Norton Fischer

Norton Fischer was an average white American with a college education, saddling student debt, car payments, exorbitant monthly rent, and ex-girlfriends whose wealthy boyfriends owned jet skis on private lakes and generally had way better lives than his own. Norton was a self-diagnosed alcoholic and believed he had no reason to commit to either therapy or sobriety because the alcohol had at this point in his short life, he believed, been the only thing keeping him alive. As it were, alcohol lowered his sober-time inhibitions which urged Norton, every second of every day, to kill himself with whatever means presented themselves at the time. Guns were obviously off-limits, he couldn’t travel to view angelic vistas for fear he’d jump, and he couldn’t drive on the highway for fear he would veer towards oncoming traffic or a deep ditch. He lived with the thought of suicide the way most of us live with the thought of sex: he didn’t so much wish for the execution as he dreamt of the possibility. It had dawned on him recently via this sex/suicide thing that he thought about his own demise more than he thought about intercourse, a realization whose allegorical implications with respect to life v death seemed too transparent to indicate much more than the sad state of his own life.

Today is Sunday, and it happens to be Norton’s birthday. He is 25. Twenty-five is an age where the expectations of a vibrant, successful life are either entirely thrown away and new, lower expectations fortified in their place, or else the healthy expectations of youth are postponed for another ten years of intense naiveté and profound self-absorption in which adolescence is relived in as many ways as possible to neglect the haunting reality of a dawning maturity. Norton no longer holds any lofty goals and his narcissism extends no farther than his masturbatory rituals, so he’s been left with a rather blank slate as far as his life’s aims are concerned.

In his hand is a brown paper bag inconspicuously concealing a $15 plastic bottle of Canadian whiskey which was purchased with his mother’s annual birthday present of an ironic card and $20 check. The remaining five dollars of outstanding allowance are left in his black jean’s back pocket. Norton doesn’t blame his mother for wanting to kill himself or his untreated alcoholism. It can’t possibly be her fault that his rat’s nest of a life has transgressed to the point he feels the only reasonable solution is to quit it altogether. No one should blame their mothers. They tried their best. In fact, it was his mother’s unconditional love that rendered his constant suicidal thoughts unactionable. He had an absent father and his mother loved him so immensely in an effort make up both parent’s share of the compassion that he himself feared he was incapable of love. He had few friends. His mother’s unguarded love made them unnecessary. His solitude was unimportant to her so long as he remained nearby, and vaguely present, filling her own emotional holes so to speak. His personality took no shape, no obvious form in which to categorize or distinguish himself. He wasn’t good at anything in particular and he didn’t like to do much of anything either. School was uncomfortable because his social skills were untrained and the sharpness of a pencil’s point rendered classes unspeakably difficult attention-wise. Alcohol was pretty much his only friend.

Tonight’s choice of cheap whiskey was McCaster’s, a violent 90 proof mash that could literally burn the nose hairs of a man who pulled too slow. Norton was never sure whether to write his mother a thank-you note. When the thought of gratitude presented itself in the cycles of his mind he merely pushed it away and let guilt reside in its place. Guilt is easier to manage than gratitude and can be buried behind a buzz. He doesn’t know where the guilt came from or why it’s so easy to fill responsibilities with, but he knows he’s guilty of something long forgotten but now manifest in the dull yet self-aware, morally-deprecating personality Norton has tempered to the cultured whine of an elite East Coast liberal despite his lifelong tenure in the Metro Detroit area.

Passing bar after noisy bar on his bi-pedal commute home from his 9-5 job as a tech consultant for the local urban school district (whose responsibilities don’t include much social interaction or sharp objects or high vistas being that he shares a basement office with the janitorial staff who also aren’t much for conversation), brown bag of blended whiskey in hand, tossing the bottle’s cap in his other and taking sips whenever he damn well pleases because no pedestrian gives a man with a brown paper bag the time of day let alone a passing glance, Norton wonders if one could sustain fatal injuries from diving through the plate glass window of one particularly bustling and joyful-looking establishment. If diving head first, it would be a definite possibility, Norton figures, but the probability of simply slamming headfirst into the window and knocking himself out, or the potential for crashing through the glass, impaled with transparent shards of heavy silicone benzine but none penetrating the right veins or arteries in his arms, neck, or legs to cause catastrophic bleeding would just be a huge inconvenience—not to mention traumatic experience—for the innocent patrons of the otherwise non-malicious bar, not to also mention a hefty hospital bill and relentless attention from his poor mother. A mother who Norton cannot bring himself to divulge his inner struggles with existence v self-harm for more reasons he cannot bring himself to investigate in-full.

Norton’s plans for the night include television, light reading, possible masturbation, and finishing both the whiskey he’s currently drinking and most likely whatever’s in his nearly-empty refrigerator too. Norton lives alone on the rather rundown West side of town. As he nears his home the foot traffic thins to just bus stop loiterers and homeless folks with overflowing shopping carts and squeaky wheels.

With the alcohol invading Norton’s system in the outset of its inebriating effects, causing lowered inhibition and general numbness, Norton lights a full-bodied organic tobacco American Spirit cigarette (which he views as the only culturally accepted form of suicide) and blows a stream of cotton-white smoke away in the swift breeze above the heads of a group of young, good-looking coeds who must live on this side of town to take advantage of the lower cost of living.

‘Sir. Sir.’ a deep, masculine yet pleading voice echoes from the darkness of a bus stop shelter.

Norton takes a big pull out of instinctual awkwardness and audibly chokes, igniting his throat in a 90-proof burn.

‘Sir. Sir.’

Norton raises one hand with the other on his knee in the universal give-me-a-fucking-second posture, eyes filling with whiskey tears he’s too embarrassed to remember how long it’s been since that’s last happened.

‘Couldja spare a dollar?’ the voice says, edging nearer to the breathless Norton who’s dropped his cigarette and is trying to pick it back up with little success what with the tear-filled eyes and all.

Reaching into his back pocket, Norton withdraws the leftover money from his birthday check and submits it in the general direction of the closing-in voice. He feels the folded bill disappear from his fingers and looks up to see a multiple sweatshirted-and-coated man with a look of absolute joy crossing his pocked face which now arcs in the direction of a smile that Norton can tell hasn’t held the expression of true happiness in quite some time.

‘Oh thank ya, thank ya, sir’ the man is saying while Norton regains composure and stands back upright, wiping his whiskey-dripping face, and makes a courageous offering of the brown bag to the figure who clearly has his own substance abuse problems.

A searchlight of elation crosses the man’s face and without resignation he accepts the bag and takes a two-second pull that ends with an audible gulp and satisfied sigh. Seeing the joy brought on by a rather insignificant offering, Norton decides to let the man keep the bag with a wave of the hand and continues home, for the first time not thinking about diving into traffic or donut-shop windows, but instead lit on the warmness of mere generosity. A feeling he has not had for quite some time.