One night last summer, my significant honey and I were
awakened by a flat, emphatic boom. With 2:00 a.m. grogginess,
it took us a moment to realize what we'd heard.
"That wasn't thunder."
"No. It wasn't thunder."
The sirens that howled past a moment later confirmed
it.
Turns out a young man in our neighborhood had decided
to commit suicide that early morning. He closed all his
doors and windows. He disconnected the gas line from the
stove and waited for the house to fill up.
But it's tedious, waiting for gas to suffocate you. Uncomfortable.
Smelly, too. You have lots of time to think about what
you're doing, and you start feeling disgustingly sick
long before you feel comfortably dead. Somewhere during
the wait this individual (apparently well-lubricated with
Budweiser) had a change of heart. No, he didn't want to
die after all. He wanted to live!
So he re-connected the gas line, opened the front door...and
sat down to enjoy a cigarette.
They found pieces all over the neighborhood for weeks.
Now there are some who would call this a tragedy. I call
it (to borrow the phrase used by Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle in their novel Oath of Fealty) evolution
in action. Anyone who lights a cigarette with his house
full of natural gas is saving the human race from the
certain dumbing down that would have occurred had he lived
to breed.
And I'm sorry-I know you aren't supposed to say such
callous things out loud-it was also great entertainment.
Certainly the most exciting thing that had happened in
our area in years. Brought folks together. Created a sense
of old-timey neighborliness as householders got together
to chew the fat and kick through the rubble. Gave journalists
something to natter about for a day or two besides "gun
violence" and "right-wing extremists."
That young man did the right thing, even if he didn't
intend it.
A few years ago, I had a friend named Matthew who also
met an early death. Now, Matthew's fate was quite decisive,
no wishy-washing or second thoughts about it. He blew
his head off with a shotgun.
This, too, was called a tragedy.
Well, I liked Matt. He was a sweet-natured, intelligent
boy (21, but emphatically still a "boy") who loved small,
furry animals and who tried desperately to please everyone.
But since childhood he had been stumbling heedlessly from
one disaster to another--most of which involved Matthew
finding himself in jail.
When asked why he stole that car, or why
he broke into that store, Matthew was never quite sure.
It just seemed like a good idea at the time. Or at least,
he supposed it had seemed like a good idea; sometimes
he couldn't even remember.
As you may gather, there were a few chemicals lubricating
Matt's activities, as well. But it was more than that.
Matt was fey.
You know that word? It's an old one that means something
like "touched by the fairies." A modern rendering might
be "born loser." In short, Matt was a vague, wraithlike
man-child who would have been doomed to wander life forever,
never quite touching reality, surely never getting a grip
on it-if he hadn't taken the one decisive, purposeful
step of his existence. Picking up that shotgun.
I submit that folks who commit suicide-or whose casual
actions doom them-are almost always doing the right thing.
They are saving themselves, and indirectly saving most
everyone else, a whole lot of grief.
Now, let me quickly clear up three possible misconceptions.
Sure as God made some people crosseyed, a few illiterates
are going to accuse me of a Hitlerian desire to rid the
world of the "unfit." Bushwah. No human being has the
right to decide the fate of any other, and it ain't my
business nor yours to decide who's "fit" to live and who's
not. But I will defend forever people's right to determine
for themselves whether they're fit to live, and to do
themselves under if they decide in the negative. And I
won't cry if Mother Nature helps them along with that
decision, as she did with our young neighbor who went
out with a bang.
Somebody's also going to accuse me of being unsympathetic
to the emotionally troubled. On the contrary. Twice, I
came this close to suicide myself. This close. I couldn't
do it for whatever reason. Cowardice, I thought at the
time. Cockeyed optimism, I believe in retrospect. Whether
my death would have been the right thing or not, you can
judge for yourself. I can say only that I've been down
there in that emotional pit. I know the territory. And
I still won't cry for anyone who chooses to climb out
on the death side rather than the life side.
Finally, some do-gooders will point out that both young
men in my examples were on some form of drug, and that
if they'd just had "help," they might have chosen to lead
bright, happy lives. Yawn. Yeah, lots of people do quit
drugs and get happier. Just as lots of people stay on
drugs and are perfectly happy, too. And the rest of us
can be miserable or happy while unstoned, cold, sober.
Some people use drugs. Others choose to give up their
sovereignty over themselves and let drugs use them. In
either case the person is following his or her own choices.
I don't care if you teetotal or mainline Drano. You're
in charge, and what you do with your life, drugged or
undrugged, is your own decision.
All of this, of course, goes against the current fashion.
We are supposed to call everything we don't like a "disease,"
mourn every idiot who dies by misadventure, and hold everyone
responsible for everything except the person actually
doing the deed. We are supposed to ban the guns with which
someone might commit the most efficient suicide. (Hmmm,
can we ban natural gas, as well?) And we are supposed
to help, help, help endlessly, whether we want to or not.
And whether the helpee wants to be helped or not, which
is even worse.
I say, hooray for the folks with the guts to make their
own life and death decisions, and a tip of the hat to
those self-destructive bravos who have the mercy to die
young before they do a lot more inevitable harm to themselves
or others.
Now, that's not to say I favor suicide. I certainly didn't
favor my own when I reached that long-ago decision point.
I merely favor choice, and respecting choices, and recognizing
responsibility for choices. And that brings me to the
final, entirely self-serving, conclusion of this little
screed.
Recently, I wrote an irritating book called 101 Things
to Do 'Til the Revolution. It's irritating, that is,
to people who like power and imposed order, and who don't
like us members of the rabble thinking for ourselves.
(More relaxed folks have told me the book is quite a lot
of fun.)
Acquaintances have suggested that this book is going
to get me in certain kinds of trouble. My publisher says
I'll end up in jail. An attorney says the charge will
be sedition. Several friends have suggested I'll be "Fosterized"
or die by "Arkancide." Personally, I feel this latter
prediction is overly dramatic. Goodness, if the political
powers-that-be Fosterized all their critics, they'd be
building graveyards as fast as they're now building prisons.
The simple fact is, I'm probably too insignificant to
Fosterize. At least, for the moment.
However, if you do hear a report of my death...if, perhaps,
you learn that I tied myself up, carried myself into the
woods without getting dirt on my shoes, and shot myself
in several hard-to-reach places with various calibres
of handgun...I hope you'll remember that I think suicide
is a fine idea. But not for me.
