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 8
They take every part of you, and life becomes only about them. This sounds bad. It isn’t. It’s a good thing. Life contracts a little bit, taking free time away so only the parts that matter remain. My children became those only parts that mattered.
That’s about as much as I’m going to talk about my kids. They aren’t a prop to gain sympathy. They aren’t a plot point in my life to coax tears from anyone who might be reading this. But I can’t tell my story without mentioning that they existed then one didn’t exist anymore. Don’t feel bad for my family. You don’t know my kids and you never will. Just read the last few paragraphs as a matter of history, as unfeeling and stoic as I wrote them.
We can make a trade. I won’t write about the bad thing that happened, but I can write about another bad thing — a thing I never told anyone (at least fully).
When I was about five or six years old, my best friend at the time sexually abused me, but it’s unfair to blame him at all for what he did to me. We were both victims of abuse here, and I’ll start with the part I’ve told people.
My mother and I were in the car on the way home from the day camp program at the camp where my father was director. We lived literally across the street in a huge, white farm house that was rumored to be haunted, but she picked me up on the way home from her job that was on the west side of Cleveland, and it was easier to just pick me up in the car.
(The haunted house thing is an interesting story in its own right, and even though it’s completely beside the point, I’d rather write about that than this, so I’m going to get sidetracked for a moment. There are two stories related to me specifically with this house, neither of which I remember directly but they’ve been told repeatedly throughout my life.
The first story took place when I was about three years old. My father was out of town, and my mother had me stay in their room with her. I get it. Whenever Allison was out of town, I wouldn’t have the kids in the bed, but I’d have my very good dog, Scooter, sleep in the room with me. It’s weird to have an empty bed when one is used to having another person there.
In the middle of the night, I popped up in bed, pointed into the open closet and said, “Look! There’s a family in there. They’re crying.”
My mother said, wearily, “That’s just a pile of clothes.”
“No. Behind the clothes.”
As a father, I know that kids say crazy shit all the time, and they double down on every batshit thing that comes out of their mouths. That’s probably what was going on here, but my mother always says that it freaked her out and she didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
The second story was a more ongoing situation where, over the course of years, I would always talk about how The People From The Light would come to visit me at night, which is a rad thing to call ghost or alien people. I’ve always been proud that four year old me came up with that, and the name alone always kind of gives me shivers when I talk about it. That shit is creepy, and I can say that without bias because I don’t remember the story myself and have become dissociated with it as a story about myself.
I told my parents they were mean guys but they were nice to me, and I told my mom they wanted me to kill her but I told them I wouldn’t. This was the 80s and we didn’t have a lot of money. Either my parents never thought to bring me to a therapist or they couldn’t afford it. They probably should have because clearly there’s something wrong with me.
After the camp fired my father as director, other people lived in that house, and my father always said that even they reported weird things happening in the house. I doubt it’s haunted, but it’s still strange.)
What I told my mother was that Alex asked me to do some things that made me feel uncomfortable, which is true. And that I didn’t do the things that made me feel uncomfortable, which is also true.
That wasn’t the whole story.
If they knew what happened to me with my friend Alex, that was another time my parents should have sent me to therapy but didn’t. Even with what I told them, I should have gone to therapy.
I’m not sure if therapy is punk or not. Strangely enough, I think it sort of is. I think it’s punk because for as aggressive and strange as punk is, at it’s core, the lifestyle is about making the world a better place. Only just now am I realizing how terrible I’ve made the world for everyone else, and I don’t blame anyone but myself but maybe therapy would have given me the chance to not be as broken as I am.
They also didn’t send me to therapy when it was clear I have Tourette’s and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. So many signs throughout my life that I was broken and couldn’t cope, and the best my parents could do was put me on Ritalin when I was diagnosed with ADHD, calming me down so I could get through a school system that didn’t bend itself to children who aren’t quite normal.
If I could have just gone to therapy, I could have been better than I am. Maybe then I would have put some good out into the world, and that’s punk. It really is. So yeah, therapy is pretty punk.
“What’d he ask you to do?” my mother asked.
“He wanted to put his penis in my mouth,” I said.
Through a gulp, she asked, “Did you?”
“No. I didn’t want to.”
“Okay,” she nodded.
