“I hit a deer on my way into work last week”, Jay was telling one of his customers, “It bashed up my grill and headlights but the really expensive thing was the kink in the hood”.
Jay was a performer. He loved to talk to the procession of customers that paraded through his auto repair shop every day. People expecting the typical unkempt attendant spewing a steady stream of automotive jargon were always surprised by the strange turns their conversations took with this man.
“I was pretty upset”, he continued, “but I figured the deer didn’t make out that well in the deal either”
“I guess you got your first kill of the season”, his customer mused.
“Maybe not. I mean, I didn’t stop to give that animal mouth-to-mouth or anything but I swear it was gone when I drove out that way the next day”
There are people all over the planet who have wealth, power, beauty, fame, and all the other wonderful things that life has to offer. Jay had something that was worth more than all of those things combined: Happiness. Without happiness, everything else is as worthless as yesterday’s lottery numbers.
Jay went through life feeling this extremely valuable emotion while he doled out information about tire, muffler, and brake technologies to his many customers. To hear him talk about Uniroyal Laredo All Weather Tires you would think he was a wine connoisseur, extolling the virtues of a particularly delightful Pinot Noir. He would savor each interaction, feeling its texture and warmth in his mouth before swallowing it whole. Happiness hides in strange places, I guess.
Jay kept his waiting room comfortable as a sort of lure for conversation. That way, his customers could watch the large screen t.v., sip free coffee, and relax on the large, plush couch while they waited for his staff to repair their cars. It was a nicer set up than most of them had in their own homes.
This environment provided Jay with a perpetual audience for his sermons on tires, animal husbandry, religion, politics, hair replacement technology, or anything else that found its way into his head. In addition to his incidental lectures, Jay liked to ask a lot of questions that didn’t have answers. He couldn’t help it. The thoughts would clutter up his mind, nagging at him like a pack of cranky, restless cub scouts at a life insurance seminar. There was no doubt about it, he needed an outlet for the frantic happiness that cluttered his brain.
This was especially troubling for Jay when he found himself at home late at night with no one to talk to. Without his captive audience, the thoughts would slowly begin to compact themselves in his mind until he became bloated with words. When the pressure got to be too intense, he knew he had to find someone to talk to before his head exploded like a big water balloon.
Sleep wouldn’t have him when he got this way. Jay tossed and turned his way through life, waiting for the morning sun and all the customers that accompanied it. He often felt like a child on Christmas morning, up too early to open any presents.
He eventually developed a coping mechanism that helped him to get through these particularly lengthy nights. It all started when he accidentally dialed a wrong number one late evening and found himself in the middle of a puzzling conversation with a complete stranger. It was like barging, uninvited into someone’s home. It was reckless, absurd, intriguing... exhilarating.
Soon after, Jay started randomly dialing the telephone and having confusing conversations with whoever happened to answer. It wasn’t quite as enjoyable as talking to his customers but, like an alcoholic who finishes off all the half-empty glasses after a party, he found that it held him over until he could get something more substantial in his system. Over the years this evolved into a nightly habit.* * *
“Hello?”, said the voice that he woke at the other end of the line.
“Hey, what’s up?”, Jay asked the complete stranger.
“...Not much...”, the confused person replied, sleepily searching his brain in an attempt to figure out who he was talking to.
“Listen”, Jay hungerly continued, “I’ve been thinking about this Jack Kevorkian guy. I mean, the man is famous for killing terminally ill people. Do you think he makes his friends nervous when he visits them in the hospital?”
“Barry?”, the confused person asked, hoping that he had identified his late night caller.
“Yeah, this is Barry”, Jay lied. “You know, they call Kevorkian ‘Dr. Death’ but I heard the AMA took away his medical license. Shouldn’t they call him ‘Mr. Death’ now?”.
“This doesn’t sound like Barry...”
“I mean, what if you were in the hospital and Jack Kevorkian came to visit you? Wouldn’t you get a little nervous?”, Jay pressed on.
“Who is this?”, the stranger on the other end of the line demanded to know.
