Fickle Read online

  fickel @ January 28 01:03 am

  Hold on a sec—I’m accepting what?

  marleybones @ January 28 01:04 am

  Look, I don’t like the idea of putting words into someone else’s mouth. chinkigirl?

  chinkigirl @ January 28 01:05 am

  Well, it’s a theory that explains a couple of things. If Mr. Suicide somehow knew you, met you in passing and got—I don’t know—obsessed with you, wouldn’t that explain your presence in his flickr and his smiling at your face in a record shop and…well…

  fickel @ January 28 01:08 am

  You’re suggesting that there was nothing random about his committing suicide in front of me—that it was something he meant for me to see?

  chinkigirl @ January 28 01:14 am

  All I’m saying is that people who are lonely and obsessive can get fixated on a stranger and maybe make them a significant figure in their lives, if they’re that far gone.

  fickel @ January 28 01:15 am

  But why me?

  webmaggot @ January 28 01:17 am

  You look easy?

  fickel @ January 28 01:18 am

  But I don’t look easy. Nothing promising whatsoever, from a “Dear Penthouse Forum” perspective, and certainly nothing to get obsessed over, if I may be so frank a critic of myself.

  marleybones @ January 28 01:24 am

  Well, maybe he thought you were attractive, even very attractive, yet cold. Maybe he fixated on you because he craved being rejected by you. I mean, we are talking about a guy who took a dive in front of the T as a means of escaping his problems.

  fickel @ January 28 01:26 am

  What you’re saying is that maybe I’m walking around depressing lonely men whose eye I happen to catch because I come off so icy.

  hitman @ January 28 01:27 am

  Fatal without even trying. Spider-woman: deadlier than the male.

  wazzup! @ January 28 01:31 am

  Original title of Born to Kill!!!!!!! Another reference spotted! I live for this stuff!!!

  hitman @ January 28 01:32 am

  wtf?

  wazzup! @ January 28 01:33 am

  You gave homage to a NOIR CLASSIC—Deadlier than the Male was the book title and also original film title of one of the great noir flicks: Born to Kill. Female lead, anyone quickly?

  36-D @ January 28 01:36 am

  Well, it’s way off topic but it was Claire Trevor. Back to the point: fickel’s not cold or standoffish or any of that.

  hitman @ January 28 01:38 am

  You can tell that from the blog?

  36-D @ January 28 01:39 am

  Absolutely. I think I know something—a lot, even—about every one of the regulars on this blog I think we all do.

  hitman @ January 28 01:41 am

  Interesting, because what I get is that we are a bunch of people with not much in common except that we are into a misanthropic art style—who are using this anonymous form of interrelating as a substitute for socializing. I would say that the chances are pretty high that most if not all of us are not that friendly in our day-to-day lives.

  chinkigirl @ January 28 01:44 am

  Well, I’m actually pretty gregarious. I just find this blog utterly fun. And I love the connection with Boston, a city I’ll always adore because it’s where I met my husband and did my training, and got knocked up for the first time. fickel’s site is just something I do after the rest of the household goes down; it’s like my “me” hour. Sorry to blow your theory, hitman.

  hitman @ January 28 01:47 am

  Theory intact. You could be an exception, chinkigirl, or, of course, you could be scamming us. You could be some lonely, toothless old alcoholic.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 28 01:49 am

  Oh, get serious. I know I wouldn’t be here, whatever my own situation, except that fickel is NOT cold or repelling. She is what attracted me to visit twice, then three times, and now nightly. It’s her VOICE, people.

  roadrage @ January 28 01:55 am

  ditto, mon.

  fickel @ January 28 01:57 am

  Look, I love the idea that I’ve got this inviting web voice. But hitman is right, my persona could be completely different offline. I mean, I could be this person to whom Mr. Suicide could be attracted but unable to approach.

  marleybones @ January 28 02:01 am

  But you aren’t.