From where I sat in the backseat of a car rumbling along the gravel road leading out from the camp, I couldn’t see her face. Knowing what I know now about how being a parent feels, I know she was crying. Although she never told me she was and I didn’t actually see, I know this is absolutely true because no parent who loves their child could hold back tears. No parent is that strong.
Assuming I’m right, she dried her tears by the time our car crossed Crackle Road and pulled into our own gravel driveway leading to the farmhouse as white as a ghost. She brought me inside. She called Alex’s dad. That day was the last day I ever saw my friend.
What I didn’t tell her (and haven’t told anyone until right now) is what I did want to do. He led with the big ask, the one I refused and about which I told my mother. Then he asked if I wanted to touch penises, which I did. He asked if I wanted to take turns putting our penises up to each other’s butts, which I agreed to do. We were too young to get erections, obviously, so we kind of just pressed nubs against each other.
I had no idea what sex was. To me, it was a weird game my friend wanted to play, so I went with it, and the thing that makes me feel most ashamed – what has kept me from telling even Allison through my whole life – is it was fun. At the time, that part wasn’t the thing I found weird.
And that pisses me off. Not that I thought it was fun, but that I feel so fucking ashamed about it. When I think about what happened that day, I think that people will think I’m gay when I’m not. And I hate that I’m afraid people will think I’m gay because who cares even if I were gay? I did nothing wrong on that day, but it’s my greatest shame, and I’ve spent thirty years never telling anyone because I am so embarrassed my friend convinced me to do some disturbing shit. What the fuck is wrong with this world where I’m the one who feels bad? What’s wrong with me that I feel bad about this? A therapist probably could have helped me figure out all of it.
Months later, my mother and I ran into Alex’s dad at the strip mall near our house. We chased him down as he was getting into his car. The man stood in a transitional state, halfway into his seat with his head poking up over the car door like he was spying on us over a fence.
“How is Alex?” my mother asked, out of breath from running with me in her arms halfway across the parking lot.
“It was his babysitter,” the dad said.
The monster had been abusing my friend for months, and what he did to my best friend, my best friend eventually did or tried to do with me. Like I said earlier, I don’t blame Alex at all. I blame this man for what happened to both of us. What he did to Alex was so much worse, anyway. Holy shit, was it worse.
The punchline to all of this was when his dad said, “He’s in therapy. We’re getting him help.”
Maybe that could have been me. Not the bad stuff. Not the torturous abuse. But the help. Right there in that moment, my mother could have made a decision to save me. I have no doubt she loved me when she was alive. I have no doubt both my parents did what they thought was best, but what the fuck?
“That’s great,” she said, and she put me down next to his car so she could hug him with the car door still acting as a barrier between them.
My entire life, I’ve thought a lot about what happened to Alex, probably at least once a week even in my most stable of times. Shame works that way. The good moments evaporate from memory but shame stays and brews and drips, drips, drips.
Someone murdered my son and got away with it. This is a weird reaction to have, but it’s strange the things adults do to children. Twice, I’ve seen the worst of it first hand, and I can’t help but be puzzled how anyone could do this to a child.
The day the worst thing happened, I found myself in a bar instead of at home with my family, who needed me. I know they did. We do selfish things.
“Do you know what you want?” the bartender asked.
“Whatever you have,” I said.
“There’s literally hundreds of choices.”
“I don’t care. Strong.”
“What about your hands?” he pointed to my Xs.
“The fuck about them?”
“I don’t know if you really want me to serve you.”
“Whiskey,” I said. “I like whiskey.”
Accidental Suicide isn’t exactly an overt attempt at killing oneself. If it were, it wouldn’t be an accident. It’s more akin to behavior that is especially risky but the person enacting that behavior doesn’t care about the consequences. It’s like not going to the doctor in the subconscious (or barely conscious) hope a disease will overtake one’s body. It’s like drinking in excess and driving home with the faint hope of never making it all the way back, rubbing the Xs on the back of one’s hands like they’re good luck charms.
That night, I almost died, but I didn’t. This was my second attempt at killing myself even if I wouldn’t openly admit it at the time. That night, I wish I had died. It would have been better for everyone if I had.
I think I already mentioned I should have gone to therapy.