World Suicide Prevention Day
My wife isn’t in Pattaya often. She prefers living in Ban Nok. Rice paddies, family, and probably a lover. This means eating out for me and most of my meals are taken at Chez Michel on Soi Buffalo. Cheap and cheerful. Two nights ago my dinner companion was Jamie Parker. The New Yorker had finally recovered from his appetite after six-month Ice binge with little Ort, the 23 year-old go-go dancer from the Paris A Go-Go.
He ate everything. Salad, steak, and dessert.
Afterwards we walked to the Buffalo Bar for a nightcap at a slow pace fast thanks to a motorcycle accident to my little toe. Jamie was in a New York state of mind. “Tomorrow will be six years since 9/11. Remember everyone saying how it would change the world. Nothing’s changed. Nothing at all.”
He paused and a second later a woman’s body hit the pavement with a soft thud. We looked up to see from where. A second-story balcony. A groan reverted our attention to the woman. Her fall hadn’t been fatal. Jamie knelt down to help her.
She didn’t want our help. Two women came from the small restaurant. They regarded us as assailants, until seeing the woman’s face. She was no stranger to them. I would late find out the jumper was one of the other women’s lover. She had found out about her seeing someone else. Her leap to the street had been an act of love. The police took the failed suicidist to the hospital and Jamie helped me hobble into the Buffalo.
“If she had wanted to kill herself, she would have jumped from the roof.”
“Have a little heart.” People jumped to their death frequently in Pattaya; mostly jilted lovers and bankrupt farangs.
“She broke her arm. That’s all and you know what day today is?”
“September 10th.” I couldn’t recall anything significant about the date.
“World Suicide Prevention Day.” Jamie ordered two Chang beers. They were stronger than Heineken. “I read about it in the Bangkok Post. She was trying to kill herself on a day like that.”
“Suicides aren’t interested in dates only a relief from their misery.” Last year during my black period I had contemplated killing myself, although only with a gun and rejected jumping as too messy.
“Then she should have picked another day. The terrorists from 9/11 did.”
“9/10/2001 was rainy. Ceiling visibility in New York was a 1000 feet.” no way they could have foudn the World Trade Towers in that slop.
“I know but the real reason they didn’t pick 9/10 was that it was World Suicide Prevention Day.”
“You really think 19 Arabs had any idea about that.” I had never heard of World Suicide Prevention day until Jamie mentioned it.
“Yeah, I do. If you’re going to drive a plane into a building then you want things right. Everything. They did it on 9/10 out of respect for what they were about to do. Suicide.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Then you give me a good reason why they chose 9/11.”
“It had nothing to do with 911 being the telephone call letters for many countries.” I sipped the beer from my glass. The ice made it nice and cold. I had actually researched the numbers once and said, “9 is the first cube and 11 symb0lizes threat in numerology. Revelation 9:11 warns of destruction. George Bush Senior declares the creation of The New World Order on 9/11/2000. Eleven years later 9/11 and 9+1+1=11. September 11 is also the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.”
“Stop it before you go mad.”
“They’re only numbers.” I wondered how many times 9/11 had been said since 9/11. Billions of times a day. Those numbers added up to no good. “But not if you consider GW Bush as the anti-Christ.”
“And you do?” Jamie’s eyes rolled in his head like a broken slot machine.
“I don’t believe in anything, but I think I’ll keep trying to kill myself with beer.” No God. No country. No Santa Claus. Just my daughter and beer. I lifted my finger to signal we wanted two more. “Is that all right with you?”
“It’s not like we have a choice.”
“Beer.” We clinked glasses. “The only way to go.”
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