"It takes a fine scale to weigh a shadow."

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

The next thing you do is simple. You wipe your face and go outside to smoke, knowing the need to scope the other 'guests.' They've been staring at you already brcause you aren't exactly fitting in all that real ultra swell. You're old and white-haired and far too well-dressed. You look professorial and your spoken voice is a thing of wonder: too deep to be entirely human, too Southern to be taken seriously, too everything.

But they're mainly kids and this is quite startling.

Junkies can spot one another from a mile away. Sure there are a couple of red-nosed straight boozers, a wet brain sporting a very good (but pitifully askew) toupee sitting in a wheelchair, but the gang is mostly cokers. A crystal freak here and here, a handful of bangers like me, but still: mainly just kids. Never been to a meeting, never asked for help, got here under duress.

It's trouble with John Law or trouble with Ward and June, but they did not get here on their own. Somebody's willing to pay two grand a day to get them out of a jam. Me? I walked in with volition and a heart buzzed all the way up with hornets. Some of these poor bastards are under the Thorazinf pillow, or -- worse -- lurching about in a Librium fog. I go to the regular hospital first; that's my deal. They feed me Ativan for a few days to calm the shakes and then they cut me loose.

This time I've gone directly from the regular hospital to rehab. Twenty-eight days of splendor and mockery,

Junkies! My children! I'm glad to join you again. Let us dine then on ice cream sandwiches and pulled pork.

Into the room women come and go.

The cokers are in a stupor.

The winos are just shaking. The bangers are hollow-eyed and jittering. I say little. It's poor form to intrude until life and the ragged regimen has introduced you. Tomorrow, I'll make them laugh and try as hard as I can toshow them how to love one another befre the cannibals set in.

A fellow named Sam asks my name and leans over to read it stamped on my badge. These pins are to be warn at any time you step out of your room.

"Guy," I say. This is neither the smartest nor the stupidest thing I'll say that day.

"Guy's a real name?"

I shrug.

"Okay so what is your real name?"

"It's Sam," I say. Because I'm not that fucking blind. Way deaf, pretty fucking blind, but not entirely stupid quite yet. I can read his name badge. Also, I'm mean.

"So why do they call you Guy?"

"On account of I think Sam's a name for asswipes, I guess."

It took a bit for the news for Sam's demise to arrive, but it made groundfall like a hurricane. I shot to the top of the charts and I even got along pretty famously with Sam by the time he got out-sourced as a guest. Out-guested? That would seem at once tidier and more cumbersome an odd combination.

I brook not many fools and I fear no man alive or dead. This ain't no Ernest Hemingway crap here: I fear no man. Nor should I fear any God, and I don't give a toad's nuts what you call him/her/it.

Mainly, I call God us.

But I will knock your ugly yellow-assed teeth down your throat if you threaten my little apple cart. Don't matter who you are. If stomping's got to happen, I figure I might as well be there when it does. Stomping's a lot like chewing gum: "Why, thank you. Don't mind if I do."

Sam, in time, turned out to be okay. He was a straight boozer but he knew what he was talking about when it came to fishing. Fucker could flat out catch a fish. They were teeny sunfish although he caught them by the barrel. I cast a couple of times and nailed a genuinely decent largemouth.

Of course I was also coughing up scary amounts of blood.

So Jesus probably wasn't a junkie boozer whoremonger. But he made us, or some fucking body fishers of men didn't her?

So they say.

So they say.

That one, I think He probably did say.

Capital H on the he? Nah. I'm a Quaker and a purist. It's just that I can't type so great.

Anyhow, I stole second whille you were all that busy thinking. That was plenty fucking dumb. Didn't anyone ever teach you anything?

The answer here in Hell, is: no.