Elaine tells me that she's had a great week, in that her brother tried to kill himself by swallowing a bunch of sleeping pills on Monday. They took him to the hospital and got his stomach pumped and now he's fine, and her parents are hella pissed.
I respond by saying that, despite my dark days (which, for your records, range from 1998 to about, oh, six months ago), I never once considered killing myself, that I always held out hope that things, at some point, would get better.... okay, I didn't tell her that much, but I generally said that not once did I ever consider killing myself.
I lied.
I considered doing it JUST ONCE.
It was either the summer of 1999 or early autumn. School could have started, or it could have been several weeks away, but in any case, it had to be warm enough for a group of Roma Rats to spend an all-nighter at Lake Mead, because a Roma employee named Harmoni Sandler was moving to San Diego and the Roma Rats threw her a goodbye party, at a secluded northern beach on Lake Mead, complete with candles lighting the graveled walking path to the rocky beachside, and coolers full of beer. I was most definitely invited and so was another Roma regular by the name of Beth Englund.
I had known Beth since high school. She says 6th grade, but I don't remember seeing her until the 7th grade and she did not speak to me at all in junior high. After she dropped out halfway through my senior year, I had no idea I'd see her again when I started frequenting the Cafe Espresso Roma. We talked and suddenly we became pretty good friends. Then I did something stupid.
I fell in love in her.
It ate away at my being and kept me from being reasonable. I'd hang out at the cafe waiting for her to show up. I may have told her in some form or another, and she balked in her own special way: by disappearing off the face of the Earth. Beth never was good at facing her problems. She certainly tried, but she was trying too hard to be diplomatic and not hard enough to.... Okay, it was just unrequited love. Once I tried to write her a letter and I began it, "As the days pass, I am slowly losing my mind." Jeff turner read it and wisely said, "OH MY GOD! Steve, I don't think you should see her anymore."
In any case, I started school shortly after, the fall of 98, as a newly anointed theatre major, and I dove headfirst into the program and had forgotten about the girl not too long after. She never really showed her face near Roma anyway, and that was the only place I could have seen her.
That year of theatre was invigorating and had me tumbling headlong down the path to a career as an actor or a director... and then I was stonewalled by a theatre professor who didn't like me and decided to hold me back another year, even though I had done everything I was asked. He gave me C's in two of my acting classes so I'd have to repeat the first year. The C's dropped my GPA low enough to cost me my scholarship, and suddenly I was faced with having to take a loan to stay in school. But for what? To struggle through a first-year program I had already successfully completed and try to advance, when the department didnt want me? To continue in a major where I didn't trust my own abilities anymore?
I dropped out of school, promising myself to go back when I gave a damn about getting an education. May 99. I quickly found work as an office temp.
And then Beth suddenly starting popping up at Roma again.
We talked, and things were okay. But Beth had changed: she wasn't the weird arty reclusive rebel she was in college. She dressed nice, worked long hours, and... dare I say it then, but I sure can say it now without remorse: she was sexy.
She smoked her cigarettes and had a pleasantly manipulative attitude, but she fired something fierce off in me. And she still was the same person I had fallen in love with the first time. But I had learned my lesson after she broke my heart the first time and I knew better.
Right?
RIGHT?
And just like that I had fallen in love with her again.
If Jeff Turner had seen more of me he'd slap the shit out of me. But he was working long hours at Channel 3 and hating it, so I didn't see much of him. So he didn't. Instead I fell harder in love the 2nd time around. Harder like me when her nipples poked through her shirt... and what the hell was she doing 20 minutes before work without a bra on in the first place....
But I told her one day outside of Roma that I was in love with her and she was crestfallen. I was such a stupid naive ignorant piece of 20-year-old adolescent shit back then. I would beat the ever-loving shit out of Gomez 1999 out of principle. All those times she dragged me to movies and shit with her and she hugged me and made it a point to hang out with me and all the times she would kiss me on the cheek before she dropped me off and so on, all that she did because I was a friend, not a potential lover. I KNEW that, but she honestly had no idea. Maybe SHE was the (deliberately?) ignorant, (deliberately?) naive piece of adolescent shit back in the day.
