Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

We’ll rest a bit for the evening and then head back as early as we can. We’ve got to get home right away, this situation is a really bad fuck up. Between the two of us, Jen and I should have known better but I guess it only emphasizes how desperate our situation really is.

The automobile is the place where modern America learned to fuck in the outdoors, the place where many baby boomers were brought into life and the same place where some Americans have learned to casually die. Passing only one major accident or death on the freeway during the daily morning commute is considered a good day even as people curse the dead and injured souls that have the nerve to keep them locked up in traffic. An old lady drives to the grocery store and kills a busload of retarded kids, so fucking what? We’re desensitized. Forged in Detroit, or maybe overseas nowadays, the car still holds beauty, status, power and even our lives in its cold womb.

To the teenager, the car is a key to freedom. To some minorities, it can be a modern mating dance, complete with flashy plumage. To a college-bound kid, their car might be a means to see the world before the shackles of responsibility harness theirs souls to a desk all day. To us, it was our refuge and life.

Car accidents are supposed to be sexy, they always have been. Ever since James Dean and Jane Mansfield made the allure enticing, America’s been entranced by the beautiful kind of accidents where the cars seem to caress each other, wrinkled fingers of steel reach out to scratch and mold to the places of another car or object, while the glass eyes shatter and stream down onto the ground as if from a spent lover. A famous person’s death car, riddled with bullets or wrapped around a tree, becomes a symbol, often reduced to legend with one grainy black and white photo that’s held in high regard as if it was forever trapped in time like mass-produced posters, mini Monets symbolic of eternal youth. In truth, the silence that follows the aftermath of carnage is an eerily hypnotic absence of life and sound that seems to hypnotize, similar to those tense moments of freefall before your parachute mercifully jerks open.

The accident was ugly. None of it was beautiful or romantic. None of it was perfect. If it were an ending to a movie the audience would grumble and complain to their friends about how the director failed to leave them feeling special. It was pain and confusion and dread and sand and dirt and blood.

The worst of it all is that it’s entirely my fucking fault. I’d never ever fall asleep while driving. I couldn’t have.

We left New Orleans bright and early while the sun was still nesting and hit the road, hoping to tear ass homeward as fast as we could. Jen drove like a bat out of hell, smoking Marlboros and vomiting into a crinkled fast food cup, determined to get her needs met as soon as possible. She got too tired to move and I took over at some point along the way, doing my best to focus on the road and not be sick. I kept repeating “I will not be sick, I will not be sick” over and over as my mantra but after a while our bodies couldn’t do any more. They shut down and we pulled over to sleep. For several hours we slept right off the side of the highway and I regained terrible consciousness to the sickening smell of diesel fuel and the annoying whoosh of traffic shaking the car. I was still in the driver’s seat so I started the car and drove on while Jenifer slept fitfully.

We finally made it out of Louisiana and hit I-20 for the last leg of our drive home. I was tired and my body was screaming, intent on purging itself of anything inside it—as much and as soon as humanly possible. Just a few more miles. Just a few more miles. Just a few more.

I woke up with the jolt of the car going off the shoulder on the driver’s side and sliding into the median between the East/West directions on I-20. It was a beautifully mown bowed-in field of grass still glistening with the sheen of leftover morning dew that prevented the brakes from having any effect. I tried, oh GOD, I tried braking, tapping the brakes, turning the wheel every which way looking, hoping, praying for some kind of traction to steer that damn Escort in any direction, even onto the other side of the freeway, but it was all to no effect. The car was not responding and we were no longer rocketing under our own power, just gliding along with unstoppable highway momentum on a crisp green slip-and-slide of death. In the split seconds before we careened off the bridge between the roads I tried to shake Jen awake so she could brace herself for the impact but she didn’t even get the chance to stir.

A sickening weightlessness, then a hard thud and crunch of bone against plastic against metal against dirt and concrete.

Then black. For a minute or maybe more.

Can’t breathe.

Then black again followed by an almost instant return and barrage of my senses. The taste of glass and dirt and blood in my mouth and the goddamn horn blaring it’s consistent pathetic note of announcement.

Can’t breathe

I finally shook myself together enough to look and see Jenifer twisted and lying next to me. She was dead.

Oh God, she really isn’t fucking moving!

“Jenifer wake up Jenifer wake up Jenifer WAKE UP!”

Careful not to move her around, I somehow managed to find something and cut the tightly choking seatbelt off of her.

A gasp for air. An exhale. Too much of an exhale. “Breathe IN!”

I can’t breath!

“JENIFER WAKE UP!” I screamed at her over and over, pinching her cheek, accidentally wiping some of the blood from my hands onto her face. “I can’t live without you Jenifer and I’m fucking sorry okay?” Maybe you’ll forgive me for my simple possessive selfishness some other time but you are going to live! “Do you fucking hear me in your HEAD, you are going to LIVE!”

A person was running down the embankment to our smoking car, screaming words I couldn’t hear over the blare of the horn and the bees in my head. He got to the car and backed off for a minute as if he might throw up when he saw us. He yelled to me that he saw us go off the highway and that he had just called for help. He backed even farther away when he saw Jenifer and smelled the gas.

Oh my God, we just filled up the tank!

I yelled to him “WE CAN’T GET OUT, GET HER OUT OF HERE!” I looked around for the first time and saw my door had barely missed a concrete support column from the bridge. The car crashed two inches from my own instant death; my door was shredded like paper against the concrete and completely sealed off. The only way out was across Jenifer and if we had to burn together so be it. If help arrives at least they can push or pull her out first. “JENIFER PLEASE WAKE UP!”

And then she finally stirred. Very weakly she stirred, wheezing in a quick breath for the first time in minutes, her dry lips barely mouthing the words “How did I get back?” then “I can’t feel my legs.”

For the first time I noticed her legs had been pinned under the dash and saw the fear in her eyes as she started to go into shock.

“HANG ON JENIFER, DON’T GO BACK OUT THERE ON ME YOUR LEGS ARE JUST STUCK AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE FINE!”

She passed out again and I had to touch her face with my hands, accidentally smearing more blood from my arm, why is it still bleeding, onto her smooth white cheeks, forcing her to look at me, yelling her name so loud until her open eyes fluttered back with a spark of life and fear.

“Jenifer. Jenifer. Jenifer. Look at me Jenifer. I love you Jenifer. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I’m so sorry and I love you. I LOVE YOU. CAN YOU HEAR ME? SAY IT BACK TO ME! Everything is going to be ok,” my voice panicking at first, then trying to stay calm.