Why I Committed Suicide (27 page)

I’m apologizing here because I don’t think anyone knows what the fuck is going on in my head. I keep unearthing this journal and putting down all the same crap that I wade through over a period of months and none of it helps change anything. What the fuck is going on with me and what am I even doing anymore? I’ve heard that when people reach thirty or have children they get values and shit. Maybe I’m hoping if I write some of this down I’ll be able to look back and see my own naivety. Maybe I’ll shake my head understandingly andhold the hand of somebody who’s looking for truth one day. Maybe out there is somebody who can honestly admit they were confused and frightened when they were like me. Isn’t someone supposed to tell me it’s all going to get better?

Galveston! Here we are on the island for the Christmas holidays, trying to get away from all the drugs and hassles for a little while. It’s gray and cloudy here, empty and cold. All the t-shirt shops and Miami-esque hotels lining the inner coast have been virtually abandoned for the off-season, which leaves me with an odd feeling about the place. We’ve come down here looking to get away for a while after a serious rohypnol and heroin binge with some of our friends. I think we are both looking for another Christmas like the one in Baja, but we’ve both changed so much since then and the bleak weather is contributing to our disappointment.

We walked hand in hand over the sand beaches, which made the entire trip worthwhile to me, but I really wanted it to be more of a sunshine moment for Jenifer. At one point we were so bored we picked the largest hotel near us and cruised up and down in the elevator for a half hour. We ended up in a weird conversation with a lonely little boy whose parents had booted him out of their room so they could get busy. He cruised the elevators with us for a while too. He looked a little enamored of Jen since she was so nice to him and that was cute.

We spurned the tackiness of a local neon-signed t-shirt shop that prostituted everything in x-large cotton sizes. I thought about stealing something from them but my heart just wasn’t in it. I think the island must be spectacular and crowded with revelers during March, but Jen and I never got into the drunken Spring Break thing too much, which is sort of why we decided to drive down here now.

The best part of this place is the cool bridge leading here from the mainland; it’s even larger than the bridges that span the swampland in Louisiana. It’s a lot like living in the Keys I suppose, the thrill of being unconnected to the continental U.S., a “create your own rules” or “maritime law” sort of situation. The bridge leading here is curved so that it will be structurally sound enough to withstand the hurricanes that seem to target this area on a regular basis. People in trailer parks here are a better class of white trash and I’m sure they look down on the “regular” trailer parks populating the rest of the state. I guess there’s a distinction that comes with being wiped out by a hurricane instead of a plain old tornado.

While we were sleeping in the car last night on a concrete pier (isn’t “pier” a great word?) overlooking the roaring ocean, I awoke in the middle of the night to heed the call of nature. I’m afflicted with an as yet unidentifiable disease that causes my body to need multiple bladder relief sessions right after getting zipped up tight and perfectly comfortable in a precarious sleeping position on the coldest nights of the year. After working my way outside of the car, shivering with my tiny dick in my hand, wearing nothing but my boxers and getting black tar on my socks from the cold concrete on the wet pier, I crawled back into our cocoon (car-coon?) of steamed windows and into the mummy bag. I checked on Jenifer, giving her cold pink cheek a kiss and then tried to go back to sleep.

About five minutes later, a car drove up, circled the lot and parked at the far end of the pier closest to the ocean. The occupants got out and started flicking a flashlight towards the sea and after a bit I saw return flashes of light out in the night, indicating a boat was out on the water somewhere close by. I’ve seen enough Miami Vice to know what was going down and since I was still groggy from my wake-up pee I started thinking maybe we could be in some trouble if they noticed our car was occupied. We might be discovered and they might make us submit to bizarre torture involving a shower and a chainsaw or a nefarious garden implement.

I scrunched down in the seat a little bit and watched as the boat slowly approached from a hundred yards away. It was a new looking-trawler; I could see the polished chrome glinting through the mist every time a flashlight would swing across the stern until they got the boat in position. Then the lights were doused or covered quickly and I could barely make out several boxes being hastily unloaded into the trunk of the non-descript car. Simultaneously, the boat pulled away into the night and the car drove past us and off down the road. A simple “Wham-Bam-Thank-you-Ma’am” and they were gone; I have to admit I admired their precision and coordination.

