=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = F.U.C.K. - Fucked Up College Kids - Born Jan. 24th, 1993 - F.U.C.K. = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Suicide and Airplanes: Jumping ------------------------------ I tried to kill myself when I was 21 years old. Whatever. Rough childhood and all that. Anyway, I've been doing things that are a little dangerous just about my whole life. Most people think I'm crazy. Or I'm a little on the edge. In high school I was known as satan. Not that you give a shit about any of that but it's nice to have a little background. I went to college in NY where I crossed a 3 mile long railroad bridge one night with my roommate. It's famous now. It's in a bunch of railroad magazines; the first railroad bridge to span the Hudson River. They're rebuilding it into a walkway now. A monument of sorts. No big deal eh? Did I mention that it's about 300' above ground? Oh yeah, it was condemned after a fire in 1929? or there about. We crawled for about half the total distance on a 12" wide I-beam. Very exciting shit. Maybe I'll write about that someday . . . Anyway, that wasn't exciting enough. I decided to start train dodging. Now that's an adrenaline pumper. Picture yourself standing in the middle of three sets of railroad tracks. There's a small but stiff breeze. Down the line you can see a small pimple of a light. You figure out which track the train is on and move to it. You stand solidly in the middle of the two iron bars. Throwing back the last of a beer, you grin and toss the can aside. The echo of the empty tin can booms in your ears. Slowly the light gets larger. Larger . . . more intense. It blinds you. The thunder of the train can be heard now. It's less than a mile away. The light is right in front of you. Day blossoms around you. Pounding, pounding, pounding. Your breath catches in your throat. What would happen if you just didn't jump. What would everyone think then? Still no one would know. They would know nothing. So you prepare to jump. 100 yards, 80 yards, 40 yards. The rattle of the cars can be heard against the constant background noise of steel on steel. For all intents and purposes a million tons of steel comes barreling at you. Constrained only by two insignificant steel bands. Your roommate jumps off. You stare into the light. This is what a deer feels like. Immobilized your mind races faster than your heart. At 40' your roommate screams at you. His voice just barely audible over the cacophony of noise created by the beast that is baring down on you. 30' and a solid force slams into your side. You fall to the gravel bed. Rocks driving into your wrists: knees pounding into the wood of the tracks next to you. As you lay bruised on the cold rocky ground a gale washes over you; sweeping away the adrenaline as a cold shower washes away the pain of sunburn. We used to do that a lot. Then my roommate got tired of tackling me. He began to hate me I think. Shit, if I had to save some idiot every night I'd grow to loath them too. Later on in my college career I tried it for real. I lost everything but my life: In a sense I even lost that. After they let me out of the hospital I left the state for greener pastures and bluer skies. It was a good decision. It was time for change. Well, I toned my life down a bit. Instead of drinking myself into oblivion night after night I started writing; I only drink on the weekends now. That is, I try only to drink on the weekends. After a few months of being normal I got tired of it all. I lost my suicidal edge to an extent. But I still had a craving to give my adrenal gland a workout. So I decided to jump out of a plane. My roommate Scott and I decided that we'd jump. He's totally normal so I was shocked that he had an interest at all. Not that you have to be abnormal to jump out of a totally stable aircraft. So, we set up a date to do it and drove out to the airport. It was the smallest airport I've ever seen in my life. I thought it was a farm. It was comprised of a large barn and a dirt parking lot. Along side the barn was a small trailer. Just past the trailer was the worlds smallest runway. It was either a runway or a long stretch of crabgrass. Hard to tell actually. Remembering back on it I think it was just a small patch of crabgrass gone wild. We headed out into the trailer where we signed our lives away and promised that if we died no one would sue them for it. They were to be held responsible for nothing. No matter what. Fine by me. We were led into another room where we where taught the basics of arching and turning and when to grab the toggles and what to do with them. We weren't doing it solo. We were going tandem. What that entails is that there's someone behind you that you're strapped to at the shoulders and the waist. We suited up, complete with goggles and Greg Bradey-type pants. At that point in time I'm sure we could have scored with any chick in the world. We even got a cap to go along with our new nifty duds. Anyway, we met the guys that were to be our tandem counterparts. The guy I was with was about 6'4" and skinny as a rail. Probably even thinner than I and that's a feat. His name was Paul. We loaded up in the plane. Our tandem partners explaining over again what the scenario was to be. Paul was silent. I listened to Scott's partner. We'll be jumping out at 14,000'. We'll be free-falling for a total of two minutes. Fall out of the plane. Forward. Arch. Because the two of us will have a higher mass I'll let out a small chute to keep us at the same terminal velocity that a single jumper would have. When I tap you on the right shoulder spin right. Tap again. Stop. When I tap you on the left shoulder spin left. Tap