I was in the dayroom last evening, doing a crossword puzzle with my stubby little pencil when one of the other patients came up to me and asked, "What's shakin'?"

“All four cheeks and a couple of chins,” I told him.

“I’m in here for huffing silver paint behind Arby’s. What’d you do?”

I didn’t want to tell him about the Pepsi Incident, so I said “I just went nuts. Pretty run of the mill, really.”

“I prefer gold paint, but we couldn’t get any. My buddy Stylee ran, but I was too fucked up. I hit a pole. They took me to normal jail, but I guess I lost it there, so here I am. What kind of nuts did you go?”

“Just regular ol’ run of the mill nuts. Nothing special.”

A commercial for Crazy Glue came on the tv and he wandered over to watch it and I made a break for my room.

Five minutes later, here he came. We aren’t allowed to shut our doors until 10 o'clock, when everybody has to go to their rooms. The doors are even locked open, against the wall. When closed, they don’t lock at all. Strange to encounter a door that only locks open, never closed. I have never seen such a thing. I’ve decided that it is symbolic of something. What, I don’t know, but something to be sure.

“My buddy Stylee turned me on to gold paint,” he continued. “Before that I was into any ol’ paint I could get my hands on, green, red, whatever. God, I was so naive. ‘Bill,’ Stylee says to me, 'if you wanna get truly fucked up you gotta go for the gold.’”

“Your name is Bill?”

“No.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. It’s Cody, but Stylee says that’s fag.”

“He’s right.”

“You know, spray paint, right? That’s what I’m talkin’ here.”

“Yeah.”

“You spray it in a plastic bag and put it over your mouth and nose and…”

“Yeah, yeah I went through a D.A.R.E. program in high school.”

“I got all Fs in high school.”

“No kidding.”

“You should try it.”

“What, paint? No, thanks. I’m a drunk.”

“Wimp.”

“At least my name’s not Cody.”

He laughed. “Good one.”

“I don’t always take out the recycling,” I told him, “but when I do I look like a raging alcoholic.”

“Huh?”

“Listen, Cody, I have to take a shit.”

I hurried down the hall, past the bathroom, and squatted behind a plastic bush that was in a nook by the drinking fountain. Through the made-in-China leaves, I watched him come out of my room and go into the bathroom. I watched him come out of the bathroom and go into my room again. Back and forth he did this for, like, 10 minutes. Finally, he wandered off.

I felt safe behind the plastic bush, and caressed the brown styrofoam that served as its soil. This has to be symbolic of something, too, I thought, this styrofoam pretending to be soil. What, I didn’t know, but something.