more about my fucked up year. you were warned.

[steventangent]

JT Harper was kind of a sonofabitch.

At least a half-decent guy, he'd run sound at local shows and festivals sometimes. I'd purchased a few guitars from him, dirt cheap. He owned a recording studio and jam space out on Steamburg Road, out in the country. Someone told me he fixed guitars, and he'd actually performed a few last-minute repairs for me that I had dropped off, well before I even met him. It occurs, just now, I'm not even sure when I actually DID meet him. He's just one of those fixtures. A townie. A character. A part of the landscape. Like when they build something in your neighborhood, and damned if you can remember when you first noticed it, or when they tear something down and you forget what it used to look like. His son-in-law used to be our mayor. I went to high school with his grandson.

Harper would always be at this co-op that I was on the board of - part art-space, music venue, and coffee shop. He quit coming around so much after 2006, because he had a pretty severe stroke. He'd make the rounds, looking frail and gaunt and sometimes using a cane, talking all this shit about studio musicians that worked for him in Memphis and Detroit and wherever else. I'm not sure I bought everything he was selling. But it was fun to listen to sometimes.

At 71, he was conspicuous in crowds for metal and punk shows, but there, nonetheless. If someone was playing, he'd be watching, with his girlfriend Marcy Wilkenson, and his roommate, James McKinney. He'd come into the shop where I worked and crack me up bitching about who didn't know how to tune their guitars and who was just fucking tone deaf. "It's okay if you write songs where all you do is scream, just at least learn how to play a goddamn instrument or write a goddamn song!" I suspected after he left the store, after he got done talking shit about other people and telling me all the ways I was much better than them, he'd turn to his companions and say all kinds of nasty shit about me. It'd always be the three of them. Marcy was always smiling and pleasant, the kind of woman that wears those godawful light pink sweatshirts with puppies or cute sayings on them. James never spoke a word, a greasy, flannel-wearing old hick with crazy, beady eyes and scraggly long, black and grey hair and matching crusty beard. He'd smile, listen intently to me when I talked, and laugh at my jokes. But he'd never say a fucking word.

I guess Harper took McKinney in out of little more than kindness. He was a transient from a neighboring city and I'm still not quite clear on how the two met, I just know that he creeped everyone out big time. People had their reservations about him. They lived together for a couple of years without incident, and he followed JT everywhere and would help him with shopping and whatever other little things.

Which does absolutely nothing to explain why on Friday, October 23, as Harper lay sleeping in his trailer, McKinney snuck into his room, pushed a .38 special against his head, and put a bullet in JT's brain. His body shuddered and blood seeped through his long white hair. It soaked his pillow and dripped on the floor. McKinney gathered his things, stole JT's wallet and keys, loaded his van and drove west.

They picked him up after Midnight that night in DeKalb County, Illinois, for making an illegal lane change. He told the deputy his name was James Harper and gave him JT's license. There was no mistaking the pale, white-haired, broad nosed Jim for McKinney, though. They pitched him in county for driving on a suspended license and attempted obstruction of justice.

The deputies impounded the vehicle, which was registered to JT, and found all of McKinney's possessions and two unregistered handguns.

With nothing else to hold him on, they released him Saturday to a transient shelter that told him he could stay for two days.

About this time, Marcy, having not talked to JT since the night previous and unable to reach him on the phone, went to his house, finding them unexpectedly gone, and let herself in. She immediately knew something was wrong because all of McKinney's stuff was gone. JT's door was open. A sea of blood had settled on the floor and there he lay, tilted to the side, in the grip of rigor mortis, stretched out on his bed, with little more awry than the hole in his forehead.

McKinney was the obvious suspect and the word got out that they were looking for him. The warrant was issued Monday morning after the sheriff's department in my county discovered his arrest. As McKinney prepared to leave the shelter that morning, authorities called and asked him to try and keep him there. The DeKalb County Sheriff Department picked him up and he was extradited back to Michigan.

The trial against him has been pushed back to the end of this month, from it's earlier March date. We share a coroner with another county, and he has been in Europe. The DA provided vague reasons for the postponement. They need additional lab evidence. They are waiting on a pending suit from the Court of Appeals.

I hope it comes out in trial what motivated this. After something like this goes down, you naturally start searching for answers. Wondering if there was something that suggested this might happen that maybe you missed. He was weird, that's all. Weird, and quiet. And had crazy eyes. JT was a nice enough guy, who paid a pretty shitty price for letting someone in need live with him. His family had misgivings about this, and they were right. He was fairly old and a stroke victim; I had already sort of been resigned to his not having too many years left anyway. Bang, dead.

I guess I don't really feel like it was "shocking" in a way that maybe I should. It's more of a..."what. the. fuck." that I still haven't quite worked out and processed, given the other things going on in my life.

[steventangent]

yep. there you are, you ugly sonofabitch.

RIP Jim...he was an interesting acquaintance to have around. I haven't seen Marcy since before it happened and I hope she's alright.

Anybody had a similar experience? How do you deal with senseless shit like this? I almost feel just...cold about it. Like I should have been upset, or something. I couldn't even make the memorial they had for him, which I felt like a piece of shit about.

[riddle350]

no words of encouragement but fuck I absolutely love your writing and wish I was able to write as well as you. Keep it up and i hope you're year gets better. I guess those are technically words of encouragement.

[riddle350]

I also ment to write "your year" as opposed to "you're year".

[controlthebleeding]

i was gonna say, this almost felt like a short story in a book.

[mutinyzine]

i was gonna say, this almost felt like a short story in a book.

[jcamps]

good read

[fourfourtwo]

good read

[steventangent]

no words of encouragement but fuck I absolutely love your writing and wish I was able to write as well as you. Keep it up and i hope you're year gets better. I guess those are technically words of encouragement.