“What difference does it make? Just talk to me for Christ’s sake!”, Jay blurted out at his unwilling audience. His slip was answered by the click of the receiver that severed his dialogue in mid performance.
Strangely enough, this little exchange was exciting for Jay. It wasn’t, however, enough to slake his thirst for human contact. Seeking another hit, he quickly dialed another random number. The phone purred in his hand. * * *
There are a lot of ways that a guy can kill himself. He can hang himself, blow his brains out, stab himself in a major organ, jump off of a building, ingest any number of poisons, slit his wrists, cut his jugular vein, throw himself in front of a truck, breathe in car exhaust, explode himself into little pieces, drive his car into a tree, lie in the path of an oncoming train... Why, there is a virtual smorgasbord of options available for people who have decided to end their lives.
Choosing a suicide method is a lot like picking out a suit coat. You need to find something that is appealing, practical, and appropriate for your personality. You need a suicide that says “Here I am, world! Look at me! I’m dead, for Christ’s sake!”.
Leonard had probably considered all of the popular suicide methods at one time or another. For a few weeks he toyed with the idea of buying a gun and blowing his troubled head clean off his shoulders. It seemed to have the kind of fool-proof, no-turning-back kind of quality that appealed to him.
A bullet to the brain wasn’t all champagne and confetti, however. Leonard had a couple of concerns about this method that caused him to hesitate in his decision. For one thing, the Brady law made it impossible for him to buy a hand gun at the moment inspiration struck him. He would have to put in a request for a gun and, then, wait five days while a background check was being completed. This robbed the event of spontaneity. It was like trying to schedule a sneeze and being told that there were some openings in March.
He also imagined that the gun would make a terrible mess. He heard about a woman who blew her brains out while she was sitting under a ceiling fan. When the police arrived, they found blood and skin spiraled around the ceiling like a grisly bull’s eye. Leonard had hoped to find a more considerate way to kill himself. That was just the kind of guy he was.
Finally, he had a dream that convinced him once-and-for-all to seek out a more benevolent form of suicide. In the dream, he carefully positioned a hand gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet traveled through his chin, through the back of his tongue, through his sinus cavities, and exploded out of his right eye, leaving his brain fully intact. He tried to scream but all he could produce was a horrible, animal-like gurgling sound. He staggered, blindly out the door of his apartment and gurgled for help from his neighbors before passing out in his shabby little lawn cubicle.
It wasn’t the sort of dream that inspires a guy to shoot himself in the head (although it did inspire Leonard to take better care of his lawn). No, there had to be a better way for him to bring about an end to his suffering.
One day, Leonard read about the alarming rise in a new form of suicide. Apparently, people were putting plastic trash bags over their heads and going to sleep. After a few minutes, they would pass out and, eventually, suffocate. It was painless, neat, and fool-proof.
The trash bag suicide method fit Leonard like a perfectly tailored suit. It wasn’t too flashy or technical. It wasn’t high maintenance or self-indulgent. It was effective yet unpretentious...
Once he found his method, Leonard decided that he was ready to give it a try. This wasn’t an upsetting moment for him. It was actually quite a relief to finally reach a decision that would bring about an end to his suffering. It was like coming home after a long, traumatic journey.
Preparing for his suicide, Leonard looked around and decided that it would be a shame to die with his apartment in such disarray. He knew that his passing would be followed by a procession of police, paramedics, and relatives who would be entering the apartment at one time or another in order to conduct whatever business people attend to after a suicide. You simply don’t throw a party like that in a home that hasn’t been properly cleaned. Even dead, Leonard wanted to be a good host.
He spent a few hours vacuuming, washing dishes, putting dirty laundry in the hamper, taking out the trash... When the apartment finally looked presentable, Leonard put his will on the dresser and went downstairs to get a trash bag from the kitchen. He felt remarkably calm. He reached into the box of trash bags, hoping to extract the tool that would end his suffering forever. The box was empty.HE HAD USED THE LAST BAG WHEN HE TOOK OUT THE FUCKING TRASH!
