Crazy Enough by Storm Large

wasn’t fixed on winning anything that day. I’m pretty sure my head was quite a distance up my own ass.
    We whooshed past the warning buoys and were in the final stretch, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the finish line, but the view from inside my rectum was, of course, obscured.
    â€œWane off! We’re gonna hit a post!” I said, Kara pushed her oar up and we coasted until she looked back.
    â€œThat’s the finish line, not the posts! We haven’t even finished! Racing start!” Kara screamed a new start but it was too late. Four boats swept past our coasting shell and we didn’t even place.

    I threw the race. Not sure if it was a conscious decision, but I disappointed my coach and teammate to the point of sickness. I ended up driving back to Boston with a different team because I couldn’t face my own. Kara and our coach drove separately.
    Looking back, the whole trying-to-fit-in thing just wasn’t me. I was good at some stuff, even great at some of the things most kids would have loved to have been able to do at all. But the competitive angle, the trying to win, the be your very best, felt like an iron maiden–type torture device. Kara and my coach were lovely, and I only encountered terrific people on this quick and clean detour, but my dark, twitching insides still felt like all I could be was a loser. So I lost.
    Though I would have loved to have skulked off into a dark comfyhole to be null and void, my crew adventure had one more stroke. I was driven to and dropped off at Harvard University for Crew Camp. I imagine it was just like one of those awesome camps my brother Henry often got to attend. I stayed at the university, woke up at six in the morning, ate breakfast, then trudged to the fancy boathouse to haul the big shells into the water. I miserably rowed every day on the Charles River with the rest of the Izod-clad moose.
    They were all really nice, and very excited for this great opportunity. I was a loser and a bad one at that. My head and mouth rang with so many who cares, I can’ts, fuck its, and why bothers, that no one wanted to even talk to me there. Coaches bristled when I was around and the other rowers barely tolerated my presence.
    So, I’d run off at night to bum change off strangers, get high, and fuck whomever, come back wasted and stinking of weed, beer, and boys.
    It didn’t take me long to get kicked out. I stayed out all one night doing coke and taking Xanax. Then, my fuck buddy, Keith, and I broke into someone’s basement to have sex and pass out. I showed up just in time for practice, only to be confronted by the head coach telling me I had to leave. The good news was the cops weren’t called.
    Bad news, my dad was.
    He swore and shook and asked me what my fucking problem was as I packed up my room. He moaned and kept saying over and over how he had fucked up as a father. We walked across the yard and out through the university gates into Harvard Square. Me with my bags slung over my back and him with a lit Viceroy pointing at me while he yelled. I tossed my bags into his car as he continued to rail on me. Some street kids I knew were looking on, one of whom I had slept with. He smirked wickedly as my dad noticed them watching us.
    â€œWhat the fuck are you looking at, you fucking freak?” Hepointed at the kid. The kid’s smirk spread into an evil grin, with many terrible things to say behind it.
    â€œDon’t,” I said to both of them. “Dad, just go home. I’ll see you later.”
    â€œFucking freak,” he said again, to everyone in earshot, as he slammed into his car with my bags in the back and took off, leaving me on the sidewalk.
    Looking back now, I guess it was odd that my father would just leave me there, with no place to stay that he knew of. Southborough was forty-five minutes away by car, and I had no car. He was well aware that I had been kicked out of camp, so I couldn’t stay at