But, wait, there's more!  The next day I have to open the store, as does Brandy.  So we get there and conversation is a little awkward.  At least Robin isn't working.  Everything is fine, and my family actually comes into see me, and we get along okay, which turns out to be a very good thing.  Around two, after the lunch crowd has slowed down, I clean the fry vats and take the old oil to dump it.  Well, I pick up the container to pour it, but it slips from my hands and falls.  Oil shoots up in the air and lands on me, mainly on my arms and shirt.  I run out of the dumpster area, yelling and pulling my shirt off, streaking past some unsuspecting old people.  Luckily, I have a change of clothes in the back, so I am able to put another shirt on.  The only problem is my arms are in a lot of pain.  And there's nobody to take me to the hospital.  So the working assistant manager calls the incoming assistant manager to take me.  It's Robin.  She takes me to the hospital, and they give me drugs.  Whee!  My burns aren't bad at all, but the drugs have knocked me on my ass (I don't handle drugs well).  I can't help myself from constantly apologizing to Robin for fucking her roommate.  Finally, she takes me back to the store and I fall asleep in the lobby.  Somebody calls my family and they take me to the house, and I go to sleep on the couch for about twelve hours.  And whenever my mother chastises me for marrying the first girl I ever slept with, I can always blame it on her, because it probably never would have happened if she hadn't kicked me out.

Nineteen years ago I stood in a courthouse in Belleville, Illinois, waiting for the judge to dissolve my marriage.  My wife was not with me.  At the time I had no idea where she was.  I had filed for divorce a year earlier, then had spent much of the time trying to track her down to get her to sign the divorce papers.  She signed them finally and that was that.  Nine years later I dated her long distance for a bit, in a foolish thought that she might have matured.  She hadn’t.  I last saw her in 2003.  I haven’t talked to her in maybe six years and haven’t communicated with her at all in about three.

So it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense that I am writing this to thank her.

She was not a good wife.  At the time, I probably wouldn’t give myself too much credit as a husband.  We married too young, and one of the things she said when she left was that she was too young to be a wife and a mother.  I don’t know about her as a wife nowadays--as far as I know she’s not married (although she did marry and divorce after me).  But next year she turns 40, and she is still nothing as a mother.

I divorced in July and then moved to Germany in October.  Between then and 2004, it was just Robyn and me, not counting summers she would spend at Grandma’s or that horrible eight-month period when I had a three-week TDY to Las Vegas, a three-month deployment to Italy, and a new assignment to Nebraska.  It was probably not the best thing for Robyn, and I have had everybody and their mother and MY mother tell me, “a girl needs a mother.”  But if it wasn’t for Brandy being the suckass parent she was (and in this case, it looks like I ended up marrying somebody like my father, instead of my mother), then I wouldn’t have had the experiences I did with Robyn.

I had a best friend (and still have the same one), but for a long time there, right or wrong, Robyn was pretty much my best friend.  I, for the most part, raised her alone, so a lot of what makes her her comes from me, so we were into a lot of the same things. 

I’ve talked about that before...but the thing is that those trips, those concerts, those time exploring caves, those moments we shared getting irritated by the same people doing stupid things, those wouldn’t have happened, at least not the same way, if Brandy had been a better parent.  It’s a shitty thing to say that, because I benefited because of it, while I can’t say the same thing for Robyn. 

Maybe people are right.  Maybe a kid needs her mother.  Maybe, despite the awesomeness that is her, she would be a better person if she had her mother around.  Then again, maybe I would be a better person if my father had been around.  But the way I am a parent and the way I am with women are directly because I made a conscious decision not to be like my father.  Who knows who I might be if he had been in my life as more than a better-forgotten disk of angry poems?

So thank you, Brandy.  You’re a determined, purposeful person, who has apparently achieved what she wanted in life.  But you’re absolute shit as a parent, and I thank you for it.

I was chatting online with a friend today when she told me to hold on, because there was a knock on the door.  I tinkered around, doing other things, still trying to work myself into doing anything, since I’ve been in a bit of a stupor for the last five days, ever since I tried to address my Diet Coke intake.

When she came back she told me that was the sheriff’s department, letting her know a family member had committed suicide and they needed her to identify the body.

I’ve been thinking about that all day.  In large part, because I feel bad for her, knowing she already has other things to worry about, without the addition of this added on.  But I’ve been thinking about the issue in general.

