Suicide Note Ch. 1

Chapter One

             I started writing my suicide note when I was fifteen. I didn’t really know it then, but that’s what I was writing. It took me twenty-two years to finish it, assuming that I’m lucky enough to finish it by my next birthday, or unlucky enough. I guess it all depends on your perspective. Right now, I think it’s lucky. Stick around, though. Five minutes from now I might feel differently. That’s pretty much how I’ve always been. Not knowing how I’ll feel from one minute to the next. Please forgive the inconsistencies. Be a little tolerant. This is my last story, for crying out loud. 
           
And it is only a story. If you’ve come to these pages looking for some grand truth or some timeless pearls of wisdom, methinks you’ll be disappointed, although you might be entertained. I can’t say for sure. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure what this story’s about, other than my suicide note. You may find things here that are humorous or poignant or sad or maybe even pathetic and disgusting. All the mysteries of life. Hah! To be perfectly honest, I don’t care about any of that. All I want to do is finish my suicide note so I can kill myself and be done with it. 
          
Unfortunately, it turns out that writing the note is a hell of a lot harder than actually killing myself. It’s like the long version of that project at work that you can’t leave for another day, that you have to finish yesterday! It becomes a battle of yourself against yourself. You can’t rest because you’re constantly thinking about it. It swallows you up until you finally get it done. Then you breathe easy. Until you have to start the next one.    
       
The difference for me I guess is that when I finally finish the fucking thing, instead of breathing easy, I get to stop breathing. A blessing or a curse? For me it can be either, depending on when you ask. Ironically, my suicide note is what’s kept me alive for so long. I still can’t rest until it’s finished, although I do lie down in bed and close my eyes periodically.     
       
So. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you a bunch of stuff. Just spit it out here for all to see. Hopefully, in the process I can finish my note and check out. If it seems disjointed, that’s because it is. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It might be chronological. It might not be any kind of logical. It is what it is. So here goes:  
         
I was born on March 16, 1965 or thereabouts. My mother pushed me out of her womb somewhere in Ohio. I haven’t been there, and I have no plans to go. Obviously. Of my earliest memories, there are none. I’m not trying to be obtuse. Any early memories I have read either as dreams or nightmares, rarely in between. For example:           

Memory ( three years old) : I pushed my brother into a hole in the ice of a frozen lake, just to see how cold it was. Did I laugh? I most probably howled with glee. Did it happen? Not a fucking clue. It does sound like something I’d do though. As a matter of fact, it sounds like a lot of things I’ve done throughout my life. I never meant any harm, I was, and still am, just curious, and hyperactive and confused. 
          
Memory (six years old) : My father walking outside barefoot in snowy, ten degree weather to get the paper. I knew it was impossible, it was too cold. A mere mortal would freeze to death before he got down the steps. That was the day that I realized my father was God.            

Memory ( six years old ) : My brothers and I huddled around the floor vent listening to my father scream at my mother. She sobbed as he raved like a lunatic. I think he was hitting her too, but I’m not sure. That was the day that I realized that my father wasn’t God.           

As I got older, memories became a little more concrete and reliable, though not always accurate. I’ve never been able to get my brothers to corroborate my stories. They’d rather not dredge up all the muck. I can’t blame them, although I do frequently, so as to stay true to form.                
Are you still here? Hmmm. I thought I’d lost you for a minute there. Don’t give up just yet. I haven’t gotten to the juicy stuff. As a matter of fact, I’m just getting warmed up. Bear with me and I promise you’ll be as totally confused as I am.           

