Live To Death: F*%k That Guy (12)

“You ready to order?” The blonde woman asked me in her thick polish accent.  Ever since I moved to into the apartment on my own, I had been eating breakfast at this place down by Queen St. and Triller Ave. 

“Eggs benny, coffee and water please.” I said, rattling off my standard order.  The small family owned diner was quiet that Tuesday morning.  The bright white floor and deep red chairs and tables gave off a pseudo modern vibe.  The two old men standing in the kitchen awaiting my order looked on from the open kitchen as I rattled off my request to their young niece. 

I grabbed a paper off the recently abandoned table next to me a stared at the front page.  Though my thoughts were not with the story, but with the dreams of that night at Bathurst station I had been having.  It was as if they were reminding me that there was no escape from the shit feelings I had been dealing with.  

I have known for a long time my exit wouldn’t be till I was an old man or a sick one.  Truth be told killing yourself is just a fucking inconvenience to so many.  It shatters your family, whose jobs are affected, and there for coworkers, their friends, their lives.  And, if you do it by jumping in front of a train like I wanted to then you waste the time of the entire cities transit department, and the literally hundreds of thousands of people.  The echo of every suicide is felt by thousands.  

 You don’t get the right to fuck with that many people's lives just because you don’t want to deal with your pain anymore.  It’s selfish, I was being selfish.  I'm well aware depression is a metal health issue that you cannot control, but what you do about it.  That you can control. 

  As soon as I finished what is to this day the best eggs benny I have ever had, I left the restaurant and started my walk to my apartment just four short blocks away.  I strolled through the cold but bus streets dodging hipster after hipster as I contemplated my situation. 

A post meal cigarette will help get the juices flowing.  That first deep haul always had such a sweet sting to it.  I had to try and come up with a way to get better so I tried to think about the times that I'm not depressed.  As I mulled over it as I passed the old run-down pharmacy.  I come to a stop at Jamison Ave and wait for the green light. 

The only time that I'm not depressed is when I'm working.  I thought to myself about how every time I build something or drive a fork my deep sadness just melts away and I feel, well not necessarily happy, but I don’t wanna swallow a bullet and I’d call that a plus! I took another drag off my smoke.  I really have to try and get some gigs booked.  I gotta build. 

The next day I had no gig and no work at the dock.  I usually picked up a Saturday shift but there wasn’t one available.  So, there I found myself, bored and doing nothing.  The exact opposite of what I need to be doing to deal with my depression.  I got up from my computer and looked around my small closet of an apartment.  My dirty clothes were strewn across my brown tile floor, the couch had become a glorified shelf as did my kitchen counter and small two foot by two-foot table that sat between the couch and kitchen counter.   

The counter had become my primary storage area.  Bare where the cupboards meant to house my plates, mugs and glasses.  Those where firmly planted on the kitchen counter in various states of cleanliness.  My bathroom wasn’t filthy, but it sure wasn’t fuckin’ clean.                                                                   

It was the only thing I had to kill time and occupy my mind.  So, I cleaned.  Every corner, nook and cranny.  Seven hours, four garbage bags and a lot of rags later my apartment was spotless.  All I had left was laundry which was an easy fix with the washing machines down stairs.  After loading the machine and marching back up to my first-floor apartment I sat in front of my computer and loaded up yet another YouTube video.   

I realized something, something earth shattering, ground breaking and whatever cliched phrase you want to say.  I didn’t feel like complete shit.  The combination of having done something and not living in a god damn pig pen actually made me feel good.  I then realized something else. 

“I have nothing to do tomorrow.” I said out loud. “What the hell should I do to feel good.?”   I looked back at my computer and was struck the you red and white simplicity of the webpage's logo.  “YouTube.” I said to myself. 

The next day I set up one light, and used the webcam built into my computer and filmed my first episode of “The Nerd Knows.”  If I remember right, I talked about a couple comics that had just come out and I made fun of the Arrow trailer.  I got maybe twenty or thirty views, that was more people listening to me than I have in my everyday life.   

For the next month my routine was regular, Drive to work, Drive at work, Drive home, clean, write and shoot a video sleep repeat.  I was still doing all my grocery shopping at 3:30 am, in a city of over 3 million I barley saw anyone.  That used to depress me but now I had grown in different to it, I was too busy. 

I wasn’t just driving fork during this time though.  I had actually gotten a few odd gigs over the winter.  It was helping me gain confidence in what I was doing with my work.  When I wasn’t trying to create entertainment with my YouTube, I was doing it at shows, events and big parties at skyscrapers downtown.   

