Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

So my job’s a pretty great deal, the after-hours clean-up is a bitch and I come home smelling like sweaty pizza grease but all in all I could be doing much worse. I’ve even learned the magic trick to get the dishwasher working. Specifically, where to beat on it so that it works like Fonzie’s jukebox. Summer time is slow time now though. Most people vacate Denton after the spring semester and we cater to the small batch of locals or permanent students.

Damn it’s hot. I seem to be getting hairier in some strange paradox of nature. I shaved my legs one time in some weird sex game with Melanie and ever since then my body’s rebelled and increased my body hair quotient. Don’t ever believe those scientists that say shaving will not make hair grow back thicker. My Chew-bacca legs are living proof. It’s probably the heat that is making me notice the strange gradual growth of hair on my belly and nipples. It’s actually kind of embarrassing to me. Damn, I mean I thought all this crap was supposed to be taken care of during puberty when life in general is humiliating. At this rate I will be an ape-man by the time I am forty. I guess most girls are used to male body hair though. I even heard a rumor that some girls find it attractive. Probably only girls with mustaches and hairy fathers or with my luck it’s only European women and I’ll be stuck on this continent forever. Maybe girls have so many of their own insecurities that they won’t notice mine? Whatever.

The swim class that I am taking this summer is going well. I am way too advanced for the beginning swimmer class but I figure it will be an easy “A”. There are people in there that can’t swim at all and I think I could be on the swim team if my observations of the advanced class are anything to go by.

I thought that my swim class would be a good thing for the summer time, but the pool is fucking bitch ass cold. The temperature change is too much for a body to handle during the summer. It’s hard to wake up early and bike, with a hangover, over a mile to my swim class and then get into frigid water. Then I have to stay in the Antarctic torture pit for the next three hours. At the end of class even the fat girls, with all the insulation an Eskimo could ever want, have blue lips and their pudgy skin wrinkles in rolls of pale bumpy tissue.

I’ve been trying to sleep over at Jenifer’s every night and bask in her sweet AC. We sleep well together. Some people just are not very compatible in that respect, they can’t get comfortable when a foreign body is in the same bed. To me that is a sign that maybe you should give the relationship up. Jenifer and I both seem to relax around each other and we sleep without rolling over and punching each other in the privates or something on accident. There is nothing worse than waking up screaming in the middle of the night, holding your ‘nads and trying to breathe.

Jenifer would sleep all day and night if she didn’t have the occasional need to get up and go to work. She works as a nude model in the art department on campus. Yes, a nude model. Some of the taboos of conventional society that she breaks without blinking an eye amaze me. Her complaint about the job isn’t that people ogle her or walk up to her at random and feel it’s their obligation to tell her that they’ve seen her naked; it’s that the rooms are so cold in the art department. As hard as it is for me to believe, to her it is just a job. I must admit that it bothers me slightly to know that the girl I am smitten with has people leering over her lovely nude body in the supposed name of art. At the same time though, I think it’s erotic to imagine her standing there naked in front of a room full of strangers. A room where half the guys haven’t been laid and are taking this class to see someone naked while half the women are in there for the same reason.

The power of the courage she wields, to be able to walk into a room full of strangers and simply take off all her clothes without a second thought or hesitation. To be the focal point of that class period where all the eyes of the room are taking in every aspect of her physiology, looking and scratching their interpretation of what she looks like to them on the coarse drawing paper. The sketched images of Jenifer coming to life are amazing or fail miserably, leaving traces of charcoal pencil on the sides of the eager student palms as a reminder of their imagined secret. The stifled energy and eroticism of those moments in the classroom must be what leads random men to feel the need to let her know they have seen her naked. They seek to capture some of that energy. To make contact with the girl that so nonchalantly invades their nighttime fantasies and fuels their secret evenings of masturbation sessions where they have to be really quiet for fear of waking a roommate, or worse, a girlfriend in the same bed. I just like to inhale part of the energy surrounding Jenifer and witness the way she dismisses these boys. It is so delightful to see. It’s even more erotic to watch her naked and sleeping knowing that there will be some point when she will be awake and alive responding to my touches. Passionate and giving before she goes to pose for a crowd that will never ever know the love of a creature so beautiful. It’s just a job to her but I keep thinking of that ARMY slogan that says “it’s not just a job, it’s an adventure”. I guess the adventure is for me.

I think that I am putting too much pressure on Jenifer by sleeping over at her place so much but it just makes my heart ache to be without her. I know that I should play it cool and try to let her grow more attached to me. I know that girls get burned out easily on the boy that hangs around too much. This love is making me psycho in the head. Every action is weighted too heavily in my mind to be of any use for coherent decisions. It’s a problem to savor.

Jenifer is a total Fry Street girl. It’s hard for me to imagine, but she was one of those damn ‘townie’ high school kids that hang around the Tomato and drink five dollars worth of twenty-five cent soda refills in a single sitting. The caramel that coats some of these kids’ digestive tracks must be ungodly permanent and sap-like in its consistency by now. She’s been back from A&M for a while now and I still wonder why I never ran into her before. Even after all these weeks of getting used to her being in this small town, I am still struck breathless at how beautiful and sexy she is. I thought that I hadn’t seen her before but looking back I remember noticing her once when she was working at Voertman’s, the book store right off campus. I was still going out with Melanie at the time and yet when I think back I remember pausing and noticing how pretty the girl behind the counter was. Not leering in an alpha male sort of way, but stopping and appreciating a brief glowing moment of eye-locking mutual attraction. It lasted only seconds and then I was away to re-join my girlfriend, blotting out the memory, absorbed in her needs and some form of intoxicating substance. I either can’t believe that I didn’t remember seeing her sooner, or that I even remember the event at all. Maybe on that day our fates were irrevocably entwined together, finally finding a way to bring us back together after one mere glance, or perhaps I am just being moony again. It isn’t my imagination that she is definitely becoming very comfortable with me being around. I think that she has realized that I am harmless. Yes, that is how I am describing myself—harmless—and she is becoming more content being my friend at least. It’s a start, even if we’ve never laid down the distinctive curse of being “the friend”.

Jenifer’s even comfortable enough to enjoy a little mild flirtation with me. Last night while I was working the front counter like I always do on Thursday nights, Jenifer’s friend Jill Moppingworth came into the store and said she saw Jenifer making out with some guy outside. Now I had already seen Jenifer that evening and I knew she was lurking around outside socializing giggling and goofing around with Jill doing girl things so I knew that Jill was just fucking with me. Still, even though it gave me weird pain in the heart to hear the words, I knew it was the joke that all girls get around to playing on their boyfriend to see if he really really likes them. Melanie did it by saying she was pregnant and observing my reaction. My slight empathic abilities always let me know when a situation is serious and I know the right way to respond to these things so I puffed up my chest and said “I don’t care” in my best I-don’t-give-a-shit-voice. I knew that this would even out the playing field a little bit and accelerate the relationship between us for the good or bad. Sure enough two seconds after Jill went bouncing outside in her giggly girlish manner Jenifer came in pretending to be mad and said “So you don’t care huh?” in her best pouty/hurt voice. Then we both cracked up and just smiled at each other. It was such a small thing but it made my heart soar. I knew Jenifer knew I really loved her and for the first time and that it was not repulsive for her to imagine me caring that much. The playfulness in that exchange made me so happy. I don’t know how I can explain it here, only extreme love or intense anger can drive the words from an intellectual man’s mind. I had an old grade school “check this box” confirmation that she liked me back. It made my whole night.