Listen to the lists of my endless insanity. (My name) a precarious figure unto himself. Shit I was high as balls. I love getting that high, silly kinda deep. But I’m only saying this, well I was only this high because I just got back from Dick Fealey’s apartment. His bong is magic. I don’t get stoned all the time at Dick’s, but more times than not you know he has the stuff to get the job done. We were going out tonight and it was to be glorious. Mika and Drinkysips were there. They were getting engaged, well were engaged, and it was lovely. Drinkysips was that rustic bearded type of character. An intellectual, a scholar preaching to the frantic youth. A teacher and mentor to many, but of all these things he was my friend and brother. I’ll never forget during pledging the first time he rolled up and said his hellos. Well actually he just told me to shut the fuck up and stare at the ping pong ball on the picnic table out front. Funny enough I hadn’t said anything, nor was there a ping pong ball on said picnic table, but I went along with it.
I stood out there for 5 mins before he coupled over with laughter. Shit kid,you’ll just do whatever anybody tells you won’t ya. I’m just fucking with ya. Let’s get hammered, he says to me, handing me one of my own beers. The even funnier thing was he was right. I would do almost anything you told me. I would, in the simple hope it might make me more likeable. I do anything for that. Hell Drinkysips was one of the best guys I know. I couldn’t wait for their wedding this summer. Just got the invite in the mail. I wonder who I was going to bring. I was even going to be a groomsman. I felt honored. I’d never been a groomsman before. I was so excited. I’d never been one before. And I was just so excited. But o’ fuck here goes the fucking anxiety. Time to go home. Fuck I hate myself.
I was anxious because I was writing about Denise. Ya I know a fully packed bar is a weird place to write, but there I sat amongst the drunken chaos writing away about a girl I might love and I became terrified. So I had to leave. I had to leave them all for the moment. Mika asked me where I was going, in her cutesy voice of a voice. I lied and told her I was just going out to smoke a cig and that I would be back in a second, but nothing else could be more untrue. I never came back when the fear set in. I always left, not ever telling my friends why. I just left to waltz home among the skies above and the pain below. I was scared. I was scared of what Denise made me feel and what I knew she would never feel for me. I was scared and wanted nothing more than to be alone. I was thinking about her too much lately. Her smile. Her laugh. I knew we were meant to be together. Even if it was for a moment. She may break my heart tomorrow or a month from now, but I didn’t care. It was worth my turmoil being with her. She was worth any heartbreak because, well because, I guess. I want to write about her. It was that kinda Love. Well I guess I’m writing about her if you call this writing. But I love her. I really do. People may scoff. They may jest. But I don’t care. I promise I don’t. I don’t because it was glowing. The love I had for her. Shining I tell you. Warm. Pleasant. Scary as fucking shit. But most important it was home. It was warm and it was home. What else could I ask for, but a love like that?
I was thinking this to myself as I exited the premises of whatever bar we were all drinking at. It began to rain gently as I turned the corner and made my way down the alley that I often took on my way home. The mist in the air glistened across the neon signs that I left behind. The wind stirred in a chill as it brushed up against my exposed skin and slipped through the edges of my mind. The stars I could not see, but I still hoped that they would be there in nights to come. I still hoped that I would be there to see them. And as I strolled down my street, I stopped and I cried. I cried my fucking eyes out, because I knew no one was home. No one to stop me from what I was about to do. No one there to protect me from myself. No one to stop me from what I’ve done so many times before. No one. No one. No one. No one.
