5 Suicide Notes

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TXT5 SUICIDE NOTES

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5 Suicide Notes
By Saracen Tate
5 SUICIDE NOTES
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5 Suicide Notes
by Saracen Tate
To know more about the Author visit his website: www.saracentate.com
Send any Comments about the book to: saracentate@hotmail.com
CHAPTER 1
The tide lifted me up and placed me back in my bed. I pulled the sand around to
keep me
warm. The sea rocked me to sleep.
And so it went.
The sun was shining the day I stopped believing in God. I can�t remember much
else
from that day, except for that.
Ever since I stopped believing, my luck has been awful.
Not just bad, but damn awful. I�m too dumb to take that as any sort of message.
Stupidity and bad luck have never been a good combination.
Looking back on it all, I should have known all along how it was going to turn
out. But
you never do, until it�s done.
The weeks all blend into the horizon after awhile. So I�m not sure where to
start, but it
began with the loss of my luck. And once you lose that�
It might have been as simple as believing in God again, but probably not.
Anyway, I�m
not one to back down. I have my pride. Well, I don�t, but I�m not going to back
down.
A lot of people think they have bad luck, but that�s mostly their own fault.
Lack of
planning mostly, I imagine. Drinking or gambling their money away. Smoking their
whole lives
and then dying of cancer. Lying on their death bed lamenting their bad luck.
Fools�that�s not
bad luck�bad planning or weakness maybe, but not bad luck.
I started to take it for granted that things would never go my way, and even
started to
plan it that way. Though of course, you can�t plan to have good luck. You can�t
plan not to have
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bad luck, but you can take precautions. And you can make sure you don�t give
luck any excuses
to take you out into the back alley and beat the hell out of you.
It got to the point where my car was full of spare parts and my pockets were
full of
screws and paperclips and rubber bands. I never got to use any of them, of
course. I was just
taking precautions. You start thinking like that and you think yourself into a
corner or up a tree,
waiting for the fire department to come and rescue you.
It became clear that I had to change my luck. I know what you�re thinking.
You�re
thinking someone can�t change his or her luck. That�s what I thought, as well.
That�s how it
turned out, but it took many hours at the library before I accepted that
conclusion. Considering
the library�s attitude towards me, it�s really quite remarkable that I was able
to establish this at all.
They have asked me to stop going to the library, but since they don�t have a
restraining
order or anything like that, I�m allowed to go in there anytime I want, as long
as it�s between the
hours of 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Sunday. They are closed on Mondays.
Normally, I�d go in there and ask them a question like � How many Angels can you
fit on
the head of a pin� and they�d look at me strangely for a minute or two,
especially the janitor, and
then they�d point me in the direction of one section of books or another.
So I went in there and asked them how I could change my luck. There was a new
librarian. I�m in there quite a lot, so I know all the librarians quite well.
And the janitor, who�s
the most helpful of the lot. His name is Joe and he�s been there for
twenty-seven years. Which
means that he started working there the year I was born. He must be nearly
fifty. And he really
looks like a janitor, the way some people look like policemen or some people
look like Mafia hit
men.
You might think that most men would look like janitors if they were wearing
overalls and
carrying a mop and bucket, but I saw him coming out of a church one day and he
was in a suit
and he still looked like a janitor, though I think he was a little overdressed
to do any mopping.
Anyway, I asked the new librarian how I could change my luck. She looked a
little dazed
for awhile. There was an uncomfortable pause. I live my life in uncomfortable
pauses. She
really didn�t look like she knew what to say, so I gave in and added a
clarifying comment to
rescue her. �A book on luck�, I said. Her face warmed up. She looked like a
little kid who had
been looking at a grandfather hoping that she wouldn�t be kissed, when all of a
sudden the
grandfather smiled and gave her a chocolate bar he was hiding behind his back.
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�A book on luck�, she said, �that would be over there�. She pointed behind me.
She was
wearing short sleeves and the motion that she made, gave me a look into her
shirt through the
sleeve. I couldn�t help but look. And she saw me looking. And I saw her see me
looking. I
smiled, which I usually find to be a mistake.
�Where was that again�, I said. Once again she paused. I do enjoy the
uncomfortable
pauses that I cause. I�m not too fond of the other kind, though. She didn�t fall
for it a second
time. �Behind you in the 650�s�, she said. I can�t remember the number she said,
so if you�re
one of those people that know the Dewey decimal system like I know the starting
line up of the
1975 Montreal Canadiens, don�t bother writing me any letters, because I just
made that number
up. On second thoughts, write to me. I do like to get mail, especially when it
says occupant.
Somehow that describes me better than anything.
Every now and then I say something corny. I guess it was one of those moments.
Corny
comments don�t translate very well to the written word, so I�ll let you use your
imagination. It
was something about our discussion of luck and the fact that I had just looked
up her shirt. Send
your entries with a self-addressed stamped envelope to�
Anyway, this time she managed to avoid the uncomfortable pause with a giggle.
Normally, I get a stern look and silence.
This was the point where I always hit a brick wall. I didn�t know what to do
next, so I
panicked.
I mumbled something and headed in the direction of what I thought was the door.
Unfortunately, I went the wrong way. I ended up in the self-help section. I
found a good book
on how to make furniture from willow trees to relieve stress.
I�d always wanted to make furniture, but I�d never got round to learning the
trade. I had
spent many hours as a youth, hanging around outside the neighbourhood furniture
shop,
watching the furniture salesmen in their finery, smooth talking the customers,
but that was one
dream that had remained unfulfilled.
So, I was standing in the aisle, with this book, trying to decide if I could
wait the three
hours and twenty minutes until the librarians changed shifts, and guess who
walked up to me. It
was, of course, the librarian. She asked me if I had found the book on luck I
was looking for.
And I said that if I could find a book on luck in the self-help section, then I
really didn�t need the
book on luck after all.
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Unfortunately, I was being serious. She giggled. First, I panicked again, and
was about
to make a dash for the door�again. Who knows where I would have ended up this
time,
probably the true-life crime section or something equally as indicative of the
true nature of
mankind�readers not book subjects.
And before I could rush off, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the library
had finally
wised up.
This was a deliberate plan to get me, once and for all, out of the library. They
had put up
with my eccentricities for a number of years and not been able to get me
banished from their
musty aisles, despite the phone calls to the police.
They must have devised an elaborate plan. I�m a bookish little coward. I must be
scared
of women. They would get a librarian to make advances on me, and this would
scare me out of
the library once and for all. Devious. And it almost worked. Almost. With this
bit of
knowledge on my side, I quickly took control of the situation. The next few
minutes are a bit of
a haze. Anyway, we ended up getting married. Best six days of my life. I lost
her in a record
store. I never did catch her name.
Back to the books I picked up that day. I managed to get a couple of good books
on luck.
They advised various concoctions and talismans, which I managed to round up. I
have a feeling
that a lot of these luck things were cancelling each other out, because my luck
pretty much
stayed the same. I did lose a wife, after all. I didn�t manage to find anything
to fix my luck in
the books. So, as you could see, I had come to a dead end.
With nothing but bad luck, your options narrow considerably. There was really
only one
thing left to do. I, of course, would kill myself. You�ll note that I didn�t say
I would try and kill
myself. I would actually kill myself. I�m not really one of those melodramatic
attention seeking
suicide part-timers. I would actually pull it off. It�s all in the planning and
attention to detail.
The trick, of course, is not to make it too messy, unless you�re into that sort
of thing.
I�d always had a creative side to me, and I thought what better way to express
myself
artistically than to do it through my suicide. I had, at one point in my
artistic career, been very
well thought of by my peers, but no one in the first grade really thought I
could have a
sustainable artistic career in macaroni drawings, no matter how excellent my
drawings were.
I�ve always had a flair with pasta. And that was back in the days when pasta
only came in one
colour, not like today where it comes in all the colours of the rainbow.
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I had a dream last night. All the sheep in New Zealand managed to get to vote.
They
managed to vote the humans out of power. I�m not sure how they actually voted
because it must
have been quite difficult to vote with hooves. Anyway, they formed a minority
government.
This struck me as quite odd, because since the sheep outnumber the people by
about
twenty to one, why didn�t they get a majority government. Did they have a poor
sheep turnout,
did some of the sheep vote for people, or did rival political parties split the
sheep vote allowing
some human candidates to pick up some seats? Anyway, the sheep took power. They
didn�t
really have a strong charismatic leader or anything. It was very democratic.
They made all their
decisions by mass votes. The first thing they did was round up all the sheepdogs
and have them
shot.
Once again I�m not sure how the sheep fired the guns. They might have had some
humans working for them.
It all started with a little revenge on the sheepdogs, but before long the sheep
were on the
rampage, killing and burning and generally destroying everything in their path.
It wasn�t long,
only about six months, before the rest of the world decided to intervene, but by
then it was too
late. Everything was pretty much destroyed, and then I woke up.
I decided that would be a good way to die. Jumping in to a mob of rampaging
sheep to
try and save a sheepdog and being torn to pieces�what a heroic death. The
trouble would be
finding a pack of rampaging sheep. Actually finding a pack of sheep would be
quite difficult, as
I don�t think I�ve ever seen a sheep. Maybe they have them at the zoo.
I did ponder the sheep question for awhile, but nothing really came to mind. It
would
usually start with me thinking about sheep and how I could upset them enough to
turn them into
killers, but before long I had them jumping over fences, and then I would start
to count them.
And then I would be asleep. This carried on for several days, before I decided
to give up on the
sheep idea, though not on killing myself. It was nice to catch up on my sleep. I
really should
sleep more often.
Have I mentioned that I live on a beach on the ocean? Well, not actually on the
beach,
it�s more like a few blocks away from the beach. And it�s not really a beach,
it�s more of a water
restraining wall. And the ocean isn�t really a ocean, it�s more of a water
treatment plant, but
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when the wind picks up and the water is lapping against the wall, and the sun is
setting, it�s
almost the same.
Anyway, after sleeping on the beach for several days, I shook the sand out of my
beach
blanket and bid the other beach bums goodbye and headed inland. My library books
were due
back. I didn�t want the overdue fines crippling me with debt and the financial
commitments
forever weighing heavy on my shoulders. After easing my mind of the books, I
headed towards
the grocery store to pick up provisions. I will not tell you what I was on my
way to pick up, as
you might think me strange. I do have strange appetites.
It was the discount day for the senior citizens at the grocery store. All senior
citizens
twenty per cent off. Usually, I get my grandmother to do my shopping for me, but
I can�t
remember where I put her, so I was forced to go in there myself.
The senior citizen is the last great mammal to roam the countryside in packs. Or
maybe it
was just this supermarket. Ghengis would have to rework his definition of horde
after seeing the
number of senior citizens that I saw, in that store, on that day. Flammable
fabric and blue rinse
hair as far as the eye could see.
Actually that�s not entirely true. I do tend to exaggerate on occasion. It
wasn�t quite
wall-to-wall senior citizen. It was a little patchy in the foreign food section.
The vegetarian food
section was a little poorly covered as well. I�ll make no generalisations on
that.
I was in the check out line, where I was comparing coupons with the little old
lady in
front of me. I thought I was pretty handy with the scissors, but the little old
lady�s handy work
put me to shame. We got to talking. I asked her how her arthritis was and she
told me. It looks
like rain. If it wasn�t for the weather, people really wouldn�t be able to talk
to each other in
checkout lines, elevators, or waiting for public executions to take place.
There�s nothing quite like a public execution to bring out the people. They�ve
faded a bit
from sight this century, but from I can gather, it was like going to the circus
or tractor pulls
nowadays. Only the cream of high society would partake, because they were the
only ones
capable of really appreciating the artistic merits of government sanctioned
murder.
Though from my experience, some of the fellows that ply the tractor pull trade
across the
country, nowadays, make a puddle of mud a fantastic work of art. The roar of the
engines, the
fist pumping adrenaline, the smell of the masses. What could represent the human
condition
better. Certainly not a water colour landscape painting.
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So I asked her what she thought of painting. She said that she liked it.
�What do you like about it?�
She asked me if I was talking of about any particular painting. So I said that I
was
talking about the painting I had in my living room. Apparently she hadn�t seen
it.
I asked her if she baked. Of course she baked. Well as long as she promised to
bring me
over some baking, then she could come to my house and see my painting.
Agnes needed some help with her groceries, so I carried them home for her. I
don�t
know why senior citizens buy so much canned food. Canned food equals heavy. I
guess it must
have something to do with peace of mind. You don�t really have to worry much
about canned
food, except for botulism.
There�s a lot of pressure in buying fresh fruit. Eating it before it goes
rotten. Eating that
fresh bread before it gets mouldy. And on and on. I guess when you hit a certain
age, you just
don�t need that kind of pressure hanging over your head. Who can blame them?
Certainly not
me. It�s some kind of cruel irony that as your muscles get weaker, the food gets
heavier. Who
could believe in a God like that. Certainly not me.
I had mentioned to Agnes that she should pop round when she�d done some baking.
I
had got home and had been shouting at the television for about ten minutes when
the doorbell
rang. It was Agnes with muffins.
I don�t know how she had done it. There must be some sort of magic baking portal
that
they tell you about when you retire. I invited her in.
She did like the painting. She said she liked paintings with blue skies.
Fortunately for
my painting, it had a blue sky. I would not have switched places with that
painting for all the
plundered war treasure in Switzerland if it had had a red sky. I would not have
wanted to feel
the terrible wrath of Agnes. The muffins were really nice.
I asked her if she had any hobbies besides baking. Did she like knitting large
sweaters or
ironing? My old sweater is starting to look holier than thou and who doesn�t
like ironed clothing?
Agnes plays canasta on Thursday nights at the senior citizen centre. Apparently
the
seniors have their own gathering place. They are so well organised. I admire
that in an age
group. If they only had some pent up rage and didn�t forget things so quickly,
then they could be
quite a political force. Agnes agreed.
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What was the senior citizen centre like? Apparently it was quite nice. Someone
provided
coffee and donuts. I guess if anyone can handle sugar and caffeine, besides
policemen with
loaded weapons, it would be seniors citizens.
I asked Agnes where she lived. She mentioned something about living two doors
down.
While I was trying to remember if I had struck up the conversation in the
supermarket or if she
had, she started mumbling something about the neighbourhood.
Why did it take me half an hour to get back from her place?
Is she some sort of person that randomly picks people out at the supermarket and
manipulates them into carrying her, heavily laden down with canned food,
groceries for her with
the promise off free and easy baking goods?
Was it some sort of coincidence that she was able to show up so quickly at my
front door
with fresh from the oven muffins?
Were the muffins full of real creamery butter or something more sinister?
Was I about to be the latest victim of a mass murdering granny? I thought I�d
better get
her out of here as quickly as possible. I had to promise to go to canasta night
on Thursday to
finally get her out.
I hope she doesn�t think we�re dating, because I�m not really over my wife yet.
After several hours, I decided the muffins hadn�t been laced with anything,
unless, of
course, she was planning to poison me gradually over many months to avoid
arousing suspicion
with the authorities. This would actually be a good thing as it would save me
the bother of
actually having to kill myself. It would also give me time to work on my suicide
note, and I
wouldn�t have to do my own baking. Besides my oven wasn�t working properly. I
won�t bother
explaining that incident to you, as it involves paper mache and is not in the
least bit flattering.
CHAPTER 2
I think I lost my sex drive when I was about twenty-six. That was when I started
forgetting to masturbate on a regular basis. I started scheduling it, so I
wouldn�t forget. I�d put it
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in my daytimer. Thursday before bed- Masturbate. Or I least I would have done
that if I was the
kind of person to do that sort of thing. Keep a daytimer, not masturbate.
A lot of things in life are like that. You don�t really notice them waning, and
all of a
sudden they�re gone and you�re left wondering where they�ve gone. I guess it�s
all in your
perception. If things change in such tiny incremental amounts that you don�t
notice, then they go
from being 100 percent to nothing instantaneously and you never even notice.
I guess the only way to keep a check on these sort of things is to constantly
monitor and
graph things like sexual drive, cynicism, fashion sense, trust in the
establishment. You could
have months on the x-axis and the percentage of things today that I read that I
believed on the yaxis.
You could set up a threshold of ,say something like 95%, and when you hit that
point you
could consider yourself beyond any hope, and then follow through with what ever
you had
planned before.
If you decide, as some sort of free thinking cynic and man-of-the-world
eighteen-yearold,
that you�d rather die than sell out to the corporate oligarchy that runs the
world, then you
better set something up before you join their ranks. It happens so
inperceptively. One minute,
you�re throwing up in an alley, the next, you�re driving the kids to soccer in
the station wagon.
To save yourself from turning into a sell out, you have to set yourself a
threshhold. And once
you hit that threshhold, you would have to kill yourself. You would have to plan
something
before you had gone too far, because as you age your perspective changes. Do I
really mind
earning a decent salary and getting a house in the suburbs and walking the
golden retriever twice
a day? It�s not really a bad thing to sell your soul for. Is it? So what if I
have to lick up
whatever degrading substance falls from above, onto my desk.
None of these sort of thoughts were going through my head as I wrote my suicide
note.
I�ll hope you�ll take the time to read my suicide notes. I�ve made the mistake
of formatting them
like poetry. Whenever I see poetry in the text of something I�m reading, I
automatically skip to
the next section, because I can�t stand poetry unless it�s sung to music. What
follows below is
my first attempt at a suicide note. I thought I�d go for the traditional standby
suicide note. There
is something so timeless about it.
There�s no point in going on
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Nothing means anything
We�re all just wasting time doing the pointless
Nothing of anything we achieve or create will exist in a thousand years
Time melts everything and everyone into nothingness
Why wait til nature takes me down
when I can save myself the trouble of getting out of bed everyday
I�m too sensitive to live a cruel and humane world
My will is under my mattress in the midst of alot of money
Just kidding about the money.
Well, not quite the traditional suicide note I was going for, but as close to
one as I can
get. I�m wondering about the etiquette of laughing at a joke in a suicide note.
Do you laugh?
I really couldn�t resist putting it in. At least, I�d probably get an
uncomfortable pause or
two.
That�s one word that really annoys me, when I�m inclined to be annoyed by words.
Humane. Humans are base, cruel, hateful creatures that are only kept in line by
an iron heel or
free and easy living. Give a man a ridiculous salary and you don�t have to worry
about beating
him into the ground. Humane. If I understood irony then maybe I could make some
sort of
clever comment, but I�m only capable of sub-human mumblings.
I�ll admit that it was pretty short as suicide notes go. Normally people try and
squeeze a
whole life of failures and depressions into a page or two. But who wants to read
more than a few
lines. Yes, he killed himself. Why did he do it? Here it is on line three. His
wife slept with all
the members of the local sewing club.
All suicide notes should have to be proof read by some sort of editor.
And who wants to make a spelling mistake on a suicide note. That�s a lot of
pressure.
That�s why I didn�t kill myself sooner, the pressure of spelling mistakes. Who
want�s to see a
(sic) placed in a reproduction of their suicide note.
I guess that�s why I never really got a job, because there were never any
interesting jobs
like suicide note editor. Must have fine attention to detail and good grammar
skills. Some late
evenings. Must have car.
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That was the note I had in my pocket on Thursday evening as I headed over to
Agnes�
senior citizen centre for canasta night. I didn�t really have a plan, which was
probably my
downfall. All I had was some sort of vague idea of making the sheep so angry
that they tore me
into pieces. That�s a romantic suicide, isn�t it? Torn to pieces. Or hacked to
bits. Something so
modern day about being rendered into little pieces. If only they could take me
down to the
quantum level, the same way my soul had evaporated.
I�m not normally into describing things, but this den of canasta does deserve
some sort of
description since it was going to be the scene of my last heart beats, unless
the doctors got my
heart out fast enough and passed it on to some sixty-five year old chain
smoking, never exercised
in his life, tax lawyering, hunting, racist. My well maintained heart. Twenty
thousand miles.
One owner. Never taken above third gear.
Floral patterns. Curtains, wallpaper, carpet, furniture�all flower patterns�all
different
flower patterns.
I guess whoever had set this place up had thought that if you could have gardens
with lots
of different types and colours of flowers then you could do that sort of thing
in a senior citizen
centre.
I had a moment of pity for the senior citizens. How could they concentrate on
their
canasta with all these different patterns competing for their attention? But the
moment quickly
passed. Empathy is something that has never been in my emotional battery. Anger,
rage, hatred,
despair�sure, but not pity. Pity is for the weak and those that have so much
excess emotional
energy that they can give it away like used train tickets.
Twenty senior citizens, no waiting. Agnes was there. She had her game face on.
She
was taking her canasta game very seriously. I guess you don�t live to that sort
of age with out
taking things seriously. I found a comfy flowered chair and settled into it near
Agnes� game.
We exchanged pleasantries, and she invited me to play in the next game.
The hour I spent waiting for the game to end gave me time to think. The question
was
�how do I get the senior citizens into a killing rage�. I thought about setting
a couple of them on
fire. That might do it, but I�m not really a murdering sort . Sure, I might fit
the profile. But I
don�t really have the reflexes, and I�m lazy. I just know that if I was to try
and kill someone and
they got the upper hand and managed to escape, I�d just be too lazy to bother
chasing them.
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Plus, I don�t really like the sight of blood. No, I don�t think I could kill
some one. If it
was one of those situations where it was either me or him, the trick would be
getting him to write
my suicide note for me. Most murderers must be highly motivated, just because it
must take a
huge amount of energy to actually kill anyone.
There was a man sitting in similar sort of flowered chair to the one I was
occupying. He
was sitting by the window. Actually the chair was directly facing the window,
and it looked like
the world was his television.
I asked him his name. Apparently, his name was Ted. I asked him if there were
any
good shows on. He said, �The good shows came on later when it was last call at
the bar across
the road, and all the young miscreants came out and started carrying on outside
the bar, but until
then it was mostly repeats.�
Okay, he didn�t really say that, but that�s what I would have said if I had been
him. What
he said was more like �Are you sassing me?.� Which I replied, �Of course not,
sir.�
�My son used to talk to me like that.�
�What happened to him?�
�I put him in a potato sack and tossed him in the river.� Apparently people were
allowed
to do that sort of thing in the olden days.
I wouldn�t have lasted five minutes in the olden days.
I decided this man was going to be my saviour. He was going to be the one that
saved
me the trouble of killing myself.
�What else did your son say to make you an unblinking killing machine.�
�Are you sassing me? I don�t have half a mind to whup yer ass.� I thought, �Hey,
I�m
halfway there.� Then he dozed off. I didn�t really have the heart to wake him.
There must be a
dozen of him in here if I�m to believe conventional wisdom on crotchy old men
stereotypes.
There was a man with a blue felt fedora looking handsomely smug in one of the
many
corners in the senior centre. This particular room had about a dozen corners,
each occupied by
someone. I guess it helps you to live longer if you keep your back to a corner
and your front to
the world, except for Ted. Anyone could have snuck up on Ted and quickly stuck a
ball point
pen through his neck with him being none the wiser.
Anyway, I went up to fedora hat man and asked him if he had been a communist in
the
fifties because I�d seen his name on the list. Panic washed across his face like
the saliva of a
5 SUICIDE NOTES
14
golden retriever happy to see his master. I think he would have made a dash for
the door if
someone hadn�t stashed his walker in a nearby closet.
�I don�t know what you�re talking about.�
�There is no point in lying anymore. We have finally caught you and you will not
get
away. We must have the names of all your fellow commie friends and
acquaintances. If you do
not tell us right away we will begin the torture, and I must warn you that
torture techniques have
improved significantly since you last saw a James bond movie.� This seemed to
scare him.
Apparently he had seen a James Bond movie. This had been a gamble on my part.
You
can never be sure what cultural references some one will be able to grasp. I
then added that it
was quite possible that only one of us would leave the room alive. This was more
for effect than
anything.
�Give me the names, now.� He started giving me a list of names. I think he was
making
them up, because there were a number of film stars, some baseball players, and
just about all the
presidents from the past century.
It must be terrifying to be old. Like being in a poorly lit room, with cotton
wool in your
ears, and everyone treats you like an old person.
This fellow was still spitting out names. I got up and went over and got myself
a coffee
and a donut with sprinkles. The fellow was still adding to the list. Some sort
of attendant came
up and said that I�d been upsetting some of the senior citizens and that I
really should leave. I
replied that that old fellow just started listing out those names with no
provocation from me
whatsoever. �I think they were people that he used to know that are dead now.�
Agnes, who by this time had finished her game, rescued me. She had won, in case
you�re
interested, because I certainly wasn�t, unless of course she had cheated to do
it.
Agnes said that I was here to see her and I was her invited guest.
I�m under the impression that they are allowed to invite one guest a month. Well
at least
I was safe for a few weeks after this one.
She had brought me banana bread. She thought this was the proper moment to bring
it
out. I would have to return the Tupperware after I was done with the bread.
Little did she know
about my Tupperware hoarding problem. I�ve had counselling about it, but if
anything, it has
only made the problem worse.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
15
I went over to Agnes� table to join the game. On the way, we walked by fedora
man. He
was still reciting out names. I think he was on to the names of his and his
neighbours dogs.
Sparky, Snowball and Jack Russell will be rounded up and interrogated tomorrow
morning.
Once seated, I casually brought up their policy on cheating. They said that they
didn�t
have to worry about that sort of thing, since we were all respectable people
here and that sort of
thing didn�t happen�here.
I guess that�s why they didn�t let Ted or fedora man play. Those two just
weren�t
respectable enough.
I managed to win the game. I won�t say how I cheated but I did. If you notice a
surprising lack of detail in some of my descriptions, such as my cheating
techniques, it�s usually
because I�m lying. I didn�t really cheat. These senior citizens are too shrewd
for a simpleton
like myself to get away with cheating them out of a game. I wasn�t on the
winning side of things
either.
Winning isn�t everything. I think I�ve heard that sort of thought expressed
among the
heaving sweating masses. They are probably wrong, but who wants to argue with
sweaty people.
Certainly not me.
I usually give up after I lose at something once. I�m not really a sucker for
punishment.
Though I do like a bit of pain every now and then to remind me I�m alive, or at
least awake. You
don�t feel pain when you�re asleep.
At least I don�t think you do. I�m thinking of making up some fake credentials
and
getting a grant to do a study on the subject. I�ll just find some similar sort
of report and change a
couple of lines here and there and have all the money to spend on some sort of
extravagant crosscountry
bus trip. I�d stay in high class two star motels and partake in the fine cuisine
of the most
discriminating truck stops. Living the high life. It just can�t be wrong.
Some people just shouldn�t have money. I think that�s true and it should be the
people
that say such crazy things that go without. I�m full of clich�s tonight. It must
be the donut
speaking. More likely the spinkles.
Another cliche that I like is the �youth is wasted on the young� one. If that is
true then
money is wasted on the old. What sane person would spend money on a station
wagon or give
money to a political party. Senility sets in when you first bother to cast a
vote.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
16
Where am I? That thought usually goes through my head several times a day. I�m
not
always able to answer that question. But on this occasion, instead of being
scared and panicky
about being surrounded by senior citizens, I remembered that I was playing cards
with Agnes
and her cohorts.
Some words are good and some words are bad. I do like the word cohort. It�s not
quite
as good as finicky, but close.
It�s really tough to play canasta if you�re not paying attention. About every
two minutes
I�d hear Lupee, it�s your turn to play a card.
I told Agnes my name was Lupee. It wasn�t really, but when she pressured me with
that
what is your name question, I panicked. I couldn�t remember what it was really,
and instead of
being sensible and looking in my wallet, I made something up. And she has been
calling me
Lupee ever since. It does grow on you, like an invisible sort of fungus.
