Less Than Hero (2 page)

“Yes.”

“Inability to move or bear weight on a joint or tendon?”

“Yes!” Randy says. “You are so Van Halen right now.”

I run through a possible list of Van Halen songs in my head. “Hot for teacher?”

“On fire,” he says, as if it should be obvious.

“Right. How did I not know that?”

“I don’t know. It’s only the final track on one of the greatest debut rock albums of all time.”

Randy’s knowledge of classic rock is rivaled only by his enthusiasm for getting laid.

“Is it cipro?” I ask.

“Nailed it!” Randy gives me a fist bump as the train pulls into the Marcy Avenue station. “Speaking of nailing it, did I tell you about the cute little blonde technician who works at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx?”

Randy proceeds to tell me about the cute little blonde technician in more detail than I care to know. While he’s telling his sordid tale, three young white punks get on and stand in the middle of the car wearing sunglasses and wife beaters, with their pants halfway down their asses like they’ve never heard of a belt.

“So how are things with you and Sophie?” Randy asks.

“Good,” I say, as the doors close and the train continues toward Manhattan.

“You two been together what? Four years now?”

“Five,” I say.

Randy nods and whistles. “I don’t think I’ve been with the same woman for more than five hours.”

Randy’s not a big fan of long-term commitment.

“You ever think about getting married?” Randy asks.

“Sure,” I say.

When I think about marriage, it’s always more in theory. Like time travel. Or the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

It’s not that I don’t like the idea of marrying Sophie. I like it just fine. And when I graduated from high school, I figured I’d be married by the time I hit thirty. But now that I’m here, getting married seems like something grown-ups do.

“Yo man,” one of the punks says, loud enough for everyone to hear him. He has a buzz cut and a soul patch growing on his chin like black mold. “This car smells like piss.”

“Yeah,” the second punk says, this one with a clean-shaven face and blond cornrows. “Like someone rolled around in it.”

“Or took a bath in it,” the third punk says, his head shaved down to a cue ball.

They laugh at their show of bravado and continue to stand in the middle of the car, daring anybody to make eye contact. Cue Ball makes a show of sniffing at the air and takes a few steps in our direction, while Cornrows and Soul Patch follow his lead, sniffing at some of the other passengers like dogs.

Marcy Avenue is the last stop on the Brooklyn side of the
East River, and it’s about an eight-minute ride to the Essex Street station, so our only options are to avoid eye contact or move to another car for the next five minutes. But New Yorkers like to act as though nothing bothers them, so everyone stays put and keeps their eyes trained on their books or on their iPhones or on the advertisements above the windows on the opposite side of the car, one of which is for depression.

Are you feeling anxious? Have you lost interest in activities you used to enjoy? Are your dishes piling up in the sink? You
just might have clinical depression. We can help!

“I think it’s that motherfucker over there,” Cornrows says, nodding toward an apparent homeless man sitting by himself at the other end of the car. The three punks make their way toward where the man is sitting and start harassing him.

“Yo man, you stink,” Soul Patch says.

“Yeah,” Cornrows says. “Why the fuck did you bring your smelly ass onto this fuckin’ car?”

“Now we have to breathe your fuckin’ stench until we get to the next fuckin’ stop,” Cue Ball says.

“Leave me alone,” the man says, his voice high-pitched and pleading. “Just leave me alone!”

They continue to berate the homeless man, who cowers in the corner, taking their abuse. No one in the entire subway car says anything. No one does anything. It may as well be happening on another planet.

I feel bad for the guy. The problem is, I don’t know if the three assholes are carrying knives or guns, and I don’t really want to find out. I’m not much for fighting, especially when the odds are in favor of me getting my head kicked in.

While my cupboards might be full of empathy, I haven’t exactly stocked up on heroism.

The thugs keep at the homeless guy for a couple of minutes. When it starts to look like they’re about to escalate their verbal abuse to something more physical, Randy stands up.

“Hey,” Randy says. “You heard the guy. Why don’t you leave him alone?”

The three punks stop their badgering and turn to look at Randy.

Cue Ball takes a step forward. “What the fuck did you say?”

He stares at Randy from behind his sunglasses, flanked on either side by his buddies. Everyone in the car seems to be holding their breath, as if anticipating someone getting hurt. I’m sort of anticipating the same thing.

“I asked you to leave him alone,” Randy says.

While Cue Ball is a couple of inches taller, I’d say Randy outweighs him by a good twenty pounds. But I don’t know how much size matters in a street brawl, even if it’s on a subway train.

“We’re not looking for any trouble,” I say, trying to think of something to keep Randy from ending up in the hospital. But even to my own ears, I sound like a pussy.

“Yeah, well, trouble is what you got.” Cue Ball starts to walk toward us, with Cornrows and Soul Patch following his lead.

The people sitting in our general proximity finally decide this would be a good time to get up and find another place to sit. I’d like to join them, but I can’t bail on Randy.

Shit
, I think. Then I stand up to let Randy know I have his back.

Randy flexes his hands and fidgets, shifting from one foot to
the other, like a boxer dancing around on his feet. While Randy occasionally moonlights as a bouncer, he’s always struck me as more of a lover than a fighter, but he’s not backing down. Me? I’ve never been in a fight before in my life, never even thrown a punch, and I don’t really want to break my perfect record. Or my face.

It’s only another minute or two before we reach the next station, and I’m hoping we get there fast enough for me to avoid words like
fracture
and
contusion
and
hospital
.

“You should mind your own fuckin’ business,” Cue Ball says as he and his buddies close in.

