Suicidal Postman

“I’m not going back. I can’t do it. I can’t take all the shit. I can’t take the cold. I can’t take the men who look down on you or the women who don’t look at you at all. It chips away at you man. It chips little pieces off your soul. I just want to die in a place I feel like a human being. I swear to you Turk. I’m going to do it.”

It had been a long evening and Jeff was due back to his job as a South London postman in three days. He’d been coming to Bangkok for nine years and for nine years he’d been suicidal every time it was time to go back. He had plenty of plans about how he was going to do it. It usually involved some locking himself in a hotel room with some hapless lady of the night equipped with Viagra to give a whale a stiffy and a cocktail of drugs recommended on the EXIT website. There had been a time he’d had some romantic notion about wrapping himself in a Thai flag and plunging to his demise in the murky waters of the Chao Phraya but this idea didn’t last longer than a couple of drinks. What he really wanted was to die in some cheap hotel bed beside a beautiful woman and never have to face grim realities again.

In his defence I should mention that when he wasn’t slipping into the realms of suicidal fantasy Jeff was a great guy. He was the kind of person who would buy anyone a drink and laugh at the worst jokes. Whenever he arrived in Bangkok he always brought sweets and presents for the kids who lived in my apartment building. He could joke and laugh with Thais practising his phrase book Thai. The problem of his suicidal fantasies never even emerged until the clock was ticking closer and closer to his return-to-blighty date. Even then it wasn’t so much depression that struck him as it was anger. He was angry that fate should ever force him to spend so much as an afternoon in the UK let alone 11 months of the year.

“Sometimes I think the best way would be to set a time and a place and have some hitman take me out. You know… When I wasn’t expecting it. That way I couldn’t bottle out. This is my problem. I’ve bought the drugs before. I know what to do. I just bottle out.”

“It isn’t bottling out. It’s just self preservation.” Said Bob. I thought Bob had gone to sleep on the bar that his head was resting on but it seemed he was at least half awake. “Every sinew, every muscle and every bone is geared to it. You’re a machine whose only purpose is to keep going as long as possible. Committing suicide takes an immense effort of will.” Bob pulled himself up and looked Jeff in the eye. “To be able to really kill yourself you have to really hate living and you, my dear friend, you do not hate living. You just hate your life. That’s not enough. You’ll never do it.”

Jeff looked crushed. “You’re right. I can’t do it. I want to do it. I want to end it. I can’t face going back to that stupid little life delivering stupid letters to stupid people who scowl at me through their stupid net curtains. My dad did it all his life and it fucking killed him. You can see why. The pitbulls that bark at you when you within ten feet of their letterbox. The gangs of kids who hang around every fucking estate all fucking day with eyes full of ignorance and resentment and hate. Getting up at half past fucking four and setting off into the freezing cold to pick up a bag of crap that nobody really wants. It isn’t any kind of life. But I keep doing it, day in day out like some robot keeping myself going by thinking that in eleven months, ten months, nine months eight months, I’ll be able to come back here and live like you guys live every day. Just to be able to wake up in the morning; late in the morning and think that on this day anything could happen...”

Bob smiled and said “Where you’re going wrong is that you shouldn’t be a postman. You should be an international criminal.”

Jeff paused and thought about it. “You know you’re right. I should be an international criminal.”

Bob suddenly looked nonplussed and said “What?”

“I mean how hard can it be? There are a few risks. I accept that. But you know… You get to pick your own hours. I’ll bet the pay is much better than what I’m making as a postman. With all the fucking letter bombs and anthrax it’s probably not that much riskier than what I do at the moment. And, let’s face it, what do risks matter when you’re suicidal anyway”

“But you’re not really suicidal Jeff.” I said.

“I could be suicidal… But Bob is exactly right. All I really need is a scheme; a way of making loads of money in a criminal way. Not drugs… I need to draw the line somewhere.”

“Murder, rape, extortion.” I suggested.

“How can you make money out of rape? Come on Turk. You’re not thinking straight... What do you know about computer fraud?”

“I’m no expert but I’m told it can be extremely profitable.”

“Or mail fraud.” suggested Bob getting into the spirit of criminal enthusiasm. “Set up an offshore business bank account, a PO box somewhere, design a letter that looked like some lottery thing with dollar sign graphics and mail it out to a thousand or so people telling them that they’ve won a hundred thousand but need to first pay the ninety nine dollar tax before they can collect it. There are always a percentage of stupid people who’ll fall for something like that. And the beauty of it is you’re only cheating greedy people who want something for nothing.”

“I like that.” said Jeff.

“And it’s not even breaking the law.”

“How’s that not breaking the law?” I asked.

“It’s business.”

“Or,” I suggested, “You could just go to night school and study to do something that pays better than being a postman.”

Jeff looked at me with beautifully reddened 4AM eyes and said “No… Bob was right. There’s no way to win playing by the rules. Rules are for suckers. Look at my dad. Look at me. I tell you. I don’t know what I’m going to do but the next time I come out here I don’t want to be sitting in some bar knowing I’m going to be going back again to a life I hate. For what? Just to repeat an endless cycle of mindless drudgery with a few weeks time off for good behaviour every year. I want to live.”

Some women drifted into the bar. They all had bad nose jobs and thick ankles. One stood between me and Jeff while ordering a drink. Jeff made some joke and the two ended up together.

A couple of days later Jeff was packing his stuff into the boot of a taxi meter. As usual he gave the local kids all the spare baht he hadn’t spent. “Better than walking around with heavy pockets for the rest of the year.” Then he was gone.

The following year he was back again. He didn’t seem to have become an international criminal (at least he made no reference to it). He was still a postman…

The fact he stayed three months instead of his usual one while being even more generous is something we all put down to thrifty living.

Sometimes it’s best not to ask questions about things like this.

© Turk Fist. All rights reserved by the author.

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