“Jesus Christ!”, Leonard yelled as he threw the empty box on the floor. Things never seemed to go smoothly for him. He immediately started rummaging through the hall coat closet to see if he had any jackets that were still wrapped in their dry cleaning bags. Although he felt a little silly being found dead with the words “This is not a toy! Keep out of reach of children!” across his face, it was an allowance that he was willing to make. He rummaged around the closet but had no luck.
Eventually, Leonard found some plastic sandwich bags in the kitchen, No, they wouldn’t fit over his head but he thought he could hold them over his mouth and nose until he was properly suffocated. He trudged back upstairs, lay down on the bed, and held an entire handful of sandwich bags over his face.
Things weren’t going very well. He couldn’t seem to get an air-tight seal over his face. The air kept fluttering in and out between the bags. The plastic was getting hot, damp, and itchy against his skin as he struggled to keep his hands in the proper position. This wrestling match went on for several minutes.
In the middle of all the action, the phone rang. Leonard tried to ignore it as he struggled to keep the sandwich bags in place but whoever was calling was remarkably persistent. The phone rang twenty times before Leonard decided that maybe he should answer it. * * *
Jay was getting concerned. The phone rang and rang but nobody answered it. Then, just as he was about to replace the handset back in its cradle, the person on the other end picked up the phone, yelled, “YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER!”, and hung up.
This perplexed Jay. How did the person know that he had the wrong number? He hit the redial button on his phone and waited for an answer. This time, the person on the other end picked up after only two rings. Again, he yelled, “YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER!” and hung up. Jay hit redial again and yelled out “HOW DO YOU KNOW I HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER?!?” at the very same time that the person on the other end was yelling, “YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER!”.
This time there was a pause. Leonard was trying to decide whether or not to hang up on his persistent caller. The plastic bags felt hot and wet in his hand.
“Why would anyone want to talk to me?”, Leonard asked, the anger rapidly fading out of his voice.
“I was just wondering why dogs turn around in circles before they lie down”, Jay asked, “Can’t they just lie down without turning around first? What do they accomplish by making those stupid circles?”
“You’re not very good at this, are you?”, Leonard asked.
“Good at what?”
“At making prank calls”
“Is that what I was doing?”, Jay asked with a profound, child-like sincerity. Up until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him that his late night phone calls could be considered to be pranks.
“I don’t have time for this shit”, Leonard said with the annoyance leeching back into his voice. He was getting ready to hang up the phone again.
“Why? What are you doing?”
“I’m in the process of killing myself. Would you like to join me?”
“I just wanted to know why dogs turn in circles...”
Leonard was ready to haul his life to the curb like a broken down old couch. It was heavy and ugly. It smelled of mildew. He looked forward to seeing it being hauled away by stupid, muscular men with a big truck.
Jay, on the other hand, was so infatuated with life he couldn’t talk quickly enough to tell people about it. He woke up each morning, nearly exploding with enthusiasm about the wonderful things the bad mufflers and bald tires would introduce into his life on that day.
Strangely enough, both men lived on the same planet. In fact, both men drove down the same roads, woke up in the same city day after day, followed the same laws of physics... They simply interpreted the world in drastically different ways.
“I don’t know why dogs turn in circles! I don’t care!”, Leonard shouted. The tone of his voice suggested that he was, again, preparing to hang up the phone. He wasn’t. His curiosity was getting the better of him. He couldn’t keep himself from wondering where this conversation would head next. It was like driving past a horrible car accident and not being able to look away.
“Tonight when I go to bed I’m going to turn in circles before I lie down. Maybe I’ll find something appealing about it”, Jay added, feeling pleased that the conversation was continuing to unfold.
“You do that”, Leonard said.
“Do you want me to call you with the results?”, Jay asked.
After a brief pause, Leonard’s resistance began to dissolve again, “...Yeah, you may as well call me with the results”, he consented, “You know, I haven’t gotten a phone call from anyone except salesmen for months. I guess it would be kind of nice to talk to someone who isn’t trying to sell me something”
“So I can’t interest you in some quality aluminum siding?”, Jay asked.
