[Los Angeles, 1991]
I’m not dying.
I’m sitting on the couch next to the windows with my feet up, feeling the breath of the afternoon air; the sun slants away across the grass and its sprinklers. I’m wearing my gray robe, the heavy warm one, and waiting stoically for another coughing fit. I’m sick again this week, but I’m not dying. Of course, I do have a damaged immune system, and I’ve been having various troubles for some time now, digestion, skin, it’s all quite annoying. The doctors fuss over me, at least when they’re sure that insurance will cover the cost, and give me tests and various prophylactic medicines. Prophylactic medicine, that’s always an embarrassing thing to talk about, I think they need a new word for it. But then, sensitivity isn’t exactly an overwhelming concern for the medical profession. Today I just have a cold, but it seems to have ambitions to become a mild bronchitis; the hacking, wet coughs are tiring, and I am full of antihistamines that aren’t working. Actually, they are working in that I can’t quite think straight, and everything I touch seems slightly padded, and when I take the corner between the kitchen and the hallway I can’t stop myself from veering into the wall. However, in spite of these problems, I think I can definitely say that I’m not dying.
When I talk to people I haven’t seen in a while, particularly over the phone, I can almost hear them thinking: I wonder what he looks like now, how is he doing really?, and I always make it clear that I’m really doing just fine. Yes, I have occasional problems, no, I won’t be in today because I’m not feeling well, no, it’s not serious. It’s hard to convince some of them sometimes, most people obviously prefer soap operas to just picking up the dull shards of living, day after day. Yesterday, when I called to cancel a meeting, I was coughing explosively into the phone, wiping it off, trying to get through a few sentences coherently. I could hear the concern in her voice, and could imagine her working out a tangled problem in friendship and management: what do we do if he gets really sick, do we keep paying him or what?
Dying isn’t a medical category, not really. Doctors aren’t comfortable with ideas that emphasize time and process, they’re much happier with machine metaphors – either you’re working or you aren’t, and when you stop working they try to fix you, and if they can’t do it someone has to go out and buy a new model of whatever you were. And then there’s a bill for labor and parts. And even for normal human beings, the kind with feelings and hopes, dying is always a retroactive narrative, a story that is told only after its end has already happened. He’s dead now, so he must have been dying since last June, or even March when he first went into the hospital. Or, he’s looking just fine, he was sick last year, we all thought he was dying but I guess he wasn’t. And we all say, I’m so glad.
And dying can go on for so long. There are certain difficult types who claim that we’re dying from the moment we’re born, but I think we can ignore them since they’re mostly drunkards and poets. And so always we continue to live, moving through our different processes, some of which inevitably include being sick in various annoying or inconvenient fashions. But when the secret disaster begins, when the cells of the body begin to whisper among themselves, when morale drops in the liver and the spleen starts to spread nasty rumors of impending collapse: as though we’re being sold to the Japanese, and you’re all going to be fired. And inevitably the rumors get out, and the stock in T-cells starts to fall: it was worth so much more last year, but now look at it.
I wander the house, looking through the various rooms. I manage to generate the energy to start washing the dishes, but get bored halfway through and go back to the couch to lie down. My heart is racing strangely, probably from the combination of medicines; it is impossible to sleep, and I drift in and out of an irritable semi-consciousness. I go back out to the couch to watch the twilight, the kids from across the street running up and down the sidewalk. Lately, I haven’t liked my T-cell counts, or the way the subjects of wills, insurance, pentamidine and such keep appearing in my phone conversations and lists of things to do. It is, frankly, not amusing; I would prefer to spend my time otherwise. I am forced to admit, I’ve been hoping that the universe would get the point if I acted rather cool, somewhat preoccupied, when such things come up; but then I suppose the universe isn’t known for perceptive sensitivity, any more than doctors.
It has been pleasant to lie on the couch, to read comic books and feel the late, fading sun. I have enjoyed these days of being sick, in spite of the coughing. The nicest thing is the slightly woozy feeling from the drugs, that’s a big help, I like that a lot. It’s pleasant really, it’s been nice to call people up and tell them to go away, that I won’t be in, that I won’t be able to do various annoying jobs. I should do this more often. But there is that cellular unease, that feeling that things have been shifting when my back was turned, that the rules are changing and I haven’t kept up. I consider the health of others, those who died recently, surprisingly, and meditate on the disagreeable feeling of seeing familiar names in the obituaries, and of going to my computer address list and changing the information: erase the phone number and address, and put instead: ‘died 5/12/91.’ I consider my body’s reactions over the past weeks, I try to relate my energy and muscle aches to the increasing improbability of ever going to the gym again. I suppose I should be changing my diet too, but can’t imagine finding the energy. I wonder if they have a pill that prevents one from giving up. I sit and stare into the dark, watching the street lights come on one by one, irregularly.
Having reached various conclusions, I think it would be best to be open and straightforward about them. I turn on the light switch for the lamp above my head. I look severely at the coffee table and the couch, and I tell them, explaining it very clearly, making sure they understand that I’m making a precise distinction in both the temporal and interpretative spheres, that it’s certainly not that I was wrong before and am admitting it now, no, it’s just that there are certain processes, and certain changes that occur in those processes, and that our judgments are always based on the facts we have at hand.
“So, okay: now,” I say, and, aware that my audience is showing signs of impatience, I try to state my central point before I lose their attention, “now, I’m dying.”
[Los Angeles, 5/14-8/13/91]
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