This Modern Writer: Suicide Note by Erin Lyndal Martin

My ex-boyfriend is most famous for his death.

On Yom Kippur in 2010, Mitchell Heisman put on a white tuxedo, walked to Memorial Church in Harvard Square, and shot himself. He left behind a “suicide note” of nearly 2000 pages comprised of the manuscripts he was working on. He had an automated program email the note to his loved ones and publish it on a website.

My ex-boyfriend is most famous for his death.  I didn’t know he had died for months. I had moved away, and the note came to an email address I no longer used regularly. I logged in one night and saw his name and the subject line “suicide note.”

My hands started shaking. I reached for my bottle of rum.

I read the email. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to read the note.

I Googled him right away. I found many articles about his death. There was one that had photos of the church. In one there was a white sheet. I can’t even think about that one without crying. In the other one, there was a rose someone had left on the stairs. I wondered who had left it there.

My ex-boyfriend is most famous for his death. In a coffee shop in Virginia, I overhear a man I know make a joke: “It’s kind of like that guy up at Harvard that killed himself. You kind of wish he was still around so he could tell us all the reasons for not living anymore.”

I interrupt him.  “That was my boyfriend.” I say pointedly. And start crying.

But the man doesn’t understand. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t even backpedal. He tells me he read every word of the note and Mitch (except he doesn’t even remember his name) is a hero, no, an antihero.

He’s not a fucking hero.

Mitch and I met on Craigslist of all places, in what must have been the spring of 2009. I placed a personal ad for a man in which I stated I liked men with a dry sense of humor. He responded with a picture that actually turned out to look nothing like him in real life. He said my ad was alluring and that he wanted to meet. Then he told me he was a writer and was working on a book about the Norman invasion.

When I read that he was a writer, I followed my first instinct to Google him. I found nothing.

Now, if you Google him, you find plenty of stories about his death. Some of them feature the same picture he sent me.

I didn’t find anything on Google and thought that maybe he wasn’t that serious of a writer. Little did I know, he was a writer with the most fervent work ethic of anyone I’ve met.

Mitch sent me another picture of himself, this one shirtless, with a brief note that it was taken back when he was working out. I was puzzled by this. Was this guy vain? A meathead? Insecure?

Our first meeting was equally strange. We met at my favorite coffee shop in Somerville, Massachusetts. The first thing Mitch did after he showed up was pick up my half-full glass of water and drink it.

I thought he was nervous because I noticed this strange habit–I still don’t know if he did this with everyone–of starting about five sentences at the same time and then finally settling on one. His humor was, as promised, dry. Within twenty minutes, he had taken my hand. All I remember about this first conversation is him telling me that he was Jewish and that he liked ant farms.

None of the newspaper stories mention the ant farms.

Here, I wish I could remember everything we talked about. I wish I could lie and say I remembered it all.

I was still a little unsure about Mitch the second time I went out with him. We went to my favorite place in Porter Square. I had brought my Murphy’s Law First Date Bag, which provided for everything that could happen on a first date. Motion sickness, sex, bad breath, anxiety, it was all there. When Mitch said his food was upsetting his stomach, I offered him antacid. He asked me what antacids did. Nobody had ever asked me that before. We went to his apartment and he kissed me in the stairwell like he couldn’t wait to get inside.

We kept kissing on his bed beside his enormous book collection. When I had driven us there, he said he hated cars because he felt like he couldn’t be free. Having books, he said, that’s what makes me feel free. He had so many books and more piles of them besides his computer.  The only title I remember (aside from the Kama Sutra) was a book called something like Two Jews, One Opinion. I joked that it was disturbing that two Jews only had one opinion between them. Mitch kissed me some more. He said my curves turned him on. Nobody had ever told me that.

We didn’t have sex. I didn’t even take off any clothes. We just listened to Bach. Mitch was always listening to Bach.

I just realized I was wearing the same dress as I’m wearing right now, typing this.

I wasn’t terribly surprised when, a couple days later, I got an email from Mitch. I’d get many emails from him like this. It said something about his inability to be in a relationship. I guess I’m too much of a loner is the only line I remember. I could look it up, but I can’t imagine going back through our emails.

I went on with my life. I even–God, I hate to admit this now–made fun of his “meathead” picture with my friends.  I know. You’re looking at me like that, but that’s only because you know how this story ends.

The next time I saw Mitch was a while later. Maybe a month. I don’t remember. I remember that he suddenly emailed with the subject line Thinking about you. He said he’d kept thinking of me and how he let me go and how he had made a mistake.

Nobody had ever said that to me before.

I called him right away. He sounded so happy to hear from me, and he was so eager to invite me over for dinner.  I wore my black and neon-green Day of the Dead dress. When Mitch answered the door, his whole face lit up at seeing me, and he couldn’t stop touching me. We went upstairs to eat. I’ll never forget the way he came into his room with two TV trays full of spaghetti and store-bought salad mix. The whole time we ate, he was concerned. Was the pasta hot enough? Was the sauce too spicy?

Mostly, as Jared said, Mitch was sweet.

I hadn’t thought to use that word to describe that night.

That night, I told Mitch that all the light bulbs in my bedroom were burned out. Even on a chair, I can’t reach them, I said. He immediately offered to come help. He’d never seen my apartment because I kept it so messy, but I wanted to see him again.

I tried to call him to come over and help, but I got a strange error message when I dialed his number.

My ex-boyfriend is most famous for his death.

