Happy Mutant Baby Pills by Jerry Stahl

death camps, when Nazis had to just drive around gassing Jews and gypsies in the backs of trucks, with hoses running from the exhaust pipe to the back where the people were, they called the corpses “tarts,” because their faces turned scarlet, as if lipsticked, after they died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The sky over Los Angeles at certain times blasted the same quality. Poisoned to death but pretty. When ugly would have been so much more appropriate. And less disturbing.)
    Someone in a Noam Chomsky mask under a black zip-up hoodie kept interjecting the words “fuck jerky” into the debt-relief presentation. Eliciting a wan smile from the cross-legged speaker, who said “I understand” in Chomsky-man’s direction, and then launched wearily back into debt forgiveness and infrastructure-investment job solutions. The crowd turned and waved their hands angrily in his direction. “Self-censorship is not self-censorship” is how the professor wrapped up. “Why don’t we think about that?”
    The human microphone repeated this, and Security, a large-shouldered Latina with flat Mayan features, led ur-Chomsky off to one side, leaving him with a pat on the back.
    I had not, at that time, even heard of Occupy Wall Street. This was its early days, and I wasn’t exactly up on the news. Then the Chomsky guy ran up to me. “Hey, Lloyd! Lloyd the Roid, is that you?”
    I recognized the voice. Adenoidal, snarkastic, but kind of pleady and needing-to-be-liked at the same time. With a Pittsburgh accent. “Harold?”
    â€œLloyd the Roid,” he repeated.
    Harold was an old side-effects pal and junkie (maybe ex-junkie; maybe, people can change, right?). I’d heard he had somehow broken into TV. We weren’t close, but in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be the person Harold knew. Me, as I was, instead of the new, still uncomfortable, post-murder me.
    Harold prattled nonstop as we turned onto Fifth and Main, where the tents looked more ragged and improvised then the ready-mades in Occupy LA. At one time you could buy a human soul on Fifth and Main. Never mind the Mexican tar and fish scales, as old-time crackheads referred to their brain-crusher of choice.
    Harold lifted the mask. Without it, he looked as he had always looked, like a fluey Orlando Bloom. Still talking. (The way he was talking: fast, flicking spittle, mouth loose at the corners, I began to suspect he wasn’t ex-everything.) He had theories, too. “No one at Occupy opted for refrigerator boxes. You notice? That’s the difference, see? On Skid Row they do what they have to do. Back there”—he thumbed over his shoulder, toward City Hall—“those kids do what they want to do. Sleeping bags? That’s really being down with the people.”
    â€œJust ’cause they’re getting laid,” Nora shrugged, “doesn’t mean they’re not serious.”
    I watched her as I had been watching her, wanting to shake her, shout in her face. Do you know what I just did for you? I FUCKING KILLED A MAN! After, I might have added, standing there while my victim took a dump. One more thought to block. Along with one I was already wrestling with: were there surveillance cameras in the bathroom? I’d made sure to close the stall door behind me so that, to the casual traveler in need, it just looked like the stall was occupied. I blinked back the memory as we walked together. The questions. The turmoil. Why it was troubling that there was no blood. Had I pricked some life-sustaining cerebral bubble, bloodless and fatal? Did his memories vanish when I paper-clipped his brainpan? If so, maybe I should take a stab at my own.
    There was a minute there when I honestly believed I was beyond heroin. I had a reason not to use, because of love. But because of love—when had this melodrama set in?—I had done something that made heroin necessary. If it wasn’t