Why I Committed Suicide (2 page)

The Delta Lodge became my escape from the serious side of college while I still lived on campus in the dorms. When the chance to live in the “house with no rules” became available this summer, I took it. The house is three stories tall and perches on one of the tallest points in the city. During the hot summer nights you can climb out of the third story window onto the crumbling roof and look at the stars and tops of the trees for miles all around. I scrawled my name in big black spray-paint up here for the entire world to see, or at least those folk brave and drunk enough to climb up here for themselves. The other day I found an old broken television and painted the words “I am watching you” on it in an acidic moment of clarity. I dragged that old TV up to the roof and perched it up on the highest chimney so that the television could watch those who watched it for so long. Down in the depths of this old house is a basement filled with foulness and an old light that hangs from frayed and shaky wires. The walls here resemble a New York subway car, it’s layered with tales of graffiti and past pleasures. There are catacombs of crawlspaces with dirt floors and secret exits under here too. Here and there, among the hallways of the main body of the house, is a sporadic doorway that leads to someone or the others room. The cast of players in the house is ever changing except for a few mainstays. I have been in all the rooms at some time or another and each one is so different in shape and décor from the others that I could spend hours going into the details of each. I have put in a lot of time stumbling around this house drunk, listening to aspiring local bands in the front room, painting the walls, tripping on acid and smoking obscene amounts of marijuana with good people I would not have otherwise met.

This summer is my break. This summer is where I cast off the domineering presence of Melanie (the ex) and have choices to make without fear of fighting and repercussion. Melanie was THE girlfriend. The first super-serious girlfriend I ever had. She had a great body and a buck-toothed face that kept me pussy-whipped for two years. The one that made me wait almost four months to get an AIDS test before I could fuck her. The one that was always getting bladder infections and smoking cigarettes in that annoying matter where each drag took an intense showy draw to inhale. This method of smoking caused her front left vampire tooth to be slightly off-color than the rest of her teeth. She was the one who tried to be so classy and gothic without ever figuring out class is not defined by money but rather is a sense that exists in your soul. The one who always had me give her oral sex without ever truly wanting
regular
sex, or so I thought. I kept a journal of that whole time we were together and used smiley faces as symbols to denote what sexual activity I participated in on certain days. A frowning face meant just oral sex for her, a neutral face meant just oral sex for me and the face that grinned like an idiot meant the whole walla-walla-sha-bang. When I go back now and read my journal from that time, I see that at some point I was getting quite a bit of the grinning like an idiot good stuff.

I had a lot of developmental experiences with Melanie that looking back now seem like good things to have done, but at the time they were a little bizarre for me. Hell, some of them are still bizarre when I think of them. The handcuffs and bondage was nice and I could even stand going to the gay bars and getting drunk while she played the fag-hag role. I could have done without that one experience where I was wearing makeup while naked and handcuffed to the bed when the Resident Administrator walked into our dorm room though. Melanie would study and sleep mostly but she was pretty cool about letting me trip acid all night and then stumble into her bed during the dawn hours.

I finally moved out of the dorms and all that silliness and while we’ve been broken up I’ve had sex with her once after she made a surprise visit to my pad. My roommate Ernie warned me not to do it with her, saying she was just trying to get back together, but my cock wanted to believe she only wanted “one last fling” and so I had to invoke another tear session when it turned out her and my cock didn’t have the same understanding of the “one last fling” concept. At the time I was kind of pissed that she thought she would get me back merely by fucking me again, but some girls are taught their whole life that sex can equal love when they want it to.

Basically I can sum up Melanie by saying that I really thought I loved her for a few months and convinced her to love me, and then we got trapped in one of
those
relationships that doesn’t quite work, but doesn’t not work enough to call it off. I was in that whole soap operatic scene until the beginning of this summer. I’ve been dead-set on celebrating my relationship freedom until life threw me this crazy curveball in the shape of Jenifer.

