My Friend Isaac

My friend Isaac was an old black man who drank too much or at least too often. He was inclined to be paranoid. I spoke to him about it, but he just shrugged and said that he knew it. Thus, in everything he did, he worked against that element in himself. He sat on his emotions. At the least, he strained to restrain the more extreme impulses of his anger. It was hard work and it mostly worked, but when he blew it, he really blew up!

At other times he was thoughtful, though darkly so. Once he laughed and said, as if he'd memorized it,

"The possibility exists that suicide is not as painful as this life that drags on and on, but the prospect that death may be even more boring than this has become the last remaining thing that keeps me from making any melodramatic decision."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"One never knows," he nodded.

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