Tag Archives: suicide
Fabricating the Fake
I make a cocktail every night, stir it with the long helixed spoon she gave me the night she killed herself.
It was a birthday present, I think, the spoon. Or maybe her suicide. She jumped from our veranda at 8 pm central time. So at 8 pm central time I always make a cocktail, toast her, toast the life we used to have.
I cue up Interpol first, good Interpol, not their recent shit, and irritate my upstairs neighbor. Then I mix my cocktail – often vodka because she loved vodka, but sometimes something jingoistic because she hated jingoism.
Then I sit in the dark and drink. I cry, too, in the dark, let the good memories carry me away for a while. I think about how we used to listen to Interpol in the dark, went so far as to get matching Interpol lyrics tattooed on our bodies some snowy night some November.
We sat next to each other, grimaced in unison as our bodies accepted their tattoos. We healed our tattoos together, put expensive lotion on our tattoos, defended our tattoos from cynics who questioned our devotion.
To Interpol?
To each other?
It’s hard to say.
I make another drink.
Complicated and Enlightening
The train’s repetitive click-clack wakes her every night.
“Did you hear that noise,” she asked the morning after she first stayed the night, nose pressed against my cheek, head sunk deep into her pillow.
“It was the train,” I replied, feeling myself fall in love.
“Charming. Does it come through here every night?”
“It does.”
“Great. You’re lucky I like you.”
I propped myself up on my elbow, glanced around the room: wine bottles, condom wrappers, and empty chocolate boxes. “We should do something else some time.”
“Why?” She climbed on top of me.
She moved in with me several weeks later, complaining about the train. Then we started to fight, and our nightly bingeing on wine, sex, and chocolate gave way to heavy silence and passive aggression.
As our relationship worsened she took to walking the train tracks at night.
“I’m not going to kill myself, K, relax,” she said.
I was unconvinced. So I walked with her, behind her, like a scolded but loyal pet. I bought her expensive earrings, tried to cheer her up. She pushed me in front of the train.
Now she sleeps in my bed, wakes with a smile whenever the train rumbles past.
Techniques for Intervening
“Anything at any price,” read the inside of the card, which featured a cat sleeping in a martini glass.
The attending package – displaying no return address – contained a cylindrical fish tank, complex instructions, and laudatory remarks:
Congratulations! Your new jellyfish will arrive tomorrow. Make sure your tank is calibrated to the appropriate temperature. Jellyfish are temperamental creatures, so handle your new friend with care!
I assembled the tank, placed it on my dining room table. I filled it with water and spent my evening hours envisioning various scenarios occurring within its narrow walls. In my mind, I saw her treading water, face creased with deceit, anger, and hatred. I saw her puff her cheeks up before descending toward the bottom of the tank for no reason in particular. I saw her begin to convulse and spasm, unable to ascend to the surface. I saw myself jump into the tank to retrieve her from the bottom.
The creature arrived the next day. It was dead already. I placed it in the tank and watched its tentacles gently keep it afloat. Then, thinking I could revive it, I jumped into the tank and pressed my lips to the top of its hood.
The Great Below
He marched out to sea, leaving his luxury tennis shoes in a pile on the sand. While the other beachgoers retreated in light of the approaching storm, K surged forward.
She had returned. Now was the time.
He waded deeper into the water, felt the currents tug at his body.
She vanished into the sea during their honeymoon. Upset about something trivial, she threw herself into the water to spite K, to punish him, full of violence and rage. And it worked. He slid into cocaine addiction and ridiculous shopping sprees. He retreated into himself, blamed himself, cursed himself. He tried to kill himself. Then he bought luxury tennis shoes.
Yet rumors swirled: the sea was different now, violent, unforgiving, merciless. Ships were lost sometimes; people drowned sometimes; jellyfish and sharks and sea urchins attacked sometimes.
He dismissed the rumors at first. But love got the better of him. For he loved her still, after all this time.
One day he went to the sea, to see for himself, this violence, this rage. But the sea was calm, compassionate. He returned the day following, etc.
With each day, his desire for her violence and rage grew. And he waited – always at the edge of the water, always in his luxury tennis shoes.
It was her, today, churning the sea, tempting the weather. He ran his fingers through the seaweed, thinking of her muddy brown hair.
“All of this for you,” he muttered to nobody as the sea pulled him down.
The Philosopher on His Deathbed
I found the angel dangling from the end of her halo, her limp body suspended by the prettiest cloud in the sky.
She was still alive, I noticed, as I hurriedly untied the knots in her halo.
