Death to Make a Living

To Whom It May Be None of Your Concern,

Call it naivety, stupidity or a combination of the two; my dumbass thought I could be a writer and actually support myself financially. I quickly discovered that this wasn’t the case. Go ahead, I’ll give you a moment to laugh…

A man of meager means it doesn’t take much for me to survive.  A small room, cigarettes, beer, one meal a day, and a few other miscellaneous vices are all I really want or need. And they fall in that order of importance. With the exception of washing pots at a restaurant, I barely have any money coming in to support such a flawed lifestyle. Right from the start poordom seemed to be a predisposition.     

However an opportunity presented itself. A one-off, seedy shortcut where my writing ability has resulted in monetary compensation. But it turns out that it comes at a much bigger cost. 

It all started when I was waiting for the train home from work. As I mentioned I cheat on my writing with my side job and we do it in the minimum wage position. I got to the station and had about a half hour before my train was scheduled to arrive. I lit a Newport to kill time as well as myself. 

Of course, within seconds of sparking up, someone approached me and asked for a loosey. He looked like he needed it so I gave him one. I knew the struggle and how real it could get. The guy looked to be in his late 20’s, but was physically aging faster than that. He already had a significantly receding hairline and was rather blatantly balding. He wore the gaunt, pale expression of man at the end of his wits. Stressed was not a word that could have done him justice. Hopeless seemed more justified. He was all body with a diminished soul.  

With the bummed cigarette came the pointless chit-chat. This led to me having to sit through him complaining about his life. Anytime someone bums a smoke they instantly go into telling you about their problems. Sometimes it’s easier to vent to a stranger because the preconceived notions aren’t there. The man introduced himself as Randy.

I had nothing to do but wait for my train and listen. I quickly found out that Randy wasn’t giving me the typical hard-luck tale I was used to. He was entrenched in legitimate despair. He went on this long soliloquy on how his girlfriend of nine years had been getting dicked down behind his back. Up until finding out he was planning on proposing to her and had bought the engagement ring and everything. He even pulled it out of his pocket and showed it to me. It looked expensive. He’d spent a fortune on a hoe. Many men have done the same.    

I tried to trade stories of misery and told him about my struggles with writing and life in general. It was a heartfelt and depressing exchange between two strangers. Woe is us and all that crap. Although Randy’s ally in sorrow he barely even acknowledged my sorrow. It did pale in comparison, but shit, I’m depressed too man. Let’s match sympathetic energies, otherwise I might as well be a damn volunteer psychiatrist. Sorrow isn’t a contest but humanity tends to treat it as such.   

Out of nowhere Randy blurted out, “I think I’m just going to kill myself.” I assumed this was just some metaphorical unhappiness statement, so I jokingly responded, “Hey man, let me know if you need anyone to write your suicide note. I could really use the work.” I laughed. It was supposed to be an obvious joke. But Randy took it to heart. 

“A note. I didn’t even think about that. I would like to leave a note behind.”

“Wait. So you’re really thinking about offing yourself?” 

“I’m already dead,” he coldy replied.  

I could see the headlights of my train in the distance. I was glad because I wanted to get out of there. 

“Sorry Randy, this is my train coming up. But good luck with everything. And…uhh…uhhh… don’t kill yourself. A good friend of mine once told me, ‘Bitches ain’t shit.’ Just take this as a lesson and keep it pushing. There’s more pussy in the ocean, or fish in the sea. However the saying goes.” 

I was trying to give him a few last words of encouragement but didn’t do a very good job. 

“You got to help me write the letter!” he insisted. 

I kept walking towards the train with my back towards him. The car door opened and I was just about to hop on when I heard Randy scream, in one last desperate attempt. 

“I’LL PAY YOU!”

When my train left the station I was not on it. 

The two of us walked to a local bar that I went to all the time. Randy and I sat down in a booth and  began drawing up the blueprint for his suicide letter.  “Alright. So what do you want me to write?” I asked. Randy paused. He wasn’t sure. He knew that he wanted to go but didn’t know what he wanted to say on the way out. 

“You want to say, like, a final goodbye? I’ll make it all dramatic, and shit.”

“It’s hard to put into words…”

“Well, that’s kinda what you’re paying me for. You gotta help me out a little.”

“I guess…..Well….You see…..”

He couldn’t spit it out.

“What exactly happened? I guess we can start there,” I said. “You told me that the bitch cheated on you. I’d be pissed too, don’t get me wrong. I’m not underestimating how you feel. But offing yourself seems a little extreme.”

Finally he spoke up.

“When that’s all you live for, and it ends up being taken away from you, killing yourself seems a lot easier than finding something else to live for.”

“You sure you even need me? You might as well write the letter yourself. I would have never come up with something like that,” I replied.  I wrote his exact quote down on the napkin I was using to take notes. I ended up putting that line in the final draft. It’s bad enough I was writing a suicide letter for someone but I was plagiarizing the suicidee on top of it. I really ain’t shit when I think about it.

 I ended up sitting at the bar with Randy for over two hours as he expressed every emotion that he wanted to leave behind. Based on the limited interaction I had with him I was surprised at the lasting impression Randy wanted to make. He wasn’t capable of putting his disdain for his own life down into his own words. And now all of a sudden he wanted to be remembered as poetic. It was kind of poethetic. He longed for a flowery description of his hidden inner turmoil and unhappiness. 

