all dead white boys say god is good

Suicide is a lot like homeless people.  You see them living on the streets, asking for some money or food, sip on a can of beer wrapped in a ruffled brown paper bag.  You see them in their raggedy clothes, pushing around shopping carts full of junk, walking the streets bundled in sweaters in the middle of summer.  You see the moistness in their eyes, the weakness in their voices.  Then, you try to comprehend it, and comeup with some trivialized, over-simplified story in your head about the events that inevitably led up to this point and the state of their life now. You think you know their story, you think you see all there is to see about their circumstances, and you move on.  Until the day it happens in your life, that is - at which point you realize it’s a whole different world than you were ever capable of understanding.

He was an active guy, always playing basketball in the courts outside the dorms with a few of his friends, making sure to wave to everyone he knew that passed by.  He was always awake early and up late, and we always chalked it up to him being some sort of robot.  He never seemed tired or worn out - always energized, with a skip in his step. He smiled almost too much, and always with a sort of vigor your rarely saw. Perhaps not the best looking kid you knew, but the girls loved him - he always knew how to make someone (anyone) laugh.  He was a religious kid, but not the kind who forced it on you - one who just gave himself a grin because he knew that there was something better out there. When he talked to you he had a tendency to wrap his arm around your shoulder, and bring you in a bit closer, even to his closest of guy friends - he seemed to love physical contact in a very innocent sense.  He ate hugs for breakfast.

A week before, we were walking down the street on the way back from a coffee shop we used to go to, and he was unusually quiet that night.  He still had his smile, but no skip in his step.  I pulled him to the side and he belittled his own problems and summed it up quickly in a few sentences encompassing his family, girlfriend, and school problems.  Seceding to myself that everyone has bad days, I tapped him on the shoulder, gave him a comforting line, and bought him a drink at a bar we stopped at on the way back.  He doesen’t know it yet, but he’s gonna be alright, I remember telling myself.

Two nights before he had arrived a couple of hours late to a football watching party at someones house and he had reeked of rubbing alcohol, as if he had drank it, they said - but he was in his normal spirits, his smile had never left.  The next night he had spent hours on the phone with his ex, that he had just broken up with, and never showed up to dinner with some friends of his.  The next night he hung himself.

When I got the call, I laughed and thought it was a joke.  I think, part of me, still thinks it’s a joke - that he’s going to pop up from behind me and ask me when I’m going to join him for a game of basketball, because I had said no to him ever since he started asking, or that he would join me at Wendy’s again, or smile once more, or anything at all.  Anything would do, I think.