Why I Committed Suicide (22 page)

We hung up Chuck’s autographs in a shrine on the living room wall. The autographs, the baseball-sized chunks of hail that fell in our yard (preserved for eternity in our freezer) and various Beastie Boys paraphernalia are now the highlights of interest on our house tours. Well, they would be if anyone ever showed an interest in touring our casa. Oh Blah Di, Oh Blah Da.

Living with Kirk is all right; he’s so damn passive about everything and Dan couldn’t ask for a better drinking buddy. It also looks like Kirk is going to start working at the Flying Tomato with us, for lack of a better job. There’s just not much work here in a college town. If you don’t like your job someplace, there are a hundred other kids that can take your position the next day. The employers know this and keep the wages right about minimum. The amount of time our household spends at the Flying Tomato is truly pathetic but we’ve developed a sort of symbiotic relationship. They use us for cheap labor and oddball work hours and we use them for free beer, pizza and laundry. Oh and a miniscule paycheck every once in a while helps to pay some of the rent and school expenses.

Jenifer, David, Gabe and myself had an odd experience after we closed the store the other night. Gabe finally scored enough dilaudin to have our first get together and we attempted to learn about shooting it up. Dilaudin is basically the prescription form of heroin, another thing the government conveniently overlooks in their crusade against drugs. I guess if you’re a big business pharmaceutical company it’s ok to be a drug dealer in America. Truthfully I’ve never had a more aggravating or frustrating experience in my life. We’re so inexperienced with using needles that none of us could get the crushed pills into our veins, leading us to think maybe dilaudin is not water soluble and we had wasted our cash for nothing.

I became so obsessed with getting all the air out of my needle I eventually just squirted the whole yellow concoction out in a frustrated rage that can only compare to my short temper in traffic. The temper that scares Jenifer because she observes the animal in me and doesn’t think I notice her looks of fear. The temper usually reserved for things that people do to Jenifer, the one that caused me to throw beer bottles at a car full of rednecks on the highway after they made her cry. Sorry honey.

The night was a failure drug-wise, but I think our attempt is sort of amusing now. As neurotic as Gabe is, I don’t doubt that we’ll find real heroin very soon.

Let me see if I can describe what I’ve observed about people’s love affair with the needle. It’s strange but the terror instilled in us as children while getting shots at the doctor’s office can’t compete with the morbid fascination of preparing and injecting a serum personally prescribed for a good time. I understand how it is now and I think it might have something to do with the blood, that most sacred of fluids.

I stopped giving blood after high school because it was making me progressively dizzier every time I donated, leading me to illogically conclude that my body was having trouble replenishing its supply. But watching the blood cloud diffuse into the milky solution seconds before the whole poison cocktail is pushed back into my arm gives off a rush that precedes the drug. All the romance of the mythical vampire and the power of being able to tap directly into my life fluid, it’s almost like playing with God. Cocaine is so fucking evil but injecting it feels so good, for a while anyway. I don’t want to try and describe the sensation that comes with mainlining cocaine to anyone because if I romanticize it then I might be responsible for what others pursue. I’ll simply state this: as much as people like to merely snort cocaine and still become addicts, most of them would realize they’ve just wasted their coke all these years after the very first time they injected it. It is too nice, fun, intense and pure fucking evil. I don’t think I can do it ever again and enjoy it. There is too much guilt, too much of a desperate need for it and I never want to fall in love with something so fleeting. I’ll spend all my money after that first shot of coke, going back and forth to the dopeman, telling myself this next quarter bag will be the last one for the night.

Jenifer, David, Gabe and I went out camping deep into the woods last weekend and when we got home I couldn’t remember anything we did out there except shoot coke and David’s pistol, a bad combination all the way around. I felt so guilty later, like I had offended the gods, but I couldn’t express my depression to anyone around me, even Jenifer who I’ve always felt I could tell anything to. It just wasn’t right. The whole fucking scene didn’t feel right to me. I know Jenifer enjoys it too much but I was afraid to give her any kind of ultimatum until the other night.

