When I was younger I saw my daddy cry, and curse at the wind. Here I am, once again, I’m torn into pieces. Can’t deny it, can’t pretend, I thought you were the one. Some times it causes me to tremble. And when at last I find you, your song will fill the air, sing it loud so I can hear you. Make it easy to be near you, for the things you do endear you to me, oh, you know, I will.
Ever since I can remember, I have always been musical. When I was born the doctor slapped me and I screamed in perfect harmony with the heart rate monitor attached to my mother. When I was three I wrote a symphony with just pots, pans and my father’s crystal wine glasses, filled to varying degrees. By the age of eleven, I was getting paid for my compositions so they could be played in Carnagy hall. By twelve I was conducting my own works there. I have been a featured soloist for every musical instrument known to man, woman, and child. In short, my life is empty.
Yes, that’s right. Empty. My mother died giving birth to me, my father tried to drown his sorrows in expensive wine and cheap women. He pushed me so hard to have music in my heart that it started coming out my rear end. Music came before all else. At age fourteen I still couldn’t read.
Well, that’s not entirely true, I could read music. When I sang, I listened first to someone else sing the words. With my phonographic memory, I could instantly remember whatever I heard. I was “home schooled.” The “tests” I took to measure my “progressing ability” were taken by my father, while I was in the basement composing. These tests were some of his few sober moments. His only others were when I played or conducted at concerts.
There is only one good thing about my childhood, and it could be counted as a bad thing, depending on who you ask. Whenever I troubled my father, (usually with a poorly composed song, or some other such thing,) he wouldn’t hit me. He thought he might damage my pianists hands, or singer’s lungs, or composer’s head. He simply made me write out the music to all Mozart’s work by hand. By the time I was seven I could do them with my eyes shut.
When I turned 18 and was finally released from my father’s overbearing tyranny. I was an ex-child progeny, with little to none education and slightly more life experience. I had a few hundred dollars stored away in a privet bank account, but other than that, not a penny to my name. I quickly learned that there were many, many brilliant composers out there, and without the gimmick of being a child I was simply on of the many many. I had tried to sell some work, but failed miserably. After a few months, when I had spent my last $20, I was at the end of my rope.
Well, more accurately, my pier. With living in D.C, there is no shortage of naval piers. It was about 7 o’clock on a misty Monday morning. A perfect time for suicide.
I watched the roiling mists coming off the ocean. There was a fish belly up next to the dock. Clinging to it was a fine white trail of Angel’s hair mold, turning the fish, an intrinsically ugly creature, into a furred beauty. Hopefully I would be out in the ocean long enough to collect such a fine growth. Perhaps I would never be found out in the sea, and the sea itself would absorb me. I lied flat on my belly, and dipped a hand in the water. A swimmer testing the water. It was very cold. I sat back on the pier, Shivering. The sun wasn’t yet up on this october morning. The false dawn de-colored everything gray, the fishing boats, the ocean, the surrounding city.
I wasn’t really depressed, well, I was, but that wasn’t why I was committing suicide. I didn’t want to be the “starving artist,” which I most certainly would be in a few hours. If I died now, my works would immediately become a fascination as the news of my death hit the papers. I reached into the back-pack I had brought with me and took out the rope and weights so I couldn’t change my mind and start swimming.
I quickly tied my feet together and roped the weight on. The rope was a special kind. It would dissolve in a few hours. long enough that I wouldn’t live, but short enough that they could find my body. I had no note, the more mystery there was concerning my death, the better.
Physically ready, I tried to prepare my mind. I didn’t really have a religion, My father is Jewish and my mother was Muslim, so before I was born they had agreed to disagree concerning my religious up-bringing. I was destined to be Atheist before “god” had even determined that I was to be born a boy, but I had learned enough religious music to get the concept that suicide was bad unless you were a Saint.
Hmm, a Saint. I laughed. I was about as far as one could come from being a sinner. What with my upbringing, I had been quite the sheltered child. I had never even known a woman.
So you con understand my surprise when I heard this voice behind me.
“Mondays are a good day for suicide” I turned. A very beautiful lady was standing about 4 yards away. She was wearing a long white skirt partially covered by a patent leather trench coat. Her small hands were neatly gloved. She had shoulder length hair so blond it was almost white, her skin was translucent, without freckles or blemishes. In fact, she was completely colorless except for her startlingly green eyes. She looked like an actress in an old black and white movie.
“Yes, that’s what I thought.” I said.
“It’s going to be a lovely morning.”
“Is it?” I looked across the bay. The fog and clouds said otherwise.
“Oh yes,” she said. “the sun will come out and vaporize the clouds.”
“Vaporize?”
“Vaporize.”
“Oh.” There was an awkward pause.
“It would be a shame to die before seeing the sun rise.” She came to sit next to me. “I love the view from here.”
“I don’t think it will rise for another half hour.” I said.
“I know, I like the quiet of the pre-dawn hour, don’t you?” We sat in silence for a while, enjoying the view and each other’s company. The sun did indeed vaporize the clouds.
“It would be a shame to die on such a bright, sunny, October morning, Even if it is a Monday.”
“It is unseasonably warm.” I stared at the fish. Without the ghostly rays of the moon to lend it romance, it was just a moldy old fish.
“I haven’t had breakfast and I’m hungry, want to go get a doughnut?”
“I’m kinda busy.” I looked pointedly at my still-tied feet.
“You can commit suicide any old day. How often do you get to grab a doughnut with a pretty girl?”
I smiled. “Not too often.”
“Exactly. No untie your feet and let’s go!”