again. Stop. Check your altimeter. At 6,000' we pull the chute. You let me know that you're aware of when that is. When I tap you again hold yourself and I'll let out the shoot. Then stand on my feet and I'll unhook you at the waist. You'll swing down, connected only at the shoulders. Don't worry the harnesses are built to hold a weight of 1 ton. And you don't weigh that much. So with that out of the way we're bounding along the grass runway. I was in the front seated on the floor next to the pilot. My Paul was seated behind me. If I were gay I would have liked that compromising position. I'm not, and I wished to god that he wasn't either. I watched the pilot defy the laws of gravity. We were tossed up and down, side to side by the gale winds. I looked over at Scotty. He looked a bit scared. He kept staring at me. Trying to tell me something with his eyes. (Later I found out that he was big-eyed because the girl next to him was so hot. I was enjoying the whole experience so much I didn't even notice that half the plane was filled with females.) Paul and this other guy started talking about how it was so tragic the guy last week had come unattached from Paul's harness and died in the fields below. Maybe they shouldn't have drank that night they say. "Oh yeah," Paul says to this other jumper, "which pill was I supposed to take?" "The red one." "Shit," Paul says shaking his head back and forth, "I took the blue ones again." At 8,000' we all got buddy buddy with our tandem partner and got latched together. They double checked all four points of contact. Both shoulders and hips. "Ok, throw 'em out," the pilot said, smiling at Paul. So, two by two, everyone made their way to the back door. Which, by the by, was a solid sheet of plexiglass. Very cool. You could see for miles out of that door. I'm blind so I couldn't tell the difference between the grass, the fields, or the forests and lakes but it was enrapturing none-the-less. As I made it towards the door Paul checked the straps of the harness. When he was satisfied he pushed me closer to the door. The sound of the wind buffeting past the plane was deafening. Everyone had jumped but us. "You're friend said that you're nuts," he told me. "Are you," he half-asked. "Uh, I don't know. I guess you could say that I'm not right," I told him blandly. "Ok, forget what they told you down there. We're going to roll out of this plane." "Uh . . .," I half replied. "Just tuck your head between your legs and roll. Keep trying to kiss your ass until I tap you. Then arch. With that he called out, "One . . . two." And out we went. No three. No fucking three. I tucked my head between my ass. The world spun by then the sky then the world. World, sky, world, sky. Blue, green, bluegreen, bluegreen. My mind receded in upon itself. I was whole: I was alive and I plummeted towards death. From out of the spinning blue and green came a pounding on my back. The wind made it impossible to hear. We had reached a higher terminal velocity than normal . . . he hadn't let out the safety shoot yet. We were still free falling. I arched. Immediately we leveled out and stopped spinning. In front of us the plane dove and swung up under us. We fell towards it and swiftly it was under us and away. It was gone out of my line of vision in a split second. I enjoyed the speed. My mind raced quicker than my body. Ecstasy consumed my very being. We spun right then straightened out. We spun left and straightened out. I looked at my altimeter, 8,000'. God this was intense! We spun in a left circle for what seemed like an hour. We rolled once and then arched again. I interpreted his nudges and assumed I did the right thing because he threw up two thumbs in front of my face and shook them. I looked at my altimeter, 4,000'. Then he tapped me again. I held myself. Suddenly I was jerked out of my free-fall. The chute opened. He reached down and pulled my goggles off my eyes. He screamed in triumph/joy/ecstasy/fear/relief. I joined him. I got on his feet and he undid the clasps at my waist. Then he told me to get off his feet. For two seconds I thought I was going to fall the rest of the way. But after a mere 2" my shoulder straps took hold and my weight was nestled by the harness once again. He handed me the toggles and we proceeded to do spirals left and right, testing the chute. Everything was ok so we started fucking around a bit. All the while he was laughing and screaming. We did a 720 degree turn that brought our bodies up even with the top of the chute. It was tremendous. We settled down and watched the others who had jumped before us land. Then Paul said that we had to prepare to land. All I had to do was pull down as hard as I could on the toggles seconds before my feet touched the ground. He said that if we came in too fast that I should just raise my legs up and hit with my ass. We practiced in the air. We both pulled down on the toggles and for half a second Mother Nature was defeated. We hung motionless in the air. Neither going up nor going down. It was the most surreal feeling I've had in my entire life. There is no drug that I've found to duplicate that feeling. It was almost as intense as plummeting down through the skies staring at the massiveness of earth. When we landed on the pad I unclasped from Paul, shook his hand, and tackled Scotty. The Unbidden =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = Questions, Comments, Bitches, Ideas, Rants, Death Threats, Submissions = = Mail: jericho@dimensional.com (Mail is welcomed) = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = To receive new issues through mail, mail jericho@dimensional.com with = = "subscribe fuck". 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