Why I Committed Suicide

by sam paul

  I started to think I would be ok after being confined for those few days. Jenifer came by to visit me and even though it cheered my soul to see her, her parents still look at me with so much contempt. My mom was there also and followed me around spreading her “everything’s okay” false happiness to anyone who would listen. I’m realizing that when I get out of here all I have to go back to is that same cold room at my parents’ house which looms over me like a black hole and nobody pays any attention. My sister is cool and I have a lot of love for her, but she can’t even begin to understand what I’m going through. My Dad’s still pissed off about me stealing their money, even if they have plenty of cabbage. He’s probably more concerned with how easily I was able to deceive them to get at their money; to him it’s like discovering the dog is using the telephone to call China while he’s at work. He’s always been respectful but I’ve never been much more than a stupid kid and now that I’ve proven I’m not stupid he’s likely a little frightened about what other damage I might be able to do. My mom thinks it’s all her fault but I know she’s smart enough to know that it isn’t.

  I tried to quit, dammit I tried, but living in my parents’ house right down the street from the dopeman makes the whole situation pathetic. As soon as I got home from the rehab hospital there was a check in the mail with some money from the accident. As soon as my mother left to go someplace I took a taxi to cash the check and then went and scored. Yeah, I scored.

  What the fuck is wrong with me? All that rehab crap they fed me bounced around in my head for about 2 hours before I was already back at it, pulling stupid stunts that I know are going to get me caught down the line. I hate taxis too. I’ve put my parents through hell. I had every single advantage as a child and I’m still bitter for no reason even though none of the problems in my life are their fault.

  It was a very bad day.

  I wrecked my fucking car pretty bad today. Poor Sally. It’s not like before when I merely smashed in the front fender and I was able to fix it by ripping a replacement off a fellow bug owner who had the misfortune of leaving his car by the side of the road one evening. I drive as fast as I can now, probably hoping some ancient part in the vehicle will finally give way and fate will dispose of me quickly, but so far I’ve only managed a few minor fender benders. I even remember most of them.

  Having just scored, I was pleasantly fucked up driving to the hospital to visit Jenifer during her afternoon rehab. I wasn’t going that fast but I turned a street corner too shallow and hooked the front passenger wheel on a telephone pole suspension cable. I was going just fast enough to drag my car up the wire and roll it over a few times, finally landing upside down, caving in the roof and smashing all the windows. Except for some minor cuts I got from the glass while crawling out of what was left of the window, I was perfectly fine once again. Dammit.

  Jenifer had secretly given me her credit card so I could get cash to buy her some smack but I had to use it to pay the tow truck guy to flip my car back on its wheels instead. Can you believe that when I stuck the key in the ignition the damn car started right up? After some minor business with the police and refusing an ambulance I hunched down inside and drove my car to the hospital for a visit and then back home. Even though I had an excuse, Jenifer was pissed because I was late again and her mom found out about her giving me the credit card, so Jen got even more anti-Sam propaganda to add to the ever-growing fire. Yes I am a bad fuck up, but I still love her and it hurts me more than anything when my behavior is used to take their shitty frustrations out on Jen. Punch me, hurt me, but leave her alone! Isn’t it enough you are more important in her life right now any-fucking-way?!

  My parents freaked when they saw the car and I’m guessing it was about the last straw. It was so obvious they just wanted me to go away that I just did. My mom even started yelling that I wasn’t leaving with my car. Oh, you want me to go but I can’t take my own fucking car? What do you want me to do? Fuck you!

  I went to Denton and saw my friend Kirk who’s going to let me crash with him for a few days. I wasn’t sure what else to do or where to even try and go.

  I’m still sitting here thinking about that last one.

  I’ve been staying with Kirk and Bryce now for many of the past weeks and I’ve been doing some terrible things for money. I’ve just kind of attached myself to their apartment and I’ve worked towards establishing some credibility in my life again but nothing ever seems to pan out into anything worthwhile.

  I got fired from my job at a local company called MARC whose sole purpose it to call people during dinner and try to get them to answer surveys. I probably should mention that I told them I was bilingual which is why they chose me over several other applicants, plus it got me an extra quarter per hour. My job basically involved calling people and trying to get them to take incredibly long boring surveys with absolutely no incentives. While I was being monitored for practice I only had to talk to a few English speaking people on the phone and I was doing fine after two days of training but when I finally got to my cubicle with my own computer calling list, nothing but Hispanic names and numbers started scrolling down my screen. I tried to do my best but after a day of spouting out random words in Spanish to people over the phone and not fulfilling any of my survey quotas, it was pretty obvious I needed to go before they monitored my calls or got a complaint.

  I said I could speak Spanish; I didn’t say I could make comprehensible sentences or understand what the other person is saying when they speak Spanish. So most of my first day I used a lot of very stiff standard key Spanish phrases like “El Gato Es En El Bano”* and “Mansana Con Leche Es Bueno”.** That kind of thing. It didn’t go over too well with most of the families I called; I probably broke the company record for the most, but shortest, calls in one day. Some very drunk Mexican men had a good laugh about the whole thing when I called their house. They started spouting back English phrases that made no sense and we had a good time playing around for a bit.

