under the streetlight

Tomorrow I’m leaving town. Leaving you, maybe forever. My bags are in my room and they’re packed with everything I’ll ever need for my next big adventure. Now that I’m done with the packing, I think I’m going to take a little stroll through my neighborhood.

The second time I met you was the first time I ever cut myself. That first date, that first time exploring the inside of your mouth, it was exquisite. That second date, though, that was sublime torture.

It’s this army knife that my dad got me when he went to Turkey. I started by holding the edge under my lighter for a few mintues, then I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and cut a two or three inch gash into my shoulder. It wasn’t very deep, just deep enough to draw a little blood.

As I pass under the streetlight, I roll up my right sleeve and expose my arm to the yellow light. I stare at the small scar for a few seconds before I light my cigarette.

My dad travels everywhere. One time he went to the Grand Canyon. There was this spot that was a little off the trail that had one of the most panoramic views and one of the steepest cliffs. My dad stopped there to take a picture of it, when this nineteen- or twenty-year old kid came up to him and started peering over the edge. It was just some random teenage tourist kid wearing a bright red jacket.

So my dad asked this kid if he would take a picture for him. My dad stood facing the camera, with the ravine at his back. After the kid took the picture, my dad asked the kid if he had a camera so he could do the same for him.

When the kid said he had no camera, my dad offered to take a picture of this kid and mail it to him. The kid said that would be okay. So my dad asked him what the address was so he could write it down.

“Oh, it’s a new address so I don’t really know it yet. I have it on a letter in my car, though, so it should be easy enough to find it out.”

The kid stood in front of the majestic mountain scenery and beamed at the camera. He made a peace sign as the shutter closed, and that was it.

“Do you think,” he asked, “that you could mail it today?”

“Sure,” my dad said, “but why the rush?”

“This is why.”

And with that he crossed his arms over his chest and took a few steps backwards. As his feet left solid ground, he smiled again at my dad and closed his eyes.
At first, my dad thought this was some kind of a joke, some kind of a gag where someone was filming him. He inched his way to the edge of the cliff, though, and when he peered down he saw a little red speck, laying prostrate with contorted arms and legs.

Then he vomited.

My dad said he went to find a park ranger and told him what happened. The ranger nodded and said they would go and retrieve the body first thing in the morning.

“Why don’t you do it now?” he asked.

“People jump here all the time. Maybe twice a week. It’s more common than you’d think.”

“But why don’t you get his body, though?”

“It’s getting late. We don’t like to go down there until the sun comes up. Sometimes, when we go down to get one body, we find two or three other ones that nobody ever reported.”

After that, he handed my dad a convenient pamphlet prepared especially for the witnesses of such scenes.

They went to the car, the only other one in that particular lot, and found the suicide letter in the backseat. It was addressed to the kid’s mother.

My dad mailed her the picture shortly after that. She somehow tracked down his phone number and asked him all sorts of questions about her son, about his last words, about what he was doing, how he was acting.

And she calls him every year on the anniversary of this event. My dad says he doesn’t know what to say to her, and every time it gets harder to listen to her cry. He says he doesn’t know what he’d do if he were her and the kid was me.

How would you feel if it were me? For one thing, we might’ve never met. We never would’ve kissed in the car that night. You never would have introduced me to your new boyfriend a week later.

I never would’ve cut myself.

But these non-events are little consolation to me now, sitting on the curb on the corner by my house. Two houses down, there’s a solitary television on in an upstairs bedroom. It’s the only human sound anywhere in the neighborhood, and almost the only light, except for a few porch lights some people have left on and, of course, this streetlight looming tall in front of me.





(c) 2003 Jordan R Baugher