When we woke up again the next day I told Jenifer all about it and described the scene as best I could, walking over to where they were to see if any clues had been dropped. I did notice the rocks had been cleared out near this section of the pier, which I guess is how the boat could get in so closely. I told her that I would have driven off if she hadn’t been asleep behind the steering wheel but she didn’t seem as fascinated as I was by my glimpse into the underworld. Maybe everything was on the up and up Perhaps we only witnessed a perfectly innocent international espionage ring. Yeah right, and trickle-down fuck-enomics work too.

Anyhow, that’s my big story for the trip. We’re on our way back home again unfortunately but South Padre just wasn’t happening and we crave stimulating action-packed adventure. Sometimes life is reduced to the style of an Ansel Adams print, beautiful to look at but rugged and devoid of color.

My weed plant was chopped off and stolen before harvest a while back, likely by the same skaters I politely invited over to use my half pipe. I wrote a very angry letter and left it by the remains of the plant for any of them that might return looking to steal more herb. My note basically said that I would have shared it with all, but now there is nothing for anybody. I used some F-bombs in there also and likened the thief to the Grinch. Christmas vacation went by too quickly, cut down like my bountiful harvest.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, our friend Gabe, the guy who considers himself the last Coke in the desert, finally found his elusive heroin connection a while back. Of course we’ve scored through him several times now, snorting the brown vinegar smelling shit despite witnessing Gabe’s rapidly diminishing sociability and lowered cash flow. Gabe works a low-paying part-time job and goes to school but he runs a very profitable weed delivery service that he’s built up over the years. He weighs the bags heavy, delivers to your house within an hour of paging him and his prices are good. He doesn’t smoke pot himself so he’s got no incentive to cheat anyone and his low-profile clientele—mostly sorority kids with rich parents and spending money—has built up over the years. Still, I think he’s a full-on H addict whether he realizes it yet or not; he’s barely different from the old junkie he scores through. The guy he connects through is just called Donut (I think his name is really Mark or something) and the smack we’ve been getting from Gabe through Donut has been a disappointment to me and Jen. We’ve been playing with it, trying to figure out what the groove of it all is. It’s supposed to be that final frontier drug, remember? The fucking ultimate!

Turns out, the most evil drug that all our education is supposed to warn us about is actually tame in certain respects. Really, I’ve got to say it’s been a general disappointment so far. Heroin kind of makes me feel sick to my stomach at first and then my body totally relaxes and I’ll spend a lot of time not moving around much and then I feel nauseous again. Speedballs of cocaine and heroin are extremely dangerous and really fucking fun; although we had to swear them off after the first time we tried them so Jen could keep her pledge to not shoot up coke anymore. Rohypnols fuck me up more, but I can inject the smack now and it has the added bonus of allowing my body to fully function while I’m on it. That means the majority of the shit I do is before work and my shift is usually over before I come out of my daze. It’s like I get paid to stand around and do dope, sound familiar? I’m still working hard at my job but any repetitive task is a breeze because I won’t remember or care that I’ve washed seven sinks full of dishes or changed six kegs of beer.

My new classes are the shiz-nit except Gabe’s in one of my film classes and he seems to have this unspoken rivalry or some need to look down on me. He’s had this severe crush on my ex-girlfriend Melanie since forever and he worships the ground she walks on, buying her presents with his weed money and doting on her every whim, which somewhere along the put him in her “friend” category. I’ve always been kind of rabble in his eyes for breaking up with a girl he would chop off his arm for, but he really likes Jenifer as a friend and he likely only associates with me since I come along with the Jenifer “package”. He actually gets the dope for
Jenifer
and we do it; but, when
I
ask him to get us some there’s always some sort of inconvenience that comes up so he has an excuse to blow me off. The one thing Gabe’s never had since Jen and I have known him is a girlfriend, so maybe he fucking thinks by being nice to other people’s girlfriends he can catch them on the rebound. It’s shitty to be pussy-whipped when you aren’t getting any pussy out of the deal.