  fickel @ January 28 02:02 am

  How do you know? How do I know, for that matter? It seems to me that those of us with just a touch of evil—the social drinker who causes an auto fatality, the parent with high standards who beats his child, the big man on campus who commits date rape, the judgmental woman who drives a man to desperation—would be the least likely to recognize the danger they are, the hell they visit upon their victims.

  wazzup! @ January 28 02:04 am

  Ah-ha, you f**k with our heads, clever one! Ha, ha, Claire Trevor!!!

  fickel @ January 28 02:08 am

  I’m not kidding. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to laugh later, when this thing plays out, but right now chinkigirl’s theory that Mr. Suicide somehow drove himself to despair rings too true to just blow by. And it’s chilling, truly chilling, to think that I might have caught someone’s attention, I mean really hooked a man, and yet, all at the same time, that I might have come across as so full of foreboding and the promise of pain that a man might kill himself rather than risk approaching me.

  chinkigirl @ January 28 02:10 am

  Honestly, all I was focusing on was the depth of depression that someone might suffer that could make him fixate on some blameless woman. The woman could be anyone.

  fickel @ January 28 02:12 am

  Well, she was me. And, unfortunately, what you say reminds me of something from my past. So I’m not so sure that the woman who drives a man to suicide is so blameless just because she doesn’t know him.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 28 02:14 am

  What from your past, luv?

  fickel @ January 28 02:16 am

  Not now. Let’s just say someone harmed himself because of me.

  hitman @ January 28 02:17 am

  Jesus, fickel, get a grip.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 28 02:18 am

  yes, you really must. Go out back behind your building, knock on Burly-Bear’s car window, and invite him in for a drink. u need to.

  hitman @ January 28 02:25 am

  fickel?

  hitman @ January 28 02:45 am

  Yo, fickel?

  proudblacktrannie @ January 28 02:53 am

  hopefully you took my advice, my lovely.

  chinkigirl @ January 28 08:34 am

  Somehow I don’t think so, guys.

  14

  January 28 @ 7:42 pm

  >ME AND MY DEADLY JE NE SAIS QUOI<

  Sorry to cut off so abruptly last night. I’ve spent the Sabbath attempting to get used to the realization that the explanation for this whole so-called mystery may be the one chinkigirl got us onto: a man with a tendency toward depression gets obsessed with me, follows me around for a year, and then kills himself out of despair over his unrequited love for me. Why that love would have been unrequited—he being a successful art-y type—is where the story makes no sense, of course. I mean, whatever made him presume that it was inevitable that he’d suffer so much unhappiness because of me that he was better off skipping all the middle stuff and ending it? It had to have been something he conjured up out of how I come across to strangers. And, obviously, on some level he considered it my fault that we would be unhappy together, because killing himself in front of me could only have been meant as a punishment of some sort. But the thing I cannot get past, is why he wouldn’t at least try to approach me? I haven’t been involved with anyone for a while, and if this guy was keeping tabs on me he’d know that. So what is it about me that made him so sure we were doomed before we even got started?

  GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

  i.went.to.harvard @ January 28 08:02 pm


  Maybe you got it right at the police station, fickel, and you just happened to be at the same concert as Mr. Suicide and then both of you just took the logical route to a record shop and the T on a night when he’d already decided to kill himself. Maybe the concert was his last, I don’t know, celebration before he knocked himself off. Maybe at the record shop you just caught his eye and played the role of his “escort” to death’s door.

  marleybones @ January 28 08:14 pm

  Folks who decide to commit suicide often spend their final days seeming pretty content. I’ve heard it a bunch of times, that a suicide’s relatives were thinking that he was finally coping with his depression in the days just before the death, when he was actually planning his suicide.

  fickel @ January 28 08:16 pm

  But I was also in his flickr, remember?

  hitman @ January 28 08:17 pm

  Screw that—Boston’s a small city with an even smaller nightlife. You’re telling me you couldn’t possibly have crossed paths with this guy ever before when he was out shooting pics? If you both like Stravinsky (pause to power puke) then you have some taste thing in common.

  fickel @ January 28 08:19 pm

  Huh. I’ll have to think about this. Oh bloody hell someone’s been leaning on my buzzer for the past ten minutes, and now he’s playing a tune with it. Probably looking to buy some dope from upstairs. I better get rid of him.

