Back in 1999 I was working at the Massachusetts Bankers' Association on Tremont Street in Boston and I rather enjoyed it. There was a lot of stress, but generally it was a pleasant way to earn a dollar. My job was to make sure all the mail got out, and to deliver all the mail coming in; that's right, I ran the mail room. Actually, I was the mail room. Not literally, but there was no other mail staff...just me. With only about 30 people at the MBA that was enough. And everyone but the office manager pretty much left me to myself. My favorite task was inexplicably depositing a very large check at the bank down the street. I don't know from where the money came or why, but the large sums involved made me feel like a big shot for some reason. Anyway, I got to know the cute teller, a tall girl with black hair who radiated ennui but masked it nicely out of a practical need to be affable for the customers. We had lunch together several times, and I learned that she was an excellent artist. She could draw so well I was amazed. I forget her name. For all I know, she is living the dream of having her graphic novel published. Or more likely is still working at the bank.
The reason that all ended is me. While I was tooling around work one day, I got a call from an ex-girlfriend and (at the time) friend. She told me she wanted to set up a blind date between me and someone who was "perfect" for me. I imagined a blind woman who liked to talk about bones and apes, for at that time I was studying evolutionary biology at UMass Boston. And blindness would be good due to my repugnant countenance. Get it? Anyway, I agreed, and she gave me the name of this young lady. I then proceeded to look up her name in the phone book and call her. Big mistake. I was supposed to wait until I got a call back from my ex.
That relatively small miscalculation cost me a lot more than a date with the blind monkey chick. My ex called me back at work and tore me a new one, in the parlance of the day. I responded by flipping out myself. I was not well, you see, which is why I'm on many drugs today. At the time, though, the depths of my insanity had not yet been plumbed. So she plumbed them. I lost it, thinking that I was a menace who couldn't do anything right and who should be put out of his misery. And a thousand other things were in there, too. It's hard to relate. I kicked into suicide mode and grabbed my coat and flew out the door in the middle of the day, thus kissing my job goodbye.
With deft sinuosity, nihilism, self-loathing and revulsion coiled into my brain and expanded outward against the inside of my skull. "This is it," I thought, "I need to kill myself today." I had already tried once the year before, and had been hospitalized 3 times at this point. I knew how to do it correctly if so disposed. By the time the elevator hit the ground floor, I had a plan. An romantic undertaking that would have me overdosing on diphenhydramine (found in Benadryl) and dying amid the stacks of books at the Boston Public Library just a few stops away from Park Street station nearby. So I picked up what I needed at a couple of stores and was off.
I don't really remember walking into the library, but I'm pretty sure I was sitting at a table in the mezzanine. My mind was on fire, and I started attending to knocking it down with pill after pill after pill, in between sips of Coke. So my last meal would have been Coke and Benadryl had my little undertaking worked. My final disposition would have been profound annoyance, too, because I had to pry each pill out of the fucking blister it was sold in. After freeing around 100 pills, I started shovelling them into my face. But not after finishing my suicide note. I'd share what it says, as I still have it, but it's just what you'd expect from a suicide note.
There just weren't any profound thoughts at that moment. And as I approached the 100th pill or therabouts, I had no intention of stopping. I do remember hoping that it wouldn't hurt. Some people say it is selfish to commit suicide, but they don't understand that a person in my frame of mind considers it an act of kindness to loved ones. A favor to all those who have to put up with your nonsense. In a perverted way, suicide is done out of love, too, as much as a desire to end one's own bumbling.
Things began to unravel when an African-American security guard, an older gentleman, approached me and told me that there was not eating or drinking allowed in the building. At that point, the pills and blister packs were gone, but the bottle of Coke (almost empty) remained. I panicked because I didn't want to be grabbed and forced to drink dirt at the hospital and have my stomach pumped and all that...I don't like that. So I bolted down to the Men's Room in the basement of the BPL. Naturally, I was feeling woozy at this point. I could fake a clean walk, but thinks were spinning a bit and I started getting cramps that quickly got very bad. In the Men's Room, I sat in a stall and started to sleep. But not after chuckling a bit at the whole, "I'm sorry but you can't eat or drink in the library" episode a moment earler.
About a minute later, a janitor woke me up. She was yelling, "We need to clean in here, so hurry up everyone!" What the fuck! I couldn't believe my luck, and I swear this is all true. Even though I could barely see straight, I was sort of happy to be leaving, as it smelled of urine in there. A far cry from croaking near the works of Dostoevsky and D.H. Lawrence upstairs. Things were just not going to plan.
A year before, I had worked at the Fairmont Copley Plaze hotel across the street. They have a beautiful, large lobby and pristine bathrooms with stalls that have doors that reach the floor. So over there I toddled, dodging traffic and entering through that lovely front entrance. The diphenhydramine had really kicked-in with a vengeance, and I had a hard time walking the length of that lobby, across the marble and thick, faux oriental rugs. A former fellow employee passed nearby and said, "Hey, man!" and I just kept walking. My arms were to heavy to wave, and I didn't dare try to speak. He probably just thought I was being a douchebag.
In the Men's Room, I collapsed. Blue fluid ran out of my mouth and I felt as if I weighed 10,000 pounds. The pain from the cramps kept getting worse, and everything was spinning. I was terrified. Something snapped at this point, but it wasn't a desire to live, dammit, live! It was more about ending this ridiculous pain, which compelled me up, out the door, where I stumbled over to the phone bank and called 911. I couldn't speak, but I knew they would send an ambulance. That's when I went to the front entrance and waited for as long as I could. Seemed like a very long time. I was doubled over, weeping, and people just walked on by...most of them. Then the street rushed up to my face and all was black. I just wanted to sleep.
I awoke on the sidewalk a few minutes later (I guess) and dozens of people were all around me, looking down. I couldn't see Copley Square or even the side of the hotel, just blue sky and a ring of unfamiliar faces. I couldn't hear anything, or move, but I did see a fellow I used to work with, the security guard at the hotel. He looked down at me so sadly. His eyes were large, and I really think he thought that I was going to die. Then I went out again.
They tell me that my heart went into some kind of flutter, and they obviously had to pump my stomach. I don't remember. I woke up with in four-point restraints, meaning that both arms and both legs are chained to the bed. The doctor told me that if the ambulance had been a couple of minutes slower, I'd be dead. Close, but no cigar. From there, the nuthouse.
I wonder what ever happened to the girl at the bank, the one with whom I shared those lunches. Or that security guard, or the fellow employee I ignored. I think about that day sometimes and wonder if I learned anything at all from it. Not to eat or drink in the library is one thing, I guess. Some darker things, too.
But it's just something that happened, like brushing one's teeth or genocide. The black oak grows and pays no mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment