Golden Gate Hank

I wake up with a toothache, think Ishouldwrite about a toothache, make it somehow worthwhile. It's got everything: intimacy, decay, how the body's busy, night and day, doing you in. One of the hundreds of jumpers' corpses pulled from the bay had a note in its pocket saying No reason at all except I have a toothache. Josey's grandfather shot himself after his fifth sinus operation failed. Josey says Empty Nose Syndrome and I get confused— how can hollows be hollowed? But then I go to emptynosesyndrome.org, cup my poor nose in horror, grateful for all I take for granted, can't see. Golden Gate Hank hates his nickname. If you wanted to be called Serenity Hank, Ken tells him,you shouldn't have jumped off the fucking bridge. The ones that live all say they changed their minds in the four seconds before they hit, tried to land feet first and managed it. Ken says don't tell people I think every day of how I wouldn't kill myself, they get the wrong idea. I think every day of how I'd save myself, save Josey: stab the bad guy, fall feet first, punch the Great White in his eyeball, play dead in the bullet-ridden mass grave. From the back seat of the Suburban, I heard my mother say to my father Driving across a high bridge always makes me want to jump. You might live: A seventeen year old boy hit feet first, swam to shore and walked for help, saying his back was killing him. Another guy realized he was alive and underwater, felt something brushing his broken legs.Great, now I get eaten by a shark, he thought. It happens. But this was a seal, circling, apparently the only thing that was keeping me alive, and you can not tell me that wasn't God, because that's what I believe, and that's what I'll believe until the day I die.