Back Pain Billy Thompson
Look, I know I don’t cut the most sympathetic figure here, what with the kidnapped baby and all. But still, that doesn’t change the fact that my back is killing me right now. I’m dying here. I can barely turn my head. But I’m powering through, and that should count for something, right? I just popped a couple pills for the pain, the ones from that commercial where the light courses through the body and then flashes at the pressure points. You know it? Well, my back feels like that, like flashing lights. And sirens, too. The pills really just make it feel like only flashing lights, which I’ll take, I guess. I have to. And anyway, who isn’t battling through something, right? Just to make it through the day. We’ve all been here before. But for the kidnapped baby, sure. That’s a new one for me, too. The baby’s crying now. That one’s not new for me; I have two of my own. Or had two. They’re teenagers now. And they don’t really talk to me, although I pin that mostly on their mother. But then, she had her reasons. I can’t really blame her. My drug habit got me in all kinds of trouble, with all kinds of people. Which led to my trouble with her, or really her trouble with me. But regardless, all that past trouble is why I’m here in this car with this kidnapped baby now. This baby I kidnapped. I’m clean now, and have been for two years, almost two and a half, which I’m proud of, but, you know, things happen. People are seldom who they want to be. Look, I would never do this by choice. You think they said Roy, steal a kid, and I wasn’t like, nah I’m good? C’mon, man. I had to do it. Why? Because even though they’re teenagers now and they don’t really talk to me, Kenny and RJ are still the only way to threaten me into kidnapping a baby. Which, I know, how could I do that to another father? Look, things don’t just happen. I got myself into this. So did he.
we’re not nice to each other to be nice to each other. But whatever, that’s just to name a few. Don’t even get me started on Marketing. Marketing’s so prevalent we don’t even notice it anymore. But it’s everywhere, and it’s insidious. It’s why I popped these pills I popped for my back, because that commercial got stuck in my head. To be honest, I don’t even know if it’s actually the pills that make me feel better or if there is some kind of numbing agent just in the simple process of shopping for pain relief at the drugstore, you know, like a sort of pitch and purchase placebo effect. They said these ones will make me feel better, so they will, because they must. It’s not always in an addict’s arsenal to be skeptical. At least these drugs are legal. And I wouldn’t know about them unless I was told about them. So, we just accept it. And not even as a necessary evil, but simply as necessary. Well fine, okay, but you know what, what I’m doing is necessary, too. That’s my reality. The baby’s a girl. I didn’t know beforehand, I was just told: Roy, get the baby. I know she’s a girl now because she was wrapped in pink when I found her, in her sparkly, princessy nursery. It’s Marketing, man. It’s separating boys and girls because that makes us easier to sell to. But you know what, I don’t even call it necessary evil myself. Because I don’t believe in evil. Not anymore. And not because what I’m doing is, you might say, a pretty evil thing. No, I’m saying there’s no such thing as evil. There’s just weights and counterweights. Look, the closest thing to pure evil that I’ve seen would have to be the two guys, and their guns, who have put me up to kidnapping a baby by threatening my own sons. But not even because of that. No, what was really, conventionally evil was introducing someone as young as I was to the idea of escape. I didn’t need it; but once I had it, I did. And the ramifications of that… well, let me just say the shadow of that time and those decisions is long. Everything in my life is darker now because of it. Did they have to do that, introduce me to it at such a young age? I say no, but maybe yes. Maybe to them it was necessary. Maybe they needed to escape and knew no better way. But either way, now I have this baby, and she’s crying, and I feel bad but I can’t look at her because I can’t turn my head to the right because of this pain in my back. Something inside me wants to touch her toes or rub her head just to soothe her, but it’s just as well that I can’t, because I have to concentrate on driving to get as far away as possible before they realize she’s gone and put out an Amber Alert. Time, as per usual, is of the essence.
I was young when I started using. I don’t know why I started, because I was young and things were easy. I just did. Maybe I was bored, I guess, like all kids are bored, but life hadn’t come at me yet with its claws out. So, I have no excuse. I know this. Show me a guy who’s my age and using, even without an ex-wife and two estranged kids and back pain like this, and I’ll be like, yeah, I get it. Shit’s hard, man. But, back then, nah. No excuse. Now, though, I got real shit to escape. Like we all do. That’s just the reality of things. I mean seriously, look around; all you see are attempts to escape reality. Am I wrong? You got music, movies. Drugs and alcohol. Cell phones and airplanes. Religion. Capitalism. Well, maybe not capitalism. Capitalism is reality. We’re not nice to each other. We’re mean. We’re going to do whatever we have to, just to survive and to be comfortable, and being comfortable means not thinking about people who aren’t comfortable. I mean, really, look at some of the worst ways capitalism manifests itself: Wall Street, privatized jails, corporate-financed political lobbyists. Goddamn, you know. But nobody even flinches. And how about tax deductible charitable giving? I mean, c’mon, philanthropic tax shelters? Even when we’re nice to each other,
Did you know the Amber in Amber Alert is an acronym? I thought it was named for a girl, and it was, a little girl, Amber Hagerman, a 9-yearold who was abducted and murdered in Texas back in 1996, but it’s officially an acronym: America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.
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