Scott Wicklund was the kind of guy who had a framed shirtless photo of himself from his USC days, an artifact of a time when he believed his own hype. A douchebag at best, but tolerable in the right settings. Then came the drinking, and that was when the real Scott emerged—the one with the hungry eyes, the restless energy, the unquenchable thirst for something darker, something he couldn’t name but desperately needed to find.
The thing about Scott was, he was always going to crash. The only question was how hard and how far the wreckage would scatter. He had the entire American Dream tied up in a neat little package—the doting wife, the two kids who may or may not have been his, the oversized house in the quiet neighborhood, the respectable career selling overpriced real estate to retirees who thought Oregon was still affordable. But none of it filled the void. There was always that itch, that little voice whispering, this isn’t enough. And he listened.
Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was something deeper, something wired into him from the beginning. Or maybe he was just another guy who had played by the rules too long, convinced himself that walking the straight line would eventually lead him to happiness, only to wake up one day realizing he’d built a life that bored him to death.
Watching him spiral was like watching a slow-motion car wreck where the driver keeps pumping the gas, grinning, convinced the wall will move out of his way if he just keeps pressing forward. You want to stop him, shake him, tell him to hit the brakes. But then again, you also kind of want to see how it all plays out.
Vice never takes you all at once. It peels you apart in pieces, small enough that you barely notice. First, it’s an extra drink. Then, it’s the strip club. Then, it’s the escort. Then, it’s the lie, the excuse, the whispered, It doesn’t count if I don’t love her. By the time you look up, you’re drowning, and the life you built is a distant shore.
Scott thought he was in control, thought he was just another guy cutting loose, getting his kicks before heading back to suburban servitude. But control had left the building the moment he walked into The Acropolis, the moment he texted the old high school flame, the moment he convinced himself that he wasn’t really cheating if he still tucked his kids into bed at night.
The irony was that he blamed everyone but himself.
He blamed me for feeding him alcohol, blamed Portland for corrupting him, blamed his wife for not being adventurous enough, blamed his kids for not appreciating him, blamed his church for filling his head with guilt, blamed God for making fidelity such a difficult concept to grasp. But the truth stared back at him every morning, hungover, miserable, looking for another scapegoat.
And then came the grand finale—the inevitable, ugly, yet oddly satisfying collapse. The affair, the lies, the late-night texts, all unearthed in a moment of rage-fueled discovery. His wife, white-knuckling the phone, voice raw from screaming, demanding answers while Scott sat in their bedroom, the weight of every bad decision crushing him all at once. No more excuses. No more justifications. No escape. Not this time.
Scott lost everything. The wife, the house, the illusion of respectability. All gone, burned to the ground in the fire he lit himself. And yet, as he packed his bags, moving into some shitty apartment on the outskirts of town, drinking alone, drowning in the echoes of better days, I knew—deep down—he’d do it all again.
Because some men aren’t built for happiness. Some men are built to chase ghosts, to run headfirst into oblivion with open arms, convinced that just over the next hill, just beyond the next mistake, they’ll find whatever it is they’ve been looking for. But they never do.
Scott was one of those men. And in the end, all that was left was the wreckage.
At some point, I considered him a close friend, let him into my world, trusted him like a brother—something I don’t do often. The dumb, fun, reckless things we did together were priceless, the kind of memories you carry in your back pocket and pull out when you need a laugh. But at the end of the day, Scott was an addict, not just to alcohol, not just to women—he was addicted to destruction. And like all addicts, when it came down to survival, he would sell out anyone, stab anyone in the back, if it meant making a buck or getting his next fix.
The last time I saw him was in the hallways of a law office, standing in front of me, holding out a check—a lowball offer for my restaurant, a slap in the face disguised as a deal. He acted like we were still the same old drinking buddies, like we should go out for drinks and laugh about all this.
I leaned in, my voice calm, steady. “If you stay here, I’m going to beat the shit out of you. And no one is here to stop me.”
Scott looked around, checked the exits, measured the odds.
And we parted ways.
