I’ll never forget the first time I saw Brent really try to kill himself. The memory is riveted in my mind, always there, reminding me of what could have happened, no matter how much I try to forget.
We had just gotten back home from the bar. I had managed to get Brent to drink about four beers more than he should have, and he was the drunkest he’d ever been in his life. Still, I was the one leaning on his shoulder.
“We’re home!” he said cheerily as he banged the door open. He was having a lot of trouble keeping straight. The fact that I was half dragging him down wasn’t helping. But hey, he wouldn’t finish the pitcher and somebody had to. He trudged in a few steps, then more or less dropped me on the floor.
I took a few minutes to orient myself and then half-dragged myself up into the chair. Alcohol never did too much to me, but it always screwed with my legs. “You going to be okay?” I asked, squinting at him.
Brent giggled a little, then just kind of dropped into a sitting position. “I don’t know. That last beer might have been a bit much.” He let himself slowly drop until he was lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
“Pansy,” I said, my head on the table. I tried to raise it up to look at him, but it just wouldn’t move. I stopped struggling and just let it lay there. “Still awake?” I asked after about ten minutes.
“Yeah,” he muttered back.
“Trying to get the world to stop tilting?” I asked, thinking back on the first few times I got drunk.
“Nah,” he muttered. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Julie.”
“Julie?”
“Yeah, girl in my art class.”
I thought back. “I think I remember… brown hair, tan streaks?”
“Yeah.” Brent let out a wistful sigh. “That’s her.”
“So, what about her?”
“Nothing,” he answered.
I waited for him to say something else, and when he didn’t, I laid my head back down, figuring we’d both fall asleep where we were and wake up tomorrow with a headache bad enough to justify suicide. “God,” I muttered aloud, “we’re going to need a bottle of Tylenol each tomorrow.”
Brent stirred. “Tylenol? Now that’s a good idea if I ever heard one.” He pulled himself off the carpet and walked into the kitchen, where I heard him rummaging around in the cabinets.
“What are you doing?” I muttered, completely not in the mood for any stupid little games.
Brent came back to where I could see him, grinning happily. “That’s easy,” he answered. “Killing myself.”
It’s amazing how two words can send enough adrenaline into your veins to nullify a night’s worth of alcohol. “What?’
“I’m killing myself,” Brent repeated.
“Quit fooling around,” I snapped.
“I’m serious.”
I looked at him; confused, nervous, annoyed? All of the above? “No you’re not,” I said angrily, hoping I wasn’t bluffing.
“I’ll do it!” he countered, a wild glint in his eyes. He pulled the bottle cap off for emphasis. “I’m serious.”
I watched him, tongue tied, not certain what to say.
He threw the cap over his shoulder and poured several dozen white pills into his hand. “I’m serious!” he said again.
I was too busy trying to figure out what I was supposed to do to say anything. Was this some kind of joke, or did he really want to kill himself? Was I supposed to reason with him? Call an ambulance? Tackle him and knock him out for his own good? What? I figured I’d try reasoning with him first, and then see where it took me. “And why do you want to do that?”
Brent’s face twisted a little. Then he shook his head, slowly. I thought maybe he was going to cry. “I just can’t take it anymore,” he whispered.
“What? You mean college? That ‘C’ you got last semester?”
“No!” Brent’s hand shook, spilling a few of the pills. “That doesn’t matter!”
“Then what?”
“These stupid classes, this shit life.” His hands, still clenching the bottle and pills, lowered. “They’re meaningless. I’m not interested in spending my life jumping though hoops just so I can have a job I hate.”
He looked a little less likely to choke down the Tylenol now. I pushed myself up shakily to my feet. I needed to look him in the eye. “Oh, c’mon, it can’t be that bad. Whatever happened to that whole acting dream?”
Brent shook his head. “You think that’s going to happen? How many people actually succeed? And most of the time, it’s just luck anyway.”
“You could give it a chance.”
“There is no chance.” Brent looked at his hand, still holding most of the pills, though he had scattered several of them all over the floor.
“You don’t know that.” I took a step forward.
Brent laughed. “Yeah, I do.” He glided a step back. “This is my life. I was miserable and alone in high school, and then I graduated. And now I’m miserable and alone in college, and in a couple of years, I’ll graduate. And then I’ll either be miserable and alone in graduate school, if I can afford it, or the real word if I can’t.” He sounded like he was choking on something. “And so there I am, alone, cursed, just waiting to die.”
“So, what, you’re just going to end it sooner?”.
“Sure, why not?” Brent asked, giving a final, bitter laugh. Then with a flare of the wrist, he jammed the handful of pills into his mouth.
“Brent!” I grabbed at his arm but he pulled back and jammed in another quick handful. I couldn’t tell if he had managed to swallow any or not, but I could see a few of them spilling out from between his lips. I jumped at him this time and managed to grab the bottle. Brent let me, and I fell to the dorm-room floor, spraying pills across the carpet. Brent was still on his feet, but he looked like he was choking. He reached into the cabinet, found my bottle of whiskey, wrenched it open, and then swallowed as fast as he could. By the time I was on my feet, Brent was putting the bottle back down with a good third of it gone.
He made a face and rubbed his mouth. “God, that stuff tastes like shit. How can you drink it?”
My brain tried to go numb, but I wouldn’t let it. Poison control, I thought. No, 911. I looked at the shelf, but the cordless wasn’t there. Where the fuck is the phone!
Brent leaned against the counter, placidly unconcerned. “Now, for my next trick,” he gave a short, bitter laugh, “I’ll make myself disappear.”
Phone, phone, phone… I was on the floor of the main room, throwing bed sheets and papers aside, trying to figure out where I had left the receiver.
Brent was still talking. “You know, I forgot to make my will. ‘To my esteemed roommate, I leave… my room.” He laughed at his joke. “And my computer. And to my parents, I give them my clothes… to give to my brother. And to my cou-” He hesitated. “My-” Then he broke off, spun around, and began puking in the sink.
I slowed down, putting the towel back on the floor where I had found it, watching Brent more or less puke up a bottle of Tylenol, a third of a bottle of whiskey, and a good thirty dollars worth of beer. That works, I suppose. And hopefully he’ll feel bad enough afterwards that he won’t want to move, let alone kill himself. Well, he might want to kill himself, but he’ll be so sick, he won’t be able to do anything about it.
I looked around our room; the papers that had been on the desk and table were now all over the floor, the clothes that had been thrown about were a little farther apart now, and the floor around the table was a scattering of pills. And to top it all off, a sink full of puke, too.
Shit, I thought, we’re going to need more Tylenol.
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