Illustration Credit: Aaron Cooper
Note from the informational ether: “Nosedive” is a collection of essays and narrative prose written by Ben Lee over the course of a year prior to his death. Per his will, I am posting these on his behalf with no changes made to his original text. He’s not that Ben Lee. He’s also fictional.
Part 1: Is Suicide Punk?
Chapter 7
On the last good day, nothing remarkable happened. Life had been that way for many years, first good then good but unremarkable. The good started, strangely enough, when I got a job per Allison’s decree.
Listen, I went to college for Political Science because nothing is more punk than a punk who actually knows what he’s talking about. Not to mention, the degree didn’t help me one bit in getting a job until I interviewed at the Plain Dealer to be a reporter on several local politics beats. And let me say that nothing is more surreal than covering the local politics of a dozen Cleveland suburbs. My boss, Terry, probably would have preferred I stuck mostly to the inner ring, but that’s not where the truly wild stuff occurred.
Get out to Parma or Rocky River or even further than that, and one finds pocket communities that identify as Clevelanders without ever setting foot anywhere outside a half mile radius of any stadium downtown. And one can find these people showing up at city council meetings to formally complain about each other while their elected legislators act as interpersonal mediators between neighbors.
At my interview, Terry didn’t avoid staring at the gap-nose. In fact, he studied it with the intentness my doctor showed after the accident. He looked for answers on my face like he was scouring my reaction for nonverbal clues as to who I was and what I was all about.
I should have worn my handkerchief or something, but I kept getting nervous that would be against etiquette. There’s nothing less punk than fucking around with interview etiquette, but weird things go through jittery minds when nervous.
“You’re not boring,” he laughed after a few extremely awkward minutes stood still in silence. “This beat is boring. Nobody gives a shit about any of it. Old people don’t even give a shit, you know?”
“I could make it interesting,” I said.
This was a lie of sorts. Before Terry called the beat “boring”, it never occurred to me I should have to make local politics anything but a deep cut thrown into the middle of the paper.
“How?” Terry asked.
I took a moment to think, but Terry took the moment back.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “You have a fascinating past. People want to know what the guy who shot off his own nose thinks about all this shit. My thinking is you write the policy articles, obviously. But I also need you to go beyond that, right? Do some articles about what the people think about whatever shit is going on, and you say what you think, too. Maybe you can do a weekly column. Put some personality into it.”
“So you want me to capitalize on my semi-celebrity as a guy who accidentally shot off his own nose?”
“That was an accident?”
“Well, I missed.”
“It took me a long time to track down some articles in those whatever you call them where you used to write,” Terry laughed. “And I have to be honest, your punk mags are pretty batshit. There’s some crazy anarchist terrorist shit in there. It’s really out there, but you have opinions. Write the facts, but also write your opinions because I know you have that in you.”
I shrugged and took the job.
At first, they didn’t care what I wrote but they cared about the where. Terry would hint that I should check out the inner ring more, and I’d ignore him and keep doing whatever I wanted to do. This was a job I never wanted. Losing it would be no big deal. But after a while, even the hints stopped and I was left to do whatever I wanted.
Some strange things happened so naturally that I’m unclear what order they occurred.
The X tattoos on my hands became an omen. We ran out of beer and I didn’t want liquor, so I kind of stopped drinking. I got tired of arguing with bartenders in punk joints about whether or not I should have a drink. Straightedge crept into my life unexpected.
Another crazy thing was the day I wandered into the newsroom and discovered I was happy to be there. Dave and I argued about The Wire during lunch and had a laugh when we realized he was talking about some TV show and I was talking about the mother fucking band. I polished off an article, feeling especially proud of the clean prose, which can be a difficult achievement for me. Skimming through my author page on the paper’s website, pride over came me for the work I had done over the past few years.
I loved my job and went home to tell Allison, but my entire insides shattered when she smiled at me, weary from her intern shift at the hospital. What people who aren’t bipolar don’t always understand is that things as simple as joy or love can kickstart a depression out of nowhere. Her blouse became a wet blanket where I could rest my face.