So I played a card, I�m not sure what it was, but Agnes smiled. That�s my
philosophy in
one line.
So I played a card, I�m not sure what it was, but Agnes smiled.
I always thought I had bad luck, but sometimes bad luck is cancelled out by good
planning.
If you remember me saying something that does not quite match up to that, then
you are
probably going senile.
I always thought I had bad luck, but sometimes bad luck is cancelled out by good
planning.
I don�t know how that applies to me, but we won the next game, and I jumped over
the
table to celebrate.
I was quickly ushered out into the cool night with all those donut sprinkles in
the sky
watching me. I was a little confused.
Okay, I was a little more confused than normal. I have never been kicked out of
a senior
citizen centre before. Sure, I�ve been kicked out of Kareoke bars and, of
course, libraries, but
never a senior citizen centre.
I�m a good singer. I don�t want you to get the wrong idea. I don�t get kicked
out of
Kareoke bars because of my singing. It must be something else. I�m not sure
what.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
17
Communism. That�s it. I got kicked out because I�m a communist. Or at least
until I get
some stuff and then I�ll be a capitalist. Every one has a price. Some people
just cost more. A
crust of bread or a seat in the senate. What is the difference after the cost of
inflation and the
standards of living are factored in?
I�m sorry. Getting kicked out of places does make me reflective and
antagonistic. I�ll
regret some of my comments in the morning, if I can remember them. Thank the
gold standard,
that none of this is being recorded.
It is really tough to swear, mild ones only, when you�ve given up believing in
God.
Goddamn. Not allowed.
Zeus, strike that fellow with a thunderbolt.
I wandered around the dark and gloomy streets like only a godless communist
looking to
end it all by his own hand could. After hours and hours of aimless
wandering�okay, it was
about six minutes until I was sitting on a park bench. Where were the birds? How
was I
supposed to sit on the bench and feed the birds if there were no birds? Where do
birds go at
night?
I ate the banana bread. It was very chewy, and made me thirsty. I had nothing to
drink.
Maybe that was it. Maybe Agnes had killed me with her banana bread. I would just
sit
here until I died of thirst. It might take a few days. I�m not too sure how long
it takes to die
from dehydration. Maybe if I got some more banana bread I could speed up the
process. I�m not
really the patient type. It�s this short attention span that I�ve developed
growing up in the�what
decade is it. You might have to fill that one in yourself if I can�t remember.
It must be all that
television.
Where do you get banana bread at quarter to nine on a Thursday night? That�s
what was
going through my head at that moment. And where did I put my car? I hadn�t seen
it for days. I
hope it was okay.
Bakeries would have banana bread�but they close early.
I wandered into a grocery store. Less than two chapters in and I�ve been in two
supermarkets. I�m telling you too much about myself, aren�t I?
I tend to prefer to go into the supermarkets late at night when no else is in
there and the
cashiers are too scared of people strange enough to do their shopping at three
in the morning to
5 SUICIDE NOTES
18
strike up a casual conversation. Or maybe they are inherently anti-social and
have chosen this
shift specifically.
The shelves were about 90 per cent empty. It looked like there had been a
Tornado
warning or something and everyone had rushed down to the store to hoard all the
supplies they
could get their hands on. I hadn�t been keeping up on the news, so something
like this was
always possible. Though, I don�t think canasta night would have been quite so
peaceful if there
had been a severe weather warning.
I asked one of the friendlier looking cashiers, though there wasn�t much to
chose from, if
we were at war or something.
I have been met with a number of blank looks before, but this was by the far the
blankest.
I then realised that my glasses were a little dirty and that I was talking to a
cardboard cut out of
some celebrity or other. Like anybody I have my good days and my bad days. You
must also
remember that I was suffering severely from dehydration and possibly from shock.
I not sure
about the shock, but if you can describe all the symptoms then I could probably
have a very
believable case of shock.
Same question, different cashier, same sort of response. �Are you wearing any
underwear?�
�Yes�, he said.
�I was just seeing if you were awake. I really have no interest in your
undergarments.
Why are the shelves empty? Are we at war?�
�The shelves are empty because we are closing down.�
Apparently, eating food just wasn�t popular with the youngsters anymore.
�No, we are not at war, though one of those tinpot banana republics should get
its ass
kicked.� His words, not mine.
�Do you have any banana bread?�
�Try one of those banana republics.� Laughter. His, not mine.
I decided the employee of the month was not going to be anymore help. I turned
and went
looking for the bakery section, which I duly found. I bought seven loaves of
banana bread. I
was only going to buy five, but I had enough money to buy them all. I just knew
some other
person was going to come in here looking for an emergency banana bread and find
none.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
19
Sometimes, when I have money, which isn�t very often, because I do things like
this. I�ll
go into a shop and buy up the entire supply of drain cleaner or barbecue lighter
fluid, or
something similar that people might make a special trip out to the supermarket
to get. They�ll
arrive and find nothing and have to go off to another store.
I�m petty, but I do get some revenge back on the world. It�s also interesting to
see the
look on the cashier�s face when you show up at the checkout with eighteen cans
of lighter fluid
and one packet of matches. Another good combination is razor blades and apples
around
Halloween time.
I intentionally went to another cashier to make my purchase. I thought the
cardboard cut
out might have trouble cashing a ten.
When I got home, I laid all seven banana breads out on my kitchen table and
looked at
them for a bit. I inadvertently had a glass of milk, because I had momentarily
forgotten my
intention to dehydrate myself to death.
I was glad I had bought all seven after all. I started eating the banana breads.
I finished
one relatively quickly. It was quite moist, much moister than Agnes� banana
bread, and I didn�t
really feel that thirsty, so I had another. I don�t usually put butter on banana
bread, but
considering this was my last meal, I though, �What the hell.� Sorry about that.
Don�t believe in
Hell. I thought, �What the harm.�
At this point, I was full. I hadn�t counted on that. I really have to plan these
things out
better.
I decided to watch TV, which was unfortunate, because I had thrown the toaster
through
the television earlier in the day.
It had made quite a mess. I had a quick look at the remote control to see if
there were any
buttons for cleaning up the mess caused by poor program selections. Alas, there
weren�t.
I must have dozed off.
I was having the dream where I was walking through the desert looking for an
oasis. I
came upon an oasis. There were various Middle Eastern leaders standing in a big
circle around
the water. I wouldn�t have recognised them as Middle Eastern leaders except they
were wearing
sashes like beauty contestants.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
20
These sashes identified which country they were currently running. They were all
holding the boxed version of twister, and anytime time I tried to make a move
towards the water
they would say �You want water, first you beat me at twister.�
I have a slight issue with twister. It is a regular participant in my dreams.
Actually, a
number of board games make regular appearances in my dreams.
I was really thirsty, and contemplating a game of twister, when all of a sudden
the 101st
Airborne started dropping out of the sky and they all had copies of twister and
I panicked and ran
off.
I ran and I ran.
It wasn�t the kind of dream where I was running in quick sand, but instead I was
bouncing along on trampolines. It was a little tricky at first, but once I got
the hang of the
bounce I started to move along at a pretty good pace. It was much easier than
twister. It was
actually quite fun and I forgot I was thirsty.
I must have kept on sleeping, because I woke up at the usual time. I was really
thirsty,
and I had this spot in my mouth directly above the back of my tongue that was
particularly dry. I
must say that going to bed thirsty seems to have cleared up my drooling problem.
The pleasure
of waking up on a dry pillow is just not describable.
I managed to restrain myself from getting a drink, which is not that easy to do
during the
early hours of the day when you are not at your brightest.
If you want to play along, eat about thirty crackers and you can feel the
horrible thirst that
was my burden first thing on that cold august day.
It would have been cold if it had been August, but to be perfectly honest I�m
not entirely
sure what month it was. Good thing I don�t have a checking account, or people
would be getting
some strange cheques. 10 million rupees to the shah of Iran�re Twister�August
16th/1964.
Actually, I just remembered that I do have a checking account. The Bank was
giving
away toasters to everyone who opened a checking account. I really needed a
toaster at the time.
I�m not sure why? I don�t eat toast, unless it�s French.
I think it was the pressure created by society on every individual to own a
toaster.
Looking back in hindsight it was probably quite fortunate that I had opened that
checking
account on that cold August day a few months back. If I hadn�t got that toaster,
then I might
have thrown something more valuable through the television last night.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
21
Come to think of it, the toaster was the most valuable thing I owned. It was an
eight
slicer, chrome, and you could select how brown you wanted your toast. It had
never been used.
Okay, I used it once, to see if it would dry my socks. I�ll save you the details
of that experiment.
It did dry socks very well, so well, in fact that I had to get them wet again to
put out the
flames.
My fridge was full of beer. I almost said cold beer, but that would have been a
lie, as the
fridge wasn�t working. It�s strange how someone will still put stuff in the
fridge to cool down,
even if it�s not working.
I don�t know how anyone can doubt the theory of evolution on such evidence.
In less than thirty years it has been ingrained into my DNA that if you want
something
cold then you put it in the fridge.
DNA does not understand the concept of on or off apparently. Anyone looking for
a PhD
topic might be interested in that. Send me a copy. I�m interested in the
results. Actually just
send me the last page with your conclusion. I don�t really want to have to go
through all the
bloat and fluff you made up to fill in all those pages.
All this talk of bloat reminded me of my mission. I ate two more banana breads.
This
was an extremely difficult task with no saliva. It would have proved impossible
without the help
of the butter. Butter is nature�s lubricant. I can�t believe I wrote that,
either.
I decided that this loaf was going to be my last. There was not a chance on
Darwin�s
green earth that I could manage another moist and delicious crumb of that banana
bread, even
with the help of all the butter in China.
I just sat there.
I thought of all that beer at room temperature sitting in my fridge, and I
thought of the tap
and all the glasses sitting waiting to be cleaned with all that delicious water
from the tap, and I
thought of all those liquidy sort of cleaning products under the kitchen sink
that were covered in
dust, and I, of course, thought of all that lovely water in the toilet just
waiting to be scooped up
by my hands and cascaded down my throat.
I had never understood why dogs drank from the toilet until now.
I even thought of drinking my own urine, but I thought that might be against the
rules. I
did argue that around a bit in my mind before deciding against it. Drinking my
own urine would
keep me alive a little longer, and I was trying to avoid that. I did wonder what
urine tasted like,
5 SUICIDE NOTES
22
since I had never tasted it, and this might be my last chance. This was probably
the argument of
a desperate man looking to live one second longer.
I was very close to breaking down and doing the old �all the things I have never
done�
routine before snapping out of it.
I have never drank my own urine. I have never climbed Mount Everest. I have
never
been to the moon. I have never held a professional wrestling belt over my head.
But I managed
to stop myself before I went too far down that road.
It is so easy to wallow in your own despair. Listening to that song over and
over and
over until the neighbours come over and tell you that if you play that song one
more time that
they are going to split your head open with a croquet mallet.
They, of course, brandish the mallet when they show up at your door.
I was always more of a tennis player. I�ve never really understood the nuances
of
croquet.
But you have to keep playing that song, so you put it on so quietly that you can
hardly
hear it and you turn off the lights to help your ears out, and you lie on your
bed just listening to
that song. And every time that song goes through it makes things one degree
worse, and it gets
to the point where you are paralysed and it takes all your energy to turn the
music off, and you sit
in the dark staring at the stain in the ceiling from the time your upstairs
neighbour let her tub
overflow. And you just lie there thinking and thinking. And the walls and
ceiling start to close
in on you and if you had the energy you would get up and run, but you don�t have
the energy, so
you just lie there and things get worse.
But I managed to stop myself before I went down that road.
I have a long standing policy on not killing myself when I�m actually depressed.
That
would be too easy. I�ve also promised myself that I will only kill myself if I
have not been
sitting in a darkened room for a large number of successive hours. Anyone could
drive himself
or herself to suicide if they sat in some manufactured cave by themselves
drinking for days and
days on end.
Try to sit in a darkened room for days and days on end and not drink. It can�t
be done.
Instead of getting depressed and forcing myself to postpone my imminent suicide,
I made
blueberry muffins.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
23
I only have two recipes memorised. One of them is blueberry muffins the other is
French
toast. I learned to cook French toast, not so, as you might think, I could tell
people I could cook
French cuisine, but because the previous tenants had left a carton of eggs in
the fridge. I had
phoned up the egg advisory board and asked their advice on what to do with these
orphaned
eggs. They had made the very helpful suggestion of making French toast, which to
this day I
cook on a very regular basis.
I do tend to make good use of free phone lines. It�s always nice to talk to
someone when
it�s too rainy to go over to the library.
I have one of those phones that can store ten numbers that you dial most often
and all
mine are free phone lines to large multinational companies.
Actually, that�s not entirely true, as is most of the stuff I write. I do have
the pope�s
number in there somewhere�though I guess in a way Catholicism is, in certain
respects, a large
multinational company. Try and float that stock offering.
That is quite a terrifying thought.
Believers in the religion are customers. The pope is the chairman. The churches
are
shopping outlets. Redemption and eternal life are the products.
IBM is up one and a third, PepsiCo is unchanged, and trading in Catholicism has
been
suspended on news that the Jews were right.
They could advertise on the television�.oh, wait�I think they�ve done that
already.
All the good ideas have been used up. I think the thing to do is just to pretend
to think
them up again and pass them off as your own.
Actually, that sounds like an original idea. That idea is mine and mine alone.
Don�t even
think of stealing it, or I�ll set my lawyers on you.
I have two lawyers that I house in my garden.
I have them chained up to an extremely heavy iron rod that has neatly impaled my
garden.
They growl when you go near them and enjoy knawing large bones. I just leave
them
tied up in the back all the time and if it weren�t for the fact that they are
lawyers, I would
probably have the animal welfare people on my back.
But since they are lawyers, I can pretty much do with them what I want.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
24
I have an electric cattle prod, which they are not too fond of. I sometimes hose
them
down. This is done so the neighbours don�t complain about the smell rather than
for any
altruistic reason.
So, I had the choice between making blueberry muffins and French toast. I
decided to go
with the muffins, on the basis of aroma.
I had them whipped up and in the oven in Agnes-like quickness. When I set my
mind to
doing something I can be quite efficient.
Somewhere during the baking process, I lost control, like a man bobbing up and
down
with a thousand miles of salty ocean around him and nothing to drink. Instead of
drinking the
salt water, I went for the toilet. I probably would have been better off going
for the tap, but as I
have said before, I was mad with thirst.
I think I�m using too much bleach in the toilet. Maybe I�ll try a
lemon-flavoured toilet
cleaner next time.
I had failed my first suicide attempt. But I was upbeat. Got to get back up on
that tractor
when the twister takes you off.
I�ll file this event away as a learning experience. I�ll pack up my clich�s and
come back
harder and stronger next time and I will accomplish the mission. You can�t keep
a good social
deviant down. Well, you can, but it takes a straight jacket and a lot of crazy
glue.
Considering that I was no longer concerned with dehydrating myself, I liberated
the beer
from its cramped and tortuous conditions in the fridge. Long live the
revolution. Free the beer.
Destroy the fascists.
CHAPTER 3
When I was eleven, I got three wishes. I wished for more upsets in the playoffs,
and I
wished for more natural disasters because the news was boring.
I decided to save the third wish, in case anyone that I knew died and I had to
bring them
back to life. I�m still sitting on that one wish. I hadn�t often thought of
bringing that one wish
out and finally using it up, but every now and again, it did cross my mind. Now
was one of those
times.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
25
I�d locked myself out of my house, and I had tried all the doors and windows. I
didn�t
have a key hidden anywhere or anything like that.
After spending half an hour trying to decide whether to use my last wish up or
not, I
decided to smash a window. I cut my hand. I hadn�t thought about what I was
going to do after
I�d smashed the window, and found out that the window was a little too small for
me to crawl
through, so I had to smash another one. I managed to get in. I stuck my hand in
a bag of flour to
stop the bleeding.
I tried to remember if winter was coming or going, and went with the hypothesis
that
since it was lighter when I got up each day, it must be moving towards summer.
This could
simply have been because I was just sleeping in longer, but I don�t often argue
with myself, so I
made this my final guess, and decided I didn�t have to bother fixing the windows
for several
months.
It was still cold now so I thought I�d better make up some sort of temporary
fix. I
wrapped the windows up in plastic wrap, which is transparent for this exact
reason. I really
didn�t notice any difference in overall window performance. And I still had my
wish.
Remember that, because it might come up again.
I couldn�t remember why I had left the house in the first place, but I decided
to sit around
until I remembered, rather than just walking adrift outside, letting the waves
push me up against
one wall and then another.
I had a little look around the living room and was quite shocked at the state it
was in.
You don�t really notice the state of a room when the curtains are drawn and the
lights are off, but
I�d opened up the curtains to crawl through the window.
There was a pile of broken glass, another pile of broken glasses and yet another
pile of
broken glasses, and then there was the television and the toaster. I�ll stop
there unless you think
me a slob.
I closed the curtains and the room was as clean and sterile as the classical
music page of
the newspaper. You could wrap fish with my living room.
Beauty and cleanliness are only a light switch away. I really should clean this
place up
properly before I kill myself. On second thoughts, I don�t want to waste all my
energy on
cleaning and then be too worn out to kill myself. What should I do?
5 SUICIDE NOTES
26
Gaughain. I�d get in a knife fight with Gaughain. That was always good for a
laugh.
The crazy Frenchman couldn�t stick a knife in a cow-sized slab of butter if it
had him pinned
against a barn door.
Gaughain was a fellow who sometimes drank in the same bar that I did. We had
mutual
distrust of municipal employees and a love of cave man drawings. It�s very hard
to find people
with similar strange hobbies as oneself, unless of course you�re in England
where every one has
at least one strange hobby. If you can find more than ten people with that
strange hobby, in
England, then they televise it.
Sorry about that. I was once trapped in the gardening section of an English
library for
several hours, and I haven�t quite gotten over it yet.
I�m not sure where I�d got my love of cave man drawings, but there is something
about
seeing bad art up on walls and in books that make you feel good about your own
scribblings. So
there it was. I was off to find Gaughain.
It had started to rain. The sky felt like a thousand pounds of cotton pressing
down on my
head. It was a short walk to Tolstoy�s Bar and Grill. Nothing much came off the
grill except for
an occasional grilled cheese sandwich. Gaughain was not there, but it was still
early. The rain
stopped and the clouds cleared. The sun was high and sprightly in the sky. I
waited through half
a dozen drinks.
Gaughain pranced in like only he could. I sank into my bean bag chair a little
more than I
already had. I did not want him to see me in case he made a dash for it. I let
him get through a
couple of drinks. And just as he ordered his third I crept up behind him and
stuck a plastic fork
in his back and asked him if he had ever had plastic fork poisoning.
He turned around as only a semi-literate water logged Frenchman could.
�How did we leave it, you sonofabitch��French accent turned on.
�I think you said you would kill me the next time you saw me�, I mumbled.
�How drunk was I?�
�About as drunk as a Frenchman could get, without declaring their home a
Republic and
bringing out their guillotine�, I said.
�Drunk, I was then. You have nothing to fear then.�
�Not with your hand-eye co-ordination�, I said.
�I have great hand-eye co-ordination.�
5 SUICIDE NOTES
27
So I said,�For a Frenchman.�
�Quoi?�
�Where are your henchmen?�
�They are working on a job.�
�A big baguette shipment going to fall off a truck, is it?�
He touched his nose. Actually, it was more of a pick.
Gaughain was of moderate height and weight. He had last showered when I was
casting
my first vote. I voted in the grade six student elections. It was a hard fought
campaign and the
best person didn�t win, but ain�t that democracy.
Gaughain had a limp, an eye patch, a lisp and stuff constantly dripped out of
one ear, if
he had had a cat to stroke then he could have been a spy movie villain. Alas, he
was just a
pathetic Frenchman with a number of defects and a large collection of henchmen.
I�m not sure what he did, but I don�t think it was allowed under New York state
law or
even Queensland State law, but whatever it was it provided him with a large
enough income to
buy himself a pretty little wife to dry out his ear and buy him fashionable new
eye patches.
Going once, Going twice, sold to the Frenchman with the limp in the back row.
When was
slavery abolished? I think some people are still waiting.
�You must not get me started on my business, because then I talk and talk. You
can buy
me a drink and tell me where man�s conscious has gone.�
�Any man in particular�, I asked?
�No, no�all men. Where has their conscious gone?�
�Are you talking about any incident in particular?�
�I was reading the paper this morning��
�Why?�
�I like to know what is going on, and I read an article about this mother and
this baby��
�Does it have a happy ending?�
�No, of course it doesn�t have a happy ending.�
�Then why would I want to hear about it?�
�Do you not concern yourself with things that do not have a happy ending?�
�Not if I can help it.�
�You would not make a good Frenchman.�
5 SUICIDE NOTES
28
�And what makes a good Frenchman?�
�Too difficult to explain to someone who was born under the suffocating weight
of a
plastic mountain.�
Sometimes Gaughain did get a little caught up in his own imagery. Sometimes to
the
point where he was not sure entirely what he was saying.
�I told him I had no money and that if he lent me some money then I could buy
him a
drink.�
After running up a not totally insignificant debt with him, and after wading
through a
dozen or so drinks, double ryes if you see me in a bar and want to buy me a
drink, and after
discussing the usual mess of topics we got down to a little name calling.
He called me a scurvy ridden misanthrope. I can deal with scurvy ridden. I just
can�t
stand it when he says I have rickets. I called him a two-faced leprosy ridden
vagabond. I never
have been able to string two words together into anything meaningful. Even
though I lacked
imagination, I was able to avoid telling him that he was also a scurvy ridden
misanthrope. I also
told him that he was a pathetic tennis player and couldn�t serve a ball if he
was given a silver tray
and a butlers uniform (, or French maid�s outfit).
Unfortunately for Gaughain, in a weaker moment�he was severely weakened by an
excessive number of drinks, excessive even by our standards�he had confided to
me his dream
to be a professional tennis player. Once you know someone�s deepest desire you
own them, like
a penny in your pocket.
Whenever I brought up the tennis, his expression would turn to that of someone
who had
just had a racquet driven deep into his abdomen and was being lifted painfully
off the ground by
it.
This was how I would usually start things with him. Depending on my mood I�d
move
on from there. Today, I followed it up by asking him if he could show me how he
would jump
over the net after he had won the French Open in front of his people.
The knife was out. He made reckless jabs at me, like he was sewing with a string
of
sausages. I weaved back and forth easily dodging his clumsy attempts to puncture
me. It sounds
pretty good , and you probably think that I�m extremely dextrous, but I�m
probably overstating
things a bit. It�s really not difficult to dodge the blows of a drunk Frenchman
with no depth
perception, unless of course you are drunker than he or it is pitch black.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
29
One thing I always had to make sure of when I met Gaughain was that I was sober,
because as sure as February followed January, Gaughain would be drunk. It then
turned into a
matter of keeping pace with him.
If you�ve been keeping track you might remember that I had had some to drink
before I
met him, but this probably put us on even footing, because he had probably had
at least as much.
I�m not entirely sure how he ran a successful business. I guess it was genuine
business
acumen, or maybe he owned a gun. No, he didn�t own a gun, or many moons ago I
would have
had to dodge bullets rather than the weaving knife.
He would eventually get tired of trying to kill me and he would collapse into
any seat
conveniently near enough to a drink. It usually wasn�t his, but after seeing him
with his knife
and hearing him babbling about the French Open, most people were happy to
sacrifice a drink or
two to the French God of public displays of drunkenness.
He had had managed to remove the occupants of a table. The table held a couple
of
drinks, so I quickly moved into position across the table from Gaughain and
casually took
ownership of one of the drinks. It had an umbrella in it, which might prove
useful later on, as it
looked like the rain might accompany me on my trip home.
Gaughain oozed over the tabled and grabbed me by my sideburns. �Have you ever
set
anyone on fire?�
I thought this was a strange sort of coincidence, as I had had a thought or two
about
setting people on fire while I was waiting for him to show up at the bar.
I really needed a mirror in these sort of situations, just so I could see my
reaction,
because I know that I must have had a reaction. When someone hits on something
like that, you
can�t help but have a reaction. I imagine that he was too drunk to notice the
bead of beer form
on my forehead.
At some point during heavy alcohol use, you stop sweating sweat and start
sweating
whatever alcohol you have been drinking. And I was sweating beer, which might
strike you as
odd because I wasn�t drinking beer.
�No, Gaughain, I have not ever set anyone on fire, and if you want me to set you
on fire
because you can�t live with yourself anymore, then the answer is no, unless you
are willing to
offer me 25 grand and all I can drink in seven days.� Little did he knowhow much
I could drink
5 SUICIDE NOTES
30
in seven days. Oh, my hidden talents. Heavy drinking and juggling, though not at
the same
time. It�s something I�m working on.
�No. That is not what I mean. Have you ever seen anyone die in front of you in a
lot of
pain?�
�Does that include stand up comedians?�
�No, I�m being serious here.�
�So am I. What do you know about death, Gaughain?�
�I know the slower it comes, the more entertaining it is to watch.�
�Entertaining?�
�Intriguing. People will be kept interested as long as someone is dying. The
second the
person is dead, so is the interest.�
�Have you ever worked at a slaughterhouse, Gaughain?�
�No, why do you ask me that?�
�Because you would have been fired pretty quickly, if you had been torturing the
meat
with those sort of thoughts.�
�I would never torture an animal.�
�Not even with questions?�
�I have watched someone dye by my own hand.�
�Is that why you drink, Gaughain?�
�No, I drink because I�m an alcoholic, the person I watched dye by my own
hand�we
used a red dye and the colour turned out very nicely.�
�So, I take it you don�t want me to set you on fire.�
�No, I was joking with you.�
�Oh.�
It didn�t look like he was going to lend me anymore money to buy drinks with, so
I lit a
couple of matches and threw them at him and walked out of the bar. I bet his
name wasn�t even
Gaughain.
It was raining, a cold rain like standing in a shower with all your clothes. The
shower
was cold because the heat had been turned off because you hadn�t paid the bill.
The water hadn�t
been turned off yet, even though you hadn�t paid that bill either. Those
kind-hearted water
people.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
31
I�d forgotten my umbrella in the bar, so I hailed a bus. Buses are easy to hail
if you are
standing at a bus stop. It�s a little more difficult to hail them when you are
not at the bus stops
unless, of course, you whip out your tits. Sometimes I wish I had tits. Man�s
world? Don�t
believe the pamphlets.
I really have to keep track of my umbrellas. They don�t grow on trees. Or maybe
they
do.
Riding the night buses and riding the day buses were as different as �night and
day.
First off, you don�t get senior citizens on the night buses. They all have to be
home for the six
o�clock news to see if they have found the meaning of life or an elixir that
enables people to live
forever.
At least, I think that�s why they watch the news or maybe they watch to see if
anyone
they know has died. No wait�that�s why they read the obituaries. Whereas, I read
the
obituaries to see if anyone has had an interesting death. Normally people die
peacefully in their
sleep. It�s the died suddenly ones that are more interesting. It�s unfortunate
that these ones aren�t
more specific. Maurice died suddenly when his car stopped suddenly, but he
didn�t or Jillian
died suddenly when she came face to face with a very large grizzly while hiking
in the
mountains. No one told the bear that Jillian wasn�t food. Who wouldn�t read the
obituaries if
that kind of information was in them..
So I got on the bus. I wasn�t cool enough to sit at the back and I wasn�t old
enough to sit
at the front and all the seats in the middle were full, save one. I couldn�t
decide whether to stand
or sit next to the crazy man who smelled like urine. He also smelled like beer
that has been
sitting in a pool on your floor for six days.
