ARTN1

My hand froze halfway to my mouth. There it was, spread wide across the homescreen of The Washington Post: the word 'butt-huffing'.

I eat lunch at my desk mostly. Alot of my coworkers go out and they ride their bikes to little delis or drive their cars to god knows where but I prefer to stay at my desk and read the news. I unwrap sandwiches from foil and cue up any number of digital publications. Shove too-big handfuls of white cheddar puffs into my mouth and then clench awkwardly as strays roll down my shirt; never taking my eyes away from the screen. Click. Click. Click.

"Police begin to comment on what has now become a national problem: 'butt-huffing'. Teens have taken to ingesting a new designer drug, a green vapor known as ARTN,  through their rectums. The drug is said to produce a euphoria, emptying the consciousness of thought and leaving users incapacitated for hours on end. Doctors are warning that there are serious side effects and hospitals have reported as many as 300 overdoses just this year."

My wife and I are thinking of buying a new car. The old Taurus looks more and more out of place in our neighborhood every year. I tell her that I'm happy driving it, but I still feel a twinge of self-consciousness when I pull into our driveway each evening, looking back at a street lined with Audi. My daughter will drive this car to school and I will drive the new one, shiny and clean and smelling of leather. This is when the thought strikes me. Butt-huffing. My daughter.

You never imagine what its like when they're little, it's impossible to separate yourself from the image of them as a baby. Toddling around your kitchen floor, flinging hard-boiled egg into their own face and eyebrows. But they grow up. Your daughters. You are a man and your daughters grow up. Their faces change, their legs change, their bodies change. You are a man and very suddenly you have a young woman in the house. This is something the classes did not prepare you for. The sight of panties crumpled in the corner of your hallway. A woman's panties. Your heart pounds involuntarily.

I'm not saying that I lust after my own daughter, I am not a sick man. But at the same time, I know exactly what the boys are thinking. I know exactly her shape and what she can do to them. I know about parties and I know about drugs and I know about the back of a Ford Taurus in your junior year of high school. I tuck a piece of spinach into the corner of my mouth and let this idea roll over me. What if my daughter is huffing vapor through her butt? Who is she doing it with? Incapacitated for hours on end?

We never had a distinct, 'Drugs Are Bad and You Shouldn't Do Them' conversation. I always kind of figured the schools would take care of that. My parents had been overbearing about the subject and I can remember their warnings having little effect on me. But this was different. Nobody in my school was ingesting drugs through their ass. What could I possibly say? How could I know what the right words were? I scanned through the rest of the article quickly but it mentioned nothing. No tell-tale signs of a possible user, no tips or hotline to call. Possibly my teenage daughter with the swelling breasts could, right now, be preparing to take ARTN into her body via god knows what methods. Butt-huffing. Euphoria.

Strangely, I start to think about where I could even buy such a drug. My life is so totally shut off from that kind of behavior. If I stood around the outside of a nightclub? People would think I was a cop. I don't know how to move my knees in that kind of situation. My daughter holding a cigarette between her two fingers and whispering into a boy's ear; he hands her a small brown bag with a jerry-rigged inhaler inside. Natural and effortless. Young people just hold themselves differently. I look down at my feet uncomfortably when her friends pile into my living room, their young bodies pressing back against their clothes. There must be a way to buy it online.

People are filing back into the office now. An hour gone. I close the window quickly. I didn't eat much of my lunch, but I don't feel hungry at all. It just seems like things are different now, and that the dangers are real. Before, there was nothing that could really hurt us.

atm1