A Word to the Wise

Sensitive content: touches upon the topics of drug use and suicide.

As he stood before the podium, before the crowd of youth and old now watching his every move, Donnie couldn’t help but feel an intense discomfort. Truth be told, a small part of it was admittedly due to being at the precipice of public speaking, but, really, it was the cap and gown that he was wearing. The accumulation of quiet was approaching the awkward verge, and he could sense his audience wondering why he had yet to utter a single word. Feeling beads of sweat beginning to seep through his pores in places both visible and obscured, he made a decision to prioritize his comfort, his own self-interest, over the decorum of the ceremony.

“F*ck this.” He muttered, shattering both silence and expectations. With a speed that signaled frustration, he nearly tore the cheap, uncomfortable gown off his body, tossing it off the stage and topping it with the cap that he found equally worthless. Wiping away the dew from his forehead, he stood there with his clothing and physique unveiled. Regular calisthenics, the only habit worthy of keeping since leaving jail, had chiseled him over the years. He was wearing his favorite outfit, a decade-old set of jeans and a Lyrnyrd Skynyrd t-shirt that featured a skull and crossbones, reminiscent of a biker gang’s backside. It was his favorite outfit for a reason: combined with his physique and the scars that spanned his appearance, face included, it commanded caution from whoever he crossed paths with.

Positioning himself back behind the podium as he had been moments ago, he let out a sigh of relief before scanning the venue from one side to the other. His audience was layered almost like a Roman legion. The student body formed the frontline, with parents and faculty stratified behind them in that order. Regardless of where he looked or whose gaze he met, he found the same expression of confused curiosity. No one had arrived today expecting a valedictorian’s speech to begin this way from a man like him. No longer irritated by the itchy warmth of the garbage he had just cast away, the calm of comfort began to set in, and he smiled as he spoke for a second time.

“Sorry about that folks, and thank you for your patience. I’ll get started now since I’m sure we all wanna get outta here, and maybe grab something decent to eat. I know I do. I’m freaking starving.”

Upon the podium was a set of index cards that he had worked on the night prior. They were stacked in three alternating sets of horizontal, vertical, and horizontal cards, three options for the speech he was enthusiastically asked to deliver by the dean of student affairs who was now awestruck and staring at him, mouth slightly agape. With impeccable timing, the 1200 mg of prescribed gabapentin, ingested an hour earlier, seemed to take sudden and decisive effect. He welcomed it as it furthered his feeling of comfort, being up there onstage. Now, disinhibited both naturally and artificially, he couldn’t help but grin as he tossed the index cards, sprinkling them on the mound of his refuse offstage. When he agreed to honor this tradition of the valedictorian, he had done so out of a sense of debt to the woman who had lent him more hands than he could count. He hadn’t an inkling of what to say, and he used ChatGPT to generate some boilerplate. Yet now, facing an even more confused and curious crowd, he felt conviction. He could feel the right words rising from deep within to the surface of his consciousness, and he was ready to speak.

“Let’s be real here. I ain’t your usual valedictorian. For starters, I’m 29-years-old, a little late to the party but better late than never, right?” His gaze shifted to the students, among whom he had built friendships on the foundation of a legally changed name and cover story. The naive youth about them was so glaringly obvious that he felt a sense of duty push him to continue.

“Time’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it. It really does fly, and I’m here to encourage you to fly with it, alright? To ride on its wings instead of squirming in its claws. I’m talking to you, boys and girls, you unsuspecting lot. Y’all look like you think you made it when, in reality, you’ve only just begun.” A somber look had taken over his face without him realizing.

“Let me tell you a little bit about myself. This ain’t the first college I went to; it’s the fourth. That’s right. This is the fourth institution of higher education that I have graced with my presence, which really does beg the question: what am I doing here?” Unintentionally, he looked to the section occupied by the parents and guardians. Wistfully, he visually confirmed the absence of his own parents, a confirmation which he immediately regretted. The door deep within him that he vigilantly kept closed began to crack open, and it took a great deal of control to imprison the tears that demanded release.