  After a while, a Hispanic girl in the cubicle next to me started giving me the evil eye, as if perhaps I was butchering her language and that maybe I was also responsible for exploiting and persecuting her people over the past millennium. I realized things were getting too heavy and it was time to ramble so I dicked off for the last few hours of my shift and never went back. At least I’ll get paid for the training time. Hee hee.

  My next job was working to help set up the new Super Wal-Mart on the outskirts of Denton. My only difficulty there was getting up at the ungodly hours they start work and finding a ride or catching the bus out to the store. They needed people to be there around 7 a.m. and I usually came in at about 2 p.m. with the returning lunch people and then signed in like I had been there all day. Then I went in the back warehouse and worked for a while, helping unload and then unpack the endless boxes of crap they sell and put it onto the shelves. The few times I managed to make it in there on time, they made all the people sing these gay-ass “Go Wal-Mart” songs to kick off the morning on a positive note. Every time I had to stand and listen to one of their songs I made sure to steal something at the end of the day to compensate for them stealing a part of my soul with their horseshit drivel.

  One day I was trying to catch the bus out to the store and I didn’t have any scrilla to pay the fifty cent bus fare, the most I could come up with was a few washers and some pennies I found on the ground near the beat up phone booth next to the apartment. I got on the bus in a crowd of people and deposited what I thought looked like a random assortment of change into the slots. The coin collector was glass though and the bus driver kicked me off the bus when he saw what I tried to do.

  While I was walking depressed down the middle of the street back to Kirk & Bryce’s apartment, trying to think of another way to get a ride to work, this dollar bill blew lightly by my feet. I ran to catch the limp paper and it was ten dollars! What a great fucking country right? I went to the store to buy a pack of smok
es and then used the change to get on the next bus to work where I smiled at the token Wal-Mart handicapped person saying “hi” at the door and then I signed in as if I had been there the whole time. I didn’t kiss enough asses to get put on the permanent hire list for Wal-Mart, so after the store opened I got the boot, but I did learn one thing. I really hate singing motivational songs in the morning!

  After Wal-Mart, I worked for this temp agency that doesn’t do any background checks and I got a job helping this lady clean doctor’s offices at the same hospital Jenifer was born in. It was cool because I got to poke around in the doctor’s cabinets and desks and I scored all these kick ass samples of pain killers they save for themselves which were ripe for the taking. The best score I ever got out of that job was a box of Tylenol with Codeine. It’s something I can trade or use during the next withdrawal time. I never got in any trouble with the hospital or temp agency but after a while I quit going in at night because the lady I worked with was too nice and I felt bad for putting her job in peril.

  So I’ve pretty much been on a mini-crime rampage lately trying to fund my habit without any legitimate money coming in. The easiest thing to do is score for other people and then jack the price up a few bucks to pay for my own dope. I also steal a lot of books from the campus bookstores but the scams are getting old, people start to recognize me wandering the stores more than once a week and the people in the return line seem to grasp what’s going on but usually a book isjust a book to them no matter where I got it. I’m glad I’m not paying for these books because I’m getting raped in the re-sale racket.

  I’ve hit a few dorm rooms just by knocking on doors during class and checking to see if they are locked. From my experience, most students leave their dorm rooms unlocked and if I walk in on anyone I can just say “whoops, wrong room” and everything’s cool. Some of the outer edge dorms have (unintentional) removable plate glass windows that pop out with a screwdriver. I’ve skateboarded down the street a few times with purloined stereo and musical equipment under each arm to take to the pawn shops. I just don’t like messing with that anymore though. I don’t like stealing from students or people and the last time I took off a window, the huge plate glass wouldn’t fit back into the frame right and while I was casually walking away with a bunch of loot the entire window fell out and shattered all over the concrete. I was glad I always wipe my prints off the glass as I ran scared down the street.

  Jenifer is back at her parents’ home in Denton now but I don’t really get to see her much. Although talking to her cheers me up and I really miss her. I wish I could go back and just take back that one day or moment in time forever. The happy memories we shared make me so sad now. The few times I’ve gone back inside the Tomato it’s like I’m a leper. My old boss won’t even look at me in the eyes. I hate it even more when they won’t look at Jen either.

  It’s cool of Kirk and Bryce to tolerate my staying with them. Hopefully I won’t end up screwing them over like I have with most everyone else. What can I do to keep my life moving forward? I DO the only thing I know how to do better than most. Write. Lately though, it’s just more sad pages of shattered hopes and dreams. Who am I kidding? This is really all one big titty-sucking whine fest. My miseries and the like are simply recorded in a journal for posterity even though it’s an old repetitious story told across a million lifetimes.

  *The Cat Is In The Bathroom

  **Apple With Milk Is Good

  Hello Mom, I’m In Jail! Every day in here is yesterday, today and tomorrow.

