ns and alcohol, and any one of them could have been stanched, given enough warning. But there was no warning.
He wasn't the only one who brought a gun to the party. I spent New Year's out West with Mark two years ago; and he, his fiancée and his brother all brought guns to shoot off at midnight. But too much alcohol got in the way, and they never got around to it. This time, nobody got around to it, either. Except Mark.
Maybe the only sympathetic or sensical answer is that it was an accident. I'm not hopeful enough to think he was aiming for the sky. I think his aim, at least, was intentional. But it wasn't suicide either. I try to explain this to people; nobody gets it. The pieces fit together like a suicide, but I don't think he got up …show more content…
I might have been drinking; honestly, I don't remember. I had all the things that cause a tear in the depressive personality: no money, no lover, a dead-end job cruelly draining my youth. So out the window I went. I didn't plan it. I didn't even look down. Hanging high above the F.D.R. Drive in my underwear, I thought, So that's what this is like. I certainly didn't think, It's all over when I let go. After 30 seconds or so, I got tired, so I kicked my leg up and got back into bed. That's kind of how it went with me back then. Not the ugly, desperate, hanging-out-of-windows thing, but the I-wonder-what-happens-when-I-do-this …show more content…
I had moved here for a magazine internship, one that didn't offer much in the way of inspiration or vie de bohème (or cash), and soon all the troubles of being rudderless set in. I ran across Mark, someone I knew from home. In high school, we'd courted the same girls and stayed out late drinking with the girls we were courting. Mark was a card-trick genius, a bright-eyed under-age Johnny Cash alky. We would end up at strangers' parties together; on the way home, driving through the foothills, he would hang onto the car roof while I took the turns too hard. At 16, he told my Bible-proud mother on her own doorstep on Easter Sunday that he was an atheist.
You may think that I'm being too smart-alecky for someone whose friend just died. Trust me, Mark would have wanted it this way -- except he wouldn't have used the word ''aleck.''
Last December, when I last saw him, his new favorite song was some bluegrass thing called ''Broken Telephone'': The lines are down. . . . Connection's gone. Over a Mexican breakfast, we got to talking about guns, and then his guns, and then -- after I'd reflexively berated him for owning them -- about the beauty of machinery. There was no suicide
note. The whole guns-at-midnight thing could have been a ruse, a detailed and protracted ruse. But I don't think so. There was a lot going on with Mark, room for roiling in his enormous
He wasn't the only one who brought a gun to the party. I spent New Year's out West with Mark two years ago; and he, his fiancée and his brother all brought guns to shoot off at midnight. But too much alcohol got in the way, and they never got around to it. This time, nobody got around to it, either. Except Mark.
Maybe the only sympathetic or sensical answer is that it was an accident. I'm not hopeful enough to think he was aiming for the sky. I think his aim, at least, was intentional. But it wasn't suicide either. I try to explain this to people; nobody gets it. The pieces fit together like a suicide, but I don't think he got up …show more content…
I might have been drinking; honestly, I don't remember. I had all the things that cause a tear in the depressive personality: no money, no lover, a dead-end job cruelly draining my youth. So out the window I went. I didn't plan it. I didn't even look down. Hanging high above the F.D.R. Drive in my underwear, I thought, So that's what this is like. I certainly didn't think, It's all over when I let go. After 30 seconds or so, I got tired, so I kicked my leg up and got back into bed. That's kind of how it went with me back then. Not the ugly, desperate, hanging-out-of-windows thing, but the I-wonder-what-happens-when-I-do-this …show more content…
I had moved here for a magazine internship, one that didn't offer much in the way of inspiration or vie de bohème (or cash), and soon all the troubles of being rudderless set in. I ran across Mark, someone I knew from home. In high school, we'd courted the same girls and stayed out late drinking with the girls we were courting. Mark was a card-trick genius, a bright-eyed under-age Johnny Cash alky. We would end up at strangers' parties together; on the way home, driving through the foothills, he would hang onto the car roof while I took the turns too hard. At 16, he told my Bible-proud mother on her own doorstep on Easter Sunday that he was an atheist.
You may think that I'm being too smart-alecky for someone whose friend just died. Trust me, Mark would have wanted it this way -- except he wouldn't have used the word ''aleck.''
Last December, when I last saw him, his new favorite song was some bluegrass thing called ''Broken Telephone'': The lines are down. . . . Connection's gone. Over a Mexican breakfast, we got to talking about guns, and then his guns, and then -- after I'd reflexively berated him for owning them -- about the beauty of machinery. There was no suicide
note. The whole guns-at-midnight thing could have been a ruse, a detailed and protracted ruse. But I don't think so. There was a lot going on with Mark, room for roiling in his enormous