A famous Beatles lyric later adopted by the Manson family was supposed to go here. I think I’m finally learning what “hilter skilter” can actually mean.

Man! This first stage of love is always such bullshit. All the insecurity and confusion I was trying to avoid has swept over me like the coarse bristles of a witch’s broom. We’re so alike that it’s infuriating. Jenifer’s doing the same damn thing that I was trying to do this summer before I met her; playing the field and having fun. Unfortunately the relationship she just removed herself from must have been even more serious than mine was or at least more dramatic in ways that only girl relationships can be. Her laid-backishness is taken to the point of fanaticism at times and I can see how it is preventing us from being together.

It has only been one week and I am already up late at night writing these words under the light of a single bulb casting its dirty glow around my dark, cat-pissy room. These are the actions of an inexperienced virgin-boy dammit! Why am I obsessing like this?

Everyone is predicting the death of Jerry Garcia soon, rumored reports tell of another failed stint in rehabilitation. The scent of motor oil and sun-cooked asphalt fill the air. The weed around town is abundant and the greenest it’s been in years, producing rich thick smoke that fills the air with laughter. Its rich aroma results in the firing of intellectual pistons that merge us both into one person. I am a Gemini you know.

But there is still a problem. Jenifer thinks she loves another. A fine strapping boy of a man named Kristoff with the mystique and doe eyes to drive women (and some men) mad with want. He looks like that picture of Nick Drake on the inside of his Pink Moon album. I pretend not to care because they have known each other since High School and if I start to resent them, soon I’ll resent myself for falling out of the tree and bouncing so readily onto the trampoline of love again.

What does a man do in a situation like this? Stalk her of course. Under the almost respectable age-old pretense of creating that chance encounter. There’s a summer of freedom before me that’s still in its virgin state, so I have the time and the feverish desire to watch her do the girlish things that cause me to infatuate. Plus by following her around, I get to see how actually “with him” she really is. I casually show up and run into her at places I would normally never be in anyway. At the time I think I am being cool and non-chalant but I know deep down that I’m only increasing the repulsive fawning puppy dog effect. I guess I will come to terms with the fact that I am just a couple of one-night stands to her sooner or later, but “Da-Nile” isn’t just a river in Egypt.

I trailed her this evening to one place off Fry Street called the Karma Kafé. It’s one of those trendy coffee places that I always expect to fail but still seem to hang around and make a profit, serving all sorts of granolas and the coffee-addled-Renaissance-fair types that seem to dwell near a college campus at all times. I like this coffee shop because I can ride my hundred-dollar fenced Diamond-Back across the street, on the University campus, and not look like a total stalking doo-fus. The café has big front windows covered with flyers for local bands, but enough of the window is exposed to fuel my hopes of catching a glimpse of her. More often I see the object of her affections walking around and I wonder if he knows his powerful mystique is keeping this beautiful girl’s heart from loving mine. I have made it a point to be there as she inevitably walks home alone because I hope to appear to be the embodiment of chivalry and raw appeal.
Corny?
Yes, but my heart is hers and I would rather act the fool than lose her forever.

Does that even make sense?

How do I describe the intensity of being in love to the macho parade of men that will read and laugh at these semi-private lamentations? I suppose it doesn’t matter, for this journal isn’t about the opinions of others, it is about my damn summer and the crystal clear knowledge that turns out to not be so crystal clear even when you think you’ve finally found the “one” person in your life that will make you complete.

After being fed romantic movie schlock for years, this is the dream that I have. Traditionally the story should go, awkward boy meets beautiful girl, girl won’t give him the time of day, girl is betrothed, girl is dying of terminal illness etc. etc. ad nausea. Boy takes it upon himself to follow and stalk the young fair maiden and luckily finds himself in a situation to prove his love by saving her from a wild boar, gang members, unsympathetic cruel world etc. I guess that is the emotion going through back of my mind. Or maybe I just want the chance to spend that one last evening in her presence before fate whisks her away. I am sure at this point that I will continue the rest of my days pining for the magic of Jenifer. All the demons of hell have conspired to give me one night of passion and love so wonderful that the rest of my life shall pale in comparison. I am foolishly and romantically in love and not ashamed to go through the throes of that agony if that is my fate, but I will do everything I can short of letting go to keep me from giving in to life without her.

