***
When you were twelve, Mr. Suicide asked: “Why not today? You got a hard-on in class and some of the popular kids saw it and laughed. They kept asking if you were queer for the history teacher—old, yellow-toothed, stoop-backed Mr. Winnick. Why not now? Why not now?”
Because, you thought, the school just held an assembly about suicide. The people talked about how it hurt those left behind. They brought in the family of that twelve-year-old in Paducah who did it two years ago.
“That?” Mr. Suicide said. “Puh-lease. You’re telling me that little propaganda show has convinced you to slug through the misery?”
You felt embarrassed when he called you out that way. He made it seem like you were just another slack-jawed yokel conned by a slick sales pitch. You’re outnumbered. You’re the only voice telling me to do it. There are lots of voices saying not to. One by one, the family members came up and told everyone not to do it. The father started things off. He offered no reasons why we shouldn’t do it. His entire talk was just two dozen repetitions of lines like “Don’t do it,” “It’s a very bad idea,” “It’s a stupid idea,” and so on. I’ll admit, that part wasn’t very convincing.
Then the mother started to give her talk about the reasons suicide was a bad idea. By that point, the assembly was getting restless. The novelty of all this suicide shit was fading. The other kids slumped on the bleachers. Some of the biggest dickheads whispered dirty jokes or made farting sounds. They made it a little hard to focus and this was the only time during the school day when focusing seemed important. About three minutes into her talk, the mother disclosed what she saw and heard when she went into her “little boy’s” room.
“I’ll never forget how d-dark his hands were and how pale the rest of—” She could go no further before succumbing to a wave of hard sobs. The kind that shake shoulders. “I’m sorry, boys and girls,” she said, “I thought I could do this but I, I can’t.” When she began to hyperventilate, the father had to go up and retrieve her.
Next came the brother—athletic-looking and wearing Marine Corps dress blues. He pounded his fists on the podium and said that if anyone in that gymnasium even thought about it, they “damned well better tell the guidance counselor”.
“Did you?”
Did I what?
“Tell the guidance counselor.”
No, because I’m not going to kill myself, no matter how much you try to convince me to.
“Hard head. Okay, tell me more about this assembly.”
There was a collective gasp in the gym when the curse word echoed off the walls. It was the only time in school when anyone was allowed to say “damned” from the podium. (The brother was a hero of Afghanistan who had been given a medal for fighting for our freedom. He was home on leave. No one—not even the principal—was going to stop him from cussing. He could have said “fuck” and “cocksucker” and still been allowed to keep talking).
It made for good theater: the cussing was probably the part that saved the assembly from descending into chaos. It made the student body pay attention. No more fart sounds. No more whispered jokes. It gave the anti-suicide message a certain flair. It made it cool.
He said life was too precious and sacred to toss away like that. He went on to say that suicide (which he, and all the rest of his family, pronounced “sue-sad”) was a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
“He was a big, fat liar, then,” Mr. Suicide said. “We’ve been goin’ through this since you were ten. How fucking temporary does that sound.”
Things might get better when I move out of the house.
“More like if you move out. Look at that brother of yours. The one who went nuts.”
But my oldest brother and my sister both made it out. It’s not impossible.
“You moron. You really don’t get it, do you? They made it out because they’re the oldest. Your mother let them go because she had two younger ones still left to cling to. She managed to hold on to your older brother, and you can be sure she isn’t going to let you go without a fight, either.”
Maybe, but if it’s a fight she wants, I’ll be up for it.
Mr. Suicide sighed. “I’ll still be hanging around you, then, too. I’ll be hanging around and telling you: ‘I told you so.’”
***
When you were thirteen, Mr. Suicide asked: “Why not now? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? Greasy hair. Thick glasses. Pimples. Dude… pimples. You’ve got so many it looks like you came down with measles.”
That would be a dumb reason to kill myself, you thought. Everyone gets pimples. Even football players. No. Big. Deal.
“But then again, kiddo, your face is a bit more blemished than theirs. And even the most pimply of football players can still get laid, you know. As for you… well… my guess is that even in your dreams, girls turn you down. You don’t even get wet dreams, do you? You get blue ball dreams, instead.”
You really know how to be charming, don’t you?
“I know how to cut through bullshit, and that’s just what I’m going to do. I’m not going to mince words: you’re one fucking ugly looking nerd of a kid. C’mon, I’m not telling you anything the kids at school haven’t already told you a billion times. What names do they call you?”
It’s none of your business.
“What names do they call you?”
Shut up.
“What names do they call you?”
I’m not giving you the answer.
“Why… because it hurts too much to even say? Are they that bad?”
They call me Trash Ass. It’s not even all that bad of a name. It’s just stupid.
“And why do they call you that?”
It doesn’t make any difference, does it?
“Why do they—”
Get out of my head!
“Only after you tell me. Not before.”
Leave. Leave now!
“You don’t have the power to expel me, flesh-thing, so I think I’m staying put right here in your brain for awhile. I want to hear you tell the story of how you got the name Trash Ass. Maybe it’s not the name itself that bugs you, but rather how that name came about, eh? I have a hunch that there’s something in the story of how the name came about that you need to face. I want to hear you tell the story, and then explain to me why you keep refusing me.”