  LATER—LATER—LATER—LATER—LATER

  Hi, blog. I see I never signed off. Just had dinner—well, if you want to call scallion rice and a finger of scotch “dinner”—with my brother, who is in the bedroom, sleeping off whatever he was on upon arrival.

  webmaggot @ January 28 11:14 pm

  Wait—your brother shows up and you put him in your bedroom?

  36-D @ January 28 11:16 pm

  Always count on webmaggot for that touch of grossness you thought you could live without. Obviously this is a younger—read SPOILED—brother.

  wazzup! @ January 28 11:17 pm

  Har-har-har, I am lurking at exactly the correct moment and have one word: This World Then the Fireworks! Score!!!!

  webmaggot @ January 28 11:18 pm

  Wouldn’t that be 5 words?

  roadrage @ January 28 11:19 pm

  He’s Dutch, give him a break.

  fickel @ January 28 11:21 pm

  Actually, my brother is technically younger, but just by one minute. And I put him in the bedroom because I like to blog out here. He snores like a fat cow, which is interesting because he is about the skinniest man ever. You can practically see his heart beating through his chest, or you used to be able to before the tattoos got solid. As you can guess, we’re exactly alike. (That’s sarcasm, although we are very much on a wavelength in certain ways.) Anyway, on the bedroom thing, I actually often sleep on the couch, which is this old daybed that I absolutely love to do everything on—eat, read, roost, even blog when I get utterly sick of my desk chair (old wooden swivel chair with plastic pad cushions—my other favorite piece of furniture). The bedroom, on the other hand, is dank and tiny and faces the street so I can never open the shades. And the radiator clanks. And the boys upstairs smoke dope directly above, like, 24/7. So I use it kind of like a storage room for my clothes. Plus the TV is in there, which my brother is into (sports—preferably of the “extreme” variety) and I am not like him in that way. Go Revolution. There—I’ve just exhausted my repertoire of sports talk.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 28 11:34 pm

  O my lord you have a twin—SO DO I. My twin and I are “identical”—not that you can tell anymore being as he is a straight-arrow power tool and I am…well, just about diviiiiiiiiiiiine, lately. Ironically, he has a smaller wobbly than I do—mine is such an annoyance when I’m in something skimpy. And so annoying for my brother, all growing up—he’s competitive about everything. In any event, twins are bonded no matter what—no wonder you and I are simpatico, fickel dahling. Is your brother like mine in being totally macho and ruled by the code of the sword—in other words the divining rod between his thighs?

  fickel @ January 28 11:39 pm

  Never thought of it quite like that, but I’m pretty sure he’d be comfortable with that description of his “picaresque” path through life. I don’t know that’s he’s all that randy—it’s more a matter of testosterone messing up his judgment We’re very close, but I’m not sure that’s a twin thing. We never had much family and it’s been kind of tough, particularly when one of us got into trouble.

  chinkigirl @ January 28 11:44 pm

  What happened to your parents, if it’s not out of line to ask?

  fickel @ January 28 11:51 pm

  Not to get into it too deeply, but my father left this world rather abruptly when my brother and I were about ten, and my mother put us in boarding school while she got her life back together, which has yet to happen. My brother would get in trouble in school—put it down to an “artistic temperament”—so we made our way through a few of your lesser-known private schools, by which I mean the kind that you go to when you get kicked out of another private school. Then I landed at McGill, even scored some money to get me through. My brother went to New York City and then suddenly moved in on my mother in rural—and it does get rural—Massachusetts. I don’t ask what he does for cash. I don’t ask why he shows up when he shows up. My role is to like him—that’s what he needs me for and, frankly, it comes natural. That said, I’m actually a little nervous about him being here.

