Man Of Few Words

Chapter 76

I'm really looking forward to seeing Inge again, and I wish I were ready to do so. I want to talk to her face-to-face and up close. I want to ask her why. Why is she doing this? What's drawn her to this dying guy who, even when he wasn't dying, was a bit of a selfish arsehole anyway. I'm still one, I think. I guess. Part of me hope's so. I would hate to be living, and dying, some kind of pre-death redemption cliché. That would make this a shitty book too, wouldn't it?

But maybe that's why I started writing it in the first place. Maybe something in me knew that this would lead me to something like peace.

Ha! I admit it. By "something like peace" I kind of mean Inge. She's not perfectly serene or untroubled. Far from it, I'm sure. Yet she seems to have an enviable clarity of mind. I very much get the feeling that this is something she's learned and continues to work hard on. That's another thing I want to ask her. How does she do it? Can I learn just a little bit of it too before I die?

Maybe I already am learning.

I will ask her these things, and many more. When I'm ready.

For now though, these four walls and this window. At least it's cleaner in here now.

I'm not sure if what I'm experiencing right now is peace, or if it's an eerie stillness. A deadly entropy. Once again I'm here doing nothing but writing this book because I can't do anything else. All the while my very life is rapidly ebbing away.

Tears again. I welcome them. They make it hard to read what I'm writing. But... they also show me that what I'm writing means something. And I feel it. I feel something.

Feel something.

Fuck that fucking coffee.

I was going to end this chapter there, but I'm starting to bore myself with all these chapters that are all introspective, but then go all "fuck you" at the end like I just discover punk two days ago. No, not punk. Fucking emo.

I don't know how to end it otherwise though. Is that how my life's going to end? Just before I croak, I'm just gonna go, "Fuck it!" and flip off everyone in the room. Then the poor undertaker will have to carefully but forcibly bend my fingers to a more open-casket-friendly configuration.

I might add a clause to my will that states specifically that the undertaker must mot do that. And that if he does, all my money goes to a guinea pig sanctuary instead of any family or friends.

I'm making myself laugh now. Still crying too.

Between now and tomorrow, I'm going to try really, really hard to think of a worthwhile story that doesn't have anything to do with bad sex. Maybe there's something important in my life that I've forgotten about. Not that bad sex is important to me, of course.
Actually, it is.