But she got invited and I got invited, and I made it a point to get there on time, to somehow drive my blue station wagon over the mile of gravel at 15 mph, just so I could be there, while she was there, make sure if she did anything mischievous, that I would not miss it. I was dumb: maybe she would get drunk and I'd get drunk and maybe the both of us would be stupid enough.... She was single. I was decidedly single.
It got dark. Everybody showed up. We sat and drank. She'd run off to talk to whomever, and I followed, tried to listen. I wanted to hear her every word. I didn't want to miss a thing. I tumbled over every rock she tumbled over, strained to catch every word she said, every word everyone spoke to her. People took off clothes and skinny-dipped in the dirty ass lake. She'd go off and sit alone on a rock far off, far up, and I watched her in the dark while everyone partied. I couldn't talk to anyone else, party with anyone else. She was the life of my party.
It ate at me, that I wasn't the life of HER party.
The cops showed up, and informed us that alcohol wasn't allowed on this beach, and oh, by the way, are there any minors out here. Indeed, half of us were underage. Somebody had pot and he got rung up with a ticket. Somebody else had some E on her and she got a citation. We were lucky, because they could have taken us all to jail if they wanted to. In return for letting us off, we agreed to throw out all our beer. They took the bag full of liquor and took off, but most everyone else didn't mind. The party went on.
But it still ate at me, that I wasn't the life of HER party. I could have gone to jail, could have called my mother from a jail cell, angered my family to no end, but it didn't frighten me, didn't scare me, didn't tear at me the way Beth not loving me tore at me. I went up to her and told her we had to talk. GOD, I was such a fucking idiot; I would slap the taste out of the mouth of ANY guy friend of mine who acted the way I acted that night, for the last six months, for the last two times he fell in love. What the fuck was wrong with Gomez 99?
She was saddened, that I was her friend and that i was in love with her and that I couldn't just shake it and just be her friend, because that was the way she wanted it. She wanted things to be like high school, where the guys and girls could all just be friends and give hugs between classes and talk smack to each other and everything could just be COOL. You see, she had never been in love, and she wanted it that way. She didn't want to get attached. She liked being free.
But I couldn't accept that. I wanted requited love. It just wasn't gonna be that way. She hugged me in sadness and frustration, and said, "Oh Steve, I'm so sorry." And I just had to leave after that.
I sat in my car and cried and cried until I cried dry tears, people aimlessly chattering in the distance. Finally I dragged myself to the wheel and started the engine. My party was over. Actually, if you wanna get hella cheesy, it had never begun, and it was never gonna happen, because she was never going to be the life of my party.
I drove the long and lonely drive down the gravel road, back to the long and lonely winding highway back to Las Vegas. The sounds of Satan's ballad from the South Park movie echoed in my head because I had just seen the movie with friends two weeks ago, but it did not make me feel better. My soul shivered, hollow, destroyed.
I turned a corner and saw a ravine coming up on the right side of the road, deep, rocky, unforgiving. Right then, at that moment, for the first and last time in my entire life, I considered doing it. I considered driving the station wagon off the ravine, ending the pain I felt would never leave me, for the rest of my life. No suicide note, only my smoking car and the remains of my smoking body saying goodbye to the world I wasn't grateful enough to want to keep living in.
I watched it come up and I thought about it, thought about it, then sucked it up and wound through the turn, kept going. I got back into town at 3 am without incident.
*****
It was all okay. We had some rocky encounters, Beth and I, before finally I said fuck it and moved on with my existence. I even dated someone else shortly thereafter. In fact, two years later we moved in together and were roommates for six months, and we got along reasonably well. I have fortunately been smart enough not only to not fall in love with Beth again, but also have been smart enough to know that suicide isn't worth it.
