MARTIN
The guy who jumped had two profound and apparently tradictory effects on us all. Firstly, he made us realize that we werent capable of killing ourselves. And sedly, this information made us suicidal again.
That isnt a paradox, if you know anything about the perversity of human nature. A long time ago, I worked with an alcoholieone who must remain nameless because you will almost certainly have heard of him.
Aold me that the first time he failed on an attempt to quit the booze was the most terrifying day of his life. Hed always thought that he could stop drinking, if he ever got round to it, so he had a choice stashed away in a sock drawer somewhere at the back of his head. But when he found out that he had to drink, that the choice had never really been there… Well, he wao do away with himself, if I may temporarily fuse our issues.
I didnt properly uand what he meant until I saw that guy jump off the roof. Up until then, jumping had always been an option, a way out, money in the bank for a rainy day. And then suddenly the money was gone - or rather, it had never been ours in the first place. It beloo the guy who jumped, and people like him, because dangling ys over the precipice is nothing unless youre prepared to go that extra two inches, and none of us had been. We could tell each other and ourselves something different - oh, I would have do if she hadhere or he hadhere or if someone hadnt sat on my head - but the fact of the matter was that we were all still around, and wed all had ample opportunity not to be. Why had we e down that night? Wed e down because we thought we should go and look for some twit called Chas, who turned out not to be terribly germao our story. Im not sure we could have persuaded old matey, the jumper, to go and look for Chas. He had other things on his mind. I wonder how he would have scored on Aaron T. Becks Suicide I Scale? Pretty high, I should think, unless Aaron T. Beck has been barking up the wrong tree. No one could say the i wasnt there.
We got off that roof sharpish once hed gone over. We decided it was best not to hang around and explain our role, or lack of it, in the poor chaps demise. We had a little Toppers previous, after all, and by owning up, wed only be fusing the issue. If people knew wed been up there, then the clarity of the story - unhappy man jumps off of building - would be diminished, and people would uand less of it, rather than more. We wouldnt want that.
So we charged dowairs as fast as damaged lungs and varicosed legs would let us, a our separate ways. We were too nervous to go for a drink in the immediate viity, and too nervous to travel in a taxi together, so we scattered the moment we reached the pavement. (What, I wondered on the way home, was the pub to Toppers House like of an evening? Was it full of unhappy people on their , or half-fused, half-relieved people whod just e down? Or an awkward mix of the two? Does the landlhe uniqueness of his tele?
Does he exploit their mood for financial gain - by a Miserable Hour, for example? Does he ever try to get the Uppers - in this text the very unhappy people - to mix with the Downers? Or the Uppers to mix with each other? Has there ever been a relationship born there? Could the pub even have been responsible for a wedding, and thus maybe a child?) We met again the following afternoon in Starbucks, and everyone had the blues. A fereviously, in the immediate aftermath of the hol