Cocktails and Suicide

Last month I caught up with an old friend (Pat) at a rooftop bar over cocktails and… a suicide.

(new rooftop bar in Hell's Kitchen)

Pat and I had met eight years ago in our early twenties, teaching English in China. She was mourning the death of a close friend in a drowning accident, and I was mourning the completion of a three year business degree that I had no desire to use. There we found ourselves working for a dodgy Chinaman, eating boiled chicken’s feet and being treated like celebrities, all because of the colour of our skin. When we try and tell other about the craziness that goes on in China, they don't seem to care.

“I forget I can talk to you about this stuff,” Pat said. I sipped my martini staring out at the lights of Manhattan and thinking about skinned goats, when a large dark object fell from above and over the edge of the deck. It was about the size of a miniature grand piano, which I vainly hoped it was, but when people rushed over to the edge of the glass, they confirmed it was a person.

We were too short to see over the ledge, but the tall guy next to us said they had landed on the road in front of a cab – that had stopped just in time.  People across the road were frozen in their tracks. Most got on their phones to call 911, and within two minutes we could hear and see sirens heading towards the hotel. On the rooftop, we all became instant buddies bonded by tragedy. We talked to one another about what we’d seen, and made facial expressions that read “eeek” and “how sad.”

The horrible thing was, when we looked up, we could clearly see where they would have jumped from. The penthouse was only one floor above, and set about 5 meters back, overlooking all the action in the bar. How long had they stood up there? How terrible that no one had seen them. Also, how did they propel them selves far enough to clear the bar area?

After a while my morbid curiosity won out against my fear of gore, and I asked one of the staff members near me if I could stand on the chair to have a  look at the body.

“No. You’re not allowed,” he said, moving the chair away. Fair enough.

We waited before going downstairs, where staff ushered us out the side door. Police tape now surrounded the hotel, and in the distance flashing lights reflected off the white sheet that covered the body.

***

Later that night, in a different borough and after many a bar / much saki / vodka from teacups and random acts of dancing, we remembered the roof-top.

“You know 16 floors is not very high,” said Pat. “If  you’re going to go, why not go skydiving and just not pull the shoot. That’s what I’d do.” 

That was not a lie. Pat is a living poster child for a Pepsi-max commercial. As long as I’ve known her, she has always lived life "to the max." She's practically a full-time snowboarder, and since China she’s: studied film, been married, divorced, lived in Canada, NewZealand and Paris, and she’s younger than me. Currently she has a crush on her tattoo artist who designed a giant quill feather dripping in ink that spans her right rib cage and ends at her pelvic bone. (It actually looks rather elegant.)

Even that night, in the sushi restaurant which was empty and dead, she’d pointed to every single picture on the menu page and ordered one of each.

“I love picture menus!” she exclaimed, pointing to a picture of a saki flask. 

It seems kind-of ironic that I took a someone so full of life to bar where another person decided to end theirs.  But I'm glad I was with her, as we were able to turn the night around. Next year she plans to move  here to study again. This time - jewellery design.

Death

I’ve never been afraid of death. Partially because mum told us from day one, that when we die we simply go into our next life. Cool hey? No heaven and hell in my family. And as if that wasn’t enough, she would constantly bring up baggage from her ‘past lives’ that explained her problems she faced in ‘this life’. This is just one reason why I’m a sceptic.

But back to the topic of death. I’m also at ease with it because when I was six and my brother four, Dad took us into the country hospital where he worked, which was pretty rare, turned to us and said --
“Kids, do you want to see a dead body?”
“Sure!” I said. Why not?
"I’m hungry," said my little brother, gripping his teddy bear.
Dad took us into a dark little room, where a blue sheet lay covering someone on a bench. He pulled down the sheet revealing an old, skinny man with a beer belly.

He looked like he was taking a nap. A very still nap. Then Dad lifted up both of his eyelids, and shined a torch in his eyes. Closed his lids, covered his head over again, and that was that. He might as well have taken us to the newsagent to buy the paper.

I’m sure we asked lots of questions. Like – "So when does he move onto his next life?" To which my Dad would not have known how to answer. And you wonder why my parents divorced?

So that was death. Very simple. A natural part of life. Since then, I’ve seen two dead bodies in real life. One was my grandfather, and the other was a lady in the distance, who got hit by a car in China.

I do wonder if I will see Ada die. I can’t help but think if she did, we’d all just feel relieved. But I happen to know for sure that I won’t witness her death this year. And not just because she’s been dying for the last fifty years, and won’t deliver. You see, my mum got me a psychic reading for Christmas last year, and I asked her – "Will Ada die while I’m with her?"

The psycic said she won't. But then the psychic also said that Ada would really enjoy my company and to look out - because a hot romance was just around the corner, if not already starting. Well, unless by 'hot romance' she meant licking pizza drippings off my fingers, while fantasizing about Jeffrey Dean Morgan, then I'm still waiting lady! Still waiting.