Death and Cars and Rock 'n' Roll

Please don't be alarmed.  Please don't take this the wrong way.  I'm not suicidal.  Far from it - I'm probably the opposite of suicidal, whatever that is.  And this isn't a cry for help or a threat or a warning or anything like that.

But sometimes I wonder that if I were going to commit suicide, how would I do it?  And most every scenario I come up with involves some combination or another of my car and music.

I'm not into guns, and any method of suicide that involves either burning, freezing or strangulation sounds too scary and/or painful.  Overdosing seems popular but you always run the risk of not doing it right and winding up some sort of vegetable or in a psychiatric hospital and worse off than you were before.  

But there are three methods I've come up with that sound intriguing.  Here they are, in order of decreasing probability (which in my case are all exactly zero, because as I said, I'm not suicidal). Also, don't try any of these at home, kids:

1. Slam-Dancing With a 18-Wheeler - In this fantasy, I'm in my car (just like I am in the other two fantasies), and in this case I'm listening to music.  Loud.  Very loud.  And something fast and aggressive, like the SF psych-punk band Thee Oh Sees.  With the music blaring full blast out the open windows, I find a way to jump into the wrong lane of traffic on an Interstate Highway, usually I-85 in Atlanta, and try to swerve and avoid as many on-coming cars as I can while I accelerate to full speed and drive head on into the first 18-wheeler truck I can find.  We're both going well over 60 mph and the end, at least for me, is fast and certain.


2. Thelma & Louise - This one is a lot more specific and will take a lot more planning, but at least it doesn't involve taking other people out with me like the previous fantasy probably would.  I find a spot on the rim of the Grand Canyon where I can drive my car off the edge and into the abyss like in the movie Thelma & Louise.  Once the spot is found, I very carefully measure the precise distance away that I need to be so that I can start driving as fast as I can while playing the Swans' song Into The Sun and arrive at the edge (and the end of my existence) at the exact moment that the song hits its climactic crescendo and the chorus is singing "Suuuuun!" for the last time (you have to know the song to understand that reference), and my car and I boldly leap into the afterlife.  If I can time this to also occur exactly at sunset (or sunrise if I'm driving from the west), so much the better.


3. The Comfy Way - This one's a lot less violent than either of the previous two fantasies.  I simply park my car in a snug garage, open the windows, leave the engine running, and let the carbon monoxide fill my lungs while I listen to my favorite folk-rock and indie songs on the stereo.  Since I don't myself actually own a garage, a variation involves attaching a hose to the exhaust pipe and running it into a partially open window but leaving all the other ones shut tight so that the car itself fills with carbon monoxide to take us to the other shore.  If I do this at home, I can leave a message in the mailbox politely informing the mail-person not to be alarmed but if she finds this message it means there's a corpse in the car in the driveway, and to call 911 or whatever before some innocent passerby is traumatized by finding a dead person in their neighborhood.  Also, she can help herself to whatever she wants in the house before the police arrive - I won't mind as I won't be needing any of it anymore.

So to repeat, these are just fantasies, morbid meditations on the unthinkable, and not anything I'm planning to do.  But if I were . . .  it obviously would involve my car, which I probably should just go ahead and rename Charon now for the ferryman in Greek mythology who transported the dead to the underworld.