James Klise - Love Drugged

Woodbury, Minnesota

Love Drugged 2010 by James Klise.

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First e-book edition 2010

E-book ISBN: 9780738727271

Cover design by Lisa Novak

Back cover image iStockphoto.com/subjug

Front cover image iStockphoto.com/Amanda Rohde

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For Mike

I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

one

Judging by the angry mail we get, a lot of people consider me to be the villain of this story. The Chicago newspapers treat me like a public menace. They use the most biased headlines:

STRAIGHT CHARADE LEAVES READERS IRATE

NO MORE DATES FOR JAMIE BATES

WOULD YOU WANT HIM FOR YOUR DAUGHTER?

No, people, you would not want me for your daughter. That should be obvious.

Its true, I told a lot of lies. I lied to everyone, including myself. I took things that didnt belong to me. Valuable things. In the end, I resorted to violence, which I totally regret, and I set what I thought was a very responsible, very contained, tiny fire, which led towell, massive destruction of private property.

But a villain?

My defense goes like this: Technically, in order to be considered a true villain, youve got to have a sinister plan. I suspect that a class called Creating Your Sinister Plan is taught during freshman year of Villain School.

Take, for example, the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians . Cruella De Vil creates a plan: I am going to steal these adorable puppies and kill them to make coats. The crazy old people in Rosemarys Baby hatch a downright devilish plan: Lets take this innocent young woman and use her body to give birth to Satans immortal offspring. In the Friday the 13th movies, the drowned teenager Jason Voorhees comes up with a truly ambitious, no-good, blood-splattered plan: Maybe, if I avenge my young death by killing every teenager who comes to Camp Crystal Lake, over time I will find some measure of peace.

Sure, these characters are all lunaticscertified, grade-A wack jobsbut they are bad guys nonetheless. They created evil plans; therefore, they are villains.

Let the record show, I never had a sinister plan. I never said to myself: Let me trick a beautiful, intelligent female classmate into thinking I am heterosexual. In our case, a relationship simply grew of its own accord. Opportunities presented themselves. It was the classic romantic scenario involving two young hearts, first kisses, exotic locales, and a stolen supply of untested pharmaceutical drugs designed to alter the sexual chemistry inside the brain.

I dont mean to excuse my crimes. These days I carry regrets with me like my grimy gray backpack, evident for the whole world to see.

People are complicated. Desire can be confusing. Not for you? Consider yourself lucky.

Reporters hold their compact digital recorders up to my mouth. Please, Jamie, talk about the drug, they say. Tell us about specific changes to your mind and your body. They always ask me to describe the taste of the pills, and they always use the word miracle.

Often they ask for a photograph, something for them to use instead of my freshman yearbook picture, which everybodys seen. Infamous me, sitting up too straight, with my shiny brown bowl cut. Toothy and too happy-lookingalarming glee, like someone just pinched my ass. Now when someone pulls out a camera, I slouch a little and push my bangs to the side. I cross my arms. Ive learned how to stare at cameras with confidence, without needing to smile at all.

Chicago reporters like to include my background story. Heres my version: Im an only child. For the past five years, my family has lived with my mothers parents in Rogers Park, north of Peterson Avenue. Before thatback when my dad had his quick-printing businesswe lived on the citys west side. My grandparents place is a brick two-flat, one apartment on top of the other, with a chain-link fence along the front sidewalk. It may not impress, but it doesnt embarrass, either. It fits in.

When we first moved in, I picked a bedroom downstairs, in my grandparents apartment. I wanted to be in the middle of everything. In retrospect, my parents must have appreciated the chance to have the upstairs to themselves, where they had plenty of space for starting their endless chain of doomed businessesdiscount magazine sales, website design, recipe subscription clubs. One half-baked venture after the next.

At first, my parents expected our stay would be short. One year, tops, my father said. Of course he thought so. My dad wears his wavy brown hair exactly as he did the year he led his high school baseball team to historic wins. (Another headline: SLUGGER BATES TAKES LAKERS TO STATE .) Ill catch him paging through the old yearbooks we keep on the TV, next to the Bible, and even Im struck by how much I resemble him at that age. Despite subsequent setbacks in my dads life, he has always clung to the notion that the universe happens to favor certain people, like him, and that the universe is not fickle.

Now remember, kiddo, he told me back then, as we carried my suitcases into the temporary bedroom, were guests in this home.

I looked around the room. The narrow window offered an unobstructed view of my grandparents garage, squat and brick. On the bed lay an old toy, a small wooden carving of two painted ducks on a log. I reached for it. The ducks were at opposite ends of the log, but when I pulled a string at the bottom, the ducks moved to the center, flapping their speckled wings.