Why I Committed Suicide

by sam paul

  For one day, Jenifer and I were members of the upper crust, true sophisticates washing out the taint of our ring-around-the-blue-collar and simplistic collegiate lifestyle for an afternoon. The basic skinny is that today was the final showing of a great Impressionist exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. In hillbilly speak that means some high-falutin’ famous pictures were on display. The collection was absolutely amazing. The works are on some sort of tour and we had been kicking around the idea of going for the past few months but it took a deadline and some encouragement from Mrs. Lansing to finally motivate our asses. We got to dress up and be art-fags for a day, leaving Generica (that’s Generic America) with all its McDonald’s, Wal-Marts and malls behind for a few hours.

  The Impressionist colors and scenes of life have always struck a power chord in me. I love the artists’ quirks, I love the museums and I loved getting to go with Jenifer. She’s one of the few people that I knew would value and appreciate the experience as much as I did. Other lovers have tolerated my off-kilter interests in the past but how many have taken the time to incorporate and embrace my oddities, learning about them out of love for me? Just her of course. I doubt I could have viewed the art with anyone else in the world and felt like it was being equally appreciated. Ours was not a snobbish grasp of the value and history of the pictures but an appreciation for the passion and intensity of the driving force behind the artists and the thrill of seeing so many quality works together. I love her so much, in part because I respect her as having an intelligence level equal to mine. I’ve met women smarter than me in certain ways and I’ve certainly met my share of stupid bimbo bitches with killer bodies but only Jenifer has a unique intelligence I identify with and love.

  The vivid scenes highlighting trivialities of life and details that only artists are given the opportunity to capture captivated our minds for the afternoon. It’s rewarding to be touched by an experience but it’s hard to explain the depth of an afternoon with a mere smattering of insignificant recorded details. Let it suffice to say that today we expanded our souls in each other’s company, we got to have a date together, and I’ll remember the pleasant sunlit afternoon forever. Or at least until I get amnesia or Alzheimer’s.

  Before we left I talked Jenifer into viewing the permanent children’s exhibit they have at the museum. We mostly goofed around in this one section called the “Shadow Room” where people can stand against this special wall and it burns a shadow impression of your body onto this big screen for a few minutes, kind of a like a police chalk outline in reverse. It was fun because we were the only near-adults in a room full of children and watching Jen laughing and playing around left me star struck yet again by her raw vitality. When my eyes briefly locked with her aqua soul gems I fell into them until she looked away taking a piece of my heart and severing our psychic umbilical cord. I value those silly moments and overly dramatic thoughts that are forever burning themselves into my brain despite the mysterious significance.

  I could write whole sonnets on the power her eyes have over me. How the clear blue excites me sexually and withers my confidence. A long time ago I learned this neat trick about looking into a woman’s eyes, a trick that’s worked many times successfully. When I want to appear as if I’m looking deep into a girls eyes and glimpsing deep down into their soul, something that subconsciously drives women wild for some reason, I just stare at the reflection of light in the sheen of their eye. It gives off the appearance that I am staring through them, seeing inside their persona instead of creepily staring at them. When I try it with Jen however, I am always drawn into the obsidian pools as if they have their own gravitational force, black holes with such an intense power that it warps the universe to one point. Like Pavlov’s dog I still drool over her and describing the spirit of the mood between us would be like trying to describe God with a single name or word.

  Kirk moved in with us last week which was a decidedly uneventful experience. I finally responded to Jenifer’s impassioned feelings and when Jim moved out I secreted the majority of my accumulated Playboy subscription amongst his belongings. It was more to show her respect than in response to her nagging; besides, enough time had passed where I could get rid of them without it being just in response to her pressures. I would have gotten rid of them sooner but it became such a big deal between us that if I had let her crappy attitude dictate my decision it would have set a bad precedent rooted in disrespect for both of us. Sometimes as the man I have to bite the bullet and fight for something I don’t really care about if I want to maintain my integrity and trust my decisions will be respected down the road when something comes up that I do care about. No woman wants a pushover for a boyfriend even when their natural instinct is to pussy whip them into being their bitch. It’s just one of the burdens of being attracted to strong intelligent women, every type has their idiosyncrasies I suppose. When it was finally my decision again (I think) to get rid of the Playboys it was no big deal anymore and ultimately unappreciated by Jenifer, but I won’t call attention to any of that. Marriage (oops), I mean dating, is sometimes a delicate diplomacy.