I was bored as fuck as I sat out on my back porch with a cig half lit and new scars in the making. Life acquires an interestingly stale flavor when you get bored. It is surprising, with so little time left, that one could get bored at all. Like I would endlessly be entertained in my passing. Fuck what a dream, I says to myself in a chuckle. That even if I were to falter in my entertainment I could always go out and watch the grass grow and in that gain some existential awareness or some bull shit like that. Some Walden Henry David Thoreau type of shit. Well the dying get bored just like the living. We’re no different in that regard. What a fantasy to have defeated boredom in dying, but I guess you can only ever truly defeat such a foe as boredom where boredom sleeps forever more. Whether that forever be one of heaven eternal or oblivion nevermore I know not yet. But I’ll figure it out sooner or later I guess. Hey bud whatcha doing, Chancey asks me. O’ nothing, I says. Just thinking, I says to him. Shocker, he says to me, as he pulled out a lighter and grabbed the cig out my hand. I guess it had gone out in the cool breeze that had been passing by for an hour or so by now. As he touched flame to already burnt tobacco and took a few puffs he began to laugh. What’s funny, I asks him, as he handed me back my cig and proceeded to light his own. I don’t know bud. I don’t know, he says to me still chuckling. I started to laugh with him as my boredom slipped away. We sat there laughing, and I looked at him with a half cocked smile. Thanks Chancey, I says to him. Anytime bud he, says to me. Anytime.
I find myself driving so often. With the sun long set and soon to rise I came to a thought and then it was gone. My lights flickered across the wet pathment of this long forgotten road. Forgotten to me and those other missing souls I call friends who venture out into night’s clarity. I wouldn’t know where I was if it weren’t for the fact I always drive the same way. Off to the speedway 20 miles outside of town. What was the difference between this particular speedway and the one 2 miles away from my house? I don’t fucking know. I’m dying, let me have my one or two or three neurotic habits. It was a good time for reflection though. Time to get things in order. Thoughts. Emotions. Hopes. Aspirations. Dreams. You have no idea how many fucking things there are to do when you realize you don’t have all the time in the world to do them. All seem so relevant, so necessary to living a life fulfilled. How can I die knowing I’ve done so little, but thank God life isn’t weighed by such things as where you’ve been and what mountains you’ve climbed, but more so by the people you’ve touched and the moments you made.
This maybe one cliche run on sentence much like most of the things I say, but it’s true. The people we love are our life’s meaning, for love extends beyond a checklist of to do’s and, in my case, a bucket list. We can have our list, we can check them off one by one, but if we forget those we love in all our endeavours, we become nothing because we have given nothing to those around us. We are what we give to those we have in this life. Nothing more. Nothing less. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and you’ll know. It may be that cheesy chapter from the bible that people read at weddings, but for me it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. More profound than anything any philosopher has ever pondered. If I made something like that the focal point of my life then I could die for real in that I would have loved in my passing. Fuck my final night. Let me get hit by a bus tomorrow for fucks sake. If I could behold that sorta love, even for a second, I could say I was alive and deservant of passing on in righteousness. I could die because… because I… because I loved and was loved.
There was a section of prose in this article I was reading out of that magazine again. That same magazine as earlier. It went something like this:
The things one hears outside one’s door, the tragedy and smiles filled with laughter. People fighting... making love. Reminiscing and looking far beyond tomorrow’s dawn. In all this lays so many stories. But I guess there are stories out there that I will never know. Human voices left only to a tone.
I was reading that over and over on my back porch to myself. Over and Over I read it. Something bewitched me in its solemn truth. Then as I looked up my pondering was ceased in brevity. There she was. There was Gladice and her saggy tits. Gladice who I might never know. Well at least not from the distance of my porch to her. God dammit! I thought I just had a thought worth thinking and there it went. My thought. My fucking thought. It evaporated before thinking could even have its way. Dammit I thought I might have been on to something there for a moment. It’s a strange feeling to have an epiphany to no resolve. A preponderance of the psyche with no resounding understanding to follow up with. Anyway, I should go over there and say hi or something. Say hi to Gladice that is. Shit at least wave. I swear to God before I die I’m gunna figure that woman out. See, it’s not that there was anything particularly captivating about her, not besides those breasts which have so ungracefully fallen sway to the minglings of gravity. But o’ shit that was what I was thinking. People’s stories. Her story. Human voices out there. Gladices voice was one of them. I knew that article clipping was applicable some how. That’s why I kept on fucking reading it. I have to. I have to meet that women as she really is. I don’t know the fuck why. But I gotta. I need to put some reality to these abstractions of my mindful searching. I had to do something to engage with her or maybe she would, but fade away from sight at all. As if she was never there to begin with. But it was 5 in the morning and she seems really busy in her garden. Better wait till I’m a little bit more fucking existentially ready for that sort of shebackel. I say that a lot… Shebackel. What the fuck does that mean anyway?