Before I could make up my mind a sharp stop had moved me into the seat.
My balance was a little random when I was sober, after a few drinks it lead and
I
followed.
I had sat next to this fellow before, thus my knowledge of his lack of
rudimentary toilet
habits. One of the blessings of riding the same bus route for a long period of
time was, of
course, the knowledge gained of the citizenry riding the big yellow and silver
tennis ball
container. Gaughain really did get me in the mood for tennis sometimes.
So I knew what to expect from this fellow. I had to try and keep a low profile.
Normally
I can blend into the scenery like a coat rack, but for some reason I was giving
off a please talk to
5 SUICIDE NOTES
32
me vibe. Sometimes my personality would manage to wander out through my pores
and give
people the impression that I wanted to be engaged in full frontal conversation.
This fellow wasn�t really someone that knew what conversation was, but the
minute he
realised that he had an audience he was off.
�Charlie, there�s a light over there. Can you see it? Whose turn is it to check
it out? No,
it�s not mine. I went out last night. You go, and take Tom. Be careful remember
that gully
down by the stream. That is the perfect place for an ambush. Make sure you check
the wires.
Last time they were cut and they managed to sneak in and all hell broke loose.�
And on and on
he would go.
I would occasionally add a comment here and there. �Oh, my God Charlie I�ve been
shot. It�s gone clean through my stomach. I�m not going to make it? Tell my wife
I love here.
And tell little Billy that I�m proud of him, and I know he�ll grow up just
fine.� I�d say things like
that.
You can never tell how someone will react even in normal life and times, but
when
you�re dealing with a crazy person things are even more random. In this
particular case, I think I
got lucky.
Ronald and I managed to capture the King�s elite guards single handily, and we
are inline
for some sort of commendation. I hope I get it this time. I�m still waiting for
my Nobel
Prize. I think that probably got lost in the mail. I have no faith in the postal
system anymore.
First they lose my acceptance letter to bible school and then they lose my Nobel
Prize for
Taxidermy. If only they would spend less time going insane and more time
delivering mail then
oh what a wonderful world it would be.
Travelling on a bus, especially the ones where they have seats that face each
other,
basically involves forty different people trying to find a different area to
stare at, all the while
trying to avoid looking at each other. If you do happen to make the mistake of
looking at
someone else and they catch you, then you both share a moment of embarrassment
and
consciously tell yourself not to look at that person again.
The men in the white coats say that if you put rats in a closed container, like
a bus, with a
large number of their fellow rats, then they would end up killing each other.
That�s why rats
never developed public transportation. They are just too intelligent for that
sort of thing.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
33
After I got bored with Ronald, I spent the next little while trying to catch
people�s eye. I
did avoid the people at the back of the bus, though, because I�m just not cool
enough to make
eye contact with that stratum of people.
And then I got off the bus. I was let off in front of a twenty-four hour dry
cleaners.
There must be some sort of logic tucked in there somewhere, but try as I might I
could not see it.
The rest of the street was as deserted as a cold prairie night.
I had a look inside the dry cleaners. The lights were on , but not a creature
was stirring. I
normally would have gone in and asked questions about the dry cleaning process
and the whole
concept of cleaning when every thing was dry, but I noticed a security camera
lurking in a
corner.
That probably didn�t look suspicious. I had gone up to the window had a look
around the
shop, noticed the camera and made a dash for it. I�d had a couple of incidents
involving cameras
in my one month past history, and I was trying to behave myself during this pay
period, which I
was only just barely managing.
Those cameras really scared me. I�m not that photogenic, and I always seem to
get
caught on film when I haven�t shaved or washed my hair in several days and I
look like some
sort of nut, which I�m not. I am not happy with my portrayal on the local news,
and one of my
goals is to clean up my TV persona. In the future, I will be clean-shaven and
properly groomed
before I go out and create any havoc.
At present, I had no outstanding warrants.
I always walked the streets much easier when those sort of things weren�t
weighing down
my very broad and masculine shoulders. There had been times when I had been too
scared to
even leave the house because of my unfortunate connection with all those zeros
and ones in the
master computer. I had managed to finally shake off all the subpoenas, warrants,
writs and leans
grasping at my freedom. I had changed my name fifteen times and moved eighteen
times with
brief spells of being a person with no fixed address and no fixed designation.
I think I lost the government somewhere around David Smith or Mex-Mex Van
Govern.
I have no plan in letting the government get its razor wire or T-4567 forms into
me again. It�s
bad enough that the supermarkets know what you are eating for breakfast, but to
have the
government also know how much money you make in a year�the consequences are
dire, even
5 SUICIDE NOTES
34
for the optimistic cynic. The last time the government had an accurate
representation of how
much I was actually earning, I was working as a bounty hunter.
I have had some glorious jobs in my life, but bounty hunting was not one of
them. All
hard work and no fancy cars, or pretty women. The money was alright, but not
enough to allow
you to retire after a few years and open up your own disco/haberdashery like so
many of us
dreamed of doing.
Yes�once again you have caught me in a lie. For one thing, it was only me that
held
this dream, and for another thing I was never a bounty hunter. I have worked as
a shopping mall
security guard so you can see where the confusion arose in my mind.
I had a thought. It was a blue thought. It had mag wheels and lots of chrome. It
had
something playing on the eight track that certain long haired post-teen
pre-taxpayers might
consider entertaining. Or was that the car behind me at the drive in.
I had wandered over to the drive-in window of a very reputable fast food
establishment.
The drive-in staff never seem too happy about people going through the drive-in
window on foot.
Maybe it�s because they don�t like working in the service industry, or maybe
it�s because they
don�t like working or maybe it�s because I just order water.
The fellow behind honked his horn. For such an Alpha male car, it sure had an
Omega
male horn to it. He wasn�t Greek. You can always tell the Greeks. I�m not sure
how, but that�s
what I�ve heard.
I�m always quite amazed at these people who can tell someone�s national identity
by the
way they look, like Biology recognises political borders. No anthrax here, it
doesn�t have a visa.
I�ve never been one to sympathise with these discriminate haters. If you are
going to hate
one group of people, then hate everyone. That way you don�t have to waste the
energy trying to
remember which groups you hate.
I�m quite big on not wasting energy. Perhaps you have noticed. It seems such a
complicated endeavour for your body to produce energy. The body must find it
very stressful.
And stress kills.
It doesn�t seem to be a very effective killer though, or celebrities and world
leaders would
be popping off like firecrackers. I still try and watch my stress levels though.
Once I�ve heard a
health warning, I tend to watch it no matter how quickly they reverse the
findings.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
35
I had managed to procure a paper cup of water from the very obstinate fast food
employee. I turned on my charm in the end to win him over to my side. Or maybe I
just used a
bit of my day-time television intellect and brought up some of my own
experiences in the
frenzied world of hot oil and heavy duty mops.
Glorious jobs, past, present and future haunt me like a tax collector.
I guess the only way to beat the bastards was to join them and wallow in the
petty
thievery and corruption.
I really have no idea, do I? There�s nothing wrong with a little ignorance. And
there�s
even less wrong with a whole lot of ignorance.
Chalk two up for the elders and their sayings.
There really should be a big book of morals or something, so the average person
doesn�t
have to go through life and learn all these silly little lessons life after life
and lesson after lesson.
They should give these books out in about the fourth grade, just after children
have just started to
learn that a lot of things in life just aren�t very nice, but before they are
broken in too much and
have no room left for lessons on how to be a productive and valuable member of
the rickety,
sputtering machine.
I think what I need, sometimes, is a legion of young followers. A Roman legion,
not a
legion of old men war vets who hang out in curling lounges drinking subsidised
beer.
I don�t have anything against the aged and I think it would be unfair of you to
make that
assumption on a couple of statements I have made. I love senior citizens. I like
them, but I don�t
ever want to be one and have to deal with all that they have to deal with.
Another reason for
death by your own hand at a reasonable age. Who wants to be resented for living
so long, and
have to deal with all that. A half price movie does go along way, but it doesn�t
quite cover it all.
A legion of young followers to bend to my will and shape in my own image. Oh�so
that�s why people have children.
I would have to isolate my followers from the corrupting influences of
children�s
television, professional sports and bombastic politicians. To bring them up
right, I�d have to
keep them from anything even the least bit subversive. That pretty much rules
everything out
except food, shelter, clothing, English television and American Literature.
Actually, I don�t
really know about American Literature as I can�t say I�ve ever read any of it.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
36
The problem of creating a legion of morally pure super humans is that they would
have to
stay in isolation because if they were ever unleashed on the world then the
world would
extinguish them like a lit match hitting a sea of icy desperation. I�d have to
find another planet.
If we do find another habitable planet, put me down for some beachfront
property. I do
like the ocean.
There was a man sitting on the curb in front of a boarded up former beauty
salon. He
looked like one of those thirty-year-old alcoholics. The kind that still held a
job and was still
managing to get up in the morning, but you could see that in ten years, if he
was still alive, he
would not have a rack in which to put his umbrella nor a fridge to cool his
beer.
He wore this fate on his shoulders like a worn out blanket placed over him on a
frosty
evening in a doorway. I steered clear of him. I did not like the look of the
mirror.
I did not own a mirror and had not done so for a large number of years. As of
late, I had
been finding mirrors extremely terrifying. I would avoid them at all costs.
There were entire
blocks of the downtown area that I would avoid because they had that mirrored
glass on all the
buildings.
It�s damn hard to shave without a mirror. That�s why I didn�t shave much. The
problem
with that, for me, had always been that I couldn�t grow a beard. I had to get
along with gangly
sideburns and sporadic stubble everywhere else. I never really looked like a
man. Always like
some sort of man-boy, wearing sideburns to look like a man. Not quite as bad as
looking like a
man and wearing clothes to look like a boy.
I guess that was another reason to do the final sweep up, and close the doors. I
would
look in the mirror and not see a twenty seven year old, but a fifteen year old
with an enormous
chip on his shoulder.
Some people were just meant to die in a war. Their DNA just didn�t have the
instructions
to age them properly like everyone else. I was one of those people. One of the
sad and pathetic
victims of no wars. How many hundreds of generations of mankind had there been
before me,
and how many of those had had at least one war to send their children off to die
in.
A weak soul can easily lose themselves in a war, and without the shame of
suicide. An
act of selfishness, appears to be the opposite if it saves another�s life. They
send a medal to your
mother, instead of avoiding to speak your name. Really, I had been let down by
my country.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
37
They had not given me a legitimate and potentially heroic way out. Instead I was
stuck with a
half dozen banana breads and my paper and pen.
I think I really need a vacation. From what? I�m not entirely sure. Where would
I go?
Again, I�m not entirely sure. But, I really felt that I needed a vacation. Or
maybe just another
drink.
Wasn�t drinking just a form of vacation anyway. It didn�t quite last as long as
a proper
vacation, unless you did it properly, and managed to keep up the intoxication
level for a week or
two at a time. I called it riding the wave, and I had managed to do it on
several occasions. It was
quite difficult to achieve and really shouldn�t be attempted by amateurs. It
basically involves
drinking Texas size amounts of alcohol on an ongoing basis.
You can�t sleep either. This is the difficult part. Just imagine that this is
your last night
on earth and there is no point in sleeping.
It didn�t work for me, because I can�t imagine anything more pleasant than
spending my
last night on earth asleep, but it might work for you.
At some point, for me it was about sixty hours, you stop needing much alcohol
because
the sleep deprivation takes over. The sleep deprivation and the alcohol take you
on some weird
and wonderful trips. I read somewhere that after 72 hours of no sleep, the brain
starts to burn
some of its sugar and that�s what accounts for the hallucinations.
You, of course, are not eating either. This is probably what forces the brain
into the
hallucinations, but the sleep deprivation does get to cut in for some of the
stranger dances.
This is something best experienced, and not described. You don�t even have to
spend
any money breaking the law purchasing contraband substances. Contraband
substances�sometimes your government does make me laugh. I think that that is
probably the
whole point of government�to make me laugh. Though if anyone asks, I�m laughing
with
them.
Having steered clear of my mirror image, I went on down the street. As we had
passed,
we had caught each other�s eye. I wonder if he had caught the same look of
recognition that I
had seen in his eyes. I wonder what his mission was. My present mission was to
find my way
home. Once again, I was lost. In one manner or another I was always lost. It was
a good day if
I was only lost in one respect at a time.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
38
I staggered over to a bus stop, hoping to find a map. I would have liked to have
thought
that if there was a map, then I would have been able to read it. Alas, there was
none.
Map reading had always been a little out my reach, like the magazines on the top
shelf.
The one thing about the magazines on the top shelf that always made me smile to
myself,
were the amateur pictures of wives and girlfriends sent in by the fellows,
presumably, with the
subscriptions. When you buy a magazine like that, who wants to be reminded what
real sex is
like.
I decided to wait for a bus. I waited through the acrosses of a moderately
difficult
crossword puzzle(it is strange what you find in your pockets sometimes), before
a bus came by.
It was driven by one of the drivers I had come across before. He slowed to stop.
He looked at
me. He, unfortunately, recognised me, and then carried on past.
I had been in this town too long. I had licked off all the chocolate�all that
was left was
the wafer biscuit. I had to move on..
I could feel every last thing that made this a tolerable place to live slipping
away. It was
the last of a string of things. Sometimes the doors didn�t shut tight enough in
my house of cards
and the wind could sneak in and catch the roof and bring the whole thing down on
me. There
was nothing left in this town to salvage, except for my beer. I was going to go
home anyway,
but now I had a reason. There is nothing like a rashly made decision to give you
enough energy
to find your way home.
I had made it home. It was at this point that I realised that I had forgotten my
keys again.
Have you ever had one of those days? Are there any other kind?
I managed to fight my way through the plastic wrap of the larger of the two
windows that
I had previously broken.
I had got a little wet from my evening stroll, and I was feeling a little cold.
Normally, I
didn�t feel the cold. I was usually too drunk too notice, but I was sobering up
so fast. I had the
shivers like I had just finished running twenty-six miles on a chilly day.
I gathered up everything that looked the least bit flammable into one area, and
then
started a fire in my living room on a glass coffee table. I was soon drying out
and starting to feel
warm again. It was either the fire or the beer.
If you are thinking about my fire alarm, then don�t waste the energy. I took the
battery
out several months ago after it objected to my cooking.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
39
Appliances, especially the toaster and the television, know better than to mess
with me,
now. I have discovered that the best way to deal with poorly behaved appliances
is, 100% pure,
sugary cereal fed aggression. If you can�t deal with something then annihilate
it. Hundreds of
generations of mankind can�t be wrong, can they? When I say hundreds of
generations of
mankind, I�m just pulling that number off the top of my head, and have not done
any research
into it, so don�t bother sending me letters saying that you really should have
used the word
thousands, instead of hundreds. On second thoughts, send the letters, my fire is
getting low and I
don�t have much left in my flammable pile.
I exported myself off to bed. I left the fire going.
It was pitch black. I was not sure how long I had been sleeping, but it felt
like a long
time. This place felt strange. It wasn�t my room. I was once again cold. I
wasn�t wearing any
clothes, but had a sheet over me. I tried to lift my arm up but immediately met
a ceiling. The
walls were as close. I was in a metal coffin, on some sort of stretcher.
I�d somehow been buried alive. The idea of being dead had never scared me
before, only
the idea of dying. There�s not much you can do about the panic of dying, no
matter who you are.
And I felt panic, overwhelmingly terrifying panic.
I did not want to die on someone else�s timetable, without a suicide note on me.
I
screamed, a high pitched womanly scream. I screamed for perhaps a minute, which
in scream
time is extremely long. I stopped screaming and was reloading my lungs for
another one, when I
heard voices and bangs and thuds.
I was in a morgue. Apparently, I�d died in a fire. Smoke inhalation. Lucky to
have
woken up before the autopsy they said. On hearing that the police were going to
want to speak
to me, I ran for the exit. Fortunately for me, I was still naked, and neither of
the two technicians
felt that tackling and restraining a naked man fell within their job
responsibilities.
As I ran through the halls of the hospital, I gained a new appreciation for
exercising in the
buff. The ancient Greeks did get that one right. Since the halls were empty, I
gathered that the
four on the clock was referring to AM.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
40
I managed to hunt down some green hospital scrubs. I though that by, wearing
these I
would attract less attention to myself as I made my escape from the police. It
was only a matter
of time before the entire city police force had the hospital surrounded.
So I made my exit from the hospital, looking even more like an escaped mental
patient
than I normally did. There were no police cars in the parking lot yet. There
must have been a
riot or something going on somewhere else in town.
The pavement was very cold on my feet. I should have taken the time to track
down
some of those green shoe covers to complete my ensemble. I had, as a matter of
interest, put on
the latex gloves, hair covering and mask, but had neglected the shoe coverings.
I always feel
naked without shoes on, when I�m wandering about on city streets. I guess I was
still naked
under my scrubs.
I arrived back at the big game of pick-up sticks that was my home. The fire had
saved
me some energy. I would no longer have to clean the place up.
By the looks of things, it probably wasn�t that spectacular a fire. It was
probably more
like a pitiful campfire struggling under the rain, than a big book-burning
bonfire extravaganza. I
really couldn�t do anything right. I started to go through the remains looking
for shoes or clothes
that were less conspicuous than what I was presently wearing.
It was probably a good thing that I didn�t have anything of value, either
monetarily or
emotionally, as I probably would have lost it in this mess. Despite the fact
that I was still
planning to kill myself, the thought of losing something of value still struck
at my marginally
humanesque side. I�m not above making up words, so get off my back.
No matter how little I thought I was like everyone else, there were still little
things that
made me empathise with the brutes. That must be beyond belief�losing everything
you value,
but it does say a lot for not having much to value. The less you have, the less
you have lose. I
think I�ll have shirts printed up and go around and give them to poor people,
myself included,
now that I had lost it all.
I picked through the wreckage and managed to find a favourite shirt that had the
slogan
�Praying is Begging� on it. I also found my painting jeans, which were covered
in paint. I would
have though they would have been one of the first things to feed the fire.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
41
The only footwear I could manage to find were a pair of sandals and a pair of
rubber
boots. Because I didn�t have any socks to wear with the sandals and I thought
the boots would
be warmer, I went with the boots. I put the clothes on.
There is only one place you can get away with wearing rubber boots and that is
the
country. I ditched the hospital scrubs in the burnt out mess and headed for the
country.
CHAPTER 4
There is nothing more depressing than being cut by your own dried up semen,
except for,
maybe, being trapped in the country without any visible means of escape.
And trapped I was. I had wandered off the main road and was now travelling on
dirt
roads, quickly being made muddy by the ever-present rain. I was glad to have the
rubber boots.
And some of you were thinking I should have gone for the sandals. Practicality
before fashion.
Sometimes, I really am an old man. Maybe Agnes was right.
Maybe I should send her a postcard? She might like that. I wonder where you get
postcards in the country?
I stopped at a crossroads. All three directions looked the same as the one I was
coming
from. As usual, I closed my eyes and spun around a large number of times. I then
headed off in
the direction that had been chosen for me. That was the way to lead a life. No
wonder I was
lost.
At this point, I had no money, or food or anything like that. Instead of
contriving some
kindly stranger or some lucky windfall, I have decided to tell you truth, as I
perceived it.
For the next little while I ate grass and bugs and slept in bushes. Wait a
second, that
doesn�t sound very good, does it?
A large bag full of money fell out of the sky and landed at my feet. I can only
imagine it
was some sort of sign or something. Maybe the money had been thrown out of a
plane that was
full of bags of money by someone who was later planning to pick it up.
So this bit of fortune provided for my needs for the course of the rest of the
story, unless I
feel the need to lose the bag of money later in the story.
The rain was being turned on and off like some one was checking to see if the
water
heater had heated the water hot enough to run the bath yet. I didn�t really
mind. I just imagined
5 SUICIDE NOTES
42
it was the rainy season on some sub tropical island and I was sitting on the
beach drinking a rum
drink out of a coconut�
I have a pretty poor imagination. I know this and have known this since I was a
small
child and could only make cube shaped houses out of the Lego.
Maybe I wasn�t dropped on my head enough as a baby. That would explain my
perfectly
shaped head. I had always been quite proud of the shape of my head. It is a
masterpiece of art
and design. I sometimes used it to trace out shapes of heads. Well, actually I
wouldn�t do the
tracing myself, but I would let others do it�who wants to trace my head next?
I figured I would have to lay low in the country, until this whole mess had
blown over. I
would check the papers to see what extent the police were searching for me. I
imagine that my
image was currently being circulated to all the police stations in the country,
and that a massive
manhunt was currently being started. There would be young police officers all
over the place
looking to make a name for themselves by bringing me in.
I would be lucky to last a couple of days under this scrutiny, especially when
the general
public got in on the act. It would only be a few hours before everyone could
identify me because
my photo would be appearing on every television in the land.
I�m not sure where they would have got a picture of me, though. I didn�t have
any in my
home. They probably took a photo of me when I was brought into the morgue, but
they would
hardly show a picture of a dead man on the television, would they?
They would probably be able to find old pictures of me from public cameras, like
the one
at the dry cleaners. That�s what they would have done. It would only be a matter
of time until I
was caught like a cold.
As I walked along, humming� no song in particular, just humming�I imagined I was
leading a pack of Leprechauns. The Leprechauns were in all their emerald finery.
They started
to hum along with me. We sounded like ten thousand bees. Killer bees.
War-mongering bees.
Like a child, I never understood why war still existed. Just the sheer cost of
it all boggled
my mind. All those billions spent on steel and transistors.
If you divide 20 billion by one hundred thousand soldiers, you could bribe any
army in
the world. Find me a soldier that wouldn�t desert for 200 thousand and
citizenship in a new
country and I�ll find you a pack of humming Leprechauns.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
43
I guess there must be some natural need for large amounts of the human existence
to be
deleted. It�s probably on the fifth chromosome. I�ve always had my doubts about
that fifth
chromosome. The way it just sits there between number four and number six trying
to look
inconspicuous. And all the time you know it�s scheming and planning and just
waiting for its
chance to cut down the neighbours and cover them with quick lime. Never trust
that fifth
chromosome, there is no good in that one, as my Uncle Ned used to say.
Oh�Uncle Ned�there was a character�a character in a second rate play�the kind of
play that you can�t give the tickets away to�the kind of play in which the only
people that show
up for the play are reviewers, people who won the tickets accidentally and
people who�ve
randomly shown up because they have decided that they should do something
cultural this
weekend instead of sitting in front of the television and watching a made for
television movie.
That was my Uncle Ned to the letter. He ended up going insane like a character
in one of my
stories.
Uncle Ned used to walk around with a fishing rod and a can of beer. He would
tell me
that any thing in life that I wanted, I would have to go out and take and then
he would ask me to
get him another beer. He would then be surprised when I would take one of his
beers and find a
tree to climb into to finish it. It seemed like a good idea. Have you ever seen
an old man climb a
tree to retrieve a beer from his nephew? Good idea.
Relatives. A necessary evil. Into all lives a little black tar-like sludge must
fall. That
was the one thing about Uncle Ned. He was a relative.
Actually, come to think of it, I don�t think he was actually related to anyone
in the house.
What was he doing in the house?
Maybe he was already in the house when my parents moved in� like the linoleum
floor.
They got rid of the linoleum floor, but they never managed to get rid of Uncle
Ned until the day
the men from the sanatorium came and picked up the heavily taped man off the
newly carpeted
floor. That was a strange day.
Uncle Ned had stayed up all night gluing hairs back onto the cat. He had been
saving up
all the cat hairs he could find for months. This is not a bad habit to have in a
house guest, saving
not gluing, as it reduces vacuuming time. This, of course, struck us as odd, but
somehow the cat
ended up looking better, and we were under the impression that the cat didn�t
really mind.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
44
Unfortunately the gluing didn�t end there. Something to note, because you don�t
really
need to go through this experience yourself. Glue in the hands of a crazy man is
not a good
thing.
We had eaten chicken the night before and Uncle Ned had made a heroic attempt to
glue
it back together. In fact, he had gone through the garbage and tried to
reconstruct everything that
had been ripped, cut, torn, and opened into what it used to be before. He kept
on babbling about
how he could make the world whole again and ridiculous stuff like that.
He might have been able to get away with this behaviour as a performance artist,
but he
really couldn�t pull it off as a house guest. It climaxed with him trying to
reverse my birth. At
this point, he quickly found himself on the newly carpeted floor heavily wrapped
in electrical
tape. My father was always very handy with electrical tape, despite all his
other faults. And
they say I�m the bastard. Bastards.
It was several years after this that I disowned my family. Actually, it was more
of a
repossession�the kind where your car disappears in the middle of the night and
you�re upset
about a tape you left in the car more than you are about the car because you
knew they were
going to take the car anyway.
You talk in riddles, young man. Yes, Uncle Ned. Are you ready for another beer?
And
that was Uncle Ned and my family. Aren�t you glad you asked?
Sometimes a question seems good in your mind, but once it hits the fresh morning
air it�s
quickly apparent that you don�t think you can last through the answer. I had
asked one of the
Leprechauns if he would tell me where the gold was hidden.
I had thought it would be kind of a jokey-fun thing to ask him, but instead he
got really
defensive and started in on a lecture about how not every leprechaun knew where
the pot of gold
was hidden. I immediately regretted asking. I stopped listening after a few
seconds.
Leprechauns have no sense of humour�but man, can they hum.
I�m not entirely sure how many Leprechauns were surrounding me, but I am sure
that
they would have had no trouble knocking me to the ground and beating me into a
messy mash. I
only mention this because the atmosphere had changed.
It was no longer happy humming Leprechaun weather. All of a sudden it was string
up
the tall guy weather. They had gradually dropped the humming and now it was only
me. I was
5 SUICIDE NOTES
45
getting a little worried. I�m not sure where this was leading, but I was scared.
I thought about
running for it, but I remembered that I was wearing rubber boots.
Now that would be a sport I would watch. Rubber boot wearing races. They could
have
relays, and use a ten-pound fish as a baton. Who wouldn�t pay to watch that sort
of thing? Why
watch baseball when you could watch high quality athletes competing in the
extremely
competitive fishmonger�s games. Really I should have been a promoter or a
marketer or
something in that field. I really missed my calling, and the world is a
marginally duller place
because of it.
Anyway, the Leprechauns had started chanting kill the tall guy. I crouched down
a bit,
so that I was little lower than the tallest Leprechaun. He stopped chanting
pretty quickly and you
could see he was feeling a bit uncomfortable. He then changed the chant to kill
the crouching
tall guy. The others followed suit. I was going to try juggling and dancing
while crouching just
so I could hear them chant kill the juggling, dancing, crouching tall guy, but
chanting aesthetics
got the better of me and I climbed up a tree instead.
I didn�t think that I would be able to get out of this mess, and I decided I
didn�t want to
die like a coward so I started making mildly inflammatory comments. What else
could I have
done really? Throw leaves at them. I hadn�t been burdened with a sharp mind so
my comments
were a bit dull. �Tie a ribbon around this tree�, I said. I said this in an
offensive manner and not
the helpful manner in which you might have read it. �Green is for municipal
employees�, I said.
Apparently, some of them worked for local government, so they really didn�t seem
too offended
by this. At this point, I noticed that it had stopped raining.
Across the horizon, ending in a small copse of woods, a rainbow was hovering,
like only
a rainbow or an alien spaceship could hover. �I think someone�s going to get
your gold.� And
like half the stuff in my fridge, they were off. And that�s how I escaped from
the Leprechauns. I
felt quite comfortable in the tree and decided to spend the next three nights
and two days in it.
