Death and All His Friends

Last night, I was sitting with my roommates, talking about our lives in the context of a television show, which happens pretty regularly around our apartment. At first, I think they loved it, but I can tell from their lackluster reaction that it has become white noise like most of the things I do and say around the apartment. But last night, as we were commingling life goals and television talk, I said that you can't just settle for something in life because you don't know how long you're going to live. Eventually that led to me asking What if one of us died tomorrow? Wouldn't that be a huge plot twist in the show? What if it's me? to which Ben responded, You can't die. That would be like killing DJ off in the first season of Full House. It was reassuring because I always considered DJ the most integral of all of Danny Tanner's daughters.

It's not the first time by any means that I've contemplated my impending death. At six-years-old, I specifically remember going up to my mom and telling her that I was going to die when I was 29, which is super sketchy for a six-year-old to drop in casual conversation. That moment always stuck with me, and it stuck with my mom as well, so we don't talk about it. And the idea of 29 haunts me every birthday because I know it's getting closer and closer each year, and as silly as it sounds, I don't really feel like getting to 29 to find out if my child-in-a-horror-film-esque proclamation was right.

Death has always been a tricky thing in my life because I've seen so much of it, so in a way, I never really thought much of it... almost to the fact that I've been obsessed with it. Death and Justin are a bit of a roller coaster because when it comes to the topic, I've always been a bit up and down on the matter. One of my favorite anecdotes I've ever read (about my silverfox mancrush, Anderson Cooper) was that he became so obsessed with journalism and taking in sights that he would take pictures of all the things he had seen throughout his line of work. One day, whilst taking a picture of some dead bodies he had come across, a friend took a picture of him and gave it to him; it was to show him what he had turned into, and from that day on, he has supposedly drawn boundaries for himself. In a way, Anderson and I have that in common. I become infatuated with death and the emotional consequences it can have (i.e. One Tree Hill school shooting) that I sometimes forget how incredibly real death is, and then like clockwork it comes rushing back, and I witness something death-related--and all blog candor and humor aside, it's not a joke.

So when I woke up this morning, I was weary of even getting out of bed because I had this inclination myself that this is going to be the day that I die. I suppose it could be a lead-in from the conversation that I had last night or maybe that the bed was just really warm and that my subconscious went to a really dark place so that I would stay there, but I really did have a gut feeling that this was going to be my last day on Earth. So naturally, I reset my alarm for two more minutes... and for twenty minutes, I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, hoping that my intuition was wrong. In essence, it was very Meredith Grey in the bomb episode of me (2.13 "It's the End of the World," for those interested). And after resetting my alarm ten times over the course of twenty minutes, I admitted to myself that if this was really going to go down today, and this was my time, I couldn't really intervene fate when I don't actually know what the fate is. 

On the way to work, while very consciously watching out for other drivers, I thought about what I would want to do--how I would want to act--if this was the end of my road. So I called my mom, who started talking out of the blue about how she was happy that nothing had happened to me since I've moved because she has no idea how she'd get to me. Needless to say, when you have the pressing feeling in your gut that a catastrophe is bound to happen, and you're going to be its victim, the foreshadowing of your mother's praises don't help matters... so I told her I loved her, and I got off the phone. By the time I got to work, I had decided on my game plan... just be kind.

I didn't want to go to a special restaurant for lunch or take the day off (mostly because if I took the day off, then my chances of dying would have exponentially increased). I just wanted to be kind to people because I think that how's you should want to be remembered: kind. And it was probably the hardest thing that I did today because apparently no one else thought they were going to die today, or at least, they had a different approach to humanity if they did. I didn't want to tell anyone about my unconfirmed fate because I didn't want to taint the day, and I didn't want anyone to respond to it one way or the other, so the only person I told was my sweet, sweet coworker Liz who was mildly concerned and mildly frightened. As for everyone else, I just wanted them to act as is. I made an effort to call people on my breaks today to tell them hi or that I loved them, but it seemed as if everyone was busy or, honestly, just didn't want to talk. I made an effort to talk to an ex who would only respond in one word answers and quickly reminded me why we probably broke up. Others that I would hold the door for were downright hateful. I thought to myself Wow, you guys are really taking a giant shit on my last day on Earth. The climax built up to the walk to the metro when I nearly got hit by a car who sped through a red light. After I got to the metro, I accidentally backed into an Asian woman who flipped out on me in the middle of the car. 

