Thurston Howell The Third’s Suicide Note
Okay.
That’s it. Cut the shoulders out of my suit jacket with a knife and tell me
it’ll all be okay. I don’t believe in any of it anymore. And, also as it might
concern those who are reading this after what has past (or passed, as it were),
I would like to thank you for your inattention to detail.
So
here I come to the brink of personal evolution, of sprouting up and bustling
down….and me? And so as they’ve always said, I’m still too picky about whom I
pickup. This time it isn’t so. It just can’t be. And me? I’m done being sad.
Yes. I am not sad at all, not even a single French fry’s salt’s worth. Life has
just become not very interesting to me. I am dizzy all the time. You bet. And
so I’m telling myself one last time to get lost. Maybe I will. Only you will be
left to know if I do. If not, well, nobody will probably ever read this. But,
if you do (or are-- reading this, that is), would you please note that there
are no tearstains on the parchment, and that neatness and order still mangle
me, even in my last moments here? Maybe it is I who am not interesting enough?
Could be. I don’t have the energy left to ponder such matters.
I
told my butler to go home early today. He pulled at his droopy whiskers and
yawned as he always does. Does he not have his own matters to attend to? Can he
not feel the momentous, if not calamitous change careening towards the high-hat
manners of his life? What’ll he do, the poor sap, when I’m through? Who am I
kidding? Myself, perhaps. He’ll find some other old weepy bastard to put socks
on. All of it, it’s just not interesting. The exclusive clubs, the submarine
rides, the vacations and boat tours. No. Not interesting to me. Not at all. He
started a sentence as he was leaving: “In a doohickey’s appraisal…” But then
his mind must have wandered off, or maybe mine did. It is so hard to tell. I am
vertiginous at every moment, and I must lie down often and rest. I am tired of
needing tending. I am tired. Well-off and infamous to myself. So god-awful
tired.
You
see. You do. You who know me well enough to know that the world just isn’t so
round without Teddy around. His soft scrunched face next to the pillow, nestled
close to my cheek, always a soothing companion for those latent nocturnal hours
where dreams perchance would fret and tug at my soul. So soft.
The
island has made me wretched. I am always there, among the palm trees and
scathing winds of terrible nights, even though I am not, now, or so they tell
me.
Despair?
Never. It is beneath one whose name is carried on like the one I wear so well.
Father? Grandfather? No. I will not fail you now. I only fail myself. I cannot
adjust. Not to this or what was. Failing to be even myself. That is all.
Onward.
I heave onward one last time, I guess. I see visions in the dystopian landscape
of my imagination. Something uncomfortably feral and tracked by sterile laughs.
There is a fat man, a sailor, and some goofball lanky fool in a red shirt and a
white navy cap. And. Wait. A millionaire? And his wife? Who? Lovey? Sometimes
she is there too, or was, or….I get dizzy. I don’t know. The band doesn’t even
know the existence of our song. I get tired. Wait. Who?
A
movie star. Mary. Ann. Yes. A fateful trip. Sand all over everything. In my
socks and loafers. So much I just do not understand. I owned all of downtown
Denver. I was Hatchet-Cuckoo king. Where has it all gone? Was it ever so much
as a pile of dust in some Oklahoma field? No. I’d say I was making believe just
as well as I could. Money’s just something to pad your bed with, stuffing,
filler. And his wife? No. I do not have a wife. Bachelorhood is my domain. The
professor says so, he says so, he does say such things. He does. I will buy his
ideas at well above the going rate.
The
dying sun’s shine in the window blinds me. I cannot keep at this much longer.
The drapes will be pulled. I will truly being going it alone, now. Yes. That
seems appropriate enough. Everything around me has gone to pot, turned to dust,
and now it is my time to join them. Anymore now in a how of a Howell gone down.
Play another song, boys. This one’s gone too far out of tune to ever matter
again.
I
do not know what it is about you (oh, no-- not that you) that made me grow old
and bitter. Lovey’s not around, and I’ve got my feet in somebody else’s socks.
Perhaps she never was, around, at all. It’s all just an idea I’ve constructed
from a thousand other thoughts that I’ll never admit to owning. Like a fat man
chasing around a holy goof with just his sailor’s hat to swat. A much-too-catchy song stuck roving circles in my mind. Somebody
somewhere is always falling down. Today, here, it might as well be me. We were
all saved, but for what? You know what? You better watch out. Your savior’s
name might as well be your own.
Where
are my pants?
I
might go quietly in my sleep, after all. That is for other angels than these to
decide. If it were not for her (whatever “her” that might be at the moment), if
it were not, I just don’t know what I’d do. But this is probably the safest
bet, to take myself out of the lineup one final time. With a dose of hemlock?
With broken glass from my favorite mirror dragged across my wrists? With a leap
from an ocean liner? A bathtub job? Sleeping pills and Ballantine’s, and then
Scotch-tape my nose and mouth shut? No. Too gruesome. I am unaware of what
it’ll take. I think I will just let it happen, like erosion, or some evening
with too much wine. I am too tired. I am dizzy. I must lie down and rest.
Hello.
Well,
another morning has come upon me. I was awakened by trash trucks, as usual. I
was choking on mothballs. And the turn has still not completely gone from the
screw. It seems. Awake. Yawn. Tell somebody I love them. Awake. Another yawn.
That is all.
Good
Bye
Good
Bye
With
trembling calm and timorous valor,
TH
III
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