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As promised, here is the follow-up to the Top Ten Ways to Go (which you can read here). The first list is useful; this list is essential. Be aware.
Top Ten Ways Not to Go
Number 10: Choking on vomit
I think choking to death on anything would suck: you can’t breathe, your eyes are bulging, you’re swinging your arms and half bent over. It’s an awful spectacle. But vomit, jeez. And yes, I mean your own vomit, I’m not being Spinal Tap cute here. I’m talking about that late night pass-out moment at the end of what had been a thoroughly righteous ten hours of moveable feast, right up to the point when your body makes the unfortunate choice of deciding it doesn’t want ribs and baked beans and bourbon and ibuprofen swirling around in its belly any more and gives not the least little fuck about the fact that you are flat on your back and breathing through your mouth. Um, hurl.
Number 9: Listening to the band Bread
. . . on repeat. Okay, who hasn’t had the experience of a new-ish friend scrolling through your iTunes library, pausing, looking you in the eye and asking, “Bread? Seriously?” Yeah, motherfucker, Bread. Seriously. I confess, I’m a risk-taker, a tempter of Fate. I wave my private parts at Death on a regular basis: I listen to Bread all the time. Sometimes I put on some Bread when I climb into bed, and I start my prayers, “If I should die before I wake,” and then I chuckle, roll over and fall asleep. Take that, Grim Reaper.
Number 8: Getting your ass stomped to death by a gang of midgets
Just picture the last thought that would go through your mind. That is all.
Number 7: Wearing skinny jeans
Guys, I don’t know who is going around telling you those pants look good on you, but whoever it is, punch that person in the face because she or he is a filthy liar. Nobody looks good in skinny jeans. Everybody who wears skinny jeans looks like an asshole, and you know what they say: if it walks like a duck . . . which you do, in your skinny jeans. It is a horrible way to go through even a brief period of your life, and a worse state to be in at the very end. Don’t take that chance.
Number 6: Making flan
Statistically, this is extremely rare. Don’t be the one who skews those numbers.
Number 5: Thrill-seeking
By comparison, this is statistically quite common: skydivers’ shoots don’t open, parasailors crash into waterfront high-rises, world-class skiers go off marked trails and crash into trees bearing signs that say “Don’t ski here” (which I realize is technically ironic, but come on). If you’re so remarkably stupid that you need a regular fix of this kind, go with God. And tell him I say hello.
Number 4: Suicide
Unless you write the most profound suicide note ever – and you won’t – don’t do it. I write pretty good, and I couldn’t pull it off, so do yourself a solid and don’t go there. Stick around, make fun of people, eat weird foods, find out if Ryan Gosling will finally be named People’s sexiest man alive.
Number 3: Being named People’s sexiest man alive
. . . and having the magazine come out two days after you’re dead. Gross. Ironic and gross.
Number 2: Fucked to death in all the wrong ways
I don’t just mean the obvious bad fucking, like unwanted prison sex. I’m thinking more about those relationships we’ve all had that have run their course and grown stale, but you keep going through the motions, even going so far as to have the expected amount of bland, uninspired sex, and while you’re doing it, the thought crosses your mind, “God, what if this is the last person I ever have sex with. Like, what if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, or . . .” and then you die. Bad fucked to death.
Number 1: Cast into the sea
Getting beaten up and thrown off the back of your yacht in the middle of the night by your drunken-ass jealous hack-actor husband because he thinks you’re banging Christopher Walken: that should never happen (again).
The midgets thing is pretty hilarious. Sorry. It just is.
I once had a conversation with someone – and I don’t know how it started (as these things go…) – but we decided that drowning, while being eaten by sharks, while on fire would be pretty horrible. Of course, that might fit better with the first list.
I’ve always thought it would be pretty sad to die in some lame way that no one expects and most people don’t die from: being hit by a float in a parade, a sudden allergic reaction to air, impaling yourself on a pencil while doing math, etc. Not really Darwin type deaths, but still really lame. Anti-climax deaths.
Gloria, I’m going to a parade tonight — if you don’t hear from me for a few days, assume the worst.
i should like to spontaneously combust. that would be the best way to go. a close second would be spontaneous pneumothorax. mainly because i like causes of death with spontaneity and big words.
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I learned – eventually – that when an American says “Do me a solid” s/he is not – NOT – requesting a stool sample.
Aaand…I was at a wedding reception – a very rowdy rock’n’roll, drink’n’drugs wedding reception – where a very camp little Asian chap known only as Princess, lying on his back against a wall, began Hendrixing. I sat him up, and he continued puking, on my herringbone trousers. He’d admired them earlier, I guess he changed his mind.
He was OK, he didn’t actually succumb to Death #10.