I respond by saying that, despite my dark days (which, for your records, range from 1998 to about, oh, six months ago), I never once considered killing myself, that I always held out hope that things, at some point, would get better.... okay, I didn't tell her that much, but I generally said that not once did I ever consider killing myself.
I lied.
I considered doing it JUST ONCE.
It was either the summer of 1999 or early autumn. School could have started, or it could have been several weeks away, but in any case, it had to be warm enough for a group of Roma Rats to spend an all-nighter at Lake Mead, because a Roma employee named Harmoni Sandler was moving to San Diego and the Roma Rats threw her a goodbye party, at a secluded northern beach on Lake Mead, complete with candles lighting the graveled walking path to the rocky beachside, and coolers full of beer. I was most definitely invited and so was another Roma regular by the name of Beth Englund.
I had known Beth since high school. She says 6th grade, but I don't remember seeing her until the 7th grade and she did not speak to me at all in junior high. After she dropped out halfway through my senior year, I had no idea I'd see her again when I started frequenting the Cafe Espresso Roma. We talked and suddenly we became pretty good friends. Then I did something stupid.
I fell in love in her.
It ate away at my being and kept me from being reasonable. I'd hang out at the cafe waiting for her to show up. I may have told her in some form or another, and she balked in her own special way: by disappearing off the face of the Earth. Beth never was good at facing her problems. She certainly tried, but she was trying too hard to be diplomatic and not hard enough to.... Okay, it was just unrequited love. Once I tried to write her a letter and I began it, "As the days pass, I am slowly losing my mind." Jeff turner read it and wisely said, "OH MY GOD! Steve, I don't think you should see her anymore."
In any case, I started school shortly after, the fall of 98, as a newly anointed theatre major, and I dove headfirst into the program and had forgotten about the girl not too long after. She never really showed her face near Roma anyway, and that was the only place I could have seen her.
That year of theatre was invigorating and had me tumbling headlong down the path to a career as an actor or a director... and then I was stonewalled by a theatre professor who didn't like me and decided to hold me back another year, even though I had done everything I was asked. He gave me C's in two of my acting classes so I'd have to repeat the first year. The C's dropped my GPA low enough to cost me my scholarship, and suddenly I was faced with having to take a loan to stay in school. But for what? To struggle through a first-year program I had already successfully completed and try to advance, when the department didnt want me? To continue in a major where I didn't trust my own abilities anymore?
I dropped out of school, promising myself to go back when I gave a damn about getting an education. May 99. I quickly found work as an office temp.
And then Beth suddenly starting popping up at Roma again.
We talked, and things were okay. But Beth had changed: she wasn't the weird arty reclusive rebel she was in college. She dressed nice, worked long hours, and... dare I say it then, but I sure can say it now without remorse: she was sexy.
She smoked her cigarettes and had a pleasantly manipulative attitude, but she fired something fierce off in me. And she still was the same person I had fallen in love with the first time. But I had learned my lesson after she broke my heart the first time and I knew better.
Right?
RIGHT?
And just like that I had fallen in love with her again.
If Jeff Turner had seen more of me he'd slap the shit out of me. But he was working long hours at Channel 3 and hating it, so I didn't see much of him. So he didn't. Instead I fell harder in love the 2nd time around. Harder like me when her nipples poked through her shirt... and what the hell was she doing 20 minutes before work without a bra on in the first place....
But I told her one day outside of Roma that I was in love with her and she was crestfallen. I was such a stupid naive ignorant piece of 20-year-old adolescent shit back then. I would beat the ever-loving shit out of Gomez 1999 out of principle. All those times she dragged me to movies and shit with her and she hugged me and made it a point to hang out with me and all the times she would kiss me on the cheek before she dropped me off and so on, all that she did because I was a friend, not a potential lover. I KNEW that, but she honestly had no idea. Maybe SHE was the (deliberately?) ignorant, (deliberately?) naive piece of adolescent shit back in the day.
