Warning: sensitive themes
I rock up at eight o'clock wearing my dad's old suit, to the table I booked weeks ago at the fanciest restaurant I could find that was halfway between my apartment and the twelve-story carpark off Cemetery Row. I have planned everything perfectly down to the last detail. I have one hundred and thirteen pounds in my trouser pocket, ready to splash out and spend it all on dinner. It's the last one, after all, why shouldn't I make it a big one? But when he opens his mouth, he just has to go and ruin it, that fucking French guy, whatever they call the guy who stands just outside the restaurant and shouts at you to come on in, the one in the suit and bow tie, him. He's ruining it all. He claims, with his posh twat accent, that the restaurant had ‘misplaced my booking’, he ‘couldn't find my reservation in the system’, yeah, right, just twist the knife right in, why don't you. He tells me I can have a table at 7pm tomorrow, and I almost punch him right then and there, but he doesn't know what I know, and that wouldn't really be fair, so instead I just laugh and decline politely and turn around and go right back home.
It wasn't part of my plan, to go back home. I'm not sure what to do, so I do what I do best and call Wei.
“Wei Chinese Food,” comes the comfortingly accented voice over the phone. “Wei, my man, it's me. Hook a brother up with some beef in black bean, egg fried rice, and some salted chilli chicken, you know what, make it two chilli chickens.” I hear a moment of pencil scribbling madly on paper, and “Same place?” “Yep,” and Wei hangs the phone up. I mooch around my apartment while I wait for the food. Nothing in it interests me much, obviously, I'd tidied most of it away, again, I hadn't planned to return here tonight. I think I came back because I couldn't face going out without a last meal - after all, what else was the point of it all? Don't worry, I'm not abandoning my plan, not at all, I'm just hungry is all. All I'd left in the flat for nobody to find were some Moby CDs, piled neatly on the table by the kitchen. ‘Everything Is Wrong’ stared at me from the top of the pile, that terrifying bald chap on the cover looking me right in my eyes, you know the one, go look it up and come back here so you know what I'm talking about. Moby, you hit the nail on the head with that one, I'm telling you. I slip it into the CD player. Everything Is Wrong? Yeah it is. When It's Cold I'd Like To Die, and right now it's minus a billion degrees and freezing outside. If it hadn't been for finding your music, Moby, I'd have left this world much earlier, I'm telling you. I shrug my jacket off and throw it to the ground, watching as it crumples on the floor. If you were to ask me why I was doing what I was doing, I'd be hard pressed to tell you. I bet you Virginia Woolf couldn't say, oh, on the 23rd of March I was doing fine and dandy, and it was only on the 24th of March that I decided to top myself. I bet Marilyn Monroe wouldn't say oh, my life was simply wonderful, and then one day I just decided I'd stuff my face with pills and call it quits. No, they wouldn't, because it doesn't happen like that, does it? It's death by a thousand cuts, like they say. Someone who died by one cut, that's who I'm really jealous of. That sounds like a pretty good way to die, don't you think? One cut, nice sharp blade, not much pain, you're out like a light. In my dreams, I'm Dying All the Time, by a rusty and blunt cleaver. Don't know why people would complain about one cut. No, this is much worse. A thousand cuts with dull butter knives. The worst part is, you can't tell anyone about the butter knives, ‘cause you'll sound like a pussy, and nobody wants to sound like a pussy, certainly not me. Oh boohoo, poor me, I've just been cut by a butter knife, that's likely to impress nobody. Sure, in the greater context of things, if I've already been cut by nine hundred and ninety nine butter knives, it sounds a bit worse, but people don't know that, do they? And you can't explain it all to them, unless they're a therapist, and I couldn't afford a therapist, plus I didn't really want one either. I'm not even sure if I wanted to be fixed. It's The Last Day, and I'm accepting it.
Moby is rudely interrupted by a knock at the door, and I go to answer it. Thank God, the Chinese. I fish in my pocket, take out two creased twenty pound notes and hand it to Wei’s brother Hui. It probably costs a lot less than forty pounds, but Wei and I don't really deal in numbers like that, we go too far back for that, and plus I don't need the money and God knows he does. He'd probably like to know what I am up to tonight, on reflection, but then he'll try to stop me or something stupid, and that is the last thing I need after all this planning. I am already proud of myself for improvising when my booking fell through, so God help the fool who gets in my way next. I turn Moby back on as I sit down with my boxy white container of heaven, and get to work hungrily. I'm Feeling So Real, more than I ever have, me and Moby, sitting in my kitchen at nine o'clock on a Wednesday, devouring a Chinese takeaway. I wonder what everybody else is doing now. People who have plans tomorrow, work, holidays, people who are meeting friends, or loved ones. Isn't that right, Moby? All We Need Is To Be Loved? I've had that once, it was okay, had its ups and downs, wouldn't recommend it to anybody though. If you look closely, you can probably see at least a hundred of those butter knives I mentioned are still sticking out of my heart, thanks to Being Loved. It's Hard to Let You Go. God, chilli chicken is good.
