Don’t worry – it’s not quite as maudlin as that.
But you do need a hook in the title, don’t you? I will run out of Glenn Close puns eventually. Not unlike the prestige gays who plagiarise me. One day, they’ll succeed in uploading all of GettyImages onto Instagram, and then it’ll be Little Marky’s turn!
But it is World Suicide Prevention Day – although, frankly, the way things are going, I’m reminded of Joan Rivers’s line when asked to compère a suicide function (“Are we for or against?”). St. Joan famously lost her husband, Edgar, to the disease – and recognised that humour, even in such deathly circumstances, is what gets you through. I talk about my Yentl health to every dog on the street! When the dogs start talking back, then I’ll get worried. Although I do think we gays could be better at distinguishing between oversharing and genuine vulnerability. As the line in The Office has it: “They’re the same picture”.
I’ve told this story before, but when I was seventeen, I witnessed a young man lose his life this a-way firsthand. Of course, there were suicides among neighbours and acquaintances before then, but the Mother and Father kept it from our ears. Quite right! Children don’t need to know. (The epidemic of mysterious “accidents” in suburban Dublin of the mid-2000s notwithstanding.) As we got older and learned the truth, we realised that these tragic losses were men and women very much like our parents. Who drove nice cars; had two holidays a year; ran businesses and owned property; with partners and families – everything that didn’t demarcate them as “failures” in the mammon-obsessed society of the Celtic Tiger. Even recently, I heard of a guy about my age who died of motor neurone disease. Much of the narrative focused on the indignities this soul braved. Having his dad dress him and take him to the toilet, while he watched his siblings get married and start their lives. The truth? Unable to cope with such a grim diagnosis, he dispatched himself into the Dodder.
But back to my young man. John. John was a distant relative of the Father’s. It was Christmastime and there was a party for a great-aunt and uncle who’d been married since Moses was in short trousers…
What I am to Glenn, John was to Madonna. He worshipped her, and we chatted about W.E. which was about to be released. Having been previously unaware of this man’s existence, I learned from the Cousins the trials he’d endured: in-and-out of psychiatric care and previously the victim of a queerbashing outside The George, Dublin’s premiere gay pub. There was an open bar, that night – and I sensed that alcohol might’ve been a problem. To tell you the truth, I thought him ancient – and being such a stereotype (living with his mother at a rarefied age and sporting an ambitious combover), it confirmed my bias. He wasn’t thirty.
A few months later, I was in town – and saw a fluster of policemen and emergency services. Someone had jumped off Grattan Bridge! The body wasn’t fished out until the early hours. My parents were away and I was studying for exams, so it wasn’t immediately clear that we knew the deceased. The Father texted the news in his typically tactful way. “Did you hear about your pal?”
“He suffered with his nerves, Mark,” the Grandmother explained “though his Mammy didn’t like people knowing he was on-the-other-bus.” We invented “Don’t Say Gay” in our family long before Florida did. The funeral was delayed given the need for autopsies and when it did occur, his beloved Madonna blared throughout. “Don’t you dare do that for me!” I warned.
I still think of John to this day – and the fact that “harmless” was about the only summation he earned in his whole life.
That, let’s face it, is No Way to Live.
In the September, I started at Trinity – and about twice a month, I’d get an e-mail stating that a member of the college community had died. More often than not, you’d discover they were another John. Somebody’s daughter, somebody’s son. Someone who had friends and ambitions and a future, but decided it was all too much. I was seized by nightmares of their gulping in dirty Liffey water (or languishing on hospital trolleys); and in their final moments not wanting to die like that.
We had one lecturer who had an unusual last name and when I Googled her, I came across a personal blog. It was written under a pseudonym, but she gave herself away with a post about deciding on first names for her children to go with the mouthful of a second. (Children who, she crudely related, only came about because of a faulty coil and were given birth to in a paddling pool in the dining room.)
In this blog, no one was spared her scoldings. Her colleagues, her in-laws – and worst of all – her students. She called us “little darlings” and, in one instance, likened a Junior Freshman to Anders Breivik. What took the cake for me was a hypocritical entry dedicated to those e-mails from the Senior Tutor, showing faux concern for her charges and preaching kindness.
Mem’ries such as those come to the fore on days like today. “World Suicide Prevention Day”. And, dear readers, I know your lives have been touched by it in some way, too. Both of them! What I would tell my younger self, yet to navigate impossible healthcare systems, medications and treatments, is that the only ones that matter are your own friends and family. And to cultivate a Support Network (be that a friendly ear or a loving set of paws) – so you can close your front door at night with your head held high. There’s so much hatred out there.
Take care of yourselves!
Has Ms. Close connected with you on Instagram? Are you following her?