Free Market Failure

I have a friend – some of you have him, too – who is brilliant, funny, empathetic, generous, and so self-destructive that he makes Nicolas Cage in Leaving Los Vegas look like Mr. Rogers and Under the Volcano read like Mother Goose.

He was the first person I texted when I heard about Robin Williams. Last night, he finally texted me back. Fifteen or so times.

I keep very odd hours. I generally get up around four in the morning, which means I’m usually fast asleep by nine o’clock at night. Last night, I had insomnia: Bad Date from last weekend is trying to get me to see Guardians of the Galaxy with him. All this requires is a simple No, you’re thinking. And that’s absolutely true. But I kept being haunted by Bad Date’s face in repose last weekend, his expression when he didn’t know I was looking at him – how sad he looked. How deflated. Plus he had my phone number. So I turned off my phone and didn’t get my brilliant, self-destructive friend’s texts till this morning.

(Instead I watched multiple episodes of Friday Night Lights. That Riggins. Is he a hunk or what?)

What to do?
Libertarianism isn’t just a political leaning for me. It’s a deeply entrenched personal philosophy. Not to worry: I’m not one of those Ayn Rand liberatarians! I believe that governments have a moral obligation to intervene when the free market fails, and that the free markets fail all the time. I just don’t believe in government intervention until the free market fails. But I hate telling people what to do. And I hate being told what to do.

So you can imagine what a difficult dilemma was posed when I read this from my brilliant, self-destructive friend (hereafter to be referred to as BS-DF): I’m really broken up. Not because HE did it, but because it’s been so close on my mind. Of late. At least I mowed the lawn, yeah?

In a psychology class I once took as an undergraduate back in Cretaceous times, I did a paper on the rhetorical differences between real suicide notes and fake suicide notes. It got complicated! Because, of course, some fake suicides turn into real suicides. And some real suicides are thwarted.

But basically, when someone is talking about killing himself/herself and it’s actually a gesture designed to get a head start on funeral planning by pinning down the the guest list, the suicide notes they write are little stories, displaying linear thinking and good grammar.

Whereas, when people are serious about hitting the Off Button, their notes are rambling and have no linear thread.

BS-DF’s texts made no sense.

Yeah, yeah. He was very drunk.

Still…

I called him after texting him, How drunk are you? Because I can’t talk to you if you’re drunk.

Summary of our 40 minute phone conversation: DUDE. You don’t know how difficult this phone call is for me to make but YOU NEED PROFESSIONAL HELP.

It’s like when I got so sick four summers ago. I came down with the flu or something and spent four days throwing up everything that went into my stomach, water even. I was amazingly dehydrated and weak and trembling all over and still vomiting every 15 minutes. And it finally began to occur to me, Hey! This is serious. I better go to the ER!

And the minute B showed up to take me to the ER, I began to slip out of consciousness.

I don’t know whether the decision to seek help gives one permission to let go or if sensing oneself letting go is the impetus to seek help. I suppose like just about everything else, it’s a feedback loop and an irrelevant distinction in functional terms.

Of course, BS-DF played Yes, but – Yes, but – on the phone.

So my phone call was for naught.

I am seriously frightened for him.