Looking Upon The Prick

I arrive at the box and trudge upstairs with my heavy pack and a Duane Reade shopping bag full of water. Water, the densest stuff on Earth. I drop off the water at my bed and continue on upstairs to get my meds. I get on line and one of the male Techs, whose name I still don't know, but as usual, he knows mine, tells me that I can't take my meds just yet. I am asked to follow him.

I drop off my prescriptions and follow him back downstairs to the second floor tech office here he gives me a breath- alyzer. I pass with flying colors. Next it time to pull my urine. This is a wonderful experience because you have to produce urine whether you like it or not, or sit in the "Hot Seat' until you do. Further humiliation is involved because as you pull out your dick to fill the cup you have this grown man looking over your shoulder to make certain that you aren't pulling a fast one with your piss.

Yeah, that's right, people here sell each other clean urine when a urine test is called for. So we have this close surveillance when we fill the cup. As the Tech looks over my shoulder I inform him that I can't piss like this when I have another man looking at my cock. I'm sorry, I'm not gay like that. He backs away, confident that I'm not filling the cup with another. "Well you know how it goes," he says to me. Yeah, I know. I fill the cup and hand it back to him. He takes the tester and drops it in. "Take a seat in the Hot Seat Mr. Hobobob." I have my backpack on my back because, simply put, I'm not leaving my baby out of my sight as I take a urine test. Tough titty if they think I am.

"Alright Mr. Hobobob, you passed," The Tech tells me. "You can go upstairs and take your meds." This I do, and I get on a line of only three people, but the hallways is filled with loud, boisterous motherfuckers talking about playing Spades, and whose good at it and whose not. But like children they have to shout over each other. The nurse, whose fat ass is taking her own sweet time to dispense the meds, shouts out into the corridor for people to shut up and get lost if they aren't on line. But here's the problem. If the bitch would dispense the meds just a little quicker, there would be no one in the corridor talking. They would have taken all this noise into the drawing room, where they had intended to play Spades. Her stupidity makes me want to rush into her office with a bat and a gun.

From the nurse's office I re-weigh my bag. 28lbs. The damn thing is putting on weight. I need to put the thing on a diet. I head downstairs to my bed and upon reaching it I notice, for the first time, that the bed next to mine was no longer stripped, but instead carefully made. The FNG has arrived.

Soon he walks in and stretches out on his bed. "Hey brother," he begins, "My name is Elvin, what's yours?" Hobobob. "Well, how long have you been here, Hobobob?" About a year. "Wow! The woman told me today that I'll be out of here in about ninety days." Do you get social security Elvin? "Yeah." Well you'll probably be out of here in three months. "Really?" Yeah really. I unpack my water and tins of sardines. Elvin continues to talk and then he jumps up and leaves. Later, he returns and plops into his bed, falling asleep.

Well, ain't that some shit? I have a new bedmate. Although there are at least half a dozen beds around me that are empty, this one seems to be the most favorable to fill. Cosmically, the universe loves to test me. I pack up early tonight and hit the hay. I'm tired. More tired tonight than normally, as if Elvin is some sort of life vampire. Maybe I've grown used to people being outside of my proximity when I'm preparing for sleep.

And sleep I do, and I have discernable dreams. I dream that my father had more than one child. I dream that I had brothers and sisters. I dream that we rebelled against him, in fact blamed him for something, although I can't remember what. I even woke up during the night twice to use the bathroom.

In the morning, Elvin is up, sitting on the side of his bed, asking a passing Tech the schedule. I rise and Elvin and I talk. We talk about everything, and in passing he mentions several items that he no doubt wants me to know. That's just the skek mind there. Normal people usually don't bother telling you the sordid features of there lives, mainly because they are embarrassed by them. Whereas a Skeksis is proud of his failures, proud of his deficits. They don't mention them because of their having to, they mention them because they want you to know.

Firstly, he has a program, court appointed for him, for anger management. Translation: Watch it, Hobobob, don't you or anyone fuck with me here, because I have a short fuse. Then he goes on to tell me, in passing mind you, that he had a stint in Riker's Island. Translation: My anger is so uncontrollable and dangerous, Hobobob, that it's landed me in jail. He queries me about my laptop, in fact being dim enough to ask me if I had one after seeing me with it. Translation: I'm stupid. He asks me if it costs a lot of money and he gestures to a few clothes that he has. Translation: There's no need to look for anything to steal from me because I have nothing. Double Translation: I have my valuables in my locker outside. He tells me that he has an addiction to marijuana because he had to get off crack. Translation: I've been around the block, I'm a bad man, Hobobob.

I don't bother with his chatter any longer, it's a bit of a bore you see. I get dressed, make up my bed and head out to Starbucks.

Hobobob