TOPOLOGY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE |
FALL2007these are the colors of the end of the world |
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The sun was setting out the window in the painted-black room; through the thin curtains colors became meshed together into something blurred and sublime. “These are the colors of the end of the world.” I was hoping I was right.
My attention turned back to the medium who was now in deep trance, fingers tapping the table devoid of anything except for some generic looking crystal ball, that, surprisingly enough, was giving off a slight of glow. She took in deep breaths, her eyes twitching beneath her eyelids beneath the black veil sitting on of her pale face. The room was now totally silent, and the sun had left my mind, subtracted back to the part of my head where the end of the world is always going on, where the moon bleeds and for those four days that humans know they have left total fucking decadence occurs, taboos becoming the norm, etcetera, etcetera. The medium opened her eyes. With a gesture that I could describe in no other way than present her mouth opened and a white terrycloth spilled out onto the table. I couldn’t hear a thing, even my heart beat was eclipsed by my terror; an emotion I hadn’t been expecting to encounter for only fifteen bucks. I could see my breath floating in front of my mouth like the smoke from a freshly exhaled cigarette, I still couldn’t hear anything. The medium’s eyes were even wider, and blood slowly dribbled from her bottom lip onto the white mound below. I had the distinct feeling that everything was moving in slow motion, but I still couldn’t keep up. Finally, I heard my heartbeat return. “He’s, well, he’s not really worth it. You can’t do anything.” And of course, I knew exactly what she was talking about. *** Tip #1 Start Early. Getting an early start is important. If you can, start a few days before your suicide. Make sure you're in a clear state of mind. You do not want to try to write your note while waiting for the pills you took to kick in, or have to rush through it before you bleed to death. Giving yourself enough time to write your note will help eliminate the most common mistakes. *** Tony, at the time, was living in my house. He had moved out of his last apartment when all of his roommates had, but unlike the rest of his roommates, he had neglected to find a new place. I offered to let him crash at my house until he could find somewhere else to live. He ended up moving his bed into Matt’s room, the two twin beds pushed together in order to create, roughly, a queen sized bed. I’m not sure if they were fucking or if they just liked the presence of others while they slept, but it seemed to be working out. It was nice to have another fag livin in the house; and my roommate Matt didn’t exactly count due to his belief in some sort of weird sexuality where the only thing that mattered was pleasure. He had spent the last year in Berlin and come back a totally different person, fully exposed to everything possible that could make his body feel good, whether it be drugs or sex or just anarchic freedom. Tony, on the other hand, was having a bad time. Having kicked junk just a few months before I met him he seemed in a perpetual state of disappointment, and shit was never going the way he wanted it to. It appealed to me in the fucked up way that depression always appeals to me; occasionally it made me really horny and hard. I had the utmost desire to get inside of him, or at least let him inside of me, to maybe come closer to whatever this thing was that made him permanently depressed. I came close to asking him to fuck me a few times, most often in fits of inane drunkenness, or after some coke or speed combined with alcohol, it didn’t really matter. Inebriated horniness always made it seem like a really fucking good idea. I mean, this guy who was attractive and totally fit my need for emotionally fucked up sex lived and slept about ten feet from me. I never said anything. It may have been a good idea though, since making sex self-destructive is always in my best interest. *** Tip #2 Don't try to say everything. There are probably a lot of things you have on your mind, and you need to take some time and sort them out. Decide what is most important to say and leave out things that don't matter. Decide now what you want your readers to come away with after reading your note. Eliminate those things that distract from that point. *** When I finally had sex again, after two years of theoretical set ups and reading far too much for my own good, I had drank a bottle of five dollar champagne after blowing some pills and decided to wander around my neighborhood by myself. My house was in a neighborhood that bordered the campus of the college I attended, so I knew I wouldn’t have a problem finding somewhere to party. It was only two AM, and most of the people I knew were busy drinking and dancing to