  Life is just continuing as usual except we will soon have an entire summer at our disposal again. My visit with James has prompted the possibility of a trip to Colorado very soon. The excitement is sexually titillating.

  The past weekend, in response to an ad I saw in the Dallas Observer, we all went to the Kennedy Memorial in downtown Dallas to be extras in a Public Enemy video shoot. It was cool but very tiring because we had to get there very early in the morning to be in it and Jenifer stayed up late with Jerry doing coke while I was at work. She didn’t really want to go down there with us but the clingy woman part of her didn’t want to be left out, so she was pretty much a Grumpasaurous Rex all day until she finally went and slept in the scorching car. It was cool because Dan and I got picked to be Nazis and we’re going to be an integral part of the video.

  The premise has something to do with us (the Nazis) trying to assassinate the first black president (hence Dallas, i.e.: Kennedy) and Public Enemy foils the plot. We got to meet Chuck D with all his Muslim bodyguards giving us the evil eye because we were white AND we were strutting around with the Nazi armbands that the film crew said we couldn’t take off between takes. This didn’t go over too well with the crowd of Dallas black people who came down to be in the video since nobody ever told them we were part of the shoot, but Chuck D was cool and took a few minutes to talk to us and sign some autographs since we were fans. Flavor Flav wasn’t there, which was kind of a bummer, but I got some hands-on experience seeing how a music video is filmed. It kind of reminded me of being an extra on television which I haven’t done for a long while. I smoked some weed with members of the film crew and chilled out with Dan who bought a couple of 40’s at a 7-11 and got really drunk. All in all it was exhausting but fun and hopefully we’ll see the finished product on MTV in a few months. Public Enemy’s kind of fallen off the hip-hop radar lately, but back when “It Takes A Nation Of Millions…” and “Fear Of A Black Planet” came out they totally ruled the scene.

  We hung up Chuck’s autographs in a shrine on the living room wall. The autographs, the baseball-sized chunks of hail that fell in our yard (preserved for eternity in our freezer) and various Beastie Boys paraphernalia are now the highlights of interest on our house tours. Well, they would be if anyone ever showed an interest in touring our casa. Oh Blah Di, Oh Blah Da.

  Living with Kirk is all right; he’s so damn passive about everything and Dan couldn’t ask for a better drinking buddy. It also looks like Kirk is going to start working at the Flying Tomato with us, for lack of a better job. There’s just not much work here in a college town. If you don’t like your job someplace, there are a hundred other kids that can take your position the next day. The employers know this and keep the wages right about minimum. The amount of time our household spends at the Flying Tomato is truly pathetic but we’ve developed a sort of symbiotic relationship. They use
us for cheap labor and oddball work hours and we use them for free beer, pizza and laundry. Oh and a miniscule paycheck every once in a while helps to pay some of the rent and school expenses.

  Jenifer, David, Gabe and myself had an odd experience after we closed the store the other night. Gabe finally scored enough dilaudin to have our first get together and we attempted to learn about shooting it up. Dilaudin is basically the prescription form of heroin, another thing the government conveniently overlooks in their crusade against drugs. I guess if you’re a big business pharmaceutical company it’s ok to be a drug dealer in America. Truthfully I’ve never had a more aggravating or frustrating experience in my life. We’re so inexperienced with using needles that none of us could get the crushed pills into our veins, leading us to think maybe dilaudin is not water soluble and we had wasted our cash for nothing.

  I became so obsessed with getting all the air out of my needle I eventually just squirted the whole yellow concoction out in a frustrated rage that can only compare to my short temper in traffic. The temper that scares Jenifer because she observes the animal in me and doesn’t think I notice her looks of fear. The temper usually reserved for things that people do to Jenifer, the one that caused me to throw beer bottles at a car full of rednecks on the highway after they made her cry. Sorry honey.