I passed the time, imaging myself in different fifties television shows. I could
have lived
in the fifties, because I really like meatloaf and waiting room furniture. I do
have a strange
affinity for smooth furniture. Its very hairless and natal, as if it�s just been
born out of some
even bigger piece of furniture. I think it�s the idea that it can be wiped down
and all evidence of
previous users can be removed. Smooth furniture is the quick lime of the
furniture world.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
46
I was usually the wacky neighbour�when I was pretending I was in the fifties
shows. It
was a bit of a stretch for me as wacky is not really in my arsenal. I can be
confused and
disorientated, but not wacky. I had to be the oddball character as I was even
harder pressed to be
the regular, normal, everyday people.
Towards the end of the third night, I remembered that I was supposed to be
trying to kill
myself. Having missed the perfect opportunity with the Leprechauns, I set my
mind on thinking
up how I was going to do it. First of all, I would have to create a new suicide
note. I have
always maintained a policy of only preparing to use a note once and once only.
Rules of
disengagement, so to speak.
I decided to go with the �he�s obviously insane� type of suicide note. This was
a bit of a
stretch for me. This is what I came up with.
Carpet has been growing on every bit of my body.
I�ve been cutting it off as fast as it grows, but it keeps coming.
I don�t know what to do any more.
This is my only way out.
That�s what the grass tells me.
It howls at me as I walk by.
Do it.
The trees reach down and tap me on the shoulder.
As I look around, they are gone.
I want to peel my skin off, but I can�t find the potato peeler or the cheese
grater.
Water burns my lungs and air scalds my skin.
The liver is in the popcorn maker.
I can�t remember the train times.
Who are you and what are you doing with my waffle iron?
I folded the note up and put it in my pocket. For this note to be effective, I
was really
going to have to remove all my clothes, shave off all my body hair, cover myself
in blue paint
and shove the note up my ass before killing myself. At least that was the plan.
Once again I was
5 SUICIDE NOTES
47
left with the difficult task of coming up with an original suicide that wasn�t
going to involve
much pain or effort.
I�d also thought that gassing yourself with carbon monoxide fumes was probably
the
most peaceful and needed the lowest amount of energy output of all the common
sort of suicides.
It was also one of the easiest ones to clean up. No one had to hose your remains
off any walls or
floors. Damn�I�m still finding little pieces of skin and bone in the brickwork
and it was over a
year ago. Good revenge though, and you always leave a little piece or pieces of
yourself with
them. I had no one I hated that much. And there were no high buildings around.
I decided I was going to go for one of the little known variations of the carbon
monoxide
poisoning suicide. I just had to find a farmhouse. I was looking for a
snowmobile. This looked
like snowmobile country. There was a big hill just down the road. And wouldn�t
you know it,
on the hill was a farmhouse. If I ever try and tell you I have no luck, don�t
believe me.
I wandered off to the farmhouse. It was situated on the side of the hill. It
wasn�t on the
top, though, which struck me as odd. People do like to tower over their
surroundings, except for
whoever built this farmhouse.
I knocked on the door. I didn�t use my confident � I�m here to sell you
something� knock.
I used my timid � I�m a neighbour coming over to borrow a snowmobile� knock.
I�ve found that
people are more likely to open the door to a timid knock than a confident knock,
unless they�re
not there, and then they just don�t answer the door.
The door opened and a musty, dusty little old lady opened the door. I expected
her to
scream and run inside yelling it�s the man on the television, but she didn�t
recognise me. Maybe
they didn�t have a television.
�Can I help you?�
�I�m just here to borrow a snowmobile for a couple of hours.�
�What�s a snowmobile?�
I described it to her.
�Don�t be silly, it doesn�t snow in these parts.�
�Oh, I�m sorry to bother you.�
She closed the door. I have no luck. I sat down on her porch. I really have no
luck.
Country folk, I like. A salesman�s ideal customer, or a crook�s. I just asked
her for a
snowmobile for a couple of hours, and I really believe that if she had had a
snowmobile she
5 SUICIDE NOTES
48
would have lent it to me. You just don�t get that simple trust in the city. I
guess people are just
smarter in the city. If I had actually liked living in the country, I really
would have been an ideal
country person.
I wandered over to the barn. Fortunately, there were no animals in it, as they
might have
attacked me. For some one with a death wish, I do like to take care of myself.
The barn was quite big. You could have fit a lifetime supply of alcohol in it.
Unfortunately, there was not a drop in sight. There was something under a
tarpaulin along one
wall. I lifted the tarpaulin expecting to see a snowmobile.
I�m such a cynical city dweller sometimes. It serves me well, though. I have no
complaints with cynicism. Cynicism and a bottle of whiskey will get you through
most days
with a sneer on your face and a warm feeling in your belly. Or is that just me?
Under the tarpaulin, were three or four sets of encyclop�dias. You�d never see
that in the
city. It�s really hard to buy a tarpaulin in the city. I spied with my eye a
chainsaw hanging on a
wall. It even had a chalk outline, so that if you took it off its hook you would
be able to put it
back in the correct spot. Feeling confident that I would be able to replace the
chainsaw as I had
found it, I took it off the hook. It was full of fuel. Can you see the light
bulb hovering over my
head?
This barn was obviously too big for my purposes, I had to find somewhere
smaller. I
vacated the barn with extreme prejudice, or a quick walking pace to be more
specific. There was
a small shed next to the barn. If I ever try and tell you I have no luck, don�t
believe me. My
newly acquired power tool and me were soon situated in the centre of the shed.
This shed was loaded with handy things. There was a pair of scissors, which I
used to cut
off most of my bodily hair. I had removed my clothes first and had neatly folded
them and put
them on a bench. On second thoughts, I decided that this didn�t make much sense
so I tossed
them into a ball under the bench. On third thoughts, I decided it might appear
to be even crazier
if the clothes were folded carefully and left on the bench. So I did that. He
was obviously
insane, but just look at how neatly he folded his clothes.
There was no blue paint, but they did have some peach coloured semi gloss latex
on a
shelf. I got involved with that. I shoved the note partially up my ass. This was
not a pleasant
sensation and I felt a bit like a five and half foot tall peach coloured
firecracker, but the effect
would be worth it. I got the chainsaw going and decided to lie in the foetal
position with my
5 SUICIDE NOTES
49
suicide note very apparent to anyone entering the shed. I didn�t know what to do
next, so I
started to count sheep.
Country life isn�t all chickens and sawdust. Sometimes a lunatic gets into your
shed and
starts playing with your chainsaw. The door burst open. I guess someone had
heard the
chainsaw. He didn�t say anything. What could you say, really?
I got up slowly and picked up my clothes as I walked by the man. I�ve never seen
a
stranger look on anyone�s face in my life. Alas, I was foiled again. Anon.
He�s probably going to be standing there for awhile. Who can blame him?
I�d forgotten about the suicide note, until I tried to put on my pants. Anyone
want a
souvenir? I really didn�t put much practical thought into these suicide
attempts. The reason
people didn�t kill themselves like this was probably the impracticability. Those
damn laterally
thinking suicide attemptees. If more people put more thought and originality
into their suicide
attempts, then maybe that fellow wouldn�t have been so shocked when he saw me
and maybe he
would have quietly shut the door and left me to it.
Once again I was left to wander the countryside. The paint felt really good on
my skin.
It was like I was being buried alive, but could still breathe. The rain returned
and started to wash
the paint off my exposed skin. Damn water based paint.
I decided to grow my side burns back. I found a place at the side of the road. A
ditch.
Somewhere over the next two weeks I put all my clothes back on because I was
cold. If you are
ever being hunted by the police, hide in a ditch. No one even stopped to see if
I was alright, as
they drove by in their high falutin pick up trucks. Perhaps this is acceptable
behaviour out here
in the country.
I started to think the worst was over and the massive countrywide manhunt was
dying
down. The country had probably lost interest. I know I had. I couldn�t even
remember what I
had done to set it all off.
My sideburns were coming along nicely. They were into the stage where they were
clearly definable as side burns and not just looking like I�d been too lazy to
shave for a couple of
days.
If you ever want to take a cheap holiday, lie in a ditch for two weeks. You�ll
never need
to take another holiday again, because you�ll want to spend the rest of your
life in the ditch. I�ll
admit the first couple of days are tough, and even I had trouble getting through
them, but once
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50
you get over that wall, it�s pure nirvana. It�s like middling to good sex, or
finding yourself in a
vat of Irish whiskey and being forced to drink your way out.
I had a friend who fell in a vat of not yet solidified liquorice mix, but he
died. I haven�t
been able to eat liquorice since or drink ouzo, unless it�s mixed with orange
juice. The mind is
so weak sometimes.
The ditch experience. I really don�t know what all those soldiers in the First
World War
were whining about. They had everything a dispirited spirit could ever desire.
White bread
bourgeoisie. No godless communist would whine about living in a ditch.
Eventually, living in paradise got to me a bit, and I scaled the walls of the
ditch and
headed up the road. About five minutes into my walk, I came to the border
crossing.
I imagine they were a little concerned about my appearance. The sideburns looked
all
right, but the rest of me was a bit of a mess. I got packaged away to a little
room in the back of
their complex. This was definitely one of those government buildings that had a
bunker.
That was one good reason for running for political office. There were bunkers in
all the
government buildings whether they admitted it or not. If the world should have
one of those
calamitous events that destroy 99% of the world�s population, you can be sure
that enough
government employees will survive to carry on the bureaucracy and mismanagement
into a new
age. An age free of those very tiresome and time consuming masses that place
their misguided
trust in this massive pointless writhing mess of human failure and
pointlessness.
I was explaining this to the fellow assigned to keep me from getting through
their
imaginary border. Their imaginations not mine. I should be allowed to go where I
please.
Border, I don�t need any borders. I�m free to do what I want, whenever I want.
Show me the
line in the dirt that separates that field from its next door neighbour and
maybe I�ll respect your
border. Geography has borders only when the geology is so inclined.
�No I didn�t have a passport, and no I didn�t have any identification. It�s your
game and I
don�t want to play. I play my own game and it has it�s own rules. There are no
borders based on
political and economic systems in my game. The only thing bordering on a border
is how far
you can get on a tank of fuel, but even that wasn�t a border.� I said, �Give me
one non-racist or
non-econmicist reason for having borders and I�ll go and get a passport
application and be back
here in six to eight weeks.�
5 SUICIDE NOTES
51
None of this went over very well and I got sent to another room with a different
bureaucratic desperado. I guess that�s bureaucracy for you. Why do a job
yourself when you
can pass it on to ten other people. If government was a for profit organisation
it wouldn�t last the
time it takes to fill out a form, even with all the taxes.
�If you want to hide the fact that you can�t do anything, join the civil
service. If you want
to advertise the fact you can�t do anything, run for office.� I knew I could say
anything I wanted
to these people because I would be passed around like the measles and no one
would know what
I had said to the last one, because that is the way they operated.
Apparently I was wrong on that one. I ended up in a room with two of these
taxpayersubsidised
mannequins. Good mannequin and bad mannequin took turns berating me for things I
had said and for the way I looked. They got me within one of my sideburns hairs
of telling them
where to go with their form. They nearly heard some of my dearly collected and
proudly held
swear words. But I decided to forego them the pleasure of hearing this all-star
parade. I
stopped talking and just looked at them quizzically.
Looking quizzically basically involves tilting your head and scrunching your
eyebrows.
Even mental dullards like myself could look like it was in our intellectual
grasp to answer a skilltesting
question off an entry form if we tilted our heads and scrunched our eyebrows.
�Do you know why you�re here?�
�Isn�t that the hundred grand question? Your supposed to start me out on the
easy
questions to get me overconfident for the later rounds.�
�Son, this isn�t a game show.�
�But the other bureaucrats told me that if I answered ten questions I would win
a car.�
What am I going to do with a car? I guess I could always crash it in to their
customs checkpoint
building.
�Son, do you know where you are?�
�That�s better, start with the easy ones and work up to the tougher ones. I�m in
a small
white room with no windows and very nice simple wood furniture, and I�m been
asked questions
to see if I can win a car.�
�Son, there is no car. We are trying to help you. Now if you can just help us by
telling
us your name and what you are doing trying to cross the border.�
5 SUICIDE NOTES
52
�My name is Fiasco de Gama and I want to go over there.� I pointed in the
direction I
though I was heading, but to be perfectly honest I wasn�t too certain which way
I was facing.
�Fiasco de Gama��.he wrote on his form��that�s a strange name.�
I helped him out by adding some more information. �My mother was a hippie and my
father was a 17th century Spanish cabinetmaker.�
�Son, please give us your real name.�
�That is my real name. My mother was trying to have a baby and couldn�t find any
suitable fathers. She was at a flea market and bought this really beaten up old
cabinet. One of
the drawers wouldn�t even close all the way. My mother took this cabinet home
and while she
was in the process of fixing it up, she found a tiny bottle that was keeping the
drawer from
closing properly. On the bottle was some writing, which she had translated into
English. It said
that this is the seed of Jorge de Gama, cabinetmaker, July 12th, 1642. The semen
was really
dried out, but my mother put some water in there and shook it about a bit, and
it came back to
life. Being one of those liberated sixties women and not being able to find a
suitable father, she
did a little bit of that artificial insemination thing and here I am. Or at
least that�s what she tells
me when I ask about my father.�
�Son, I don�t believe that. What is you real name?�
�Are you calling my mother a liar?�
�Son, one of you is lying, either it�s you or it�s your mother.�
I slapped him, it was a manly slap, like the kind a very manly doctor might do
to get a
freshly delivered baby to make it cry.
�Son, did you just slap me?�
�No�, I said. At this point, the two had one of those whispered conversations
that only
bureaucrats could have.
�Son, I�m starting to lose my patience here.�
�Maybe you left it in one of the other interrogation rooms.�
�Son, this isn�t an interrogation room. It�s an interview room. We aren�t
interrogating
you. We are interviewing you.�
�If you�re interviewing me, could you send me a copy of the published interview
so I can
see if I�ve been misquoted or anything. If it�s an interview, then you don�t
mind if we wrap
things up and head off.� I got up to leave.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
53
�Son, you can�t leave.�
�Why not?�
�The interview isn�t over yet.�
�Oh, okay�.
�Son, I�m going to put your name down as Fiasco de Gama, but I don�t think that
is your
name.�
�Why do you keep calling me son? You�re no 17th century Spanish cabinetmaker. I
bet
you�ve never even made a cabinet in your entire life.�
�No, son, I�m not you father. Son, I�ll call you Fiasco from now on. Okay?�
�That will be fine.� Score one for Fiasco.
�Son�I mean Fiasco, Where do you live?�
�I live under the stars, but above the ground�.
�Fiasco, what is your address?�
�I don�t own any dresses.�
�Larry, just put down no fixed address and move on.�
They kept on with their questions, and I decided to have a nap until they were
done. I put
my head on the table and went to sleep.
I woke up in jail. They had finally figured out who I was and now I was going to
spend
the rest of my life behind bars. I guess I should have figured that they would
eventually capture
me and punish me for what ever it was I had done. I really can�t remember what
it was, as
sleeping out in the country really dulls the mind.
As jail cells go it was quite comfortable. I even had my own toilet. I hadn�t
actually seen
any food yet, but I imagined that in this kind of place, they would even feed
you. Just as I
finished this thought, a little green municipal man brought in my lunch.
�What am I doing in jail and where are my shoelaces?�
�You are not in jail, this is an observation room.�
�Euphemise this�, I said, giving him the euphemise this hand signal.
�There is no need to be rude. We are just keeping you under observation for a
few days.�
�Then where are my shoelaces?�
�We took your rubber boots away from you so you wouldn�t hurt yourself.�
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54
Now that would be a suicide worth committing. Death by rubber boots. If I ever
write
any music that will be my first single.
The food was actually quite good. The salmon was a bit overcooked, but what
could you
expect at one of these second rate institutions. I did get quite attached to the
pepper steak and
mashed potatoes. They put garlic and butter in the potatoes. If there was a God,
then they would
have been divine.
I got interrogated or interviewed several times a day. I think they were putting
various
pharmaceutical additives into food, because I was feeling even more lethargic
than usual. When
I was lying on the bed I felt like someone was holding a massive balloon against
my body, and it
would take all my strength to get up and use the toilet. I would have stopped
taking the food ,
but it was so good and I was never one to give up a good reason to stay in bed
for weeks on end.
Eventually, they let me mingle with the other patients and I suddenly realised
that I
wasn�t being held against my will in a government run customs checkpoint
underground hidden
jail, I was actually being held against my will in a government run insane
asylum.
My first thought was to make some panicky escape attempt, but this thought
quickly left
me when I saw their defences against such things. I decided to play it calm and
calculated and
hold out for a day pass, and then make a run for it. And besides, things weren�t
really too bad.
This lifestyle was a step up from what I was used to. Drugs all day, everyday,
good food,
wonderful furniture, and lots of interesting conversations when I was so
inclined. They also had
scrabble. I love scrabble. I have lots of words that no one else uses. Words
that can get by if
my opponents aren�t paying too much attention. Words like improval or quzxalty.
It wasn�t long until I was into the loonybin routine. I wasn�t really in the
habit of eating
three times a day. But one can get used to just about anything, except for an
all over body itch.
No one can get used to an all over body itch.
If I ever get in the situation where I�m holding government secrets and I get
captured by
the enemy. They could get any information out of me they wanted by telling me
they were going
to rub fibreglass insulation all over my body so that I would itch like a
madman. And then I
would tell them anything. I wouldn�t make a very good spy.
If you aren�t insane when you get there, you certainly go insane while you�re in
there. Is
that what is supposed to happen?
5 SUICIDE NOTES
55
Someone once told me to question everything. They were so wrong. Question
nothing
and you will live a long and happy life. And you will probably avoid
institutionalisation. 500
points in scrabble for that word.
If I had unlimited funds I would have decorated my own place pretty much the
same as
my room in my new abode. It was all clean lines and no clutter. Hose it down and
bring on the
next guest.
I had never really understood the injustice of locking up people that did not
fit through
the cut out template that was strangely named productive member of society,
until I had spent
time in one of their buildings. Time to get out the soapbox. Actually, I�d
prefer something that
could actually support my weight. Soap comes in cardboard boxes. I�ve seen them
at the
supermarket.
People complain about putting animals in zoos, but people are pocketed away like
this all
the time. How many people are locked away because they don�t think the exact way
that they
are supposed to think? You have a government run, by at best, half a dozen
people. They
control the judicial system. The judicial system controls eighty percent of what
people do all the
time. Taxes, parking tickets, zoning, and more laws and by-laws that can be
counted. Just try
walking down the street drinking a beer. You have no personal freedom, no matter
what they tell
you. And if you want to live by your own laws, where can you go? It�s the
equivalent, of being
told by your parents that you can stay in their house, but you have to live by
their rules. There is
nowhere else to go. There is nowhere that you can live by your own laws.
What is right and what is wrong?
Can anyone could really answer that, let alone the six people that are in power.
Laws are
used to keep the lawmakers and their brethren in power, by keeping the masses in
line, and for
no other reason.
Simplified summary of the truth. Anarchy, rule by the strongest, is what we live
by. The
ruling few use their minds as their strength and they have thought up laws to
keep themselves in
power and they have these laws enforced . A law is mightier than a busload of
thugs with lead
pipes and baseball bats. The police are the cheaply bought Hitler youth of the
ruling elite.
They locked me up, and now I�m an angry crazy person instead of just a crazy
person.
I�m not crazy. I�m sane and everyone else is crazy.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
56
CHAPTER 5
Kepler led a ten of clubs. Gauss followed with the eight of clubs. Pasteur
played the
queen of clubs. I had no clubs, so I played the four of hearts and took the
trick. It was the first
one I�d taken all day. These fellows were good at cards, or maybe I was just
abysmally bad.
The walls were like plain yoghurt. There was a fan slowly spinning overhead. The
furniture was smooth and to my liking. The room was like some back room in a
third world
airport.
I had finally earned the right to leave my room, and I was taking full advantage
of the
privilege.
I think they had changed the medication they were feeding me, because I was soon
able
to get out of bed almost everyday. I felt more like I running through a
waist-high wheat singing,
than lying in bed all day. Unfortunately we didn�t have access to any wheat
fields. I had to
make do with the common room. I would bounce through that room like I was on the
moon
looking for one of the golf balls that was left behind.
It had been a little hard to find my place amongst all the little social groups
that you so
often find in mental institutions, but after a few false starts I had found my
place. I had been
accepted with open arms in to a small group of miscreants that had helped shape
modern
scientific thought. I wasn�t too sure what they all had done, but I did
recognise their names. It
was a bit daunting at first. But soon I realised that, besides being really
famous, they were just
regular people underneath.
It was a good thing I had fallen in with these fellows, because they were always
well
behaved. Some of the other groups were very poorly behaved and they were always
getting
themselves into trouble. One group in particular would just freak out and have
to be restrained
by several attendants. They did this on a regular basis, usually it was
triggered by the staff
serving us hotdogs. I have always found hotdogs to be quite offensive, but
nothing to freak out
about.
Gauss was a particularly nice fellow. He had accidentally glued all his fingers
together.
Glue and crazy people.
He didn�t want anyone to know what he had done, so he was always trying to hide
it. He
was very good at doing a royal wave, but he had a bit of trouble tying his
shoelaces. This wasn�t
5 SUICIDE NOTES
57
a big setback since we all pretty much wore slippers and dressing gowns. I kept
asking for a pipe
and a big armchair, but I never really got anywhere with that.
Gauss was the leader of our little group. He won this honour by drawing the high
card.
He introduced us to the fours are high rule. I wasn�t really aware of this rule,
but I didn�t want to
appear like some bumpkin off the street so I pretended to already know about it.
The first week they let me out of my room, I followed Gauss around like a fart.
Sorry to
resort to such vulgarities, but the surroundings and all the constant exposure
to bodily functions
were having their expected effects. These people did tend to be very graphic
about certain
intimate actions, and a bout of food poisoning amongst the inmates really
cemented this sort of
commentary. Incidentally, the food poisoning occurred after hotdog night.
I don�t know if it was because they were scientists or not, but Gauss, Pasteur
and Kepler
were very qualitative about what was going on in the toilet for the next few
days after the food
poisoning incident. Apparently food could pass through Gauss� system in four
minutes and
twenty-five seconds. Pasteur clocked in at around eight minutes, and Kepler
staggered in at a
molasses like twelve minutes. I guess if Gauss wasn�t our leader for picking
high card, then he
definitely deserved the honour for the speed of his innards.
Gauss was a fair and just leader. We really needed a leader or the four of us
would just
have sat at the card table and stared at each other until someone blinked. I
wasn�t very good at
the blinking game or even at just looking at people.
I could be stared into the ground by dogs and photographs.
Gauss took to his newfound role of leader like a nine-year-old might take to bow
hunting.
He couldn�t really pull our strings unless he was full of amphetamines. And when
he was, he
would run around us like a sheepdog and nip at our heels. One of the many
drawbacks of
wearing slippers. Another of the drawbacks of wearing slippers is walking
backwards or
walking up stairs or walking backwards up stairs. I did like the theme nights.
There are no
disadvantages to wearing dressing gowns all day, and don�t let anyone tell you
differently.
The entire ward was basically divided along political lines. Some days, when the
political tension bubbled under the dress of the establishment to near boiling
point, it would be
very difficult to play cards.
There were two factions. It was almost equally divided between the communists
and the
fascists. One of the days when Gauss hadn�t been given his daily ration of
amphetamines, and
5 SUICIDE NOTES
58
was acting a little less like the great leader that we all knew and hated, I
took it upon myself to
organise both parties. It was really hard to get any one to go on the fascist
side unless they could
be the leader. The fascist side had seven leaders, most of the people that
wouldn�t talk and the
fellow who shaved his head and didn�t like ethnic food night.
Little did the bald guy know, that the chicken balti and peshwari naan was one
of the best
dishes the master culinary experts at the institute prepared. The Institute. A
person did tend to
get a little involved with the euphemisms used by the staff and patients at the
institute.
The institute was actually called The O�Grady Institute for Mental
Reconfiguration and
Well Being. Instead of being called patients or lunatics, we were encouraged to
be called and
call each other citizens. It was a bit like being in France during the
Revolution, except the
Guillotine went under the wig, cloak and makeup of Hotdog night.
Hotdog night was a bit of an institution in its own right. It occurred ever
second
Thursday. We were on a fourteen-day food rotation. I am more familiar with the
ten-day food
rotation. The ten-day rotation does have the one advantage. It mixes up the day
that you get
spaghetti a bit. One week you might get spaghetti on Wednesday, and then you
would get
spaghetti�ten days later.
On average, we would lose one patient every Hotdog night. I managed to find out
from
one of the staff, I mean senior citizens�the patients were called citizens, but
to differentiate us
from the staff they decided to call the staff senior citizens.
Basically, this was to let us know that we were all the same, except some of us,
I guess,
were more senior. This was probably someone�s idea of a joke. This someone was
probably
able to get a cheap bus tickets and could probably also get into the movies at a
reduced rate. It
might even have been the ever present Max O�Grady.
Besides having his name on the institute, Maximum O�Grady also had the presence
of
mind to get his likeness on at least one wall a room. My room had a picture of
him cooking
waffles on a barbecue. He was wearing an apron that said � Hotstuff coming
thru�.
When I�m rich I�m going to have no taste as well. My apron is going to say � I
would
have no trouble paying for a hit man to wipe you off the face of the earth, so
kiss my ass�. The
way people worship money would leave me with a damp ass.
I had managed to blacken a couple of old Max�s teeth. I had used some of my
leftovers
from Cajun night to do this.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
59
Hotdog night. I didn�t really notice the disappearing citizens for a number of
weeks. The
reason for this is because I�m very self-centred and don�t really notice or care
about other people.
It wasn�t until the bald headed fascist disappeared that I started to notice.
That fellow had been
the damn holding the fascist side in place. Without him, the other fascists
washed over the walls
and flooded a number of the villages unlucky enough to be down stream.
Fortunately these
villages were fascists villages so the loss was not that great.
After noticing that it was usually the day after hotdog night, that people would
disappear,
I managed to get an explanation from one of the senior citizens. I don�t want to
get you too
excited thinking there might be some intrigue or even a plot in my story, so
I�ll quickly tell you
the reason for these disappearances.
The fact of the matter was that every second Friday was also transfer day. Food
was not
the only thing on the fourteen-day rotation schedule. Citizens were transferred
to other hospitals,
prisons, or released depending on the recommendations of the senior citizens.
One can easily see
how Hotdog night could get a bad reputation. I guess this is one of the serious
disadvantages of
being on a fourteen-day schedule.
I was in the Institute a long time. Long enough to memorise the fourteen-day
food
schedule and long enough to get issued a second pair of slippers. It was some
time between the
introduction of Rib and onion ring night and the hole in the second of my left
slippers that I
began to believe that I had lulled them into believing that I was harmless and
unlikely to escape.
That was when I began to plan my escape.
I decided to put some real thought into this, unlike my suicide attempts. I
won�t go into
much detail at this stage, but I�ll let you know that it involved maps, train
schedules, travel
documents, three tunnels and a large amount of shoe polish.
