On A’s striptease suicide via web-cam and justin.tv.
You’ve really never heard the name Abraham Biggs?
Is that because he’s black?
Is that because he served in Iraq right when we decided green was the new black, anyway, when we went anti-war during Bush’s second term?
Is that because he never made it past twenty-years old? And yes, we all know, no one gives a shit about anyone over eighteen who’s slid off of the liberal-arts track.
I’ve obsessed over Abraham’s death since the first second he broadcasted his glam-benzo-overdose. I watched him right along with everyone else on justin.tv and Bodybuilding.com. I provoked him right along with everyone else to finish up his bottle of Xanax-bars and end it already.
But, I barely felt a tinge of shock when the cops burst in three hours later to roll over his certain still-dead body – when the cops bludgeoned the web-cam out of surprise, and probably, quick-set embarrassment at their own failure.
I considered this whole experience of watching Abraham through the looking glass as some high-glossed porno: a psychedelic experience on ebonyfuck.com you only have the opportunity of catching maybe once a decade, if that.
That was nearly half a decade ago. Now, there were two more weeks, give or take an extra couple days of class, of law school left before the fucking morbid evils of moot court and finals. I thought – really – it would be best to proverbially “juice this shit up” (sans actual steroids; come on, if I’ve been ingesting any illegal substance in law school: Dexedrine-derived) and end this first-year at Columbia in style.
And after almost a complete academic year of torts to civ-pro and all that wickedly depressing sort: who wouldn’t want to watch me, now? I must be more exciting than Abraham. I have double-D tits; they’re real double-D tits.
Allow me to make my plan clear, thus:
I) I will not actually commit an act of suicide. Much like a striptease, I’m just to put on an entertaining show for the benefit of others’ entertainment.
II) I will begin by posting a suicide note, publicly, to the Internet – and I’ll make it silly-stupid, nothing prolific, prophetic, or profound. At the end of the note, I’ll announce the date of the broadcast.
III) I will buy all necessary props. This is far simpler than it sounds; this step involves pills that won’t kill me. At a place like law school, we all know what 1mg of Ativan looks like (simple, white and with a small circumference). For an appropriately believable death, I will need to take between forty and forty five of these. Therefore, I will substitute the Ativan with Ondansetron (or Zofran, for those not quite so au fait with the dormitory cupboard pharmacy). My doctor prescribes Ondansetron to me – with a rather heavy-hand – to aid in alleviating the nausea induced by my frequent migraines. The nausea pills really do look quite like Ativan, especially with the low-res of a web-cam; and I’ve completed the research to confirm that the ingestion of forty 4-mg Ondansetron won’t kill me. I’ll wake up in a legitimate daze of lethargy and nausea, however, but undeniably nothing I can’t handle (is this the right time to comment on the irony of rebound effects?).
IV) On said promised date, broadcast my striptease-suicide.
As I mentioned before, the broadcast will have to wait – necessitated by my methodical process – but I can certainly post the note today:
“I am feeling very dry with this existence. I think death seems to be the best thing but I can’t seem to kill myself. I am dead broke. I feel my life has been plagued with evil and badness. I believe I am more right than God and never deserved to be treated how I have been treated. I feel abandoned and I feel awful. I do think I have thought about seeing a therapist within the past 24 extra worldly measurements of hours, and I think the thought of trying to see a therapist gets me feeling worse. I think young vulnerable beings especially deserve respect. I think using a young being, maybe an individual who cannot yet grasp a decent understanding of what is going on, or maybe an individual who cannot yet speak: is unfair. Please watch me end my life in two days: June 15, 2009, at 12:00p (noon) Eastern Standard Time. This is the only way I know to reconcile what has been done to me.
XOXO
~A.”
Excellently executed, I thought: certainly obscure and even a bit mind numbing, rife with adolescent banter. No airbrushing with Aeschylian catharsis or Shakespearian riddle to have made the note worth anyone’s time reading.
And that’s exactly what I was going for – because everyone would rather tune into an image than have to read a word or two.
I’m sure it hasn’t taken you very long to realize that e-mails and SMS-texts were actually created for the sole reason of encouraging just this kind of individuality I’ve taken advantage of.
If you ever meet emotional danger – a life checkmate, I like to call it – it’s of your own responsibility to send out an alert: obviously, via en-masse electronic media.
Heroes who hit the music charts at number one before they even got signed to a label: that’s moot now. The fairytale era of acoustic self-assertion is dead.
Try (I dare you) going AWOL from the digital world – or down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass – and life, as you know it, will spiral out of control. You’ll be terminated from your corporate job; or lose relationships; or miss out on hearing about all those missiles just decimating the entirety of the Gaza Strip.
Dare you’ve that same gall as Alice?
Dare you’ve that same gall as Abraham?
I’ll see you in two days.
XXX,
A.
Justin currently resides in Boston. His ultimate goal through creative writing is to expose the profound silence stifling Gen-Y: a silence rooting from, paradoxically, the ever-rising world wide network of faceless communication. Justin’s former professors, who worked diligently to hone his skills in the Classical tradition of Latin & Ancient Greek, are most certainly dismayed to see this. Justin, however – just on the cusp of 23 – has never been happier to break the traditional mold.
“because everyone would rather tune into an image than have to read a word or two”… true enough–and so it goes.