  The night was a failure drug-wise, but I think our attempt is sort of amusing now. As neurotic as Gabe is, I don’t doubt that we’ll find real heroin very soon.

  Let me see if I can describe what I’ve observed about people’s love affair with the needle. It’s strange but the terror instilled in us as children while getting shots at the doctor’s office can’t compete with the morbid fascination of preparing and injecting a serum personally prescribed for a good time. I understand how it is now and I think it might have something to do with the blood, that most sacred of fluids.

  I stopped giving blood after high school because it was making me progressively dizzier every time I donated, leading me to illogically conclude that my body was having trouble replenishing its supply. But watching the blood cloud diffuse into the milky solution seconds before the whole poison cocktail is pushed back into my arm gives off a rush that precedes the drug. All the romance of the mythical vampire and the power of being able to tap directly into my life fluid, it’s almost like playing with God. Cocaine is so fucking evil but injecting it feels so good, for a while anyway. I don’t want to try and describe the sensation that comes with mainlining cocaine to anyone because if I romanticize it then I might be responsible for what others pursue. I’ll simply state this: as much as people like to merely snort cocaine and still become addicts, most of them would realize they’ve just wasted their coke all these years after the very first time they injected it. It is too nice, fun, intense and pure fucking evil. I don’t think I can do it ever again and enjoy it. There is too much guilt, too much of a desperate need for it and I never want to fall in love with something so fleeting. I’ll spend all my money after that first shot of coke, going back and forth to the dopeman, telling myself this next quarter bag will be the last one for the night.

  Jenifer, David, Gabe and I went out camping deep into the woods last weekend and when we got home I couldn’t remember anything we did out there except shoot coke and David’s pistol, a bad combination all the way around. I felt so guilty later, like I had offended the gods, but I couldn’t express my depression to anyone around me, even Jenifer who I’ve always felt I could tell anything to. It just wasn’t right. The whole fucking scene didn’t feel right to me. I know Jenifer enjoys it too much but I was afraid to give her any kind of ultimatum until the other night.

  We were over at Gabe’s apartment, doing bumps and listening to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. We were all getting really amped and trying to get as much pleasure as we could, increasing the amount of cocaine we put into our shots each time until tiny Jenifer pushed too far and had a seizure. Oh God I’ve never been so fucking scared in my life. I had no idea what the fuck was going on and what was happening, I was just praying to God she wasn’t having a heart attack. I really thought she was going to die and nobody had the first clue about what to do since we had never seen anything like this happen before. I get cold chills just writing this down and nervous about how I could have lost her right there on Gabe’s linoleum floor. I laid her out on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed, putting my hand under her head so it wouldn’t bounce on the hard surface while seizures ripped through her body over and over. I swear I thought she was going to die and tears were streaming out of my eyes. When the seizure stopped I got ready to do CPR on her in case her heart had stopped. I was screaming her name over and over trying to get some sign that she was alive, checking her pulse and breathing while Gabe was freaking out. He wanted to get her out of his apartment and even tried to slap her awake. When he slapped her face I almost broke his arm but I was too focused on helping Jen to follow through.

  Thankfully after about five agonizing minutes of me wanting to call an ambulance, she woke up with no apparent side effects and no recollection that anything had happened. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. I think I got a taste of the pure terror a parent feels when their child is finally out of a terribly harmful situation and it’s something I never want to experience EVER again. Jenifer’s lungs are so bad and she’s so skinny that I was sure her system had overloaded and that she would die right there in front of me, despite anything I could have done. I was so physically drained and relieved she was all right that all I wanted to do was get her away from there as soon as possible, just to hold her and thank God.

  My heart almost broke when one of the first things she asked for was another bump. I even understood why. She didn’t know what had happened and she didn’t have to live through the fear and danger we had all just gone through standing over her body. Coke’s like that—a pure evil presence that tells you to keep doing more and more. Shooting coke is almost like winning free games off an easy pinball machine, when the fun wears off you want to leave it behind but don’t feel quite right if you do.

  Lord, thank you so much for keeping her alive the other night, she’s a wonderful soul and I need her so much, but whatever you do please, please, please don’t remind me that way ever again.