Spring was getting closer and so was the summer concert season.  I didn’t hate driving fork but I did hate my boss.  Now the story I’m about to tell you is, grey, morally speaking.  So, I get a call on Thursday. 

“Hey Jae it’s Rand.” Rand was a Booker for my newest client I.N.H. Productions. 

“Hey man.” I said as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. 

“I have a gig tomorrow night, $25.00 and hour, you’d be on the lighting crew.” 

“Umm.” I thought about it for a second.  If I take the gig, I have to call in sick to the dock.  After a moment I realized they could deal without me being there for one night.  “Yeah I can do that.” 

So, I do the gig, call in sick to the dock…kind of.  See I had been sick a couple times that month.  Kept waking up sick to my stomach.  I knew calling in sick wasn’t really the best option.  So, what does one do in this situation? 

“Hey there, It’s Jae.” I said to my boss over the phone.  “I just got a call from my sister.  My father has had a heart attack, I have to get back to London to be with him, so I won’t be in today.” 

I know, I know, it’s a low move but let’s be real.  At least half of you mother fuckers reading this have done something similarly messed up in a desperate attempt to get a day off.  I wasn’t even taking that day off.  I was accepting more money to go do another job behind there back.  I was learning a lot about prostitution in the great Canadian show biz scene. 

Anyway, the next Monday I showed up to work and my boss comes up to me. 

“Where were you on Friday?” He asked 

“I called in; you didn’t get the message?” I asked him 

“Yes, I got it, your father, but Jae.” 

“Yeah.” I said 

“That doesn’t get my trucks unloaded.” 

“My father had a heart attack dude.” 

“I almost did to.  Don’t let it happen again.” He said 

I fumed this short little SriLaken mother fucker, HE DOESN’T KNOW I WAS FULL OF SHIT.  HE WANTS ME TO PUT THIS JOB AHEAD OF MY TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY HEALTHY FATHER.  FUCK YOU ASSHOLE! 

“Sure, thing boss.” I said.  I was gonna fuck that little man over the first chance I got. 

Now I know that a normal human reading this would think that me being upset about him acting like that would clearly show he knew I was full of shit.  See that’s the thing about us stagehands, actors, writers, whatever the position that’s in show business you can name, we are all at least a little bit fucked in the head. 

Even though I know logically I shouldn’t have been upset with him, to this day all I can think is. 

“FUCK THAT GUY!” 

Live To Death: The Bathurst Revelation (11)

I snapped awake, my head raising from its hanging position as I sat on a cold steel bench.   

Click click swoosh, click click swoosh, click click swoosh.  The familiar sound rang out from a black trench that was in front of me.  A yellow line, the only guard between me and the seemingly bottom less pit.  As I looked to my left, I saw a teal colored wall adorned with a strange grey grid pattern on it.   

The familiarity of the long room struck me, like a home I once lived in.  I looked at the wall behind me and it too was teal with the same grey grid pattern.  But it had a name on it, fuzzy and out of focus I couldn’t make out the letters exactly. 

Click click swoosh, click click swoosh, click click swoosh.  Fuck, it looked so familiar but the frustration that I couldn’t recognize where it was lit a wick of anger in the pit of my stomach.  I stepped back as the noise of the train grew louder and faster. 

With the high-pitched screech of steel wheels grinding against the polish rails.  The out of focus Room snapped in to a sharp image.  My memory was complete and as I stared at the name on the wall and came to a disappointing realization. 

“I know.” I said as I hung my head both in disappointment and shame as I stood in front of the name on the teal tiled wall.  “I know I can’t” 

I opened my eyes and stretched in my bed as the smell of stale cigarettes and dirty sox filled my nasal cavity.  I sat up, placing my feet on the cold brown tile of my tiny apartment.  I reached over to my kitchen counter and grabbed a pack of smokes, reaching Into grab one. 

“Fuck.” I said discovering it was empty.  I threw it to the other side of the room, sorry, apartment, and reached for a fresh pack.  As I sucked on the fire of my cancerous pleasure, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked at the time.  0730. 

“Oh yay, I got almost three hours of sleep.”  I said to myself. 

I spent the next several hours catching up on some tv shows and YouTube videos before heading out.  Drive to work, Drive at work, Drive home.  After work I'd make my 2 am visit to the grocery store in nearby liberty village and then head back to the confines of my apartment where I would eat my Kraft diner and drink some beers while surfing the poisonous wave of late night social media conversations. 

