Adventura by Ned Vizzini

I carefully manage my nights—I make concrete decisions at each point as to whether I'm going to go out, have a drink at home, take drugs, drink coffee, read or go on the internet in sequences like this: Right now I want to watch pornography but I've taken drugs so I know that it's more respectable for me to read, besides, if I masturbate into the garbage can next to me, I just put the garbage bag in there so it'll all settle at the bottom, and I'd prefer to have some paper in there to act as a buffer and an absorbent.
    So I resolved to read a magazine and throw it away for its absorbent power before going to the porn.
    The magazine was full of lots of things that were very pornographic. There were articles about flowers and population. I didn't get aroused though, because I walk around when I read magazines; if I could I'd like to walk around doing everything. As I was walking, the magazine informed me that pacing, tapping your foot, and jittering around in general ways burned almost as much fat as exercise, and people who did it lasted longer. This put a smile on my face and I tried to listen to some music to reward myself, but I can't listen to music and read at the same time. I'm stuck in my ways, my girlfriend says. When the magazine was finished and I was ready for the porn, I was at a loss—I'd drunk too much coffee. Part of the satisfaction of porn—the biggest part—is that it puts me to sleep afterwards. Sex with a real person, I've found, can go both ways: it either energizes me or knocks me out. But masturbation always does the second one, and it was time to go to bed (1:09). But now, if I wanted to knock myself out, I'd have to cancel out the coffee and take my pills, which said "TAKE 3 TABLETS AT BEDTIME," but I was convinced that the pills were bad because WebMD said they were bad.
    I had no booze to put me to sleep and not quite enough money to be spending it on booze. Ditto a bar. And I was too old to masturbate twice. So it seemed I had to slip out, take a quick drink at a friend's house, and come home to sleep.
    There were two people I knew who stayed up this late: Amar and Christian. Amar was a pot dealer who smoked an annoying amount of pot. He smoked so much that you had to disdain him, and by doing so you disdained yourself a little. I texted him.
    "Hey can I come over?"
    "Sure."
    I went to his house, the night sky a rigid black, and found him slumped over dead on his coffee table. The glass of the table was broken and the bong was leaning in towards his head. I didn't know he was dead at first; I felt him; he was warm; but when I got under the table to inspect him and saw his crumpled face I knew. I figured the killer was still in the house so I got the hell out of there. I got in my car, went down the block, and called 911. I was a little discombobulated talking to the operator because I was thinking that there was certain crazy shit in your life that you wanted to happen, like threesomes and Armageddon, and certain crazy shit that you didn't. And now that the evil ugly shit was happening, I thought that maybe it was in part because I hadn't given it enough respect, like karma, except with a trigger point of ignorance instead of malice. Then, given my equal ignorance of close death and long-range Armageddon, I wondered if all the desirable adventures would be this bad, if even threesomes would make me sweat and vomit.

About the author:
Ned Vizzini is the author of It's Kind of a Funny Story, Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah.... He has written for The New York Times Book Review, The New York Sun, Bookslut, Huffington Post, Dogmatika, 3:AM and Underground Voices. His work has been has been translated into seven languages. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.