An Inconvenient Suicide
Katria Wyslotsky

After a lengthy and thorough review of his life, Frank Finck
concluded that everyone whom he had attempted to emulate,
everyone whom he had at one point or another respected, or
anyone who had a talent that he envied had killed himself or
herself. It couldn’t have been purely coincidental, for how could
anyone have so many heroes commit suicide in the relatively
short amount of time they’d been on the earth? Was this some
sort of subliminal message sent from the great beyond? Was this
just the nature of the life of an artist? And, why had he been
saddled with the unfortunate last name of Finck? Life, it seemed,
was an endless mystery.
Punk rocker Sid Vicious, Saturday Night Live comedian
Chris Farley, and songwriter Elliot Smith overdosed on various
legal and illegal pharmaceuticals. Kurt Cobain stared down the
barrel of a gun seconds before he pulled the trigger and the back
of his head splattered against the wall. The pattern his viscera left
behind was reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting. Michael
Hutchens appeared to have everything except a healthy sex life.
INXS, the name of his band, seemed to predict his future, for it
was officially reported that he accidentally hung himself while
legally intoxicated and attempting to achieve personal sexual
gratification. No doubt, his wife didn’t appreciate that particular
item of information being printed on his death certificate.
It definitely wasn’t a memento she wanted to keep for her
grandchildren.
Having reached the end of her desire to live, one chilly
February morning poet Sylvia Plath fed her children, hung some
laundry outdoors on the clothes line to dry, and then stuck her
head in the oven without bothering with the pilot light and
inhaled deeply. Maybe she forgot that the turkey was supposed to
go in first.
Donny Hathaway, soul music balladeer, sang a duet with
Roberta Flack at Carnegie Hall, checked himself into the Essex
House, and jumped out of the window of his room on the

fifteenth floor. He was later hosed off the asphalt. The month of
August in the city could be brutal.
Actor, screenwriter, and playwright Spaulding Gray, while
commuting between Manhattan boroughs, completed the New
York Times crossword puzzle, neatly folded his overcoat, laid it
on a bench on top of the puzzle, and stepped off of the Staten
Island Ferry into the muck and mire that is the Hudson Bay. If
he hadn’t drowned, then the diseases he would have picked up in
the water would have killed him. It was a mystery as to how far
his body had floated out into the ocean before a fishing trawler
scooped him out of the briny water. Ironic, too.
And finally, even Englishman Lawrence Oates, the intrepid
Antarctic explorer who had survived subzero temperatures,
polar bear attacks, the walrus mating season, and frostbite,
disappointed Frank by throwing back the flap of his tent and
calmly announcing to the shivering members of his expedition
to the South Pole, “I am just going outside and may be awhile.”
With a stiff upper lip, he walked directly into a blizzard of
massive proportion, never to return. It took days for his body to
defrost so that it could finally be laid in a coffin.
So it came to pass early one morning that Frank found
himself giving serious consideration to ending his own life. Why?
Who’s to say? It might have been destiny. It might have been
that he was chronically depressed. It might have been the copious
amount of tequila he’d imbibed the night before. It might have
been a lot of things, none of which truly made any sense. Suicide,
it seemed, was the key to eternal happiness, the end to the
aggravating utility bills which made him slightly hysterical each
month, an answer to some unknown question of the meaning
of life, and an interesting way to pass an otherwise dull Monday
night. However, being the meticulous planner that he was, Frank
needed to carefully examine his various options for suicide,
and he took certain measures to make certain that he was not
distracted in any way while he conducted the necessary research
into his ultimate demise. He disconnected the phone to prevent
being disturbed by its seemingly incessant ringing and closed the
curtains on all the windows so that the early morning sun was
blocked. He prepared snacks to maintain his strength during the

course of his endeavor. Then, Frank spent an entire day carefully
listing and weighing the merits of various options for suicide. He
did this in neat columns on the monitor of his computer using
Excel software. After all, he was an Internal Revenue Service
officer, and all government employees have a proud and proven
reputation for being efficient and highly organized. No one could
say that Frank didn’t follow the rules.
Overdosing on chemicals was his first option. Yes, to
sleep, perchance to dream. That was the question. However,
as is proven on his high school and college transcripts, Frank
was never proficient in chemistry or biology and feared dosing
himself incorrectly. The slightest miscalculation could mean
the difference between death and copious and, quite possibly,
projectile vomiting, and Frank had major sanitation issues that
had yet to be addressed with his therapist. Basically, he had an
overwhelming aversion to vomiting and would, at all costs, avoid
it whenever and wherever possible. Therefore, a planned overdose
was shelved before it was given any serious consideration.
Vomiting was anathema.
A gunshot to the head. Quick. Painless… unless you missed.
That’s when things could get messy. Plus, there was the entire
aspect of purchasing the gun, waiting while a background check
was done, learning how to use the weapon, and then purchasing
the requisite ammunition. It seemed to be such a lot of work
for one good shot. Expensive, too. Also, there was the problem
of someone being put to the task of scraping his gray matter off
the walls that needed to be considered if he was successful and
his aim was true. Once again, the old albatross called “sanitation
issues” reared its ugly head. He’d recently had his apartment
painted a lovely and delicate shade of robin’s egg blue only after
having spent days meticulously spackling every pinhole, every
dent, and every tiny hairline crack on the walls. Also, one had to
consider one’s appearance while laid out in a coffin. Appearances
were of primary importance to Frank. A first impression is a
lasting impression. What if one of his friends brought a date to
his funeral? Gruesome, yes. However, one could not find fault
with his friends since sympathy sex was the motivating factor. A
man in mourning required the attention of a good woman and an

