Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

This evening we lit fireworks off the roof of her apartment down in Cement City. Anywhere else in Denton and the bastard police will cut your balls off for shooting fireworks, but they won’t come down to the ghetto. Typical America, but we used it to our advantageous amusement and had a fun time.

Jenifer has a Ford Escort, which she affectionately calls “RedOne” and late in the evening while we were sexing it up in her apartment, someone came by and slashed her tires on the driver’s side. I could tell it kind of spooked her but it just made me really angry with no one to take it out on. It was very strange because we had only been at her apartment for about 30 minutes and she was just about to drive me home when we discovered the damage. She had parked across the street with the passenger side of RedOne facing her apartment, the culprit was probably fucking hiding on the far side of her car and watching her apartment as he cut her tires. Spooky stuff. Neither one of us could think of anyone who was aggravated with her in the slightest, but I am beginning to discover that weird-ness follows this girl.

When Jenifer was at Texas A&M for her first brief year of college, she acquired a stalker. The guy would follow her to her apartment. Once he even cut the power to her apartment, before the police got involved. I guess if I want to psychotically obsess over Jenifer I will have to take a number. Thankfully I’m not that crazy yet, just taking advantage of the time we are together not worrying about the future or pining for my lost innocence and blaming generation X.

What am I saying? Dese Nuts! Time to sleep.

I may not have mentioned this before, but this summer, come hell or high water, I am going to go see the Grateful Dead. This second summer semester is my own time to play with and I AM going to go see the Grateful Dead. Throughout my many acid-filled years living in the dorms here at college and interacting with all the cool people in town, I’ve been hearing tales about how going to a Dead show is one of the ultimate life experiences. I don’t want to go for the drugs, I want to taste a little bit of true “On The Road” freedom. I’m young and I’ve got the stamina and the willpower to complete a cross-country journey, plus I’ve saved a little money to help butter my way across the veins of the U.S. At first I thought it might be romantic to hitchhike, but I’ve never done that before and I’m not sure I would get enough rides fast enough to get up to Oregon and still see the shows.

Sing a song of sixpence, pocket full of rye.

Right now, my worst-case scenario involves me taking my ‘74 VW bug with the flower stickers, the exhaust problem, the funky clutch and flying solo on the trip, but I really don’t want to do that. I could easily get stranded somewhere in the bounty of America’s heartland or the exhaust leak that makes me dizzy when I drive the car too far could cause brain damage by the time I make it to the Pacific Northwest. I explained my intentions to Jenifer and she suggested I put a flier up in the Karma Kafe’ since a lot of people in Denton who hang out there are going to the shows.

So here’s the flier I put up:

Of course my ultimate fantasy would be to go with Her to the shows. It would be our first road trip together and seeing the Dead would be sweet, but she already committed to going with (gasp) Kristoff at the beginning of the summer. Calm blue Ocean, calm blue Ocean.

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

I’m actually all right with it. This trip will be a definitive point in our lives together I can just feel it. She told me that she wished she hadn’t promised to go with him so long ago but in a way it’s good. I’m praying it will help her decide she really wants to be with me but I’m relaxed about the situation now that the final cards are dealt because it’s all up to fate I suppose. Regardless of what happens we are going to have a little time together before our vacation/separation and more than likely we’ll see each other at the shows in Oregon but I really don’t know what to expect. Long car trips tend to create a forced companionship that strengthens or dissolves any bond. I’m confident that even if she doesn’t know me yet, she knows she wants to know me and I’ll leave it at that.

One of Jenifer’s ex-boyfriends (another?) who owns part of the Karma Kafe is going and she isn’t promising anything, but she said she would talk to him. I’m hoping to find a ride because I would like to go with someone who knows about the music and “scene” to maximize my experience.

It would be cool if I could find some opium too, but I’m not holding my breath. Among the Grateful Dead fans there seems to be a riptide of desperation underneath the happiness so I don’t know what to expect. The people I’ve spoken to say that this might be the last year to see the shows because Jerry Garcia is rumored to die soon. He looks pretty old I suppose but I don’t know why he would suddenly keel over. Maybe it’s a fan thing, but geez they sure are pessimistic.

Well it’s official, I’m moving out of the Delta Lodge. I am sad to leave a house I truly love but there are some good reasons for this. I’ve written before about how I keep getting sick in the room I’m living in. Even with that it might be tolerable if the room wasn’t so accessible to revelers and hoed out all the time. Plus if the heat abated a little our room might actually be downright cozy for about the only 4 months of the year Texas weather isn’t intolerably annoying. Of course I’ll miss all the free marijuana I get to smoke around here (thanks to someone always needing a nearby room to light up in) but while I enjoy smoking dope, ever since I met Jenifer I’m enjoying being a little more aware.

My second reason for leaving the house, and I’m not fucking kidding about this, are the giant possums that wander the hallways at all hours like ambling diseased ghosts. A literal family of possums have taken over the first and second floors. The front door got ripped off during a party last week and several windows are missing so there isn’t really any way to keep an animal that can climb trees out of an open house. One of my alternative fraternity housemates tried to kill one of the possums with a garden rake but the creature was too damn big. I’m serious, we’re talking at least the size of a medium dog here. It’s extremely disconcerting to stumble into the bathroom hungover, or barely hanging onto reality thanks to varying drug combinations, and find a salivating mangy possum between the porcelain god and me. Hangovers and tetanus shots are not a good combination. And despite what I’ve heard about possums, these motherfuckers do not roll over and play dead like in the fucking Deputy Dawg cartoons. I’m speculating whatever keeps making me sick probably mutated them into a new smarter and larger species. I thought they were cute for about five minutes, then back in reality I learned it’s not really cool in any circle to cohabitate with rodents. Jenifer’s pet rat Rico is the exception I suppose.

My third and most important reason for moving is that I found a new place to live. Jim Heines, my friend from the dorms, and his friend Dan found a neat little house on the opposite side of campus, right by the school. I initially didn’t really think they would find any houses at all, so I kind of off-handedly offered to move in with them if they could find one near the campus, knowing that’s a near impossible task in a college town. But less than a half hour after I sent them out on a snipe hunt they came back and had a fresh pad. The rent is cheaper, the house is cleaner and I’ll have my own room.