I really hated to waste this much energy on an escape attempt when, really, I
should have
been expending it more destructively on a suicide attempt. The thought did cross
my mind to
somehow combine the two, but it ended up being just too damn complex for my
simple mind. I
was going to try and pull the escape off myself, but I had to turn to Gauss,
Pasteur and Kepler for
advice in the end. They weren�t really much help, but it was nice to have
co-conspirators. We
had been co-conspirators before, but that was before the collapse of the
fascists. We were in the
process of blowing up all their bridges when that bald fellow got released.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
60
Pasteur suggested I sneak out in the dirty laundry, but that only works in
movies. I know
this because I tried this the last time I had been made a ward of the state. I
ended up getting
some nasty burns and also finding that the laundry was done in-house. I was not
going to try that
sort of thing again.
One of us had noticed that the building had a number of fire alarms around.
Normally in
such government run institutions, the fire alarms were not accessible to the
general population.
This probably was an oversight on someones part.
Unless the fire alarms were rigged with an electric charge. This would make
sense. If
some one had the choice between getting a huge electric shock or burning to
death in a fire then
they would pull the alarm, but with no fire, people would think twice before
pulling it.
I touched one. No shock. We now had a way to get outside.
I got Pasteur and Gauss to work on the catapult. We had a workshop where we
could
fine tune our arts and craft skills. It contained all the glue and finger paint
we could use.
Incidentally, this was where Gauss had glued his fingers together. He had tried
to cut
them apart, but he was left-handed and all the left-handed scissors had been
removed for some
reason.
The right-handed scissors had also been removed. The scissors removal occurred
after an
altercation involving macaroni and tissue paper. This was before my time at the
institute, so
anything else I say would be hearsay, as I was not a party to the actual event.
From what I hear, some one had his genitalia cut off and forced into his mouth.
Sometimes I missed TV. They wouldn�t let us watch TV because it had a
detrimental
effect on us. That was what it said in the literature detailing the Institute. I
didn�t really
understand that. They thought we might get excited. I guess they had never
witnessed people
watching TV before. Sedate the masses. Drag them back to your place and have
your way with
them. Television. I missed it.
So, Pasteur and Gauss were working on the catapult in the workshop. Kepler was
working on our clothes for the outside. I say our, because somewhere along the
way they
decided to join me in my escape attempt.
Once we were on the outside we couldn�t really walk around in slippers and
dressing
gowns. We�d get picked back up and locked away within an hour, unless we could
lie in front of
someone�s TV and hide in the surroundings that most suited our slippers and
dressing gowns..
5 SUICIDE NOTES
61
It would probably be difficult to find a room with a television around here
because the
locals all locked their doors on account of living near a mental institution.
The locks would have
been a problem because I was really bad at picking them and really didn�t have
the body mass to
break down a door.
Gauss had explained the difference between mass and weight one afternoon while I
was
watching the area of the room where I would have located a television if I had
been put in charge
of placing a TV in the room.
That had been an interesting afternoon. Firstly, we had Gauss explain the whole
weight/mass thing. Then we had an argument on Nietchze.
We did manage to agree on the spelling of it. Kepler recieved a bit of a bruised
ego after
that because eventually we all teamed up on him, and voted him down.
That�s the only time democracy works. When you have such a small amount of
people
that you can all get your say in. It sometimes doesn�t work, though, if you have
an even number
of people, unless you give someone two votes. I guess that�s not democracy then.
It�s still better than giving a few guys millions of votes, though. Bizarre what
people will
believe. Give everyone one vote. Elect a couple hundred people that belong to
two or three
parties. Let five or six people in the party with the most representatives
decide how all the
members in their party will vote. Let those five or six people make all the
important decisions
like going to war and setting the tax rate. This has been very well marketed as
democracy. Not
quite what the Greeks had in mind. Sorry to bring that up again, but those tax
people really get
to me.
So, Kepler was in the workshop trying to come up with outfits to wear on the
outside. He
made some very nice terrycloth shorts. He also dyed my white dressing gown red.
I wasn�t sure
when Christmas was or I would have tried to pass myself off as Santa Claus when
we made our
break.
I was so taken with my red dressing gown that I would wear it to bed. One day I
forgot
to take it off before I went to get breakfast. The senior citizens noticed and
immediately
confiscated it.
�We can�t have any one looking different here.�
It might start you thinking differently to the others and the way we want you to
think. It
was like being back in school.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
62
Unfortunately, this small incident got me noticed. I think they started to watch
me a little
more closely after this. I went from being a piece of the furniture to potential
enemy number
one. I think I might have got away with the red dressing gown if, when they
asked me where I
got it, I had said that I had found it on a couch or something.
Instead I had said that I had secretly been dying it with my own blood for
months,
because I just loved the colour of blood.
It�s always one little thing that blows away months of effort and work. One
little match,
one little whisper, one little iceberg.
It is so hard to concentrate indefinitely and keep up your guard all the time. I
could never
work undercover, unless it involved sleeping undercover. I�m very good at that.
Once you get
the areas prone to bedsores callused over, you�re set for life.
It was my job to dig tunnel Beta.
We had named the tunnels Alpha, Beta and Omega. We were going to call the third
tunnel Gamma, but we finally agreed on Omega because it might be our last hope.
Quite clever, I thought. It obviously wasn�t me that came up with the idea. I
would have
called the tunnels 1,2, and 3. It was Kepler who came up with the idea.
Apparently he had been
classically trained. He knew Greek, Roman and English. He also knew how to use a
glue stick.
Sometimes I really thought he should have been our leader. If only his bowels
were faster, and
really then Gauss would have had to step aside.
I was having a little trouble finding out a good place to dig Beta. We were
housed on the
second floor. I�m not entirely sure what was below us. I decided that I would
start in my room
and just dig for all I was worth.
It was really hard to get hold of a shovel in my ward. Some of the other wards
had their
own shovel, but not ours.
I decided that if I was to dig the tunnel, I would have to grow my fingernails
long. I
started to do that. When the others would enquire on the progress of Beta, I
would have to lie to
them.
I think fingernails grow faster if you don�t stare at them all day. I did learn
a lot in my
days at the Institute.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
63
It took nearly six weeks before my fingernails were anywhere near good digging
shape. I
was going to start my digging the next day, but this was not to be. My horrible
streak of bad
luck jumped in front of my car and forced me to steer off the road and into a
tree.
It was an afternoon counselling session on anger management.
As citizens of the institute, we were entitled to a three-hour afternoon class
every day.
Since we had no TV, our days were made up of the three meals, a class, seven
hours of cards and
board games, and an hour of quiet time before lights out. The classes varied
from day to day and
on your particular affliction. Sometimes the classes would have eight or ten
people. Other
times, you would get some one-on-one instruction.
There were seven people in the anger management class. It was being held in one
of the
classrooms. The senior citizen was at the front of the class. He wrote the word
ANGER in block
letters on the blackboard. He then, as he always did at the beginning of the
class, asked us how
we should deal with ANGER in block letters.
This was one of those situations where we went around the class and everyone was
expected to respond. It was okay if you were at the front of the class and could
be one of the
first to answer before all the good answers had been used.
I always sat at the front for this reason, and this reason alone. During this
particular
anger management class, the senior citizen decided to mix things up a bit and
start at the back of
the class.
It is never a wise idea to mix things up a bit when you are dealing with mental
patients,
especially ones taking an anger management class. Mental patients love routine
and knowing
what is going to happen next. Mental patients don�t like surprises or
uncertainty, or so they told
us in the �Understanding my Mental Illness� classes.
Anyway, I would always answer with the same answer and the senior citizen would
always say that�s very good, as if it was taking all my mental abilities to
produce coherent
speech. I might not be the smartest tie on the rack, but I still know when I�m
being patronised.
He would always say how do you deal with ANGER in block letters and I would say
medication. But on this unfortunate afternoon, he started in the back of the
room and someone
else used my answer.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
64
It was a fellow called Tom. He was infested with anger. He needed an anger
fumigation
class, not an anger management class. He deliberately took my answer and
blatantly disobeyed
the unwritten rule of not stealing other people�s answers.
After he stole my answer, I turned around and said that that was my answer.
Actually to be fair, I said that that was my answer, you hermaphrodite.
He jumped over a desk or two and started to punch me. I quickly got into the
foetal
position with my hands over my heads. It was after a couple of the bulkier
senior citizens had
removed Tom to the anger recovery room that someone made a comment on the size
of my
fingernails.
I was quickly de-clawed, and with the loss of my nails was the loss of my
tunnel.
We had our weekly escape status meeting the next day.
Things were not going according to plan. I didn�t mention anything about my
nails.
Tunnel Alpha had been discovered when Kepler had tunnelled into the staff
smoking room.
Apparently, the room was empty at the time, but the noise that occurred when the
ceiling
came down on one of the tables in the smoking room quickly drew a crowd of
senior citizens.
Kepler was apprehended, partly because he was still a bit dazed from the fall
and partly because
it was his room that the tunnel led to.
That tunnel wasn�t really a tunnel. It was more just a hole in the
floor/ceiling, depending
on your viewpoint.
When confronted, Kepler said that this was not a tunnel and that the four of us
were not
planning an escape.
This off-hand remark got all our rooms searched and we collectively had a lot of
our
possessions seized.
I don�t know why they seized Gauss�s teddy bear. Maybe they were just being
bastards.
The funny thing was that they didn�t seize the catapult components. This was
being
made in the arts and crafts room and hadn�t yet been assembled. This was a major
oversight on
their part. Also we still had the other two tunnels to fall back on. Our escape
plans were
delayed, but we were not without hope. It was a good thing we had been digging
those other
two, make that one, tunnel all along. It shows you what a little good planning
can do.
When they asked me about tunnel Beta, I told them that the tunnel was
approximately six
weeks behind schedule, but was proceeding according to plan.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
65
Tunnel Omega was running into a bit of a snag itself. Apparently, it had some
how found
itself into the dirt below the building and now we had nowhere to put the dirt.
At this point, I
suggested flushing it down the toilet, and that is what we did.
Flush by flush we proceeded with the tunnel, until we reached the ground outside
the
building. Unfortunately, the ground that we had made it to was in the Institute
courtyard.
We all moved out through the tunnel and out into the courtyard. We all stood out
in the
last minutes of the disappearing sunlight and looked around the courtyard. No
one said anything
for awhile.
And then, forgetting my place as not the leader, I said that we should assemble
the
catapult.
We dragged down all the pieces of the catapult through the tunnel and out into
the
courtyard. It took us the best part of an hour to assemble it. This was probably
because none of
us had ever assembled a catapult before. It looked remarkably sturdy considering
it was made
out of construction paper and popsicle sticks.
We strapped Kepler into the catapult and we were preparing to let him loose upon
an
unsuspecting world. It was at this point that we were assailed by a legion of
baton wielding
senior citizens.
I had though this might happen and had covertly thought up a plan epsilon.
Amidst the
cries of cut the rope and ouch, that was my head, I snuck off towards the front
door thinking that
the senior citizens might have made a classical tactical error by not leaving
any of their soldiers
in reserve.
I was just about to the door when I got caught. I tried suggesting that the
mayhem in the
courtyard was not going well for the senior citizens and that they should
probably send in the
reserves. He was obviously too bright for me and didn�t fall for it.
I�ll call it a court marshall because I�m not sure what else to call it. Anyway,
it was my
turn to face the court marshall. I tried to explain that I had nothing to do
with any of it and that I
had accidentally heard plans for the escape and that I was interested in seeing
Kepler catapulted
through the night sky. I also said that I had money riding on whether or not he
would make it
over and I had to see what happened with my own eyes.
Apparently Gauss and Pasteur had said similar things and they had both labelled
me as
the prime instigator. Those damn scientists always stick together.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
66
I tried saying that I didn�t have the mental capabilities to plan something so
elaborate.
They told me that I must be intelligent because I had been able to plan
something so elaborate so
therefore I must be able to plan something so elaborate. This logic thing really
confuses me
sometimes.
Anyway, they went through the notes of some of my one-on-one tutoring sessions
to find
out my worst fear and that was my punishment.
Lesson well noted. Never tell anyone in an authority position anything that
might come
back to crush the delicate flower that is your soul.
They didn�t tell me what my punishment was going to be. They just sort of threw
me
into it. It wasn�t until I entered the room that I knew what punishment was
waiting for me.
Gauss and Pasteur managed to get off quite lightly, all things considered. They
lost
dessert privileges for a week. I might think that punishment was a bit light,
but Black Forest
cake and trifle were two of the desserts that week.
Kepler didn�t quite get off with a slap on the wrist like the other two, partly
because he
was strapped into the catapult and partly because they didn�t like him. The
senior citizens also
went through some of his one-on-one tutoring sessions to find out his worst
fears.
He ended up in a room with a cage on his head. They put a starving rat into the
cage.
That will teach him to read. Ignorance can save your eyeballs getting chewed out
by a hungry
rat.
I guess they are allowed to do things like that at the institute.
Anyway, I walked into that room not knowing what I was in for, but I was
worried. I
walked into a dark room. I heard the machinery of the lock as senior citizens
sealed me into the
room. The light went on and I was sitting in a room with all my ex-girlfriends.
There was a moment of silence long enough to pay tribute to all the men who had
died in
all the wars since Alexander the great held a sword in his hand.
I thought about the logistics of trying to round up all my ex-girlfriends, but
quickly gave
up. I thought I had better make some sort of comment to break the silence.
I asked if anyone was up for a menage-a-trois. This met with more silence. They
just
had no sense of humour. Or maybe it was because they knew I wasn�t really
joking. I guess that
was why they were ex-girlfriends. I guess it was also the reason why I was
attending the
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67
institute and not living in some cosy one bedroom downtown apartment with the
woman or
women I loved.
I scanned the faces of the eight women in the room hoping to find one of them
whose
name I actually remembered.
I had always been bad with names. I was equally bad with numbers. I had never
been
able to commit to memory a phone number or an employee number. It probably had
something
to do with my perception of the transient nature of everything. People would
move in and out of
my life so why bother remembering their names.
Memorising a phone number might aid me for a month or two, but really it wasn�t
worth
the bother. I could always write down a number if I was likely to need it. I
would sometimes get
in trouble when I was trying to talk about someone who wasn�t in the room. You
know that tall
fellow with the blonde hair and glasses? Do you mean your brother Bob. Yeah,
that
fellow�well, he�I usually didn�t have to worry about this as I considered
talking about people
not in the room, gossip, and I didn�t practice that dark craft.
It was not as uncomfortable as having your eyes chewed out by a rat, but I could
see why
the thought of this situation had terrified me. I presumed they had all been
sitting in here for
awhile before I got there and had some sort of chance to share stories. I just
hoped they hadn�t
had time to compare the actual dates that they had been seeing me, as there was
a bit of overlap
in a couple of cases.
Just for interest�s sake, they hadn�t managed to dig up my lost wife. I guess
she was gone
for good.
None of them said a word. They just stared at me with eyes that knew too much
about
me. It is unfortunate what you might say to a person you have been sleeping
with. I guess
dovetailing body parts makes you more inclined to say what you really think
about things.
Too strange really. I guess if you need an excuse to tell people things, having
sex with
them is as good a reason as any. It makes more sense than telling some paid
psychiatrist.
In my world, there would be a big pit where you could take all your deepest
darkest
secrets, hopes and dreams and write them down and put them in a bottle and throw
them into the
pit.
People could just go into the pit and pull out a bottle and read some one�s
secret
whenever they needed to hear some one else�s hopes, dreams or secrets. This
would help
5 SUICIDE NOTES
68
alleviate the need to tell people things and also remove the chance that anyone
would know
anything about you and be able to hold it over your head forever and ever.
This would make a lot more sense than having ex-girlfriends killed so that no
one knew
all your secrets. I guess that would be one wish for the bottle pit.
So, at that particular moment, I was thinking about either having a bottle pit
or an exgirlfriend
pit. One of the ex-girlfriend, I can�t remember her name, said that she always
thought
that I would end up in a place like this.
I asked her what her name was. She answered. I�d pass it on, but I�ve already
forgotten
it.
So, I said that I bet she was feeling pretty smug then about telling us about a
prediction
she had made after it had already happened. I then asked her what she was doing
now. She told
me. I�d pass it on, but I�ve already forgotten what it was.
I told her that was how I thought she would end up. She didn�t notice or
appreciate the
effort I�d gone to make her comment about me ending up here seem stupid.
There was something about women that brought out the intelligence in me. Maybe
it was
the foil effect.
Maybe it wasn�t intelligence, but some sort of spite, revenge, jealousy, anger
combination
that forced me into defensive aggressive responses that sounded to my weak mind
better than
they actually were.
It�s probably the verbal equivalent of walking away from a fight in which I�ve
had six
ribs broken and had two black eyes inflicted on me, but I�ve managed to get one
lucky punch in,
that has caused a bloody nose. Did you see what I did to that fellow? Did you
see his bloody
nose? I really nailed him with that punch.
Considering all the negative emotions that women in general and ex-girlfriends
in
particular can pull out of me, it�s amazing that I�ve never responded
physically, makeup sex
excluded. I guess the more emotionally attached you are to someone the more
extreme the
reaction. I guess that�s why I don�t get in fights with strangers unless I�m
projecting my anger
from someone I�m emotionally bound up with to some one I don�t know.
I guess all this therapy and tutoring was having it�s desired effect. I was
getting all
introspective and confused, even more so than normal. Not that I was ever
normal.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
69
I thought that the only way that the senior citizens would let me out of this
room was if I
became a danger to either myself or one of my ex-girlfriends. I was in the
process of deciding
which of them to attack. This was a difficult decision because they could all
kick my buttocks
into ground beef.
Suddenly�not much in my life has ever fallen into the category of
suddenly�suddenly
the door opened and one of the senior citizens announced that it was time for a
coffee break.
Fortunately for me, torture fell within work regulations and was governed by
some higher
authority. The women all got up and went off to the table with the coffee and
rather boring
looking biscuits. They looked so unappetising. They could only be called
biscuits.
I made a rush for the front door. I caught them a bit off guard but they managed
to catch
me anyway. They piled on top of me and punched me a few times and a couple of
the exgirlfriends
got in a kick or two. They got me wrapped up in a straitjacket and gave me an
injection of some nice clear liquid. It was such a nice chemical punishment that
I felt like doing
things just so I would be punished again and again. If I ever felt like getting
out of bed again,
then that was what I would do.
I guess once again the ex-girlfriends had won. Or had I won. I was the one
getting free
and easy narcotic satisfaction. They were probably all living pathetic
middle-class suburban
lifestyles and sitting waiting around for their grandchildren to visit or
waiting just to die.
They weren�t yet that old, but there wasn�t much else to wait for. Their taxes
would go
up. Their cars and furniture would wear out and have to be replaced. They would
have to find
the money to send their children off to be taught by the slightly insane
professors that populate
higher learning campuses across the country.
And they thought I was insane, which I, of course, was not. Those people, with
their
paper bagged lunches and their soap opera television shows, they could have
their dreary
Midwestern lifestyles. I win. I win. I�ll see them all in hell.
I�m not sure when the chemicals had been fully oxidised and rendered useless by
my
body chemistry, but it was sometime before lunchtime. The door in my room had
been left open.
I rolled myself out of bed and managed to find my feet. The straitjacket was a
bit restrictive but
I managed to get to my feet anyway. I went out into the hallway to find out what
was for lunch
and thus find out what day in the fourteen day schedule we were in and thus find
out how long I
had been in the land of the dancing pixies.
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I made my way to the cafeteria. Along the way, I saw no one. The cafeteria was
deserted. I felt like I was in one of those post apocalyptic movies where I was
the last person
alive. There was still food in the stainless steel vats. Peas, mashed potatoes
and pork chops.
Something had happened on the first Monday of the fourteen-day schedule. I
wonder what.
It suddenly occurred to me that I might very well be a free man.
I had a rather large helping of mashed potatoes. Consider the logistics of
eating a pork
chop while wearing a straitjacket. Now consider the same with mashed potatoes.
So I headed towards the exit wearing a mashed potato mask. If you have the
capacity to
form mental images, then you might understand how terrifying I might have looked
at this
moment.
I made it to the security post at the entrance to the institute without seeing
anyone
wearing either the dressing gowns of the citizens or the brown leather
jump-suits of the senior
citizens.
Rather conveniently, for plot clarification purposes, I noticed a newspaper
lying on the
counter at the security post. It was open to page twenty-seven and rather
conveniently had an
article circled in red ink. The headline simply read �Nations Mental Healthcare
Workers Vote to
Strike�.
They were always striking us, I thought. It was then that I realised that I
might possibly
have been saved by the system that I despised. Despise is too strong a word. It
was more of a
mild annoyance. Pseudo democracy mildly annoys me.
There I stood, on the brink of my freedom, in front of the door that opened out
on to the
world. All I had to do was make it through the line of striking mental
healthcare workers. I
knew that they might spit on me and call me a scab or something equally painful
and demeaning.
I mustered all my strength and promised myself that I wouldn�t cry no matter
what they
might call me. I opened the door and went outside to face my executioners. I
stood there for a
minute, taking a few breaths as a free man. I was waiting for the onslaught to
begin. Nothing. I
opened my eyes and there was no one there. Lazy bastards. They couldn�t be
bothered to set up
a picket line.
And there I was with my faced covered in mashed potatoes and wearing my
straitjacket
and standing on the stairs outside the Institute with all the freedom of the
world. I was feeling a
bit tired and I thought I might have a go at those peas.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
71
I re-entered my former prison as a conquering hero with all the swagger of a
spaghetti
western star. El Duce returns. Lick the mashed potatoes off my lapel, El
Cuchoracha. If only I
had a gun�and spurs that jingle jangle jingled. Poncho, por favor.
CHAPTER 6
They were carpet bombing us with water buffaloes and rice patties.
Water buffaloes and rice patties were raining from the sky in an unbelievable
manner.
An 800-pound water buffalo landed about a dozen yards away. It left a waist-high
crater. I
climbed into the crater. I huddled in the crater. I sat there shaking and
waiting for it all to end. I
hoped a water buffalo and not a rice patty would hit me. It was terrifying. I
know I�ll have flash
backs until the end of my days. I will dream of water buffalo shrapnel and wake
up screaming
for a million nights. Some of my best friends were hit with tenderised buffalo
meat and we sent
them home in non-leaking Styrofoam coffins. Some of the rice patties would take
out entire
platoons. The horror of it all.
I don�t know how I survived. It must have been sheer bad luck since it can�t
have been
God�s intervention, because I still don�t believe in God, though I now believe
in the terror of the
water buffalo. It was the way the water buffalo screamed as it fell�terrifying.
I waited in the crater for hours in case the terror flights returned. I
eventually summoned
up all my remaining strength and courage and made for the tree line. I thought I
might be able to
find shelter in the woods but I didn�t quite make it. As I was nearing it, out
of the woods came a
squad of men. I couldn�t tell which side they were on, because no one had
explained which side
I was on. These men wore vacant expressions. It would have taken the entire
Israeli army to
occupy an expression on their faces.
After a few tense minutes, they decided they weren�t going to shoot me. I did
plead for
them to do it, but they thought that their captain might take away their R and R
if they shot an
unarmed man. I suggested they could place a gun in my hands to make me look like
a threat, but
5 SUICIDE NOTES
72
they didn�t have any enemy weapons and they really couldn�t be bothered to go
and get any. So
once again I was foiled in my attempt to get off at the next exit.
I�m not entirely sure how I ended up in a war movie after leaving the Institute.
Maybe it
was the mashed potatoes. Maybe they had been maliciously laced with something by
a
disgruntled senior citizen. Or maybe the potatoes were just off.
It suddenly occurred to me that I was still in a straitjacket. The mash potatoes
had
hardened on my face. I wasn�t good looking at the best of times. I would have
been interested in
getting my hands on a mirror if it wasn�t for the fact that my hands were
severely restrained by
the straitjacket. I imagine I looked terrifying in my own mousy way.
Anyway, the squad of men must have seen something in me because they decided to
adopt me as a mascot. I didn�t even have to wear a mask. I asked them for a
trampoline,
because any mascot worth his weight in water has a trampoline. They said that we
could pick
one up at the next village sports shop that they torched. They were very
accommodating fellows,
and not beyond a bit of irony now and again.
It took me a while to get all their names. Mostly they were nicknames�Red,
Sparky,
California, Tito, Bammer and Hedgehog Rodriguez. They were from small towns that
no one
has ever heard of�Des Moines, Calgary, Brisbane, Wellington, Leicester. They did
the jobs
that no one else would do�butcher, baker, candlestickmaker. They were fighting a
forgotten
war against an enemy that was so elusive that no one had ever seen them.
In fact the enemy was totally fictitious. It had been fabricated by the
democratically
elected oligarchy consisting of the figure head government, the fascist minded
environmentalists
and the poultry producers of the western world. They were attempting to take the
public�s mind
off the banality of their own lives and give them a reason to watch the news.
The head of the poultry producers association had a bet with a decorative member
of a
western European royal family. The head of the poultry association bet that he
could increase
news ratings by two points. Unfortunately, the general public wasn�t buying it.
They would
rather watch Olympic figure skating and celebrity funerals than watch their sons
dying a bloody
and messy death in some Caribbean Island paradise. Anyway, that was Hedgehog
Rodriguez�s
theory of the war. California wasn�t so sure. California wasn�t sure about
anything, but man
could he tan. Like milk chocolate.
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73
We were on our way back to base camp to catch up on our sleep and drink
everything
that was even partially related to the chemical family of alcohols. If it was in
a see-through
bottle and wasn�t marked as a urine sample then we would try and drink it. At
least that was
what California said. I myself, usually try and stay away from cleaning products
and liquid
fuels, unless I am particularly desperate. But then again, I hadn�t seen the
horrors that these boys
had seen.
I thought that I would be able to stay in my Mascot role and would be duly
rewarded with
a place to sleep and something to eat, but their captain wasn�t having any of
it. The guys said
that they would take care of me and clean up after me, but then their captain
said that they had
said that about the last mascot that they had had and look what had happened to
it.
I, being as curious as the next mascot, asked Tito what had happened to the last
mascot.
He told me that they had cut him up into little pieces and cooked him in boiling
oil. I asked him
why they had done that. He told me that it was fondue night. I guess it wasn�t
only the institute
that had theme nights. I also asked Tito what the mascot was. He informed me
that their
previous mascot was ten pounds of grade A beef.
A moment of relief passed through my body until I remembered that my face was
covered with mashed potatoes. I hoped that they hadn�t mistaken me for a big
walking, talking
pile of mashed potatoes.
That would be an interesting way to go, though. How did he kill himself? He got
into a
big aluminium vat next to another aluminium vat of gravy and another aluminium
vat of peas
and yelled that dinner was on and he was mistaken for a big pile of mashed
potatoes. He was a
bit chunky for mashed potatoes and could have done with a bit more butter mixed
in, but other
than that he was edible enough.
Tito said that I was being a bit silly, and that no one was going to mistake me
for a big
pile of mashed potatoes This was because while I was sleeping, someone had
licked the mashed
potatoes off my face.
I found this a little disturbing.
I asked Tito who had done such an odd thing. He wouldn�t tell me. I have my
suspicions
though. I think it was Hedgehog Rodriguez. He just looks like someone who would
do such a
thing. He looks like the kind of person that would sneak into someone�s house
and go through
their underwear or the kind of person that would invite people over for a
Tex-Mex barbecue and
5 SUICIDE NOTES
74
serve homemade chili that he had defecated in and had then heavily seasoned so
that no one
would know or the type of person that would lick mashed potatoes off someone�s
face.
I wasn�t allowed to stay in my role as mascot any longer. The captain gave me a
choice.
Either I could join the platoon or I could be sent to the brig.
The brig was a little bamboo cage that hung over the latrine. The latrine was a
hole in the
ground filled with the unmentionable. Whoever said that war wasn�t pretty must
have spent
some time hanging over a latrine in a bamboo cage.