I’ll tell it, but then you have to go.
“Sure, if you’ll tell it, I’ll eventually go. If you don’t tell it, I’ll keep tormenting you and I won’t eventually go. I’ll keep tormenting you until you kill yourself because that will be the only way to be rid of me.”
You relented. It seemed like the lesser of two evils.
Okay, okay… There was one week in lunch when the teachers punished some kids who had started a food fight by giving everyone assigned seats. It was awful. They had us all sitting at tables according to alphabetic order, which meant there was one of the worst jocks close by. His dad was the gym teacher, so he pretty much got away with whatever he wanted to do. He was pissed at having to sit next to me. Pissed, I suppose, at having to suffer any inconvenience for his actions. He was so unused to being called on his behavior. (In fact, he was one of the main players in the food fight).
On Monday and Tuesday he hit me in the shoulder a few times when the teachers weren’t looking. Then, after punching me, he pretended to punch me dozens of times. If I flinched, he’d laugh and then hit me twice—harder than he ever had before. He would say: “That’s two for flinching, faggot.” Then he’d laugh some more.
There were two other popular kids at the table who laughed with him, and a couple of unpopular girls there who looked like they just wanted the whole thing to be over. One of them was this disabled girl who went around school in heavy crutches. She put her head on the table throughout the entire ordeal.
By Wednesday, the punching game must have gotten old for the jock and his friends. So when I showed up in my assigned seat, I felt something soft and mushy c
ollapse under my butt. It smelled like sour milk and rotting meat. I looked down and saw white liquid had stained my crotch.
“Oh my God,” the jock wailed. “He’s a homo. He just sat down next to me and came in his pants! I don’t want to sit next to no homo. Nuh-uh!”
There was a brown paper lunch bag on the seat. It was old and it was smelly and it contained a half-full container of sour milk and a bologna sandwich that must’ve been in the trash for a week. I knew the jock didn’t crawl into the dumpster himself to get it. He must’ve had accomplices who did the dirty work.
Mr. Suicide took on a know-it-all tone. Half-lecturing, half-ridiculing you. “They always do have accomplices to carry out the dirty work, kiddo. And it doesn’t change when you get older. The jock will one day be behind a desk at the Pentagon or at an oil company or at a health insurance conglomerate, and he’ll make some self-serving decision and force underlings to carry it out with dirty work. That’s the nature of the world. The people who are at the top of the ladder in high school are usually the ones who stay at the top of the ladder throughout life. The ones, like you, who are at the bottom of the ladder in high school usually stay at the bottom of the ladder throughout life. Hey now, speaking of ladders, wouldn’t this be a good night for a hanging?”
I’m not at the bottom of the ladder. I’m smarter than all of them, and they know it. I just happen to live in Louisville, Kentucky, and so I just happen to be surrounded by the sorts of kids socialized in such a shit pit. When I graduate, I’ll go to Chicago or New York or L.A. I’ll surround myself with other smart people, with people who like books. It’ll get better.
“It doesn’t get better. It stays the same—or, hell, gets worse. Life is like a movie that starts out shitty. Humanity is like an audience in the theater, sitting there telling themselves that it’s gonna get better. Hoping against hope. And when it doesn’t get better, you folks can’t admit to yourselves that you’ve wasted your time sitting through crap. So you lie to yourselves and cling to some small supporting performance or unique camera angle that you can use as proof that you weren’t wasting time. That’s what humanity’s like: always trying to convince itself that breathing isn’t a waste of time.” Mr. Suicide took on a mocking falsetto: “‘It’ll get better!… It’ll get better!’ Ha! Repeat after me: It doesn’t get better. It doesn’t get any fucking better.”
I’m not ready to say that yet.
“Sheesh, kiddo. This is almost enough to convince me that I’ll never sway you my way. Let me try to extend my theater metaphor a little, to improve your understanding. Have you ever noticed how, in the theater, you’ll laugh at unfunny jokes just because everyone else is laughing? That’s an example of what I like to call consensus reality. Everyone has agreed that, for that moment, the unfunny joke deserves a laugh. Laughter, in a crowd, is a reflexive social instinct. Tell the same joke to yourself, at home, and you probably won’t laugh. You may even groan at how lame it is.
“Life’s the same way. When you’re in the midst of a crowded city, you have all kinds of people telling you—either in their words or their actions—that there are some very important, very meaningful things going on with their lives. And so it becomes contagious. Society forces you to absorb—almost by osmosis—the idea that life has meaning. The hierarchical nature of your species makes you try to prove that your life is even more meaningful than that of your fellows. Self-deception is programmed into your species. The advocates of hope believe it to be a feature. I believe it to be a bug.
“What do you get out of lying to yourself? Hmm, kiddo? You’re a smart person, explain it to me.”
I’m not lying to myself. You’re the liar. You make it sound like everything’s going to stay the same. Any moron can tell that’s not the case. When I graduate, I won’t have assigned fucking seating in a cafeteria. I won’t be forced to be in the same room as jocks. I think you’re forgetting that I have a second older brother, besides the one who lives at home. He went on to become a lawyer. He’ll never have to take lip from another jock, ever again. That’s the privilege of being smart. He’s going to be the boss of the jocks, not the other way around. Now leave. Go away. I have work to do. I have a shit pit to escape.