retarded ironic 80s dance hits in my living room, so my decision to hit as many parties as possible where I didn’t know a single fucking person seemed like an easy goal. The first house I ended up at I saw a few people that looked familiar, but nobody was interesting enough for me to care enough to talked to. I was still fucking buzzing and needed some beer or something harder to bring me down a bit, at least enough to impress some semblance of reality on the strangers in the room. I lit a cigarette and walked out to the front porch hoping that somebody was relying on the cold air to keep their beer warm--the fridge I had seen in the kitchen was undoubtedly occupied by every dumbass who was rich enough to not bother guarding their escape from sobriety. Not surprisingly I find a 12-pack of Old Style with at least eight of the cans still inside, so I shoved it into my backpack and left, hoping that anybody who saw me was too shit-faced enough to actually care. Nobody did. *** Tip #3 Handwrite your note if you can. A handwritten note is a lot more personal. However, if you are worried your letter will not be understood, or you are physically not able to write it by hand don't worry about it. The important thing is that you get your message across. *** I decided to take a break and stop under a bridge before I entered the next shit-hole. I quickly downed two beers, chucking the cans into darkness, and let out a ridiculously macho belch. “Hey.” I heard somebody shout from the other side of the river that ran beneath the bridge, the slight sound of cars still passing above. “I’m coming across to the other side, hold on.” I heard footsteps crossing the cement above me and shortly after saw a dark figure walking towards me back lit by street-lamps, allowing nothing but a silhouette to permeate my vision. It was a guy who I had never seen before, but--at least, in my drunken state--as he stepped closer, I realized that he could classifiably be referred to as “my type.” At least half a foot taller than me, a terribly attractive cleft chin covered by a light beard, and short brown hair surrounded eyes that were as fucking deep green as any sort of hidden forest that’s been lost to humanity for the better part of existence. “Hi.” I pensively said, trying to not let him notice how hard I was staring at him. “Hi, I’m Adam.” “Mike.” “So, what are you doing down here?” He was slowly inching his was closer to me--apparently I was either too blitzed to notice there was enough light down there to actually, like, see things, or he had been under there long enough for his eyes to adjust. His sublime fucking eyes. “I’m party hopping and needed a break. Was hoping to come down a bit before things get too crazy.” “I’m here for the opposite. I was bored and needed something to pick me up so I stopped under here to blow some speed. I suppose the answer’ll be no, but want to do a line?” “I’m alright. You want a beer?” “Sure.” I grabbed another can out of my bag and handed it to him, lighting another cigarette as he pulled open the top. It wasn’t long before I was following him to another party at a house that I hadn’t noticed anybody living in previously. The rooms were empty except for dilapidated furniture and the burnouts that were too far gone to be doing anything besides sitting down. After about twenty minutes I got bored and wandered outside to light another cigarette. He followed me out. There was a fight going on in the front yard of the house next door, and I admitted to him that it sort of gave me a hard on. He laughed and told me to follow him. *** Tip #4 Be natural. Write the way you would speak. A good suicide note is personal, not formal. Don't get out the thesaurus and look for the biggest words you can find. Be yourself. *** His bedroom walls were painted deep red and floor was empty except for a disheveled mattress and a couple of books. He dimmed the lights of the antiquated chandelier hanging from his cracked ceiling and an album on a record player that was out of sight. A dissonant bass line--some early 80s avant garde post-punk that I wasn’t familiar with filled the air. I looked at his walls and saw bizarre collages with very young looking porn stars from the early seventies surrounded by images of feces pasted into boxes of consumable products like macaroni and cheese. Each image had a blatantly ironic caption below it, most of them to the effect of “I cleaned my plate but I’ll never be clean!” “You know I’m going to fuck you right?” “You know I’m totally empty, right?.” “Easier for me to fill you up then. Take off your clothes and lie on the bed. Pretend that you’re dead.” I laid ass up on the bed and shut my eyes. I heard him take a few steps around the room. A few more steps and my wrists were being held up, tied together with a thin rope. I heard him spit and several fingers entered my ass, shortly followed by his prick into the same hole. For the next few hours I remembered why I liked fucking so much; I