To Cover Up the Smell

I lit my hair on fire.
“Ahh… fuck.” I said.
I flipped the Zippo away before it could light my whole head up like I was doing a Pepsi commercial.
It would be hard explaining to my parents how a huge chunk of my hair was singed off, without outing the fact that I had been stealing cigarettes from my mom’s car.
The wind had suddenly shifted and whipped my hair across my face.
I pulled the cigarette out of my mouth as quick as I could. Though I still smelled burnt hair.
“Ah! Fuck, that could have been horrible.” I said.
I was down in the overgrown nature trail that I walked through during the day when I was desperate.
Even when it was the middle of December and I had to walk through a foot of snow, like it was now.
Days were more difficult.
At night, the smell of smoke was so thick in the house I could have been smoking anything in there and not have been caught.
You need friends to do drugs though.
At least that’s what I assumed.
I tried to picture having friends, but I couldn’t.
Cigarettes were all I could get my hands on, god only knew what slippery slope I had been down if I had any… friends that is — or money.
I don’t think that they would be surprised that I was smoking, they had been buying me lighters since I was 10.
Even after the house fire.
The reek of incense came from my room, even though I was only 15 and hated the Grateful Dead.
Hey boy, here’s a lighter! While we’re at it, have a knife too!
Gifting your son with lighters and knives when he’s dressed all in black and locked in his room listening to The Cure for hours wasn’t a sure sign they had high expectations.
Or maybe helping him along his way.
Sometimes, I wondered if we were upscale enough to be white trash.
Then I would come home to our double-wide and realize that we weren’t even that upwardly mobile.

When I got home, I popped the licorice gumdrops that had been rolling around in my pocket lint into my mouth.
To mask the smell, you know?
My uncle was sitting at the table, telling my mom how he had cleaned out my cousins’ apartment before his born-again mother got there.
He had found a barrel of marijuana.
He had burned it in a bonfire.
God, I was hungry standing next to the fire. Ha, he said.
My cousin apparently made quite a living selling a contraption he made where you could hang from the ceiling by your penis.
Well, if you had one. I did, and it didn’t sound like something I had much interest in.
He sold them from the back of specialty magazines.
My uncle found a couple of those too.
He had burned them too.
Ha, he said.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t joking though.
Either way, my cousin, who I never met was dead.
His brother, who I never met either had been on the run from the cops since the ’80s for making the majority of the acid sold in the Midwest.
I never met him either.
The first time I heard about him was when his brother died.
The first time I heard of his brother was when he died.
Their other brother owned big stakes in a video store franchise.
I had heard of him.

After my uncle left I sat in my room and tried to draw a diagram of how you could hang from your junk without it ripping off.
I couldn’t figure it out.
My VCR was playing a movie that had been playing on repeat for the past two weeks, but I wasn’t paying attention.
I took one of my gift knives and pulled it across the skin of my hip.
Not because I was sad, but because I wasn’t.
I thought I was supposed to be.

Going out for a Coke. My dad started in on me about how I was on drugs.
I wasn’t.
I didn’t even know where to get any.
Didn’t matter to him. From his wheelchair, he raised his fist and hit me.
He had been a strong man before he lost his leg, now that he was using his arms to get himself everywhere — they were like a monster’s.
I used that as my reason to leave.
I slipped my boots on, no coat — and I went out the back door and out despite it being past 10 on a school night.
Out into the nature trail that was boot deep in snow.
I should have put on socks.
The snow was melting and pooling around my toes.
I walked and smoked cigarette butts.

When I got home, it was after midnight.
No one was awake, I was sure.
I took a white gumdrop that was in my pocket and ate it.
To cover up the smell.

I had a bottle of vodka in my closet, that was given to me by someone wanting to be my friend.
We weren’t.
I had taken the bottle anyway.
I also had some codeine that was left over from when I had a tooth pulled.
I pictured a slippery slope.
Maybe you didn’t need friends to do drugs?
I took both of them, not because I was sad, but because I wasn’t.

I died, and everybody felt sorry for me.
Everybody was at my funeral.
Except for my uncle who was searching my room for things to burn, but couldn’t find anything because I was too dull.
He ended up burning my room instead.
But mostly my funeral was full of the people that I really hated.
What the fuck? I said to myself. This was bullshit.
They just didn’t want to go to school.

When I woke up the next morning, I found a ruined razor next to me, and all the hair on my body was gone.
Oh well.
I pulled my dirty clothes from the day before on to go to school.
On the way out I pulled some gumdrops out of the package sitting open on the counter.
To cover up the smell.