Love and Death

To Whom It May Concern:

Arthur Adamov, Cleopatra, Socrates, Virginia Woolf, Vincent van Gough, and Earnest Hemingway have something in common besides being great men and women that we read about. They killed themselves. Some say it is easier to escape life than to go on with it. Is it? How many people can hold a gun to their heads and pull the trigger? How many can cut open their veins with a knife and watch blood trickle down to the floor? How many can take a step down to oblivion from a roof? How many can swallow the cyanide pill before the final bedtime? Those small deft movements take a lot more than people would have you believe. It requires a realization that their lives have been an utter failure or perhaps that human existence is such that there is not much to look forward to.

My first rendezvous with death occurred when my grandfather died. I was four then. I tried to talk to him as his body lay in the verandah for public viewing. My brother yelled at me, “Get away, dadaji is dead.” I looked at him angrily and then went running to my mother and complained that Vicky was being obnoxious again. My mother didn’t say anything but I saw my grandmother crying in a corner. They had been married since they were eighteen. It must have been hard on her – sixty-six years of marriage – now that I think about it. At least there’s nobody who has become so attached to me. I don’t want anyone to miss me like my grandmother missed my grandfather. That’s just cruel.

I suppose I have had a rather average childhood. I, like everyone else, went through phases where I wanted to be a military hero and an astronaut…and an executioner. My parents wanted to send me to some elite boarding school in Connecticut, the kind that my brother went to, but I refused. I didn’t think I could live with so many people. I also very much doubted that my parents would remember me if I went away so far. I was brought up like a single child as my brother was away most of the time. I enjoyed that. I could sit and stare at the wall for hours with no one to bother me. It seems to me that everyone whines quite a bit about the apparent lack of time in their lives. Really, does it look like I care? I am the busiest and the most involved person I know. Do I ever complain about anything?

My mother has not knocked on the door today for some odd reason. She hates it when I lock my door. She usually knocks and demands, “What are you doing? Go to sleep. Don’t be like your American friends and stay up late at night. You have to be better than them. Look at the Indians here, they are all running the Silicon Valley. One day you have to be like your dad. Anyway, your brother is coming tomorrow…” She always leaves out the part about the high suicide rate among younger Asian-American siblings due to the enormous pressure on them to perform. Okay, so I don’t have the exact stats on that but it seems right. But really, I can’t stand her for more than a few minutes at a time. I hate this bullshit. The intellectual Indians, Russians, Chinese immigrants keeping America alive. It’s great that my mother’s generation struggled to get here for a better life for my generation but somewhere along the line they need to relax and enjoy life. Since I was in first grade my parents have told me I need to get 4.0s if I ever want to get anywhere in life. I kept hearing the same thing for ten years. The reaction is never, “Congratulations for your 98%.” It’s always, “Why didn’t you get 100%?” They don’t even need to say it anymore. I feel guilty if I get anything less than a perfect score. When I do get a perfect score, which is often, there’s not much to celebrate. That’s what is expected. That’s normalcy.

My brother is another character I do not like. We eagerly await his arrival from Stanford for the weekend. He has slept with more girls then I have met. To be fair, he does have a two year age advantage over me. Still, it is unlikely that I will ever catch up. All of these assholes – Marc Garcia, the drug dealer; Diego Melo, the zit filled tennis benchwarmer; or even that one-legged Bret Smith seem to have girls all over them. Don’t get me wrong, I have a girlfriend--Rebecca. She’s from Alabama. She’s also fat, stupid and ugly. But I love her anyway. Partly because once I get used to something, it’s hard for me to let go. And let’s be honest, it’s not as if the cheerleaders are waiting for us to break up so they can have a piece of me. Apparently, last month she was cheating on me by cybering with some guy in Kentucky. Her ex-best friend informed me. Then Rebecca spent the whole of last week apologizing and feeling guilty. I told her I don’t care. For all I care, she can go fuck someone on national TV.

That reminds me--I was on live television the other day after I led the Tennis team to its first state championship in over fifty years. A rather heroic moment -- other than the fact that nobody really cares about tennis. I gave a great speech to the local TV station. It didn’t really have anything to do with tennis. The cameraman wanted to shut off the camera but I wouldn’t let him. I wanted to make a point like Richard Gere did at the Academy Awards, when he launched into a scathing attack on the Chinese government about Tibet. I talked about the filthy media corporations making money off the misery of the Iraqi populace. But after a while you don’t even know whom to hate. Do you hate the newspapers, the journalists, the news broadcasters, the words, the people, the country, the military, the Senate, the Congress or the President? That’s how fucked up we have become.

