I hate your birthday

Suicide is a Killer

I’ve been thinking of suicide for quite a while. All the many ways to end a life. My life in this case. At first I was leaning towards hanging myself. But then I remembered that I lost my good belt. And since I’ve given up on solid foods, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight. As you could imagine, I wouldn’t want to hang myself, only to have my pants fall off, greeting the person who discovers my body with my lifeless limp genitals. And I certainly wasn’t about to go shopping for a new belt. The last time I was in my local clothing depot, I got into a rather heated argument that ended with me being escorted from the store, and my picture being hung up behind the register.

After hanging, I found myself intrigued by the idea of slitting my wrists. What more relaxing way to kill yourself is there, than lying in a warm bath, with some blissful suicide music playing in the background (anything by Kenny G will do fine) and opening a vain? I went on for weeks toying with the idea, planning everything to the smallest detail. Finally came the day when I was ready. I moved the CD player into the bathroom started up my John Tesh CD (I couldn’t find any Kenny G at my local record shop. In fact the clerk behind the counter would only sell me the John Tesh CD under “major direst”.), turned on the warm water, and walked into the living room to get the brand new box of razors I picked up earlier that day. However much to my shock and dismay, I cut my finger open while opening the box too hastily. Blood was pouring all over everything from my newly injured index-finger and I started to get a little queasy from the sight of all of it. So I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I got dressed and drove to the hospital, holding my finger up in the air the whole way. I spent four hours in the ER talking to an old man who had a fork sticking out of his neck, got 12 stitches and went home. I learned two things that night. One: I am not that good with razors nor am I good with the sight of blood. And two: I learned there is an elderly woman named Pearl living somewhere in the area who does not take critique of her cooking very well.

Since I didn’t need my John Tesh CD anymore, I returned it to my record store, where the clerk gladly gave me a refund, then deposited the CD into a bin that looked very much like its purpose in existence was for the collection of trash. As I walked home, I contemplated another form of suicide. This went on for weeks. On the bus to and from work, at work, on the toilet, everywhere and always I found my mind drifting to all the ways of self-murder.

Jumping off a building was out, as I’d hate to make such a mess for the department of sanitation. Death by electrocution was a no-go as well. I couldn’t stand the idea of being fodder for all the lame puns. “He electrocuted himself? I can’t believe it! I’m shocked! No, wait, I guess that’d be him! HA HA HA!” Nothing seemed to work out.

Then, after two months of deadless ends, it finally hit me. Pills. I’ll just swallow a fistful of pills and drift away quietly. First into a deep sleep, then into non-existence. Nice, neat, and wholesome. However, getting the pills would prove troublesome. I wasn’t friends with any dentists, nor would I be any good at charming the local pharmacist woman into slipping a few downers with my vitamins. Then, while watching the news later on that night, I saw this commercial on TV about this new “Sleepy-time Chaconix” aspirin that just came out. Just two pills are supposed to help you get through the night in a “restful and undisturbed sleep.” Surely I could do the trick with enough of them. That was it. The next morning I woke up early and walked to the Shop-Bonanza across town, picked up two bottles of “Sleepy-time Chaconix” and a can of chicken noodle soup. With fifty pills per bottle I figured I was more than prepared for the task. The soup was for helping me take the large dose of the pills all at one time. I couldn’t swallow a fifty pills at once, in fact I couldn’t even swallow more than two pills at a time due to a horrible throat infection that I had when I was twelve. Swallowing only two pills at once would take far too long. So, what I would do is crunch up all the pills, and mix the resulting powder into the soup. I was almost impressed, me, planning shit.

Later on that night, I was smiling and dancing away as I hammered the pills on my kitchen counter. I had my new ABBA Unplugged CD-I picked it up on my way home from the Shop-Bonanza at the record store. After ringing me up and seeing my selection, the clerk banned me from shopping there again-blasting on my stereo. I was going to kill myself and I couldn’t have been happier.

The soup cooked, I took a seat on my torn black leather couch and had a big bowlful. I could barely taste aspirin. I had thought that it was going to make the soup bitter, but that wasn’t the case at all. After my second and third helping, I laid down on the couch and prepared to cross over into the darkness.

I woke up in the hospital the next morning. The doctor explained to me that during the night before, my landlady heard several loud and disturbing moans coming from my apartment, which prompted her to call the police. When they arrived, after getting no response from knocking on the door and at my Landlady’s request, they broke though the door only to find me unconscious on the floor and covered in my own vomit. After calling the paramedics they did a little investigating, and found a can of chicken noodle soup in my kitchen. Apparently the soup’s expiration date had been up over six months before. The doctor finished by saying that I “probably had quite the nice lawsuit on my hands.”

When he left me alone I put it all together. I figured out that the reason I was laying in a hospital bed and not in the morgue must have been because of having vomited up all the sleeping pills along with the bad soup. I felt a wave of despair wash over me. Once again a suicidal adventure had been dwarfed by bad luck. I fell asleep with the troubling thought “Maybe I’ll never be able to kill myself,” floating through my head.

I woke up in the dark about five hours later. As I sat there in the bed, under the freshly starched sheets, with the beeps and other goings on of any normal hospital happening on outside my door, I began to smile. The solution to my incessant beating heart had finally come to me. After suing the Shop-Bonanza for selling the expired chicken noodle soup, I could use the money to hire a hitman to kill me.

Things were finally looking up.

- Peter J. McCann, 2003