Jealous

I am the first one to see my best friend’s dead body. He is sitting at his desk, facing the computer. Behind his chair is a suitcase hanging an inch or so above the ground with a rope tied around the handle. The other end of the rope is tied to his neck, which is stretched backwards over the top of the chair. His pants are around his ankles and his dick is in his hand. There is semen everywhere, running down his stomach, hand and legs. His face is blue, but he looks happy. A porn movie is playing on his computer. Well, at least I was the first one to get there, I think. I shut down his computer and search his room for a rag. Cleaning up his semen I wonder if any of my friends would do this for me. Freeing his cock from the increasing rigidity of his grip I’m sure he never wanted to be in this position, me touching his dick I mean. I know I didn’t. Or maybe he would have thought it was funny. At least it wasn’t his mother who found him.

When I pulled his pants up it looked like he had only hung himself without any of that masturbation asphyxiation stuff. I remember a conversation we had a couple of days ago. He was telling me that jerking off was getting boring, that it was so not worth his time that he would end up laying on his bed starting at the ceiling or sitting at his computer staring at the blank screen. Instead of thinking about girls and penetration and all things erotic, he would think about how to make his life more complete and fulfilling. He said out of all the things he could be doing, he was sitting out home fucking himself. He said he didn’t even know how many hours of his life he had wasted doing this. I told him hey, you’re just getting desensitized, that’s all. You need to find more exciting ways to do it.  

He asked like what.

I told him like doing it in public places or maybe with something other than your hand. Or you could go get a girlfriend. I’m sure she’d take care of your problem.

He said he’s tried all those things, well, not a girlfriend, but lets not push it.

I say, hey, have you tried choking yourself?

Now that my friend looks normal, at least as normal as a dead person can, I tell his mother that something terrible has happened and that I am sorry, but her son is dead. She must think I’m joking because she makes an accusatory face at me.

I tell her no, I’m serious, he’s dead, go look in his room.

She gets up with a placatory sigh and walks toward his room. The way she does this, I feel like a little kid trying to lure a parent into my room with transparent pretenses in order to surprise her. Even when she sees his body with the unnatural appearance of his skin and the awkward angle of his neck, she folds her arms across her chest and taps her foot in mock impatience, waiting for the punch line. 

I look at her, then the body, and then back at her. There’s an uncomfortable air between the three of us and I’m jealous that my friend doesn’t have to participate. It’s silent except for the unusually loud tick of a clock that persists relentlessly fifty, now sixty, now seventy times. 

Finally, she walks toward my friend’s body and tells him that he should take that rope off of his neck before he chokes himself. She touches his arm and freezes. Her face goes white and the clock starts ticking again as she sinks into a state of shock. 

She looks like a marble statue, she’s that pale. 

The steady beat of the clock is interrupted by a horrible noise. It is my friend’s mother; and though I’ve never heard a sound quite as lurid, it seems wholly appropriate considering the circumstances. A mother who is touching her son’s dead body must feel some sort of ineffable emotion, and though the noise probably was not an expression of this feeling, it did reify her despair to an extent that made me feel sorry for her.

Her hand starts to shake and she pulls it away from my friend’s body and up to her mouth. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. She makes that noise again, only this time it is quickly followed by sobbing and tears. Her attempt to deny what is in front of her fails, and she falls to her knees with the weight of reality. She grabs my friend’s hand and kisses it, then kisses it again, and then holds it to her cheek and cries harder. With her other arm she reaches around his body and pulls it toward her. Still holding his hand to her cheek, she buries her head in his stomach. And though his clothing muffles her screams, it sounds like she is yelling directly into my ear. She lifts her head up and looks at me. Her face is red with agony and blotchy from the tears. Her eyes are puffy and her mouth is twisted open in a gruesome grimace. I move toward her to comfort her, to maybe touch her shoulder or give her a hug, but I stop when I realize that the hand she is holding, which is now covered with her tears and slobber, is the same one that was covered in semen five minutes ago. Suddenly, this scene becomes too awkward and disgusting and I no longer want to be there. My friend’s mom is still looking at me, sobbing, and because she is on her knees, it almost feels like she is begging me to rescue her from eternal misery, like if I do not help her now, she will be lost to a world of grief and hopelessness. I want to leave, to go lie down somewhere and close my eyes, to avoid this kind of intimate compassion. But instead I hold my arm out and force myself to walk toward the broken woman on the floor. She bows her head as I put a trembling hand on her shoulder. Her sobs die down to barely audible whimpers and once again, she brings my friend’s hand, the one he had been jerking off with, to her mouth.

I am sitting on the couch at my friend’s house waiting for the ambulance and the police to arrive. His mother is somewhere in the house, not in the room with me. I stare at the blank wall and think of nothing. 

The front door opens and my friend’s dad runs into the house. He does not notice me sitting there and goes directly to his son’s room. By now my friend is unmistakably dead and there will be no period of denial for his father, only stark reality. Within seconds I hear him scream and can imagine him, too, on his knees, eyes shut tight, kissing his son’s semen stained hand. I cannot help but think about how different this would all be if I had not taken the time to clean my friend up, how his parents’ lives would have been forever changed knowing that their son accidentally hung himself while trying to get off. I start laughing out loud and then the police arrive with the paramedics.

The police come over to me with their pads of paper out and the paramedics walk past them to my friend’s room. The police ask me who was the first person to see the body.

I tell them it was me. 

Then they ask did I do anything to the body, anything at all.

I suddenly become aware of my hands and facial expressions. I cannot remember what direction people look when they are trying to recall something that actually happened, but since I am lying, I look in the opposite direction than where I want to look. I relax into the couch and try to keep my hands in a natural position. None of this works though. My movements feel forced and unnatural, so I say no and look directly at them, ready for the next question. Both of them pause, look at each other and then scribble something on their pads.

Behind them the paramedics are coming out of my friend’s room with a gurney. My friend is covered in a sheet, only his face is showing. The paramedics nod at the police officers and tell them that the scene was undisturbed, that it was a clean suicide.

The officers immediately close their pads and tell me that the case is closed, they wont be needing anymore information from me, I am free to go and thank you for my time.

I follow them all out to the front yard. The police officers get into their car; the paramedics load my friend’s body onto the ambulance, throw the sheet over his face, and shut the doors. None of them turn on their sirens, and then they are gone.

I am alone on the grass. I turn to look at the house. I do not want to go back in there. Not because my friend just died in there, but because his parents are still in there. I do not feel like being sympathetic, I cannot be sympathetic, because if they knew their son as well as I did, then they would have expected something like this to happen sooner or later.

My friend and I are riding in his car. He is driving. We are not going anywhere in particular, but on the way we pass a car wreck. It is one of those wrecks where the cars are so completely totaled that you know nobody survived. 

“What a horrible way to go,” my friend says.

“What? In a car accident?” I say.

“Yeah, in an accident,” he says. “What a pointless way to die. I hope I never die in a car wreck.”

“Hey,” I say. “Camus said the same thing and guess how he died?”

“In a car wreck?” he asks.

“Yep,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s pointless at all.”

“Why is that?” he asks.

“If you think about it,” I say. “Life is pointless. There is no purpose to our existence, no underlying reason why we’re here. We suffer our entire lives, never understanding any of it, and then we die. Death becomes our liberator, it can’t be pointless because it saves us from pointlessness.”

“Yeah,” he says. “But there has to be a reason to live. What about hope and happiness?”

“Illusions,” I say.

“How can they be illusions?” he asks.

“They are emotions,” I say. “They are intangible, not real. Look at it this way. Would you say that more good things happen or more bad things happen?”

“Bad things,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “And when something bad happens to you, you feel sad and maybe even a little depressed. Now, good things don’t happen very often, they are sporadic at best. So, everything good that happens is surrounded by clusters of bad things, which means these times when you think you are happy are really only periods of decreased sadness.”

“Well, what about hope?” he asks.

“Hope,” I say. “Who needs it? What happens every time you hope for something? You get let down, that’s what. Without hope there would be no disappointment. When you blow the candles out on your birthday cake or throw money into a well, does your wish ever come true?”

“No,” he says.

“That’s hope,” I say. “It gets you nowhere.”

The conversation ended there, but over the following weeks I noticed a dramatic change in him. He did not seem to care about anything anymore. He lost all feeling for himself and for others. He became disenchanted with life and the world around him. People said he was starting to act like me, a shell devoid of positive emotions. It felt good, though, to have an equal, someone who could understand me, someone to validate my thoughts. He was a true friend.

At his funeral, everybody is there. The seats are all taken and many people are standing. Friends and teachers from school bow their heads in solemn remorse. Distant relatives dab at weak tears that trickle down their cheeks. Closer family cry and hug each other for comfort. His parents sit silent and motionless. They have the statuesque appearance of the emotionally barren; desolate and wasted by sorrow and despair. 

I do not know how to feel or what to do so I am looking at everybody else, though I do not know why because seeing everybody else cry isn’t helping me any. All I can think about, for some reason, is my friend’s semen covered genitals. It feels strange to be the only person who knows the truth, almost like I am the one living a lie.

The funeral seems dry and impersonal. The preacher reads the same exhausted biblical passages that are read at every funeral. He makes vague and ambiguous statements about my friend’s life, some of which are completely untrue. It does get better when the podium is opened to any individuals who would like to say a few words. People line up to deliver their anecdotes on my friend’s life, little stories that tell about his chivalry, and his sense of humor and his willingness to help others, as if he possessed these characteristics everyday of his life. 

I wait in line and when I get to the podium I look out to the audience. I did not prepare anything to say, though I feel like I should be the one who gives them the deepest insight into his life. What I want to tell them is that he was the strong one, the brave one. He had the guts to do what none of us could ever do. I want to tell them that his solution was the right one, the rest of us are just treading water. I want to convince them, as I did him, that life is a futile waste of time spent trying to avoid the inevitable. I want to tell them that I am jealous of his escape, but that it can never be mine.

Instead I mumble something into the microphone about how much he was loved and how much he will be missed.

I am the last one to leave the parlor. On my way out I stop at my friend’s casket and touch the lid. My arm starts to shake. Though a part of me wishes I were my friend, the coffin scares me and I am forced to walk away toward the door, pondering the extent of the suffering to come.