Would anyone read further, if this were the first paragraph of something?
It all started with my father. At least that is what I tell myself as I stand on the roof deck, staring out at all the neon of Hong Kong invading the night sky. Eleven stories up, leaning over the concrete edge and staring down, I wonder how anyone could actually be brave enough to jump from a tall building, an open window, a bridge. I heard once that there are cameras on the Golden Gate to count the objects falling into the bay and that over the years it has added up to hundreds.
The red cabs below me line up on the street, honking whenever the drivers get frustrated, which seems to be every few seconds. From eleven stories up, they look like the toy cars that my neighbors’ kids would leave scattered about the sidewalk. From eleven stories up, everything looks smaller except the sky and the clear, big moon that shines down on my bare skin like a strobe light. It’s nearly four in the morning and I suddenly feel ashamed of myself and scared.
It was melodramatic, I’ll admit, climbing the stairs to the roof, propping open the door with a brick and sobbing as I thought about the effects of killing myself. Because I was never going to do it, anyway, it was simply the thrill of thinking it. The power of the suggestion. Like all the mystical words before it: birth, childhood, marriage, sex, love, truth, death. But in the end, suicide is something that is not in my deck, not a card that I can actually play. It is the ace of spades and I only hold a couple of queens, a jack, a seven of hearts and a two of diamonds. Instead of focusing on the high pair, I have always been obsessed with the two low cards that life has dealt to me. My father being one of them, but not the lowest.
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