I finish the box in about fifteen minutes. Moby is still warbling on, but I'm sorry Moby, I can't Take You Away today, I have myself to worry about. Actually, that forms part of my point. You'd think ‘he's alright, isn't he, Moby, he's got money and a house and everything, not like me’, but no, that's exactly the thing, those things don't stop your mind from being fucked up, they just help you deal with it a bit, but that's not always enough, is it. Take Anthony Bourdain, for example, if you're bored with me prattling on about Moby. He had it all, television show, book deals, I loved that guy, but he still offed himself, didn't he? Goes to show how many butter knives some people have sticking out of them that most people don't notice. Sorry, I'm dragging the butter knife metaphor, it's worn out, I'll stop now. I'm not like Anthony though, I don't have my own television show, or an autobiography, or been nominated for six Grammys, sorry, Moby. So really, in actual fact, I have all the more reason to be feeling the way I do, even more so than all the famous people you've heard of that ended themselves, because they have loads of people who should notice the butter knives (last time), but me, I'm left to just me myself and I, and what am I meant to do with that? I get a glass of water from the tap, and open my fridge to stare into it blankly, for old times sake. It stares back at me, equally empty. Do you know what would hit the spot right now? Do you know what baiju is? It's a Chinese drink, a liquor, probably about fifty percent. I last remember drinking it with Wei a couple months ago, sitting on the roof of Cemetery Row Carpark talking about life. And it was good shit. I'd kill for some of that right now.
My legs move as fast as my mind does these days, and I’m soon down on the street outside my apartment looking for a shop which sells baiju, that'll Bring Back My Happiness. Can't be too hard to find in London, can it? This time, though, I'm out of the house for good, and haven't brought anything with me except for the seventy three pounds left in my trouser pocket. I'll probably give the rest of it to a homeless guy on my way to Cemetery Row. Before long, I find a small red shop with huge white Chinese characters on the front of it. Perfect. I walk inside, to a freezing, cramped shop, avoid eye contact with the man at the till, and find baiju on the second shelf I look at, the beautiful glass bottle with a red star and a red label, thank you Mao Zedong for this drink I will enjoy in your honour, thank you Wei for everything you've done for me. I hold the bottle firmly in my left hand as I walk to the till, and place it onto the counter, doing my best to not look like a madman. I don't know why I'd look like a madman, I just feel like I might, what with all the thoughts in my head, some of them being quite mad indeed. I don't know what a man who is planning to jump off a building looks like - is he calm? Is he happy? Is he sad? I didn't look at myself in the mirror, so I don't know. I don't feel happy, and I sure as fuck feel sad, but I also feel kind of calm. It's a strange thing, making a decision like that, and then it's made up, that's that. People can get in my way, sure, the French twat certainly did, but I'm better at adapting now than I was a week ago, before I'd made this plan.
“Thirty pounds!” the man yells at me. I think he'd said it a couple of times by now, by the look on his face, but I hadn't been listening. He sounds a bit like Wei's dad when I first met him and he got angry at Wei for smelling of weed, which really was my fault, but at the time I didn't feel like owning up, and Wei is never been one to snitch. I pull my money out of my pocket, and the man eyes me up suspiciously as I flick through loose twenty pound notes. “You have ID?” he barks at me. I nod, and pat my pocket. I pat my other pocket. Shit. I fumble up and down my body, falling short at every hurdle. My jacket, my fucking driving license is in my jacket. My suit jacket, the one that's lying crumpled next to the Moby CDs and the empty Chinese takeaway box, the one that has my door keys in its other pocket, the one I left behind because I'll ‘never need it again’. “I left it at home,” I mutter, and surely, look at the state of this shop, this Chinese man is not going to be a dick about asking for ID, is he? He puts his hand authoritatively on MY baiju bottle, my last hurrah, and says to me, “You need ID. Alcohol.”
