I said, Oh my God. I had the absolute craziest fucking dream about you’ll never guess who! Still in bed, right as I woke up next to my partner Paul. He said, Wait. In your dream? Who was it? Not that bartender from The Dark Lady again? I said, Rick fucking Brunson. He said, You know I hate when you curse like that, Patrick. I said, Oh, Paul. Jesus fucking Christ. I’ll put a flipping quarter in the swear jar, okay babe? He said, Well, you said the F word twice. Actually, no, three times now . . . I said, But, I don’t know. It was just . . . so vivid. So strange! I actually felt like I was Rick. Except for this one part where I was oddly overhearing Chris Childs? Oh yeah! Chris Childs was in it too! He said, Oh wow Patrick. This actually sounds . . . mildly intriguing? Tell me more. Because now I’m actually interested. What was it about? I said, It was about like. I don’t even know. Like Rick somehow got himself in this business of selling illicit sex toys for people’s house pets or some. Paul said, Actually, you know what? I think I’ve heard enough. Ugh, you’re so disgusting sometimes, you know that? I said, Oh, sorry Paul. My sincere apologies. I didn’t realize you were above discussing the occasional vibrator.
He said, Do you think this turns me on, Patrick? Cat dildos? I said. God, you make me feel like such shit sometimes, you know that? Like, it’s a dream. How can I. He said, I’mmmm . . . sorry. I know it’s been a tough few weeks for you, babe. It’s just. You know I have a thing about vulgarity. And then you’re saying the F word. I said, See? Now you’re bringing that up again. The F word. F word this, F word that. Never I love you Patrick. I told you I’d put a quarter in our swear jar. I’ll put three quarters! He said, Now it’s technically four. Put a dollar in. I said, Did you talk to your wife like this? He said, Oh. Wow. We’re going there now, Patrick? You know what? Honestly, I need to get ready. I’m lollygagging around here and I have to meet with the ADL in like 45 minutes. You know how traffic is this time of morning. It’ll take me. I said, I’mmmm . . . sorry! I apologize. I just. I don’t know. I don’t feel like myself. Having to sit on the sidelines during this playoff run. It hasn’t been easy for me, Paul. He said, I know baby. But that’s the thing. The NBA has totally skewed your view of age. I feel like. I don’t know. Like you feel like you’re this geriatric senior citizen or something and you’re not even forty! How do you think that makes me feel? I feel like I’m rocking the cradle in this relationship already. And now you think you’re old. I mean. Honey, believe me. This is just the beginning for you. You have your whole life ahead of you. I promise. Turn that frown upside down. I said, God I love you babe.
After Paul left I laid in bed totally despondent, thinking Fuck This. Thinking Fuck Life. That’s what I was honestly thinking. Fuck Life and Fuck This. Just fuck it all to Hell. Because I’d always had a great relationship with Latrell. But at the same time it’s tough. Latrell and Allan were like little brothers to me. They are like little brothers to me. And now they’re leading my team to the biggest stage in the world? And I’m lying in bed with my dick in my hand. Literally. My penis is in my friggin hand. Ugh. God. I’m saying frig now! Fucking Paul. If I’m being honest with you? I don’t know. You think about dichotomies sometimes. Sometimes you just have to think about dichotomies. Doppelgangers and what not.
It wasn’t that long ago. It was maybe two weeks ago or possibly even last night. That I’d met up with my old friend Chiara Naccarato, an island girl with an impressively natural shit shooter. I met her at a strip joint on a road trip back in like ‘97. Another injury plagued season for me. Christ, man. I just can’t catch a fuckin break these days. Basketball: it truly is a young man’s sport! And of course she was sitting there and reluctantly informing me of her most recent attempt to take her own life. And of course I couldn’t help but note that a certain intensity emerges between two persons who have no regard for their own lives. I was actually surprised she was telling me this. She didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. Raging alcoholic maybe. But not suicidal. But yes. In any case. While the utter disregard for distant lives occasionally makes me livid. I mean, we’re now bombing Yugoslavia again? Right after we fucking bombed the shit of, what? Bosnia? What, just a few short years ago?
Have we not utterly obliterated enough square footage in the Balkans yet? No. This American indifference to the countless lives compromised by our barbaric foreign policies? Which we hardly follow closely enough to even critique anymore. This understandably makes us shudder in disgust. Yet a similar disregard for my own life and the lives of people in my immediate orbit is actually a point of intense bonding. We sat in a cramped booth in a dive bar, Chiara arriving after she’d finished her shift. After I’d already been out for a moderate amount of time. So she ordered her first drink as I placed a request for my fifth and then went on to say something to the effect of: Honestly, you should probably see a therapist. And I didn’t disagree in the least!
Because of course there was absolutely a time in my life where I wanted nothing more than to kill myself. Right now for sure. But also for a brief period after we lost to Michael in the Conference Finals in ‘93, Maybe some other times too. Where almost every waking moment of my life was consumed with this fantasy of throwing myself out of a window. With the hope of achieving an instant death in the process. Of course it’s rarely noted that the people with the most intense urges to kill themselves are in fact totally incapable of slitting their own throats, of jumping off tall buildings, of pulling the trigger of a firearm into their mouths. No. There’s a distinct difference between wanting to kill yourself and actually committing suicide. Obviously, having never committed suicide myself, it’s difficult for me to say for certain, but I would imagine the people who do manage to successfully kill themselves perform the act immediately. Without pause. In an almost automatic fashion. A particularly strong urge perhaps never even overcomes them, that perhaps killing yourself and wanting to kill yourself are almost two entirely distinct states.
Suicide is perhaps always an act of caprice? And perhaps the people that miss this window are the same people, such as myself, who fall prey to this infinite loop of desiring to kill themselves with an inability to actually complete the deed. To this day I still have no fucking idea how I escaped this endless loop of self-terrorism. And unfortunately by the time Chiara arrived I was whacked out of my mind. Way too much so to truly fuckin expound upon any of my experiences with suicidal ideation with any sort of precision whatsoever. The moment I had to bluntly admit to myself at this dive bar had officially passed us by. The moment where I was still capable of expounding upon these types of ideas in any sort of mellifluous fashion. We were approximately half an hour to maybe forty five minutes past this stage. That was my best estimate at the time. I was definitely going to try to bang her. And while, sure, I wanted to be a resource for her, for her suicidal tendencies. Of course I did. But I also wanted to at least try to plow her as well. Her ass was so succulent. I had to at least pull my eel out. Right in the street I did. I didn’t give a fuck. Why not?
We believe that we want to divulge our deepest secrets to people and of course at times we do. We do divulge our secrets. But at the same time sometimes we’ll go ahead and mix suicidal ideation and vaginal penetration. We’ll fuck the suicidal girls who come to us because we’re suicidal as well. Prior to Chiara arriving I’d been sitting at the bar attempting to mind my own fucking business. At the same time somewhat involuntarily making the acquaintance of its patrons. At the same time I remained aware on some level I would in all likelihood never set foot in this dive bar again, that I’d have no regrets about never entering this establishment again. That I’d experience no regrets about accidentally under-tipping the incongruently jovial bartender on my second tab. And that the notion of joining this community, or perhaps any community, was totally far-fetched. That it was nothing less than an absurd notion! Haha!
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