Wyatt Perkins

A Sadder Tale Never Told

Santa Barbara, junkie capital of California. Here you find all types. Some, like Wyatt Perkins, hang around street corners, falling asleep in the road with needles still hanging out arm. Trouble. Addicted to every drug you can imagine. Ready to do whatever necessary to fund it, including causing harm to those around him. Dangerous. A liability to all and sundry. Mostly, he is harmless. Too high, really.

With drug-thick blood in his veins, Wyatt flops about the roads. Often unconscious. Incapacitated. In between, he is after fentanyl. Crack cocaine. Heroin. Anything works, hard drugs most of all. The trouble is what he does to get it. And what it does to him. To his body. It is impossible to hide drug use this bad. It shows in everything he does. Everywhere he goes. And how far he will go to get it.

You can see his drug use all over him. Wyatt has teeth falling out. Rotting. He is wrinkled. Very prematurely. Way before his time. He has no hair. All gone. He is a walking skeleton, just bones. Barely even skin on him. Wyatt will never stop. Not even a court can stop him. He goes to jail, gets drugs there, comes out even more hooked. Even more crazy. With better ideas for crime each time.

Somebody always gets hurt. Wyatt is violent, increasingly so. It gets him his drugs, and quickly. The way he needs them. He beats people. Leaves them bleeding out. Leaves them for dead. He steals. He lies. He cheats. He assaults everybody. Consequently, there are no friends left. Nobody trusts him. Nobody even knows him sober. They just avoid him. He uses people. For money. For drugs. For sex.

It matters not who helps Wyatt. Or how. You will always find him wandering the streets of Santa Barbara, either looking to harm someone or too high to do it. How he is alive each morning is a real question. There is a risk of overdose. Very high risk. There is the chance of accident, also very high, or retaliation, extremely high too. Of course, people can fight back. Defend themselves. And often will.

Nobody will hire Wyatt. He steals from them. Nobody will date him. He pimps his women. Nobody is his friend. He assaults them all. It is a pattern. A cycle that will never change. This is Wyatt's life. It is all he knows. He does not know work. Or how to keep a job. He is mostly too high anyway, a liability to all around him. He deals drugs to colleagues, takes drugs in bathrooms, and gets fired. Every time.

Drug addicts like Wyatt have the saddest stories of all. So much potential wasted. Nothing wrong with them, just unable to make choices with any good outcomes. They pay for it too. Wyatt pays dearly. He is not alone either. Many sell their souls for drugs, rejecting family, life, and relationships in the process. It is sad for Wyatt. It is sad for his loved ones. It is sad for everyone in Santa Barbara.