outlet for his grief. Anyway, it wouldn’t do to be buried wearing
a football helmet with a chin strap to hold it in place because he
had blasted his skull into tiny little shards that had imbedded
themselves into the now immaculate walls. No, a gunshot to the
head met the same demise as an overdose; both were too messy,
too unorganized, and he was simply far too anal-retentive to
pursue either method. No muss, no fuss. This was Frank’s most
important rule to live by.
Drowning was simply too odious and horrifying to even
consider. If he couldn’t see the bottom of any body of water and
if it wasn’t thoroughly chlorinated and bleached to the point
where the liquid bore no resemblance whatsoever to what could
be found in any body of water produced by Mother Nature, then
Frank wasn’t going to get into it. That was the bottom line. The
thought of walking barefoot into a lake as the ooze located on
the bottom squished up between his toes made the hairs on the
back of his neck stand up. Plus, after drowning and sinking to
the bottom of the water, there was the physical bloating from
the gases building up due to decomposition, his body eventually
popping to the surface like a buoy, and nibbling fish to consider.
He’d worked long and hard to develop a trim figure, six-pack
abs, and a clear complexion. Ending his life in the unfiltered raw
sewage of the nearest lake or the local kiddy pool lacked dignity.
Plus, it was far too unsanitary. Someone at his funeral might ask,
“What’s that smell?” and it would be Frank.
Jumping off a high edifice was his next option. Certainly,
there were buildings tall enough in town that would make the
job easy and efficient. Closing his eyes, he could see himself
soaring through the air with the grace of an Olympic diver.
However, Frank had a morbid fear of heights, so it was out of the
question. He’d never be able to work up the courage to peer over
the edge of a building and into the abyss, much less jump off.
Frank’s major appliances all ran on electricity, so emulating
Sylvia Plath ended before it even began. He hadn’t been
exploring since the third grade, and airfare to the Antarctic was
appallingly expensive, so walking bravely into a blizzard had to
be dismissed.

Finally, Frank found himself left with one option: hanging.
In his youth, he’d been a member of the Boy Scouts and earned
numerous merit badges in woodworking, athletics, crafts, and
various other areas of interest. Only one merit badge eluded
him… the merit badge for sailors’ knots. Having been a bit slow
as a child, Frank required one long and tedious year to finally
learn to tie his own shoelaces. Sighing heavily, his mother had
bravely resigned herself to the fact that her son would be wearing
loafers or shoes with Velcro straps the rest of his life. To her
complete delight, he surprised her one day and showed her how
be could tie his own shoes. Untying them, however, took another
year of rigorous practice.
By the time Frank joined the Boy Scouts, he’d successfully
conquered his footwear problems and was prepared to face and
summarily conquer and control any knot that came his way.
Skill, however, and rote memorization eluded him, and he found
himself having nightmares about the clothesline, where his
mother hung his boxer shorts to dry. In his nightly trips into the
semiconscious world, it slithered up his legs and torso like an
Anaconda and squeezed him until he felt his eyes would pop out
like corks just before his head exploded like an overfilled balloon.
It was his nightly shrieks of horror that made his father moan,
“Do something! He sounds like he’s being skinned alive!” to
Frank’s mother. Ever the resourceful one, and, never having been
one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she finally gave thanks for
that fateful drunken night she neglected to take her birth control
pill which lead to the conception of her only and somewhat
sullen child, and she happily drove off to the store and purchased
an electric clothing dryer which she’d been eying enviously for
the better part of a year. And, after flirting outrageously with
the hormonally-addled young sales clerk, managed to have it
delivered the very next day. Years later, even though Frank had
been through numerous and costly psychoanalysis sessions,
the clothesline nightmare still haunted him from time to time,
rendering the revisiting of events from his youth that had
seriously scarred his psyche rather impossible. Hanging himself,
therefore, was simply out of the question since it could not be

accomplished with a simple bow knot. It might have looked
pretty and bizarrely decorative, but it wouldn’t get the job done.
Thus, Frank found himself out of options and out of
columns in Excel. Without his noticing it, the sun had set and
the stars were twinkling brightly in the night sky. Life, when he
thought about it, really wasn’t all that bad. In fact, he was having
a pretty good time lately. Actually, he was having a great time!
He had plenty of money in the bank, a plasma television and
a stereo system which was the envy of all his friends, and he
had a girlfriend who didn’t make his eyes hurt when he looked
at her. She was neat and orderly, too! No, there really was no
logical or reasonable reason to kill himself. Sadly, he realized
that people have flaws and weaknesses that may precipitate
some poor decisions that could lead one to determining that
suicide was the ultimate solution. There seemed to be no socially
acceptable, dignified, or even remotely politically correct method
of accomplishing his own suicide. And, most importantly, what
made him reconsider his plans and banished all thoughts of
suicide from Frank’s head was the simple fact that tax season
was right around the corner and he had audits to prepare. Many
audits. Perhaps even hundreds of audits. The great mystery of
life had been solved and, once again, his own life had meaning
and purpose. Ahead of him were many lives tied up in financial
knots that he would take great delight in slowly, meticulously,
and with exquisite precision unraveling. Alone, in his pristine
and tastefully decorated apartment, Frank Finck smiled in the
dark. In fact, his oddly reptilian grin stretched from ear to ear,
revealing gleaming white and perfectly formed carnivorous teeth.
Exhilarated, Frank had never before felt so alive.