Or he doesn’t care. If only Chicago had doctors like him. As he’s leaving, he gives me his pager number, tells me to call if I need anything. I am now officially taking meds for anxiety and depression. I am now officially under his care.

• • •

A week or so later—who’s counting anymore?—I am wandering the aisles of a bookstore in a haze, and during a momentary break in the clouds, I find myself staring at The Pill Book, “the illustrated guide to the most-prescribed drugs in the United States,” according to a blurb on the cover. I have always liked illustrations, so I buy it. Thousands of pills are listed inside, of every shape and size, potency, ability. They have fantastically foreign-sounding names, such as Abacavir and Norvasc and Zaroxolyn, that clog the tongue and bunch the lips. Betatrex and Cerebyx, Lorazepam and Mevacor, Questran and Rynatan. My old friend Ativan. My new nemesis Copaxone. Anoquan. Decadron. Guaifenex. Norethin. Roxicet. Warfarin. Names that recall distant galaxies hovering on the rim of space. Placid resort towns in Arizona. Snow-dotted villages in New England. Sterile stops on the sterling-silver superhighway of tomorrow. Misty, quartz-powered home worlds of superheroes. Letters seemingly chosen at random to make words—new words, a new language, a new world. Alphabet soup. Flurries. Each of them is a unique, little snowflake. Each of them is beautiful.

I hide the book under my mattress, like it was an old copy of Playboy and my parents were in the next room. I lock the door to my bedroom and read it at night. My pulse quickens with each page I turn. My eyeballs flutter in the dim light of my Oakwoods apartment. I hope my mom doesn’t walk in on me. Snorted, swallowed, or shot into my stomach, every pill represents a new opportunity, a new neuron-frying, serotonin-searing adventure for me to embark on. There are dosage guides and lists of possible side effects. Food interactions. Generic equivalents for the penny-pinchers. Overdose warnings too, but I usually ignore them. It’s a step-by-step guide to self-medicating, sort of like The Anarchist Cookbook for manic depressives. I am no longer aware of how many different pills I am taking, but I find myself paging the Soap Opera Doctor at least once a day. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s seen hundreds of guys just like me, nobodies from the middle of nowhere who show up in his town and promptly fall apart. I’m just following the script, having my first meltdown. Call me a cliché. I probably won’t even notice. My eyelids are always heavy. Things are easier this way. No talking, no feeling, no pain. Just a handful of prescriptions and the occasional suspicious look from the pharmacist. Days blur into nights. Dull, warm sunsets become hazy, fuzzy sunrises. Los Angeles begins to disappear into a pharmaceutical haze. And I go with it. Sometimes, I even admit that I’m sort of enjoying all this. This is what I am supposed to be doing, after all.

I haven’t slept in a while now. My sentences are running like they just want to get away from whatever’s behind them. I’ve been writing Her e-mails with no