by Rudy Johnson
Suicide is a siren song to the Malone Calfiremen in souped up F350s going southbound on Finney Blvd, hoping to let me down gently. Dispatch says, “Distraught male with extension cord, possible self-harm crisis situation, Hallam Circle.” Dispatch (the band) says, “You are young men, you should be living!” and that resonates when my frequency is tuned to The Buzz (99.9 FM, Plattsburgh) instead of 98.6, my personal BlueTooth transmitter station where I play localized fuzzy warbles—usually nasty songs and stories performed by AI voices—for the company of myself.
Anyway, the first responders get to my place and compare notes before approaching:
● The notes from my arrest record, with sealed Dark Things only the local Keepers of Order can access [insert inaccessible Wheel of Time reference].
● The C-sharps of Avenged Sevenfold’s “Hail to the King”, playing from the black F350, vs. the D-flats of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” playing from the white one.
● The text of my schizotarded twitter crashout (provided to them by a friend) vs. Cobain’s TO BODDAH magnum opus (provided to them by lingering memories of Kurt Loder talking about Kurt loading up his gun, bringing his friends... and family... to their knees).
RE: the first bullet: I’ll say that I was arrested once, and taken for mental health evalution twice, from the same nearby locale—the spooky ~ woooOooooOooooo ~ Chateaugay Bridge. This bridge is haunted by ghosts of people who’ve jumped, and at least one spook (the author) who isn’t a jumper but also hasn’t “cut ties with all the lies that you’ve been living in” either.
The last time I rode to that bridge to outdo/undo myself, I set out with finality, like Tolkien’s Rohirrim. Hear ‘em talk about it on the scanner around oh dark thirty, or whenever EMS gets a call that someone’s getting liminal up by Bailey Brook.
Usually, when I ride out (and fear no darkness!), it’s at dusky hours. CHOM FM’s “Morning Drive At Five” with DJ Frank Ouellet is alive with the glory of post-grunge. CHOM’s a Canuck station that comes in all down Route 11. Elated 9-5 workers, mostly Anglophones, are hitting the Frank O phones during commute, requesting “Medicate” or “Hate My Life” with the theory being (I think) that friends in offices on Sainte-Catherine Street will somehow feel their well-concealed pain through Tyler Connolly’s droning verses. But there’s always at least one Frenchie lurking in Mont Saint-Who-Cares, fingering the landline, ready to call in that other tune. An airstrike, a desperate broken arrow. Broken english: “Can you play de one song, eh? You know, de uhh, de how is it—how do you say—beat go like: My girlfriend’s a dick magnet!”
And this is the real upbeat, not-weepy part of the tale where I admit that sometimes, while I’m driving towards envisioned death—past white birch and white John Birch supporters visible only to people south of Johnstown, past in my rearview like Jason Aldean, just past the point-of-no-return mentally—I take honest solace in something as pedestrian as car ride music. Butt-rock, generally.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
While serotonin sometimes weaves through my gray matter roads—roads Brainardsville didn’t pave because it spent everything on the new Hippocampus—my destination still looms. Whether I arrive this night, or 1001 nights from now, my existence feels like the radio slogan “nothing but the rock” [bottom]. At 3:30 AM, I open Abilif-eyes. By 5:30 PM, the stimulant comedown’s taken a fat shit on any sort of human-like evening. NOTHING TURNS OUT RIGHT, THERE’S NO END IN SIGHT, I HATE MY LIFE. Nothing but the rock. The morning Ritalin drop sparks an hour-long obsession over my family’s addiction history [needle drop, any given Puddle of Mudd]. Nothing but the rock. Depression isn’t a siren song. It’s that chorus about a bitch coming back. A single—and singular!—and yeah, “one need not be a chamber,” hell, I’ve always got one in the chamber for sadboi Russian Roulette, and during down time I play (nothing but the fucking rock).
When EMS anxiously knocks at my door, the New York State Trooper’s posture is relaxed. Meme image: first_time.JPEG. My face is blue, partly from the volunteers’ coveted top-mount emergency flashers (up here, Blue Lights Matter). I let them in. They don’t judge the holey walls. “Hallowed Be Thy Name” is playing. The Trooper isn’t. He says, “We gotta bring you to the ER, bud.”
We get so near, yet so far away.
(Nothing but the rock!)
______
[RETURN.]