That's when the take away kind of hit me: you don't live your last day on Earth (or at least act like it) for the praise of other people; you do it because that's how you're supposed to be every day. And for the logically-minded, I apologize for wasting your time with a whole bunch of nonsense revolving around potential death. If I had wanted to be logical, I probably could have spelled out all of the reasons that I wasn't going to die today (even though, today isn't really over. I still have to drive to class and back). However, and I may be stretching it, I don't think that feeling like I was going to die today was really the end-all-be-all lesson that came from my experience. People can be kind of cruel without even thinking about it, and it's even easier to notice when you honestly believe that it may be the last time that you'll ever see them again... even if it is just the door people at your office. But as crazy as it sounds, I really did believe when I opened up my eyes this morning that there was a good possibility it could be my last; it's a numb pain that's been with me all day. And as logic would have it, this will ultimately probably not be my last day, but it's a good reminder anyways because any day that you take out one minute, just sixty seconds, to remember how very fragile life can be... well... I would consider that a day well spent.

Wendell Shot My Friends

I am surprised that PETA didn't storm my house as a child, and if some of the photos from my childhood ever leak into the public eye (which considering my eventual run for presidency, they might), then I'm sure they will appear sooner than you can say that's not faux fur. Last night, Andrew and I were sitting on the couch watching Call of the Wildman, which is about a man who goes and grabs a lot of wild animals with his bare hands. He usually gets compensated for his services in small amounts of money, pieces of food, or the occasional first born. Anyway, as we were watching him eliminate a covey (just go with it) of raccoons from a family's house, I started telling Andrew the story of living in a single wide trailer with my family as a young boy.
Essentially, we would have the occasional mouse or perhaps on the right day, a small litter of opossums scurry through the living room or the kitchen. My dad kept a blowgun around the house and eventually mastered the art of shooting the little buggars with darts which would pin them to the floor. From there, they were available for removal. Andrew kind of looked at me with a fascinated, yet terrified, stare. Apparently his dad had never pinned any small rodents to the floor by use of a dart and a stiff gust of wind. I forget that other people didn't grow up the same way I did, and the concept to me is foreign. Of course, the dynamic changed when we moved from the single wide to the double wide. That didn't eliminate the presence of dead animals in our house... we just brought them in dead, as opposed to killing them on location.
Some of my favorite childhood portraits that are only seen by people legally bound to the Kirkland name are pictures of me hanging out with a flock of dead geese. The composition is almost ironic in that "postmodernist art that nobody gets but everyone wants to understand kind of way." There's me, kneeling next to these dead geese with a smile on my face petting their little head feathers with blood stains trailing from them. And I mean, I guess it was never a big deal for me, but even as I write this, I wonder how people will respond to phrases like petting their little head feathers with blood stains trailing from them. I get it. I see you. Something is wrong about the whole situation.
But there's also some merit in growing up around things that are kind of morbid. Instead of being afraid of everything under the sun like horror movies or snakes, I was just kind of emotionally vulnerable... but not when it came to animals. Nine year old Justin was an absolute wreck when Rose died on Titanic, but when Bambi's mom got shot, I was like Neat! Dinner! The thing is that while I may or may not have utilized the deer's body itself as a personal swing set, I knew that the deer died for a reason... and not just for a play place for my friends and me. The ultimate reason that my dad went around killing everything is because we needed to eat. Yes, holding a beating turtle heart in my hand was kind of awesome, but it's not like Wendell went all Hannibal Lectar and just killed things for the joy of killing. He's a lot of things, but he's no Dexter.

Wendell, why you killin all the animals?

But it did take me a long time to understand exactly why all these things were ending up dead on our porch. To be the academic that I've always claimed to be, I'm really not the brightest person when it came to common sense. There was something that didn't quite click with me from the time that these animals showed up at the house to the time they ended up on the table. But I will go through the step by step process of what was going through my child mind as this timeline of animal death happened around me.
First and foremost, there was the initial victim in question: the kill. Most of the time, it would just be laying there and because most of the kids in my neighborhood lived in houses that also concocted drugs and/or were dangerous to play with themselves, these animals were my friends. I think I consciously decided to ignore that they were dead entirely because if I did that, then I could just have pets for awhile. I can't count how many pictures of me there are carrying around dead rabbits and quail, and if I remember correctly, I had conversations with them... probably because no one else wanted to talk to me anymore.
Then, in true parental wisdom, I was ushered away so that I wouldn't see the animal skinned and cut up. Actually, I don't think I saw the actual animal be taken apart until I was at least ten, which is obviously a suitable age for an introduction to animal dismemberment. Anyways, the next time that I would see the animal was all cut up in the bath tub. Yes, looking back on the whole mess, it was kind of weird to imagine that I took baths in the same place that we would leave our fresh meat to soak, but whatever. I would spend hours leaned up against the side of the bathtub just poking at the meat. I'm not sure if I didn't understand what raw meat looked like or if I thought it was going to come back to life, but there was something about it that was fascinating.
And then, for the finish I guess what it boils down to is that... I ate my friends. I suppose I should maybe go back and apologize to all of my fallen comrades, but at the end of the day, I wasn't so emotionally attached that I couldn't enjoy a Southern-fried version of venison filet mignon or stuffed wild turkey breast. And even with the mice, it's not like I had a Michael Jackson thing going on. I wasn't so much interested in naming the little guy "Ben," but more concerned about where exactly I was going to stumble upon a mouse bound to the ground by a small metal dart with a bright green cap. Call it what you want, but my childhood was kind of awesome. While everyone else was going over to friends' houses for dinner, I was having my friends over... then eating them.

