suicide pt. one
**I dug up some stuff on my Hard Drive from a bunch of years ago. This is one part of a High School assignment where we were to tell the same story in three different writing styles. This one was supposed to be a rough copy of David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, Supposedly Fun Things We'll Never Do Again) and Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow). I'm not sure how sucessful I was, but this was certainly the best of the three pieces, and it was the most fun to write. I wish they'd had us do this kind of shit in college, maybe I would have been proud of the fact that I was an english major, but then again... Probably not. So, the first suicide thing. and yes, it's supposed to be really badly puncuated and stuff.
David Benson had never thought of himself as suicidal, but then he had also never bargained on loosing his expensive job, his partner / wife and his N.Y., N.Y. pound-extracted mutt of a dog. And from up here, none of that mattered was what he would have been thinking, had a single coherent thought really been occupying space in his head. Instead, 50 stories up, peering onto the Hudson and the N.J. crackling towers by the turnpike that seemed as much a landmark in The City as the Statue of, well, Liberty, Dave, or Mr. D. Benson, as his x-employer at the firm had called him, was finally ready to end it, end his troubled life and go that route that so many had gone before him. The Cables of the bridge were humming in a malignant, nightmarish way, and David B. thought that he could perhaps maybe possibly see vague goatish figures capering (or more likely running, as nothing in this city truly capers) around one of the parks partially hidden by the immense city eating shadows that the skyscrapers created.
And but so the point is that Dave’s probably going to jump and hit the water at an extremely high speed, turning him from the highly invested in and educated piece of flesh that he is to just another mashed thing in the N.Y.C. morgue, chilling and waiting for his Westchester-residing family to I.D. the vaguely Dave Benson-like pieces that would sit coldly on the plastic. Dave thought about his reasons, remembering the old vacations to The Camp in Maine, N.E., U.S.A., and remembering how much more gratifying it was to pull crabs out of the low-tide seaweed than it was to close deals and SELL THAT STOCK, as all his training classes and mentors had urged. At this point, to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t, like, even care frankly about his fucking wife and her issues. Goddamn dog was never really any good anyway, its previous owner would beat it methodically and keep it tied up for days, and that kind of aftermath was something that D. Benson and his posh but shallow 20th floor apartment wouldn’t mix with, and well come to think of it, that apartment would have been pretty good to jump from. Hell, to tell the truth, it wasn’t even a choice, really, though. Thinking things incredibly fast, Dave just tilted, tilted towards the edge and it was done, he was away. Dave, like most human beings wasn’t meant to fly and his descent was almost spectacular to say something because the wall-street shirt bought at a nice store that he can’t remember is like flowing out behind him like some kind of white expensive fucking flag, and the sound is just down right strange as the usual bustling metro-rush-hour bridge honkings and screeches fade into a dull roar that fills his ears and he notices that his eyelids won’t stay shut and there is a queer sensation, not to use the word queer in any homosexual sense because that would go against the polite distrust that Dave B. had for gays, as he feels his body sort of peel and fold inward on it self and the colors and his boss’s office and the apartment and the fragile porcelain / plastic mix of his wife’s face and everything else about the damn City blur into blue and white streaks and Dave B.’s Body’s motions look oddly choreographed as he fades towards the water and finally as if to say enough already, he just hits the water with this hideous and horrendous and fucking huge slapping sound, sending practically Surfing waves away from him as he brokenly descends to mingle with the oysters, aborted babies and muck that inhabits the bottom of the Hudson, earning himself a notch on the Old Suicide rate and fading politely from everyone’s memory.
David Benson had never thought of himself as suicidal, but then he had also never bargained on loosing his expensive job, his partner / wife and his N.Y., N.Y. pound-extracted mutt of a dog. And from up here, none of that mattered was what he would have been thinking, had a single coherent thought really been occupying space in his head. Instead, 50 stories up, peering onto the Hudson and the N.J. crackling towers by the turnpike that seemed as much a landmark in The City as the Statue of, well, Liberty, Dave, or Mr. D. Benson, as his x-employer at the firm had called him, was finally ready to end it, end his troubled life and go that route that so many had gone before him. The Cables of the bridge were humming in a malignant, nightmarish way, and David B. thought that he could perhaps maybe possibly see vague goatish figures capering (or more likely running, as nothing in this city truly capers) around one of the parks partially hidden by the immense city eating shadows that the skyscrapers created.
And but so the point is that Dave’s probably going to jump and hit the water at an extremely high speed, turning him from the highly invested in and educated piece of flesh that he is to just another mashed thing in the N.Y.C. morgue, chilling and waiting for his Westchester-residing family to I.D. the vaguely Dave Benson-like pieces that would sit coldly on the plastic. Dave thought about his reasons, remembering the old vacations to The Camp in Maine, N.E., U.S.A., and remembering how much more gratifying it was to pull crabs out of the low-tide seaweed than it was to close deals and SELL THAT STOCK, as all his training classes and mentors had urged. At this point, to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t, like, even care frankly about his fucking wife and her issues. Goddamn dog was never really any good anyway, its previous owner would beat it methodically and keep it tied up for days, and that kind of aftermath was something that D. Benson and his posh but shallow 20th floor apartment wouldn’t mix with, and well come to think of it, that apartment would have been pretty good to jump from. Hell, to tell the truth, it wasn’t even a choice, really, though. Thinking things incredibly fast, Dave just tilted, tilted towards the edge and it was done, he was away. Dave, like most human beings wasn’t meant to fly and his descent was almost spectacular to say something because the wall-street shirt bought at a nice store that he can’t remember is like flowing out behind him like some kind of white expensive fucking flag, and the sound is just down right strange as the usual bustling metro-rush-hour bridge honkings and screeches fade into a dull roar that fills his ears and he notices that his eyelids won’t stay shut and there is a queer sensation, not to use the word queer in any homosexual sense because that would go against the polite distrust that Dave B. had for gays, as he feels his body sort of peel and fold inward on it self and the colors and his boss’s office and the apartment and the fragile porcelain / plastic mix of his wife’s face and everything else about the damn City blur into blue and white streaks and Dave B.’s Body’s motions look oddly choreographed as he fades towards the water and finally as if to say enough already, he just hits the water with this hideous and horrendous and fucking huge slapping sound, sending practically Surfing waves away from him as he brokenly descends to mingle with the oysters, aborted babies and muck that inhabits the bottom of the Hudson, earning himself a notch on the Old Suicide rate and fading politely from everyone’s memory.
posted by hotspur at 5:37 PM
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