Michael Ford: Suicide Notes

I swear, sometimes he’s like one of those weird old guys in martial arts movies who show up and say all kinds of crazy crap that the hero has to figure out so he can find the sword or save the girl or kick the bad guy’s ass. You know, like, “Find the whistling pine tree and ask it for the key,” or something.

I guess I know what he means, though. It was like the night I was with Sadie, when I knew I couldn’t have sex with her. It just didn’t feel right. Yeah, maybe it would feel different with another girl, but I don’t think so. With Rankin I knew . Even though he wasn’t the right guy, being with a guy felt right to me. Everything about what we did was scary and weird, but I knew it was what I wanted. Not with Rankin, and definitely not here, but someday with someone else. Someone I like.

Then Cat Poop brought up the idea of telling my parents. I said I wasn’t sure if I could do that or not.

“So you’ve never talked about it with them?” he asked.

“We don’t talk in my family,” I said. “We assume.”

“What do you mean by that?” he said.

“I mean my parents assume,” I explained. “They assume that Amanda and I will ask them if we have questions about anything. Otherwise, they assume it’s all good with us.”

“And do you ever talk to them?”

I gave him a look. “You’ve met them,” I said. “What do you think?”

Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think my parents have any gay friends, at least none that I know of. So I don’t really know how they feel about the whole gay thing. Besides, I think it’s different when it’s your kid you’re talking about and not some stranger. I know my mother is all into the idea of having grandkids someday, and my dad teases us about how he’s going to screen everyone Amanda and I bring home when we start dating. I can’t exactly see him sitting my date down and asking him what his favorite football team is.

I asked Cat Poop if he would tell my parents if he was me, and of course he said he couldn’t make that decision for me. I figured he would say that, but it was worth a shot. So then I asked him if he had any advice on how to decide whether or not to do it.

“You could practice telling them,” he suggested.

“You mean walk through it in my head?” I said.

“No, I mean with me,” said Cat Poop.

“You don’t look much like my mom,” I informed him. “Even without the goatee.”

He smiled. “I could play your dad, then,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “That’s kind of weird.”

“Well, think about it,” he said.

So now I’m thinking about it. I’m imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, “I’m gay.” And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don’t have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls. Everyone just assumes that they do. But if you’re gay, everybody makes this ginormous deal out of it. You practically have to hold a news conference and take out an ad in the newspaper. Why? Just because it’s not what most people do? That doesn’t seem fair.

Why should my parents know? So they can get used to the idea of not having a daughter-in-law? So they can practice imagining me walking down the aisle with a guy? I don’t get it. Why is it that you have to warn people about who you are? Why can’t it just be something that happens?

I know why. I’m just blowing off steam. It’s a lot of pressure, telling someone something like that. It’s like you’re committing to it. “Mom, dad, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve decided I’m gay.” Like you’ve read all the brochures and comparison shopped. Or finally decided what college to go to. Only if you’re wrong, you can’t exactly get a refund or switch schools. Well, I guess you could, but then you’ve gotten everyone all excited for nothing.

Funny, Rankin has been gone for almost a week, and nobody has asked where he is or what happened to him. I asked Cat Poop about him today, but all he would say was that Rankin had been transferred somewhere else. Like he got a new job or something.

He also read me Sadie’s suicide note. I didn’t even know she’d left a note. Cat Poop said he’d waited for some time to go by before telling me so that I wouldn’t be as upset about it. I told him that was big of him.

So he read it to me. It was his voice talking, but what I heard was Sadie.

“Hey, everyone,” she said. “I guess by now you know I won’t be around anymore. Maybe some of you will miss me, and maybe some of you won’t. I’ll miss you guys. It’s been fun. But it’s time to go. No one can save me this time. Not even Sam. I’ll see you all on the other side, I guess. Love, Sadie.”

That was it. Nothing about why. Nothing about what was going on in her head. Nothing about… me.

“What the hell kind of note is that?” I said. “She didn’t say anything. It’s just stupid.”

Then I got mad. Really mad. “Who does she think she is?” I asked Cat Poop. “She goes and kills herself and all she has to say about it is ‘see you on the other side’? That’s completely fucked up.”

“Maybe it’s all she could say,” said Cat Poop. “Maybe she didn’t really know why she was doing it.”

“How can you not know?” I said.

“Why do you think she did it?” he said, pulling the old answering-a-question-with-a-question bullshit.

The thing is, I didn’t know. But I was afraid I did. I was afraid it was because I couldn’t sleep with her. I was afraid it was because she felt rejected, the way I did with Burke. And with Allie. If that was true, then I knew why she wanted to kill herself. I knew exactly why.

“What are you thinking?” Cat Poop asked me.

I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t. If I said it, I knew it would be true. But as long as I kept it inside, as long as it was a secret, it couldn’t be.

“You’re afraid it was because of you?”

Goddamn it, I don’t know how he does that, but the doc always manages to ask you the one question you really don’t want him to.

I nodded, but I still didn’t say it. I didn’t let it out. Finally, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said, “Do you?”

When he shook his head, I almost threw up. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“Then why the fuck did you ask me?” I practically yelled. I only say “fuck” when I’m really pissed off. Otherwise, I think it kind of ruins the effect. But right then I was really pissed off. Fucking pissed off.

“Because I had a feeling you might be thinking that,” he said.

I glared at him. “You’re a real asshole,” I said. “You know that?”

He ignored me. “There’s something else,” he said. “She wrote a poem.”

“A poem?” I said. That was totally not a Sadie thing to do.

Cat Poop handed me the letter. Down at the bottom, after the note, Sadie had written: