Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

One day I was trying to catch the bus out to the store and I didn’t have any scrilla to pay the fifty cent bus fare, the most I could come up with was a few washers and some pennies I found on the ground near the beat up phone booth next to the apartment. I got on the bus in a crowd of people and deposited what I thought looked like a random assortment of change into the slots. The coin collector was glass though and the bus driver kicked me off the bus when he saw what I tried to do.

While I was walking depressed down the middle of the street back to Kirk & Bryce’s apartment, trying to think of another way to get a ride to work, this dollar bill blew lightly by my feet. I ran to catch the limp paper and it was ten dollars! What a great fucking country right? I went to the store to buy a pack of smokes and then used the change to get on the next bus to work where I smiled at the token Wal-Mart handicapped person saying “hi” at the door and then I signed in as if I had been there the whole time. I didn’t kiss enough asses to get put on the permanent hire list for Wal-Mart, so after the store opened I got the boot, but I did learn one thing. I really hate singing motivational songs in the morning!

After Wal-Mart, I worked for this temp agency that doesn’t do any background checks and I got a job helping this lady clean doctor’s offices at the same hospital Jenifer was born in. It was cool because I got to poke around in the doctor’s cabinets and desks and I scored all these kick ass samples of pain killers they save for themselves which were ripe for the taking. The best score I ever got out of that job was a box of Tylenol with Codeine. It’s something I can trade or use during the next withdrawal time. I never got in any trouble with the hospital or temp agency but after a while I quit going in at night because the lady I worked with was too nice and I felt bad for putting her job in peril.

So I’ve pretty much been on a mini-crime rampage lately trying to fund my habit without any legitimate money coming in. The easiest thing to do is score for other people and then jack the price up a few bucks to pay for my own dope. I also steal a lot of books from the campus bookstores but the scams are getting old, people start to recognize me wandering the stores more than once a week and the people in the return line seem to grasp what’s going on but usually a book isjust a book to them no matter where I got it. I’m glad I’m not paying for these books because I’m getting raped in the re-sale racket.

I’ve hit a few dorm rooms just by knocking on doors during class and checking to see if they are locked. From my experience, most students leave their dorm rooms unlocked and if I walk in on anyone I can just say “whoops, wrong room” and everything’s cool. Some of the outer edge dorms have (unintentional) removable plate glass windows that pop out with a screwdriver. I’ve skateboarded down the street a few times with purloined stereo and musical equipment under each arm to take to the pawn shops. I just don’t like messing with that anymore though. I don’t like stealing from students or people and the last time I took off a window, the huge plate glass wouldn’t fit back into the frame right and while I was casually walking away with a bunch of loot the entire window fell out and shattered all over the concrete. I was glad I always wipe my prints off the glass as I ran scared down the street.

Jenifer is back at her parents’ home in Denton now but I don’t really get to see her much. Although talking to her cheers me up and I really miss her. I wish I could go back and just take back that one day or moment in time forever. The happy memories we shared make me so sad now. The few times I’ve gone back inside the Tomato it’s like I’m a leper. My old boss won’t even look at me in the eyes. I hate it even more when they won’t look at Jen either.

It’s cool of Kirk and Bryce to tolerate my staying with them. Hopefully I won’t end up screwing them over like I have with most everyone else. What can I do to keep my life moving forward? I DO the only thing I know how to do better than most. Write. Lately though, it’s just more sad pages of shattered hopes and dreams. Who am I kidding? This is really all one big titty-sucking whine fest. My miseries and the like are simply recorded in a journal for posterity even though it’s an old repetitious story told across a million lifetimes.

Hello Mom, I’m In Jail! Every day in here is yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Officer fucking Goldberg. The name will be forever imprinted in my brain as a conspirator against me. Mr. good-guy Officer fucking Goldberg. Mr. Campus fucking police man working to right the wrongs the world has committed against him. Officer fucking Goldberg. The embodiment of everything I hate about cops is permeated in the actions of this man. Cops justify falsifying evidence because they look at it as getting the results they want within what they feel are limited means. It’s the quick and easy way to do things, a characteristic that personifies most police as I’ve come to find out. They are the not-so-bright kids in high school, maybe even the ones who got picked on and are still holding a grudge. They’re lazy, donut-eating paunches of men sitting in their cars truly believing they are going to make the world a better place by getting into everyone’s business for the sake of right versus wrong, firmly believing that they are the sole voices of right. The soldiers that dragged Jesus’ ass to jail and beat him down over and over and then nailed his butt to the cross probably felt the same fucking way. I call it “working for the side of right by doing wrong.” How does the famous quote go? “You don’t change the devil, he changes you.”

I went in the campus bookstore to make a snatch and grab, to get some quick cash with a few purloined textbooks. It’s not easy anymore since I’ve become pretty familiar to all the faces around the ins and outs of the campus bookstore in the Union. There were days when I could go in the bottom of the store, get some books, exit the top of the store, walk back down to the bottom floor on the other side and sell them their own books back. It was a quick 50 to100 bucks on most days. Today I went in and as I was about to exit, scott-free again, something came over me. Far back in my mind, my conscience thought it would be a good idea to try and apply for a legitimate job since I know so much about the book orders and shift changes anyway, at the very least I could work the place from inside, but my intentions were honorable. Instead of zipping away with a giant book surreptitiously stuffed in my baggy pants I stopped to fill out an employment application. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I guess I just wanted to do something honest or strive for legitimacy or something. I’m bored by this amoral path I have become so familiar with, I’ve taken to corruption so easily and it is not who I feel I really am.

The joke was on me though. While I was filling out the application somebody recognized me and they must have called the cops because when I went to turn my app into the manager, they had Officer Goldberg in there, waiting and licking his chops. I HATE all of them! Every fucking one of them! Easy money arrest! I might as well have just walked to the jail with a videotape of me stealingthe shit and asked for a room. Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me! Stupid! I blew my cover at the bookstore and got thrown in the pokey.

Humiliation, handcuffs, police car, arrest, blah blah, blah. I finally got to the campus police station and the motherfucker starts shaking me down, only I don’t know it. He starts talking and asking me my motivations like he really is a concerned person underneath that uniform, just another average Joe, like he might be able to fucking help me with some of my problems. Hey look at that I think, this is the first adult in a long time that has asked me about what’s going on in my life and I actually fell for his caring act. It was all a fucking act!