Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

We hiked up and up and up with our worldly possessions and borrowed camping gear growing heavier and heavier on our backs. We took a lot of breaks for cigarettes and pot but gradually we reached the less inclined trail that wound through a birch wonderland. I took a lot of pictures despite knowing that scenery blends together in a photographic respect but I also know my own angular variations and the inclusion of my 5’9” flannel-clad blond bombshell will make the photos memorable to me. Every time we paused I marveled at how the rigors of altitude flushed Jenifer’s cheeks and made her hair stick to her head. It was sexy in a sweaty aerobics instructor sort of way, plus the oxygen deprivation to my brain probably helped make me moony.

Eventually after trekking all day under a blue sky, Jenifer put on her stubborn face, dropped her gear and said she wasn’t going any further. We set up camp and I felt like an asshole for pushing her so hard on the hike, forgetting that she’s physically smaller and asthmatic to boot. I guess it’s just that her spiritual enthusiasm soars above mine so often that I forget to treat her like the lady she is, but I suspect she likes that I treat her as more of a friend first. My best-est friend. We put the tent up, gathered firewood and then explored our surroundings. My camera has a timer and I took this great picture of us from the back holding hands naked during sunset, staring out over a spectacular view.

After spending the night smoking pot and talking with Jenifer in front of the fire under the most vivid stars I’ve ever experienced, we turned in early to soothe our taxed frames. The following day we hiked back down to the great news that RedOne had been fixed. Well almost fixed anyway, one more night at the most. I got a greater appreciation for the influence and generosity of the Sheriff taking us under his wing when three other touristas came by the garage while me and the mechanic were having another conversation about Nebraska football. The people only needed something minor repaired on their jeep and the mechanic all but told them to fuck off while we were talking. He ended up only charging Jenifer about $160 bucks to fix her car, which was so surprisingly cheap for a timing belt that she wanted to tip him. I got the impression he still thought he was overcharging us because he went ahead and fixed some other minor stuff on her car for free, what a great guy! When Jen eventually tells her parents how much it cost to get the timing belt fixed, her dad’s going to shit a brick. He has used the same mechanic in Denton for years and always gets overcharged for everything. I suspect the extra money her dad pays is mostly just to give his obsessive-compulsive brain a false sense of security.

We’re going to have to cut our car trip short by a few days thanks to all the unexpected events that went on, but we both don’t mind much. We did what we set out to do and it’ll be nice to lie around the house for a few days, among real friends, with no particular place to go.

Today Dan and I went scavenging in the bowels of his parent’s garage. It was boiling with excruciating heat, even under the roof of the building that once upon a time was intended to shelter his parent’s mobile transports. Imagine a virtual warehouse of wall-to-wall boxes filled with discarded treasures of the 1970’s. I scored a new rolling tray that was once a souvenir from a now long forgotten trip to Tahiti. We also got all kinds of framed pictures and even some funky string art that has been incorporated into our living room décor. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had come across a paint-by-numbers set featuring the Osmond’s, it was just that kind of cool loot. Anyway, after several carloads and lots of replenishing ice water, our front living room in the house is filled with all kinds of miscellaneous junk that one day we’ll sell in a garage sale and make a bit of cash. When the planets perfectly align and we are properly motivated of course. It’s just SO DAMN HOT now that it’s hard to do much of anything at all. We curse the heat yet hate the cold, there has to be a nice balance somewhere, but it’s probably not in Texas.

My twenty-first birthday was uneventful except for continuing to live with Jenifer in sin, which is the only present I wanted since I could already indulge in my drinking delights. My relationship with my parents is improving, mostly because I don’t ask them for anything anymore. My mom still sets aside the occasional bag of groceries for me though. I sympathize with my sister for still having to live there with them but I’ve tried to let her know she can stay with me if things ever get too rough. She’s never had any problems with ignoring their authority so she’ll be all right. My sis has the potential to be really cool if she would only quit listening to that infernal pop country music crap.

After a few bad interactions with her family, Jenifer got put on anti-depressants again in order to satiate her father’s insistence that she has a chemical imbalance and I got put on anti-depressants again to satisfy my mother’s neurosis. Jen and I both get run down but we’ve decided it’s due to our unbiased views about the state of the world rather than fictional cynicism partially due to a chemical imbalance. What is it with adults pushing drugs down our throats to make everything appear better? When did everyone give up on trying to actually make things better? Am I living in some delusional late 60’s radical mindset, didn’t our parents try to change the world for the better once upon a time? Maybe I should try to do both, fix my mind with their serotonin stimulators or inhibitors and try to follow my heart to do the right things. The damn anti-depressants have caused a slight diminishment in my creativity that is very bad. I need that inspired part of me for film school dammit or I’ll wind up directing crappy videos for crappy bands on MTV. Lately, I’ve been making these cool collages that I paste together over a period of weeks and then shrink down on the photocopier to mass-produce intricate pieces of mini-art. I’m really proud of them and I like to give them away to people or use them to write letters to my brother Adam, but when I’m on the Zoloft I just lose the drive to do any of it.

So when we can remember, Jen and I take their medicine and just try to keep each other sane like we always have. I get more nervous when she forgets to take the old birth control pills, but apparently this woman who looks like she’s as fertile as the Tennessee Valley isn’t. It’s good right now while we’re in college but I’ll be sad if it turns out down the line that we can never have a child together.

Oh well. If we had some cheese, we could make a ham and cheese sandwich, if we had some ham.

Jen and I went to Mexico via San Antonio on a Rohypnol run. We visited Jim and Simone while we were there which was pretty cool. I felt like we were two yuppie couples, with the world at our financially stable feet. We stayed at Jim’s house and I got to hang out with his little brother. Jim says his brother has looked up to me ever since the day we went to a Texas Ranger’s game with him while we still lived in the dorms and I showed him how to heckle. That was the same day that Jim got so drunk and stoned before we went to pick up his brother that he puked out the window of his Mustang while he was driving and poor Kirk, who was riding in the back seat, caught the backsplash. Jim was so sick that we just stopped at a random house by the side of the road and used their hose without asking in order to clean out his car before his brother got in. I guess his little brother just really liked the way I constantly badgered the umpire and batters from our cheap seats. Even though the players couldn’t really hear me I kept making his brother crack up by being so blatantly belligerent. What a positive memory to have about someone, right?