I’ve never really come close to suicide.  I’ve thought about it; it’s hard for me to imagine a person in the United States not thinking about it at least passingly.  I did think on occasion that it might be easier if I just exited, stage left.  Junior high was a rough time for me.  I don’t know, really, how I made it through.  I imagine if I didn’t meet my best friend there, I don’t know what might have happened.  I never took a pill or held a knife to my wrist or anything like that.  But I had a pre-written suicide note, just in case (that was the type of kid I was).  I don’t know what happened to that note, but I remember that it was fairly all-purpose, just overall explaining why I committed suicide in generic terms.

The next time I encountered suicide or a suicide attempt was a few years later.  I had graduated high school and my family had moved from Fort Smith to Barling, but for a while I stayed at our old house by myself (my work was very close).  My friend (and later to be wife and ex-wife) burst into my bedroom one night.  This was a dream I had been having on a regular basis, but reality was much difference, as I was, one, not expecting anybody to be coming into the house, and, two, I wasn’t ready for that look on her face.

Her roommate, who was a boss of mine, had made a half-hearted attempt at suicide, because of a guy.  I sat up and listened to my friend and walked back with her to her house, which was quite a distance.  Her roommate ended up being all right.  When I came back to the large, empty house, I played the last two minutes of Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland” over and over and over.

September 1, 1996.  His name was Cory Huper.  I met him on the plane going to Germany where we were both going to be stationed.  Tomorrow would have been his fortieth birthday, but he’s 24 forever, because on September 1, 1996, he killed himself.  I was not his best friend nor he mine, but I thought then and I think now that we were pretty good friends.  His death haunts me to this day.  I feel guilty because I remember in stunning detail one day when we were sitting around looking at new regulations which we get tested on every year, and they had just added suicide rates and discussion into them.  And I made a joke about how everyone would expect me to be one to commit suicide and that he never would be.  If you had known him, you would understand.  I can remember very few moments when he wasn’t laughing or smiling, causing you to think he was the happiest guy in the world.  I know, of course, that a smile and a joke can hide a lot. 

That sucks to think about, but what really bothers me is thinking that I could have done something to prevent him from killing himself.  I don’t know to this day exactly why he committed suicide, although I have my guesses, which I won’t go into.  I just remember one night we got together with some other people, drinking, and at some point others left, and I was going to sleep on his other bed, because my apartment was a bit away from his dorm room (I had my oldest daughter Robyn living with me, but she was spending the night at a friend’s house).  And he said some things...and I guess I was just so drunk that I took everything as a joke and laughed it off.  I am not so full of hubris to think that if I had responded the correct way that Cory would be alive today, but it still bothers me.

I have some dark times.  I don’t believe I suffer from depression, but I do feel depressed sometimes.  I’m not going to a doctor about it, because I’ve been to doctors and I’ve seen them in action, and I think in many cases I’m just as well off throwing a dart at a board.  Right now is difficult for me, because my daughter is away from me for much of the summer, spending it with her mother, and she’s enjoying herself, which is good.  But she’s not very good on the phone, only being four, so for the most part I am in this house alone, and the loneliness is harsh.  And strangely, my reaction to this is not to cling to others, but to regress away from them--not completely, but some.  And I find myself reacting strongly to certain people’s comments or feeling hurt when I think people are just communicating with me because they need something. 

But that’s just a minuscule part of my life.  One of the great things (sometimes) about me is that I know myself very well.  And I am able to recover quickly.  Today is one of those days that makes me realize I don’t have to regress, I don’t have to be alone, and I can hang on...and I always have that thought of Cory that makes me stop and think.

Sixteen years I’ve been thinking about what I could have said to make things different.  And it’s a useless thought...but it’s only useless for Cory.  I don’t care if you don’t like me, if you barely know me, if you don’t think I’m the kind of guy you can talk to, if you’re afraid...if anybody who reads this, who knows me, a lot or a little, every has thoughts like that, I would rather you bother me with it.  I come home to a dark house with no little girl doing strange dances or making up funny songs, and my oldest daughter is creating her own life 700 miles away, but I know Tatiana is coming back.  And I know I will see Robyn again.  And while many, many, many people have a life far more difficult than mine, they still have something to hang onto, something to look forward to, and I say this as much for me as for you, that you should contact me before you make that decision.  Because I don’t want to wait another sixteen years again.

“Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal
And then surrender
In the tunnels uptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down
As shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulence pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light

Outside the street's on fire
In a real death waltz
Bewtween what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night
They reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded
Not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland”  -- Bruce Springsteen