We were over at Gabe’s apartment, doing bumps and listening to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. We were all getting really amped and trying to get as much pleasure as we could, increasing the amount of cocaine we put into our shots each time until tiny Jenifer pushed too far and had a seizure. Oh God I’ve never been so fucking scared in my life. I had no idea what the fuck was going on and what was happening, I was just praying to God she wasn’t having a heart attack. I really thought she was going to die and nobody had the first clue about what to do since we had never seen anything like this happen before. I get cold chills just writing this down and nervous about how I could have lost her right there on Gabe’s linoleum floor. I laid her out on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed, putting my hand under her head so it wouldn’t bounce on the hard surface while seizures ripped through her body over and over. I swear I thought she was going to die and tears were streaming out of my eyes. When the seizure stopped I got ready to do CPR on her in case her heart had stopped. I was screaming her name over and over trying to get some sign that she was alive, checking her pulse and breathing while Gabe was freaking out. He wanted to get her out of his apartment and even tried to slap her awake. When he slapped her face I almost broke his arm but I was too focused on helping Jen to follow through.

Thankfully after about five agonizing minutes of me wanting to call an ambulance, she woke up with no apparent side effects and no recollection that anything had happened. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. I think I got a taste of the pure terror a parent feels when their child is finally out of a terribly harmful situation and it’s something I never want to experience EVER again. Jenifer’s lungs are so bad and she’s so skinny that I was sure her system had overloaded and that she would die right there in front of me, despite anything I could have done. I was so physically drained and relieved she was all right that all I wanted to do was get her away from there as soon as possible, just to hold her and thank God.

My heart almost broke when one of the first things she asked for was another bump. I even understood why. She didn’t know what had happened and she didn’t have to live through the fear and danger we had all just gone through standing over her body. Coke’s like that—a pure evil presence that tells you to keep doing more and more. Shooting coke is almost like winning free games off an easy pinball machine, when the fun wears off you want to leave it behind but don’t feel quite right if you do.

Lord, thank you so much for keeping her alive the other night, she’s a wonderful soul and I need her so much, but whatever you do please, please, please don’t remind me that way ever again.

Despite everything, Jenifer is still doing cocaine with David fairly often and I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I can’t enjoy it anymore after what happened at Gabe’s apartment and if I hang around her now while she’s doing it I end up sounding like her fucking dad. It makes me sick to hear myself. I have to physically remove my presence or I’ll nag and try to watch over her. Plus now it’s like that movie “A Clockwork Orange” where the main character gets ill listening to Beethoven after being programmed with a negative response. I can’t even see cocaine anymore; my heart knots up and I feel nauseous thinking about nothing except Jenifer lying on the floor hurting. I know she feels guilty after staying up all night but its draw on her is so fucking powerful that she doesn’t even care. I’ve even tried being angry with David for being her hypo companion but I know it isn’t him. Cocaine is nicknamed “girl” for a reason. What’s crazy is that up until a few weeks ago I would have been up until dawn with them. I even tried to get over my phobia by staying up with them a few times, but I just can’t do it anymore. Sometimes I feel hurt and left out but I refuse to try and make her quit out of guilt about me. It is something she has to quit on her own.

When Jenifer finally crawls into bed with me in the early hours of the morning I’m usually awake but I never say a fucking word. I’m thrilled to finally feel her chilly caresses and I’ll wrap my arms around her cold body, just happy to have her safely back with me. Sometimes we have a sort of tender, guilty sex during these mornings, sex that my brain tells me not to accept but I always want her so much that it’s impossible. I end up pinning her to the bed with my pent up anxiety and punishing her gently. It’s probably not the most psychologically healthy thing for us to do but I love her, I need to forgive her and I guess by now she always knows I want her. Something’s going to happen soon but I don’t envision us being apart so I’m curious to see what
it
is.

Hey, guess what! Andy’s moving out from the garage apartment behind our house this summer and it looks like Jenifer is moving in. She’s pretty excited about having her own place again and it’s nice to see a return of the confident independence that makes her face shine but it’s not like she didn’t have the run of the house when she stayed over with us anyway. Oh well, my single bed isn’t going to be much competition against her air conditioned queen size, complete with familiar soft sheets and her Snoopy doll. I’ll miss the mandatory closeness of my bed and I’m sad to have her go, even if it’s just to live in my backyard. I always got a thrill knowing such a beautiful woman would choose to live with me and now I know I’ll mostly be staying with her.
Activate the emergency insecurity pods Captain!
I suppose since I’m the only one who gets to play with her pet rat Rico, she must feel something for me.