  36-D @ January 28 11:56 pm

  You’re afraid of your own brother?

  fickel @ January 28 11:58 pm

  Not afraid of him. I think that he’s on parole. You’re not supposed to go wherever you want, and particularly not to places where there are “temptations.”

  i.went.to.harvard @ January 29 12:09 am

  What temptations are there in Boston? Running the ten-minute red lights?

  chinkigirl @ January 29 12:14 am

  Try drugs. My own brother got busted scoring some ecstasy at MIT. What a squid, but, as you like to say, i.went.to.harvard, that’s another story for another day.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 29 12:17 am

  Ah, I feel like I know this boy. Welcome to the family, fickel’s brother. I know you’re not into real names on your blog, fickel—shall we refer to your male alter ego as fickel-bro?

  roadrage @ January 29 12:19 am

  limp. Hey what about dickel, as in fickel with a dick?

  proudblacktrannie @ January 29 12:20 am

  oh now that’s hot

  fickel @ January 29 12:22 am

  Then dickel it is. In any event, I am more than comfortable having him here, but here’s hoping that we’re talking about a day or so and then back to wherever he’s supposed to be. And I hope he doesn’t get drunk and piss in my sink again. Do you KNOW how long it took for me to wash a dish after that?

  leo tolstoy @ January 29 02:44 am

  …as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged…

  fickel @ January 29 07:25 am

  Sigh. Hi, leo tolstoy whoever you be. Aren’t you…lost in the ether yet? Hint, hint?

  15

  January 29 @ 8:42 pm

  >I GO SHAMELESSLY SHAMUS<

  Okay, finally I will answer chinkigirl’s question from some nights ago. I’ve been going by Mr. Suicide’s place. That’s how I knew the cops had removed his name from his buzzer. And last night I discovered that someone in there has discovered that I am out here. So now what?

  GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

  marleybones @ January 29 08:50 pm

  Umm, can we back up a skosh? What is “going by Mr. Suicide’s place” about?

  fickel @ January 29 08:55 pm

  Well, it’s about…taking control…?

  i.went.to.harvard @ January 29 08:59 pm

  Not catching your drift, here.

  fickel @ January 29 09:17 pm

  Sigh. What I mean is that it just keeps echoing around in my head all d
ay, while I’m trying to function, that I may have actually tortured some guy into killing himself.

  i.went.to.harvard @ January 29 09:20 pm

  So you go by his place? What do you do there, if we may know?

  fickel @ January 29 09: 46 pm

  I hang around. I watch the neighbors come and go, and wonder if any of them ever notices that the well-dressed guy from upstairs has disappeared. Sometimes I sit on the stoop across the street. I think. Strange, I guess?

  hitman @ January 29 10:06 pm

  We’re talking once, twice, you’ve gone by the guy’s place?

  fickel @ January 29 10:09 pm

  Let’s call it several times. Late at night. The other night I noticed a light on inside Mr. Suicide’s place, and so I stood there trying to will whoever it was to come to the window. Finally I rang the buzzer and no one answered, and then I walked back across the street to look up at the window, and I could see that there was someone up there, standing in the dark, looking down at me.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 29 10:30 pm

  What are you getting your sweet ass into, baby?

  marleybones @ January 29 10:33 pm

  This is getting a little morbid. Dwelling on the fact of someone’s suicide is going down a twisted path.

  hitman @ January 29 10:35 pm

  Could we maybe just turn down the psychobabble a notch? So fickel, tell me this: what was it like, standing outside the dude’s place and suddenly having it come to you that the dark-against-the-dark shape in the window above was someone staring down at you?

  fickel @ January 29 10:36 pm

  Well…it was noirish. ;)

  hitman @ January 29 10:37 pm

  CYA, bitch! Dig it! There’s more, though. I get that sense?