I want to die... Why?

Sometimes when I'm sitting with someone just watching their mouth flap open and closed, and hear the drone of pointless words falling over themselves in an effort to spew out some old idea, I wonder what the person would do if I suddenly stabbed a fork into their arm? Or if I took the tea-pot and poured the boiling water onto them? Would they leap up screaming? Would they recoil in shock and wonder what just happened? Sometimes I just want to punch them in the face to feel what it's like. To see that look of total betrayal that their eyes would reflect.

And when standing at the edge of a tall height I sometimes wonder what it would be like to just jump off. To crash through the air and then suddenly stop. Would there be pain? Or the relief knowing that the struggle for survival is over? Would the sensation be so exhilarating that I forget my grim purpose and enjoy it? Or would my super-powers kick in and I sail off into the sky finally liberated of my earthly bonds?

I image that the first day-dreams - of committing wanton, senseless violence is an expression of frustration and boredom with whomever I'm talking with. Or more correctly being talked at. The second - wanting to jump off very high places to see if perhaps I can fly - is I suppose a fantasy that will hopefully never be realized. And yet my latest short film that I've penned is all about someone committing suicide. Admittedly there are extenuating circumstances, but the truth remains:

I have written two films about a rent-boy who is forced into difficult situations and must choose. I have written two films in which a young man must make a decision between killing himself or struggling on for survival sakes. In almost all the films the main character is mostly naked. In this latest one - he's completely naked. What's up with my head and why am I consumed with this idea?

I can immediately dis-spell the idea that I want my characters naked because of the erotic element or because I feel it's the only way I can get close to a naked man. I've got a fairly regular sexual partner who fills all my err... needs. So why this naked theme? Could it be an expression of vulnerability? But why do I feel vulnerable? I wear my vulnerabilities as armour. Perhaps I'm afraid that those vulnerabilities are nothing more that illusions, hiding deeper ones. If so the only deep fear I have left is that I am actually a charlatan and that people will one day see through my abilities and see me for what I am: An impostor who is lazy, glib, and just a little self absorbed. And as much as I try to project a sense of intense activity it is of the lazy kind, or if not the lazy kind then the self indulgent kind.

And if I persist and tell myself I am not lazy, am not glib - well perhaps some are true but I've dissociated with self esteem so long ago that its false praise that I add to my list of errors as opposed to rebuking the errors. So a vicious little circle there. As for the self-absorption - is that a by product of a divorce? A rough childhood of uncertainty? I think it's a combination of self reliance, coupled with an innate stubbornness, mixed with a shot of ethnocentric belief (my own culture), all clumped into an intellectual puzzle. A fuck-up in other words.

But I digress... nothing new there then.

What of this choice of rent-boy? Why a recurring theme? Is it guilt? Could it be? I don't know if I could believe it. You see in my past I've approached two rent-boys. Not for my own gratification. But for use for others. The first was when I was set up to take photo's of this friends 'boy'. He wasn't a boy. In fact he was a fairly ugly 40 year old dressed to look like a 20 year old. It was rather sad. To make matters worse he couldn't get an erection. He was degraded. I was ... rather unimpressed. The end result was a boring afternoon and then a rather sad collection of photo's. I don't believe he made much of an impact on my world. Apart from perhaps setting me up for my next experience.

He was a good looking Indian bloke. He wanted me to buy him clothes, shoes in fact. Because shoes could not be taken away and used to buy alcohol. Taken away by his father. His own father would take money from his son. To finish off the deal the guy was super keen to start in the gay porn film I had aspirations of making, but if I was doing any straight films he'd love to be involved because he wasn't gay. I think my first true short film was all about him - I, Whore. But I don't think it exorcised the demon fully.