Desperately Seeking Shooting Situation

I don't think I've ever wanted anyone to die. That's not how I roll; too much karma attached to that kind of wishful thinking. However, I have always had a killer desire (no pun intended) to find myself in a shooting situation. It dials back to when I was younger; sometimes, when I would be lying on the floor pretending to have passed out hoping that Casey would call an ambulance, I would imagine it was from a gun shot wound. It would always be in a non-vital place like my shoulder, or my leg, but I would imagine I had lost just enough blood that I would lose consciousness. My last words before rescue would always be profound and full of wisdom, like most middle schoolers are instilled with, and then I would pass out and wait for Casey to find me and freak out about the morbid jokes I would play on him.
Like most things in my life, I blame a great deal of my wishing for a shooting situation on television. I've made it a point to watch as many shows involving shootings so that I can become well-versed on typical shooting plot lines. Luckily, between my Mamaw Cora and my mom, I had all of the soap operas covered when I could be home during the week. In the later years when tv viewing was more liberal, I picked up Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill. I even made a personal exception and watched Desperate Housewives for the episode where Jackie from Roseanne guest starred and shot everyone in that supermarket. One day, when someone went postal in my own life, I would step up and be the Derek Shepherd or Keith Scott or whatever Felicity Huffman's character's name was. They all tried to talk down the shooter, and only one of them died from it. The odds were in my favor.
The idea has followed me around for years now. One boy that used to sit behind me in middle school was convicted for shooting a couple in some town an hour or so away. I thought of all the times that he kicked my chair and I nearly had an emotional orgasm just thinking that I could have been a target. I know he hated me, but I could have talked him down. I could have explained why it wasn't worth it, and I could have saved the entire school. Surely it would be adapted into a television special, and I was confident that Jonathan Taylor Thomas would play me.
I never wished for anything to happen while I was in high school because I knew the odds of someone bringing a gun to South-Doyle were abnormally high anyways. Between the thug nasties that lived by the river and the uncomfortable number of country folk that had access to shotguns (myself included), I'm actually kind of shocked that I didn't get a gun put in my face on a daily basis. I knew they were on campus; we all did. Too many people shot things in their free time for there not to be. I was honestly just waiting for the day that someone would whip that bad boy out. One day, a boy did bring a dismantled pistol to school to supposedly shoot his girlfriend, but I was sadly on route to a math competition. And honestly, we never were the premier public school of Knox County, but I did expect more than the thinking I'm going to bring a broken gun to shoot someone. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy nothing happened, but seriously...
One of the appeals of being a Resident Assistant in college was the idea that I would be right in the line of fire (yet again, no pun intended... just a terrible plethora of cliches). The idea seemed magical until one girl on campus starting posting a lot of Eminem lyrics and posting statuses about how she hated everyone. I mean, Eminem is no Marilyn Manson, but I was picking up on what she was selling. So, we started talking. I figured that the allure of talking her down sans gun was probably better than talking her down with gun in hand. Same results: less consequence. She told me everything was going to be okay because she was about to get a recording contract, so I just kind of left her be so that she could go be her Mariah Carey self. The next day, I told what I thought was an authority figure of the lyrics and the possibility to the response, "Oh, it's okay. She's transferring at the end of this semester." Sweet response, bro. That only gives her like two weeks to snipe campus. Thanks, brah.
The night after our conversation, social networks exploded with news of gunshots around campus. I thought to myself Damn it, Justin. You called it, and no one listened. No one ever listens to you, and somehow you are always right. Go. Go and fix this mess. So naturally, I went toward the sound of the gunshots. Accompanied by two of my favorite lesbians armed with air soft guns, we ran cross campus in the middle of the night. A police car stopped us and told us to get inside. Oh shit, I was right! There was a shooter held up in an apartment... off campus. Not a student. Well, kind of. We slinked back to our dorm, and for old times sake, I laid in the floor and pretended to be shot one more time. I, then, actually fell asleep and missed class the next day because of it. Close enough for me.
Some people tell me that my fascinations is an utter disrespect for human life. Some people have even told me that there's something wrong with me. But you see, I've never wanted anyone to die. That's just too sad. I have, though, really wanted a situation that would be suitable for a network prime-time season finale. I don't think it's too much for a young man to ask for a somewhat life-threatening situation that he can single handedly get under control. But until then, I'll just continue lying in my floor pretending to get shot, and when anyone walks in and asks what I'm doing (which has happened), I'll just stick to the regular response. I fell down. But we'll all know what's going on... I'll be rehearsing those final, poetic moments before the show goes off until September... or something like that.