the great imposter
Suicide Pact
These are my friends. They’re in a band called JJAMZ. Their debut record “Suicide Pact” comes out July 10th on Danger Bird records. This is their album cover. I took the photo.
a happy-go-lucky vignette
She could feel death all around her. This was a new phenomenon seemingly brought on by nothing and its continued presence in her life concerned her. She would be sitting at her desk or walking to her car and without warning an undertow of anguish would engulf her. A premonition of loss so great she could feel it her knees. She would imagine the phone call, “there’s been an accident.” Her father, her niece, her lover, whomever. She could see herself racing to the hospital, tears streaking her mascara. She could hear the sardonic pop song on the radio; notice the pedestrians on the street moving forward with their lives. She saw herself alone under a sea of comforters in a blue-black pre-dawn bedroom. A dog-eared book on bereavement sitting on her nightstand. And standing at her car or in her chair at her desk, she would be temporarily seized by this terrible vision. And it wasn’t even the loved ones deaths she feared. If she was honest with herself it was something else. It was the shock — the sudden shift from things being one way to things being another way — which freighted her most. The fact that the Universe could plug one of her beloved into its chaos equation and take them away — it was unfair. And the unfairness was what she truly feared. That and the funeral. The wake. The sobbing and the Prozac and the procession of tacky shoes parading toward the open casket to pay their last respects. The grief counselor whose fat face she could just picture spouting bullshit. Making her feel worse. Somehow those were the things she was most panicked about. Not the actual deaths. That she could jive with. That she could understand on some deep, cosmic level.
These thoughts of death and dying would last a minute or two and then subside slowly into the ether of her mind. Like a genie returning to its lamp for another hibernation. And her day would resume. She might call the unfortunate loved one who was the subject of her waking dream and pretend to fact check some detail or ask about their day. She would say I love you. But lately the frequency of these thoughts was increasing. When she was young her mortality was funny. She stood on its shores and taunted it. Now — as she grew into a woman — these feelings lingered always. Like the vestiges of someone’s presence shortly after they’ve left the room.
