Suicide is Too Good For You

Again we find ourselves in this same spot, George. You, babbling on about your hurt feelings; myself, thankful I do not have a gun, because all it takes to kill a man is a gun and the will to riddle them with bullets, and believe me, all I lack is the gun. What’s that? You would kill yourself if you had a gun? Then we’re at last in agreement on something, George, and it’s long overdue. Actually, no. Suicide is too good for you, George.

Yes, suicide, that haven for cowards and those who lack the will to fight. You are a coward, George, and you lack the will to do anything. But I still would not have the actions of all those courageous self-killers blemished by you adding your lumpy, wrinkle-ridden corpse to their numbers.

Oh, I’m sure you’d do it. Not because you have the shred of self-respect that suicide requires, but because you’re just that thoughtless, to blow your brains out and leave me to find a disreputable cemetery where I could bury you in an unmarked grave. Perhaps I would put a big "X" on the ground to mark your place, only so an unwitting family doesn’t build a house over your bones and find itself haunted by the world’s most sadsack ghost. Better yet, I’ll put a small wooden tombstone at the head of your grave site, with a picture of you tacked to it—the international symbol for pathetic windbag buried here.

I take that back, George, there’s no way you could kill yourself, if you dared to, if you had the fraction of self-esteem it would take. No bullet could pass through your head. It would simply bore half-an-inch deep, yawn, and then lose itself in the humdrum of your inane conversation. Yes, George, I’m convinced even inanimate objects find you offensive, and more offensive than offensive, agonizingly dull. Poison in your food would leap off the fork just to get away from your ever-running mouth, just as the dead chicken it coats would, if it hadn’t been mercifully slaughtered already. The blade of a knife? George, no self-respecting piece of steel would be caught dead penetrating you, terrified of what the other blades would think, all the names it would be called or the inevitable accusations of preposterously low standards. Hell, the blade would shrivel like your most reprehensible bits themselves if it came within a millimeter of your ashen bare flesh.

So, George, it appears you’re resigned to live the rest of your hideous natural life, and I’ll be forced to live it with you, unless Death is much kinder than tales have told, and it comes to take me in my sleep tonight. I will count the hours. You, however, George, you may be luckier than anyone else. How do you fancy immortality, George? Kind or not, Death would have nothing to do with you, that’s my prediction. You will trod down the street, searching everywhere, see Death in a bar, either at work or taking a break at the end of its long day, and Death will put its skeletal hand over its face and try to hide from you. Oh, Christ, there’s George, he wants me to at last end his life, but that would require touching him. Fuck that, Death will say, in the vernacular of our times. Heaven will not take you if it did, because it’s Heaven up there and those good occupants should be spared your constant whining, and Hell—well, even those damned to Hell do not deserve some tortures. You geriatric loose sphincter.

Enough, George, I say enough of your tears! Enough of your prattle, enough of your pleas for compassion. I have enough compassion to tell you things the way they are. Stop your sobbing and put on your best numb façade, as the rest of us do while you speak.

And grab your good sport jacket. I won’t have you looking like the world’s most vile hobo when you collect your Lifetime Achievement Award this evening. The good shoes, George, not the Crocs. My word, George. Get dressed by yourself once, that would be a lifetime achievement.

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