10/30/26 – Suicide ‘ A Bridge Too Far ‘

Per The Plan, Wednesday November 18 ( 1998 ) I walked from an ocean facing restaurant ( after 3 screwdrivers ) to a yet to be determined patch of beach with a good buzz, notepad, and pencil. When the right spot emerged, The Plan continued as I grabbed the pad and wrote a ‘ Plus ( + ) ‘ on the top left corner, then drew a line down the middle, and then wrote a ‘ Minus ( – ) ‘ on the right. The next task, as all of this was methodical, was to write all possessives of my life on the Right followed by the negatives on the Left followed by ( assuming the Left list – the Negatives – was longer ) taking a cab to a bridge, getting out at the pinnacle ( no idea, in retrospect, how that was going to work), and jump. The Plan had many holes but it was Going to Happen because if there’s a will there’s a way. This was the day. The pain had to end. It was all prearranged, per The Plan.

To get to that point we jettison back to grade school but why bother. During those years I had Star Wars – A New Hope, a Huffy, creek, tree house, hot wheels cars, and Legos as the bullies hadn’t found me yet.

In the spring of 1987 I was at the tail end of my senior year at Christian Brothers College High School ( https://www.cbchs.org ), I had yet yet to kiss a girl, I aimlessly boozed ( the game was quarters ) too much, and graduation was looming as my ‘ out ‘ aka next chapter finally hit. I’m going to attend Kansas City’s Rockhurst University ( https://www.rockhurst.edu ) which is where I’d find Answers so I bs’d my mom into loaning her Oldsmobile then drove 230 miles to KC and showed cold ( without any prior planning, organization, and / or communication ) at Admissions, scored an interview, and was probationary accepted which required a minimum grade point at the end of year one ( May 1988).

My first semester with all that freedom but no ability to time manage I put in just below the minimum studying wise despite knowing that joining a fraternity would have  provided a necessary and badly needed identity. Being the perennial underachiever, my final grade point was .09 below the minimum required to pledge so I spent the second semester as the dorm based King of the GDI’s ( Goddamn Independents ) living on Hamm’s Special Light knowing that if I got it up ( grade point average ) my parents would send me back for my sophomore year when I’d pledge ( Fall 1988), live in the House, finally kiss a pretty girl, and that’ll be that as life would fall in line.

Nope, not dice. My second semester grades didn’t bring the average to a 2.0 so there went Rockhurst and there began Year 2 at MIT ( Mom I Tried ) at home with my high school brother and sister ( who never fell into my moat of loser’dom ) while I attended Meramec Community College ( https://stlcc.edu/locations/meramec ).

So it went as I was welcomed into a social circle of flunkies who frequented a south city bar that served minors where nobody watched ( obviously ) nor talked about college football.

I hovered in that mode for a couple of years, stubbing my toes, virigin’esk, as a directionless perennial nothing which, when reflecting back, my parents ( who thrived in everything ) had no clue / idea how to deal with as my whole operation defined wasted youth.

Think of me as the Robert Downey character in Less than Zero minus ( none of which I had ) the coast, money, cars, parties, music, style, and especially how he paid off his debt.

The next few years spired while two salvations emerged; A – earning the impossible to achieve as an unconnected commoner ( they only took the best looking 1% of the 1%  which I wasn’t, not by longshot, not by a country mile, not ever ) Orlando Disney Internship ( https://join.disneycareers.com/global/en/disney-internships ) then B. After excelling at Disney, scoring the Travel Director job ( https://maritz.com/careers ) at Saint Louis based Maritz Travel.

None of that happened as I bought an off the lot fancy car ( that I could afford. that I was always parking down alleys as the repo man was on my toes ), maxed credit cards, lived a non healthy lifestyle, and skipped along the bottom.

The only method by which I survived as all circled the drain ( this – nobody knows ) was every Friday I snuck into my dad’s dresser ( where a stack of bills and a handgun were hidden ) and shagged $100 which carried my house-of- cards life for another weekend.

Eventually, it all came crashing down house of cards style as I was hours from living under a bridge; broke, education’less, destitute, directionless, unimpressive, lost, nowhere, Less than Zero. Basically, the hotel room at the end of True Romance.