So now I write another short about a rent-boy who likes doing it. Likes selling his body. Only he gets caught up with a psychopath. A psychopath who wants the rent-boy to kill himself. And to achieve this he degrades the guy. Not physically... not at first. But through humiliation and time. My question is - what drives someone to suicide? I've never really seriously considered it. Oh occationally I wonder if when it all stops whether it does actually stop. Or are those bloody bastards right and its eternal damnation? Because if it is eternal damnation it'll go by pretty quick. Eternity is timeless so time has no meaning. If you just suffer a lot for a long long long time, then you'll suffer a lot for another long long long time. Eventually it'll all blur into meaninglessness.

I do not believe that would happen. I believe you'd end. Cease. The world would weep, would mourn, would rage and say stupid things (as I have done after a death of a friend), would ask why, and would in time move on. And that would be it. A minor number in the history books. All your concerns, fears, and regrets would be over. And yet even in the moments where I've looked at death and thought - perhaps it is easier, my mind has rallied and said yes but...

So in this short film I look at how much do you take and what must you loose before you give up? I firmly believe that most humans have the power to keep themselves going by keeping their brains alive. Oh sure when you're ninety your body is pretty fucked, but if you're active, who cares. Machines can keep most things going. But if you sit back and wait to die, your mind shuts down and 'forgets' shit. Next minute you're dead.

But that takes 60 years of life first. So not a likely way to get someone to kill themselves. Another perhaps would be to give them a terminal disease. Again though it's a the mind that will either make the most of it, or give in. The key here is not external pressures but internal fortification. The stronger the mind, the more engaged it is, the more it wants to live. The less likely it is to perish.

So how do you erode the mind? How do you make the world a meaningless husk? Apart from cutting out all stimulus I think the best way to make the world meaningless is to remove that one ingredient which we share with some animals: Hope. OK so no real revelation there. Take away hope and all is lost right? Well yes. But how do you take away hope? Surely there is always hope?

I don't think so. I think there is a line - on one side is immense hope. On the other is total hopelessness. People get pushed to the line and faith and belief help keep that line from being crossed. For those of us without those comforts dogged stoic stubbornness is required. But when that line is crossed there is very little by way of getting back across it into the land of hopefulness again.

I look at the suicides in my family and all have been - from what we know - at the point where the last shred of hope has been kicked away. After that it seems very easy to end life. Almost as if once hope is removed death is inevitable. Is this true? Hope equals life? How horridly religious. Because hope is often a total load of crap created by over-active imaginations piling 'what if's' onto the table until the table is lost in this sea of possible salvations. Take away those salvations, those what if's, and there is a load gun with a single bullet.

So why do I care so much about rent boys and suicide? Do I feel that I should save all rent-boys? Or that they are hopeless and its a great tragedy? Do I somehow feel like a rent-boy who is in a hopeless situation? I do not know! I am frustrated that I do not know. Or is this deeper and I perhaps fear that I am hopeless and have just constructed a glass dome of false hope over the gaping maw of oblivion?

Is that it? Am I just lying to myself that I have hope? In my darkest hours do I secretly feel all is lost, but rally by placing false what-if's around myself? And do I know this? And that is what scares me? I suppose my darkest fear is that I am in fact nothing. I don't make a dent in the world. I die and no one really cares. But why this focus on death? Why this urgency? Oh god is this a bloody 30 years of existence and what do you have to show for it crap thing? Stupid stupid stupid.

It's late and I'm stuck in a self absorbed ego trip. Bah! Humbug! And Fuck it! I make movies about naked men in difficult situations because I get all mushy and wanna give them a hug when they finally break and reveal themselves to be scared little boys. Is that because I am a scared little boy who just wants someone to say it's OK to be scared shit-less about the sheer enormity of the universe and how little we don't know and the futility of existence...

Am I just being a 5 year old who's worrying about world politics when in fact he should just be playing out in the garden? Huh. That's interesting. Perhaps I should learn to just have fun and forget the reasons for doing so?

What do you dream of? Is it testing the laws of reality by punching people or jumping out of windows? Is it figuring out why you'd want to die? Is it worrying about world politics?

Huh...