But she got invited and I got invited, and I made it a point to get there on time, to somehow drive my blue station wagon over the mile of gravel at 15 mph, just so I could be there, while she was there, make sure if she did anything mischievous, that I would not miss it. I was dumb: maybe she would get drunk and I'd get drunk and maybe the both of us would be stupid enough.... She was single. I was decidedly single.
It got dark. Everybody showed up. We sat and drank. She'd run off to talk to whomever, and I followed, tried to listen. I wanted to hear her every word. I didn't want to miss a thing. I tumbled over every rock she tumbled over, strained to catch every word she said, every word everyone spoke to her. People took off clothes and skinny-dipped in the dirty ass lake. She'd go off and sit alone on a rock far off, far up, and I watched her in the dark while everyone partied. I couldn't talk to anyone else, party with anyone else. She was the life of my party.
It ate at me, that I wasn't the life of HER party.
The cops showed up, and informed us that alcohol wasn't allowed on this beach, and oh, by the way, are there any minors out here. Indeed, half of us were underage. Somebody had pot and he got rung up with a ticket. Somebody else had some E on her and she got a citation. We were lucky, because they could have taken us all to jail if they wanted to. In return for letting us off, we agreed to throw out all our beer. They took the bag full of liquor and took off, but most everyone else didn't mind. The party went on.
But it still ate at me, that I wasn't the life of HER party. I could have gone to jail, could have called my mother from a jail cell, angered my family to no end, but it didn't frighten me, didn't scare me, didn't tear at me the way Beth not loving me tore at me. I went up to her and told her we had to talk. GOD, I was such a fucking idiot; I would slap the taste out of the mouth of ANY guy friend of mine who acted the way I acted that night, for the last six months, for the last two times he fell in love. What the fuck was wrong with Gomez 99?
She was saddened, that I was her friend and that i was in love with her and that I couldn't just shake it and just be her friend, because that was the way she wanted it. She wanted things to be like high school, where the guys and girls could all just be friends and give hugs between classes and talk smack to each other and everything could just be COOL. You see, she had never been in love, and she wanted it that way. She didn't want to get attached. She liked being free.
But I couldn't accept that. I wanted requited love. It just wasn't gonna be that way. She hugged me in sadness and frustration, and said, "Oh Steve, I'm so sorry." And I just had to leave after that.
I sat in my car and cried and cried until I cried dry tears, people aimlessly chattering in the distance. Finally I dragged myself to the wheel and started the engine. My party was over. Actually, if you wanna get hella cheesy, it had never begun, and it was never gonna happen, because she was never going to be the life of my party.
I drove the long and lonely drive down the gravel road, back to the long and lonely winding highway back to Las Vegas. The sounds of Satan's ballad from the South Park movie echoed in my head because I had just seen the movie with friends two weeks ago, but it did not make me feel better. My soul shivered, hollow, destroyed.
I turned a corner and saw a ravine coming up on the right side of the road, deep, rocky, unforgiving. Right then, at that moment, for the first and last time in my entire life, I considered doing it. I considered driving the station wagon off the ravine, ending the pain I felt would never leave me, for the rest of my life. No suicide note, only my smoking car and the remains of my smoking body saying goodbye to the world I wasn't grateful enough to want to keep living in.
I watched it come up and I thought about it, thought about it, then sucked it up and wound through the turn, kept going. I got back into town at 3 am without incident.
*****
It was all okay. We had some rocky encounters, Beth and I, before finally I said fuck it and moved on with my existence. I even dated someone else shortly thereafter. In fact, two years later we moved in together and were roommates for six months, and we got along reasonably well. I have fortunately been smart enough not only to not fall in love with Beth again, but also have been smart enough to know that suicide isn't worth it.
drunken wisdom o' the night.