  Despite everything, Jenifer is still doing cocaine with David fairly often and I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I can’t enjoy it anymore after what happened at Gabe’s apartment and if I hang around her now while she’s doing it I end up sounding like her fucking dad. It makes me sick to hear myself. I have to physically remove my presence or I’ll nag and try to watch over her. Plus now it’s like that movie “A Clockwork Orange” where the main character gets ill listening to Beethoven after being programmed with a negative response. I can’t even see cocaine anymore; my heart knots up and I feel nauseous thinking about nothing except Jenifer lying on the floor hurting. I know she feels guilty after staying up all night but its draw on her is so fucking powerful that she doesn’t even care. I’ve even tried being angry with David for being her hypo companion but I know it isn’t him. Cocaine is nicknamed “girl” for a reason. What’s crazy is that up until a few weeks ago I would have been up until dawn with them. I even tried to get over my phobia by staying up with them a few times, but I just can’t do it anymore. Sometimes I feel hurt and left out but I refuse to try and make her quit out of guilt about me. It is something she has to quit on her own.

  When Jenifer finally crawls into bed with me in the early hours of the morning I’m usually awake but I never say a fucking word. I’m thrilled to finally feel her chilly caresses and I’ll wrap my arms around her cold body, just happy to have her safely back with me. Sometimes we have a sort of tender, guilty sex during these mornings, sex that my brain tells me not to accept but I always want her so much that it’s impossible. I end up pinning her to the bed with my pent up anxiety and punishing her gently. It’s probably not the most psychologically
healthy thing for us to do but I love her, I need to forgive her and I guess by now she always knows I want her. Something’s going to happen soon but I don’t envision us being apart so I’m curious to see what it is.

  Hey, guess what! Andy’s moving out from the garage apartment behind our house this summer and it looks like Jenifer is moving in. She’s pretty excited about having her own place again and it’s nice to see a return of the confident independence that makes her face shine but it’s not like she didn’t have the run of the house when she stayed over with us anyway. Oh well, my single bed isn’t going to be much competition against her air conditioned queen size, complete with familiar soft sheets and her Snoopy doll. I’ll miss the mandatory closeness of my bed and I’m sad to have her go, even if it’s just to live in my backyard. I always got a thrill knowing such a beautiful woman would choose to live with me and now I know I’ll mostly be staying with her. Activate the emergency insecurity pods Captain! I suppose since I’m the only one who gets to play with her pet rat Rico, she must feel something for me.

  My Dad and I are driving to Minnesota together for some obscure relative’s wedding that I don’t really know, so I’m already off to a weird start with my summer break. My first response when my parents asked if I wanted to make the hel-lacious drive was “no way!” but since my mother is paranoid about my dad falling asleep at the wheel, I finally agreed to go. In all the years we’ve been making this 20 hour, 1000 mile trek into the great White North, I’ve yet to see my Dad even relax enough to take a nap. I guess as nervous as he is with me driving I’ll keep him semi-alert just by being there.

  I’m both excited and apprehensive about this trip. I’m apprehensive about leaving Jenifer behind because I’ll really miss her and I know that she and David will likely be doing a lot of coke and I really don’t want to come home to a dead girlfriend. The other night I had to keep going to the dopeman for them since David’s usual connection got busted and the only guy in town with cocaine was one of my good friends from the Lodge. I felt totally pathetic because I was trying to make them feel guilty for asking me to go get them more drugs, but the kind of subtle guilt I specialize in doesn’t work when someone is fiending. I’ve noticed they’ll pretty much say or promise anything to get their immediate needs met. They kept only wanting a little bit at a time, thinking each time would be the last time, pissing their money away little by little and I had to keep going over and listen to this crazy guy’s ranting and ramblings while he played me shitty death metal songs that he had made up. He thought I was doing all the coke I was buying from him (friend discount) and so he thought I was as juiced up as he was, but it all seemed pretty fucking stupid to me. Anyway, I’m hesitant to leave Jenifer behind but I’m glad to escape and not have to roll play as their fucking babysitters for a while. Plus, it’s not like Jenifer would ever cheat on me with David so at least I can have peace of mind in that respect.