My Dad and I are driving to Minnesota together for some obscure relative’s wedding that I don’t really know, so I’m already off to a weird start with my summer break. My first response when my parents asked if I wanted to make the hel-lacious drive was “no way!” but since my mother is paranoid about my dad falling asleep at the wheel, I finally agreed to go. In all the years we’ve been making this 20 hour, 1000 mile trek into the great White North, I’ve yet to see my Dad even relax enough to take a nap. I guess as nervous as he is with me driving I’ll keep him semi-alert just by being there.

I’m both excited and apprehensive about this trip. I’m apprehensive about leaving Jenifer behind because I’ll really miss her and I know that she and David will likely be doing a lot of coke and I really don’t want to come home to a dead girlfriend. The other night I had to keep going to the dopeman for them since David’s usual connection got busted and the only guy in town with cocaine was one of my good friends from the Lodge. I felt totally pathetic because I was trying to make them feel guilty for asking me to go get them more drugs, but the kind of subtle guilt I specialize in doesn’t work when someone is fiending. I’ve noticed they’ll pretty much say or promise anything to get their immediate needs met. They kept only wanting a little bit at a time, thinking each time would be the last time, pissing their money away little by little and I had to keep going over and listen to this crazy guy’s ranting and ramblings while he played me shitty death metal songs that he had made up. He thought
I was
doing all the coke I was buying from him (friend discount) and so he thought I was as juiced up as he was, but it all seemed pretty fucking stupid to me. Anyway, I’m hesitant to leave Jenifer behind but I’m glad to escape and not have to roll play as their fucking babysitters for a while. Plus, it’s not like Jenifer would ever cheat on me with David so at least I can have peace of mind in that respect.

I should get to see my older stepbrothers, Adam and Michael, which is cool. Michael just got married to a cool girl named Leann and I’ve always respected him a little because my mother threw him out of the house when I was just a kid. Adam just graduated from film school and we correspond occasionally. He’s opened a coffee shop in Milwaukee so hopefully we’ll get to run out there and see the heart of America’s beer country. I’m sure most of my time will be spent chilling out with my Grandparents at their trailer park so I brought a little pot even though it sucks that I won’t get much of a chance to smoke it on the long drive with my dad and all.

Actually,
trailer park
is really not the right word to use for the place where my Grandparents park their RV in the summer time. It’s more of a mini-resort for all the “snowbirds” that flock back North when the climate is more hospitable. There’s a golf course and an awesome therapeutic heated swimming pool. I guesscold weather is a lot more of a pain in the ass to deal with when you’re old.

♦ ♦ ♦

So anyway, I’m thinking I should get to swim and lie around and read trashy books for a while. They can’t quite figure out why I’m reading all the time but it’s always been one of my favorite things to do on vacation. I plan to get high and play a little golf in the mornings and then sit and read by the pool in the afternoon, which all adds up to a perfect vacation in my book.

Everything is pretty much going as I thought it would up here. I went to the obscure relative’s wedding and got as drunk as I could at the reception in the smoky VFW, so I managed to have a good time. I hung out with my brother Michael for a while at the wedding and made plans to visit him and his wife overnight in St. Paul, so that should be pretty cool. I also went to a fun flea market with one of my uncles the other day and all of his kids made fun of my skateboard (of course I brought it with me!) but I didn’t really care. I’ve been reading a John Grisham novel and riding around on my Grandparent’s moped looking for places to get high along the Mississippi. These are very lazy and relaxing days, just what I’ve needed to get my mind out of my own problems for a bit. There
are
a few pain-in-the-ass things to deal with, like all the millions of fucking mosquitoes everywhere
and
my Grandpa is up at 7 a.m. every day sweeping the driveway or some shit. I like him but sleeping past 9 a.m. is not much of an option while I’m staying at their place. My Grandma keeps me stuffed with home-cooked food all the time and it’s real food too, not that college budget TV dinner crap I’ve been subsisting on.