I asked for a summary court marshal and execution, but was duly informed that
there was
only one act punishable by execution in this army.
I asked �What was it?�
I was told that if you can make a souffl� that doesn�t sink then you will be
sentenced to
death. Just my luck, I�ve never had a souffl� not sink in all my days in the
kitchen.
After spending such a long time locked up at the institute, I decided to join
their army. I
fancied my chances of dying in battle.
I was well into my third Deet on the rocks when we got the orders to move. We
had
nicknamed the enemy Thomas. I�m not sure why. Maybe it was because some of them
were
actually called Thomas.
Anyway, Thomas had control of a section of the coastline, near the singles
resort of
Yamahouchi, and it was our job to move him out of that sector.
We�d had trouble at this beach before and had lost half a dozen good men when
one of
the helicopters had crashed into the water.
We were going to attempt an amphibious landing in strength. Hopefully the
battleship
guns would have cleared Thomas of the beach before we landed and all we would
have to do was
mop up the remaining resistance. That was the plan at least.
I was still having the Deet hallucinations when I boarded the landing craft. It
was a nice
calm day on the crystal clear blue water. There was a small offshore breeze and
the water was so
clear that you could see the scuba divers from the singles resort below the
surface making faces
at the tropical fish.
The landing craft that I was on was the third to hit the beach. We had followed
the lead
craft in. California was steering the lead craft and I guess we should have
known that he would
have landed on the wrong part of the beach.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
75
As wave after wave of assault craft disembarked on the beach, it began to get
quite
crowded.
We weren�t the only ones on the beach. And it wasn�t Thomas occupying it either.
Apparently, California had steered us on to one of those resort beaches
frequented by middleaged
German travellers who insist on sunbathing naked.
As if seeing naked and wrinkled middle-aged flesh wasn�t horrific enough, this
was when
the bombardment began. The battleships were about half an hour late with their
bombardment.
They were also shelling about 2 miles east of where they were supposed to.
At least I can understand them being late. The playoff game had gone into
overtime.
The winner was netted about half an hour late. No one is quite sure why they
were aiming so far
east.
Anyway, they were shelling us with a mixture of Siamese cats and Great Danes.
They
were raining in.
You would not believe the horror of seeing a naked German being shredded by a
large
dog. It is just not describable.
My mind is just not strong enough for war. Despite this mix-up, we were able to
take and
hold the beach for nearly six hours. That was when the coach loads of German
tourist
reinforcements arrived. We had to withdraw.
We suffered nearly fifty per cent casualties, but we proved something that day.
I�ll
always be proud to say I was there. I only wish I had longer to wander around
the souvenir shop.
I did pick up a couple of post cards, but I�ll always regret not buying that
shell necklace.
As most soldiers do, we never spoke about that incident again. We did, however,
compare souvenirs. I don�t think anyone was too impressed when Hedgehog
Rodriguez pulled
out a couple of cat tails. California had managed to pick up a very attractive
paperweight. It was
one of those paperweights that looked like it was snowing on the little beach
goers in the glass if
you turned it over.
It�s really hard to find such high quality memorabilia during most beach
assaults. It was
even harder to find a good quality tourist shop in some of the jungle patrols we
did. There was
one time, the boys told me, that they actually got to tour a rum distiller and
even taste some of
the rums. But from what I gather, that took a turn for the worse when Bammer
asked to search a
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76
locked room and they were a bit slow in locating the key. Seven dead and a big
fire, from what I
hear.
We did try and pack in as much sight seeing and souvenir hunting as possible,
but we
were never allowed to forget the reason we were over there. We were there to
inflict the will of
a stronger richer country on a poorer weaker country for murky political reasons
beyond the
intellectual comprehension of all but a couple of people. And we weren�t allowed
to forget it.
Mostly because they had T-shirts printed up.
I started to get into the routine. We would go out into the jungle for a few
days at a time,
set up ambushes or torch villages, and then head back to base camp for a few
days of rest and
relaxation. The most stressful part of this routine was trying to track down
enough liquor to
drink during our rest days.
The only real combat we saw was when our own artillery would accidentally send a
few
rounds our way or the fly boys would drop a few on our positions. Our casualties
were quite
light. We lost about one or two from our company every couple of weeks on
average. If the
public back home had any interest in our war then they might have been concerned
about the
number of casualties, but they were more interested in the lottery numbers, so
there was little
chance of the war ending any time soon.
Anyway, we were winning the war, so why should it end? I guess we were winning
the
war, on paper at least, because neither I nor any member of my company had seen
one enemy
soldier. The generals kept releasing kill ratios that looked good for us. And
they released maps
that continuously showed an increase in area controlled by us.
All the figures and diagrams showed how well we were winning the war. The
Captain of
our company was a bit embarrassed at our companies kill ratio. I guess because
our kill ratio
was zero. Our kill ratio was zero because we hadn�t killed any of the enemy.
I saw an opportunity in this, a way to kill myself. Rather simple really. I
would get
control of the radio during a patrol, allegedly sight a large number of Thomas�,
and call all the
artillery and air power in on my own position rather than the enemy�s. The
captain would be so
desperate to kill some of the actual enemy rather than just villagers that he
would have to send in
everything and I would at last be free of this biological disco.
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77
Getting hold of the radio was the key. Usually education is the key, but in this
case it
was a radio. Normally the radio was carried around by the guy with the glasses
until he was
killed and then the radio was carried around by another guy with glasses.
I had to get hold of some glasses and wait till the present radio guy was killed
by friendly
fire. I couldn�t remember where I had last had some glasses. I must have lost
them somewhere.
It then occurred to me that I could just take the glasses off the next radio guy
to die.
I just had to hope that he wasn�t short sighted, as that would make it even more
difficult
to see than it already was. I had to squint quite severely as it was. The
squinting gave me
credibility, though, so I won�t say too many bad things about it.
I looked very man-of-the world when I squinted. I also started to get the
squinty man
wrinkles, which made me look a lot harder than the jelly like creature that I
was.
I was still working on my thousand-yard stare, when I got my opportunity. We
were
going to be helicoptered into a very dangerous area known as Breezy Bay. A
couple of the other
companies had taken some serious casualties a week back. A series of coral reefs
outside Breezy
Bay made it impossible for the navy�s battleships to get a direct line of sight
to the bay, so they
were forced to bombard at a strange angle. Apparently this strange angle really
confused the
navy fellows, so much so, that the bombardment landed almost entirely on our own
guys.
We were all quite concerned when we heard where we were going to be going. I had
the
night to write, what I hopefully thought would be, my final suicide note. I
decided to go for the
desperate, pathetic approach on this one. It went something like this.
Everyone has deserted me.
No one can spare a minute.
I have no one to call a friend.
I have never felt so alone.
Liquor no longer works.
Narcotics only cause more problems than they solve.
I am sinking in the quicksand.
I am falling into the abyss again.
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78
I don�t feel selfish, because no one cares.
I am simply doing what I should have done a long time ago, but never had the
strength for.
I have been abandoned by all people, all philosophies and by all gods.
I am alone and will be alone for eternity.
I wrote the note up on the back of a takeaway restaurant menu.
We were based close to a medium sized city and we were able to order food from
the
city, which was fortunate because the army food was atrocious. The meat was grey
and the
vegetables were green, even the carrots.
The menu that I wrote on was from a very good pizzeria. I had often ordered the
Hawaiian pizza from them. They added macadamian nuts to the pizza. Most people
might
consider this a waste of good macadamian nuts, but it really did give the pizza
a special
something that most Hawaiian pizzas just did not have. That was one thing I was
going to miss
about that three egg omelette like thing called life.
I tucked the note into my helmet. It did occur to me that no one would notice
the note
and my suicide would be a bit of a waste. I eventually decided that someone
would have to pick
up my helmet and they would have to notice the note even if it took fifty years.
Someone would
have to notice it. I felt better about that. Someone would have to find it.
The landing zone was a bit of a mess. There were empty beer bottles and empty
pizza
boxes all over the place. It looked like the night after a really good party.
Unfortunately, we would not be doing any partying. We were there on business.
The second we touched down, we were open for business. The navy started sending
in
various livestock missiles.
We lost two right off the bat. A Holstein took out Gargantuan Finestein and Don
Juan
Stringfellow. It wasn�t pretty, but then neither was Gargantuan Finestein. At
least Don Juan
Stringfellow was good looking despite all his other faults.
We didn�t have time to stop and mourn. The landing zone was hot. The rest of the
company made it to the tree line. We stopped at the tree line to regroup. It was
at this point that
we noticed that the radio guy with the glasses had not made it. We thought he
might be a little
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79
further down the tree line, so we sent out a couple of scouts to pick up any
possible waywards.
They returned a minute or two later empty handed.
California suggested that the radio guy must have been hit. One of the other
fellows
started to panic. He was screaming about us not been able to radio for help or
pickup. Someone
else calmed him down by hitting him in the head with the butt of a rifle.
Before any one could say anything, I jumped up and ran back to the landing zone.
I
yelled that I would get the radio. It took me a few minutes to find the radio
fellow. Various
fauna was falling all around me. I was concentrating too hard on finding the
radio fellow to tell
you what they were.
I almost stumbled over the radio guy. He was in bad shape. He wasn�t quite dead,
but
was pretty close. I told him that everything was going to be okay and that we
would get him
help. I then took his glasses and radio and left him in the middle of the field.
I didn�t return directly to the others. I spent a few minutes trying to get the
radio figured
out. It wasn�t as easy as you would expect. I realised that the radio guy still
had the codebook,
so I had to return for that.
By the time I returned to him, he was at least unconscious. He might actually
have been
dead. I never could really tell. And this really wasn�t the time to figure it
out. Actually, this
was the perfect chance to figure it out.
I tried to feel a pulse, but felt none. I held up his dog tags to his mouth to
see if he was
breathing. He wasn�t. I opened his eyelids, and his eyeballs were pointing up. I
found a sharp
stick and poked him in the face with it. I even stuck it up one of his nostrils,
but didn�t get a
reaction. He must have been dead. The bombardment had stopped, and I was
unscathed again.
What does a guy have to do to get squashed by a flying cow nowadays?
This was my chance to call in the bombardment. I knew the captain would be
waiting to
see how we were doing. I radioed in that we had sighted approximately a hundred
Thomases in
the tree line and needed some artillery to move them out.
I could hear the Captain in the background squeal with joy and mention something
about
finally getting a decent kill ratio. I was asked by the other guy on the radio
who I was, as he
didn�t recognise my voice. I told him that I was the radio guy, the one with the
glasses. That
seemed to be enough for him.
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80
I was asked for my position and the position of the enemy. I gave my position as
the
landing zone and the position of the enemy as the tree line the rest of the
fellows were waiting at.
I heard the Captain say that they would send in everything they had to attack
the position. He
told me to wait around to count all the Thomas bodies.
I turned off the radio and returned to the others. I knew the bombardment would
start
pretty damn quickly. I told them to return to the landing zone as the Captain
had said that we
would be picked up immediately. They went back to the landing zone while I
lingered quietly
behind and waited for the onslaught.
It started with a wave of jets. They sprayed the landing zone with what I
thought might
be napalm, but turned out to be burning rum. Several more waves of jets hit the
landing zone.
Then the artillery started again. The bombardment from the battleships started
several seconds
after the artillery. They weren�t hitting the tree line like they were supposed
to. They were
hitting the landing zone where the rest of my company were waiting for their
ride back to base.
Things were falling from the sky so thickly, that it looked like some one was
pouring
molasses from above. I was too shocked to move. Why did I give them those
positions? I knew
they would get it wrong. Why hadn�t I switched the positions?
By the time I had realised what was going on and had made a dash for the landing
zone.
It was all over. All the men from my company were dead� I think. I didn�t really
feel like
checking. The bombardment had ended. I didn�t think there would be any point in
trying to call
in another strike, as they would probably miss again.
I wandered off into the woods. I didn�t see any point in going back to base.
Once again,
my suicide attempt had gone horribly wrong. I was starting to feel like a bit of
failure, and
wanted to kill myself even that little bit more. I really couldn�t do anything
right.
I wandered around in the woods like a drunk looking for an open bar at 4 o�clock
in the
morning. I didn�t really get anywhere.
I tired of wandering and found a bush to sit under. I eventually fell asleep,
and hadn�t felt
this peaceful and full of well being since I had been in the ditch. I spent some
time living in that
part of the woods. There was fruit on the trees and I was able get water from a
nearby stream. I
just couldn�t get access to stock quotes anywhere, so who only knows how well my
portfolio was
doing.
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81
I thought about my comrades in arms that had been brutally killed. Their Gods
had not
saved them. I didn�t witness even one small act of godly intervention to save
even one of their
miserable lives. And some of them where card-carrying, God-fearing, fully paid
up members of
the religious establishment.
Hedgehog Rodriguez, for instance, was a Pentecostal minister or something
similar. He
was allowed to perform marriages in some seven states.
He had told me about one ceremony that he performed for the price of a couple of
bottles
of bourbon. The ceremony involved a man and his horse. Several people had made
comments
hoping that the happy couple had waited to their marriage night before
consummating the
relationship. I believe the bridegroom had made some comment about test driving
a car before
buying it. These comments were second hand, so the comments may or may not be
authentic.
How could a just and merciful God betray and abandon such a deeply religious man
as
Hedgehog Rodriguez? Did their God have no sense of Justice? Maybe their God only
revealed
himself in the actions of others and was a cruel and vengeful entity.
Better not to believe, then anything evil that occurred could not be plastered
with blame.
Might as well blame and praise furniture, than try to rationalise the actions of
non-existent Gods.
The water was good. I had never had water like this in the city.
I was really getting sick of the fruit, though.
I built a hut out of tree branches. I built a generator and a television out of
Bauxite and
sand. I was all set to live out the remainder of my life in the splendour of
this emerald palace.
Then I noticed the ants.
The ants were few and far between to begin with. They were the small
happy-go-lucky
red ants that everyone has seen at one time or another.
Then the ants started getting bigger. They went from being the size of really
skinny red
raisins with lots of legs to the size of a small dog. The change was so gradual
that I really didn�t
notice until one of the ants brought the newspaper into the hut. I�d had to
order the paper
delivery because I really needed something to do in the mornings besides
clearing out any lint
that might have taken residence up in my belly button over night.
I�d got into a pretty good routine. I would eat breakfast, read the paper, take
the ant out
for a walk, have lunch and then phone into the afternoon radio talk shows before
having dinner.
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The ants started to scare me. They weren�t doing anything frightening or
aggressive.
They just kept getting bigger and bigger. First they were the size of a small
dog, then they were
the size of a large dog, and then they were the size of a really large dog. It
wasn�t long before
they were the size of a long sleek version of a giant twenty-foot high spider.
Once my hut had
been inadvertently crushed by one of these terrifying looking ants, I decided
that it was probably
time to move on.
Every time I start to settle into a place, something makes me move on. Sometimes
it�s
ex-girlfriends, sometimes it�s work and sometimes it�s giant ants.
Looking back, I�m wondering if the ants were somehow a figment of my imagination
caused by those blue and yellow berries that the paperboy/ant-dog left on my
doorstep every day.
Probably not, I�ve never had much of an imagination. Reality has always been
stranger than
anything I could ever imagine.
I packed up my television and hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Hi ho, hi ho, it�s off
to war�
I still had my gun and I still had my helmet. I had removed and eaten the
suicide note in
case it fell into enemy hands and was used by one of them. There is no lower
form of life than
someone who uses a plagiarised suicide note, except for maybe someone who licks
mashed
potatoes off your face. Just because I�ve been living the good life in the
jungle, don�t think I�ve
forgotten Hedgehog Rodriguez.
It�s the little grudges that you remember. Like the 1978 Trans-Am that you
followed to
his house after he cut you off.. You carefully noted his address and license
plates, so that you
could come back and firebomb his house and car fifteen years later while he was
out at a block
party or out voting or something like that.
If you hold the grudges and then exact your revenge many years later, it is
really hard for
the police to track you down, unless you do something stupid like lose your
wallet while you are
covering his car in gasoline.
The police might ask someone, who has had his house firebombed, if there was
anyone
that might hold a grudge or wish to cause him harm. He is unlikely to say that
there was this
Volvo station wagon that I cut off about fifteen years ago. He was pretty pissed
off. He might
have done it.
It doesn�t work like that. Revenge is best served with ice cubes and chocolate
ice cream.
Anyone that I know that might be reading this that has done something to piss me
off should not
5 SUICIDE NOTES
83
worry. If in the next ten years or so, something happens to your kinfolk, family
animals or
property, then it wasn�t me. I was off in the jungle as drunk as Andrew Jackson
on inauguration
day.
And Hedgehog Rodriguez, I know your dead, but I will exact my revenge. Oh, wait
a
second, I guess it�s my fault you are dead. Nevermind about that whole revenge
thing then.
I did have my gun, but I didn�t have any ammunition. I had traded it to the ant
overlords
for a safe passage to the new Eden. The new Eden was a jungle area not currently
occupied by
the ant army. If the army that I had served as a faithful Serbian had needed an
enemy then they
could always fight the quickly expanding ant army.
I wouldn�t like to make any predictions on the outcome of that battle, but I
hear that they
both advance to the next round if they draw, so the smart money is on a draw.
There is no
collusion in warfare, sport, politics�.and don�t let anyone tell you
differently, unless they are a
really good-looking member of the sex that you are sexually attracted to. Then
they can make
you believe whatever the hell they want, because you are a weak-minded sexual
creature.
Sucker.
So I had my gun and the day�s newspaper. My horoscope didn�t look good for
today. It
said that I would live a long and fruitful life.
It was right about the fruit. I hope it wasn�t right about the long as well.
The stars, as some people like to call them, have always intrigued me. Most
newspapers
give twelve predictions for the day, depending on which zoological sign you
might fall under. If
you get out your calculator, then you should be able to divide the number of
people currently
residing on this plastic globe by twelve. This number of people, according to
the astrologist,
should proceed with caution over the next week as they might veer totally out of
control. And
similarly, that same amount of people should watch out for an event later this
week that is bound
to effect their personal fortunes.
It looks like several hundred million people will be winning the lottery this
week and
several hundred million people will have a loved one kidnapped and sadistically
tortured and
murdered unless, of course, the loved one in question is a Taurus, and in this
case a loved one
will have a triumphant moon landing and should return to earth safely.
Or maybe I�m reading too much into them. I guess reading anything into them is
reading
too much into them. Let the children play with their toys.
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84
But then children don�t have to deal with high levels of stress and other such
upper cuts
and left hooks, so maybe childhood is the way to go. I know that I would rather
be playing tag
than doing my taxes, any day of the horoscope week
A little man in a big suit always looks like a little kid pretending to be an
adult. A big
man in a suit playing with a yo-yo, or eating an ice cream cone always looks
like a big man in a
suit playing with a yo-yo, or eating an ice cream. Age can�t be bought or stolen
and youth can�t
be leased or borrowed.
Any old spewed-out garbage can sound good if it is read or heard a number of
times.
I advise you to read over all the weaker paragraphs of my diatribe a few times,
just too
make sure you didn�t miss any earth shattering and wind breaking wisdom.
Spending long periods of time alone eating fruit has never been good for the
sanity. It
gets you wondering about bizarre and unimportant things like the market value of
a human
being.
The market forces value one white human being in the developed world to be equal
to
about 10,000 non-whites in the undeveloped world, if newspaper space is any sort
of fair
indication of a persons worth.
For instance, 800, 000 people being hacked to death in a African civil war,
might get the
same media coverage as a local train crash killing 80.
It�s obviously not as black and white as that, but if you factor out the
distances and the
political systems that the countries are running it works out to something like
the figure above.
If that is the case currently, and current philosophical utilitarian thought is
that the
preferences of any individual should be equally weighted, then there is a huge
discrepancy in the
current market value of certain third world human beings and their true moral
value.
Either there is a profit to be made or market forces are amoral. And since
markets are
driven by human wants and needs� Are human wants and needs intrinsically amoral?
Don�t
mind me, it�s probably the fruit talking. Had I mentioned that I�d figured out
how to make an
alcoholic drink from the fruit? I don�t think I had.
I had made it to the new Eden. I did like my new garden state. But not as much
as the
new jersey that I found in a beautifully prefabricated aluminium shack. This
place was even
better than the last.
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85
I took up residence in the shack, as it didn�t seem to have any inhabitants, or
any ants,
though I did see rather a large cockroach. I felt a bit like that blonde girl in
that story with the
bears. My first hut was too ant-ridden, my second hut was too perfect, and then
my third hut
would be just right.
After seeing that cockroach, I started having dreams about the ants almost every
time I
went to sleep, which was sometimes two or three times a day. I decided that the
ants would
eventually come after me. That was when I decided that I would be ready for
them.
I started on my new fitness regime almost immediately. I would wake up at
exactly six
o�clock on the dot�well, some time after it got light. I didn�t have a watch.
I would do two push ups, and then I would masturbate. The cornerstone of my
exercise
program was masturbation. I thought that masturbation was the key because it
would help in
keeping me motivated. I had heard that most exercise programs fail because the
participants get
bored of exercising. I didn�t think I would have that problem with masturbation.
I was going to
start off gradually and masturbate ten times a day and then once I got into
better shape I would
bump it up to twenty times a day. I was quite sure that I would soon be in very
good shape,
unless, of course, certain parts weren�t up to repetitive handling.
Unfortunately, as things often go with my plans, I had a bit of unforeseen bad
luck. I
injured my wrist on my first push up on my first day.
It was the right wrist, and being right-handed this totally threw off my entire
fitness
program. I did think about going at it left-handed, but that was just crazy
talk.
I decided that I wasn�t going to go down fighting as I hoped, but, more likely,
I would go
down half-drunk lying in the hammock that someone had strung up between two of
the larger
fruit trees.
CHAPTER 7
Fireworks are much more interesting if they are fired horizontally.
Among the things in the aluminium shack, I found a large quantity of fireworks.
I also
found a collection of monster truck trading cards and a still.
I was really not able to make any generalisations of the previous tenants of the
shack,
because I just did�nt have enough information.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
86
I had a go at trying to get the still to produce some high octane liquor, as the
fruit juice
wine just didn�t have enough kick. I ended up blowing up the still. I also
managed to singe off
most of the hair on my head.
I had just been thinking the other day that I should probably get around to
cutting off
some of my hair.
Sometimes you get lucky when you�re as lazy as I am. I was cutting a few corners
with
the still, because I�m lazy, and then all of a sudden I�m saved the energy of a
totally unrelated
task. Sheer brilliant uneducated luck.
My hair, at least what remained of it, had a really strange texture. It was all
melted
together in a mash of uneven sizes and colours. Much more interesting than
dreadlocks. I can
see it becoming a fashion trend. All the kids will want it.
The hair felt good to the touch, though, and I often found myself playing with
it.
Though, sometimes a big clump would come away in my hands. I managed to glue
some of it
back on to my head. I had managed to make some glue from sand, twigs, and tree
sap. I was
very handy with tree sap.
I spent most of the next few months lying in my hammock drinking distilled fruit
juice
and waiting for some of my hair to grow back. These were crazy, carefree summer
days. They
were the best days of my life. I knew it couldn�t last.
But it did. For two more days. And then I heard the helicopters.
There were at least ten of them. It must have been my army, because I don�t
recall the
ants having the power of flight. I couldn�t understand what my army was doing in
these parts.
The only explanation I could think of, was that they were lost. There wasn�t
much chance that
they had managed to win enough battles to move the front up here.
I had to move quickly, which, due to my slothfulness over the last few months,
was quite
difficult. I grabbed my gun and helmet again. I was still wearing the remnants
of my uniform. I
decided I was going to head away from the sound of the helicopters. The liquor
hadn�t totally
dulled my logical reasoning skills.
After about three steps, due to the combined effects of drunkenness, panic, and
lack of
hand-eye co-ordination, I fell face first on to the ground. This was when the
highly specialised
lazy, slothfulness gene took over.
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87
I decided just to lie there until the nasty men and their helicopters went away,
or blew
themselves up. I must have dozed off, as I often do in stressful situations.
I�m working on my skills for passing the senior citizen�s test. Can you doze off
anywhere? Can you pull your trousers up to your armpits? Can you tell a story
with no apparent
plot, meaning or ending?
I still have to work on the trouser thing. Once I can do that, then I have to
pay the
membership fees, and I get the card and the newsletter. The newsletter is pretty
good. They
have a crossword in it and lots of advice on everything from driving to matching
up socks. I
really like the �I told you so� column. It�s almost worth getting just for that
one column.
Anyway, I had dozed off into that misty world of dreams. The ants were there,
and lots
of celebrities, and of course, a full buffet table with an open bar. The ants
were all over the
buffet table, but didn�t seem too interested in the bar.
I got a bottle of rye from the bar�I had to argue a bit with the bartender
before he gave
me the bottle. The bartender was under the mistaken impression that he could
only give out one
drink at a time. I asked him if he would give me a double. He replied in the
affirmative. And
would he give me a triple. He once again replied in the affirmative. He was a
bit shaky when I
asked for a quadruple, but I eventually got him to agree to that.
I then asked for six quadruples, and as he was starting to line up the glasses
to pour the
drinks, I told him that I would just pour the drinks at the table so that I
wouldn�t spill any along
the way. I grabbed the bottle and wandered off.
I actually forgot the glasses initially and had to go back a little later and
retrieve them. I
thought this would be the sensible thing to do in case I had to get another
bottle. I wouldn�t want
him thinking that I didn�t have five heavy drinking celebrity friends and that I
was in fact
drinking the whole bottle myself.
This turned out to be the prudent way to go, as I did need to go back and
collect another
bottle from my friend at the bar a little later on, as one of those celebrity
types had rather a large
swig of my rye. I did tell the celebrity type that he could just get a bottle
from the bar and not
drink up all mine. I saw him a little later with six glasses and a bottle.
Us heavy drinking types have to stick together, so I struck up a conversation
with the
celebrity type. I told him that I had seen his last movie and that it was awful.
I asked him if he
was ever going to star in anything that wasn�t one hundred percent pure
excrement.
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88
Actually, that was what I wanted to say. I said, instead, something like, how
about those
ants, they really like a good buffet table. The celebrity type was really
vacuous, like a prairie
with no air. I tried complimenting him on his hair and asking him where he had
got it done. It
was like flicking a switch. Only I couldn�t turn it off. I really wish that he
had a ponytail so I
could have stuffed it down his throat.
I left him to contemplate his hair alone. I went over to the buffet table and
elbowed a
couple of the ants out of the way. I picked up some devilled eggs and some
little stuffed pitas.
They made me thirsty.
Actually at this time, pretty much anything would have made me thirsty,
including the air
that I was breathing, because I was holding an empty bottle. I have never been
able to have any
sort of restraint when faced with an open bar. This would probably explain the
large number of
incidents at office Christmas parties in my past.
I was just removing the cream off the top of my second, but possibly third
bottle, when a
large number of army fellows burst through the swinging doors.
I heard some one yell that I shouldn�t worry because they would get me out of
here.
I was dragged ankles first out through the swinging doors and into a waiting
helicopter. I
had the presence of mind to secure the lid to the bottle, so I was able to save
any unnecessary
spillage.
I was flown back to base camp. It wasn�t exactly the base camp I remembered
though.
Everything seemed to be inflatable. The helicopter, the tents, even the soldiers
were all
inflatable. Everything thing I looked at was inflatable. The thought that went
immediately
through my mind was what or who keeps them all inflated because I remembered
back to simpler
days when I had trouble keeping one inflatable pool up to its ideal pressure
level. I couldn�t
even comprehend the amount of blowing that it would take to keep all of these
up. Try not to
read that last comment again. I dare you.
