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The Handle The only reason you never wrote this story is because she’d hate you for it. The same reason why you’ve never sung it, spoke it, read it—and almost always your conscience would find a way to greet you with a firm strike on the wrist for even thinking it. But that’s the way shit worked out for you, at least with this story, and no wonder every time you drove by her house on the way to your own there was only one thing occupying your inner monologues. To be honest, it didn’t even matter anymore and it hadn’t mattered for a long time. You don’t even wanna tell it anyway. They’d just think you’re a fucking psycho; another love-struck asshole with his head plunged way too far up his own ass to see that it just wasn’t going to happen. Ever. To be honest, the more appealing option would have been to cut the steering wheel as hard as you could. Just as you hit the top of the bridge on Port Reading Avenue. Right after passing her house, praying that your truck would flip 180 degrees and skid along its roof on a bed of brilliant red and blue sparks into the glorious high beams that only oncoming traffic could provide. Think about it: it’d be the unparalleled final page of your story; the epilogue of all epilogues; a third act that would’ve made Romeo want to spring from the pages of 16th-century literature and poison you instead of himself. You’d cross the double yellow streaks upside down and in mid-air, as if in the midst of some untamable carnival ride that makes your eyelids cringe together with every flailing, erratic frame of movement. And it’s only a split second before you hit the ground that you can open your eyes just long enough to catch a glimpse of God, with his hands clenched around the steering wheel precisely at 10 and two, his right boot permanently affixed to the brake pedal. All this just before the lights strangle your pupils, sending shards of freshly shattered glass into your cheekbones as if it were brought on by a Katrina-esque hurricane. If only you had the sack you could have exorcised every word of this story from your physical being almost instantaneously, until every last syllable had fallen through the cracks of the otherwise unforgiving asphalt and, as if some sort of kidnapped child, were never seen again. And at the end of it all, the curtain would fall and you’d take your bow and get on with your life, or in this case, move onto the next. And if for some reason she didn’t hear the grill from that raging 18-wheeler partition your skin into equal slivers from her bedroom window, or if she had never even looked outside of it to see that a small crowd had materialized along four walls of caution tape and a smoke-laden roof, she’d at least read about how you found your way home in the newspaper the following morning. Front page. Who the fuck knows what the headline would’ve read, but you know it would’ve been something fucking quick and witty. If there’s anything you knew about telling a story, it’s that journalists are good when it comes to that shit. You knew damn well they wouldn’t let you down if you were only generous enough to give them a suicide story to cover on a crawling, newsless weeknight in July. Think about it. Some deranged fuck loses control of his car and rolls it on a busy industrial bridge during rush hour. It’s the kind of shit you had always dreamed about while sitting behind your computer during your days at the newspaper. But you were never that fucking generous and who gives a half a shit if some ace-in-the-hole reporter from “The Bumblefuck Times” had something to file for the next day’s edition. Truth be told, they’d never get the real story anyway. But none of that shit ever happened because you never allowed it to be written. You held steady at 10 and two with a light foot on the brake all the way down the road until you finally came to a slow halt at the red light just shy of Tappen Street. Idling, it’s not a big deal. Much like the real story, you know, the one she’d hate you for telling, thoughts like that one visit the far side of your mind almost on a daily basis; almost always driving. Sometimes it’s the Driscoll Bridge, that tall-ass one that arches over the Raritan River and makes the backs of your knees go weak every time you have to drive over it in the far right lane. Sometimes it’s just the turnpike, although you wonder how the hell you’d clear that concrete divider over onto the other side unless you were one of those dudes from the Dukes of Hazzard or had been some sort of maniacal stunt driver in a former life. But it wasn’t always driving that did this to you. Hell, there were even days where she was nowhere near your mind. Sometimes it was way after you had pulled into your driveway after a night of classes at MCC. Way after you had walked through your front door and greeted your mother and kid brother and told them how ordinary and mundane your day was. It was only just after you had sat down to eat dinner, right after you placed your plate on the table and reached for the cabinet to summon the comfort that only the sharpest knife in the tray could provide. It would try to whisper in your ear as your fingers grasped its neck as if they were the individual rungs of a noose. And when you’d try to ignore it, the end that could still breathe would ogle you with its serrated, sawtooth grin and a pair of eyes that bore a striking resemblance to yours. But you always passed on the opportunity to introduce this ordinary and mundane kitchen utensil to the midpoint of your carotid artery in order to watch it plunge into the steak on the plate before you instead. See, the whole thing was that you never really wanted to kill yourself. Suicide was never anything more than a shortcut to some ill-conceived fool’s paradise for druggies, grown up child actors and all those depressed fucks that would rather shit and piss themselves than get out of bed in the middle of any given afternoon. You were above all that bullshit and you knew it. And even if you did, she would’ve seen right through it all. You don’t like to talk about her much, but if you did, you would say that she was the type of chick that would’ve laughed in your face at the wake. The dame wearing white in a room of black. The only one speaking truth in a world of lies. She would have called you a fucking idiot without ever moving her lips, so that no one else would have ever heard beside the two of you. And even worse than that, she would’ve known exactly why you did it. See, she knew you better than anyone and couldn’t be duped, even for a single frame in time. You’d just be getting settled in at your new place in Shangri-La, kicking your feet up on the coffee table with a glass of scotch and maybe a book if you were in the mood and hell, maybe even all those virgins that the terrorists all swear up and down that they’re gonna get when they eventually call it a career. There’d be a knock on the door and you wouldn’t even be able to press your eye fully up to the peephole before you’d get sucked through it and back into your body as if you had never left it; as if you never wrote this story. She was well aware that it was still permeating inside you, the only part still vibrantly pulsating, eternally trapped beneath the charcoal gray suit and “Lebowski for President” t-shirt they buried you in per your own personal request; beneath the sutures in your eyelids and in between your lips. And this made her smile because, as if you had never done any of this and were still of this world, you would never be able to say anything about it. And for the first time in what would’ve felt like a long time, she would’ve cared. But she couldn’t hate you because you never wrote this story. You never sat down at your laptop that night and began to type. You never expelled any of these consonants or vowels as they appeared on this canvas from that small place in the back of your mind where people from time to time visit in what we think are dreams, in this even smaller moment in time, where they too were just getting settled. They never inched down the flank of your neck, down further into the thick of your bicep and then down even further into the bough of your forearm. They never made it into the slightly perspired palms of your hands and they sure as shit never anchored into the tips of your fingers as if single drops of tears in queue from the corners of your eyes, each waiting for their turn to race down the side of your face and then back into your hands. Looking back, you never even made it to the dinner table that night. Or into your driveway. Or to that traffic light where time stood still just long enough to determine that you had finally made the right choice. You were stopped just before the bridge, just before four walls of caution tape and a smoke-laden roof. Just before a small crowd of onlookers materialized like the thick fog that often punctuates the dawn of a new day. Just before that ace-in-the-hole reporter from “The Bumblefuck Times” showed up with a photographer by his side, scribbling in his notepad what he actually believed would be the best story he’d ever get to tell. Just before you’d look back for a split second to see her gazing out of her bedroom window. Right before she’d turn away and never look back. You knew she’d just read about it in the newspaper the following morning. Someone else had found their way home. Front page. Who the fuck knew what the headline was going to read, but you knew it was gonna be something fucking quick and witty. And whatever it said, you knew she was gonna hate him for it.
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