At that, Leonard hung up the phone. He didn’t know what to make of this unusual conversation. How was he supposed to feel? Amused? Angry? Scared? He looked at the handful of breath-dampened sandwich bags and tossed them in the trash. He was feeling too silly and awkward to kill himself at that moment. Suicide is supposed to be a solemn event. * * *
Leonard wasn’t always like this. He used to live a reasonably happy life in the suburbs with his wife and two grown sons. He had a decent job at the Ford Motor Company where he assembled track systems into scores of Minivans every day. It was monotonous work but it came with plenty of benefits and a decent union wage. Things went pretty smoothly until his depression hit.
It was a gradual process. What started as a vague grayness in the air slowly took hold like a virus. After a while, the depression attached itself inoperably to Leonard’s hip like a vicious siamese twin. It stood next to him on the assembly line each day; it lay down next to him every night; it hogged the covers from him while he tried to sleep... It was like an annoying roommate who blasted the stereo at inopportune times and left dirty underwear on the bathroom floor. The depression followed him everywhere he went, draining the color out of all the things he encountered. Eventually, it became as much a part of his identity as the color of his eyes or the size of his nose.
Without explanation, happiness just packed its bags and left. It sent an occasional post card every now and then but, other than that, it disappeared entirely. There wasn’t any clear explanation for it; Everyday things like driving to work, making small talk, or buying groceries just started feeling unbearable. To see the agony that he went through just trying to convince himself to do the laundry you would think he was trying to talk himself into pulling out his own toenails.
As the depression grew roots, Leonard became less and less capable of sleep. This was particularly disturbing because sleep was the only thing in life that appealed to him. He would lie in bed and think the same thoughts over and over again, occasionally looking at the clock to see how long it had been since the last time he looked at the clock. All this time the shallow, useless thoughts would tumble around his head like a late night stomach full of junk food.
Usually around 4 A.M. he would give up on sleep altogether. He knew that if the insomnia kept him up until that point he would be better off surrendering to it. Sleep started to feel like a lover for whom he could no longer get aroused. It was deeply humiliating.
Over time, the various things that Leonard used to view as accomplishments in his life turned into big, merciless anchors. He began to feel trapped in his job, his house, his sons, and his wife. One day when he was sitting at the dinner table he realized that he wouldn’t really care if his whole family died in their sleep that night. Watching them chew, open mouthed, with that empty look in their eyes, he found that the only emotion he was capable of feeling toward them was disgust.
This realization came as a bit of a relief to Leonard. He thought he would be more likely to wiggle free from his depression if he didn’t have to worry about his family anymore. He imagined himself writhing like a snake out of his old skin.
A few days later Leonard filed for an early retirement and moved out of his house. His wife begged him not to leave but she had become little more than a blob of protoplasm to him at that point. He didn’t feel anything at all for her. He walked out of the house with an armload of belongings, leaving the rest of his life to fend for itself. * * *
Leonard moved into a low-rent apartment in the lower east side of town. It was a building where hundreds of people sat in hundreds of apartments watching hundreds of televisions every day. Standing in the parking lot he could look up at the windows and see all the blue lights emanating from the television screens like little constellations in the sky.
Sleep continued to evade Leonard in his new apartment. Quickly adapting to its new surroundings, it found several effective hiding places in the nooks and crannies of the building. Leonard would lie in bed night after night, listening to the howls of his neighbor’s cat. He felt like his soul had gotten loose and found it’s voice in that tortured little animal.
Situation comedies, soap operas, and tabloid news shows quickly became Leonard’s drugs of choice. He would peel himself out of bed each day and turn on the T.V.. It would ignite in a flash of light like a crack pipe in his hands. Slowly, the colors and sounds would form themselves around a talk show or situation comedy. The glowing, buzzing glass eye would fix its gaze on Leonard and he would feel the familiar numbness overtaking his brain. It was almost like being asleep. Almost.* * *
One day after his first late night call to Leonard, Jay found himself feeling distracted at work. He couldn’t escape the queer taste that the conversation left in his mouth. Jay was used to walking away from his calls without any unpleasant side effects but Leonard’s hopelessness projected an unexpected shadow across his morning.