Yes, Albert fucking Einstein, it's alcohol. I'm twenty two, I'm not exactly a sixteen year old. I know I have a baby face, for God's sake I shouldn't have shaved this morning. It was the first time in about six months, you can thank depression for that, but I finally wanted to make a bit of an effort for my big day, and look where it fucking gets me, no baiju for me. I reach my hand out to take the baiju bottle, and he slides it quickly towards him across the counter. “Come on, please, mate.” I'm not above begging, did you think I would be? Look at where I am now, I'm not above fucking anything, apart from the ground, and that's the problem, isn't it? “No ID, no sale,” he shouts at me. “Get out of my shop!” My fingers wrestle with his for a moment, his face reddening and loud words I assume are curses shooting out of his mouth, before I wrangle the bottle of holy baiju out of his grip, brandishing it victorious, but not before he leans over the counter and pushes me with his grubby little fingers, and I go flying into the shelf behind him, the bottle slipping from my hand as I smack into an unopened box of cabbage. The bottle shatters all over the floor, and I scrabble desperately, licking my fingers as I roughly swab the growing pool of baiju. Again, I'm not above anything. Oh no, I'll get food poisoning, I'll get an infection, the floor is dirty - if you're currently thinking these thoughts, I'm not sure if you've quite grasped what I'm doing right now. I'm not going out to the theatre - there's not much that people get up to at the top of Cemetery Row Carpark that makes you need to worry about your bodily health the day after. A moment later, though, I do regain a bit of sense and I jump to my feet, reach over to the shelf and grab another bottle of baiju, and seeing as the shopkeeper, who by the way is still shouting in Chinese at me, doesn't seem to want my business, I take the bottle under my arm and run.
Let's Go Free, I take Moby with me in my head as I sprint down the street, my black shoes thwacking against the wet tarmac. Adrenaline feels good. It's Raining Again, but I don't care, because Moby says Run On, and run on I do, I run and run until I can run no more, until the pain in my chest overpowers my adrenaline. Jesus, I'm out of shape. It's been ages since I did any exercise. Wait, though, before you pass your righteous judgment, it's not like I'm a slob who spends all his days on the sofa. I used to do 10ks, I had a group that I did them with, every Saturday morning at nine. That's right, I bet that's more than most of you can say. Things have fallen apart a bit recently, I'll grant you that, and I haven't done a 10k since January, but I did them, and you know what they always say, exercise is a great counter to depression? How depressed people are always lazing around, and they should just go outside and get some fresh air? Utter bullshit, I ran ten kilometres every week for most of my life, and I can tell you they made me not one bit less depressed or happier, not one fucking bit.
I slowly catch my breath and look around. I'm not somewhere I recognise. I keep walking, but slower, my wet hair pressing onto my neck, letting myself feel the sensation. That's another thing they tell you to do, meditation and yoga, feeling your body's feelings and whatnot. To be honest, it wasn't half bad, although I'm not at all into any of that self-reflection shit, I don't think my thoughts are worth reflecting on at all, most of them are utterly crap and useless, though I'll let you be the judge of that. But the calm breathing was nice, and although it does sound stupid to sit down on a chair and close your eyes, it does let you have a bit of alone time, which nowadays, let's be honest, is a rare currency that we all would benefit from being millionaires in.
I fumble in my pocket for my cigarettes. Fuck, I left them in my jacket pocket, too. I can't do anything right today. I begin to feel worse about my planning that I had been so proud of, until I turn the corner and see a perfect target, a homegrown specialty of this great city, an unshaved and untamed man standing under a dripping facade of a shop, cigarette smoke puffing out of his mouth. I approach him, and he doesn't turn even as I come closer. “Can I bum a fag?” I ask pathetically, but you expect that by now. He looks at me, and I see how red his eyes are. I begin to regret asking, my adrenaline high wearing off by the second. I realise suddenly, though, that I am not a beggar, I am a man with immense riches in my pocket to the tune of seventy three pounds, but most importantly, a man in possession of a bottle of alcohol. I raise this bottle with my hand, and make it clear that I am offering a swig for a cigarette. To my relief, he grunts in affirmation and pulls a packet from his pocket. I take a cigarette, and he offers me his lighter with his right hand, and I light up with a strange homeless man I have just met under the canopy of a closed newsagents. We puff away in silence for several minutes. He takes four swigs from my bottle, and I let him happily. I don't need it all. I didn't even pay for it. We complete our prison deal of cigarettes and alcohol, and the cash in my pocket remains untouched. The drag feels good, after the adrenaline I needed something else, and nicotine hits the spot. Stop judging me, remember, I don't have to worry about lung cancer. Not liver poisoning, either. I'm luckier than most people in that respect, I suppose. I smoke until my fingers get hot, and then stamp the butt onto the rainy pavement. “Thanks,” I say to Shane MacGowan, and I walk back the way I came. Standing there smoking, I had realised I did actually know where I was, I just hadn't often seen it at night, and I just had to take a left here to get back onto the road to Cemetery Row.
