I’m at the Brooklyn Public Library rolling on doctor-approved Adderall, checking my e-mail for the first time in a week. I don’t have a computer. I also don’t have a phone, nor anything else that might serve as a digital leash. I’m shocked to see that my estranged, absentee parents have each e-mailed me a dozen times detailing their sudden great concern over my lifestyle choices. It seems my last roommate didn’t so much get the understated humor of the fake suicide note I left her last week when I moved all of my stuff out in the middle of the night without telling her.

The note said something like “Hey, I’m going to kill myself so I did you a favor and moved all of the shit out of my room first.” I simply needed an excuse to move out and sentimental goodbyes have never been my thing. So I guess she called my parents and told them about the note. She ALSO told them that I am a drug addict, which pisses me off because I’m not and, in fact, the only thing I am addicted to is online shopping, which the BPL does wonders to curb, imposing its thirty minute free internet usage time limit and all.

The following quotes are pulled from the various e-mails I received from my parents:

“I received a call from xxxxx this am telling me that you had left a sucicide note. She said that there were drugs involved and that you have an addiction. If you need help, I will get you help in Edmonton.”

“Where are you?”

“Call me about your passport. Did you get a new one? We all get depressed. I am not laughing off your depression nor did I mean to. You need to come back here.”

“Please respond.”

“Look, you have said on occasion that you are depressed. In fact you have been saying this for some time. If this is the case and I respect that it might be the case, then you need to get medical help.”

“To write a letter like you did is a call for help, regardless of whether you went to a hospital or not. It is a big red flag that you need help. You can fly to Edmonton and check in to a facility for depression, rehab or whatever the problem is. Did you make a suicide attempt?”

“I am not kidding, where are you?”

“Tell me where you are and if you left a letter like that then you are not at all well. I think you have a drug problem and you need help. I am going to locate you one way or the other, so please tell me where you are. Surely there is a phone there.”

“You can get help in Edmonton.”

“You are not fooling anyone. Your behavior has all the characteristics of drug use. You are addicted to coke. Your behaviour and money habits reflect something that is amiss. The ball is in your court.”

Wow. I guess I never knew how much they cared. In spite of this I have a feeling that all the overzealous e-mailing has something to do with their anti-Americanism and the fact that they’ve begged/commanded me to return to our beloved Canada for the past several years. Also, is Edmonton a big rehab town or something?

Curiously, the only e-mail I received from my sister during the near-self-imposed death scare was one of complaint regarding the $14 pay-per-view gay porn charge (mysteriously purchased sometime during the period in which I inhabited her house for a week during Xmas) that appeared on her bill this month… I can always count on her to keep it real with me.

In other news, most of today’s library patrons are ambiguously ethnic preteens assembled in ganglike clusters playing cards (Pokemon…? Whoa, Greenpoint kids really need to get with the times) as well as a few scattered potentially homeless elderly Polish women eating noodle-like food off paper plates (again, ?). No one is reading. This particular location of the BPL is outstandingly unpleasant in appearance. Brown all over, the windows are small and dirty. It smells like glue, White Diamonds, and what I can only assume is the noodle-like food. I just responded to my parents letting them know that I am, for better or for worse, still breathing–but, just for self-insurance, the overall implications of the note remain as is until further notice.

My thirty minutes are up in 28 seconds. A bearded man waits behind me. I just looked at him. He is now probably looking over my shoulder, reading what I’m typing. Well, are you?

BUNNY KINNEY