“I’m here because I f*cked up when I was young like you. When I first went to college, about a decade ago, I was doing drugs, selling drugs, and making all the wrong connections. I got so good at being bad, raking all that cash, that school seemed like a waste of time, so I stopped going to class. Instead of doing something that was obviously good for me, I just doubled down on the bad. I started taking Adderall to trade stock options with the drug money, and I’d mark the end of my business day with a nightcap of Xanax. Come the weekends, I’d drink like a fiend, like I had things inside me that I needed to drown because the truth is that I did. I did have things I was trying to drown, “gifts” that continue to give to this day, if you know what I mean.” He paused, out of necessity rather than rhetoric.

“Then, on December 11th of 2015, I tried to off myself. I got piss-drunk by 8 AM, lost all hope in life, and roamed campus looking for a nice roof. I was chain-smoking the whole time, carrying a bottle of Hennesey in my hand, setting off emergency exit alarms, and all that. Come to think of it, I’m surprised nobody stopped me. That really says something about the state of our society doesn’t it, huh.” His mind began to take defensive maneuvers, leveraging humor as it always had.

“The last roof I tried was the library tower. Now that was a nice roof. It must have been at least 30 stories high. With a lit cigarette in my mouth and the bottle in my hand, I actually made it through the doors of the building, up the elevator, and into the stairwell. When I finally got to the door to the roof, the only door, I found that it was locked. Man, I remember what I felt when that knob didn’t turn. It was like life was playing games with me. I was tired of living, intent on quitting, yet I couldn’t find a single roof to get onto. Mind you, I’m drunk and tired from all the roaming around campus. So I got angry, angry enough to go down a floor and return with a fire extinguisher. I don’t know why, but I used that thing to smash the knob off. In retrospect, it was such a stupid thing to do; I don’t know why I did it. I pretty much guaranteed that I wasn’t gonna make it onto the roof.” His air of humor fled from him, leaving only the somberness that practically shone from his expression. His hands gripped the raised edges of the podium increasingly tightly, a fact that he was unaware of. 

“Anyways, I got caught by the cops after that, and they threw me in the loonie bin because the nearest hospital didn’t have space in their suicide ward. I spent two weeks in that s***hole, clinging to the few sane people who were in there for the same reason I was. It was definitely some ‘one flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ sh*t. Imagine a gang of five sane people watching each other's backs from a sea of reality-departed crazies.” Focused on a nondescript point, he shook his head ever so slightly but visibly as he re-lived the memory.

“We made a pact there to commemorate the experience when we got out. So when I got out, the first thing I did was head to the nearest tattoo parlor to get this back alley ink job done.” Donnie proceeded to take off his watch to reveal what, at a distance, looked like a thick black line crossing his wrist.

“This is supposed to be the barcode on the wristband they had us wear, the one they scanned every day to know which meds to force-feed us.” As he held his arm up for the crowd, the nature of the tattoo was decidedly clear. The skin on which it resided was starkly pale in comparison to the rest of his arm, a testament to his discipline in concealment. Replacing the watch where it would remain for the reminder of his life, or until it broke and was replaced itself, he felt the door cracking open again, the tears reaching further through the bars of their cell. Fighting back with fierce resolve not to cry in public, he continued to speak.

“This tattoo was supposed to be a reminder for me to change, to look forward, and to be better. But, I don’t know, I just kept doing the same dumb sh*t. I couldn’t help it, and, even worse, I got even better at it. The crazy thing is that, all the while, I met the love of my life who was trying her best to help me. She was the reason that I went back to the second school so I could transfer to the third school, her school. You wanna know what it’s like to be a drug dealer while dual-majoring in applied mathematics and computer science? It’s f*cking stressful and inconvenient, the perfect conditions for doing a lotta drugs.” Releasing his vice grips on the podium, he stepped back, and took a deep breath through his nose before exhaling as long as he could through his mouth.