immediately regretted my two years of abstinence with the deepest sort of regret I could muster up in my state. After about twenty minutes I ditched the dead act and got super into it. I felt the same way that I felt the first time I got fucked--on the top bunk in my dorm room by some 24 year old English-major fuck up when I was 18. Obviously, I was feeling pretty fucking good. *** Tip #5 Avoid cliché's Filling your note with phrases like "Goodbye cruel world" and "no one understands me" will make your note feel less like your thoughts and more like a form letter. Too many cliché's and it can look like you are just going through the motions or that you are leaving a note because you feel that you should, but without having anything to say. If you want to say something but it sounds too cliché, try to re-word it a little. *** I woke up to the dull morning sun coming in the single window in his room. I grabbed my underwear and stumbled out of the room to find a toilet. I took a piss, not bothering to wash my hands after. Before heading back to his room I walked the rest of the way down the hallway to the only room that had a door slightly ajar. Peeking in all I could see was a wall of mirrors. Curious, I pushed open the door. I could see the same red paint that decorated the walls in Adam’s room behind the ornate wooden frames that held each mirror. I scratched my ass, still pleased from my deeds the night before and sat down in front of the wall. Staring at my body, now covered in light bruises I began to fucking smile. I looked absolutely ridiculous and I loved it. A gust of wind blew in through an open window in the room and shut the door I had left open. I continued to stare at the walls, watching eight or nine reflections of myself staring back. I could hear cars driving by outside. My mind started to drift–some sort of reverie, acid flash back, who knows. Somebody turned on a strobe light in the room, the rising light of the sun dulling the normally harsh effect. I reached up for my eyes to make sure they weren’t flickering-- they weren’t. For some reason I started to think of all the people I had known that had died in highschool. One on Christmas day, one on my birthday, and one on the day of my graduation. Pretty fucking epic events, I guess. *** Tip #6 In general, use first person. It creates a sense of intimacy and makes it easier for a reader to see things from your point of view. If you want to use a different viewpoint, be sure that you stick to it throughout your whole note. *** THE CARS DRIVING BY DON’T HAVE ANYBODY IN THEM. THERE’S NO FUCKING REASON FOR YOU TO BE HERE. THE WORLD ALREADY ENDED, LAST NIGHT UNDER THE BRIDGE. HAVE YOU EVER LET YOURSELF ENJOY SEX? IN THIS WAY, EXPERIENCE IS HELPFUL. DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU EJACULATED? YES, YOU TRAPPED YOURSELF BETWEEN YOUR MATTRESS AND THE WALL. HAVE YOU EVER HAD A DESIRE TO HURT OTHER PEOPLE? YES, YOU HAVE ON A REGULAR BASIS. HAVE YOU EVER HAD A DESIRE TO HELP SOMEBODY? YES, BUT NOT BEFORE YOU LET THEM FUCK YOU. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT ROBERT PIEST, DO YOU GET HARD? YES, YOU’RE HARD RIGHT NOW. ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM? YES. YOU ARE RIGHT NOW. YOU’RE FLOATING IN THE AIR BUT NOBODY WILL EVER BELIEVE YOU. YOU’RE NOT EVEN A FUCKING PERSON ANY MORE. YOU HAVEN’T BEEN A FUCKING PERSON FOR AT LEAST SIX MONTHS. NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU LET GUYS COME IN YOUR ASS, YOU’LL STILL BE EMPTY INSIDE. *** Tip #9 Be Honest. Your note will be one of the last things you give the world to judge you by. If you include things that others can disprove, it can discount the entire note. Besides, there is not much reason for lying at this point, is there? *** I walked back to Adam’s room and grabbed the rest of my clothes. I also grabbed the record he had put on, leaving a note saying that I’d bring it back. I wasn’t sure if I actually would. I left the house and walked the six or seven blocks back to my street. Tony was sitting on the front porch smoking when I arrived. I checked the mail box and sat down across from him, lighting up the first cigarette of the day. “Hey, how’s it going.” “I’m alright.” I replied. There was a level of exhausted exasperation in my voice, but if he noticed, he didn’t say anything. “When did you leave last night? Shit got pretty lame and I was hoping you’d be around to at least make fun of people.” I told him around one or two and finished my cigarette while he continued reading the paper. I walked up the stairs to my room where I collapsed into my bed and got a couple more hours of sleep. *** Tip #12 Don't reveal your methods. This is most important when taking poisons and pills. Telling everyone what you took just makes it easier for them to give you the treatments needed to revive you. Alternately, you do not want someone to find the note that details which bridge you're jumping off of before you get that chance to