What I would like is for some invisible presence to step out of the wall behind me with a gun, place it at the back of my head, and fire it quickly, four, five, six times.  Death by sudden, assassination. No anxiety. No pain. No forewarning.  This seems to me the ideal way of leaving a life one never chose to enter in the first place. A life just as well unlived. Bang bang bang bang bang.  For a long time I thought that one should be able to hire a personal assassin—a trained military sniper, let’s say—the way one can hire a personal trainer. Or a doctor or a lawyer for that matter. The contract would entail “taking you out” with painless and sudden professionalism at some unspecified time—at your peak, let’s say, before the inevitable and unstoppable decline begins. The details of when that point is would be tricky. The devil is always in the details. People tend to hold onto the slippery slope of their decline with a clawing, ghastly, unseeming  desperation. I fear I might become one of them. That’s why the whole idea of hiring a personal assassin seems untenable. Better that the decision when to pull the trigger—figuratively and metaphorically—be taken out of your own hands entirely—figuratively and metaphorically. Better that the assassin comes from the white wall behind you, lifts the gun silently to the back of your head, etc. It would be ideal if this assassination could be performed during or upon culmination of a sexual experience, but that’s too much to ask, that’s sheer fantasy. Although my forays into the world of quick, anonymous sex with strangers were clearly a half-hearted and semi-conscious attempt at making this happen, a form of suicide by eroticism. Ironically, while trying to kill myself with anonymous and potentially dangerous sexual partners, I found the love of my life and a reason to go on living instead. But at the same time all the more reason to fear death. Go figure. Life has a way of laughing at us, like a spider laughing at a fly caught in a web. Or is it fate? Actually, neither fate nor life nor spiders laugh. Nothing of intelligence is "out there" observing us, either benevolently, maliciously, or indifferently. If anything is laughing cruelly at our frustration, our struggles, our impossible predicament, it's ourselves.  I feel like that spider, caught in a web, terrified, struggling helplessly, strangling, who just wants it over once and for all, looking for the spider, waiting for the tell-tale tremor of its footsteps on the wire, calling out Help me! Kill me!