RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Forty-First Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

These are the actual facts of the matter:

At some point late in my freshman year, another Freshman named Rand Myers (14 years old) killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head. At some point after Katie Hoehner, Will Haynes and the Janks family were all murdered at the beginning of my sophomore year two juniors named Tim Danvers (17 years old) and Carolyn Brewster (17 years old) committed suicide prior to the Christmas break at the end of 1985, Tim with an overdose of pills and Carolyn also with a gun. Sometime after the beginning of 1986 and springtime of that year another sophomore named Chris Coloiacovo (16 years old) hung himself. Essentially the end of our sophomore year was also the end of the series of deaths that haunted Kenton during the mid-1980s.

As there is no official record of the suicides, I have had to assign them random reasons in my mind out of the usual ones – was it Rand who was an unmedicated major depressive or was it Chris? Was Tim the one who killed himself because he was gay, or was it Carolyn? Was Chris bullied to death, or was he one of those autoerotic accidents that happen by the thousands every year? Did Rand shoot himself because he couldn’t get it up for Janey Larson? Did Tim? There is always so much secrecy around suicides, especially young ones – I always think that the reasons we speculatively assign end up being much, much worse than whatever the truth might be. Sincerely, how much worse can it get than a teenage suicide?

Except, of course, for a teenage suicide birthed in Snakeland.

RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Fortieth Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

Although long after the rash of deaths at Kenton North, it wasn’t until 1992 that I was shown very plainly that you do not fuck with a suicide. That year, right before I was to graduate from Simmons College, one of my classmates - thin, shy, Indian – hung himself in his dorm room. Although the high-strung hippies that flocked to Simmons were pretty freaked out, this was old news to me and even if it wasn’t I was going through an especially self-absorbed period and probably wouldn’t have cared much either way.

However, when this young man killed himself he left a note for Leon Bernstein, the dean of Simmons, challenging the dean to make sense, or something approximating sense, out of his suicide. Although this challenge would’ve been refused by most of us, at least in the name of good taste, Bernstein was not one to forego a challenge. And boy did we pay for it. Bernstein directly confronted the young man’s death and the self-absorbed reasons behind it as a large part of his Commencement Address that year and it spread a dark shroud far and wide over the proceedings. Bernstein made the classic error of confronting the suicide head-on, and a suicide’s silence is deafening. The dead boy’s passive-aggression turned Bernstein into a bully before our very eyes. He could not pull it all back around into something positive, something life-affirming by the end, and by the time he realized he was out of his depth it was just too late. The Address stumbled to a close and even the presence on the dais of Martin Scorcese and Sonny Rollins could not dispel the huge cloud of shit-mist he had sprayed in every direction. Our graduation was, at least temporarily, ruined.

Never forget: suicide is an act of aggression. Do not fuck with a suicide.

RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Thirty-Ninth Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

-Jason. Wake up.-

I sit up, still dreaming, my wife asleep at my side. They are arrayed at the foot of our bed, the women sitting, the men standing behind them. They are five in number, a little family – although I remember later that only three of them are actually related. The last – that other teenage boy, the Suicide – is a little older than the Son but, admittedly, it is hard to determine his age because half of his face is gone and his jaw hangs awkwardly from the right side, the intact side. The shotgun took care of the rest. It appears that there may be another two or three figures standing behind him but the outlines are vague, ghostly.

-Jason. Wake up.-

Oddly enough, I am more irritated than scared, which is strange considering how much anxiety fills my waking life. I must still be asleep.

-What. What do you want.-

Rand, the Suicide, leans in. –It’s time to talk about me, to talk about us.- He gestures to the shadows that lurk in the darkness behind him.

I exhale roughly. –Why, Rand. What is there to tell. You four all killed yourselves. I don’t know what I can write about that.-

Rand is taken aback. –Well, you can tell about why we did it, how it related to Snakeland. You know, how you did with the others.- When Rand moves his head the loose jaw sways slowly back and forth over the mass of old black blood coagulated over the remains of the left side of his face.

-Rand, I’m not sure any of it did relate to Snakeland. Maybe my initial theory was wrong. Maybe all of you just killed yourselves because that’s what teenagers do, what they’ve always done.-

-Yeah, but all four of us, in that short time period. And all the murders too. It doesn’t add up.-

I whistle through my teeth. –I’m sorry, man. I don’t know, it’s just...it’s getting kind of depressing or something. All this death. I just don’t know...I don’t know if I’ve got it in me.-

Rand is getting pissed, in the way only a 14-year-old boy can. –That’s bullshit. You better have it in you or you’re not gonna be getting much sleep for awhile. We’re dead, goddamnit, and we need somebody to speak for us. And that somebody is you. So get speaking.- The loose jaw flaps wildly as Rand gets more and more agitated.

-Okay, buddy, okay. I’ll tell the story.-

-And tell it good. None of this half-assed, don’t know if I’ve got it in me shit.-

I chuckle. –Okay, Rand, okay. I will.-