Memory ( eleven years old ) : It’s eight o’clock at night. I’m lying on a little couch in my fifteen year-old step-sisters’ room. The door is open. I can hear the television from the den where my step-mother and my father are watching. “How long?” I whisper. In a disembodied voice from the darkness of her bed she answers: “I’ll tell you when!” I lie there staring at the glow of the clock radio. Time slows to a crawl, then stands still. I doze. I awake with a start. The red numbers imprint on my brain: 10:12, 10:12, 10:12, 10:12, 10:13, 10:13, 10:13, 10:24, 10:24, 10:24, 10:56, 10:56, 10:56, 10:57, 10:57, 10:57….I doze again. “Scott!!” The whisper joins my dream. The dream angel speaks to me in dulcet tones. “Scott! It’s okay now!”. The whisper comes again and I awake with a start. I’m covered in sweat. I’m touching myself. From her bed, she whispers again, more urgently: “C’mon. It’s okay now.” I look around. The house is dark. I look at the clock: 11:48. I hear loud snores from my fathers room. Rain is rat-a-tat-tatting against the roof. I sit up and move toward her bed. “It’s okay honey,” she says, her voice husky with desire. I stand next to the bed trembling with a heat I don’t understand. The blankets open to me, as if of their own accord. A hand reaches out and draws me into the bed. The covers fall and she is against me, her heat against my back and her hand on my undeveloped cock. Her swollen nipples brush my back as she turns me to face her and pierces my mouth with her tongue. I am awash with feelings both terrifying and sublime as she takes my hand and places it firmly over her wetness. I marvel at the hair down there. For a moment I am sure she has peed on my fingers, and I pull my hand away. She moans sharply and pushes it back against her swollen sex, grinding her hips against my novice hand. She pushes my fingers into her. I shiver violently from the glorious depravity of her will. She squeezes my little cock with the full force of her pleasure. I bite my lip to stifle the cry of pain coming from my groin. She continues on unabated, thrusting my fingers into her sex and squeezing my little cock. I writhe in a curious mix of pain and elation. She moves my hand faster and faster and then all at once it is over for her. She heaves a deep sigh and I feel her body relax and go limp. Her full breasts burn into my back as she lifts the covers and pushes me out of the bed. “Now go to sleep, sweetie,” she whispers. I scurry back to my couch and lie back under the covers, my little cock aching in a way I’ve never felt before. I look at the clock: 12:02, 12:02, 12:02, 12:03, 12:03, 12:03……   

I was born into a fairly well-to-do family. My father was a missile guidance programmer, or some such shit back in the sixties, so I’m sure he had a lot of money socked away. I don’t remember being poor when he was living with us. We had a big house in a little place outside Dallas. Four bedrooms, two car garage, big backyard and a brick fireplace. To me we were rich. I saw a golden future wrought with wondrous possibilities. My father had different ideas. After tolerating us for a few years, he told my mother that all three of her spawn would probably end up in jail. That is SO fucked up.

Memory ( seven years old ) : My father is sitting on the edge of his bed facing his closet, his belts hanging neatly in the center of it. The three of us are lined up to his right, as if queuing up to buy some candy at the 7-11. My father looks at my oldest brother and points to the row of belts hanging in the closet. Mike dutifully walks to the closet and after a brief moment of deliberation grabs the fattest belt in the group. I hold my breath in anticipation. Will it work this time? The fat one will spread the force over more surface area and dissipate some of the energy. ( Helluva a way to learn about physics, eh? ) He shuffles back to my father. The look on dear old dads face makes it clear that the ruse hadn’t worked. He points to the closet again and with the resignation of a condemned man Mike goes back to the closet and gets the old, familiar, skinny brown one, dads favorite. He hands the belt to my dad and unbuttons his pants and pulls them down to thigh level along with his underwear. My father pulls him down over his knees, his pale little butt sticking up. From where I stand I can see Mikes body stiffen as he braces himself for what’s to come, his hands propped up on the side of my fathers leg and his head thrown back with his back rigid. I squint my eyes and my shoulders collapse in upon themselves as my father brings the belt down in a wide arc and swings it against Mikes bare ass with a sharp, high-pitched thwack. I flinch and tears come to my own eyes as my father, all business, repeats this motion until Mike begins to tremble and sob quietly. I figured out the game the first time my father imposed this particular punishment. You were spanked until you cried. Period. Mike had a fairly well developed stubbornness about him. He held out as long as he could, usually no more than three or four minutes. His stubbornness couldn’t come close to matching Treys, my middle brother. After Mike finally succumbed to the pain and began to cry softly, my father let him up and motioned to Trey. With his jaw set in a grim, ironic smile, he strode over to my father, all business himself, dropped his drawers and took his place over my fathers knees. When it came to this sordid business, I think Trey may have been the master. It was a sheer battle of wills as my father brought the belt down on Treys ass, over and over, methodically, like a metronome. The only sounds were the sharp crack of the belt, my fathers grunts of exertion, and my own sobbing, caused partly by my own fearful anticipation of my upcoming turn, but more out of sympathy for Trey. He was splayed stoically across my fathers knees, his body appearing almost relaxed as the intensity of the beating grew. It was a battle of wills. My father against a mere boy of ten. As was usually the case, my father gave in before Trey did. My father would stop, shake his head and pull Trey up from over his knees with a look of irritation and no small amount of perplexed admiration. Each time, after Treys turn, he would utter one word: “Okay.”I was next. As clever as I was, even at seven, I was crying softly before the leather of the belt ever touched my skin. When I heard the swish of the belt on its way to my tender little ass I bawled like a gut shot bear. When I felt the first sharp sting, I wailed like a banshee with a kidney stone, screaming and crying and flailing around like a fish on hot pavement. Not only did this seem to satisfy my fathers bloodlust, but he had such a time holding on to my writhing little body that he couldn’t get much steam behind his swings. Usually, after three or four tries, he would stand me up and push me toward the door where my brothers waited quietly. I remember grinning like the Cheshire Cat as I passed my brothers, Mike with a look of shock on his  ace, and Trey with a grin to match mine, duly appreciating my craft.

