Jonathan Dodd

 

  

I never really saw myself as a failure - although everyone else always did. The way I saw it Life itself failed me. Inside this puny body raged burning desires and huge ambitions, but if you're not good at sport so many doors are shut to you, and if your voice doesn't carry and your myopic eyes are too close together and your hair is thin and mousy you don't give the impression that you're going to set the world on fire. I never got mad or even even. I just got depressed. At thirty-eight I'd had enough of my drab terraced house, my surviving parent and my dead-end job and I decided to admit defeat. No-one would mind - they wouldn't even notice. My Dad would probably still think I was there even when they took him off to a home. He was already sliding down that slipway to Alzheimer's, letting go of life with unresisting fingers - as I was about to. I had no wife or girlfriend, no friends even. They would only be irritated at work because I would have failed to give them a month's notice. They'd probably sack me.

Having decided to go the next thing to consider was how. Of one thing I was certain - it had to be foolproof. I wasn't about to die of embarrassment at having to explain to doctors or policemen what I had been trying to do, and they'd only interfere. I also didn't want to cause more than the minimum damage or unpleasantness to whoever discovered my remains, and I wanted my intentions to be obvious. Being the cause of a misunderstood murder enquiry would only be a waste of public money, and I've always been against that.

The car seemed the obvious choice. It was the only thing that had always been exclusively mine. I'd had it a long time and I couldn't bear the thought of it being sold to some student who'd thrash it up and down the motorway and not look after it. We could go together. On that fateful Thursday night I fed my Dad, sat him in front of Home and Away and let myself out of the front door for the last time. I felt very composed and my hand was as steady as the arm of a crane as it turned the ignition key. I was so calm and resigned that I simply didn't register the dull click and silence caused by the flat battery. I gave it a miss that night. Nothing spoils the mood of a suicide attempt like having to call the AA.

The next evening I repeated the process, this time holding my breath and squeezing my eyes shut as I turned the key. My trusty old car burst into life just as it had always done, and I drove through the quiet streets towards the cliffs. When I arrived there I turned the car off the road facing the moonlit sea and stared at it for a long time, my mindful of the futility of all human endeavour. Then I noticed a dark shape below and in front of the car. I squinted through the misty windscreen and rolled down my window. There was the faint sound of pop music and an old Ford Capri with its lights off, bouncing on its springs with the sound of some sort of unarmed combat going on inside. I waited. Two hours later I gave up and returned home. A baby might have been conceived that night. If I had been a Buddhist and they had arrived a little later that baby could have been me. What a depressing thought. My Dad was still sitting there drooling at the weather man. Until that moment I never thought it would be possible to be jealous of someone with Alzheimer's.

My third attempt involved smashing the car through the crash barriers of the high viaduct on the by-pass. I waited until late at night when the roads would be empty, and checked that I would sail down through the air and land with a final satisfying crunch on the gravel bed of the river below. I must have misjudged the angle or something, because the car bounced off the barrier crushing the front wing and pushing the wheel right into the engine compartment. I was perched on the bumper waiting for my head to clear when two policemen pulled up. They're never there when you want them, I thought bitterly as I was breathalysed and then taken off in an ambulance. Shock can be a nasty thing, they sneered at me. I swear they were disappointed when the little crystals refused to turn green.

At the hospital I was cunning. I complained of insomnia and they gave me a supply of sleeping pills to take home. I bought some whiskey and swallowed as many and as much as I could, but I couldn't keep any of it down. I've always had a weak stomach. It didn't stop me getting a hangover though.

I then enrolled in a parachute course. The instruction was hellish, with all those jolly sporty types bouncing about and hooting at each other, but I bore it for the sake of the opportunity of jumping out into the clean air and plummeting like a falling arrow towards the rapidly expanding ground below. My scream of joy was whipped from my mouth by the force of the air as I streaked downwards, and I stretched my arms out in front of me like an extremely high diver. At three thousand feet the stupid parachute opened. Apparently they put a pressure switch in the harness in case people panic or freeze in fear. I floated down sobbing with frustration. At least all the others kept their distance - I believe they thought I had had some kind of religious experience.

I remembered reading about the Romans, so I ran a warm bath and fetched my Stanley knife. I was poised with the blade hovering above my damp wrist and worrying because I had just remembered how difficult it had been to find a vein at the hospital to take a blood sample. Suppose I couldn't find it? I was thinking. How would I explain the cut? And then the telephone started ringing. I decided to ignore it, but it rang and rang and rang until I became so exasperated that I leapt out of the bath and answered it. It was some man trying to sell Life insurance. I became hysterical.

The next evening I disconnected the lawnmower from its lead and ran the garden hose for a while. I walked out to the middle of the dampest patch on the lawn, took my shoes and socks off, and held the exposed wires for several seconds before realising that I hadn't switched it on at the plug, so I put the wires down, padded indoors and flicked the switch. There was a brief exploding sound, a lot of sparks and a burning smell as the entire set of fuses blew. Needless to say there wasn't any spare fuse wire and I had to put up with my Dad moaning for the rest of the evening because he couldn't watch his precious television.

I have now decided to apply for a shotgun licence.