Jay tried to talk his way out of his ambiguous feelings. Fortunately, Raif Peterson showed up at the shop that day to take advantage of the free coffee. He proved to be a good testing ground for Jay’s new emotions.
Raif used to stop by the shop every month to have his oil changed. He became so enamored with the atmosphere, he continued to be a regular participant in Jay’s conversations long after cataracts robbed him of the ability to drive.
Conversations between these two men were always intriguing in their rhythm and texture. Jay spoke with the rapid fire patterns that were necessary to express the thoughts that his brain, itchy with ideas, tended to produce.
Raif, on the other hand, had the kind of voice that made him sound like he was gargling mice. There were little pops and squeaks that bubbled over his grinding bass drone when he talked. His words never escaped unscathed, either. They all bore tooth marks and other little abrasions like a dog’s favorite chew toy as they found their way past the thousands of salivary stalagmites and stalactites in Raif’s mouth.
“How the hell are you, Jay!”, Raif gurgled, waking the mice that resided in his throat.
“Not so bad, I guess”
Raif only seemed to agree with about half of the things Jay said to him. He didn’t mind wading through his friend’s stream of consciousness, though, as long as he was rewarded with free coffee and ready company.
“What has you wandering around town in this kind of weather, Raif?”
“You saw me downtown?”
“Yeah. I saw you when I drove into work this morning. I was looking at you; you were looking at the Cavalier Hotel; the hotel wasn’t looking at much of anything...”
“I was just in the mood for a little walk”, Raif said, the words fizzing and frothing out of his mouth.
Raif had spent most of his seventy years in town. He took the business openings and closings as personally as if they were marriages and funerals in his own family. He remembered the day the Cavalier Hotel opened. As a ten year old, he stood with his pockets full of candy, marveling at the awesome power and beauty the building represented. It rose proudly above all the other buildings in town with its fists full of beauty and wealth. He felt like he was looking at a majestic piece of history that would hold up the skyline for as long as there was a skyline to be held. Sixty years later, the hotel stood abandoned, scheduled for demolition like an inmate on death row. It was hard not to take the news personally.
“This town has expiration dates stamped all over it”, Raif mused.
“I’m not going anywhere”, Jay told him, “How else will an old bastard like you get free coffee around here?”
“I don’t know”
“Hey, let me ask you something”, Jay prodded, “What do you think about suicide?”
“I don’t care for it. Why? Am I getting on your nerves?”
“No. I’m worried about a friend of mine”, Jay admitted. He wanted to talk about his conversation with Leonard but he didn’t want to explain the details behind their meeting. His late night phone calls contained all the guilty pleasures that pornography held for other men. It was just easier not to tell anyone.
“This guy claims that he wants to kill himself”, he continued, “Can you believe that?”
“It happens”, Raif gurgled with the kind of simple wisdom that would sound shallow if it came out of a younger mouth.
“I didn’t really believe him, though”
“People kill themselves all the time”, Raif reminded him, “Maybe you should talk to him about it”
Jay was trying to remember if Leonard’s phone number was still on his redial. As long as he didn’t make any other phone calls, it would still be there.
“I wouldn’t know what to say”
“It doesn’t matter. Just talk to him”
“That’ll kill him for sure”
“Yeah, probably”
* * *
When he heard the phone ring late at night Leonard suspected that he was about to get into another inane conversation with his curious new friend. One day had passed since their first conversation. In that time Leonard still hadn’t decided how he was supposed to feel about it. He had to admit, though, that he felt a surge of adrenalin when the phone rang him free from the late night talk show that was holding him captive.
After two rings, Leonard picked up the phone and put it to his ear. He didn’t say anything at all; he just listened to see what the caller had to say to him.
“You weren’t really going to kill yourself, were you?”
“I was going to put a trash bag over my head and suffocate myself”, Leonard matter-of-factly answered. It occurred to him that there was something appealing about telling his problems to a perfect stranger.
“You don’t want to do that”
“Why not?”
