Withdrawal Symptoms

      Marvin thinks he has a problem.

     Hailey, his girlfriend of ten years has dumped him and run off with another man and now, as he is trying to move on and forget her, he’s starting to see her everywhere. Every time he sees a bespectacled woman with long black hair, he sees Hailey in her. There’s a bespectacled long-haired woman queuing at the supermarket counter, and for a moment, he thinks it is Hailey. He’s inside a train and he can see Hailey at the bespectacled woman in front of him.  He’s in a restaurant and he thinks, for a few seconds, that the woman sitting at a table across him is Hailey.

     “You’re having withdrawal symptoms,” Jimmy, his friend, tells Marvin. “That’s what happens when you stop doing something you’ve been doing for a long time. You’re a drug addict, you’d have withdrawal symptoms when you go into rehab. You’re a chain smoker, you stop smoking cold turkey and you will have withdrawal symptoms. You’re in love for so long and you suddenly stop seeing her and try to stop thinking of her and you will have withdrawal symptoms, meaning your mind will go haywire. Love and drugs, they sort of do the same thing to you, they mess up your mind, you know.”

     “What should I do then?”

     “You have to focus your mind on other things until your mind gets used to not thinking about her, until your eyes get used to stop seeing her, until your heart gets used to stop beating for her,” Jimmy said. “I can only think of two things, you go for long rides on your bike, or you watch lots of porn.”

     That doesn’t surprise Marvin. Jimmy is a cyclist who admits to watching porn regularly.

     “You know that I don’t watch porn, porn will kill you,” Marvin says. “Remember that guy who dies after masturbating fifteen times a day while watching porn? It was on my News Feed just two days ago.”

     “Then take out your bike and go for long rides.”

     “A 32-year-old man died in a freak accident today,” the coiffed female newscaster narrates. “He was on his bike following a truck when he suddenly lost control and hit the truck and went underneath it, the massive wheels of the giant vehicle crushing him.

      “A witness, another biker following the victim, said the victim was whispering “Hailey, Hailey” while looking at the poster of a bespectacled woman at the back of the truck. The bespectacled woman on the poster with long black hair was Ava Klimax, a famous porn star.”