Even the ground was inflated. It was like being in a really big bouncy castle.
I thought that I might get a little rough handling from the army guys because I
had gone
AWOL, but it then occurred to me that I could probably survive a couple of air
cushioned kicks
in the head. I was probably going to get court marshalled for my unofficial
leave and I would
probably spend the rest of the war stuck in some small inflatable bamboo cage.
I was eventually brought in front off the base commander. They made me stand.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
89
I had to resist every impulse in my body to bounce into a couple of them and
knock them
all down.
I looked closely at the base commander. It was hard to tell due to the fact that
his
features had been distorted by the inflation, but the man standing in front of
me was, in fact, the
captain of my old company. I glanced at some of the others that were also
standing around me.
They also looked familiar. California was there, so were Hedgehog Rodriguez and
a number of
fellows from my platoon whose names I had forgotten. Before I could say
anything, the captain
spoke.
He told me that this was just a quick debriefing. I would be able to clean up
and get
some food and sleep after I had told him about my capture and torture by the
enemy.
I was asked how exactly I was captured. After a small pause, I said that I must
have been
knocked unconscious by an explosion and when I recovered consciousness I was in
an
aluminium shack cell.
Without being prompted I added that they had tortured me every day, but not
always the
same way or at the same time, so I never really knew what was coming next. I was
made to wear
a blindfold so I never saw my torturers or heard them because they never said a
word.
I remembered that besides my hair and the burns on my face, that I didn�t
exactly look
like a tortured man because of all the weight I had put on due to my easy
living.
I had to come up with something quick.
They fed me this disgusting tasting mush all the time. I almost felt that they
were trying
to fatten me up for something. I felt like a veal calf in that aluminium shack.
The Captain said that I should try and forget about the ordeal and try and get
some rest.
He also said that I would be getting some commendations for my bravery in the
face of such
overwhelming odds.
I smiled and went to find a nice inflatable floor to lie on. I tried to lay down
on a section
of the floor and was quickly told that I didn�t have to lie on the uncomfortable
floor any more.
They told me I was no longer a prisoner and that I wouldn�t have to put up with
such hardships
anymore. They directed me to a nice soft inflatable bed. It was very
comfortable.
The food was awful. It would let out a big hiss of air whenever I took a bite.
This would be one place I could actually drive. I wouldn�t have to worry about
all the
bumps and bangs that I normally have when I�m driving. There would be no
explaining to the
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90
insurance guy about how the car looked like that after I came to pick it up in
the morning. It
looks like some one hit it overnight. He must have been going pretty fast to
take the door off
like that.
I felt pretty out of place in this inflatable world. I don�t have any clue what
I could
possibly have done to the non-existent Gods to get stuck in this rather odd
place. At least it
wasn�t entirely populated by ex-girlfriends.
It would take a thousand years of being locked up in a nice quiet room to think
of a way
to kill yourself in a world where nothing was sharp and everything gave way.
It wasn�t only the inflation that was getting me down. The people all seemed so
happy
and bubbly, like they were full of helium, except they weren�t floating.
It was like being in a foreign country, and even though I spoke the language, I
didn�t get
the cultural references. Did you see that episode of Garbonzo last night? It was
the one with the
Belgian waffles.
Sometimes, like now, I think back on my life. I think back to the point in my
life where I
had a choice to make. I could have chosen, as I did, to live a life of hand to
mouth subsistence
where I answered to nobody and I could tell everybody what I really thought
about them.
Nobody owned or could buy or sell me.
On the other hand, I could, as most do, have chosen to sell my soul to the
establishment
vultures. I could have been a chalk brick in the wall. I could have chosen
either a blue collar or
a white collar�whatever they had in my size. I could have pretended to be
pulling my weight in
the same direction as every one else during the day, while meanwhile at night I
could have been
trying to cover the distance that my weight had travelled during the day in the
opposite direction.
At night or on the weekends, I could have been starting letter writing
campaigns, or bombing
large corporations, or giving money to leftwing organisations.
I think I made the right choice most days. Today, waking up to an inflatable
world, I
wasn�t so sure.
I never really had a point in my life where I had that choice. I simply drifted
into my life
because I was too lazy to join the donkey and carrot race to the death. I never
had to sit at home
in front of the television wondering if I could possibly stand this pitiful
existence until 9 o�clock.
9 o�clock was when there was finally something on the television just
interesting enough
to take the mind of the futility of it all. He�s not going to eat another one of
those Belgian
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91
waffles. There�s no way�Oh, there he goes, waffle number four. Oh, that�s
entertainment. 11
o�clock�time for bed. 7 o�clock�time to get up for work. Ahhhhhhh.
Indiscriminate screaming has never been wrong. But, then there isn�t any right
and there
isn�t any wrong. There is only pleasure and pain. Now, whom did I steal that
from? They were
right, whoever they were and stealing the truth is a smaller crime, than
stealing a lie.
If only I had a pin.
If only I had a pin.
But then what? The sound of rushing air has always filled me with the highest
degree of
dread. I wouldn�t have the strength. I really wish I had one of my clever
scientist mental patient
friends with me at moments like this. Pascal would have been able to think of
something.
It probably wouldn�t have worked, but at least we would have been able to work
towards
something. It would have been something to keep our mind off hotdog night or the
inflatable
world�s equivalent, which would probably be inflatable hot dog night.
I was getting hungry, with all this talk of food, so I went to the canteen, and
sure enough,
in a literary device sort of way, it was, in fact, hotdog night.
They made no mention of the word inflatable in the posters that they had taped
to the
doors to mark the grand occasion of hotdog night. It was like they had no idea
that they were so
full of air. Except someone did mention that I was looking a little flat
tonight. I resisted the urge
to say anything, partly because I didn�t have anything clever to say, and partly
because it was
free food. Though in hindsight, I guess it wouldn�t have made any difference
since I couldn�t eat
the food anyway, on account of it being so heavy with air.
The condiments were something to behold. The liquid was still liquid, but the
solid was
inflatable. The relish had little floating life rafts in a green sea. The
mustard was just bizarre. It
just wasn�t describable. The ketchup was the same as the mustard, only red.
I wondered, how the food came out at the other end, but I was just too polite to
ask
anyone. How would you be able to flush something that floated. You couldn�t even
put toilet
paper on top of it and let the paper get wet and heavy enough to drag the
floating bits down the
drain because the toilet paper would float as well. I guess the toilets might be
like the kind that
you find in airplanes that just suck everything somewhere else. Waiting in line
gives one time to
think.
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I was going to starve to death, if I stayed too long in this lounging man�s
paradise. It was
a battle between those two arch enemy instincts. The eating and staying alive
instinct versus the
getting really comfortable in a nice inflatable chair instinct.
Only time would tell how things would go on this. I could have tried to use this
as a way
to kill myself, but two things stood in my way. Firstly, it takes a lot of
willpower to refrain from
eating and, as you know, I�m weak regarding anything involving mind, body, or
alcoholic
solutions. Secondly, I had nothing to write out a suicide note with, and my
simple mind could
not grasp the complexity of writing with an inflatable pen on inflatable paper.
I like that phrase�alcoholic solutions. If I ever write a book, that�s what I�m
going to
call it regardless of the subject matter.
I have often thought of writing a book about senior citizens and how they are
cast away
and undervalued in our society. It would probably involve a lot of research and
writing and stuff
like that. I�m just too lazy to contemplate such an endeavour, and besides, who
bothers to read
books these days, especially ones about senior citizens. I can�t say I�ve read a
book in the last ten
years. If I was to write a book it would be like running for office without ever
having told a lie.
I stuck my hand in the mustard, to the shock of some of the people around, just
to feel
what it was like. I�m sorry. I couldn�t resist. At times, I was like a small
child, seeing things for
the first time and having to stick my hand in it. I�m going to have to stay away
from the big
inflatable iron smelter that hovered over the base and blocked the morning sun
like a giant with a
strange sense of humour. No sun for the little people. Tee hee.
I peeled the mustard off my hand like wax and put it back in the mustard bowl to
the
delight of the audience. There wasn�t anything I could eat so I got a glass. I
still had my rye.
I sat down with a couple of the fellows from my company, and we all exchanged
pleasantries and stories. Somewhere during the conversation, the thought came in
to mind that I
might be dead and all these other fellows were also dead. But that wasn�t
believable.
What kind of deranged lunatic of a non-existent God would think up this place as
a way
to spend an afterlife. Unless, of course, non-existent God was a big supporter
of game shows.
But then I would be inflatable as well, and I wasn�t. Unless, of course, the
world and everything
in it revolved entirely around me. And that was the reason I was normal and
everyone else was
big and bouncy. No sun for the little people. Tee hee.
But then I snapped out of it, like an astronaut leaving the tar pit of gravity.
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I managed to get a day pass from the captain on account of my ordeal and latent
heroics.
He was a little concerned that I was still looking a bit out of sorts after a
good feeding and a
night of rest. It was because I was still flat. I was getting the impression
that he was a bit of an
inflatist. Some people.
I wandered through the red-light district. I couldn�t help contemplating sexual
relationships among two consenting inflatable adults. I guess it was just two
sex dolls instead of
only one. I�d probably have nightmares about that.
Instead of boring you with all the strange inflatable things I saw during my big
day out,
I�ll just mention the one thing of importance that I saw.
It was located in the town square.
It was in the centre of the square where most city planners would normally put a
fountain
or a statue or a statue with water coming out of it, but this town was
different. It was different in
a lot of ways.
It looked like the top of a twister. It was covered over by a big clear plastic
sheet. It
spiralled down into the ground. It was constantly moving and shifting below the
sheet of plastic
like a twister would. The top of it seemed to remain in place under the plastic
while only what
was below moved.
A portal back to my own dimension? Possibly. It looked like it might be my only
chance.
On one side of the square there was also an elevator marked elevator back to
flatland, and
a stair case marked staircase back to flatland and there was also a tunnel
marked back to flatland.
There was also a bus in the square which had flatland on its destination board.
There were no similar markings on the twister, but this was where I thought my
best
chance lay. The other ways might just be tricks to fool an innocent flatlander
like myself, into
oblivion.
I was going through another one of those pathetic phases where I was concerned
about
my safety. I could not comprehend the ability of my mind to be able to contain
two
diametrically opposed thoughts. I guess it was one of the perks of being a
pathetic simpleton and
all round hypocrite.
I wanted to be dead, but not have to go through the process of dying.
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Rather than taking one of the easy ways back to flatland, I knew that I had to
go back
through the twister, basically, because it looked like a pretty good ride.
I thought it would just be a matter of peeling off the plastic sheet and jumping
into the
twister, but I couldn�t budge the plastic, and my nails just weren�t sharp
enough to penetrate the
covering. This wasn�t going to be easy. I sat down and leaned against my escape
hatch. I
looked around.
A wave of loneliness passed over me. Lonely like a ship lost in a sea of sand.
Left
behind from a flood from long ago. Lonely like the last living man on a
battlefield. Lonely like
a shut-in, living off the rats he catches in his bathroom.
I didn�t often feel this lonely, or if I did then I didn�t notice because the
despair usually
pushed loneliness to the back of the cupboard, behind the pepper.
Some of my worst mistakes had been driven by loneliness. That cooking class I
took,
where I showed up with my own cutlery. Signing up for co-ed volleyball�what was
I thinking?
Volunteering to help feed the homeless and discovering that I really couldn�t
stand people, even
the ones that didn�t worship at the pit of consumerism and greed.
I wasn�t going to fall for those coy tricks that loneliness played on your mind.
One does not need other people, except maybe to establish ones own existence in
ones
own mind.
I did not need to prove my own existence to anyone or any God.
Why would I have to? I knew I existed.
Anyway, my existence was irrelevant any way you looked at it. Existence does not
need
to be proved. The relevance of the existence maybe, but not simply existence.
Games played by
the ant to give importance to the unimportant and significance to the
insignificant.
I stood up and ran straight into the nearest non-inflatable wall. This set
everything right.
My mind no longer hurt. It was now other parts of my body. There is nothing like
the cold
splash of warm blood to get your mind right. Physical exhaustion does it, as
well.
I often find it good to wander around aimlessly, when faced with a problem. And
usually
the answer comes to me.
Unfortunately, I�d often be lost when it came to me and by the time I found my
way back
I had usually forgotten what ever I�d thought up.
I needed to pierce the plastic sheet to get to the twister, so I went for a
walk.
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I decided I�d pop back over to the base camp and pick up my commendations. To
any of
you that are used to playing those crazy games where you have to find the five
jewels to give to
the wizard so you can get the scroll so you can cast the spell to give you the
power of flight so
that you can fly to the castle in the sky so that you can fight the dragon so
that you can rescue the
princess so that you can return the princess to the king so that you can get
your lucky hat
back�if any of you are possibly thinking ahead to my confrontation with the
captain and what
possibly useful item I might get from said captain that might help me get
through the plastic
sheet: you people can skip directly to chapter eight. There is nothing for you
to see here.
I was given the medal of honour, the medal of healthy weight gain and some
coupons for
a local supermarket for my bravery on the field of battle. Every one clapped,
though it sounded
more like lots of balloons being rubbed together.
I didn�t actually see how they fastened the medals to my chest, but there were
no pins. It
was probably saliva holding them up or quite possibly some one had done some
rubbing to build
up enough static electricity to hold the medals to my chest for the duration of
the ceremony.
They would then slowly slide down my body until they were resting comfortably on
my feet.
I was wrong. There was some tape holding them up.
I�m usually suspicious in these types of situations. I don�t like to be the
centre of
attention and the recipient of unsolicited praise. I kept thinking that any
minute now they would
tie me to a pole and march me up a mountain and dump me in a volcano or
something. The
whole affair got a bit out of hand. They had brought some high-ranking army
officers out to
present me with the awards. They were generals of some sort. They had various
bars, stars and
cherries on their hats. I�m not really up on my general identification, but they
seemed quite
important, judging by the way that the captain seemed to be catering to their
every need.
I don�t really want to speculate about the mud on his knees.
There was even a story on the cover of the army newspaper detailing my exploits.
The
details didn�t quite coincide with those in my memory. I don�t remember
single-handedly killing
seven Thomases during the battle of clearing 142A.
The additional four Thomas scalps attributed to me during my escape are equally
surrounded in memory fog.
I also don�t quite remember living off insects that I caught with my toes and
brought up
to my mouth with my feet because my arms were shackled to the ceiling of my
cage.
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Apparently the only water I received during my ordeal was what I managed to lick
off the
ceiling of my cage that had formed overnight as dew. I don�t really remember
telling anyone
these details or the others that fell in the story under the headline �Hero
Slays 15 During Capture
Ordeal�. Actually, I don�t remember talking to a reporter. Maybe I talk in my
sleep�I think I�ll
get those scalps framed. Maybe pewter frames if I can find them.
I�ve never been a hero before. Maybe I�ll get the respect that I�ve secretly
been longing
for all my life. Maybe my appearance will magically alter so that I look like
one of those
popular people. Maybe I�ll start following fashion trends and listening to
mindless vacuous
music. Maybe I�ll be flush with friends and in the in crowd. Maybe I�ll be
invited to all the
parties and get myself a high maintenance, fashion accessory sort of girlfriend.
Maybe, all
horror, disgust, despair, and hate will leave my mind to be replaced with cotton
candy thoughts.
Maybe the only thing I�ll have in my mind that borders on existential angst will
be the dilemma
of what to buy next or which club I should go to on Friday. Maybe my life will
be come so
shallow that I don�t even get my feet wet when I step into it. That�s what we
all want anyway,
isn�t it? Ecclesiastesican blissful ignorance. Step backwards into the cradle
and forget all that
you know and all that you have figured out.
Hero, I�m no hero. I�m the lone gunman. I�m the flasher, the stalker, the serial
rapist.
I�m the shut-in, the man who talks to himself on the street, the man with a can
of beer at the bus
stop at eight in the morning. I�m the observer that sees all and knows all. I
have no morals, no
loyalty, no respect for the weak or the poor or the infirm. I hate all that I
see. You can�t trust me
and you can�t turn your back on me.
It would take a certain kind of person to have the mantle of hero successfully
placed upon
them. Anyone that would relish the title of hero would be unlikely ever to
commit a heroic act.
Vanity, oh, vanity, all is vanity.
I must be a bit under the weather. I have made two traditional allusions in the
same
chapter. Maybe no one noticed.
I couldn�t really fit into the shallow lifestyle. Sure, I did like the Martinis
at all hours of
the day and night and I did like the art deco d�cor, but I just couldn�t get
used to all the beautiful
women of easy leisure.
I guess you can either go the shallow way or you can battle your demons until
they
finally kick you down the stairs and break your neck. Or you can just give up
all responsibility
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in your own destiny, and put all your hopes and dreams in the hands of a
non-existent higher
being and have faith that everything will work out.
I don�t really see much difference between finding religion or trying to find
the answers
in drugs or drink. These choices are the same, except with drugs and drink you
don�t waste your
Sundays listening to boring people speak, unless you are in Rehab or on the bus.
My God is eighty proof. That�s the bumper sticker I had on the back of my car. I
wonder
what happened to it? It�s probably in the same place as my wife and all those
socks I lost. I
have the feeling that I might be right about the lack of an interactive higher
being. Call it a
hunch. After what I have said during my life about the omnipotence and regular
potency of a
certain God, the fact that I have not been struck down might give some idea to
the actual
existence of that higher being.
I have been careful not to insult God in the middle of a thunderstorm while
standing on
the top of a hill with a golf club in my hand. If the great non-existent God had
any sort of interest
in punishing the wayward beings under his control then I should have been zapped
long ago.
I get the feeling that if there is a God, then he is more interested in watching
day time
television and eating grilled cheese sandwiches than dealing out rewards and
punishments to the
masses. Frankly, who can blame him. Hey God, I helped a little old lady across
the street. Can
you do my ironing for me?
Surprise, surprise, I have started another paragraph and not been struck out of
the registry
of life. Normally, I would have taken the fact that I had not been vaporised by
a bolt of lightning
from on high to continue insulting God, but I can�t really be bothered to
continue wasting my
time on part time or non-existent deities. So let me tell you about the car
chase.
Cheemo-san slammed it into gear and squealed the wheels as we peeled off. I
think we
lost a couple of hubcaps on the first corner. The remaining hubcaps were shed as
quickly as a fat
person might shed the wrapper of a chocolate bar. The two dozen army vehicles
were in hot
pursuit. They chased us like it actually mattered whether or not they caught us.
At least some
one out there cares about the quality of the job they are doing.
They were top quality pursuers.
We flew over the tops of hills and we skidded around corners. The inflatable
landscape
soon disappeared into the rear view mirror.
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The army vehicles consisted entirely of motorcycles and sidecars. I guess all
their other
vehicles were being tuned up for a May Day parade or something.
You can�t really force a car off the road with a motorcycle and sidecar. They
did try,
though, so you have to admire them for at least some male bravado/courage
stupidity. We
knocked more than a few of them into a ditch or a tree or whatever suitably
visually comic prop
that was available. Several of the motorcycles and sidecars ended up flying
through the air.
What instigated this, I�m not sure, but several of them flew through the air and
ended up in ponds
or in muddy cow fields, nonetheless.
I was really starting to get the hang of this car chase thing. True I wasn�t
driving, but I
was doing all I could as a passenger to elicit our escape. Watch out for that
slow moving truck
coming in the opposite direction. I think it�s a right turn up here. The
windshield is covered in
feathers, maybe you should put your windshield wipers on. Things like that. It
was no free ride
on my part.
We rolled the car a couple of times, but fortunately for us, the rolls always
ended up with
all three tires on the ground. We lost a tire and about a fifth of the car when
Cheemo-san was a
little slow on a left hand turn and the back of the car on the driver�s side
slammed into a tree.
Thankfully, the car had been shabbily made so some of the car gave way and
remained
on the tree while we continued on our journey.
When we lost that fourth wheel, we gave a bit of confidence to our pursuers,
because they
figured we now both had an equal amount of wheels. Never mind that we still
outweighed them
by about five times.
Through good old-fashioned attrition we managed to whittle them down from two
dozen
to a mere two. The occupants of the two remaining motorcycles and sidecars were
the alpha
males of our pursuing pack. They were appropriately dressed in black leather,
had scary hairdos,
and were covered in tattoos and facial hair. I�m not sure how they managed to
get away
with looking like that in the army. Maybe they were given some leeway because
they were such
crack chase troops.
In perfect unison, rarely seen in car chases, the two motorcycles and sidecars
pulled along
side us on a bit of straightaway. The two occupants of the side cars that had
not been much use
up to now, unlike myself, managed to jump on top of our car. They tried to smash
our windows.
I guess they had some vague idea about trying to pull us out of the car or
something.
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Anyway we came to a sharp corner in the road. We went right. The fellows on our
roof
lost out to inertia and went straight. This confused the drivers of the
motorcycles. They crashed
into each other and ended the pursuit.
It was a bit of an anticlimax as these things often are. Cheemo-san and I had a
little bit of
a debate on whether or not we should wait around for any straggler chasers or
whether we should
push on and get away from the mess that we had left all over the last corner in
the road.
We pushed on, and soon Inflatedland was just a distant memory.
CHAPTER 8
Cheemo-san was of Ukrainian and Japanese descent. He didn�t speak much. He�d
express himself pretty much with body language and facial expressions. When he
did speak, it
was only with numbers. For instance, he might greet you with a two. It was
usually safe to reply
with a two and perhaps a five. The five would normally be met with a
twenty-seven or a fortytwo
depending on how he was feeling.
I once made the mistake of reading out the barcode number that the government
had had
tattooed on my arm to track my movements. Cheemo-san responded quite
unexpectedly and
violently.
I think he broke my nose. It hurt whatever he did. I think I must have
inadvertently
insulted his mother or told him that it was, in fact, me that had run over his
dog when he was
eight. I�m not really fluent in Cheemo-san�s number language so it�s hard to say
exactly what I
had said to him.
Anyway, I quickly learned not to read out any long list of numbers. This was a
bit
unfortunate since I never got to find out what the numbers on my library card
meant.
I�d usually say goodbye with a four or just wave to him.
We were drinking at a bar in the desert. It was the kind of place where you
either drank
straight out of the bottle or brought your own glass. Even if you ordered your
drink in a clean
glass, it was unlikely to show up in one.
I�m not sure what year it is, but this place was at least twenty years in the
past. It was
like stepping into your high school yearbook and having a drink in the parking
lot before going
into a dance in the school gymnasium when you are more used to going to the
garden centre to
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100
find a couple of cedars to replace the two that have died out of the fourteen
that line your
drive�maybe we should also re-stain the deck?
They had a pool table. They also had a pretty good collection of neon beer
illuminations
to accentuate the natural lighting coming from the cracks and holes in the
walls.
A portly fellow, who had obviously left his tie and smoking jacket in the Rolls,
was
leaning aggressively over the jukebox. He was struggling to select the best in
American country
and western music from the past twenty years.
I think he still had four songs left. As long as he didn�t select anything that
was bound to
make me cry, I felt happy enough not to go over there with Cheemo-san and get
the portly fellow
to read out the number tattooed on my arm.
The smoke hovered over the room like a hovercraft.
I�ve always wanted my own hovercraft. It would be great in low speed chases.
They�d
probably be cheap to insure and they�d definitely be easy to park.
If anyone out there has a cheap second-hand hovercraft that they are trying to
get rid of,
then let me know. I don�t have any money but I could trade you for some small
children.
I�ve never understood the attraction of acquiring children.
Moulding someone in your image only goes so far in explaining it.
It seems like a lot to give up so that you can hear the word daddy. You want
immortality,
buy some land and build a big statue of yourself. The statue will last longer
than a child will and
it�ll be cheaper in the long run and you�ll still have your weekends free. No
line-ups to get onto
the teacup ride. No drooling. No runny noses. No crying in the middle of the
night. Watching
what your girlfriend wants to watch on the TV rather than watching puppets
counting apples.
Anyway, if anyone wants to trade a hovercraft for several small children then
let me
know. There seems to be a good supply of children at the park at the end of my
street and I think
I could grab a couple before anyone noticed.
Cheemo-san and I were discussing life, as people do when they have just seen
fourteen
empty dirty beer glasses removed from their table.
�The thing about the system, Cheemo�is it okay if I call you Cheemo�three�okay
Cheemo-san�the thing about the system, Cheemo-san, is that government is there
to control
your life as completely as possible without appearing to do so.
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All governments try and control your life in its entirety and they have varying
degrees of
success. The only difference between the so-called benign governments, like our
own, and the
so-called oppressive fascist and communist governments is that the oppressive
governments
don�t try and hide the fact that they are controlling your life. They might try
and repackage the
control under the banner of done for the good of everyone, but all governments
are basically the
same.
Governments don�t want you to think for yourself or do what you want. Take
parking,
for instance�what�s wrong with me parking on the sidewalk�Cheemo-san, can you
give me
one reason why I should not be allowed to park on the sidewalk�
�One hundred and sixty-seven�
�What�s wrong with everyone doing it�there is nothing wrong with it�it�s all
control�we are being controlled by people who had their lunch money taken off
them when
they were back in school�and in their pathetic revenge sort of way, they are
getting their own
back by controlling our lives.�
That�s basically what was on my fortune cookie. Cheemo-san had a series of
numbers on
his. I believe that this string of numbers also refers to government having too
much power into
where I can park my hovercraft.
Government control is a feeble attempt for man to control nature. Unfortunately,
man is
feeble enough to be controlled. Try giving a parking ticket to a cheetah that
hasn�t eaten for a
week and a half. Actually, try giving a parking ticket to a man who hasn�t eaten
for a week and a
half. Our white bread and warm milk lives have made us weak. Weak like my urine
after I�ve
had twelve beers. �Yes, we�ll have another round. Put it on Cheemo-san�s tab.�
The crowd rolled over me like a glacier, depositing the stones and gravel of
disposable
consumerism onto me. I was covered in sticky aluminium and butter-laden
cardboard and things
I couldn�t identify. Cheemo-san had disappeared entirely from my sight.
I knew he should have gone for the popcorn by himself. Crowds terrify me.
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I can take humanity in small bites. Anything more than a mouthful gets me into
adrenaline country. I must flee or hide. The lights get too bright. The noise
gets unbelievably
loud. The walls surge in and out, like the people.
We had selected an unpopular film at an unpopular time, hoping to avoid people.
It�s
hard to successfully negotiate the crowd dynamics when there are eight screens
at the theatre. It
only takes one really popular film to fill the lobby with oozing and dripping
humanity.
We had miscalculated the human need to get to the theatre an hour or two early
to get in
line so that they could get a good seat, so that they could see the same film
with a different name
that they had seen the week before.
They would sit there and laugh at the same jokes and gasp at the same stunts
that they
had laughed at and gasped at the week before. Give the crowd what they want.
Give them what
you gave them last week, and the week before. Don�t try and be too clever or too
different
because the crowd won�t like it, because they haven�t seen it before.
The new and the different and the original confuse them. But give them time to
absorb
the different, by repetition, and the different becomes the familiar and they
are comfortable and
content again. Once you understand that, you have figured out the entire
existence of ninety
percent of the people. You will know what these people want to buy, what they
want to see on
their screens, what they want to eat and you will know how to control them.
Promise them what
they think they want or need�freedom�demo-cracy�a middle class life�a better
life for their
children.
My sidekick dragged me off the floor and back into the theatre.
