All these survivors, during and after their jumps, experienced mystical states of consciousness characterized by losing the sense of time and space and by feelings of spiritual rebirth and unity with other human beings, the entire universe, and God. As a result of their intimate encounter with death, some of them had a profound religious conversion; others described a reconfirmation of their previous religious beliefs. One of the survivors denied any suicide intent altogether. He saw the Golden Gate Bridge as “golden doors” through which he will pass from the material world into a new spiritual realm.
In olden times, suicides were viewed as contagious. People who killed themselves were often buried at crossroads in the dark of night under large piles of stones. In addition, stakes were sometimes driven through their dead hearts in an effort to prevent the sickness of their spirits from infecting the living.
Once every twenty minutes or so, somebody commits suicide in the United States of America.
Approximately once every two weeks, somebody jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The free fall takes about four seconds.
Those who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge hit the water below at a speed of roughly seventy-five miles per hour, with a force of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch.
In 1993, a guy named Steve Page threw his three-year-old daughter, Kellie, over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. A few seconds later, he followed her.
In a 1993 poll conducted by the San Francisco Examiner, 54 percent of respondents said that they did not want a suicide barrier constructed on the bridge to prevent people from doing things like that. They felt it would mar the bridge. They felt it would obstruct their view. They felt it would impinge upon people’s freedoms.
gephyrophobia n.
Fear of bridges or of crossing them.
This was the second straight year that I’d lost someone during the holidays. My grandfather had died the year before, on Christmas Eve 1998. My mother’s father. We called him Granddad. He was in a hospital bed, alone, when he slipped into The Void. My grandmother had been sitting at his bedside for hours on end. Then, at about 9:00 p.m., she went home to get some rest. Granddad drifted away a couple of hours later, in the dark of night, when nobody was looking.
A month later, each of his grandchildren received roughly $6,000 in ExxonMobil stock. Ticker symbol: XOM.
petroleum n.
A thick, flammable, yellow-to-black mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the earth’s surface. Can be separated into fractions including natural gas, gasoline, naphtha, kerosene, fuel and lubricating oils, paraffin wax, and asphalt, and is used as raw material for a wide variety of derivative products.
I was wary of owning an oil stock, worried it would be tantamount to owning wars and pollution. Immediately, I called Horvak out in San Francisco. Horvak was a couple of years older than me and had been working in the financial sector for Charles Schwab. With his assistance, I opened an online brokerage account and cashed out of Exxon with the push of a button. In an instant, all of my oil stock was gone, converted directly into cash. Horvak then informed me that I didn’t want to have all that cash sitting around, because cash left to generate meager interest in a savings account would be “dying cash,” on account of something called the “rate of inflation.”
rate of inflation n.
The rate of change of prices (as indicated by a price index) calculated on a monthly or annual basis. Also known as inflation rate.
I told Horvak that I didn’t want my cash to die. Horvak told me to put my cash in a company called eBay. Ticker symbol: EBAY. Horvak had been tracking eBay and said it was a nice place to start, so in February 1999, I purchased $6,201.47 worth of eBay stock at $21.68 per share.
As of late April 1999, the stock had more than doubled in value. The thing took off like a moon rocket. It was the easiest money I’d ever made. Horvak was out of his mind with excitement at the time, trembling with joy and fantasy. Wall Street was going bananas. Stock prices were taking off, IPOs and record highs in every direction. The tech boom was on. Everyone was an optimist, and nobody could lose.
“You wouldn’t believe what’s happening out here,” Horvak said. “People are just throwing money around. It’s stupid. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Horvak was an animal, day-trading aggressively and making a killing. One day he made $50,000 before lunch. At that point, his portfolio was worth more than a quarter of a million bucks. He’d started out a couple of years earlier with practically nothing, and now he was relatively rich. He was planning on quitting his job in a year. He and his girlfriend, Blair, were going to go travel around the world for a long time, purchasing things.
Blair was a hippie chick with a trust fund.
Inspired by Horvak’s success on the open market, I sold all of my eBay shares one afternoon in late April, right before graduation, and started day-trading. The ensuing seven months were an odyssey. Evenings were spent delivering pizzas. Days were spent tracking stocks. I was averaging about four or five hours of sleep per night.
The winning was pretty much relentless. On a typical day, Horvak called me once every hour or so to celebrate. We had brief, ecstatic conversations about numbers and the future. We discussed travel plans and entrepreneurial concepts. I babbled about making an independent feature film. Horvak fantasized about buying a small resort hotel off the coast of Honduras. He sounded like he was on uppers all the time. His mind and his mouth were going a mile a minute. He was betting big, talking about early retirement with some degree of frequency. I think he was closing in on seven figures. My portfolio was growing rapidly as well, albeit on a much smaller scale. The simplicity of the arrangement was nothing short of mind-blowing. It seemed like the easiest thing in the world.
On an average day, I usually took a sizable nap after market close, if my adrenaline levels weren’t too high. Then, at about 9:00 p.m., I’d drive over to Fatty Jay’s for the late shift. Fatty Jay’s was the name of the pizza establishment that I worked for. I was just out of college, with a bachelor of fine arts degree in avant-garde filmmaking. All it had gotten me so far was Fatty Jay’s and day-trading.
avant-garde n.
A group active in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field, especially in the arts.
adj.
Of, relating to, or being part of an innovative group, especially one in the arts: avant-garde painters; an avant-garde theater piece.
With my stocks performing well, I could have cashed out and quit the pizza job, no problem. I could have taken my profits and hit the road. I thought about it several times, but I could never bring myself to go through with it. Chalk it up to indecision. At that point, the end of the boom was nowhere in sight. I didn’t want to cash out too soon and risk missing out on further profits. At the same time, the stock numbers seemed unreal to me. I didn’t trust them entirely. My money was totally intangible. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Horvak warned me continually that the entire enterprise could come crashing down at any second. We discussed this fact ad nauseam. We were desperate to be wise, advising each other to employ a conservative approach to rabid enthusiasm. We pondered the history of the markets and encouraged each other to stay with our jobs until we got off the ride. Quitting, we felt, might jinx us. It was better, we felt, to keep working hard,