Anyway, we have a huge final film project that constitutes the majority of the grade in our class and he’s planning on using Melanie in his final project. I suspect it’s a ploy to try and flatter her into the sack. Part of our class fee pays for us to use the school cameras (expensive S-VHS) and editing equipment but Gabe’s trying to get permission to spend his own money and use real film. He thinks he’s ready but whatever. I’m curious to see what sort of Lynch/Tarentino hybrid rip-off he puts together. I know that’s harsh and maybe I’m just jealous he has an out-of-pocket budget to play with, but I hate being dismissed by people. I see Gabe as the film auteur that needs everything to be exactly right before he can film it. The kind of director that throws chairs and pitches fits when the color scheme of a costume isn’t exactly what he envisioned. I see myself as the kind of director that comes in under budget by using what’s around me, improvising and adapting to whatever’s going on, tapping into a cache of talented unknown actors and since I know public interest better than anybody I’m certainly not above sacrificing my vision to cash in. That’s the way the fucking game is played boys. Okay, okay, I’ll admit I do have an unjustifiable inferiority complex around Gabe for no good reason, but I have my Jenifer so it’s all good. Let Gabe spend his cash and stress out trying to find film-editing facilities at the last minute. I’ll turn in my crappy project on video and get a decent grade.

On a weirder note, Gabe and I both seem to have a minor crush on this beautiful collagen-lipped cheerleader-type girl in our class. In fact I think the whole class has a crush on her since it’s basically a room full of lusting movie geeks and being a movie geek is slightly above being a lusting computer geek on the
date-ability
scale. I think that’s all it is for me—some sort of lust on a primal scale that’s invoked by lip enhancements. I understand what a harmless crush is and I’ve never been happier in a personal relationship than I am now, so I don’t really understand what’s up with me checking out some chick that isn’t really even all that good looking. Of course I can’t tell Jen about her (suicidal I am not) but I feel like I’m cheating on her when I’m attracted to other women. I want to be loyal and faithful. Hell, I AM loyal and faithful, but what’s up with this weird crush? Perhaps it’s a subconscious desire to sabotage the good aspects of my life. Maybe deep down I feel as if I don’t deserve anything great due to feelings of inadequacy from my mother. Freud would have a field day with my psyche I’m sure.

I need to be honest and let some of this shit out of my brain so I can keep my grip on reality. Having a routine helps, but the murmuring in my head is starting to get louder again and that’s one thing the fucking heroin is good for. Something is bothering me, a crisis of faith is venting out of my pores. Plus, it’s not like I’m fantasizing about the girl when we’re having sex together, when we’re actually having sex together anymore that is. I’ll shut up now.

What is it with people and Renaissance fairs? Do people really yearn for the days before showers and food and shelter when 99% of the populace was made up of peasant slaves?

Remember when I wrote about all the junk Dan and I moved from his parents’ house into our living room? Well it’s been sitting in the same spot in our living room for the past few months, cluttering up the entrance and being a general nuisance, so this past weekend I killed two birds with one stone by having the garage sale and also filming it for a documentary project that’s due in my film class soon. I slacked off and I was desperate for something interesting to document but instead I settled for what I
thought
would be easy. It turned out to be a big pain the ass trying to maintain total control of two situations at once but I managed to pull it off. You think, “garage sales are easy, just thrown your shit out in the yard and it sells, keep the camera on and film it right?” Ha! The more simple something seems the harder it gets to pull off.

I have a new found respect for the life of flea market people. First off, I worked the closing shift at the Tomato the night before and I got really pissing drunk for some reason so I didn’t want to get out of bed at dawn, which is when you have to start setting up because all the hardcore garage sale-ing blue-haired ladies cruise around looking for signs at first light in order to get all the good deals. Dan promised to help but he was stone cold passed out, so I set up the camera on a tripod and filmed my ass hauling all the shit out into the yard myself, changing the camera angle every once in a while and setting it all up on the tables, trying to make our loot look semi-presentable. There was quite a lot of stuff for sale and setting up took forever. Then I hung the signs up all over the neighborhood, which wasn’t hard, but I had to
film myself
‘hanging up the signs too. I had filmed myself making the signs while drunk the night before and I had filmed myself putting prices on everything earlier in the week. Luckily my preparation paid off, getting a garage sale on film is a one shot deal and there are no re-shoots if the camera messes up or the battery dies.