I wonder why Gladice starts gardening in the dark. Maybe the plants move a different way in darkness and slowly begin to dance as the sun rises. Was she the director of this seemingly unknown ballet. Maybe she might show me such a dance of petals one of these days. Maybe it was to be called The Joy of Tulips or The Tears of Roses Long Sold. I don’t fucking know if the title really fucking matters, but I’m sure it would be something well worth seeing. Just fucking go over there you idiot. This is going to be an itch on your fucking back til you nut up and actually do it buddy boy so just fucking go over there and talk to the lady. What's the worst that old dame can do to you fucking anyway? She’s not gunna bite your dick off, and if she does, well fuck then you’ll just have one hella story to tell the guys. I might tell Denise or Franky about Gladice’s ballet of flowers. Maybe they’ll understand what I’m talking about. Maybe they’ll understand the possibility in wondering about such things. I don’t know. I don’t know if anything I just said made sense. I don’t think I said it right. I don’t…
Mom cried last Christmas. I didn’t find out my condition on Christmas or anything ironically morbid like that. Actually I think it was Tuesday sometime in November. I wasn’t keeping track or anything of the days as they passed. That’s not how I wanted to go out. Fuck no one wants to go out counting the days, but Mom stilled cried a little. I knew she was holding most of it back while we gathered for the traditional family pic because she hated the thought of ruining a holiday, let alone leaving any photographic proof over something out of her hands. But anyone who could blame the women for letting out a few teers, given the situation, would be a fucking cun… well not to nice of a fucking gent to say the least. It was hard on everyone, but especially mom. Knowing her little boy wasn’t making it for next year’s photo. That this would be a memory never to come again. This last Christmas photo. It had nothing to do with the photo ya know, but it was understandable to say the least unless, like I said, you happen to be a fucking doucher cun… bad person. Mom was a strong broad though. Stronger than she might think or give herself credit for. She would pull it together in a snap if she saw me looking, and she did her best to give me that last christmas, but it wasn’t the presents or the lights I cared about. It was just them. Family. What a precious thing I had in them. What a precious thing.
This whole dying shit… well, at least the fact that I had cancer, was well known amongst the facebook friend group and the regular hooligans I called compadres galore. Sorry if I keep going on and on about dying, but you’re going to have to get the fuck over it because, well fucker, thats what’s happening. Plus this is my story, so fuck off and close the goddamn book if you don’t like it. So anyway, everybody knew I had it, though nonetheless under the illusion that I was getting better. I did my obligatory walk for cancer, photo shoots for the press, and constant statuses of endearment for the social networking world ad infinitum. Even visited St. Jude to support a fundraiser. All that shit. I never thought there was much point in keeping the broader scope of things away from the public. It was pretty fucking visable at this point any way. Cancer leaves its cuts and bruises amongst other physicalities. I mean for fucksake how else is a junior suppose to explain such complete and utter baldness other than the big fucking C. It would be hard to evade such self-assumed conclusions, even in the most alternative circles that Miami had to offer. Groups where shaving one’s head might pass as portraying monkhood or some fucking form of self-expression. But this was utterly impossible, given I was a little rag tag animal house frat boy. It’s not that my frat was judgemental in any way shape or form. Just different. They were amazing in there own special sorta fucked up way. Ya sure fraternities get a bad rap, but this wasn’t a frat, it was a brotherhood. Another island of misfit toys… o wait there I go quoting Perks quoting Rudolf.