Thanks...I wish I had the kitten in your avatar!

[steventangent]

haha. Maybe I ought to just start making shit up completely. I got robbed at gunpoint by a gypsy last night. He told me if I tried anything funny he'd put a hot lead curse in me.

[Guest darnyeller]

seriously boring.

[mariawithoneeye]

wow, nice writing! sorry about that shit happening

[Guest errolwest]

seriously boring.

it seems all your posts are extremely nonconstructive. whats your deal?

EDIT: i bet this is actually "itsajackie" taking his revenge on everyone.

[tanukichu]

seriously boring.

it seems all your posts are extremely nonconstructive. whats your deal?

EDIT: i bet this is actually "itsajackie" taking his revenge on everyone.

I don't know. Each one of his posts isn't followed by "lol."

Aaaaaaaaaannnnddddddd Steve, holy shit that's crazy and unfortunate. It's so sad that the kindness of others and their will on taking a chance on people the world's already given up on ends up like this more often than not. For what its worth you're good at this writing thing.

[steventangent]

I've been thinking about killing myself a lot lately.

Let's backtrack. There has been an awful lot on my mind lately. There is a message board I post on quite a bit, but most of my posts tend to be sardonic, completely silly, or just my opinions on various topics. A few nights ago, I decided for the first time to really write my thoughts down about something that happened 6 months ago. I know a bunch of people on that board, and I thought, "maybe someone will have something really positive to say, and I can draw on the experiences of people that might be smarter than me and may have been through something similar."

So I logged on to the forum, and made the rare extremely-personal post. At the very least, writing it down and getting out of my system was therapeutic, as I'm not the sort who likes to drag his friends down talking about unpleasant business very often.

And sure enough, a few people did have positive things to say...even if it was only that they found it interesting and worth reading. I take those sort of comments as reinforcement that I'm still able to relate to other people, as I have feared more than once in my life that I seclude myself and am becoming an increasingly difficult person to know and understand. It's not that I depend on that sort of validation, per se, but it's reassuring nonetheless.

I grew up with the inchoate notion that where we seek answers, we may find nothing. More likely that we reinterpret things to fit our own personal needs, that we look for patterns and simplify and rationalize all existence in a manner that helps us cope with a world that is ultimately chaotic and driven completely by happenstance. I may, of course, be completely wrong, and in fact, it even seems likely. But the idea always existed in my head, my own deceptively simple response to all things solipsistic in nature.

The more I think about it, the more painfully morose the idea becomes - and also more wrapped in layers of irony. If the whole of our motivation to explore all things spiritual is simply trying to comprehend the infinitely incomprehensible and assign order to chaos, does anything at all matter? What has substance? I read recently about a man, in good health, that was jogging on the beach and was struck from behind and killed by an airplane he didn't hear that was making an emergency landing. The notion is painfully absurd. We're creatures of nature, with instincts like anything else. And all of our efforts to control our lives and pretend we are somehow masters of our destiny MAY just be one giant joke we're pulling on ourselves.

One of the signs of depression is an intense feeling of hopelessness, and that you aren't in control of your life. But I'm finding, increasingly, that every societal construct that has anything to do with control of any sort is a complete illusion.

Yet here I am. Trying to make some sense of my thoughts. Trying to relate to other people. Trying to reorganize my outlook into something constructive and meaningful out of the sturm und drang of life and happenstance.

My father is mangled in an accident on his way home from work due to someone else's negligence.

An acquaintance is brutally murdered in his sleep by someone he tried to help.

An evening out with my wife finds us waiting with a total stranger in the middle of the night as he bleeds to death from a gaping head wound caused by his own unfortunate luck.

I feel too difficult to understand, because I don't understand myself, and I sabotage relationships with people who care about me.

...I wonder if other people think about death as much as I do.

And in my own fashion, I mask everything with a veneer of absurdity and silliness. I've been told before that I am like hanging out with a cartoon character. I think that may be one of the few things I find myself comfortable saying is a good quality about me; I'm a boundless source of ridiculousness, and the kind of person you want around when shit goes bad or when you're stuck on a plane or in a boring town. In my own tragically ironic way, I'm an optimist at heart.

But you know what?

All of my delusions that I am able to relate to anybody are a complete wash now that someone I don't know on the internet is seriously bored reading about my bullshit! My feelings are so goddamned hurt I might just have to blow my fuckin' brains out!

Aloha, motherfuckers!

[controlthebleeding]

dude, i wish i could write like you can. even my grocery lists suck.

[steventangent]

shhhhh! i think i might really have this guy going!

[mcm1610]

I find a lot of the senselessness of life more encouraging than hopeless. If things don't matter all that much, shit, I'm gonna goof around. That's why a lot of what I do is to entertain myself. I do little things that a lot of people don't understand or don't catch the humor on simply to make myself laugh. A lot of the time I don't explain it, I don't care if anyone catches it, I found it funny, so I quietly enjoy it and move on. It boggles me sometimes that people get frustrated when they feel there's no purpose to life.

[steventangent]

t t t totally dude!

[tobinownlife]

I find a lot of the senselessness of life more encouraging than hopeless. If things don't matter all that much, shit, I'm gonna goof around. That's why a lot of what I do is to entertain myself. I do little things that a lot of people don't understand or don't catch the humor on simply to make myself laugh. A lot of the time I don't explain it, I don't care if anyone catches it, I found it funny, so I quietly enjoy it and move on. It boggles me sometimes that people get frustrated when they feel there's no purpose to life.

You should look into Terror Management Theory. We discuss it in social psychology a lot. It's an interesting way of linking peoples anxieties and motivation with thoughts of mortality. Has it's place in fears of change, persuasion, obedience, self-esteem.