The Hail Mary was an overdue conversation with dad ( he saw this a mile away ) after work on a Friday when I came clean ( my weekends were spent on random couches ) and what he should of ( after telling me that my underachieving life to that point was beneath the Luby standard ) cold-cocked / slapped me silly ( right then and there by mom’s homemade butchers block which mirrored Frannie’s Parlor showdown in The Stand ), tossed me on my _ss, changed the locks, and never looked back. Note, not to be overly dramatic but this would have steered me to a downtown homeless shelter ahead of jumping off the just North of the Gateway Arch Eads Bridge ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eads_Bridge ). Back then I couldn’t look in a mirror as I ( like everyone else ) saw right through whatever was staring back as I didn’t want to be here, there, or anywhere.

Instead, Robert Francis Luby drove off in never to seen again Honda ( a luxury item he Would of given me had I performed ) away and brought me back ( as it’s replacement ) a Geo Prizm ( the radio didn’t work which I believe he took a hammer to out of frustration ) which was undoubtedly the last car one would’ve considered cool and driven by a winner.

His No Quarter rules were simple; anything my mom ( Good Cop ) ordered was to be completed then and there, sleeping hours ended at 7:00am 7 day a week, no television before 5, bedroom door can never be closed, bed was to be made every day, and every month ( which looking back, was brilliant ) I had to humbly write personal checks ( on Jo’s butcher’s block ) to my parents covering the necessities of life ( rent, car payment, electric, water, sewer, etc ). This left me with around $35 a week to which he said, ” You’re going to spend whatever’s left – as that’s how you operate – but what you Should do is put some of it in Commerce Bank which I’ll match ” as he ( not only was Bob Luby a pilot but he, then and there, on jo’s butcher block, he invented the 401K )

This agreement also had to tackle my other quality fUp – Debt as in $12,000 in credit card debt which was methodically destroying my credit with nothing to show for it.

To solve it, Papa Luby solicited Credit Counselors Services ( CCS ) on Hampton Avenue ( in StL City ) where I ( with both Bob and Jo watching – the disdain’ment was palatable ) symbolically cut up my maxed cards, committed to a budget, and most importantly, pledged to every last Friday of the month hand deliver a cashiers check for $394 to pay down the debt ( CCS a perk, got the juice / interest waived ).

Reflecting back despite having zero going I probably harnessed Jason Alexander’s Seinfeld line, ” My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” ) as I managed to smooch ( over 3-5 years ) maybe 2 pretty girls which gave me fleeting hope as those instances truly fell under my Self Defeating Clause of  ‘ A broken clock is right twice a day. ‘

Eventually, I found success at Maryville University ( https://www.maryville.edu ) as a commuter as the debt was nearly covered when my dad called a ‘ butcher’s block meeting ‘ when he ( with my 30th birthday coming up, congratulated me for dependability & consistency ) and ( as a present ) was covering the debt thereby ending the humbling monthly trips to CCS. And on top of that, he was giving me a four night stay on South Beach, a town I idolized and fantasized about as I loved Miami Vice ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Vice ) since high school.

I thanked him and asked to be flown down a day early ( before my friend’s arrived ) so I can be alone with my thoughts during what I called my ‘ Day of Reflection ‘ because, like Roger ‘ Verbal ‘ Kint ( Kevin Spacey ) in the Usual Suspects, I had a plan. Wednesday November 18 ( 1998 ) started with a shower, a quick walk to News Cafe ( https://newscafesouthbeach.com ), then a reflecting beach walk to the perfect beach spot with my yellow notepad ( see paragraph one above).

So I’m sitting there and Yes there were a handful of negatives but the Plus’s went down the page to a second and into third and as my friends were arriving in a few hours . . . it hit me. What kind of idiot who hates ( as that point ‘ hated ‘ past tense ) his parents commits suicide After ( think Red’s / Morgan Freeman’s in the Shawshank Redemption about Andy’s escape, “ Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can’t even imagine, or maybe I just don’t want to. five hundred yards… that’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile ‘ ) spending years driving a Geo Storm to a Credit Counseling Service? I mean, NOW, after all that, let’s go find a bridge and end it when the optima grand slam go out on bottom ( via suicide ) was Before attacking the debt not after. What an idiot, but on that day, like Private Pyle I was ‘ Born Again Hard ‘ and never looked back.

If considering suicide dial 988 and talk to a professional as I was Right There and thanks for reading.

TrL – 10/30/26