| the blog of human failure
It’s really only in my happiest moments that I consider committing suicide. Do I hope to go out gloriously and on top? Is it my fear that the rest of life will be a beige disappointment? I think I probably just get overwhelmed with the excitement of success and confuse self destruction with some kind of fireworks display of the soul. Also, of course, I would enjoy the petty little irony of, “Oh, he’s always killing himself when he’s happiest. What an unimpeachable enigma that Jason is. Let me be the last to have sex with him warm…blah, blah…”.
The conflict between almost every religion and suicide is confusing to the point of being suspicious in my view. What almost certainly happened is that a religion was set up, pick your favorite, exchanging good deeds for everlasting happiness at some point after death. A lot of people probably got their good-to-bad-deed batting average comfortably over .500 and then killed themselves immediately – wisely inferring that they had short circuited the god machine and gamed their way into heaven. Add that to the otherwise nice seeming people who were just sad and decided to kill themselves and religion had a mighty big problem on its hands. Suicide was declared against the rules. I hope the people who had the foresight to harikari before the law was on the books got grandfathered into heaven. It’s like date raping in the ‘70s. I mean she agreed to go out with you right? What did she expect? You had to be a sucker not to do it. No reason the crafty should be penalized retroactively. Otherwise we stifle innovation.
But does anybody know? Is there a religion where you still get into heaven, or whatever the positive equivalent is, even after committing suicide? I can image it not even being dependant on good deeds. Once you can do 100 pushups, and they’re not messing around – they’re talking about perfect form here, you are technically allowed to kill yourself and still go to heaven. Pushups aside, there must be a religion where you’re allowed to kill yourself. And if you’re allowed to kill yourself, well that’s almost tacit encouragement to surely kill yourself. What the hell are you waiting around for? Don’t you have faith in BimBop the Sky Spider? The best part about this religion is that they must be taking converts. They’re going through fresh bodies like a bowl of Cheese Nips. I wouldn’t be surprised if there used to be such a religion and then another religion killed them off, figuring that everyone would convert and then kill themselves – again back-dooring their way into heaven. I hope there’s still one still around, just in case I start getting religious in middle age. It would give me a special pleasure to sit in the cheaters section of heaven, laughing with my comrades at all the suckers.
As a final thought, wouldn’t it be funny if the point of life was to kill yourself? You die old of natural causes, get to heaven, and god is like, “Uh, sorry stupid, no dice dancing at this party. How obviously painful was I supposed to make it? Better luck next time coward.” I take much more comfort from that scenario.
Henry was happy to set Mitch up with a job at his PR firm. He had risen to the ranks of vice-president and was for the first time in his life able to buy himself and his dog separate toothbrushes. Mitch started off at the job very strong, reeling in a few big clients, and spent less and less time crying at his desk each day. Things took a slow nose dive as a malaise settled over Mitch. He turned up for work later each successive day. He stopped making showering a routine habit. He was frequently caught borrowing Scolnick’s dog’s toothbrush. Then came a week when McCulloch simply didn’t show up for work at all. Scolnick didn’t know what to do. On one hand he didn’t want to have to fire his friend. On the other hand he couldn’t have an employee he hired not showing up for work for an entire week. His employees would think he was a pushover and he had already spent so much money on extra wide, stabilizing footwear. On the other hand he couldn’t be personally responsible for every decision the company makes. Echh, it’s got three hands, thought Scolnick. Keep it away from the children! He obviously had to calm down. He didn’t even have any children and if he did, they would certainly have the appropriate protective netting. What he needed was a plan. Before he could even begin thinking Mitch burst into his office.
“I can’t do this anymore,” said Mitch bursting into tears. “I can’t hack it in the real world any longer. I’m moving back to the island.”
“Listen, I’m sorry if I was so hard on you but I’ll buy you your own tooth brush for god’s sake,” said Scolnick. “It’s just gross.”
“It’s not about the toothbrush. It’s not about my job or my wife. Life just isn’t the same since I’ve gotten back from that island. I left something of myself there and there’s only one way I’m going to get it back,” said McCulloch leaning on the chair next to the desk.
“Because I can’t pay you for that week you missed,” said Scolnick. “And I’m certainly not moving back to that island, Mitch. I’ve got a wife now and fancy shoes. I mean, look at me. I haven’t seen a jelly bean in three months!”
“I don’t want you to come with me,” said McCulloch, putting his hand on Scolnick’s shoulder. “You’re my best friend Henry, and you were always there for me. I want you to know that if I could pick any book, CD, and person to bring with me on a deserted island I would bring Absolute Power by David Baldacci, I Don’t Want What I Haven’t Got by Sinead O’Connor, and you my friend.”
The two men embraced and Mitch McCulloch raced out the door towards his destiny. That’s the craziest son of a bitch I ever met, thought Scolnick smiling, standing by himself.
As good as things were with Scolnick, however, life was not going nearly as well for Mitch. In the time he was gone, his wife Mary, assuming he was dead, had met another man.
“He’s a Christian Scientist and very sweet,” Mary said to him without a hint of shame.
“A Christian Scientist?” said Mitch. “Like Pascal?”
“Um, I don’t think so, but he’s very good to me and we’re very deeply in love.”
“But what about our marriage? What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Listen, Mitch I really don’t want to argue about this anymore. You’re giving me a headache and you know I’m not allowed to take aspirin.”
Dejected, McCulloch tried to go through his routine at work but kept falling off his schedule, distracted by his loss. He just couldn’t believe that his wife had left him.
“Maybe if it was one of those Nobel-Prize-winning Jew scientists I could live with myself,” he would mumble to himself at his desk, “but a Christian Scientist? What kind of world are we living in?”
Things went from bad to worse when he was called into the company president’s office. Apparently he hadn’t sold an insurance plan since he’d been back from the island and his fellow associates in the office were complaining about his constant mumbling.
“We’re going to have to let you go, Tom,” the president said.
“My name is Mitch, sir,” said Mitch, trying to hold back his tears.
“That attitude of yours is more than half your problem, son,” said the president slamming his feet up on his desk. “Doreen will validate you on the way out.”
“I don’t drive to work sir, and your secretary’s name is Hank,” Mitch sputtered.
“Say goodbye to that reference, Tom,” the president said, frowning.
Without a wife and without a job, McCulloch didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t know how he was going to pay his rent or how he was even going to survive. There were friends that he could ask for help but without his job they would all pity him and he would rather kill himself then have to rely on their self-righteous charity. There was only one person in the world he could possibly call. He picked up his cell phone.
“Honestly, Mary, a Christian Scientist. I don’t even think those people wear shoes. Why don’t you just marry a friggin’ Mormon or gopher and get it over with?”
“Please stop calling here Mitch,” said Mary and then she hung up the phone.
“Alright- I’ll call that goof Scolnick,” said McCulloch to the dial tone.
|