The rain worsens as I walk, but I don't really mind. The sensation is nice, and as I've said, what does it matter? I don't need to wash these clothes tomorrow. Oh no, my fancy leather shoes are getting wet. Cry me a river. That's a problem for the funeral director. Not for me. At least I'm dressed the part. That was sort of the point, the point of this whole day. A nice last meal, dressed up, and a good send-off. Nothing has really gone as planned, but I'm still quite happy about it, all things considered, you can do worse, can't you? I arrive at Cemetery Row, and look upwards at the imposing concrete structure. It looks tall in the day, and at night it looks simply menacing, but that's exactly what I want, and I make my way up the spiralling tarmac.
You remember I talked about Anthony Bourdain? Do you know why he killed himself? I bet you don't. What about Virginia Woolf? What about Kurt Cobain? Ernest Hemingway? Hunter S Thompson? Akutagawa? I did some research for this, you know. That's why I know all these people who died. I don't normally make a habit of memorising random people who commited suicide. Reading was another thing I used to do a lot, before things fell apart. I felt nostalgic for it a bit, while I was reading To The Lighthouse. But I wasn't reading for fun this time, I was reading for a purpose. You see, I thought if I was going to kill myself I might as well read up on it and know what I'm doing. And what I've found is, apart from people like Hitler, who of course we all know why he killed himself, the answer is often for so many people a confusing mix of oh, they were sad, they had problems in their life, and it all got too much. This is why it's so hard for people to keep their depressed friends alive, and why it's so hard for me to express the problems in my life that have led to this, because really, on their own, they can't really be explained. Read Hunter S Thompson’s suicide note, go on, go and come back. I did. He had no idea what he was talking about. It's incoherent garble, but most importantly, it doesn't really pinpoint something that went wrong for him, he just says ‘my life is boring, my life is bad, I have nothing to live for. Now, read Akutagawa's. It's a bit of a sad one, but it's worth a read, I promise. It's a big contrast, right? But in a way, he and Thompson had more or less the same reasons for ending their lives - they felt they couldn't go on with life, they felt they had nothing left, they didn't want to continue. I feel a bit like Akutagawa. He talks about his ‘vague sense of anxiety for his own future’. Hell yeah, I have anxiety for my future. Or I used to, or whatever’s left of it. Actually, I don't really have much anxiety anymore, mostly because my future is so decided now. It's a lot easier this way, when you only have so much ahead of you. The one thing I disagree with him on, is when he talks about his ‘animal fear of death’. I don't have a big fear of death, not really.
I've just made it to the top of the carpark. The wind is blowing strong, and the rain is pelting my face sideways, but again, I don't really mind. I peer over the ledge and stare for a moment, before swigging from the bottle again. It burns my throat.
I don't really fear death. A lot of people say they could never commit suicide because they're afraid of death, but I don't think they are, not really. There's two aspects to being afraid of death - there's the physical, like sure, you'd be afraid of jumping off a building, or afraid of holding a gun to your head, or afraid of drowning. That's normal. That's human instinct, self-preservation. But if you need to get over that, you can. I'm not scared of jumping off a building any more, I've been up here enough. Then there's the psychological aspect. When people say they're afraid of death, what they really mean is they're afraid of leaving this world without making a big enough impact. They're afraid people will forget them, or in fact people will mourn them, and then forget them, which is arguably worse, and they're afraid they won't have achieved everything they set out to achieve in their life. That's not a problem that's solved by timidly avoiding death. That's a problem that's solved by setting out, right now, and doing the things you set out to do, before death catches up to you, like it did to Anthony Bourdain, like it did to Virginia Woolf, like it has to me. Bourdain, Woolf, Cobain, they were always going to end themselves sooner or later, that's just the way it is, and I, for one, think it's good they managed to make an impact on the world before it got too much, don't you? It makes us appreciate them more now that they're gone. I like to set out and achieve one goal each day. That has helped me through some deep depressive days, having a clear-cut goal to work towards. It's an important thing, for a person, to have a purpose. Today, I set out to kill myself, and I like to think I will achieve that purpose.