Нед Виззини - It's Kind of a Funny Story

I’ll take the bike, and it’ll be a warm spring night. I’ll speed up Flatbush Avenue—the artery of fat Brooklyn—right to the Brooklyn entrance of the bridge, with the potholes and cops stationed all night. They won’t look at me twice—what, it’s illegal, a kid biking over a bridge? I’ll go up the ramp and get right to the middle, where I was before, and then I’ll walk out over the roadway and take one last look at the Verrazano Bridge.

What am I going to do about my bike, though? If I lock it up, it’ll just stay there at the side of the bridge, as evidence, and they’ll clip the lock or saw through the chain after a while. It’s an expensive chain! But if I don’t lock it up, someone’ll take it quickly—it’s a good bike, a Raleigh—and there won’t be any evidence that I was ever even there.

I can’t lose the bike, I decide. I’ll take the key with me when I go down, and Mom and Dad will know, then, where I’ve gone. The cops will find the bike and tell them. It’ll be harsh, but at least they’ll know. It’ll be better than not leaving anything.

What time is it? Time has stopped for me. Since I can’t sleep and I’m still sweating, I decide I can try something to knock myself out: push-ups. I don’t want to go to sleep, I just want to exhaust myself and rest a little bit so I can make the trip at the appropriate time, in an hour or so. I prop myself up in bed in proper push-up position, which is also proper sex position, I realize, and I haven’t even had sex—I’m going to die a virgin. Does that mean I go to heaven? No, according to the Bible, suicide is a sin and I go straight to hell, what a gyp.

I learned push-ups in Tae Bo. I’m good at them. I can do them on my fingers and my fists, as well as my palms. Here, next to my mom, in a scene that would look very weird if you filmed it from the side, I start to do them up and down—one, two, three . . . I move very, very slowly so as not to wake Mom up—she’s a heavy sleeper and doesn’t notice my exercises; her head is turned in the opposite direction. When I get to ten push-ups I start counting down: Five, four, three . . . until I finish at fifteen. I collapse in bed.

I’m so weak from holding down nothing but Cheerios in the last twenty-four hours, I’m beat. I’m cracked from fifteen push-ups. But I feel something in the bed. I feel my heart beating. It’s beating against the mattress, amplified, resounding not only in the bed but in my body. I feel it in my feet, my legs, my stomach, my arms. Beating everywhere.

I get on my palms again. One, two, three . . . My arms burn. My neck crinks; a bed isn’t the best place to do push-ups; you tend to sink in. This set is tougher than the last. But when I get to fifteen I keep going, to twenty. I strain and hold back a grunt on the final one and discharge myself to the mattress.

Badoom. Badoom. Badoom.

My heart is ramming now. It’s beating everywhere. It hits all the spots in my body, and I feel the blood pressuring through me, my wrists, my fingers, my neck. It wants to do this, to badoom away all the time. It’s such a silly little thing, the heart.

Badoom.

It feels good, the way it cleans me.

Badoom.

Screw it. I want my heart.

I want my heart but my brain is acting up.

I want to live but I want to die. What do I do?

I get out of bed, glance at the clock. It’s 5:07. I don’t know how I got through the night. My heart radiates badoom, so I stand and shuffle into the living room and pick a book off my parents’ shelf.

It’s called How to Survive the Loss of a Love; it has a pink and green cover. It’s sold like two million copies; it’s one of these psychology books that people everywhere buy to get through break-ups. My mom bought it when her dad died and raved about how good it was. She showed the cover to me.

I looked at it just to see what it was about, and the first chapter said, “If you feel like harming yourself right now, turn to page 20.” And I thought that was pretty silly, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, so I turned to page 20, and right there it said to call your local suicide hotline, because suicidal thoughts were a medical situation and you needed medical help right away.

Now, in the dark, I open How to Survive the Loss of a Love to page 20.

“Every municipality has a suicide hotline, and they’re listed right in the government services section of the yellow pages,” it says.

Okay. I go into the kitchen and open up the yellow pages.

It’s a pain in the ass to find those government listings. I thought they were marked with green pages, but the green pages turn out to be a restaurant guide. The government listings are in blue at the front, but it’s all phone numbers for where to get your car if it’s towed, what to do if your block has a rat problem . . . Ah, here, health. Posion control, emergency, mental health. There are a bunch of numbers. The first one says “suicide” near it. It’s a local number, and I call.

I stand in the living room with my hand in my pants as the phone rings.

“Hello.”

“Hi, is this the Suicide Hotline?”

“This is the Brooklyn Anxiety Management Center.”

“Oh, um . . .”

“We work with the Samaritans. We handle New York Suicide Hotline calls when they overflow. This is Keith speaking.”

“So the Suicide Hotline is too busy right now?”

“Yes—it’s Friday night. This is our busiest time.”

Great. I’m common even in suicide.

“What seems to, ah, be the problem?”

“I really, just . . . I’m very depressed and I want to kill myself.”

“Uh-huh. What’s your name?”

“Ah . . .” Need-a-fake-name, need-a-fake-name: “Scott.”

“And how old are you, Scott?”

“Fifteen.”

“And why do you want to kill yourself?”

“I’m clinically depressed, you know. I mean, I’m not just . . . down or whatever. I started this new school and I can’t handle it. It’s gotten to a point where it’s the worst it’s ever been and I just don’t want to deal with it anymore.”

“You say you’re clinically depressed. Are you taking medication?”

“I was taking Zoloft.”

“And what happened?”

“I stopped taking it.”

“Ah. That’s probably, you know, a bad idea.”

Keith sounds like he’s just getting started with this whole counseling thing. I picture a thin college-age guy with wire-rim glasses at a desk lit up with a small reading lamp, looking out the window, nodding at the good deeds he’s doing.

“A lot of people run into problems when they, y’know, stop taking their medication.”

“Well, whatever the reason, I just really can’t handle it right now.”

“Do you have a plan for how you would kill yourself?”

“Yes. I’d jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

I hear Keith typing something.

“Well, Scott, we aren’t the suicide hotline, but if you like, we have a five-step exercise for managing anxiety. Would you like to try it?”

“Um . . . sure.”

“Can you get a pen and a piece of paper?”

I go to the drawers in the dining room and get a pencil and paper. I take it to the bathroom and sit on the toilet with Keith. The light’s on.

“First, okay? Write down an event that happened to you. That you experienced.”

“Any event?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay . . .” I write on the piece of paper Ate pizza last week.

“Do you have it?” Keith asks.

“Yes.”

“Now, write down, ah, how you felt about that event.”

“Okay.” I write: Felt good, full.