Jenifer and Kristoff have had their relationship for years. Anything that has made her the beautiful creature she has become is a good thing, but deep down I just know that if Kristoff wasn’t more of a free spirit than Jenifer, she would be with him in a heartbeat. For some reason that hurts me even though it’s his loss. While he is actively and openly pursuing other company, Jenifer and I are becoming close friends on the cool. It’s depressing playing second fiddle to the James Dean persona that every girl falls in love with but I think I’m playing it off rather well by acting like the situation doesn’t bother me. The pressure of honesty will drive her away at this point so I am content to be her friend and occasional fuck buddy. I enjoy the nights we spend together and I’m playing the cards the way they fall. For now.

It turns out that Jenifer’s not much of a pot smoker because of her hard-core asthma, so I am flattered she consented to do bong-tokes with me on that magical day we met. It means she realized I was trying to pick her up and despite my clumsy attempts, she was attracted to me. I thought I was slick, but Jenifer has cool in her genes.

Maybe I should start a little earlier and expand the description of my living situation. Moving into the Delta Lodge was one of those ideas that sound a lot better drunk and late at night than it actually turns out to be. My roommate’s name is Ernie Harding and if I haven’t mentioned him already, he happens to be one of the coolest people I know. He got busted in high school with some bitches that had a stolen credit card and ended up taking the whole rap for their little shopping spree. That’s a big deal in the state of Texas and so he is on probation like almost 1/3 of the people in this fucked up state. Does he complain about it? No, he heroically has transformed his life so that he can drink and drop acid with us, he just leaves marijuana out of the equation since that’s the only thing the State’s drug test can really detect. I can respect that, even if I couldn’t live that way myself. I mean pot is the herb of life. It’s in the Bible and everything.

Ernie used to live right down the hall from me in Bruce Hall where we would drink and do lots of acid together. He pledged the Lodge the semester after I did, he was one of the people that dropped me off in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma for a pledge prank and he was even there for me the night I got alcohol poisoning after doing too many beer bongs. Basically Ernie’s an all around good guy and a good friend whose life seems to consist of beer, sports and fighting over the phone with his long distance relationship girlfriend. I could tell a million stories of our delinquency if I wasn’t so busy writing down the joy and trauma of my current life.

The problem with the room that Ernie and I share is that I keep getting sick. We’re on the first floor and this house has been partied in non-stop for the past fifty years so it probably has enough radon and asbestos to keep my little crotch swimmers sterile for decades. The guy who lived in our room before us got married and while he was courting his fair lady, he pretty much abandoned his own homestead. I’m sure it was partly because she had air-conditioning and partly because his fucking cats started to inbreed and take over the place. That’s why there was so much cat shit everywhere when we moved in and there were other things as well. He was one of those people that occasionally dress up like barbarians and Klingons and all that other crap, so he was also extremely sloth-like and accumulated lots of the fast food garbage and miscellaneous crap that people like that subsist on. Throw in an air conditioner without any freon, all the windows permanently nailed then painted shut and you start to get a visual picture of the mess we inherited.

Ernie and I cleaned the place thoroughly when we moved in. We evicted all the four legged, six toed mutations and shoveled out the presents they left behind. We emptied the room of all its garbage and moldy magazines etc. We scrubbed the walls and floor with bleach and tried in vain to cover up or eradicate the permanent odor I’ve already elaborated on. Hell, I even splurged and bought some cheap outdoor dark forest green latex paint that made me pleasantly dizzy in the non-ventilated area. But no matter how much I tried I still couldn’t get the walls to resemble anything broaching the word “new”.