Personally, I felt that a suicide letter would be better off as a short story. Why not take the time and fully express everything that was fucking you up, as opposed to some barely readable fancy, intellectual crap? Leave behind a more honest work of creativity, at least.

I eventually finished the letter and showed it to Randy and he approved. Apparently I was able to accurately capture what he was feeling. Despair isn’t foreign to me, regardless of the form in which it is presented. It’s amazing how much easier it is to relate to someone depressed as opposed to someone who is genuinely happy. However, at the time, I still didn’t see the point in offing yourself. To take it to such an extreme. Although I’ve been suicidal at times, I never felt as though I’d be able to actually go through with it. The worst thing about suicide is that you don’t live long enough to really enjoy it. It’s a waste of time. But try telling that to someone who feels like they’re already a waste to begin with.  

Randy agreed to pay me two hundred dollars for a two page letter. I thought two-hundred dollars was a lot. But, then again, I was providing a service. Being that he didn’t need his money anymore Randy felt paying me that amount was deserving of the time I was taking out to “help” him. I honestly did feel guilty the whole time but being broke will make you do crazy things. Blame it all on my bank account and societal sadness. Blood isn’t on my hands. Just in the ink. That’s what I’ve been trying to convince myself, at least. A psalm of desperation. 

“Thank you, Bud. I really appreciate you doing this for me.”

“Sure thing. But just because the letter is complete, doesn’t mean that your life is, necessarily. Just think it over.”

“You want to know how I’m going to do it?”

“No,” I replied. 

I didn’t want to hear the particulars. It would only make it realer than I needed it to be. We parted ways and I never saw Randy again. And if his plan went accordingly, neither would anybody else. A few days later I was paging through a newspaper and saw Randy’s photo in the obituary section. He’d gone through with it. He was a man of his word, which makes it even sadder that he was no longer here. 

I ripped the newspaper apart and threw it in the trash as if the memory would be discarded as well. But I knew better. I looked around my apartment and zeroed in on the things I’d squandered Randy’s money on. A case of cheap beer that was already gone. Dozens of punched out cigarette butts scattered on ashtrays and empty cans. A bunch of scratch-off lottery tickets, all of which were losers just like me. If I had the ability to cry I just might have.   

A few more days passed and I ended up going to the same bar I had gone to with Randy.  My eyes went right to the booth where we sat that night. That was my go-to booth but I could see the memory of Randy sitting there so I sat at the bar instead.  I knew the owner of the place, Al, and I tried to order a beer.

“Can’t do it Bud,” he told me.  

“The fuck? How come? I’m your best customer.”

“I heard about what happened here last week.”

“Wait. What do you mean?” As if I didn’t know. As if I had thought about anything else since. 

“That guy you came in here with, last Tuesday. Word is that you helped him off himself, or something like that.” 

“Who the fuck told you that?” I felt a gnawing in the pit of my stomach and I began to sweat. 

“Two cops came in here last night looking for you. I tried calling you but it went right to voicemail.”

My phone was off and I couldn’t afford to get it back on. 

“I didn’t help him kill himself. I just wrote a letter for him. He would have done it whether I wrote that shit or not.” 

“Yeah? Well, either way. You gotta leave. I can’t have that kinda heat in here. My liquor license expired weeks ago. The toilets got shit rising to the top. The last thing I need is cops running in and out of here checking for shit.” 

“I understand. You know how they found out it was me?”

“I have no idea. They didn’t say. All I know is that they know. The guy must have told somebody.”

“I’m fucked…” 

I got up from the stool and went to shake Al’s hand as a last goodbye. But he left me hanging. He glared at me intensely, eye to eye, to the point where shame forced me to look at the floor. 

“You’re a piece of shit for doing what you did,” I heard him say.

“Look, I’m not exactly happy about all of this either. But I needed the money,” I replied. As if that validated anything.

“Just get the fuck outta here. And I’m serious. Don’t come back.”

“Alright, alright. I heard you the first time,” I replied in a rather hostile fashion. But that was only to cover up the fact that I knew I was in the wrong. I turned around and started to walk out. I got to the door and I heard Al’s voice from behind me.

“How much did the guy end up paying you?”

“Two-hundred bucks…”

“Two-hundred bucks? For all that why not just help the guy out? I always knew you weren’t much, but I never thought you’d sell your soul that cheap.”

And on that note, I left. No real friends. No real family. Not even a bartender.  

There’s nothing dirtier than making bread off the dead. And those with morals knew that. I’m no better than a biographer, or someone who profits off a dead musician’s posthumous album. On top of it I could take a full blown shit on all of my work. There isn’t a chance in hell that anyone is going to publish someone who authored a black market death note. That is why I vow to only do one last suicide letter in my career, and judging by the state of my life at this moment, now seems about as good a time as ever to write it. 

So here it is. Remember? I said that a suicide letter would be much better as a short story. Not two pages of intellectual, flowery nonsense that attempts to romanticize how I’d be remembered. I’m not going to sugar-coat the lack of character in this story’s main character. Hopefully someone will find this and sell it to some publication, and then somebody that I don’t even know can profit off of it. It would be appropriate considering the circumstances. I’d finally have  my first published work, however. So maybe it won’t be that bad. I might even get famous.. They may say I died for my art. When in reality I was a sell-out who barely got paid. I tried to validate my actions by claiming to be broke, financially. But it was the spirit that was broken all along. Quite the plot twist. Don’t ya think? You can’t write this stuff.  

Sincerely ashamed,

Bud E. Ice