“Will you marry me?” I asked, curled safely into her body.
“I’m pregnant, so that’s a good idea,” she responded.
The place we began became the place where we began to end.
We invited her family to the house for our twin announcements. Amanda played a jaunty tune on the living room piano, something half-improvised and half-genius melody she would never allow into any of her real music. This served as theme music for our entrance and for Allison to stand in front of her family and clear her throat and summon all the glazed eyes to gaze at her.
“These aren’t as related as they’re going to seem,” Allison started with a chuckle. “Ben and I are engaged.”
“Who?” Amanda joked from the piano bench.
“Gun Show Guy!” Allison laughed.
“Also, Allison is pregnant,” I said, and her family cheered while I continued. “I didn’t know that when I proposed. I swear it!”
They probably didn’t hear me but they congratulated me one by one, passing away from me the moment the last syllable of every last word flickered from their mouths. Only her one remaining grandma stopped to talk to me (and long after the others surrounded Allison and nagged at her like a hive of bees stuck in a bottle).
“Big news,” the grandmother said.
Years of exercise and extensive plastic surgery formed the face of an ageless alien. She was living proof of the horrors of money. One can look however one wants to look, but at a certain point, a person makes a metamorphosis from a human to another creature entirely, the memory of “I am human” never sparked as a reminder when one looks in the mirror. Never a chorus singing that these normal-looking people are humans too.
I tend to get bored corresponding politely with humanity in the language of my people. That tended to bring out the bad moments in me, usually surrounded by my ex-wife’s family or friends. Before I accidentally slipped into being straightedge, I would begin awkwardly avoiding conversation with the people around me until I’d be drunk or high enough to interact. That would start the good part of the night, but no good part began here – just me and the grandmother, the smell of our twin breaths intermingling in this close proximity.
“We’ll pay for your nasal reconstruction,” she said. “We can’t have you looking monstrous for the wedding photos.”
“I’m happy how I am,” I said.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that because I could have told her all about my punk creed to not do cosmetic surgery or take money as some gift or bribe from rich assholes. I could have told her how every moment of my life rejected the very notion of accepting this offer. I could have told her that, but it was kind of dumb and I was tired of having a sinkhole in the middle of my face.
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” was all I said.
She nodded, taking my response about having no response to mean I’d do it, which I would.
Allison and I would pick out a new nose for me from thousands of choices. The bandages would come off. I’d get a promotion at work, Assistant Editor of Something or Another with a staff of three reporters working under me. Our baby would be born and happy. And then another baby. All these things happened leading up to the last good day. All these things blurred into one monotonous joy, only undercut by periods of inexplicable depression that almost didn’t seem to matter at all.
Having kids makes a deal (the most important deal) that one cannot kill oneself after they are born. It doesn’t matter how bad things get, it’s unfair to them to die on purpose. If God were real, this would be his main commandment – his divine truth. Once one has kids, death is no way out. This is apart from whether or not suicide is punk. It goes beyond punk because one’s kids are the most important thing – period.
One last thing.
The day the grandmother made her offer to pull me into normalcy, she also said something that I couldn’t shake until she died and my life pushed into a direction I never could have guessed.
“I have a secret,” she smirked.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “But I wrote it all down.”
On the last good day, I don’t remember exactly what happened. Over eleven years passed since I had met Allison, and I can’t say anything particularly interesting happened during that time. My life was a secret to me that I wish I had written down somewhere if only to account for the shape of it before it evaporated from memory.
I hate to break the fourth wall, but I’m stalling here because when I finish this chapter, that means I’ll start writing the next chapter. I don’t want to do that for the same reason I intend to die.
Is it punk to end a story on a shapeless ocean of unidentifiable happy memories?
No. Punk is truth.
The chapter will end here but the story will go on, told after a run of bad days and a secret revealed.