“As you can guess, it wasn’t sustainable. I had to choose between school or drugs, so I made the obvious choice for a fool like me at the time. I chose drugs. I decided to sell drugs as hard as I could, to see how far I could go. I teamed up with this real estate agent to receive f*cktons of drugs through the mail from my people in Canada, and I started making serious cash. It was enough that I found myself considering the big question for people in that life: how was all this going to end? I knew I had to quit while I was ahead, but what would that entail? What was I going to do for money once I had enough money?” I started looking into all sorts of things like rental properties and food truck permits.” Grabbing the microphone, which was conveniently wireless, he moved to the edge of the stage and took a seat, much like he wanted to do that fateful day in December. The entire audience maintained their close and quiet attention to his every gesture and action.

“There’s an irony to life, and I think that’s because God has a sense of humor, too. Just when I was thinking about when to call it quits, you wanna know what happened? I get arrested by the Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking about being surrounded by law enforcement with barrels aimed at my chest. They drag me in and inform me that my people in Canada were somehow tied to terrorist activity. Then they offered me a deal that I literally couldn’t accept: cooperate or prison.” He paused again, lost in memory, until he couldn’t help but notice the stares of the frontline of students from whom he was no more than a meter or two away.

“Listen, I’m no rat, but when it comes to national security and saving innocent lives from terrorism, I’m more inclined to bend that rule. But you gotta understand, we had a system to protect ourselves from each other. I simply couldn’t cooperate. I didn’t have any useful information because our setup intended me not to, which meant that my decision defaulted to prison, 10 years of it. Mind you, I had kept my nose clean my entire life up until that point. By that I mean, I didn’t have a criminal record besides a sealed misdemeanor assault charge and a trespassing violation. Even so, I was still facing a 10-year sentence and, since that was in 2019, I should still be in prison instead of putting on my little onstage performance here.” His somber face remained still as he paused again to imagine the inside of the cell he was meant for. He sat there like a stone, slumped over slightly, until he snapped to, indicated by him straightening up.

“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s the thought as earlier, ain’t it: what am I doing here? There’s no point in going into the nitty-gritty details of it, but basically I prayed to God for mercy, and he gave it to me. DHS just magically and irreparably messed up, and my case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the judge told them they can come back after me when they pull themselves together. I doubt any of you will understand the significance of that, so I’ll explain it. That shouldn’t have happened because the feds don’t make mistakes. What happened is an absolute miracle for me, undoubtedly divine intervention.” Energized by the memory of discovering his case outcome, he broke out in a fit of uncontrollable laughter in front of his captivated audience. Without warning, he tossed the microphone in the air, leapt to his feet at the very edge of the stage, and caught the microphone. The grin on his face was now there to stay.

“I don’t usually talk this much, and I’m getting tired of talking to be honest with you. So I’ll get to the point of this speech. After God set me free, I vowed to be a new man, a better man. It wasn’t easy. There was a transitional period where I got addicted to heroin, and the love of my life almost left me, but eventually I started to screw my head on right. It was around when I was 24-years-old, so I think maybe my frontal lobe was finally developed enough, or something. Regardless, I started to see how I was acting a fool in both my thoughts, my actions, and my desires. So I got methadone illegally, used it to taper myself down, went through withdrawal, and I got clean. I cut off all contact with everyone from my old life, and I moved here. Now, I stand before you with a 4.00 GPA, and an actual shot at getting into medical school.” Donnie walked back to the podium and returned the microphone. Still smiling, he reached into his back pocket to withdraw a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Hanging one from his lips, his intention clear, he delivered his final words.

“Like I said, I’m tired of talking, and now I’m finished. The moral of the story is to turn right where I turned left. Don’t do drugs. Don’t sell drugs. Don’t try to off yourself, and get professional help if you need it. All of you have the potential to be better than me, so make good on it, and have a nice life.”

With an abruptness that could only stand on sheer, unfiltered confidence, Donnie waded through the palpable silence, towards the exit he saw earlier. Within a dashing distance of the door, he began to light his cigarette before crossing through it, having no need to reach for a fire extinguisher or bottle. As it closed on its own, Donnie swore he heard applause as he walked away, into the world that he was ready to face.