“Ah, it’s five-to-one guys in here,” he would grouse into his beer. “You gotta have the bucks to get the girl.”

A gloomy disposition. But so gloomy that two decades later, the guy would intentionally steer his Jeep into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer?

I’m not one to second guess a person’s state of mind in the minutes, hours or days leading to a suicide. God knows I’ve seen more than a few friends go the way of the noose. It leaves a legacy of pain and questions for family and friends left behind, but can you fault the doomed man? Until you walk a mile inside a person’s haunted head, it’s tough to second guess his committment to the end.

But here’s my problem with Dave’s method of deliverance. He drove his Jeep into the path of a logging traveling at a high rate of speed in the opposite direction. The act almost guaranteed his own demise but also posed the same risk for the man in the big truck. This was a total stranger. Someone presumably with a family of his own, kids waiting at home, a life to get back to. Dave’s misery consumed him so much that he apparently had no compunction about creating misery for those populating the unhappy world around him.

I say it’s the height of selfishness, a total pussy version of an act that is already the very definition of the word. There are a thousand ways to kill yourself that don’t involve the killing, maiming or traumatizing of those in your path. Dave chose to inflict his woe on another person instead of a brick wall, a tree or a cliff. The act screams “SCREW ALL OF YOU. IF I HAVE TO BE MISERABLE, SO SHOULD THE REST OF THE WORLD.”

We used to go to the beach every weekend, Dave and I. We employed a hound dog technique we called “The body and the brain.” He was the body, a guy who spent hours in the gym and the tanning booths to define his look. I was the scrawny, winter-white guy with the intellect. Dave would go for the stunning beauties, I’d look for the girls reading Dickens on a beach blanket.

I usually did better with the beach girls but it had little to do with body or brain. The difference was that Dave’s entire day and sense of well-being was dependant on his success at the beach, whereas I didn’t care much whether I hooked up or got shot down cold.

You’ve got to wonder if that consuming need for affection became a main ingredient to the suicidal mindset. Then again, I won’t wonder too much. It’s not for me to play juror over what’s in a despairing man’s head or heart.

I can question the method, though. And that employed by my old friend Dave is less sad and lamentable than it is despicable. My condolences here go to the family and friends of Dave and to the blameless man in the Mack truck who will never be the same after his encounter with the suicidal stranger.