jump. They might be able to stop you. People will find out how you did it once the autopsy reports come in anyway. *** I woke up (for the second time that day) and took a shower, washing the smell of dirty sex off of my still-bruised body. I found myself smiling arbitrarily as I ran my fingers through my hair with shampoo. Getting dressed, I heard something coming from Tony and Matt’s room. I knocked on the door and slowly walked in to see Tony sitting on the bed holding a photograph, sobbing. About six months before Tony moved in with us, his best friend had died. I never asked him how it happened, but I knew he was still totally bent out of shape from it. He wasn’t the type of person who generally let things get to him, so he never really let himself deal with the situation. Instead he just did lots of drugs and ignored reality. Not really a bad plan, but obviously if you’ve got something inside of you, it’ll try to get out sometime. Being the emotional pervert that I am, I asked if he wanted to talk. He complied, and I sat down on the bed next to him, and for the first time since I had met him, I got to know Tony. *** Tip #16 Don't say anything you might regret. There is always a chance that you will be found and "rescued". Suicide notes are not the place to rip into people, give away other's secrets, or confess crimes. The last thing you want is to end up in a hospital bed, facing the people who read something you would never have told them while alive. *** After spilling his guts to me about his dead friend, Tony finally fucked me. It was even better than I had wanted, since I had the entire story of his dead friend in my mind the whole time. The sex I had the night before had been good, but this sex was much more self-destructive, and, in turn, much more fulfilling, or something. I left him in my bed, wrapped up like some fucking little kid in a blanket, grabbed a copy of Bataille’s The Impossible and got in my car to drive out to Heaven. Heaven was what I called a bizarre sort of half-finished, mostly abandoned park off of the highway running between my small town and another small town about ten miles from it. There was a paved trail that lead from a six car parking lot through a forested area, ending at a dirt path that would eventually lead to a neighboring farm. Right before the dirt path began, directly to your left there was some sort of wood-constructed “look-out” deck, that I presume would have been for fishing off of if the lake had ever been finished. There was a lake, sort of, but not in the traditional sense. At the time, since it was the rainy season, it was more of a swamp. The “lake” was a circle about three hundred feet in diameter which was over grown with tall, dead reeds and grass. Occasionally, over the summer when it was dry, there were bizarre crop circle patterns that would appear in the dead growth. I would occasionally revert back to age twelve and pretend that the designs were actually made by aliens that would one day come and abduct me and tell me all the secrets of the universe. But that day I wasn’t looking for aliens, I just wanted God to talk to me again. *** Tip #19 Proofread your note. Re-read your note at least twice. It's easy to make a simple mistake that distracts from the overall feel of the note. When reading over your note, there are a lot of things to look for. It's better to read it several times, looking for something different each time then to try to remember it all while reading it over once. Make sure the point you wanted to get across when you started writing is clear. Don't be afraid to made edits, but be sure to read your note over again when you do. *** God was what I had decided to call the voice that I experience in Adam’s mirror room. I’m sure it was just some drug-fucked “self-reflection” bullshit, but at the time it had felt fucking epic, and important, and really, it felt like something I wanted to find again. My God had no religious affiliation, and was obviously just as fucked up and perverted as I was, which made me a bit hard whenever I thought about it. But, I couldn’t force it, so I opened up the Bataille book to the section of poetry at the end and read my favorite lines over and over again: “I am the emptiness of caskets and the absence of myself in the whole universe [...] I’m hungry for blood hungry for bloody earth hungry for fish hungry for rage hungry for filth hungry for cold” I stopped reading and lit another cigarette, sucking in as I watched the sun set. Once again, the colors in the sky, divorced from the context of both city life and reality, reminded me of everything that happens to cold empty bodies when the world ends. The empty fill up, and the full get drained. There’s no sense of rapture–I doubt there’s any sense of closure even. It might have been my naive apocalyptic obsessions that kept my emotions at bay in the normal world. Christians repent and praise Jesus to prepare for the end of days, I kept my self