Anyway, we were the weirdos, but hell we still managed to hang with some beautiful and, well, not so beautiful women, so we had that going for us. Through endless bald jokes and shared tears they really are what got me through the initial shock, but most importantly they made me feel normal, wanted, and hopeful. That’s why I didn’t tell them. That’s why I didn’t tell Denise or Franky or anyone of them for that matter. I didn’t want them to stop hoping. Someone besides my parents should join in hoping for more. Why not those who truly cared? I couldn’t help but wonder though. How were they going to take it? It was going to be so abrupt. So sudden for them. Just a shout from the dark corners of my grave that I was now gone.
Was I in actuality being cruel, maybe selfish and unloving to them by keeping them in the mist, or was I just pitying them. Thinking them not brave enough to face the truth that I was no longer destined much longer for this world. That the days grew dimmer with every inhale and exhale, and bright shores were soon to fade from vision. I hope this was not the case, because nothing could be farther from the truth when it came to how I felt about them. I loved them so much. I just really… I just really, just didn’t want them to stop hoping. I just wanted them to. I needed them to. Because I was getting so scared. I didn’t want this to happen to me and their hope made it better. God I love them. I didn’t want them to write me off. Not that they ever would literally. But when there’s a cut off line for one’s livelihood, certain conversations about the future get cut short when you enter the room. I wanted people to include me in far off dreamy plans or conquests and adventures to come, that is, without the urge to cry ever creeping behind gentle smiles.
My family obviously couldn’t be that someone for me like they could. Gentle smiles and creeping grief were too often all we knew. O’ how I wanted to be spared from the vile nature of my own ending. Just as this death was mine, so too was it there’s. Wherever there is family and death intertwined by the calls of fate so to doth anguish lie. It tears at the soul like a festering wound that no bandage can fully cover. All you can hope for is an easing of the pain from time to time. And as we despaired over what was to be my fate we did sorrow for there is nothing… absolutely nothing lovely in death. Most don’t have the stamina to make right and befriend such a thing as death for there is no romance in a man’s passing for family, friend, or self alike. No death beckons joy in the soul. No death natural. No death meant to be. Man was born to keep on living and it is but a shame that thou and I should end into the unknown.
I say all I want is to be spared, but truly all I wanted was something entirely else. Where grief could be cherished and scorned but a little. Where we did happy things and sad. Special things that made us smile and cry to ease the pain. But that I had… that I had in them. All of them. Blessings I so often forget in my own suffering. Though my loving family was sown to my fate, might not my friends be spared, o’ so loving as they were, from such ails. I mean fuck, even when the flowers of demise first bloomed, the closest I let most of them into it all was their own reflection in that fucking shiney head of mine. If I ever had to puke or was having the shakes of a day I’d either quietly excuse myself or just stay home. Only a select few knew my suffering, but even they were shielded compared to my family. O’ God how this has assaulted my family so.
One of my favorite philosophers, Gabriel Marcel, once wrote that it is the death of others that affects us most dearly. Their passing is never calm for the remnants of their love. Death tears at those who are left behind. It no longer can be ignored for we can no longer hide how lovely it was to have that person in our lives, and how daunting it is now that they are gone. The terror, o’ the terror that lay in the slowly beating hearts of our brothers and sisters. Our fragile fates interlocked with one another. Nihilism seeps in when we are stripped from each other, for we become stripped from ourselves. We honest ones try to make this life’s honor though faced with such nihilistic tendencies. That in all its fragility, life is worth living because it is fragile. Fragile and beautifully weak. And o’ so beautifully human. Maybe this might be true, but then again maybe it’s not. Maybe life is just plain fucking awful because of our fragility. Destined to die in this world while everyone we love is but left to watch.