I don’t think my father was an evil man. I think he was the product of his parents to a greater degree than I am of mine. I think he was doing the best he could, after being raised by a father probably more brutal than himself. I still hate him. His best wasn’t anywhere near good enough. He was a puritanical, hypocritical son of a whore and I curse him to my dying day, which with any luck will be here soon, hence, my suicide note. Ah, my suicide note. On with it. 
          
I’ve never actually wanted to die. I’ve never wished that I could cease to exist. Quite honestly I’ve tried everything I can to learn to live. I’ve tried sex. I’ve tried drugs. I’ve tried Rock-n-Roll. I’ve tried books, and sports, and poetry and love and hate and depression and singing and music and meditation and masturbation and church and jogging and movies and crying and dancing and screaming, and on and on and on ad nauseum. Living thirty-seven years hasn’t been difficult. It’s the 1,166,832,000 seconds that have been unbearable.

Moment upon moment upon moment of sheer visceral despair. It wears upon you after awhile. When I was eighteen I was sure that I wouldn’t live to see thirty. I remember telling my friends that like it was something to be proud of. I really believed it too, I think. In retrospect, it was more of a wish than a prediction.            

I'm addicted to sadness. That's what I've been told by various people throughout my life, professional and non-professional alike. There is a lot of truth to that I suppose, as much as I hate to admit it. I've always wondered why I don't quite work, why I never seem to feel right, why I always feel at least a little off kilter. I once heard a comedian that would tell this story: "You know that feeling, when you're leaning back in a chair, just balancing there, and then you tilt too far back, and you almost fall but then you don't? I feel like that all the time!" I do feel like that all the time, like I just ran a red light and narrowly missed slamming into another car crossing the intersection. Disoriented, shaky, surprised to be alive and wondering how long it will last. Sometimes hoping it won't.            

Memory ( twelve years old) : I was seen showing my friend how to masturbate. I was jacking off in my room and coaching my friend how to do it when I looked up and saw my friend(? )Mike who lived next door leering at me from outside my window. He had climbed up on the roof to see if I wanted to come out. The next day at school everyone knew. Kids I didn't even know would come up and make jack-off motions at me with their hands. The girls would look at me with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. One kid, a popular Jock from a rich family harassed me mercilessly, taunting me in class and at lunch, always in front of big groups, usually of all the cheerleaders and popular girls. He was always trying to get me to fight him, which I refused to do. Not only was he much bigger than I was, he had all his big Jock friends around him all the time. The biggest reason I never let him goad me into a fight is that there was no way I was going to fight fair. He had the advantage in size, so I would do whatever it took to make sure he never bothered me again. I was terrified of what I might do if I got too angry. I believed I'd end up killing him, or he'd end up killing me, which even then I thought would have been preferable. I do remember bringing a knife to school one day, vowing that if he tried to get me to fight him I was going to stab him. He never did. Eventually people forgot about the whole thing. I never did.            