Yes. I agree. We should mind our own fucking business. But it’s a little too late for
should
s.

I take a deep breath and curl my fingers into fists as my heart pounds inside my chest like it knows I’m about to get pummeled and is trying to warn me. My own personal robot shouting,
Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

Next to me, Randy continues to fidget while Cue Ball gives us a cold, icy smile. Then the smile vanishes and I tense up, expecting the first blow to follow. Instead, Cue Ball gets this look on his face like he’s having a heart attack or crapping his pants. The next moment his face and arms break out in hives and he starts scratching at himself and shouting
“What the fuck!”
over and over.

Cornrows and Soul Patch don’t want any part of whatever’s happening to their buddy and back away. Randy and I do the same, just in case whatever Cue Ball has is catching, and watch as he continues to suffer from what appears to be some kind of allergic reaction. To what, I have no idea. Maybe he used the wrong
detergent. Or ate Moroccan food. Or wore a cheap polyester blend. But at least it looks like no one’s getting pummeled.

When the train pulls into the Essex Street station, Cue Ball’s skin has turned bright red and blotchy, and he’s covered in hives. No one offers him any comfort or sympathy, not even Cornrows or Soul Patch, who have retreated to the other end of the subway car as if their buddy is a nuclear bomb.

The doors slide open and all the passengers scramble out of the car as fast as they can, including Randy and me. Even Cornrows and Soul Patch make themselves scarce in a hurry, leaving Cue Ball behind to deal with his own shit.

“Hey!” he shouts. “Hey, man! Someone fuckin’ help me!”

As we head for the exit, Randy says, “What the hell do you think happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” I say, checking my hands and arms. “Whatever it is, I hope it’s not contagious.”

“No doubt,” Randy says. “Hey, speaking of contagious, did I tell you about the receptionist at the med-lab facility in Brooklyn?”

I
’m a professional guinea pig.

I take generic painkillers, heart medications, antidepressants, and other experimental drugs being developed and tested for consumer use.

Drugs for ADHD, insomnia, and urinary tract infections.

Drugs for schizophrenia, impotence, and Parkinson’s disease.

Drugs with names like clonazepam and naproxen and Adderall.

Not exactly something you go to college for, or intern at a prestigious law firm to gain experience as, or dream of being when you’re a kid.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Lloyd?”

“I want to test drugs that might make me vomit or experience uncontrollable flatulence.”

This is why they have high school guidance counselors. Someone to give you direction and a sense of purpose. Someone to help you come up with a plan for a future that doesn’t involve selling yourself for medical research or starring in bad porn. Not that I’ve ever had sex for money, but sometimes you do what you have to do in order to make ends meet.

And sometimes you end up doing it for so long that you can’t figure out how to stop.

Most prescription drugs go through three trial phases before they hit the market. In Phase I, experimental drugs and treatments are tested on more or less healthy subjects in order to determine efficacy and study possible side effects. Phase II clinical trials deal with dosing requirements and effectiveness, while Phase III trials involve test subjects who suffer from the condition the new drug intends to treat.

I’m in the first category.

Over the last five years, I’ve participated in over 150 clinical trials. During that time, I’ve consumed chemically enhanced sports drinks, been given pills laced with radioactive tracers, had extensive X-rays, worn a twenty-four-hour catheter, and taken a medication that turned my sweat and urine a bright, fluorescent orange.

I was like a human highlighter pen.

While test subjects in Phase III trials often enroll in a study in order to gain access to a new drug that might help them, healthy guinea pigs in Phase I trials can’t expect any medical benefits from the drugs we’re testing. And every time we volunteer, we take a risk that something might go wrong.

I suppose no matter what you do for a living, there’s always a chance something might go wrong. You could get hit by a bus. Or suffer a brain aneurysm. Or have a gas main blow up beneath your cubicle.

You never know what wonderful surprises life has in store.

But chances are, when most people go to work, they don’t have to worry that their jobs might lead to multiple organ failure. Or
cause permanent damage to their immune systems. Or result in the amputation of their fingers and toes.

These aren’t hypothetical worst-case scenarios. This is what happened to half a dozen guinea pigs who participated in a study for a prospective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and leukemia.

So yeah, shit happens. But sometimes life provides options you never thought you’d have to take, so you take them in spite of the risks. Plus it’s not like I’m volunteering just to accumulate a bunch of karmic brownie points.

In a typical month I make over $3,000, sometimes twice that, but I’ve never made less than $2,000. Generic testing studies usually take place over a couple of weekends and pay anywhere from $600 to $2,000. One time I took home $5,000 for a study on a new prostate drug, but I had to spend two weeks in a research dorm getting prodded by lubricated index fingers. Another time I was paid $4,500 for a twenty-eight-day sleep deprivation study. While I only received $500 for a one-week Paleolithic diet study, it didn’t require a washout, which is the thirty-day waiting period required between some studies to make sure you don’t have any drugs in your system that might impact test results.

This is presuming guinea pigs tell the truth about the drugs we’ve tested. Since there’s no shared database among all of the various research companies to keep track of who’s volunteering how many times a year, most of us bounce from one research facility to another to maximize our earnings.

While honesty may be the best policy, it doesn’t always help to pay the rent.

The best-paying studies are lockdowns: inpatient trials that require volunteers to check into a research facility for several days
or weeks. That way, researchers can control diet, check blood and urine on a regular basis, and monitor medical status around the clock.

I’m not a big fan of lockdowns. One, I can’t stand institutional food. And two, you usually end up rooming with other guinea pigs, not all of whom are people you want to be around for two weeks in a row, 24/7.