(A late happy 133rd birthday to Dorothy Parker, a keeper of the little god of suicide)

Suicide is a big part of art, so I’ve been told. It’s big in my family, I know that much. My father, both my grandmothers did it. My mother could have hung on another year or so but went Bartleby on dialysis. I’ve seen enough. And on the early morning of 21 December 1989, at the age of thirty, I did it. Damn wonderful, really; and such a revelation of freedom; those were the free-est, purest, most honest five seconds of my life. For once I was doing something Big. Fuck boredom and being embarrassed about being alive. But I failed. While blasted, I deliberately aimed my car at a sturdy utility pole, floored it and woke in the hospital. If a spur of the moment thing can still contain the shape of a plan, then there you have it; but of Mice and Drunks and the little devils that protect us, I was chosen to survive. My Colt looked like a crushed beer can yet I survived with a concussion, a bunch of stitches and a DUI. “Could be worse,” I told myself at the wrecking yard a few days later, as I managed to reach in and extract the eightball of blow I had in the glove box. “Yessir, could be a whole lot worse.”

Funny thing is that even though I was in a moderate bit of trouble (DUI, five days in jail and about five grand for messing up the pole), like in The Exorcist the demon inside that wanted to die bailed when we hit the pole. Just like the bastard to do something like that. Cheap fucking 80’s demon. Not like the old-timey grandmother demons who drop from the gallows with you. You could depend on them.

I do not write this for sympathy nor to shock. It’s just something that happened more years ago than I had been alive at the time of its happening. The odd thing is the missing demon-feeling. It felt like it had always been with me, something about death, a weirdly detached point of view that came up in certain situations (especially when blasted–but still, always there). I can trace back to the time, but I cannot remember the actual fabric of the feeling, the touch of being. I only remember that it always felt like night, and a certainty that good times were over, and that I had missed out on something I could never understand.

For me there is only one bit of art that comes close to describing the feeling (which, actually, is an anti-feeling, if that makes sense). It is the song Tomorrow Wendy performed by Concrete Blonde, written by Andy Prieboy. The writer is a member of the Wall of Voodoo, whose artistic respect lies somewhere between that held for the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Aha. But, hey, a job is a job and I completely understand.

Prieboy wrote it about a woman he knew who got into heroin, prostitution and eventually contracted HIV. Instead of waiting to die in the slowest, most agonizing way possible (this was the 1980s, no drug cocktails as of yet), Wendy loaded a needle and found her way to the door. But on her way out she had many devastating opinions to share. The song is a stunner, and I cannot think of a voice keener than Concrete Blonde’s Jonnette Almalfitano to deliver it. The production is first rate and it is one of those rare, perfect pieces of music that cannot exist in the same dimension with the usual pop stuff (both the good and bad) because it is too honest. It hurts too much to hear and it makes Clapton’s Tears in Heaven come off overrated (which, for me, mind you, is. Obviously a horrible situation, but I find it strangely aloof and too neatly done for honesty).

I never told anyone how I was feeling. I had a thought that they did not want to hear about it, plus the idea of confession felt as though I would cheapen something in me that was stunningly complicated and even artistic in its own fashion. I did not tell them because they were terrible people (most were, but I like em just fine), but because nearly every little thing we say and do is designed to either obscure or lessen the truth. Big ticket items tend to create an instant vacuum into which bullshit immediately fills. Besides suicide is something that varies from person to person. I believe that some people can be saved by speaking out, but others need to act out in some way. Moreover, we are still very much in the grip of the old thinking, in which suicide, depression (not always mutually exclusive), substance addiction (for some reason we still normally divide alcoholism from drug addiction, even though they are the same complaint) and fifty other troubles are moral failings, indicative of spiritual weakness. Anyway, it is too big a responsibility for a mortal to tackle. The best idea is to shut up and listen. Leave the “You are needed” tripe for Hallmark cards.

A few years ago a guy went over a land bridge in Port Orchard, Washington. It stands over a creek and a valley and is way the hell over a hundred feet above stark reality. I walk that bridge a lot and I saw the little arrangement of flowers someone left behind and a message of hope left in sharpie–signed “A Stranger.” Yes indeed we sure give a fuck after the fact. But really, I cannot see any message of hope and a Dollar Tree candle stopping somebody determined to go over that bridge. I peeked over the rail. So much shit to hit on the way down–and trust me that is a big down. The type that puts a jittery feeling in your knees to look at. And for a moment I had nothing but love for the man. He made a real statement against all the superficial labors we must endure. He made himself holy. Such courage to do that–A that which is as untake-backable as any that gets. I felt like kicking the cruddy little shrine down into the abyss, but it did not deserve the rapture.

I honestly do not believe that a song or any kind of art on its own can save a person. I also feel that such cannot destroy anyone either. But allowing good things to enter your thoughts, and by good, I mean sincere, can help. One of the few things I do remember was a terrible cycle of repetition in my mind. Certain images and thoughts chasing themselves like Cats after their own tails.

I think Wendy did the right thing for herself. That’s because she had a terminal condition that was not going to end well. Cook, jab, Goosh, sweet speedball, and sleep–the good kind, like when your mom or dad put you to bed after a late night, melting into the sweet embrace of wind dried pillow cases and sheets. And I do not think there is a “perchance to dream” part coming for people like Wendy–as in the inferred rottenness pondered by the Prince. If there was more, I’d rather it be the happiness that eluded her in life.

It is a touchy subject. Unless you spout the “You are needed, take your vitamins, it is always darkest before the dawn (to which I retort “Everything will be at its brightest when the sun explodes”) company line, you risk “causing a tragedy” or the accusation of promoting self murder. That is a lie told by people who have limited imaginations and monochromatic solutions, and it belies an attitude that contributes to pain due to its artificiality. Find someone to talk to, if you haven’t got anyone, find a priest–even if you do not believe in God. But listening to that one voice over and over and over will get you nowhere.

Leila