***
When you were fourteen, Mr. Suicide asked you: “Why not now? There’s an algebra test today. You haven’t studied for it and when you flunk, your mother’s gonna go bananas. You could write a note and make it look like an equation for her to solve. You could write: ‘14X = suicide. Solve for X, bitch. Solve for fucking X’! On the back of the note, you could write the correct answer: ‘X = one year of living with a psychobitch mother!’”
That would be overly dramatic, you replied. If I do it, I don’t want to be dramatic. I don’t want to leave a note. Notes are for girls and faggots. If I do it, I’ll do it in such a way that there won’t be any mistaking the fact that it was a suicide. I would hang myself—that’s plenty unambiguous. The proverbial picture worth a thousand words. That picture, alone, would say to whoever found me: “Look. I didn’t want to be here.”
“Good thinkin’,” Mr. Suicide said. “There’s some rope in the garage. The little machine that controls the door opener is mounted to the ceiling. You could probably get a ladder and hang yourself from that.”
If I do it, I’m not going to do it over a fucking algebra exam. In fact, Mr. Suicide, if you think I’d do it over a fucking algebra exam, then you don’t know me very well at all. If I killed myself over the test, then that would imply that I gave a fuck. And the whole point is: I don’t.
“You’ll care when your mom finds out.”
No, you insisted, I won’t. It’s only one class. Besides, I still have an A in Mr. Chin’s class.
“You like Mr. Chin, don’t you? He’s different from all the other teachers, isn’t he?”
Of course he is. He’s another reason I keep on going. I think I’d actually miss his class, if I was dead.
“English, pffff! What good is that going to do you out in the cruel, hard world, eh? You going to impress people in job interviews by reciting ‘To be or not to be’?”
Maybe. Maybe I could be a teacher, like Mr. Chin.
“Is he your role model, kiddo?”
It sounds stupid when you say it that way.
“Is he?”
Why does it matter? What business is it of yours?
“Answer the question!”
Okay… jeez… Yes! All right? Yes, I guess you could say that I want to be like him. He’s smarter than my mom and dad. He knows about stuff they don’t.
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
He isn’t all uptight like all the other teachers. He’s not like a teacher at all. He’s more like my friend.
“Do tell… ”
He tells me about cool stuff. Stuff Mom and Dad have no interest in.
“Stuff like sex?”
No, you moron!
“Sorry, kiddo. ‘Stuff’ is awfully ambiguous. Can you be a little more precise? Just what does your teacher-friend tell you? When does he take time away from his busy instructional schedule to shoot the shit with you?”
My English class is kind of weird. We have the first half of the class, then lunch, then the second half of the class. Instead of eating lunch down in the cafeteria, with all the other kids, I eat up there with him.
“I see. Sort of a class-tucked-away-inside-the-class, you might say. Are you the only kid up there?”
No, but I’m probably the only kid who has to be up there.
“Care to explain?”
Now you’re playing games.
“Beg your pardon?”
You know why I have to be up there. It’s part of the reason why you sought me out in the first place. Eating lunch down in the cafeteria makes me miserable. I see the tables where all my old friends sit. They have lots of new friends, now (people more popular than I am). I feel, in some ways, like I’m already dead. So I have to be there. Now, Andrea Matthews and Rachel Copeland are there, too. T
hey’re popular kids. They don’t have to eat their lunch up there. They eat up in the room with Mr. Chin because they like talking to him, too.
We talk about books and movies and stuff. Not the kind of things everyone knows about, but these odd ones. Once, he showed us all a documentary about this place called Jonestown, where everyone drank poison Kool Aid, on purpose, because the guy in charge told them to. That was pretty funny, because I was drinking Kool Aid out of a thermos when we were watching it. Funny, but also kind of badass. Then he told us about this one really, really old movie. It wasn’t even shot in color—it was black and white. It was called Freaks. That was pretty intense, for an old movie. Just like with the Jonestown documentary, we watched it together on his laptop over two or three days during lunch. It wasn’t as cheesy as I’d expected it to be. Then he introduced me to another black and white one. The Seventh Seal. He lent me a copy and let me watch it on my laptop at home. He said he thought I was ready for it. He said that, after the Jonestown movie and Freaks, I should be ready for just about anything.
“I bet your mother would have blown a gasket if she’d known you were watching that! It’s not exactly good Christian family entertainment!”
I kept the volume down on my laptop and brought it back in to him the next day. I wouldn’t dare keep it for longer than overnight. She’s good at snooping.
“Was it worth the risk of bringing it into the house?”
I liked it. You were in it. You looked goofy, though. You wore a black hood and played chess with a knight.
“Now slow down there, cowpoke! That wasn’t me.”
Aren’t you Death?
“If you see reason, I’ll be your death. But not capital-D Death. Not Death, in general. I’m a specific sort of death. Think of me as an underling the capital-D guy delegates deaths to.”
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