Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

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”.

The paint thing might have been a mistake because the ceiling is black now and the walls are such a dark hue that all the light in the room gets absorbed so there’s a generally gloomy feeling to the whole business. It’s like living in a cave that still smells like the generations of animals that lived there before you. Nobody will fix and recharge our AC for less than $100, which we don’t have. So the combination of paint fumes, cats hit and heat is overwhelming. Compound that with the fact that we are right next to the front room of the house where all the bands play and the stereo thumps every single night and it all keeps making me get the flu or something.

Jenifer is such a sweetheart and lemme tell you why. After I pester her and hang around her and obsess in secret over her, she still came over to help me out when I was very, very sick. I was just laying on the mattress in my loft when she popped in to cheer me up. How can I help but fall head over heels in love with a girl that brings me soup and rinses out the dirty washrag I had on my head for the fever? Maybe it’s a delusional Helen Keller syndrome but it really touched me to have her there. I know I kept babbling to her about how nobody has ever gone out of their way to make me soup before, but it was true. Nobody but my mom has done anything like that in years. I tried to convey how good it made me feel to have her there despite the vomit and fever symptoms, but I think I just played it cool.

Right. Must sleep now.

Ernie, our friend Jeffery and I all took some acid last night and were hanging around smoking pot while we were waiting to start tripping. I asked Ernie to show me how to do a gravity hit off the joint we were smoking. What is supposed to happen is that you bend your knees and take a giant hit off the joint as you slowly rise up to your full height. Somebody then grabs you around the chest and lifts you off of your feet while you hold your breath. Then what’s supposed to happen is that you lose consciousness from the lack of oxygen and then all sorts of visions come into your brain during the few seconds that dream-world overtakes you.

Yeah I know, lack of oxygen to the brain, real smart thinking. Well it gets better.

So I bend my knees and rise up and Ernie grabs me around the chest. For a brief moment I’m looking around and wondering when something is going to happen. Whammo! All of a sudden I am swimming across a vast Oceanic world with no recollection of what I did to get there. The air is crisp and the water is warm and the fish can talk without words. I see kelp and blue green filtered light all around me. Then I guess the blood started returning precious oxygen to my brain because I regained consciousness on our dirty floor, down on my knees, with my face hurting like someone had kicked me in the nose.

I wake up and Ernie looks all scared. After a minute his moving mouth starts to actually say words I can hear and understand. Apparently during that split second where I looked around wondering what was going to happen I gave the other guys the impression that nothing was going to happen so they relaxed the grip they had on my arms to keep me from falling. That’s when I passed out and did a full face plant right on my kisser. I was mad because my nose was bleeding and felt numb and I was scared because I was starting to trip by then and I knew the amplified awareness my body was in would cause my face to feel all freaky and I would think something had gone horribly wrong with it while I spaced out. I calmed myself down so that I wouldn’t have a bad trip which was hard because even my teeth felt loose and wiggly. Jenifer showed up right afterwards and she couldn’t stop laughing when I told her what happened. I guess it was pretty funny and when she started tripping she laughed even harder at me when the giggles came. Every time I would feel around on my numb nose she would start to laugh again. So I suppose the lesson for the evening was to not let Sam do anymore gravity hits.

On a better note, the sex coming down off the acid was awesome. We listened to Jane’s Addictions “Ritual” and the Earth moved.

I don’t think that I will ever be happy with a “nine to five” job. Do those hours even exist anymore? There is just too much stuff that I want to do before I get too old to do it. I don’t know. It might have something to do with the concept of what others (the suits) think qualifies as work. I don’t seem to mind sweating it out at the Flying Tomato for $3.55 an hour, but after two years of being there I have to wonder why I like the chump change they offer. It’s so hard to go out and get another job because it’s so easy to fall into the pattern of familiarity. Plus this is a college town and any available job is already staffed with someone who will gladly take my bananas so they can buy food or pot or whatever. The Flying Tomato is a mom and pop, pizza and beer operation except they are owned by a larger company up in Illinois or somewhere really cold. That’s why there are weird things on the menu like spicy hot cider and soup while it’s still 110 degrees outside. All the other stores are way up North, this one just kind of got lost in the shuffle somewhere along the way. The people who manage it and who pretty much own the place are a married couple named Becky and Ski. Ski stands for something like Sluslarski or Slurparski or something. No one really knows his actual name and so we all just call him Ski. He’s a fat greasy-haired Polish guy and his wife Becky is actually a pretty nice looking lady with a brain on her shoulders and a hard work ethic but a horrible desire to birth as many children as possible. I asked an old employee one time how a bum of a guy like Ski ended up with a lady like Becky and the rumor I heard was that she got her heart broken by a hunky dude and Ski picked her up on the rebound. That kind of made me sad because she seems like she could do better. There are plenty of men in the Dallas area that only want a woman to birth and raise children all day if that was all she wanted. I’ve heard it’s one of the only reasons they let women into SMU.

The Tomato job is fairly loyal. Once you get on staff and they know you are a good worker you can take all kinds of time off in the summer slow season or whenever you need to. There are not a lot of jobs in this town that can promise you that your job will be intact after you come back from Christmas break. I also work the crappy shifts that nobody wants on Thursday and Saturday nights, which are the main party nights in a college town. I guess almost anyone can get through Friday classes with a hangover or at least sleep in and not damage the ol’ G.P.A. too much. I like those shifts because the Flying Tomato is right in the hubbub of Fry Street with the bars and such. All my friends come by and I get to meet and talk to all the pretty drunk girls and give people free keg beer whenever I feel like it. Most of my friends have figured out that’s where I’ll be and they always come by to visit and score free pizza and beer. Everyone’s happy. The pizza place gets someone who works the crappy shifts and I get to socialize with my friends and drink beer and smoke pot in the walk-in freezer. It’s almost like I get paid to hang out and flirt if I angle it right and it’s a good night. I’ve probably given out more free beer and pizza than anyone else in Texas. My friends from the dorm and the hardcore drinkers from the Delta Lodge always come in and I make it my personal mission to send them home staggering. This job is probably the main reason why I know so many people in this town and have so many “friends” that know my name, while usually I have no clue about what their name could be. It’s all good I suppose, the blessings I bestow will come back around at some point.