THE OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD OF UNDERTAKERS

There was a time several years before. It is three o’clock in the morning. I am driving my Cadillac, a symbol of hollow, empty status, aimlessly aware that I am going mad. I drive toward a place called Longcliffe. I knew this place because  my Grandfather died there. What I didn’t know was that he was there because of alcohol, not the garden variety of insanity. My plan was to turn myself in. The Gothic towers and spires of the century old hospital were superimposed against a full moon. My repeated thought was: If I go in there they will never let me out. They will keep me there and never let me go.

Day is night and night is day. Time warps. I don't know how long I have been drinking. A week. A year. Multiples of years? There are five liquor stores in town. I buy a bottle each night and on Friday night I get the weekend supply, hoping to make it until Sunday morning without guzzling both liters and running out on Sunday. I passed out on a sofa in the Elks club. I drove so drunk I had to shut one eye to identify the three yellow lines on the center of the road. I awaken, dressed in a suit and slumped on a couch.  The room is filled with surreal half light.  I don't know if it is twilight or dawn.  How long have I been out?  My world shrinks and becomes infinitely smaller. I am still untouchable enough that I am allowed by the local law to proceed through town at 15 miles an hour, hugging the center line and with the windows open in order to get enough fresh air to avoid passing out.

I did pass out. On a cement garage floor. On the winter night I ran out of Gin and hope  I closed the door of the garage and turned the ignition switch on a brand new Mercury station wagon. I came back to my private Hell staring at the ceiling of the hospital emergency room. My first words were; My God, I have fucked this up too.  And on to a padded ward and Nurse Ratched.

Suicide is a very selfish act.
 .............with each broken shoelace out of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one thing enters a madhouse./bukowski