Shitcoin Secrets - Chapters 1 / 2

[QuintenHayley]

Shitcoin Secrets

Chapter 1

It was a decade ago and I had just gotten out of a psychiatric facility. I had capitulated IRL — ate all of my fucked-up dog’s Phenobarbital in an effort to meet God and punch him in the face for the shitty hand he dealt me. Somehow, they brought me back from the flatline, although there are times, I wish they hadn’t.

Seven rounds of electroshock therapy, an assortment of psych meds, and a month in the looney bin later they let me go. It was far from the first time, but it would be the last, unless there’s another all-encompassing meltdown looming in the distance. What made this particular suicidal sabbatical different from prior crises? It was the first time I had heard of Bitcoin, and more compelling at the time, the Silk Road.

I was in my third week sitting in one of those blue gowns you see on TV, tied in the back, donning the socks with the splotched plastic bottoms. A wide-eyed skinned head psycho dressed similarly had just been admitted into the ward.

Everyone quieted down as Ignatius posed to announce the new dude’s presence.

“Okay guys, this guy here, he’s going to be a new addition to the unit. Please help me give a warm welcome to Justin!” Ignatius said emphatically. Ignatius was a British Columbian man that had served in the British Special Forces. He had witnessed some truly heinous horrors that had left him with complex PTSD. Despite this he was nearing the completion of his doctorate. His voice was soothing, warm, and his accent palliative. The way in which he could calmly describe watching his best friend’s head turn to pulp, the things it did to him, and how he manages to press forward in an effort to assist weaker men, left me believing that I could pull myself up by my proverbial bootstraps. Although I would fail a lot more.

We stopped our card game, whoever had the remote control paused whatever was on the television screen. This was a customary process with new admits. We all got up and shook his hands one by one. “Hi, hello, I’m such and such, nice to meet you, yadda yadda,” all of us collectively fantasizing about being somewhere else with other people.

You could see the snark on this kid’s face, and his disinterest in the limpness of the handshake itself. In some cultures, a limp handshake is a sign of respect, but here in America it just means you’re an asshole. His scrunched up, post ironic face confirming the connotation. Part of his left eyebrow was missing. It was definitely a gang thing.

After the halfhearted introductions, everyone relocated to wherever they originated and went back to desperate distraction. Justin pulled up a chair next to me.

“Hey, you guys mind if I sit here?” He could barely get the question out, his mouth and demeanor languid.

I was nineteen at the time, so was the other bald derelict in question. I was used to the Lord of the Flies esque dynamic of adolescent psych wards, it’s where I spent my formative years. Everyone in this new sanatorium setting was well past their prime and had zero interest in anything that didn’t lead to existential stability or their ex-partner allowing them partial custody.

Me though? Well, I had a lot more fucking up to do.

 

 

 

Chapter 2

I was playing spades with a few guys. Firstly, Guytano, a smooth-talking Italian womanizer who sold used cars and overdosed on cocaine at work, mid thirties. Always assuring me that I was bound for women with loose morals once I got out of my perpetual lobotomy. He had a very apparent sex addiction, but his genuine frankness and cliché machismo charisma really did it for me. He was really good at cheering desperate people up.

Then there was Frank, a guy in his late fifties with your basic proclivity for alcohol. He was rotund, but his baritone voice and raspy laugh soothed the severity of our scenario. He wasn't playing cards with us, but he had seemingly taken a liking to me. Maybe I reminded him of his son or something. He was my roommate and at this point omnipotent.

There was also Ray, a kid (man) about my age, from a suburb slightly more gentrified than my own, into hopeless romance and heroin. Months later we’d run into each other at a near-abandoned mall on a Tuesday afternoon, with not so much as a word as to avoid explaining to the women we were with where we knew each other from. A turn of the head, a wordless stare, and a walk the fuck on. I was high, I remember hoping he wasn’t.

And of course, fucking Lars.

Lars deserves his own book, although he’ll never have the capacity to write one. Lars is more than likely dead as I’m typing. He was obese, sweaty, unapologetically rude, vile, mentally ill. An eastern European man who had spent the last seven years of his life sucking dick and shooting up bath salts beneath a bridge in Chicago. In our mandatory group therapy sessions, he proclaimed that the only dream he maintained was to direct hardcore pornography; his elderly mother was in attendance. The depression emanating from her sunken in face was palpable to everyone but her deranged son. His head was bald in the middle of his skull with a scalp resembling a crow’s nest; sporting an accompanying long, thin mullet protruding from the sides. He was one of the most despicable, deplorable, decadent human beings I have ever met, and my spades partner. He weighed at least 450 lbs.

Lars and I were clearing house in spades, winning all of the cigarettes and candy, and I was almost enjoying myself. It was the middle of the night on a Friday, and we were all consuming various poisons, playing cards, and talking about women and other delusions of grandeur.

So, this Hitler youth is sitting next to me, and he’s definitely on something within the sedative class-field. Jawing at nothing and wearing away his enamel as he spoke.

“Hey man, I dig the haircut.” He grinned stupidly rubbing his head and pointing to mine. I faked a laugh and thanked him. He didn’t seem to notice I was uncomfortable, probably chose not to.

“You part of the brotherhood?”

Great. Gang affiliated in a psych ward. God had such plans for me.

“Nah man, just your classic complete mental breakdown. I saw Britney Spears do it in the early 2000s and felt inspired. No disrespect.”

He wasn’t angry, he just laughed. I had become pretty good at disarming the unstable.

“Hey man, don’t worry about it. We’re not Neanderthals; we don’t get angry about something so stupid. If you’re white and your heads shaved, you’re cool by me.”

“…” The spades table remained silent as the degenerate inside all of us stirred.

“You mind if I get a turn playing? I like cards more than television. They don’t have television in juvie.” He personified confidence and picked up the cards, shuffling unwarranted, bridging the deck like second nature.