I fucking love playing sports. The only thing that rivals playing sports is getting pussy. I know, I’m every young, jock, athletic, douchebag, asshole, full of himself, pig of a man stereotype. I get it, I really do. Sports and pussy, ahhhhhhh yesssssss. What does a relatively good-looking (at best I give myself an 8—not a movie star, but a 10 can fuck me since we’re still technically in the 2-point range) guy need to succeed in the modern, fast-past, Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge world of dating? A wingman in the same range. No super hot girl is trying to go out on some awkward first date where the guy might bore them to tears while they’re texting some dude in prison on the Internet or just another more interesting guy they matched with after they’d already agreed to this date. They want to go out with their hot friends, make tentative plans with the top 3 from their dating farm, meet the dudes out somewhere, have their friends judge him and his friends, and if one of them has hot friends and is not weird, they’re sticking with that group and curbing the rest. It’s become a real-life episode of “Next” out there. Anyway, back to the pieces of shit in question.

Dre and Bengal. My best friends and my worst enemies. Gene belongs on this list, too, but our situation is… different. Dre and Bengal are both good-looking dudes. I don’t have some weird “I can’t admit when I can tell another guy can get pussy” thing. From the time I met both of them, I knew they would be perfect to meet bitches with. Yup, called ’em bitches. I know. I’m a pig. Dre was good with his words—he would spend all day texting girls and working the dating apps. One way you know you and your friends are killing it is when you’re both matching with the same girls. It’s incredible how many times I’ve matched with the same girls as both Dre and Bengal. Of course, I did completely write Bengal’s bio and chose all his pictures. I think I took most of them, too. (Okay, I admit it: I put a lot of side effort into making sure my wolfpack was taking home the dimes, ya feel me? Geez. Douche McGoosh over here. Fuck.) I had to do that because, unlike Dre, Bengal had no words. Bengal is 6’5″, and when he isn’t trying to wear a dress for Halloween, he weighs in at 245 lbs of pure athleticism. When he wants to wear a dress, he balloons up to 280 lbs and looks like the Michelin Man. That’s a story for another day.

Most people think Bengal and I are brothers. Probably all the back hair. He’s the only person I know who is hairier than me. We used to have to shave each others’ backs when our friend Erica, my side mom, wasn’t available. Erica’s daughter and mine were best friends, so we would do family nights and other things together when I had my little girl. She’s not only a great mom, she’s willing to shave the backs of two wooly mammoths. I know I just abandoned the whole “hot guy” theme by talking about our hairy backs, but I had to sound more humble right? Gotta admit our flaws. If cankles and a hairy back keep me from getting laid, I need to settle down, anyway. There you are, motherfuckers. I brought up my cankles. It’s true. True Life: I was Born Without Ankles. It happens. No one’s perfect. NOW LEAVE IT ALONE, OKAY?! If only Dre’s and Bengal’s biggest flaws were cankles.

Then there are the sports. I remember a time when Dre was on the phone, smoking a cigarette, and playing shortstop while we were taking batting practice. Jimmy hit a pop up down the third-base line that was clearly landing over the fence. Dre went on a dead sprint, phone still in his right hand and cig still in his mouth. He jumped into the middle of the fence, climbed all the way around the top (it was an 8-foot fence), and snagged the ball full extension. 100% going on SportsCenter as one of those random ass plays you see from some dudes playing around. He had been a star college shortstop, played independent ball, and was the best fielding shortstop I have ever seen. Another time he was pitching, went to the back of the mound and threw up, walked back up on the mound, and struck the guy out. What’s the problem? The puking, obviously.

I met Bengal in a park. Me and a friend I worked with played basketball at this local park nearly every day to get in shape. We had gotten pretty good together, but Zach “The Nature Boy” Richardson is not exactly easily confused with an NBA player. Quite the opposite. He had gotten in shape and was pretty good at making a set shot from 3, so we surprised a lot of people. That was probably the best I ever was at basketball—a sport I love, but the one I’m worst at. Anyway, this giant and his athletic-looking black friend started playing basketball on the court next to us. The dude is throwing it off the backboard to himself and dunking it over the black guy. Zach asked if we were ready to play them. I said, “Bro…” I’ll give Zach and I credit: it was only 11-7 when we played. We ended up running a 5-5 game with the local high school’s varsity team that came up there to practice together pretty often. Normally they destroyed everyone, but with Bengal and I running, I just gave the ball to him and he took over like a monster. After the game, we do the whole guy thing. “What’s up bro? Good game, where you from, what did you play, I can see you must have played something in college.” Turned out Bengal and I played against each other in high school up in Maryland, and he bartended downtown, too. Uhhhh, a dude who is a monster athlete, bartends, and is from where I live? Bros made in heaven, right?

Two friends meant for me. Girls flock to us, both love everything sports, both love to party and have a good time. If only they weren’t such pieces of shit. I could start going into details about the stealing, the backstabbing, the blatant lies, but the real reason why they did what they did, the reasons they are such pieces of shit, is simple. Addiction. They are both addicts to the core. I have had incredibly deep and heart-wrenching conversations with them where they swore they would get clean. I know that, deep down, they wanted to so badly. They’ve been offered help, they’ve tried rehabs, been clean for stretches, yet the levels of betrayal they’ll go to in the darkest times of their addictions are so far from the rest of who they are. It’s heartbreaking as a friend who really does care about their well-beings seeing them unable to control their desires.

This is why I write most of what I write. Addiction has touched every part of my life. It has touched the lives of nearly every person I know in one way or another. Some would argue I’m an addict, too. I’ve certainly been addicted to opiates, which are very much part of my whole story as a person. When I write about drugs and addiction, it’s a personal subject. I see every single side of the coin. Losing friends you love, whether they are still alive or have just become different people during times of addiction, is hard. What’s even harder is still finding love for them in your heart even after they’ve betrayed every shred of trust you have in them. You tell yourself it isn’t them, but in reality, it is. It is them when they’re addicted, just not the them either of you wishes it was. Dre and Bengal are those people I can never stay mad at because, deep down, I love them too much. I just really hope that somehow, someway, they both get better.