Dead son dreams of calling his father

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What do you expect, being born on Friday the 13th? That was my fate without me knowing it and the madness that followed, followed the madness that followed the madness.

The shrinks had their own name for it but I called it a babbling hell of diabolical voices. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. They put me on Chlorpromazine and a bunch of other mindbuckers, but I had the last laugh. I took enough Amobarbital and Secobarbital to kill myself three times over.

The first time hadn’t worked and I wanted to be sure the next time. I was “determined that there should be as little imprecision as possible,” as my dad’s favorite writer William Saroyan wrote in ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.’

I hated doing it to my crazy father, and I wondered as I spun off into oblivion what would happen to him. I didn’t know if my death would do him in or not, but I suspected he would survive. He told me when he visited me in Ward 3C after my first suicide attempt, “I hope you don’t try this again, Will, because I don’t know if I can survive another one — and I’m into survival.”

My sparse response at the time was, “It’s good that you know about yourself.”

After some rocky years when I was a kid when my dad and my mother got divorced, we had a pretty good relationship at the end. Eccentric was the shrink’s word for it. Fragile was another. But despite our past differences and difficulties, we made contact on several occasions in the last couple of years. Times when we really understood one another and wrote many letters back and forth signed with the big L.

I kept all of the letters he wrote to me, and now he has them again, and I know he kept mine, although I don’t know if he can bring himself to read them. He’s a very emotional guy.

There were many times when we would drive each other crazy, but finally, now, in retrospect, I loved him and I know he loved me.

My suicide was a shock to all concerned, even though I tried it once before when I was diagnosed with this goddamned mental illness. 

At the end I gave everyone a false sense of security, to throw them off the track, to prevent them from stopping me. I had just one thought and that was to take those barbiturates I had bought on the street with my last hundred bucks and to get the hell out of this world. I was on “the wrong earth,” to quote Saroyan again.

You know what I’d love to do? I’d love to be able to tap into the Internet or into the phone lines or whatever and call my dad. As in life, I’d have to make it a collect call.

I know it can’t be done, but man, I’d love to do that. I’d tell him I’m sorry for hurting him by killing myself but I could see no other way to escape the voices, and I’d tell him that I’m at peace now and that I’ll love him through all eternity.

Even if I could figure out a way to do that, I couldn’t really do it. I mean, when he picked up the phone and heard my voice, he’d think he had gone mad. Who wouldn’t in a similar situation?

 

A sad day for America and for the world!

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It has been 27 years and I still can’t believe it.

The day Truth, Justice and the American Way died.

On this day, November 18, 1992, Superman was killed by the monster DOOMSDAY.

When news broke that DC Comics planned to carry out this unwise and apocalyptic act, ‘The Death of Superman’ received unprecedented coverage in the media.

People around the world were horrified and shaken with disbelief. I know I was. I had grown up with Superman on my bedside table and by my side as I confronted bullies at school.

The world was safe from diabolical forces and global destruction — and bullies — as long as Superman was there to protect us all.

But then, Marvel Comics, on a whim, decided to end it all.  Oh — and I say this in all sincerity —the horror, the fear, the humanity! 

But what was a nightmare for me and fellow human beings of like mind was a gold mine for Marvel Comics.

The comic book Superman No. 75 about Superman’s death sold more than six million copies and became the top-selling comic of 1992.

THE GREAT CREATORS

Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, with John Byrne, debuted in Action Comics No. 1 on April 18, 1938 to immediate success.

The following year Superman became the first superhero to headline his own comic book, and thenceforth, the most famous American cultural icon. 

The last 27 years have been rough. A panoply of super heroes have come along to fill the gap to save the world, but there will only be, for evermore, the one and only Superman.

Superman’s life and death right HERE.

-30-

FLASHBACK: Clark Gable’s best role killed him

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REMEMBERING THE KING OF HOLLYWOOD

Died November 16, 1961, at the age of 59.

The day after ‘The Misfits’ wrapped up shooting, Clark Gable suffered a heart attack and died ten days later.

Perhaps best known for his role as Rhett Butler in the epic ‘Gone with the Wind,’ his best role in my opinion, and in his own opinion, was that as the aging wildhorse-roping cowboy in ‘The Misfits’ starring Marilyn Monroe. It was also Marilyn’s best role, but she hated it.

Written by Marilyn’s husband at the time, the great playwright Arthur Miller and directed by the legendary John Huston, the movie also starred Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and the great character actress Thelma Ritter.

Gable did many of his own stunts roping the wild horses and the struggle and the strain of that showed in his face and in his whole body afterwards.

Gable called it the best picture he ever made.

On the last day of filming, this is what he said about working with Marilyn: 

“Christ, I’m glad this picture’s finished. She damn near gave me a heart attack.”

He may have been referring to her unexpectedly going nude during a bedroom scene. Huston cut the scene but it still exists in a locked safe.

On the next day, Gable suffered a severe coronary thrombosis and died ten days later.

Marilyn became increasingly dependent upon pills during shooting — taking three times the normal dosage of the sleeping aid Nembutal.

She died a year and half later under suspicious circumstances, allegedly of a drug overdose, but to this day, she is believed by many to have been murdered to cover up affairs with President Kennedy and Bobbie Kennedy.

The beauty of Hollywood’s greatest icon shone through in that movie about the rowdy cowboys.

As Gable’s character Gay Langland told her as they drove back “home”: “You just shine in my eyes, Roslyn.”

Everything you ever wanted to know about ‘The Misfits’ RIGHT HERE.

 

The Cat God turns into the Cat Devil

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This is what happens when a grieving husband runs out of Xanax:

I screamed at the cat tonight. For the third night in a row, she knocked down the pictures of my wife I keep on the mantel in the living room (now known as the dead room—yet I continue to inhabit it).

I went crazy. I would never hurt the cat — her name is Bella, who I got for my wife Susan when her illness became a lethal presence in our home — or any animal for that matter. But, nonetheless, tonight I yelled and screamed at her like a madman. 

Since Susan’s death last Christmas, Bella is all I have, and I’m all she has. She thinks I am (and I say this as humbly as I can) the Cat God.

But when I yelled at her tonight I told her I was the Cat Devil and that I had killed the Cat God and taken over the house and I howled like a crazy Cat Devil, and Bella — who had assumed a half-hidden supine position on top of the bookcase — looked at me with detached curiosity and I told her, in my Boris Karloff voice, “You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

She just kept looking at me with the feline equivalent of ‘arched eyebrows’ as I continued my mad speech: “Well, let me tell you, I’m glad I’m mad! I’m glad I’ve gone mad, because I prefer insanity over the reality of living without Susan — the Cat Mama to you.”

Whereupon Bella jumped down from the bookcase and trotted over to my armchair and looked at me with a look that said: “I understand. I miss her too.”