Behind The Gym

Living life in an old 2002 4Runner will humble you like jail bars slammed behind you after a DUI arrest. Yes, it puts a roof over your head. It gives you heat when you are cold. It shelters you from the scum, scallywags and ruffians that roam your environment, but it’s a home of pathetic reminders of the piss poor decisions you had made up to this point in life.

I opened the rear hatch and slipped on my shower shoes, then walked towards the 24-Hour fitness to shower my achy body from the poor sleeping accommodations.

I let the warm water pound my head as I thought about my plan of attack for the day. I knew I wanted to go to the local library and work on my writing projects. Free Wi-Fi, and self-imposed quietness, make a library an unsung hero in creative destinations. I’d take a library over a pretentious coffee shop any day of the week.

After my morning routine at the gym, I got dressed and hopped in the driver's seat and took off. First stop was to put about ten dollars in the gas tank to get me by for the week. I didn’t drive much, so I didn’t need to spend much. I was either in the back of this four-wheel home, or at the library indulging in periodicals and free internet.

I pulled into my usual gas station, pumped my ten dollars’ worth of gas, then went inside to pay. I handed the teller twenty and got my ten dollars back. I looked up, and the Florida State lottery had grown to twenty million dollars. “Give me a quick pick, will ya,” I said to the teller. Grinding and crunching noise from the lottery machine popped out a two by three-inch of potential life-changing paper. “Good luck tonight,” he said. “Thanks.”

I got inside the SUV and put the ticket on the visor above me. The odds of winning were one and a shit load. But losers like me say you can’t win unless you play. The drive to the library was filled with big dreams and scenarios running through my head, if I won that prize. You grab onto any delusional daydream you can, when you’re poor and live out of an old SUV.

Later when I was back in the parking lot behind the gym, I looked at the dashboard clock, and it said 8:40. They drew the lottery numbers at 7 P.M. I pulled down the visor and grabbed the ticket. I stepped outside to smoke a cigar and relieve myself in the woodsy area of the parking lot.

I found a secluded area in the woods, unzipped, and started to relive myself of the days fluids. Then pulled out my phone – while puffing on a stogie – and typed in the lottery website for the numbers. In one hand was my phone. The other was the ticket, and my wanker hanging out with a Churchill in my mouth. It was impressive how I could multi-task everything at once.

I looked at the phone, then the ticket, one number at a time. To my surprise, I got the first two numbers of the six needed to win. My eyes went to the next number. I got that one too. That makes three numbers. My eyes went to the fourth number. I matched that one too. I finished pissing, zipped up and holy shit! I just matched five numbers. On the small screen of my phone, it said 53. I turned my eyes to the small piece of paper in my other hand. It also said 53. The numbers were 4, 23, 30, 40, 50, 53. They matched. I opened the door and put both my phone and lottery ticket under the dashboard light. I did everything to confirm what I was seeing. I was reading everything correctly, then the beating of my heart almost caused me to have a panic attack.

I closed the door, turned on the engine, yelled, then yelled some more. Then I started to cry, thank the Almighty upstairs, and started to hyperventilate. I had no idea what to do with myself. I was sitting in a vehicle, in a dark parking lot behind a gym, with a winning lotto ticket worth twenty million dollars.

I put the vehicle in drive and headed to my ex’s house. She was the reason I was living in this damn vehicle. She had kicked me out a month earlier. She told me I wasn’t doing anything with my life since I got out of the Air Force. She didn’t care that I was dealing with PTSD from many deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. She expected me to be the hard charger I was in military, post military. I was lost. I got lazy. I got really sad. Then I got violent one day, and she said you are out. I couldn’t blame her, and I guess I had it coming, but I needed a longer leash then what she was willing to give. I had become a mental health liability.

I looked through the window and could see she was on her phone, as usual. That’s all she did, sit on her phone and bitch at me. I knocked on the glass and startled her. She waved her hands to signal for me to go away. I knocked again. She gave me another wave, then the middle finger. I knocked again, then pulled the ole Matt Damon move from the movie Good Will Hunting. I slammed the lotto ticket on the window.

“And?” she said through the glass.

“Twenty million dollars. Right here.” I said.

“Just leave. Please,” she said back.

“I’m leaving,” I yelled. “You’ll regret it.”

She walked over and closed the curtains.

The next morning, the air smelled like twenty million dollars. The water from the shower felt like twenty million dollars. Clothes I put on felt like twenty million dollars. But after going to a website that determines lottery winnings, it felt like 6,972,980 dollars. That’s what Uncle Sam was going to leave me after his cut. That was fine, because I only had 200 dollars in my account at the time, and most of that was going for gas to get me to Tallahassee to claim my prize.

Two years later, my winnings had changed my life forever. Yes, that funeral you see is for me. I am speaking from the afterlife. That is my family and my ex-girlfriend standing around crying, looking at my casket. My mental health struggles got worse. I was no longer living in my SUV, but the money exposed a different type of problem – addiction. I had more money for harmful stuff to put inside of me, especially alcohol. I had spiraled out of control and found myself sitting in my new fancy apartment, on the couch, with a Glock 9 hand gun in my mouth and miserable. How I lasted two years was a surprise.

I saw a quote about money before I pulled the trigger. Money will only make you more of what you already are. At the time of winning the lotto, I was miserable, but I was coping and hopeful that life would turn around. That hope was down to zero.

Maybe life wasn’t so bad living behind the gym. Or maybe I should have used that dollar to buy a candy bar or just put it in my pocket. Either way, I’d still be alive today.