"Carthago delenda est."
- -Cato The Elder
Sometimes, people like Bob will say to me, "Hey, how you doing?" And, sometimes I reply, as other people have no doubt replied, "Well, I’m still here." Occasionally, I change it up and say, "Well, I still have my trousers." And, the reply doesn’t matter, because the original question didn’t matter. It’s just two people making pleasantries, making words come out of their mouths. Bob and I just stand there, half-perplexed, wondering what to say next. He probably wants to talk about his latest fucking tractor and I want to bitch about how much the latest Star Wars movie pissed me off.
Bob is a widower, freshly dating. I am in the thrall of brutal divorce settlement and practically undateable. We could talk about women. This topic, we have in common.
"How you doing, Bill?" Bob says. Some fucking football team bested another fucking football team, last night, as happens in fucking football. I’m sure Bob would love to talk about that. Maybe it was hockey. I have no idea, nor shit to give.
"Well, I’m still here," I tell him. HBO finally filmed a conclusion to Deadwood, but Bob doesn’t watch Deadwood, so we’re not going to talk about that. Ian McShane is God!
Having anticipated my other standard reply, Bob points in the vicinity of my crotch and says, "Well, you’ve still got your pants," and he snorts out a moist chuckle. But, why was he pointing at my unemployed cock?
I could tell Bob that I took a handful of pharmaceuticals, last night at bedtime, and then another handful once in bed, in the hope that these items—in this quantity—might stop my heart while I sleep. I do this a couple times every month.
I’m not suicidal. I have what’s called a "death wish." It’s why I don’t wear my seat belt. If you watch Rick and Morty, you might have noticed that Rick also rarely wears his seat belt. I don’t have the cojones to determinedly open a vein or artery, nor fasten the noose and drop. I am a pussy at heart, and that final leap into darkness requires balls of steel. (Note: in using ordinary, "vulgar" English, I can see that the genitals mentioned in that sentence once again conform to patriarchal prejudice; the female orifice represents weakness and the male nuts convey strength. I apologize for perpetuating this awfulness. I love pussies. I AM a pussy, as I stated.)
Bob tried his hand at actual suicide, a time or three, back when his late wife spiralled into her tragedy. Bob was a cutter. Man, that’s hardcore! He slit both of his wrists and ran around his neighborhood in his underwear, bleeding all over the cotton and tarmac. Obviously, he survived this incident, or he wouldn’t presently be pointing at my junk.
"Life is hard," I tell Bob. This is true. Divorce is brutal. However you feel about that other person—love them, hate them or wish they get pancreatic cancer—the process of matrimonial decimation feels like a shard of glass lodged in your sternum, just a little to the left. It’s a heart attack that’s biding its time—it teases you, tells you it’s going to break every time it shoots out a tentacle of agony, but it never actually does. And so, you feed yourself two handfuls of this-and-that to help it along.
"Fuck you, heart!" you say. And you gobble. And you tell God that he’s just a tease, too, because he never seems to show up and fix shit for you. (But God is Ian McShane, after all, and He’s usually in angry dad mode, too cool to get involved in this petty horseshit. If anything, He would likely offer advice along the lines of, "What’s the big deal? Go get some trim! You should fuck her sister—that would show her! And her sister has a fine little ass, too—you must have noticed. I’d put my whole face in that.")
Bob knows I have a death wish. We have talked about it in our more intimate sessions—usually at the Rocket Cafe, when he’s ordering a Denver sandwich and I’m trying to explain to the waitress how I prefer my latte—three shots of espresso, COLD milk and no steam—it never works out properly. And, I have told Bob, "The woman has bipolar disorder. This is our seventh separation. It never makes sense to me. I suppose I would like for it all to make sense."
Bob’s late wife also had a mind disease—much more severe than bipolar disorder. He told me, "It’s never going to make sense. You either let their insanity eat you alive or you swim away from it." I can see the white scars on both of his wrists—he doesn’t try to hide them. "I almost got eaten, but then I learned to swim. Dog paddle, maybe. Nothing fancy—just enough to get to shore."
It’s so fucking easy to hand out stupid fucking analogies, like so many bad memes that clutter up your Facebook page. Bob learned to swim. Whoop-dee-doo.
But, today, he’s pointing at my crotch and he’s telling me that I’ve still got my trousers.
Maybe he wants to talk about football...or hockey...or tractors. He’s not a farmer, but he loves to restore these rusted, nasty old machines from Minneapolis. Maybe I want to talk about Deadwood, or Star Wars, or how I need to score more drugs, because I swallowed two fucking week’s worth of my meds for the month.
I seem to have built up a tolerance.
I always wake up in the morning. That’s the real fucker of it all.
I’m not suicidal. I have a death wish.
I light a cigarette. I have upped my tobacco intake this last year. I’m really going for it. I have sarcoidosis in my lungs and esophagus, from back when I was a miner and cigarettes are a sure-fire path to converting sarcoids to cancer. That’s fucked up. Would Ian McShane respect my cavalier attitude about cancer? Or, would He confirm that I am an utter vulva for not just ripping the band-aid off with a bullet? (Hey, remember the episode where He had gleets in his peehole? That was brutal!)
While I am savoring this delicious death that I am pulling into my lungs (and after pointing out that I still have pants), Bob suggests we go to The Rocket for breakfast and coffee. He’s building a contraption—some kind of ridiculous art installation that involves hubcaps and wrought iron, and he wants to tell me all about it. He has pics on his iPhone, too—twenty-five or so—and, I’m going to have to scroll through every one of them, then offer some praise and validation, assuring him that this project is definitely worth finishing, because the end product will be beautiful.
And it will.
And at least it’s not fucking tractors.
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call 1 (800) 273-8255. But, don’t call them on my behalf—I swear to Ian McShane, I’m going to win this fucker.