It all started when some teacher asked me how I felt about the Iraqi liberation since “you are from the region”. No, I am not from India. Even if I was, India is quite a bit away from Iraq. I have been there for two weeks my entire life. I am an American. I was in Washington D.C. last year for some kind of youth leader conference and a US Senator asked me where I was from. I replied, “San Francisco.” He took a close look at me and asked, “No, really?” What is an American supposed to look like? Not like me, I suppose. Anyway, I asked her what the fuck am I supposed to feel? I asked her if it would make her happier if I felt happy or if I felt disgusted. She didn’t say anything – just stared at me in the stupid sort of way. Then she started talking about religion, after all it was a religion class. We always talk about The Bible or some other fanatical book like that. I hate these religious nuts…especially the sluttish girls that get fucked by random strangers at night and then go to Church on Sunday. Sluts by the night, nuts by the day – no pun intended. Today in class the teacher refused to talk about “The Chariots of God”. Apparently the author, Mr. Eric Von Daniken, spent some time in prison for credit fraud, so we can simply dismiss his theories on God. I mean, come on, God in the Bible killed an entire country of Egyptians.

I have thought of ways to fight the power. Writing is an excellent tool. But it has been so homogenized to suit the needs of the power. It’s everywhere. Last night I was up all night because the computer monitor light wouldn’t stop blinking. Why, why is it that they make a monitor like that? I think it’s because they want capitalism to permeate through every corner of the world. They want us to live in a matrix. That blinking light is in-your-face capitalism. But I didn’t blink or get up to stop the blinking. Instead, I just kept lying down showing bravery in the face of a capitalistic attack.

Weak people. I really hate weak people. Do you know I skipped school three days in a row because a bully told me to do so? That’s why I hate myself so much. I don’t want to be weak. I want to stand up when someone pushes me around. I want to beat them up. But I only do that later when I am daydreaming. At least I am not a follower. The followers, whose lives are neatly planned out like a clock, that taunt you solely because they are with someone who is popular. The future of humankind lies in these abject fools rising up and overthrowing the cool people. Yeah, that’s going to happen. I can’t say much more about them – they don’t deserve it.

When I don’t think about it, I feel like I am like the rest of them. Then I look in the mirror and realize I need something more than these people. I need five seconds of pain to attain Nirvana. I have a choice to make tonight. There’s an isolation around me that’s suffocating me. I need something more than a promise for a phenomenal pay-off in the future, something that I can touch, feel, and smell today. But only the lonely can feel what I feel now. And perhaps also those who decided their own fate. Please don’t try to judge yourself after I am gone. You or your words didn’t kill me. It’s never one thing. So many things lead one to believe that there’s more to life than this pathetic existence. Then again, maybe all of you are to blame. You call it death, I call it life. You call it suicide, I call it revitalization. You call it depression, I call it awakening. You call it pain…I call it pleasure.

My friend Chris thinks I should go see a shrink. But I think if he listened to me long enough, he would become disturbed. What’s the use of that? I am also afraid of becoming dependent on the shrink and his lies if I were to see one. Communication isn’t wrong. Help isn’t wrong. But dependence is. If everyone was for themselves, there would be no poor people, no rich people. There would be pure natural socialism. Of course that would mean reverting to a primitive anarchistic social state, possibly abandoning modern way of life for the more simple life. But how much does a man really need?

Death is not based on my weakness but a desire for absolute power to control it. Imagine taking a last step off the skyscraper without any fear. Or imagine swallowing cyanide like aspirin – two tablets every four hours. Or imagine watching your palms covered in your own blood with glee and joy. Or imagine even the pleasure in the pain of a blowing brain that will release you of all your agony. Can you? The night is still young. I am not out of time, just hope. Good bye. I wish I could say I would miss you all, but I won’t.

This letter is incomplete. I must go think of a fitting end. I think I would like to blow myself up using one of the bombs being dropped in Iraq right now to show my solidarity with the Iraqi people. But then they win. This might have to wait. What’s a death without a great end?

Signed,

What’s in a name?