The only person I talked to in real life was this guy that lived in the building next to me.  He would stroll by my window at three or four in the morning with whatever bottles, broken electronics or discarded paper he found in his dumpster diving that evening.  I can’t remember his name.  To be honest, he was kind of a god damned ninja. 

One-night I'm sitting there at almost four in o’clock in the morning, half in the bag trying to jerk off to some seriously perverted shit online, then I hear from just outside my window. 

“Hey Jae.” said quietly from the shadows for the ultimate creep factor. 

“Jesus! "I said startled.  of course, he couldn’t see what I was doing.  He had to look up at my window so from his perspective I was just a head and shoulders.  He always creeped up like that, he was a really strange guy but mostly harmless, I think. 

Outside of that occasional chat my life was largely a lonely one.  My depression was becoming far more compounded.  It’s not like I wanted to die or anything.  Well, I knew I couldn’t, not by my own hand anyway.  That was just not an option, not for me, not anymore.  Not thanks the Bathurst revelation. 

************************************ 

Winter, 2008 

Bathurst subway station 

19:30 

It was freezing that night.  Another minus thirty-five evening, my nose was froze inside with every breath I took in.  My thin lamb skin leather coat did little to protect me from the arctic like weather.  It had a number of small holes and tares not to mention the liner wore away on it ages ago.  it was a glorified sweater.   

My work boots weren’t in much better shape.  They were so old the steel toes had become exposed and the idea that they were still water proof is obviously a laughable one, so wet and cold feet for my little stroll. 

I was walking north bound on Bathurst street.  I was almost at Dundas street.  To my left, on the other side of the street, was a red Buddhist temple.  On my right was a park with a more Canadian temple.  A hockey rink used by the neighborhood and a couple times a year The Maple Leaf's. 

Unfortunately, my boots being in the shape they were my flat feet where causing me some trouble.  My hips and lower back ached more with every step.  I had already been on my feet all day and when I got home and my girlfriend asked me to leave for a few hours so she could have the place to herself.  She did this almost every day and for some reason I was ok with it.  I wasn’t of course, it killed me that she would rather be alone then spend a few hours with me before I crash.  But I had figured out a solve for my problems. 

I had moved to Toronto to be a musician, but instead I have had failed audition after failed audition for full time band positions.  Reasons ranged from “your too big.” to “you're not big enough” and my favorite “you're not the right type of big.”  Notice a theme among those reasons, non-had anything to do with my skill as a musician and everything to do with my look. 

One thing I learned; the Toronto music scene is as shallow as a wading pool.  I remember my girlfriend, who was in bands, telling me “I don’t have to be good at bass, I have big tits.”  The bitch was fuckin’ right.  Another reason to add to the list of my justifications.   

I was fast approaching my destination.  I was passing the old Honest ed’s.  An ironic name for a man that fucked so many contractors.  He had a great public image, but as far as the trades men he hires rumor has it he wasn’t one for paying up.  Just another rich person with a shiny public image.  I snorted at the building; my head was going from extreme self-hatred to extreme, miss placed anger. 

My day job was not awesome.  The pay kept getting cut because of this god damned recession.  My hands where cut up from the sheet metal I was constantly forming into shape during the day.  No matter how hard I worked, no matter what I did to save money, pay got cut.  Last month I found a way to save fifty thousand a year in material costs, my pay got cut by two bucks an hour a week and a half later.  

I passed the Pizza Pizza and across from the old church she sat.  Bathurst street subway station.  My exit.  I lumbered over and snuck into the station through one of the street car entrances.  I didn’t have any money on me.  I figured I wouldn’t need it so bad, so I left it on the table at home to help out the girl friend.  It would be tough times for her, though since she has had me sleeping in another room and barely seemed to care about me unless it was when my presence annoyed her, the tough times would largely be financial. 

I Felt the air punch me in the face as another subway entered the station.  I had found a cold steel bench on the east bound platform to rest my fat ass upon.  I looked up at the information screen to see how long till the next train, the last train.   

“Five minutes.” I said to myself.   

I patted my pocket to ensure the notes I had written to my mother, father and sister where secure in place, wrapped in plastic to protect them from any splatter or leakage.  I figured a train would be a sure-fire method of suicide.   