“Because if someone saves you before you actually die you’ll end up with brain damage”, Jay explained, “Then people will have to wheel you around in a cart like a ceramic doll and feed you with a stick”
Leonard hadn’t thought about that. Suddenly his plan didn’t look so appetizing. The prospect of surviving a suicide attempt or of committing a sloppy, elongated suicide was much more disturbing than the prospect of actually being dead. He wasn’t afraid of death; he was afraid of dying.
“I guess I’m too inept to pull off that kind of suicide”, he told Jay.
“I don’t know, you sound pretty ‘ept’ to me. Is ‘ept’ a word?”, Jay wondered aloud, “I mean, how can there be an ‘inept’ if there is no ‘ept’?”.
“I’m just tired. I don’t want to live any more”, Leonard explained, feeling a little comforted to finally set his emotions to words.
“I’m going to use the word ‘ept’ in my everyday conversations”, Jay continued, “Maybe if I use it often enough it’ll catch on and everyone will start using it”
As different as Jay and Leonard were, they had one very significant similarity: Both of them had heads that were desperately cluttered with repetitive, useless thoughts. When they held conversations they were like two mail men, swapping all their leftover junk mail at the end of the Christmas season.
“I feel lonely but I can’t stand to be around people”, Leonard confessed.
“...So you don’t consider yourself to be very ‘ept’ in social situations?”, Jay asked, barely able to conceal his excitement at finding a use for his new word.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No! I really want to hear what you have to say”, Jay pleaded, afraid that the conversation was about to come to an end, “Why are you so depressed?”
“Honestly?”
Jay fought back the urge to ask why people say “Honestly?” when they are asked a question. He was dying to say “No, lie to me!” but he knew it would be answered with a loud click in his ear piece.
“Yeah, honestly”
“I don’t know. I used to have everything. Then, I decided I didn’t want any of it anymore. Things just quit being pleasurable to me. Did you ever feel that way?”
“Honestly?”, Jay asked, amusing himself with a private little joke.
“Yeah”
“I never felt that way”
“Oh”
An awkward silence began to smother the conversation. Finally, Leonard said, “Look, I have to go”
“Why? What could you possibly have to do? Are you late for a nap or something?”
Jay was right, of course. The only pressing engagement Leonard had was with his television set. He decided that if he was going to stay on the line he should at least try to relate his depression to his anonymous friend.
“I can’t seem to find the will power to go on”, he said.
“You’re not going to end your life with a preposition, are you?!?”, Jay asked, “that would be the worst grammar error of all!”.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you have lived a relatively death-free existence up until now”, Jay explained, “Why screw it up with reckless grammar?”.
That did it. Leonard finally lost his patience and hung up the phone. As desperate as he was for human contact, he couldn’t sit through a grammar lesson.
Leonard returned to his late night talk show. In the back of his mind he hoped his friend would call back sometime soon. He had to admit that he was intrigued by their exchanges and he liked the freedom of being able to hang up whenever things started to get out of hand.
It didn’t matter whether or not he enjoyed these conversations, though. As it turned out, the phone emanated a horrible, horrible silence for the rest of the night. This stillness continued into the next day. Then the next... Then the next... In fact, Leonard and Jay never spoke to each other again.
Jay had intended to call back the next night but he accidentally erased the number off of his redial when he used his phone to order a pizza. With one phone call, Jay’s reckless hunger severed the line that held these two desperate insomniacs together. Who knew a pizza could have such a profound effect on people’s lives?* * *
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that all of Leonard’s problems were solved by his conversations with Jay. He may have gone on and killed himself after I finished writing this story for all I know. The calls did, however, distract him long enough to convince him to attempt a new kind of salvation (an unacceptable salvation, perhaps, but a salvation all the same).
Over the next couple of days, Leonard came to realize that the late night phone calls were a sign post in his depression. They reminded him that we was never going to be able to rejoin the living world if he continued to isolate himself. The only thing he had to lose from venturing back out into the world was sixteen hours of television each day.
Leonard had to find a way to reach out to others that wouldn’t put him at risk of being rejected or humiliated. After some thought, he picked up the phone and randomly dialed a number into it, the thoughts fidgeting in his head like a pack of cranky, restless cub scouts at a life insurance seminar...