destructive and as void of meaning as possible. I let the sun finish setting and stuck my book back in my bag, stubbing out my cigarette on the edge of the deck before tossing it into the swampy void that lay ahead of me. I heard a train’s horn somewhere not too far away. God wasn’t coming back. *** Tip #21 Check your note for flow. Your note should progress rather then being a loose connection of thoughts and feelings. People reading your note should see that it is going somewhere. If you're having a hard time, start with a sentence or two that sum up the point of the letter, and then end with a summary of the same topic. Every paragraph in between should support that point. *** Back at my house my roommates had already began partying. I cracked open a beer and joined them, somewhat at ease with my recent sense of dislocation. Drinking may be a way to temporarily fill up, but I knew that elation didn’t last forever; it was ephemeral, something that would, without fail, come to an end. That’s why I liked it so much. The night was like every other night. Everybody was drunk, and the drunkenness even allowed Tony a few hours of happiness. I was satisfied with the connection I had established with him; helping him in order to fuel my own perversity. It was a perverse act in itself, and that’s what made me smile. When you’re drunk, and when everybody you’re around is drunk, you know that everybody else is empty. And despite all attempts I could make to separate myself from the rest of, well, fucking humanity I guess, it’s a nice feeling, every once in a while, to know that everybody is just as fucked up as you are. That night I laughed a lot, smoked a lot, drank a lot. We didn’t end up going to any parties, but it was the sort of drunken comradery that can only exist between people that live together. It’s sort of like a family reunion, except instead of recalling the past, you purposely forget it. It’s a way to live totally in the present. The past, and the future, don’t exist. *** Tip #26 Make your note easy to find Take some time to consider where to leave your note. If you can't leave it near you, be sure to leave it in an obvious location. Even if you want someone in particular to read your note first, avoid sending it to someone by mail. There are too many things that could go wrong and once you send it, it's gone. Your note could get lost in the mail, or worse, it could reach someone before you can go though with it. *** After leaving the medium, walking through the alleys of the now-mostly-abandoned fair grounds, God finally came back. He didn’t talk to me this time, not in the same way that he did as in the room at Adam’s, but through a note that I found on the ground. The note read as follows: “what am i afraid of? is all fear of losing something? if it is, what am i afraid of losing? i must be afraid of losing something that i feel i have already what do i have? but all i have is fear why am i afraid to lose that? because i am that? i am fear i am afraid to lose myself? my self is afraid to go, to die i am afraid to lose everything i know i am afraid to lose life as i know it but i live my life in fear all my knowledge and concepts are built on/created by fear my memory of things past seem to be either of: things that i feel are harmful. things to run from or things to run towards. hope. "in the past, 'THAT' was good for me, i'll try getting that again" "i am not happy right now, i will be happy when i reach 'THERE'" hope is a creation of fear. without fear hope isn't needed/wanted. so i'm always running away from fear towards hope, which is fear. so i run away from fear towards fear.... and the reason i do that is because i have fear i am fear i run towards myself/hope in an attempt to get away from myself “ I smiled again, sticking the note in my back pocket. God was more direct this time, making statements instead of asking and answering rhetorical questions. I didn’t mind finding a suicide note in a public place; it was something that made perfect sense. Virtually everything I had ever written was a suicide note. I died a long time ago. Nobody noticed, and that was what was so beautiful about it. I was dead already, perfectly empty, and so was everybody else around me. I walked around until dawn, occasionally having to hide myself and my bottle from the underpaid fairground security guards, who half-heartedly would shine their flashlights if they heard a sound. I wasn’t too worried because I knew they weren’t. Once the sun started to rise, I walked into the forest that the fairgrounds bordered on, climbing to the top of a hill and sitting down. I had been right in hoping for the end last night. It was the end. Everything was over, and for once, nothing was beginning. I didn’t have anything to worry about. The sun may have been rising, but these colors that cover my body in a glorious hue, well, these are the colors of the end of the world. |
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