  Officer fucking Goldberg. The name will be forever imprinted in my brain as a conspirator against me. Mr. good-guy Officer fucking Goldberg. Mr. Campus fucking police man working to right the wrongs the world has committed against him. Officer fucking Goldberg. The embodiment of everything I hate about cops is permeated in the actions of this man. Cops justify falsifying evidence because they look at it as getting the results they want within what they feel are limited means. It’s the quick and easy way to do things, a characteristic that personifies most police as I’ve come to find out. They are the not-so-bright kids in high school, maybe even the ones who got picked on and are still holding a grudge. They’re lazy, donut-eating paunches of men sitting in their cars truly believing they are going to make the world a better place by getting into everyone’s business for the sake of right versus wrong, firmly believing that they are the sole voices of right. The soldiers that dragged Jesus’ ass to jail and beat him down over and over and then nailed his butt to the cross probably felt the same fucking way. I call it “working for the side of right by doing wrong.” How does the famous quote go? “You don’t change the devil, he changes you.”

  I went in the campus bookstore to make a snatch and grab, to get some quick cash with a few purloined textbooks. It’s not easy anymore since I’ve become pretty familiar to all the faces around the ins and outs of the campus bookstore in the Union. There were days when I could go in the bottom of the store, get some books, exit the top of the store, walk back down to the bottom floor on the other side and sell them their own books back. It was a quick 50 to100 bucks on most days. Today I went in and as I was about to exit, scott-free again, something came over me. Far back in my mind, my conscience thought it would be a good idea to try and apply for a legitimate job since I know so much about the book orders and shift changes anyway, at the very least I could work the place from inside, but my intentions were honorable. Instead of zipping away with a giant book surreptitiously stuffed in my baggy pants I stopped to fill out an employment application. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I guess I just wanted to do something honest or strive for legitimacy or something. I’m bored by this amoral path I have become so familiar with, I’ve taken to corruption so easily and it is not who I feel I really am.

  The joke was on me though. While I was filling out the application somebody recognized me and they must have called the cops because when I went to turn my app into the manager, they had Officer Goldberg in there, waiting and licking his chops. I HATE all of them! Every fucking one of them! Easy money arrest! I might as well have just walked to the jail with a videotape of me stealingthe shit and asked for a room. Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me! Stupid! I blew my cover at the bookstore and got thrown in the pokey.

  Humiliation, handcuffs, police car, arrest, blah blah, blah. I finally got to the campus police station and the motherfucker starts shaking me down, only I don’t know it. He starts talking and asking me my motivations like he really is a concerned person underneath that uniform, just another average Joe, like he might be able to fucking help me with some of my problems. Hey look at that I think, this is the first adult in a long time that has asked me about what’s going on in my life and I actually fell for his caring act. It was all a fucking act!

  He asked what was going on and before you know it, I started blubbering like a baby in rehab again! The words start coming out about my addiction, the car accident and everything. I knew to hold back about the thefts around town because of the Hasting’s incident, but I couldn’t stop myself from pouring out all this personal pain to him. It must have been boiling just beneath the surface waiting for a release.

  Through my whole spiel he’s acting concerned for my well being, like he genuinely has some sort of answer he can give me, like he really cares! I’ve got snot pouring out of my nose and my vision is blurred with tears while he watches sympathetically, but then he releases the kicker. He sort of casually lets out, “we’ve been investigating a couple of burglaries around the campus area.” as if it’s a natural part of our conversation. EXCUSE ME?!!

  All at once the tears dry up and I knew I was just played for an ass. My wide crying eyes narrow into evil little slits and I focus every fucking ounce of pent-up hurt negativity and rage through my pupils, into his fucking corneas and penetrate the back of his fucking brain all at once, trying to get his head to hemorrhage or preferably explode. He even backed up for a second in the cold cell where we are t
alking under observation, looked back at the video camera on the wall and leaves nervously before I can poke my fingers into his fucking eyes and twist them around until he’s Stevie-fucking-Wonder blind! I’m fuming, fuming, fuming mad, but I know what’s going to come next. He’s blown the good cop shit, so he’s got to play the bad cop now. It’s psychologically smart and I’ve been played like a fucking idiot schoolgirl up until now but I realize I’ve got to sit and be calm. So I focus, and breathe and stare directly into the video camera high up on the wall for about ten straight minutes letting the glare off the lens help me focus into a more relaxed meditative state. I know I have to be smart now or this cop’s going to fuck me hard. Sure enough, ten minutes later a Lt. comes in and politely takes me back to his office and offers me a seat. Here it comes I think, be cool. Be fucking ice cream in the Arctic cool.

  To this guy, I present myself as Joe Schoolboy. I’m Mr. “In over my head and scared but innocent student” to this guy. I’m sure he was watching the exchange with Goldberg in the cell since I’m probably the only interesting diversion in their full day of writing traffic and parking tickets. I’m the potential “winning-lottery-ticket-of-burglaries-that-might-take-some-of-the-heat-off-their-ineffec-tive-asses” guy. The Lt. starts in on the “this could be hard on your paralyzed girlfriend routine” which almost pisses me off and I’m silently thankful for the meditation time they gave me to analyze the angles that would likely be put in play against me.