Can I call him my boyfriend? When did he become that? I don’t want to be that obnoxious guy in the coffee shop who didn’t even remember his name. I just want to be that girl that turned Mitch on, the girl that Mitch was thinking about. I sensed you were a poet, he wrote to me once. This was when, I think, I had posted a different Craigslist ad, one seeking fans of the composer Erik Satie. Not recognizing me, he sent me a message that began Dear music lover

He said he was responding to my alluring message. I wrote back If I’m so alluring, why do I keep scaring you away?

I didn’t understand then. If I even understand now.

We went back and forth for quite some time. At one point, he jokingly threatened to call the police on me if I kept “seducing him with [my] words.”

None of the newspaper articles mention that.

I didn’t see Mitch much that fall.

In October, I went to my favorite bar–the same place Mitch and I had first had dinner–and had two Shirley Temple Blacks. I came home and washed down over a thousand milligrams of trazodone with half a bottle of vodka.

The only note I sent was an email to my former thesis advisor. It was a request for her to publish my first manuscript.

My ex-boyfriend is most famous for his death.

My advisor found a way to track me down via a grad school friend who called 911 in her town and had them call 911 in mine. I was half-asleep. I was thinking that the pills hadn’t worked. I heard voices in the stairwell.

I remember that one police officer had me convinced I’d be home by morning. I didn’t even bother to refill my cat’s food dish. All I did was put on a pair of underwear. The police officer politely turned his head.

My first twelve hours in the hospital, while they were trying to save my life (it turned out I’d taken what would have been a fatal dose), I swore to remember every detail and write a story called “Take Care.” It was the last thing one of the paramedics had said to me.

But I wasn’t home by morning. I was in the mental hospital for five days. I kept asking who would feed my cat. They gaze me more benzodiazepenes.

I wore the same clothes for five days.

I forgot the story I wanted to write.

I didn’t think about Mitch.

Later, once I was sure I was moving out of state, I wrote him, asking if he wanted to get together one last time. I’ve never seen your apartment but it’s important that I say goodbye to it, he wrote, with an offer to bring chocolate.

And so he showed up at the door to my shitty hovel with a box of chocolate. It was this bizarre chocolate Trivial Pursuit game made from cheap Christmas chocolate. “This tastes like this-time-of-year chocolate,” Mitch said after apologizing that the set he was bringing me might have “lost” some pieces along the way. In a moment I now recognize as irony, I told him of my attempt, my rescue, and the hospital. Mitch gave me chocolate and wine and held my hand. He said he wanted to see me again the next Wednesday.

Wednesday there was a terrible snowstorm. I expected nothing since Mitch walked everywhere, but at 8:00 PM sharp, my doorbell rang. Mitch, covered in snow, bundled up, and wearing the same MP3 player he wore for running, was at my door. We spent the night together. For the first and only time, I got to see him be completely silly. He started talking about how different animals might get high. The whale just puts his weed in his blowhole and sets it on fire.

My ex-boyfriend is most famous for his death.

Now, when I think of him, I try to picture his face as it was when I answered the door that night.

Now, when I think of him, sometimes I listen to Tori Amos’s “Digital Ghost”–the you I knew is fading away.

Now, when I think of him, sometimes the picture fades.

Now, when I think of him, sometimes I get jealous. I hear his surviving friends met with other women Mitch had dated. Oh really? I think but don’t entirely mean. Mostly I am preoccupied with wondering if I was his last.

None of the newspaper articles made this any easier.

About two years before I met Mitch, a good friend of mine who had taught writing in France died from heart disease. I had a terrible time with it.

Many months later, I entered a big spiritual phase. All I could feel was guilt that I hadn’t talked to Jeremy’s spirit, told him what was happening to him now and how I would never forget him. In a moment I can only describe as the greatest spiritual gift I’ve gotten, Jeremy came to visit me. I apologized for not having been there for him when he died. That must has been so weird, I said. Yeah, it was, but so was France, he said. That joke was, somehow, how I knew I was really talking to Jeremy.

It sounds silly now. I know. But after Mitch died, this time I knew I owed it to him, Mitch–to tell him what was happening to himself, as best as I knew. I did not light a candle and say a prayer. Mostly I drank and went to therapy. I bought a ticket to a Deerhunter concert in Washington, D.C. and arranged to stay with a guy I barely knew.

All through the concert I tried to focus on the music but Mitch kept coming back to me. I kept refilling my cup. Finally, I decided I would, there and then, talk to Mitch’s spirit. I would tell him what happened, as much as I knew it. I would tell him I loved him. I would tell him I wish I could have done something to keep him here.

I felt like a hypocrite. I try to off myself and then get pissed when my maybe- boyfriend succeeded. I could weakly argue it wasn’t like that, but isn’t it?

Fall, 2010. I decided I needed to have a night to remember Mitch. I write to his sister to ask her what he liked that I didn’t know about. Pink Floyd and Thai food were on the list. I texted a good friend. I said, Can we go to the Thai place Sunday and do you have any Pink Floyd?

Over Thai food, we talked about Mitch. I worried I had ordered his least favorite dish. I worried I would like his least favorite Pink Floyd song.

I kept going back to the same Pink Floyd song, “If”:

If I were alone, I would cry.
And if I were with you, I’d be home and dry.
And if I go insane,
And they lock me away,
Will you still let me join in the game?

If I were a swan, I’d be gone.
If I were a train, I’d be late again.
If I were a good man, I’d talk with you
More often than I do.

When I tried to call Mitch, I got a strange error message.

Erin Lyndal Martin is a poet, music journalist, and fiction writer currently based in Madison, WI. She invites anyone who knew Mitch to
email her at erinlyndalmartin at gmail.com. His writings can be found at http://www.suicidenote.info.