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Worst. Person. Ever(25)

By:Douglas Coupland


My posse left, and I fell asleep to the sounds of my roommates discreetly pleasuring themselves to their memories of Sarah.

OxyContin is the brand name of a time-release formula of oxycodone produced by the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995 and first introduced to the U.S. market in 1996. By 2001, OxyContin was the bestselling non-generic narcotic pain reliever in the U.S.; 2008 sales in the U.S. totalled $2.5 billion. An analysis of data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency found that retail sales of oxycodone “jumped nearly six-fold between 1997 and 2005.”

In 2001, Purdue Pharma permanently suspended distribution of 160 mg tablets in the U.S. It is speculated that the DEA had requested Purdue to discontinue manufacturing them.

Nobody ever mentions the good side of OxyContin: it makes you feel like Jesus fucking a horse.

When I came to again, I found a note from Neal on my bedside table, penned on the frayed corner of the cover of a five-year-old copy of Us Weekly magazine. I looked at its central photo: an off-the-rails starlet whose twat must, by this point in her career cycle, be dangling between her legs like Luciano Pavarotti’s tonsils.

Ray! Off to a 4G with the nurses on night duty.

Meet you at the airport.

Airport?

Just then, Fiona, clad in jodhpurs, entered my room once more, looking annoyingly relaxed.

I was polite. “Had a lovely time pussy-boxing with Sarah?”

“Yes, indeed. Our bodies sang.”

“I’m sure.”

“Her flesh—so velvety yet muscular—soooo pliable. I suppose I shouldn’t tell tales out of school, but she blows off heat like a cheap baseboard radiator.”

My tallowy Polynesian roommates snapped to attention.

“Am I allowed out of this wretched hospital or what?”

“You are. In addition, out of the warmth of my heart, you’re coming to the airport in my limo. We’re on the same flight. Lucky us.”

“Lucky us, indeed. Wait—why did you come up to the room to fetch me instead of sending an assistant?”

She rattled her purse, newly refilled with Oxy, and smiled. “Tabitha is downstairs waiting for us.”

“Tabs is here?”

“You’re not the only one who wants a slave, Raymond.”

Fiona burst out laughing, and two of my Samoan cohabitants threw soiled garments of some sort at me.

I got out of bed. “That’s our cue to leave, dear.”

Haole, in the Hawaiian language, is generally used to refer to an individual who fits one (or more) of the following categories: “White person, American, Englishman, Caucasian, any for-eigner.” Its use historically has ranged from a sociological description to racist epithet. Anyone who’s spent time in the Hawaiian public school system knows it is almost exclusively used as a racist epithet.





14


The limo was waiting for us out front. Tabs stood beside it, chewing gum and smiling as a trade wind blew up her schoolgirl-style skirt to reveal the cleanest, whitest, softest panties in the western hemisphere.

“Ray! I was so worried about you!” She gave me a smashing hug and we clambered into the car.

“You know me, Tabs. Living life to the max. I—”

Fiona cut me off. “Raymond, you could no more live life ‘to the max’ than you could doggy-paddle to the fucking moon. Your voyage through time is like the journey of a small piece of cat shit passing through a human colon, where it squeaks and slithers until one day it drops into a toilet called the grave.”

I gave Tabs a brave smile. “Poor, poor Fiona, always wearing the mask of wit to cover her withered interior world.”

My thinking on Tabs was that, although I was in love with Sarah, nailing Tabs would be a commitment-free treat, like finding a ten-quid note on the sidewalk.

The limo careened forward, and we headed off to the airport. “So, Fi, where’s Billy in all of this?”

“He’s on a flight from LA. We’ll see him later.”

Tabs continued to sneak glances at me. I still had no idea whether looking like her father, Mr. Molesty, was a good or bad omen in the screw department. Only time could tell.

The car slowed to a stop and Fi snapped, “Fucking hell, it’s an eight-lane freeway on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the day and it’s a fucking traffic jam.”

From her tone of voice, I could tell she was entering one of her dreaded hate warps.

She threw perhaps five hundred male headshots at Tabs. “We’re looking for the top twenty most fuckable. Here’s a Sharpie. Start rating them one to ten now.”

I stared at Fiona. She looked back at me. “No, Raymond, I am not going to give you the female candidates. Your taste in women is useless.”