I have always had an affinity for darkness. Not the all-too-popular, horror-type darkness. More like Douglas Adams' "Long Dark Tea Time of The Soul" type darkness. I guess you could call it "existential frustration", to coin a Jungian term. I've never "gotten" it. When I was younger, I thought as people got older the world would start to make more sense, things would become clearer, "all would be revealed". For me it's been the opposite. I'm more confused now than I was at eighteen. The reason I think is because at eighteen I really didn't know how fucked-up I was. I was clueless. Ignorance wasn't necessarily bliss, but it sure as hell was easier. See, now I know how fucked-up I am, and I know how fucked-up the world is. Not a minute goes by when I am not reminded of these things. Whether it's the news telling me about another murder, or starving people in India, or some other disaster being reported by the Oh-so-cheerful media, or it's some private catastrophe I've orchestrated in my own life, awareness provides not quite enough rope to hang myself.              

I used to quake at lyrics from bands like Ozzy and Iron Maiden and Judas Priest until I realized the darkness inside me was at least as intense and frightening. I remember when Judas Priest was sued because of their lyrics in the song "Suicide Solution". I knew how ludicrous it was to blame them for someone committing suicide, because suicide is either in you or it isn't, and no matter how hard you try, if it's not in you, it won't happen. I still haven't figured out if it's in me, but (wait for it!) hope springs eternal.          

But I digress. It isn't intentional, my mind just likes to run in circles sometimes, like a dog chasing its tail, or a man with his foot nailed to the floor or... yada yada yada blah blah blah. You get the picture.           

Back to the task at hand. I didn't actually try to kill myself until I was twenty-five. I was almost at the end of my rope, although at the time I thought I was actually at the end of it. A few months earlier I had quit a great job that I hated almost as much as I hated myself. I consequently lost my new apartment and moved in with a friend from a show that I was doing, I think it was "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas". I leeched off of him until he couldn't afford it any more and he moved in with another friend of his, leaving me homeless. A girl I was seeing (read fucking) offered to let me stay with her in her parents house. I had nowhere to go so I did. In hindsight she just felt sorry for me. She was also fucking me out of sympathy I think. Things went really wrong when she came to me one day and told me she was pregnant and needed money for an abortion. Having no money myself, I asked my stepfather for the two-hundred and fifty bucks. He gave it to me along with the requisite lecture on responsibility ( I was way too far gone to even hear him).            

I took the girl to the clinic and gave her the money. I told her I would wait, but she said she didn't want me to. I argued with her half-heartedly and then left. I sat in my car for a few minutes and I was getting ready to leave when she walked out of the clinic, arm in arm with some guy, laughing and smiling. I ducked down so she wouldn't see me. As soon as they left I drove straight to her house, got what few belongings I had, left her a scathing note and got the hell out of there. Now I was truly homeless. I had a part-time job working at Pay-Less shoes making minimum wage. I slept in my car for a couple of weeks, showering at a friends house every three or four days. Then one day, I went to work in an extraordinarily foul mood. I started doing whatever it was that I was supposed to be doing when the manager came over and started giving me a hard time about something or other. I just ignored him and went about what I was doing. He got more and more angry, until he started shouting at me. Then he said he was going to fire me. I stood up, threw the shoes I had in my hand at his feet and said "Fuck You!" and walked out. From there I got in my car, drove straight to the beach. I sat on the sand for about an hour, contemplating what I was about to do. Finally I threw my keys in the sand, kicked my shoes off and started walking toward the ocean. I reached the water and just kept walking. No one seemed to notice me wading into the water wearing a shirt and tie. I walked until the water got over my head and then I began to swim, looking back at the shoreline every so often to see if I'd reached the point of no return. I was a strong swimmer and I got quite a ways out before I started to have second thoughts. The thoughts weren't about me, they were about my mother. She suffered from debilitating depressions and while I was swimming I kept seeing her face and seeing her in a coffin. I knew that if I did this it would kill her. No doubt about it. If I had known she was going to die four years later anyhow, I might of kept swimming and saved her and myself alot of pain. But I didn't know, so I turned around and swam back to shore.