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Hit the Road, Quack

“Do you think about killing yourself?” she asked.

Every time I cut carbs, I thought.

I credit my dad for conditioning me to slice intimate encounters in half by treating earnest questions as setups for distracting punch lines or gags, leveraging droll sarcasm, predictable quips, and the occasional spit take should my mouth be filled with wine.

But today, I bit my lip. Too bushed to stage my act. A rueful, long-running, one-person farce performed behind thick layers of self-deprecation, like a paint-caked wino working overtime in a circus dunk tank.

I cranked out raw material since learning to speak. Eager to test the latest in front of friends, strangers, and my unimpressed reflection in the bathroom mirror. But the woman questioning me now deserved better.

According to cocktail gossip, she graded out as the town’s top psychiatrist. I estimated the bulk of her income came from my friends and acquaintances endorsing her. And since everyone in my circle carried on like merry crackpots, I expected little beyond my intake file getting rubber-stamped with whatever diagnosis represented her best guess.

Despite this, I elbowed my way into her oversold appointment book for an emergency session and handed her $350 for an hour of her time to uncover the reasons why mine ran out. I arrived at her office driving the straight-talk express. Because I couldn’t live like this any longer.

So, I removed the shell protecting my afflicted sense of trust and coaxed this long-silent part of me to recap the curious details related to my morning jog.

Earlier, I pounded through a five-mile run. At the halfway point, I stopped. Not to catch my breath but to give suicide the considerable focus ending my life deserved.

On a familiar route, a pedestrian bridge draws over a busy highway. I rambled across this overpass countless times, always in the early dark of morning, on another fiendish hunt for a runner’s buzz, driven mad to capture the immediate rush on the other side of the run’s protective walls. And, in matters no less pressing, to sweat down the indicative red swells on my face expanding by the hour like super mutating tomatoes concocted in a lab.

But today, in the middle of the skyway, I slowed my grinder’s pace down to a contemplative stroll, immersing myself in the eerie sights and sounds interrelated to observing perfect strangers getting on with their day. An infinite swarm of cars whizzing and zooming beneath my feet, disrupting the isolation I sought. A nomadic menagerie of glassy-eyed motorists, hollowed out by dread’s sharp edges, all dashing like mad to a place or job they hated, to engage in demeaning activities with other folks also lacking the zeal required to slide out of bed unforced.

I came to a complete stop. My heart pounded against my ribs, beating faster than usual. I locked into the gradual slowing down of its tempo until the thump fell into a rhythm sounding measured and hypnotic. But far from calming. More evocative and lurid. Warlike and determined, audibly approaching like an unstoppable tank.

I visualized this killing machine rumbling toward my village, grinding up the road and flaming every creature and structure nearby into smoldering black soot. Each strike of my heart provoked thoughts related to cannon fire as the steady cadence and escalating volume of the discharges served to mock my inevitable doom. This, or a bummed-