Somebody up on the Triborough Bridge last week made me nervous.
An older man walking the opposite direction on the highest part of the walkway looked at me and smiled.
Making direct eye contact he raised his right hand and offered me a salute.
I didn’t think much of it at first.
He walked toward the part of the bridge where there is no fence, and not much to stop one from jumping.
(Photography on the Triborough is illegal, don't you do this)
He had stopped walking. He leaned against the railing, looked over the edge.
I thought his little salute might have meant something.
In 2005 I imagined my father giving one final military salute before killing himself. On Steinway Street a few months ago I offered a pathetic salute in that memory whence mailing off the papers that closed the sale of his old house.
I watched this man for about a minute, concocting the possible drama of the situation, the no-man’s land of high places, the ribbed-condom wrappers gripping endless cocks holding the bridge in the air, the deathly-blue color of the narrow space. I imagined talking him back should he climb to a buttperch on the railing.
Certainly there was no need to preemptively intrude upon or needlessly approach a man engaged in an innocuous stroll over the bridge even as he filled my morbid imagination with sour remonstrance.
I thought of the movie “The Bridge,” a documentary about the high number of suicides that occur from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I remembered the dancer-like move of the suicidalists seen in that film.
After about a minute of looking into the waters of the Hell Gate the gentleman kept walking toward Randall’s Island.
It was eerie.
I don’t know that most people would think what I thought.
The scene was dramatic: Enormity of the bridge itself. Gloomy weather. Puncturing sound of the cars driving below and the noise of my memories formed a maelstrom of sensory backwash.
The Triborough Bridge is a spooky structure to me. It reminds me of a strict schoolmarm’s very stiff shoulders.
There is no suicide telephone hotline up there. Some years ago, for no apparent reason, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) placed a sign that reads “LIFE IS WORTH LIVING”.
The sign claims there is a suicide prevention telephone 150 feet ahead.
There is no phone 150 feet ahead or behind. I have looked high and low, up and down, salt and pepper and black on white; I cannot find this phantom crisis hotline telephone advertised on the MTA’s sign.
I wrote to the MTA in 2011 to ask where I could find the phone.
I should have indicated that my interest in this matter was not out of personal interest in using the phone.
I should have referred to my longtime interest in public telephones and phones in random places.
I should have indicated my interest in seeing what kind of phone it was and how I could have missed it. I figured it was probably a push-to-talk phone with no touchpad or buttons, but maybe it was more like a regular phone?
How could it be invisible to me?
It seemed like a cruel promise to make and a long way to go to have the sign made when someone in charge must know that the advertised phone does not exist.
The MTA replied to inform me that there were crisis prevention hotlines on all 3 spans of the Triborough.
Dear Mr. Thomas:
There are LifeNet automated phones located on all three roadway spans of the RFK/Triborough Bridge, but I encourage you to contact LifeNet’s 24/7 hotline immediately if you are in need of counseling. The number is: 212-254-5219.
MTA B&T
I know not of what they speak, because no such phone exists on the span connecting Queens to Randall’s Island. I also have no memory of an emergency callbox on the Port Morris-bound span of the Triborough when I crossed it.
A spreadsheet somewhere must indicate that phones were installed on both these spans.
The spreadsheet is assumed authoritative.
The spreadsheet is wrong.
I rarely call 311 anymore or do anything to volunteer my street-level knowledge of things as a public citizen. As this essay proves, people like me are usually wrong.
As a common citizen in an irritated plutocracy I am powerless to bring matters like this to anyone’s attention, or to the attention of anyone that could do something about it.
There is no crisis counseling hotline telephone on the Triborough, but if the MTA says it’s there then they can go on with them bad selves.
It seems like a sour and cruel hoax to post a sign like that offering hope to somebody that might need it.
Then again, I think anyone with knowledge of these things knows that someone in that state of mind is probably not going to stop to make a phone call. So why bother actually putting a phone up there? Why not just put up the sign saying there is a phone? Those things cost money! Who even cares?
I walk over the bridge once in a while to check in on my fear of heights. I never had acrophobia but it caught me within the last couple of years. That bridge is high in the sky. The dangers of the drop from the unfenced walkway makes me think a mere collision between a scofflaw bicyclist and a lowly pedestrian could send one or the other of them flying over.
This is an enjoyable read. Many times I have looked at water as an instant death driving off of a bridge, or jumping from on in high water times.
I saw the note which you made that Life is worth living. I ordinarily feel that way. This President makes life pretty damned unbearable at times while we are forced to survive on less than 1980 wages. The world is in God’s hands, so I let my case rest there.
I do so hope to speak with you more. I will bookmark your site. Thanks again for sharing.
threw a bunch of flowers into the waters off the Tallahatchie bridge
🙂