Meet Rick The Prick

"Hey, Harry! You know what? You need to go see a psychiatrist. You'd be a perfect candidate!"

Let's face facts: it's hell living with other people. I swear to God if I win the lottery I'm buying five houses and not telling one fucker in the world where they are. My home is my hideout. And had I had my hammer handy at that moment - my hand searching feverishly under my cot - I'd of chunked it right at this fucker's noggin. But as it was, laying strung out and exhausted after another soul-stealing, humiliating day of slave labor, I had not the energy to move further.

The author of the words prescribing my demise was none other than the infamous Rick the Prick, one of the biggest a-holes to ever walk the shelter. More animal than his human facade suggested, he was a troll of the highest order. Crippled by poverty in what should have been his salad days, he'd been driven by the Almighty Dollar ever since, smothering any human impulse that got in the way.

He's the worst kind of jerk you would want to meet in a shelter, a place in need of human impulses if there ever was one.

A purchased self-esteem can't be cashed

Seeing me in a state of human despair, rejecting the world of his godly dollar panicked him with the fear of every religious convert: that he had sold his soul for nothing. It was always when you were at your most vulnerable when Rick the Prick would strike, feeling in you his own fear of human need.

"I'll go if you fund it," I retorted, mocking his twisted sensibilities.

"It always comes down to money with you, doesn't it?"

Christ, what a prick! Every poor bastard in this place is living day to day, dollar to dollar and I'm going to do what? Spend my rainy day money on some moron who's even dumber than I am to tell me I need to find fulfilling work and a woman? Well, no shit, Sherlock! And Mr. Money Mad knew all this. Self-projecting jackass! But really, he just wanted to get me all riled up, to torture me when I had no life left in me. And my brain was not functioning enough to understand that.

"Like I'm going to spend my every last dollar on that! Like I don't want to eat or live indoors!"

"You got paid today! You have plenty of money! You need to do something about being miserable all the time."

I planned to do just that but damned if I could find my hammer. Just as well - at this point I'd of nailed him but good. This left me entreating my Maker: please, oh please when are You going to kill these predators once and for all? I need my goddam sleep!

"You're the one who's fucked up, always pursuing the Almighty Dollar. You don't have any money either, dickweed."

"That's right, that's what drives me. I know what's what! It's get the dollar or die. But don't see me whining about it all the time, do you? I'm happy to get money!"


That must explain your hair trigger temper and why no one wants to be around your perpetually uptight ass. Rick the Prick was always the first one in the room with news of disaster for his fellow man. He positively glowed with it, reveling in the demise one day meant for him.

"So - what? Anybody who money doesn't make them happy is sick?"

"Exactly! Suck it up, bitch!"

For whatever reason, Rick the Prick's most shining moment flashed back to me, when he picked on poor ol' Mary with one of his most infamous attacks: "You know, Mary, you're so fat I don't know why you bother living at all." Mary had visible trouble getting around but she was always silent in her complaints, making do the best she could. She held a brave dignity respected by all - well, almost all. But no one said a word in her defense, leaving it to Mary to respond. She did respond - but not directly, as she crumpled into tears.

If looks could kill Rick the Prick would have died that day. Perhaps someday justice will be so simple. And I know our silence may seem heartless to you, but to have said something would have breached the greatest protocol of the shelter: to never offer help unasked for. It's true we wrap ourselves in illusion but none of us unwilling participants dare rips the label "I can survive on my own" from another. For some, it's their sole and most prized possession.

But we can't. None of us can survive on our own. Why do we feel the need to so desperately pretend so?

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