There are a lot of ways to commit suicide: jumping off a bridge, ODing on drugs, pissing off Oprah; but I’ve never really seriously considered it. I mean, yes, as with many alienated gay teens, I have fantasized about Ending It All instead of having to suffer one more day of wearing a uniform to high school.
But in my fantasies, I’ve somehow skipped the killing myself part and pictured myself lying in the casket, looking serene and peaceful, a light dusting of powder on my nose and cheeks to prevent shine. My family would be wailing, beating on their chests. Serves them right for not letting me go to the Salsa and Merengue Dance Camp.
Suicide is scary to me. Death is scary to me. I fear death because I fear the pain of dying. I visualize the dying, I visualize the pain.
I have very lurid visions of what it would be like to be rammed head-on by a speeding semi-truck while driving on a highway. I look at a knife and imagine someone stabbing me repeatedly, my eyes watching the blood spurt from my chest, a silent scream frozen in my mouth. I think about suffocating under Star Jones and an avalanche of Payless shoes.
But what of those who experience a pain in life that exceeds that of the pain of dying? At least when you’re dead, there is no more pain. In life, you must continue to suffer. In life, you must continue to deal with loss, abandonment and rejection and then you have to walk eight blocks home in stiletto heels, two sizes too small.
And I don’t want to belittle the struggles of our gay youth, many of whom thoughts of suicide are not a fantasy, but a very real struggle. Even for gay kids with very understanding and supportive parents, the dangers of suicide and depression lurk. Some statistics may indicate that gay people, especially teens, are more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts.
I will not paint us queers as victims or martyrs, despite its possibilities for a one-man-cabaret show. But we must be vigilant. We must protect ourselves, protect our children, and we must charge a two-drink minimum.
It seems ironic to me that the only kind of control suicides have on their lives is the manner of their deaths. But sometimes, even that is foiled. Of almost a third of people who fully intend to kill themselves, fewer than half succeed. Those that fail generally do so because of unexpected rescue, or, more often, mistakes in planning or knowledge.
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In a way, that’s what happens in Nick Hornby’s new novel A Long Way Down. Hornby conjures a story of four very different people, in very different times of their lives, who happen to meet one New Year’s Eve at the top of the fictional Topper’s House, a London building with the reputation of being a suicide’s destination. It is this chance meeting that stops the four from going through with their plans.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
This post is simply amazing. Wow.
The Hornby novel sounds great. How can it lose with such a setup? Warned that it doesn't reacht he heights of High Fidelity, I'm still going to check it out.
Thanks for this.
2 - No Milk
Thanks Phillip. I did a He said, She said sorta thing on my blog. You can check out what She said.
3 - Victor Plenty
Interesting contrasts emerge from your writing, No Milk. You speak with some sensitivity and compassion about the pressures and dangers of being different, when being different means being gay.
And yet, as part of the "humor" in your piece, you employ vicious backhanded insults against two separate public figures who happen to be female, heavy, and black.
Of course I know you didn't intend any racism. Nobody sane ever intends any racism anymore. Even most of the very few people who still secretly believe in racism are embarrassed to admit it in public.
I'm old enough to remember when many white people still told thoughtless and vicious jokes about black racial stereotypes, without any embarrassment, nor any idea they might be hurting anyone. Those days are gone now in most communities, and good riddance to them.
But another type of thoughtless humor has slithered into the place of those old racist jokes. For some reason there is still no level of ruthless cruelty too low for a "humorist" to use in jokes that attack fat people. Fat women in particular are often assumed to have no human feelings deserving any consideration whatsoever.
I'm trying to remain as calm as possible while pointing this out to you, rather than going into full-bore counterattack mode. I'm sure you did not intend any of your remarks to become yet another cause of needless pain in anyone's life.
Yet this unintended contradiction does tend to undermine what is otherwise an admirably humane and thoughtful piece of writing.
4 - Roscoe
wonderful piece, funny as hell
5 - No Milk
Victor, thanks for your comments. I appreciate them. It did make me think about whether I was being thoughtless, and I do care about that. Humor should really be well thought out, and I didn't want to get sloppy.
I just wanted to note that when I mentioned both Oprah and Star Jones, it is their celebrity I was mocking, not their race or weight. In fact, I didn't even think about their race until you mentioned it. It could have been Rosie O'Donnell in this post instead of Oprah, but she hasn't been in the news lately and I'm sure she really wishes she were so I can mock her.
About Star Jones specifically, I also didn't mention anything about how fat she was, because that wasn't the point of the line "I think about suffocating under Star Jones and an avalanche of Payless shoes."
If I wanted to point out how fat she was, then I wouldn't have used the shoes at all. In fact, I wouldn't use Star Jones, I would use someone decidedly, well, fat, like maybe Chris Farley, because he's a man and he's admitted that he's fat and he's dead. Sarcasm here, sorry, but if I were thinking about fat people, I would concentrate on the most graphic image I can think of, and you know what? Star Jones wouldn't even make the cut.
It was the one-two punch of the low rent image shoes and the low rent celebrity that Star Jones represents that I thought particularly humorous. It does make the connotation that she's not reed thin, but I take no blame for that, it just works that way. I'd like to think that I am multi-faceted and that I think in many different levels, but really, I am just very shallow.
Oh, and I didn't pick Rosie O'Donnell to represent me here because she is perceived to be fat, white, irish, female or queer. I picked her because she wears some really tacky blazers, just so you're clear on my intentions.
I am reminded of the show Family Guy where every time a gay person is mentioned, it is in the context of AIDS, as if all gay people had AIDS or something. They even had a 5-minute song about a person having AIDS. Dang, it was FUNNY. I felt really bad for thinking it was funny, but it was. In fact, I wasn't sure I wasn't really just offended.
But that's what humor is. Laughter is a reaction we get from being uncomfortable, or from some truth. And I am not beyond using stereotypes in humor, there is some truth in them. The truth is funny, yo.
6 - Scott Butki
That is one hell of a review.
Excellent.
I love Hornby but I've heard this is one of his weaker works.