There were about ten of us in a room built for five hundred. This was good,
because I
really needed about fifty seats for my own personal sanity. The film was all
right. It was a bit
derivative, but then I guess everything is. Cheemo-san didn�t like it because
there were no car
chases. I explained that it did have car chases, but they were figurative and
not literal.
He punched me in the stomach. I get less abused when I acted my stupid self.
Anytime I
pretended to be clever, someone punched me. I guess that�s probably a good
thing. Nobody
likes people who pretend to be something they aren�t, except for other actors.
Actors really need
their own planet. You could throw politicians and � actually just give me the
planet.
The plan for my suicide was thought up by Cheemo-san, or possibly me. I really
valued
his input and companionship. We had a sort of quasi-homosexual relationship,
without any sort
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103
of sexual contact, though we did hug once when we were both very drunk. I�m
telling you this
now in case the pictures show up in a newspaper or something, and you wonder
about my
relationship with him. We had the kind of relationship where we could actually
talk to each
other, and not just talk on the usual sports subjects.
Most male relationships involve superficial discussions about sports, work�well
that�s
about it unless you belong to a cult or have a strange hobby.
Anyway, I could really talk to Cheemo-san, primarily because he couldn�t
understand
what I was saying. I could tell him anything. I told him about my depression and
my boredom
and the fact that I couldn�t grow a decent beard. I told him about how I was
planning to kill
myself, and how I didn�t want to do it any old way, and I asked him if he had
any good ideas for
doing it.
I�m not sure who came up with the idea. When you�re brainstorming, like we were,
it�s
tough to identify the originator of an idea.
Lawnmower�powertools�sixty-eight�something
with chewing gum�one hundred and forty-five�escalator.
We were going to do it after the film, on the way out. Unfortunately they herded
us out
some back door and down some steps so I had to buy another ticket and find my
way back into
the theatre.
I undid my shoelaces. The plan was to get my shoelace caught in the escalator
and get
sucked into the machinery.
I stepped onto the escalator. I thought it was a good variation on the shoelace
as suicide
implement idea.
I moved my lace around until it caught in the escalator. I just had to wait
until the top
and then I�d get sucked foot first into the machinery. I would be a bloody and
chunky milkshake
sort of mess, and those minimum wage minions would be rushing out with their
buckets and
mops. Cheemo-san would place my suicide note on top of whatever was left of me.
Three-quarters of the way. And I was into adrenaline country. I could hear my
heart
beating. I could feel every single hair on my body. I could smell the deer
hiding in a bush four
hundred yards away.
At the top. My shoelace started disappearing into the void. I felt the tension
build on my
foot. I couldn�t help letting out a medium loudness sort of squeal.
I think I passed out.
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104
They told me that I had been saved by a quick thinking twelve year old that had
opened
the emergency stop contraption and pressed the big red button. Damn to hell the
speed-of-lightreflex
video game generation.
There�s nothing more depressing than a failed suicide attempt if you actually
want to die.
Except for a second hand dog collar.
Well, I guess there�s not much point, but I�ll pass on my suicide note for you
anyway. I
had decided to go for the I hate every body approach on this note. This was a
bit of a stretch for
me.
I�m not used to writing suicide notes, so I�m not sure how these things are
supposed to go.
I guess I have to explain the reasons for my suicide.
I can�t stand people.
Big people, little people,
orange people, pink people,
old people, young people.
I can�t stand any of them.
I hate the way they look.
I hate the way they eat.
I hate the way they breathe.
I hate everything about them.
I hate waking up everyday and knowing I have to go out into the world teeming
with them.
I can�t get away from them.
They are everywhere, and I hate them all.
I guess I should also blame someone for this, because it can�t really be my own
fault, can it?
I blame country and western music, cooking shows, garden statues, and
politicians for driving
me to this.
I guess that�s about it.
Bye.
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105
Another suicide note to add to the growing pile of paper failures that I was
collecting.
The pile was growing faster than my fingernails.
Since we were already in the theatre, Cheemo-san and I decided to go and see
another
movie. The movie was like caramel. I was still picking bits of it out of my head
as we were
walking home.
The bus wasn�t going to stop. It wasn�t going to stop no matter what Cheemo-san
or I
threw up on.
It had started quite innocently. We were going to stay on the bus the entire
length of the
country. We were also going to have a beer every time we saw something that made
us angry or
depressed.
Cheemo-san was drunk quite quickly. Or at the very least, he was drunker than I
was by
a noticeable margin. He must be a more sensitive soul than I am. I wasn�t
finding anything
particularly annoying or depressing on our journey. It helps when you don�t care
about anyone
or anything. I was drinking merely to pass the time. The only things that I
found even a slight
bit unsettling were the actual seats in the bus.
How many heads had rested on that headrest? How many people had sweated eight
hours away of their life in that seat? How many people was I coming into direct
contact with
because we had shared the same seat on a bus? How many people�s bodies had the
water in my
beer already passed through? How many people had used the air I was breathing?
Too many questions for Cheemo-san to answer. So he gave up and drank to the
point
where he didn�t have to answer them. Not that he understood the questions or if
he did, then I
wouldn�t have understood the answers. Cheemo-san was my rhetorical friend.
We continued our heavy drinking for several days. The bus drivers were too
scared of us
to say anything.
Actually, that�s a bit of a lie. We stayed in the very back of the bus and kept
quiet and
well hidden. Our occasional drunken insanity was taken as just plain old regular
insanity when it
did show its head. I guess the drivers are used to such behaviour. Though they
certainly do not
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106
tolerate singing the same nursery rhyme for three hours. That was the closest we
got to getting
thrown off.
Actually, come to think off it, we did get thrown off. We just restocked the
cooler and
caught the next bus. The next bus driver actually joined in the singing and was
far worse a
singer than we were. This stopped us from singing for a few hours, until we had
changed drivers
and it had all started again.
The paranoia began when we stopped in a small town and a dozen nuns got on the
bus.
If I had been a weak willed church going man, I might have taken this for a
sign. But
fortunately for me I wasn�t that drunk yet. Though I was drunk enough to try and
make the
moves on a couple of the nuns.
That will reaffirm their faith. They will be thanking their God for the chastity
vow and
the excuse that goes along with it, after a drunken miserable fellow such as
myself has tried to
convince them of the pleasures of cheap motels and squeaky beds. If any of them
were thinking
of straying, I�ve driven them straight back into the centre of pack.
The paranoia doubled in the next town, along with the number of nuns on the bus.
Cheemo-san was sure they were after him. I�m not entirely sure why.
I asked them if they were after Cheemo-san. A couple of them said they were not
up to
any such thing. The rest of them just sat there in those seats, that murders and
rapists and
pensioners had sat in before. The nuns just looked slightly uncomfortable and
nun-like.
I passed this on to Cheemo-san. I told him that it was just an odd coincidence
that the
bus was full of nuns, and that no one was after him. He just kept mumbling
forty-nine and
seventy-two. I told him that there was nothing to worry about and the nuns would
probably get
off at the next town for some nun night at the local nightclub.
I was wrong about that. The next town came and went. There was a net addition of
twelve more nuns bringing the total to thirty-six, which was not a good number
to be mentioning
to Cheemo-san at this particular moment.
Unfortunately, I did and he curled up in a ball and started crying.
The seat capacity of this bus was forty-seven. Cheemo-san, myself and the nuns
totalled
thirty-eight. There were three empty seats and the remaining seats were filled
with the usual
business class clientele that usually travel by bus.
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107
I must admit that I was feeling more than a little uncomfortable with all these
nuns on the
bus.
My piece of mind was not restored when the six remaining non-nuns were replaced
with
nine more nuns.
We probably should have got off when the second lot of nuns got on.
But we didn�t.
The bus driver decided to make a small comment on the announcement system. He
said
that it was four hours to the next stop and he didn�t want any nunsense back
there.
I think every one on the coach had a small chuckle about that except for maybe a
mother
superior or two and Cheemo-san and myself.
I was just about at the point where a comment like that might have driven me
into a
homicidal rage and I would have stormed up to the front of the bus and strangled
the driver.
Fortunately for me and whoever washes his polyester uniform, I was not quite at
that
stage.
I yelled that God was dead and that the nuns were wasting their lives. They
could be out
all night, downing tequila shooters and trying to win Limbo contests for all the
good their
praying was doing.
�Ignore him and he will go away.�
�Does not ignoring your God bring him any closer.�
This confrontation was tiring.
I yelled that my God could beat up their God and left it at that. Cheemo-san
took over.
He really started to get out of control. It took a lot of hair-pulling to keep
him from
attacking the driver.
Maybe we were on the bus to heaven. I must admit that I wasn�t sure of the
destination.
This was when the whiskey came out. Neither Cheemo-san nor I were ever able to
hold
our liquor. So maybe the whiskey wasn�t the best idea, but when you are in the
physical act of
drinking its quite difficult to lash out at things.
The vomiting started pretty much as scheduled an hour later.
We did manage to get off the bus, but the driver did make it to the next stop.
He was on a schedule and he couldn�t stop.
How long will it delay your bus while the vomit is cleared?
5 SUICIDE NOTES
108
We got off the bus, but a lot of nuns had to wash their habits.
I have decided against lowering the tone and making any jokes about nuns,
habits, or
vomit, despite the incredible urge that is burning in the charcoal pit of my
stomach.
I remember back to a time before the alcohol had taken control of my body and I
still
enjoyed eating. If one was at hand, I might have been able to eat a nice steak
with a baked
potato dripping in butter.
I would have cooked the steak in butter and pepper and red wine. I would have
put a nice
big chunk of sour cream on the potato. Some garlic bread with melted cheese
would have joined
in the party. Profiteroles oozing chocolate and fresh cream from every pore
would have rounded
off things for dessert. A nice Merlot could have washed it all down�I can�t
remember the last
time that solid food had brushed by my tonsils.
I asked Cheemo-san if he remembered the last time he had eaten anything. The
chunky
things in his vomit didn�t count. I wonder what those chunky things were because
he hadn�t
eaten in awhile either.
Cheemo-san hypothesised that it might, in fact, be his lungs. I think that might
just have
been crazy vomit talk.
The bus had dropped us in the desert. Actually, to be fair, it was a town in the
desert.
The town had a bar. The bar was very familiar. After spending some time in the
bar, we caught
a bus out of town.
We would have caught the next bus out of town, but the next bus out of town was
full of
nuns. All signs were pointing to a nun convention somewhere.
The bus we eventually got on was nun free and thankfully empty except for us and
the
driver. We started drinking a beer every time we saw a bit of road kill. We were
able to stare
out the back window. We could see but never identify large numbers of our
biological cousins.
I have always felt very disconnected from nature. This might explain my
situation. I
have lost the fundamental meaning in my life because I am no longer the hunter
or the hunted. I
never had any need to use my instincts or my inbred hunting abilities.
Everything connecting me
to nature and the environment has been hidden under layers of clothing, metal
and plastic.
Generations and generations of evolution have been given the pink slip and a
week�s redundancy
pay for every year they�ve been with the company. I have no use for any of the
skills that my
predecessors have painfully learned through not doing. The fact that great uncle
Phil tried to
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109
wrestle a timber wolf to the ground and lost his life in the attempt, must mean
something. The
wrestling timber wolves gene must have died with great uncle Phil for a reason.
Ten thousand years of evolution are being wasted. They are sitting in the
cupboard next
to the suitcase with a hole in it and the shirts that I hope will come back in
style. They are sitting
collecting dust because they are useless.
Things change too quickly for evolution now. Evolve me a way to walk down the
street
and not be asked for money. Evolve me a way to get out of answering the phone.
Evolve me a
way to get food without having to go out to a place that sells it. Things have
passed me by and I
don�t have the genetics to float with the current any longer.
I think that was a dog. It�s tough to tell through the tinted glass. It might
have been a
timber wolf. Apparently, I�m not the only one that evolution has left behind. We
die now so that
what remains is stronger. Pass me a beer Cheemo-san.
Don�t take any notice of me. I�ve probably had too much to drink. Nothing means
anything anyway. It�s all snowballs and cold beer�gone when the weather changes.
Decaying while we are still growing. Don�t ever let anyone tell you that nature
doesn�t
have a sense of humour. If there is a God, that would be his only redeeming
quality.
We got off the bus in a large city and got on another bus. Somehow our
cross-country
journey became temporarily suspended as we had gone from an inter-city to an
intra-city bus.
That was how we ended up at the movie theatre where I made my unsuccessful
suicide attempt.
Since I feel closer to the end than ever before, I think I should make some
attempt to tie
up some of the loose ends that I�ve left. It�s quite difficult to tie them all
up, because my life has
been one of loose ends. Unreturned phone calls, unsent letters, moving away
before anything
reaches its conclusion. I�ve never seen things through to the end.
Anyway, I�m simply tying up a couple of loose ends by explaining to you how we
got to
the bar in the desert and the cinema. You probably could have figured it out
your self, but I
thought I�d spare you the trouble of any unnecessary thinking. The fine people
in the
government have brought this paragraph to you.
�Are you having fun Cheemo-san?� For those of you that can�t see Cheemo-san, he
just
lifted up his beer and nodded.
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110
�Glad to hear it Cheemo-san. I�ve noticed a lot of anger in your behaviour,
Cheemo-san.
Is there any reason for this?� Once again for those of you that can�t see him,
Cheemo-san gave
me a punch in the stomach. If only that was socially acceptable behaviour.
�Cheemo-san, I�m getting the uneasy impression that you can understand English
and this
whole number thing is, in fact, a manifestation of your inability to
successfully socialise with
those around you.� He punched me again, but you knew he would.
�Is it television that has driven you into this antisocial behaviour?� More
punches. �How
was your relationship with your parents?� More punches. �When you lash out at
me, are you
really lashing out at an uncaring world?� More punches.
�I think it was a cat. Any idea what it was, Cheemo-san?� He almost hit me
again, but
then he realised that I had skilfully changed topics.
I was going to ask him if he was a bed wetter, but I didn�t think I could take
any more
punches. In an unsuspected reversal, Cheemo-san spat out a quick list of
numbers. Roughly
translated, he asked me about my trouble with quotation marks.
The venom started oozing out of every pore. Smoke started coming out of all my
orifices. It�s a great party trick, that. I use it quite often. The anger
bubbled and boiled until it
cascaded over the side of the pot and onto the stove below.
The best I could manage was something like don�t get me started on quotation
marks or
I�ll come over there and kick your ass. And then I noticed that something was
floating in my
beer and quickly forgot about his inflammatory comment.
It was somewhere around this point that Cheemo-san decided that he was going to
stop
time. With time stopped, there didn�t seem much point in staying on the bus, so
we got off.
It would have been nicer if Cheemo-san had stopped time when the bus was
somewhere
closer to something. We were in the middle of nowhere once again, but I guess
that�s better than
being somewhere.
We managed to track down a shop and we restocked our beer cooler.
It was strange drinking the beer, because there were no bubbles, due to the fact
that time
had stopped. Flat beer was the most compelling reason not to stop time, as we
were to
eventually find out.
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111
This would have been the perfect time to take advantage of certain young ladies.
Though
there weren�t any around, and unfortunately, neither of us were too interested
in sex, despite
what some nuns might say.
The whole world was ours. We could have anything we wanted. We could do anything
thing we wanted.
We went back to the whiskey. At least it didn�t taste funny.
Stopping time was great, but it wasn�t much use. Nothing electrical worked. And
we
couldn�t set anything on fire. About all we could do was steal. We already had
too much stuff
that we didn�t need.
We had enough money to bathe us in liquor for a long weekend or two.
Cheemo-san only bathed on long weekends, so as you can imagine February and
October
were not particularly popular months in my calendar.
Though, come to think of it, for a person that didn�t bathe every week like the
rest of us,
he didn�t smell that bad. He smelled like roast beef that had just taken it�s
socks off and was
watching the big game on the TV.
Perhaps it was because of my own overwhelming body odour that I did not take any
offence to his. You know your scent is strong when you can smell yourself.
Having the pair of
us in an elevator made people walk up the last few floors. I�m surprised we
didn�t clear the nuns
off the bus. Maybe they didn�t bathe very often themselves.
I think Cheemo-san had lice as well. I�m not too sure if they were lice or not,
but they
were definitely some sort of parasite. I once saw Cheemo-san pick up one of the
parasites and
put it back down his pants after it had fallen off him.
This struck me as odd so I asked him about it. He explained that they made him
itch.
Still puzzled, I enquired further. He told me that since he had given up
masturbating he had
nothing to do with his hands. Seemed like a reasonable answer to me. But I told
him that he
should just take up picking his nose or chewing his fingernails.
He grabbed one of the lice, or whatever they were, between two fingers, aimed it
at me
and squeezed. He muttered something about doing that with fingernails. I ignored
him for the
rest of the afternoon or since time was inconsequential, half a bottle of
whiskey.
We sat on the dusty curb outside a mechanics. The clouds and the sun stayed in
the same
position in the sky. We contemplated what was keeping the planes in the sky, we
contemplated
5 SUICIDE NOTES
112
why it was still light outside even though the light had stopped moving, and we
contemplated
why gravity was still working�well at least I did. Who knows what that
lice-ridden smelly
fellow sitting next to me on the curb was thinking about.
I thought I should be the more adult of us and I made amends to repair our
relationship. I
offered him some of the whiskey. He accepted and our friendship was restored.
He asked me what time I thought it was.
�Where?�
�Eighty-four.�
It doesn�t matter. It might matter somewhere else in the universe if time has
not stopped
there, but here it doesn�t matter and neither do distance or the speed of light
in a vacuum.
Theoretically, all matter should disappear. He punched me again, and after a
second or two
asked me what light was doing in a vacuum. My stomach was a bit shaky so I
decided not to
answer.
I can�t remember the last time I vacuumed.
CHAPTER 9
I was alone again. I guess I should explain Cheemo-san�s demise for those of you
reading these pages in order.
Cheemo-san and I had wandered onto a college campus, the way one might if they
were
looking for a library, so that they could find a book, so that they could prove
a point and win an
argument.
It had started with a discussion about taxidermy and had ended with my companion
lying
in a freezer awaiting disposal.
It was awful to see him like that. He was really pasty looking and his eyes
looked like
glass. I was going to get him stuffed and placed on my mantelpiece. He would
have liked that.
This wasn�t really an option though, because I didn�t have a mantelpiece, or
even a corner where
I could display him properly.
The winner of the argument was never established, though it probably would have
been
Cheemo-san, because I was simply arguing for the sake of arguing.
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113
As we wandered the halls of higher learning looking for a library we were
distracted by a
bulletin board. It was a yellow sheet of paper that caught our attention amongst
all the
multicoloured pages. Green pages advertising self defence courses for women.
Pink pages
selling calculus books only opened the night before the final exam. I would have
thought that
book could have been reused by the seller the next time he took the course.
White pages
announcing something or other. I don�t know what the white pages were
advertising because I
couldn�t be bothered to read any of the white pages
A piece of yellow paper had given the contact name for someone interested in
tracking
down a left-handed smoker for a psychological experiment. The lucky candidates
would be paid
in cash money.
Neither of us were smokers or left-handed, but we both thought that we could
fake it well
enough. We weren�t really in it for the money. We were in it for the attention
that being a
subject in an experiment provides.
It started with them feeding us left-handed smokers some sort of tablets. I
think I was in
the placebo group, though the placebos made me feel warm, like I was melting.
It ended with Cheemo-san being cremated in the small hours of the night so that
no one
could see the smoke coming out of the crematorium�s chimney. I wish I hadn�t
left the laundry
out last night. It seems to be really dusty.
We had progressed from doing the simple experiments carried out by third year
students,
to some serious experiments where they would stop our hearts and see if they
could get them
going again or cut off our heads and see if they could reattach them. Anyway,
one of these
experiments didn�t go very well for Cheemo-san and he ended up dead.
I blame myself. I shouldn�t have made him go to college. It was all right for me
because
I was quite happy to die, but Cheemo-san still had some living to do.
I guess I would have to do it for him. Luckily for me, the way Cheemo-san drank
would
have killed him in about six months anyway. I�d live the next six months for
him.
The college was nice enough to pay for the funeral and cremation, though a plain
old
regular cremation was not what I really wanted.
I really think Cheemo-san would have wanted a Viking funeral. Unfortunately, I
couldn�t get permission to perform a Viking funeral anywhere.
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114
I even had the boat rented and had gone to the trouble of buying a packet of
matches. I
should have just gone ahead and taken his body and dropped it in the boat and
set it adrift after
lighting it up.
In the end, I didn�t have a choice, mainly because they caught me trying to
steal the
body. I tried to pretend I was just in the morgue to say my final goodbyes to my
friend, but they
caught me with Cheemo-san slung over my shoulder as I was waiting for an
elevator.
They were kind enough to let me attend the funeral. Somehow I managed to avoid
being
incarcerated while my friend was being incinerated. It was a very emotional
ceremony. I would
have cried, if I could.
And I was alone again. Cheemo-san was free. And I was alone.
If you�re going to hate the world, you really need a sidekick.
I felt a piece of my flesh torn away as the line the hook was connected to was
pulled
taunt. A bit of my knee flew through the air and into the water.
I had been sleeping on the beach for a couple of months.
I was really close to the ground.
I�d usually be woken up by the early morning fishermen. Normally it would be the
sound
of them opening their beers, but this morning it was a little more painful. I
looked at my knee
and at the blood dripping out of it. I hadn�t screamed like I normally would
when faced with
even a little bit of pain. This probably had more to do with not being fully
awake rather than
anything else.
I still missed Cheemo-san, but it was more theoretical.
Good thing I didn�t have a photograph to remind me what he looked like. I had an
abstract remembrance of what he looked like, but the hair and eye colour and the
face structure,
no matter how I jumbled it up in my mind, could never be mixed correctly enough
to give me an
accurate mental picture of him. I did not remember him anymore, I only
remembered of him.
And this helped.
With a rage of one, I jumped up and ran at the fisherman that had taken a piece
of flesh
from me. I tripped over a starfish and onto my face. The fisherman turned around
and picked
me up. I had somehow lost some of my toes in the fall.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
115
They were the smaller toes, whose purpose I had never been able to establish. I
picked
them up and put them in my pocket. The fisherman enquired on my welfare. I had
nothing left
to say so I turned away and wandered back to where I had been sleeping.
Nothing hurt anymore. My knee didn�t hurt. My foot didn�t hurt. The loss of
Cheemosan
didn�t hurt. I felt numb.
I didn�t know where to go. I didn�t know what to do. I couldn�t stand being on
the beach
another day, but I didn�t see what else I could do.
I really needed a desert and a shotgun. I guess the beach had been my
substitute.
The fisherman yelled something at me. I didn�t hear what he said.
I turned around. �No, I wasn�t all right. I can�t remember the last time I was
all right. I
can�t explain what�s wrong.�
You want me to tell you what�s wrong, but you only want to hear it if it can be
boiled
down to a half dozen words. I have the flu. I can�t find my keys. I�m insane.
�Leave me alone.�
I started to dig. It was easy because the sand was wet.
How long had I been sleeping in wet sand?
I dug down a couple of feet, but the hole started to fill with water. A nice
metaphor not
entirely wasted on me. I went higher on the beach and started the process again.
I dug a hole
that I could lie in. I lay down in it and looked up at the weak winter sun.
I would just wait until time and the elements covered me up.
I woke up in a strange bed. My foot and knee had been bandaged. I had forgotten
what
warmth felt like. I felt the hunger and the thirst for the first time in a long
time. There was a
fireplace serving its purpose. There was a smell of cinnamon in the air. I might
have cried if I
could.
The fisherman and his wife had taken it upon themselves to rescue me.
Despite the overwhelming cruelty and hatred that all men possess, there exists
in small
islands, unexplainable kindness. I had somehow found myself on one of these
islands. I didn�t
want to be rescued though. I was quite happy to drown alone in the middle of the
ocean.
I felt guilty. I had wrecked it for someone else. If I stormed out of here, the
fisherman
and his wife would not open their doors to anyone else. I would have sunk this
island of
kindness and hardened their hearts.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
116
They only thing I could do was stay and receive their hospitality through
gritted teeth and
look for the first available escape. I didn�t have the strength to do what I
should have done. I
had to be polite and thank them for kindness. They had enforced their
hospitality on me. I was
not given the choice. I was under obligations I had not asked for. I had
responsibilities I did not
want. It was an expensive price to pay for falling asleep.
There was nothing I despised more than being in someone else�s debt. When I was
in the
nine to five world. I would always make sure the presents I gave were more
valuable than those
received. I would always reciprocate dinners treated and rounds bought. I can
not stand owing
anyone anything or depending on anyone for anything. It rots away at my soul to
be in debt of
any sort.
Mrs. Fisherman brought in lunch. We went through that whole small talk ritual.
Sometimes I wonder how I keep my sanity. It really isn�t easy. She left me alone
with my
lunch. The second she closed the door the smile dropped from my face. Why can�t
I be left
alone?
I played happy little grateful soul for a couple of days, and then I left, in
their debt. They
owned a small piece of me that I could never get back.
I returned to the beach, but I didn�t feel that I could stay there any longer.
Who only
knows who would drag me back to their place if I stayed. Wherever I went now, it
would be
somewhere I could avoid people.
It�s not that I can�t stand all people, it�s that I can�t stand most people.
I went home. Not the place that I had burnt down. Not my room in the Institute.
Not
anyplace I had lived in the past dozen years.
I returned to the home of my youth. I returned to my old bedroom. The room with
an
obvious nautical theme that I had never realised until this very minute. Model
ships and sailing
boat wallpaper.
It was almost if someone wanted me to set off for a life on the ocean, never to
return.
The room was cold. It was always cold. I got myself carefully under the covers.
I always got under the covers slowly because the sheets were always cold. I
would
warm the sheets up a little at a time and slowly move my legs down until I was
fully under the
covers. It would be cold outside, but warm in my little nest. I went to sleep.
5 SUICIDE NOTES
117
CHAPTER 10
I couldn�t keep up with the dust. It was burying me alive. I�d constantly wipe
it away
from my face but more would come. More would come than I could sweep away. This
continued until my lungs were full of it and there was no more breathe to take.
I awoke with a shake and a roll.
I rolled off the bed and cut my shoulder on the glass I landed on.
I guess this was the end. I didn�t see much point in writing a suicide note. It
seemed like
a bit of a curse to bother with a note. I didn�t have much thought or energy
left, so this would
not be a suicide of creativity. It would be a suicide of tiredness and apathy
and of totality. There
would be no rescue from this one.
I picked up a piece of the broken glass and did what I could with it. I got back
in to bed.
It was still warm and I was able to push my legs all the way in. I drifted back
off to sleep and
out of this world with a lot less pain and noise than I had entered it, and
exisited in it.
I couldn�t keep up with the dust. It was burying me alive. I�d constantly wipe
it away
from my face but more would come. More would come than I could sweep away. This
continued until my lungs were full of it and there was no more breathe to take.
I awoke with a shake and a roll.
I rolled off the bed and cut my shoulder on the glass I landed on.
I swore loudly. I got a shush from the wife. She told me to be quiet or I would
wake the
children. I stumbled off to the bathroom to find something to stop the bleeding.
I managed a
rather primitive bandage that should at least last until the morning. I cleared
up the broken glass
and went back to bed. My wife put her arm around me and I soon drifted off.
I awoke with the sun, as I always do. I was alone in bed. I could smell
breakfast cooking.
I wandered downstairs. I was informed that I would have to mow the lawn today as
it was
looking a bit long. I�d have to do it before we went off to church.
THE END.
To know more about the Author visit his website: www.saracentate.com
Send any Comments about the book to: saracentate@hotmail.com

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