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THE FACE THROUGH THE RAILINGS
by Nicki Benson Please read the notes that precede the story before making comments. |
This piece was written the evening after a friend and I were returning from the pub and saw what you're about to read below. The dialogue is my invention - it has to be since we both reacted to the situation with stunned silence. And I have no reason for thinking that the 'jumper' was trans. I only hope that he was eventually persuaded to reconsider.
It made me ask questions of myself, seeing that face through the railings. If the police hadn't been there, what would I have done? What could I have said? If I'm honest I suspect that I'd have been a bit of a cunt and walked on by. Yeah, that would have been just like me.
Not far now. Over the bridge, across the road and into Berto’s. Nothing better than a chicken kebab when you’ve had a night on the beer.
“So did you finish watching those Charlie Brooker shows?” asks Mick.
“I did, yeah,” I laugh. “The best one was where she woke up and couldn’t remember her name. I liked it ‘cause it kind of fucked with you all the way through.”
“I know what you mean. Did she really kill that kid or…shit, what’s going on up there?”
At the far end of the bridge, three men in high-vis jackets. On the other side of the road, two police cars and a van.
It can only mean one thing. A jumper.
One of the officers begins sauntering towards us. Mick and I exchange glances. We both know we’re in for a three-mile walk if he turns us back. It’s happened before.
“All right lads,” he says. “If you can just cross over and move past the vehicles…”
Does he actually think we might want to stay and watch this? Then again, given the crowds that turned up a year or two back when someone wanted to throw himself off a roof a couple of hundred yards further along…
So we do as we’re told. Too hungry to be anything other than polite, co-operative citizens.
But before we reach the first police car a voice tears through the balmy night air.
“You haven’t got a fucking clue! None of you bastards do! Let’s see how you cope if you have to take all this shit just for being in the wrong fucking body!”
I look back and see two fists gripping the railings. Behind the green iron bars is a face. It mouths more words, but they’re incoherent and rambling.
“Shit!” I say to Mick. “He’s hanging on. Let’s get out of here.”
“You’re right. If he jumps now we’ll be witnesses and we’ll have to make statements.”
“Yeah, then we’ll never get anything to eat.”
We reach Berto’s and order our food. While we’re waiting, Mick suggests we go outside for a cigarette.
“What was all that about being in the wrong body?” he wonders.
“I dunno. Probably out of his head on heroin or something.”
“You reckon it was a bloke? Now I think about it I'm sure it was a lass. Didn’t sound like one, mind.”
“Takes all sorts to make a world,” I grin. “Hang on, can I borrow your lighter? Mine’s fucked.”
Comments
How many have been where
the jumper is and had no one to intervene?
May Your Light Forever Shine
I've been on the brink enough times...
...throughout my life, even in the past several years, that if I were on the other side, I would hope I'd do everything I could to help. I honestly don't know what I could say other than that I have been on the brink; I know what hopeless feels like, and I finally found what hope feels like as well?
Love, Andrea Lena
I have been on that bridge many times
...in more ways than one.
It Was A Shock
I don't know why, but I always imagined someone balanced on the top of the railings waiting to leap into the air. A grand gesture, shouting 'goodbye cruel world' as they dived into the air.
This was genuinely pathetic. A guy who couldn't decide if he was more afraid to hold on or let go. It was the lack of dignity that struck me more than anything else. And I'm sorry to say that deep down I despised him for it.
A very interesting take of
A very interesting take of bystanders that don't want to be involved. They haven't a clue on what was going on and only had one interest. It's like that in most cases. People want a spectacle for entertainment not caring who gives it to them and then some are shocked when they get it believing that the person was chicken.
In this groups case I suspect they'll find out when they watch the news.
I Believe The Children Are Our Future....
Fortunately it was nearly midnight so the road was empty and there was no chance of a crowd gathering. The other incident I referred to in the story notes took place at around 6:30 p.m. and attracted hundreds of onlookers, few of them older than 20. I can't say that it made me feel particularly optimistic about the future.
Nothing to be Optimistic About !
Dear Nicki,
nobody should feel optimistic about the Future, especially just now, when the dumb idiots called Politicians, with their mates in Banking and with the various wierd and impossible people running the big international corporations called Religions, have between them and with the rest of us'es passive approval or at least our indifference, driven the whole world into a ditch. Being Optimistic means one will be continuously disappointed. If one adopts a pessimistic outlook, on the other hand, one is now and again at least pleasantly surprised !
I have been encouraging my family, friends and biz associates to look on the dissappointed side of things, for years, and we all get to have lots of laughs at the silly behaviour of the naked ape that called itself H. "sapiens" when a better fit would have been H. stupidens.
There isn't anything we can do to change people - they get what they asked for and if they then dont like it, instead of trying to figure a way out of things they spend almost all their time and effort looking for and deciding who to blame.
BTW, if one is an atheist and realises that we have only one life, that a mind cannot continue without a brain and a body to keep it alive, then one is everso less likely to commit suicide. I have been in very sticky situations more than a few times, but at the last minute something happens or one has an Idea, and one finds a way out.
About the crowds that gather to gawp at people in distress - fed on a continuous diet of plastic food Erzatz and mind-altering fizzy drinks as they are, and having almost continuous television showing them gratuitous violence, criminal activities and murders as "entertainment", those people have become addicited to violent and life-losing Events, and seek their ever bigger "fix" like the Heroin, Cocaine, or Librium they depend upon to get through "life"....
If that sounds like I am out of tune with that kind of society, I am one of the lucky ones - I live on a quiet, tiny island in the Atlantic, with a perfect climate, in a small community that is still largely intact. We do have a Policeman but he mostly just drives around and stops and advises tourists. We all know one another and all keep an eye out for one another. There just isnt any crime.
Dont ask where it is - the last thing we want is a few hundred million refugees landing on us ! :)
Briar