I had tried once before.  A few years back, I tried to take one last swing in a closet in my old apartment.  The cross bar I tried my rope around broke under my weight.  I’ll be honest that stung, when part of the reason I was doing it was because I felt like a fat piece of shit and I failed because, well, fat.  Who ever said large quantities of butter and chocolate doesn’t save lives is a liar. 

I looked up at the screen again, Three more minutes. 

“Last minutes.”  I said.   I got up and started to walk closer to the entrance of the station.  I didn’t want this guy having time to hit the brakes.   

Click click swoosh, click click swoosh, click click swoosh. SKREeee. The vicious sounds echoed in the distance of the dark tunnel.  The wind slowly started to pick up in the teal colored station, and as did my heart rate.  I peeked my head down the tunnel and saw it coming, the light. 

Click click swoosh, CLICK CLIK SQREEE, CLICK SQREEE.  Closer it drew the ground began to vibrate beneath me.  I dug in the ball of my foot, ready.  My breath quickened and my eyes filled with tears.  The notes the rested securely in my pocket pressed against my chest felt as though they were screaming at me.  The wind punched me in the face as the train burst into the station broke the surface tension of the tears in my eyes, sending the salty liquid down my cheeks. 

“Fuckin’ coward.” I said to myself as I missed an opportunity.  I took the notes from my breast pocket and shoved them in my right pants pocket.  I waited and re positioned myself.  That old familiar song started playing ever to gently. 

Click click swoosh, click click swoosh. I steadied my breath and struggle to hold back the tears and shakes.  I knew this was the right thing to do, for my friends and family.  They didn’t need a burden like me in their lives.   

Click click swoosh, click click swoosh, CLICK CLICK SWOOSH  

I needed to do this, I had to get rid of this shit in my head.  I shifted my weight back and forth. 

CLICK CLIK SCREE, CLICK SCREE SCREEEEEE, CLICK CLICK SWOOSH.  Louder and louder my exit was almost there.  As it approached, my pants pocket seemed almost electrified, as if the notes in my pocket where holding me back. 

Again, I'm punched in the face by the bow wind of the train followed by the obnoxiously loud screech that accompanied the brakes.  I stood still, like a statute as a few people walked by me as they exited the train and went upstairs to the streetcars and busy street. 

“Fuck!” I said in a raised voice, my vocal punctuation gently echoed off the walls.  I was pissed.  “These FUCKING THINGS!”  I said as I ripped the notes out of my pocket and threw them on the track.  “I’ll just fucking meet you down there.”  I knew the officials would figure it out who the notes belonged to.  

I stood in complete silence, each second as eternally long as a Lord of The Rings movie.  Then I heard the song again.   

Click click swoosh, click click swoosh. Click click swoosh. 

My heart began to race, again.  My eyes began to tear up, again.  The energy with in me ready to explode. 

Click click swoosh, click CLICK SWOOSH, CLICK CLICK SWOOSH SCREEEE.  The two-hundred-ton executioner roared and screeched its way down the steel rails toward me.  This time I just stood beside the tracks.  I looked down at the light of the executioner as it approached.   

Just then, seconds before the train hit me spreading my insides all over the letters of demented affection I had left for my family my heart rate slowed.  My muscles relaxed and I took a step falling back just as the train entered the station.  I was disappointed, but I knew my decision was sound as my fat butt made contact with the steel bench on the platform again. 

I just stared at the train cars as the doors closed, the electric motors spun up and the train left the station.  I looked at the empty track and new home of the letters to my family.  I spaced out as I looked over the tile walls.  My eyes track the grey square grid of grout that surrounded the teal tiles. 

My mind spun as a realized the truth about suicide.  I was telling myself I was doing this for everyone's good.  That’s not true though, I was doing this for my own selfish reasons.  I was about to shut down the subways, interupt the lives of thousands of strangers. I was about to cost my family a ton of money for a funeral, and a world of pain.  All for my own relief. 

“I know.”  I said to myself.
I knew that so long as i had dependants, so long as i had family and people that needed me to function i could never end my life.  For some people Love is about a warm feeling, but for some people it's a fight to the bitter end.  Tho different on the surface its all the same.  
So I decided I would live my pain, push through it.  Learn about it, recognize when I'm making terrible decisions because of it and try to find some sort of understanding.  I knew I may never be rid of it, but its not right of me to get rid of it that way.  Suicide, however you look at it, is only for those who really need it.  Sick and slowly dieing, or the elderly who simply have no one anymore and are happy to end a long lived life.  But it's not for those of us that are depressed and sad.  That pain is ours to carry.  I knew I just had to find the right way to carry it.