I collected her wispy body and crinkled halo and vanished into my apartment. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the angel. I wanted to nourish her but I also wanted to eat her. So I placed her on my blue velvet couch and watched her.
She slept the way you sleep after something traumatic happens. Was her trauma her attempted suicide or all that preceded it? I could never know.
The sky darkened because it wanted its angel back. It crackled and groaned, but still she slept, her chest rising and falling slightly in response to some life still stirring inside her.
The rain came and her cloud pounded on my window. “Don’t make me go back there,” she whispered. “I hate it.”
I pressed my vial of antidepressants into her hand. She sat up and forced a smile.
Then she took her halo and smoothed it out before placing it several inches above her head, where it stayed.
Dress of the Flesh
I realized halfway down that the structure from which I had jumped wasn’t tall enough.
I was going to survive. So I stopped falling–somewhere around the fifth floor–and decided not to kill myself, or rather, to kill myself a different day.
I went home and climbed into bed with my girlfriend. In her sleep she never realized I was gone. I started stroking her arm which, thanks to a devoted interest in luxurious skin products, was unnaturally soft. I’d totally skin her alive and stitch myself a blanket.
She stirred. “Where were you?”
“In the living room. I was reading.”
“When are you going to start writing your novel?” Her eyes were closed. I hated when she asked me that. It was embarrassing. Everyone is writing a “novel.”
“Just as soon as I have something interesting to write about.”
“Why don’t you write about how you like to sneak away at night and throw yourself from tall places but always change your mind before hitting the ground?”
“Maybe,” I sighed. “But that’s just so depressing.”
“Or, how you want to skin your girlfriend alive?”
Silence filled the bedroom.
Her eyes were open now: “You talk in your sleep, K.”
Teach Me to Grieve and Conspire
K was convinced that she was the one hurting him during the night, that she was the one leaving knives in his body while he slept.
“She’s going to kill me,” he said to a friend once, refusing to elaborate.
She didn’t kill him. But one day she woke to find K dead, his head thoroughly severed from his body and covered in lipstick. She sighed. You men, you have no self control.
K had gone to the Isle of Women again.
He never told her of his dreamscape philandering. But he didn’t need to. Every night he went to the Isle of Women and every night from within her own dreamworld she watched him go.
The police told her he died by his own hand. Which would make since: those marks on his body he attributed to her were also self inflicted. One night she woke to find him pummeling his own face, shouting remorseful things about “the nature of men.” She never brought it up.
So she believed the police. She also kinda believed he killed himself out of guilt. But she also kinda believed he killed himself so he could stay on the Isle of Women forever.
Virtual Intimacies
K enjoyed the night shift because it was quiet. You’d think suicidals (as they called them) would be most active at night when you’re alone with your thoughts. You’d be wrong, though. The serious suicidals do it during the day when everyone else is busy.
K enjoyed the nightshift because at 11:45 PM every night a woman would call. The first time she called, she was patched through at random. “Hello, my name is K.” etc.
Every night thereafter, she would ask for K, telling whoever might answer her call that she felt most comfortable talking to K and, do you really want to risk not letting her talk to him?
K anticipated her call even if he was otherwise preoccupied. Her life being at stake and all, he looked forward to talking her down from the ledge every night.
One night, she didn’t call. K should have presumed the worst. Instead, he presumed that she was mad at him or that she didn’t “need” him in that way anymore. He tracked down her phone number and called her, not finding anything ironic.
She answered after one ring, an unfamiliar cheer in her voice. K hung up immediately, his worst fears confirmed.
Nonrepressive Hedonism
There was something sinister waiting for K. He sensed it when he pulled up to the woman’s house. He sensed it when she greeted him at the door. She gave K a warm hug, and though he was outwardly receptive to it the way heterosexual men are always receptive to any sort of physical contact with attractive women, his insides recoiled from her touch.
He didn’t understand. While there had always been something incongruous about the woman, K had attributed it to the fact that she owned a hideous scarf that forestalled otherwise sartorial perfection. Worse, she insisted on wearing it.
The woman led K to the kitchen where she was readying a stilted romantic dinner. Wine? she offered, uncorking a bottle of Q.
She handed him a glass. K jostled its stem and watched the red liquid agitate. He used to drink Q regularly because it matched some girl’s lipstick. After she killed herself, he stopped drinking it for that reason. The woman offered a toast, her smile smeared with the perfect shade of red.
K put his wine on the counter and dove inside. The undertow pulled at him, as the woman brought his glass to her lips.